Raney & Levine (9 page)

18


T
he second delivery came faster than expected, no
complications. It was a boy. And a thrilled mother. And two surprised interns,
Jill and Tricia, who had finished clinic early and come up to help. Suddenly
the two had free time on their hands. George Mackey just wanted to go back to
sleep.

“Bed, bed,
bed
,” Mackey groaned trudging into the
scrub room, pulling off his cap and surgical gown, dumping them into the
laundry bin.

Tricia, entering behind him said, “We heard about your
night. A tough delivery, three hours of sleep, and then the breech?”

Jill behind Tricia was silent.

“Hell, yeah.” Mackey headed for the sinks. “A fat-kid breech
who
weighed nine and a half pounds
. Phipps kept saying, ’Fat-ass kid!
You ever see such a fat-ass kid?’ Don’t think the mother heard, she was
moaning, but hell, you gotta do something about Phipps’s mouth!”

“Promise him candy and he’ll shut up. Damn, how does he stay
so skinny?” Tricia dumped her surgical gown and cap into the bin.

Then Jill did too.

And looked in, and saw a snake slithering black across OR
laundry and up the side of the bin.

She froze, blinked, and the snake disappeared. Her heart
rocketed and she felt weak. Grabbed a linen shelf to steady herself.

“You okay?” Tricia frowned, washing at one of the sinks.

“Just had a bad moment.” Jill came to the sink next to her.
Pedaled soap and water and started scrubbing out. Snakes, thank God, had
disappeared during the excitement of the delivery. Now she was a mess again.
The bad images were rushing back, storming her mind.

Mackey washing two sinks down was bitching about overweight.
His own. “At least I was a thin kid! That breech was fat at birth! Well what do
you expect? His ma weighed 260 unpregnant. We need wider tables. Okay done, now
I’m gonna go raid the vending machines.”

He left griping about his pillow getting cold.

Jill and Tricia dried on sterile towels, then left through
the scrub room door to the bustle of the main corridor.

“Bed sounds like a good idea,” Tricia said, eyeing an empty
wheelchair. “Maybe I can grab a nap someplace.”

“The lounge,” Jill said absently, her mind flashing back to
her laundry bin fright.
Her body felt cold all over. She rubbed her
hands; didn’t know what to do.

“Are you really okay?” Tricia peered up feelingly from
behind her glasses. “You seem, uh…okay, you’re fretting, right? About Jesse,
and the Jenna Walsh attack and the seven snakes in the chapel? Minor stuff like
that?”

Jill blinked. She had planned on a quiet moment like this to
bring Tricia up to date. What had she been thinking? The rest of the hospital
knew.
Peter even said it had been on cable, online. For her, the last few hours had
been a blur.

Tricia seemed to read what she was thinking. “Two minutes
after you and David took off, the hospital drumbeats went nuts. Snakes in the
hospital chapel! Like the snake on Jenna Walsh!”

Jill exhaled, and hitched herself up onto an empty gurney.
Tricia - “oof” - hitched herself up too. “There hasn’t been a moment to talk,”
she huffed, trying to get comfortable, watching an orderly push a gurney past.

“Now there is.”

Speaking haltingly, Jill told the rest about their charge
down to Security, Sivak’s cardboard box, then the run up to Pathology and the
awaited snake autopsy.

“The assumption being,” Tricia said, “that if you can
pinpoint where the snakes came from it will help knowing where the creep came
from.”

“Yeah.”

“Pity garter snakes are everywhere. My grandmother in
Brooklyn’s afraid to go into her back yard. Saw one snake last summer and won’t
set foot out the door.”

Discouraging but true. They both fell silent.

What now?

Two nurses rushed past, and an orderly pushing a lab cart
with rattling wheels, and a revoltingly cheery, pink-smocked volunteer saying
“Hi!”

Jill didn’t see them. “Wonder how Jesse’s doing.” She’d
pulled out her cell phone and started to watch him sleep. His little cheeks
looked plumper, and his tiny rosebud lips twitched a little. She felt a bit
better, watching him. Then switched to her photo of Jesse and David, both
asleep, with that sweet little face on David’s shoulder.

This, she decided, was her therapy. It helped, anyway. She
gazed at the photo.

Tricia meanwhile - “I’m Auntie” - had been on her phone with
the NICU, asking how Jesse was doing.

“The nurse said he hoovered down four ounces of milk and
just went back to sleep,” she said, hanging up. “They
were
calling him
Slugger. Now they call him Chugger.”

Jill cracked a smile. “They’ve got me on speed dial. Ditto
the NICU security guys.”

She inhaled deeply. A long moment passed.

“I feel so frozen,” she finally said faintly.

“Me too. Another maniac’s looming and what can we do about
it? I
hate
feeling helpless.”

Tricia nervously cleaned her glasses with her scrub top and
pushed them back on. Pursed her lips, leaned to peer down the wide hall, and
stopped another passing nurse.

“How’re they doing in OR 4?”

“The ectopic? Still at it. Just ordered another unit of
blood.”

Jill sighed, watching the nurse move on. “David and I were
going to go up to see Jenna,” she brooded. “I could go alone, but what would I
do? The poor woman’s comatose, she’s going downhill neurologically, and that’s
neurosurgery’s domain. What could I do?” she repeated in frustration.

“Sounds like you just want to see her.”

A slow nod. “It’s so pulling at me. This nagging feeling
that
I should be there
. I don’t know why.”

“Then go. Or how ‘bout if I go with you? For company?”

Jill found herself climbing off the gurney. “Good idea,
let’s go.”

It was as if Jenna hadn’t been moved, or turned, or massaged
to avoid bedsores, which of course she had been. But she lay now as she’d lain
last night, on her back on pillows with her eyes closed, her bed slanted up and
her head swathed in bandages. The blue blanket up to her chin was so
neat
…as
if she’d been laid out for a wake…

Jill pushed down the awful thought.

Maybe the couple on the other side of the bed had prompted
the feeling. They’d been sitting like chins-down, arms-folded dummies when Jill
and Tricia entered. Not crying, or touching each other or Jenna, or trying to
speak to her. Relatives of brain-injured patients were encouraged to do that -
speak, hold or even read to the patient. But this pair…nothing.

Until both of them looked up, blank-faced, and the woman
said, “The doctor was just here,” as if she resented the intrusion.

Her tone was flat. Unemotional. She had a low, raspy voice.

Jill introduced herself and Tricia, who muttered hello and
stooped to examine the nurses’ chart at the foot of the bed. “Vital signs
good,” she said. “Pulse, temp, respiration and blood pressure.”

“Yeah,” said the man. His arms were tight around his brown
wool jacket in his lap, as if he were impatient to leave. “Too bad someone
bashed her brain in. They can stay in a coma like that for years.”

They?

The woman had short dyed-blond hair, dark roots, and thin
lips. “We’re Dara and Brian Walsh, Jenna’s brother and sister-in-law,” she said
in the same flat tone. Her eyes narrowed. “You said you’re from obstetrics?”

“Yes.” Out of habit Jill lifted Jenna’s wrist and felt for
the radial pulse. It was normal. Jenna’s eyes were closed in her pretty face,
but there was no movement behind her lids.

“Your sister-in-law sustained serious injuries,” Jill said.
“Needed OB surgery to repair her uterus and…remove the deceased child.”

Dara glanced at Jenna’s flat belly, then looked back.

“Were you aware that child wasn’t hers?”

“Yes. Jenna was a surrogate mom.”

Brian Walsh seemed to wince. Gripped his jacket tighter and
said nothing. The couple had been facing the IV pole a few feet in front of
them. They never looked at Jenna’s face.

Dara raised her chin. “We’re Catholics,” she told the IV
pole. “The Church considers surrogacy a sin.”

Tricia frowned, switching her gaze from the beeping monitor
to Dara. “I was raised Catholic,” she said stonily. “Liberal priests say
surrogacy for an infertile loving mom and dad is okay, and don’t like the
Vatican trying to control them.”

Dara stiffened in indignation. “If a couple is infertile,
it’s God’s will,” she rasped. Her husband, reacting at last, gave her a chilled
look:
Don’t talk to the heretics
.

Jill’s heart lurched and she felt suddenly furious. Jenna
had suffered and been terrorized. Her life as she’d known it had been
destroyed. It was a horrible tragedy that brought tears to Jill’s eyes…and these
so-called next-of-kin sat here like stones of judgment?

“So you must consider your sister a sinner,” she said
sharply across the bed, her fists clenching the bed rails. “And she’s been
unable to regain consciousness to repent, so she must be headed straight to
burning hellfire, is that how it goes?”

Both expressions glared at her.

Jill leaned over Jenna, her voice rising. “Did you hear the details
of her attack? A three-foot-long
snake pinned alive to her cross?
Do you
feel no sorrow for her suffering?”

Brian Walsh jumped from his chair and ran out to the hall.
“Get that woman out of there!” he yelled. “Get her out!”

An orderly and a neuro resident came running, tried to calm
him in the hall. “She!” he bellowed, pointing, and something else indecipherable.
“…insulting our religion! Get her out!”

“Nice,” Tricia told glaring Dara. “In a hall of surgical
post-ops trying to recuperate. Very considerate.”

The orderly started dealing with Walsh, and the
neurosurgical resident came in. Will Keenan, who Jill and Tricia knew. Ignoring
Dara, he put one hand on each of their arms, pulling them close.

“Spare yourselves, we’ve been fighting with them,” he
whispered, beckoning them back out to the hall. Further up the orderly, a big
guy, looked ready to deck Walsh, who was still shouting.

Keenan started trying to tell Jill and Tricia more when they
heard a sharp, “Okay, break it up,” from yet a new voice …and turned to see
Keri Blasco there, with Alex Brand coming up behind her.

“Your wife here?” Brand asked Walsh as he passed him, and
Keri Blasco stepped to look into Jenna’s room.

“Yep, she’s here.”

She told Dara Walsh, “Stay, please, we’d like to question
you in a minute.” Brand ordered Brian Walsh back into Jenna’s room, then turned
to Jill, who was looking at both of them with surprise.

Keri looked surprised too. “Bonus finding you here,” she
said. “Got a minute?”

19


T
hey conferred near the nurses’ station. Jenna’s
clothes, which David had carefully preserved, were a boon, both cops said.
Fibers had been found on them. Forensics was overwhelmed with rapes and
homicides, but…

Keri and Alex stopped awkwardly, looking frustrated.

“I know.” Jill said. “Rapes and homicides go to the front of
the line.”

“The
long, never ending
line,” Alex groused. “Forensics
is overwhelmed.”

“What color are the fibers?”

“Brown, a wool and poly mix,” Keri Blasco answered. She wore
a navy blazer and her blond hair was pulled into a ponytail. “But damn, unless
it’s a major felony and they go looking for a match…”

Tricia looked from one cop to the other, taking it all in.

And Jill thought,
brown wool?

“Sounds like Brian Walsh’s jacket,” she said, tipping her
head down the hall. “He’s got it there with him.”

Tricia and both detectives cast narrowed gazes back to
Jenna’s room. A uniformed cop stood outside.

Then Keri shook her head, frustrated again. “Problem is,
what if the fibers do match? These people are relatives. They could say they’d
seen and visited each other on other occasions.”

Jill shook her head. “But Jenna hadn’t seen her brother
since last summer. “
Who wears wool jackets in summer?
We met the
surrogate couple last night. They said Jenna hadn’t seen her brother since
June, maybe. They were estranged, after that just fought a couple of times over
the phone.”

Alex was frowning deeply, his lips pressed tight. “That
could be argued as hearsay. The law...our hands are tied at every turn.”

That had dawned on Jill a second after she’d said it. Her
mother, the prosecutor…

Then Brand’s face cleared a little. “Unless,” he said,
brightening, “
new matching evidence from the alley where Jenna was attacked
can
be found on Walsh’s jacket. Anything. Dust, debris…”

“That just could work,” Keri said. “If we could get a court
order for the jacket-”

Jill touched Tricia’s arm, her adrenalin surging.
“How
‘bout we just go take the jackets? We’re not cops!”

“Yeah!” Tricia said vehemently. “We’ll say Jenna’s allergic
to wool or something.”

The cops looked at the two interns.

“There are a lot of brown jackets,” Keri said, trading a
reluctant glance with Brand. “Even if something were found, we wouldn’t have
probable cause to use them…”

“But it would narrow your search,” Jill insisted. “Then you
can find something that
will
stick.” She didn’t wait for no. “C’mon,
Trish.”

Open-mouthed, both detectives watched the two go to Jenna’s
room, which emitted sudden sounds of a ruckus.

They followed quickly.

Inside, Will Keenan was threatening to call Security if the
Walshes didn’t get off his back. They were yelling “It’s God’s will!” as he
worriedly watched the monitor’s beeping slow, felt for Jenna’s pulse with one
hand, and tried to speak into his phone with the other.

“Pulse is dropping,” he practically hollered. “It’s at 50
beats a minute. Yeah, get down here.”

“And
you
get back,” he told Dara and Brian Walsh,
trying to control himself. “It’s still possible to reverse this. The dropping
pulse means increasing intracranial pressure. The brain’s continuing to swell.
The membranes around it are continuing to produce fluid which we can-”

“You are fighting God’s will!” Walsh shoved Keenan.

“Jesus, that’s assault!” Will cried.

“Do
not
take our Lord’s name in vain!”

“Listen, I’m Catholic too and you’re bat shit crazy!”

“Cavalry’s here! Oh, crap!” Another resident raced in past
slack-jawed Jill, and then a nurse and an intern. Tricia let them pass and
brought up the rear just as the monitor’s alarm went off - a non-stop,
ten-second squeal punctuating the frantic air.

“Dear God,” Jill whispered under her breath. She stood
frozen, staring at Jenna’s pretty, loveable face; felt her heart drop.

“Cardiac arrest! Code red!” Keenan suddenly yelled as the
alarm changed to an intermittent
beep beep beep beep.
It kept going. The
sound was so heart-rending. Jill and Tricia stepped back as someone pushed in a
rolling crash cart. The room was suddenly crowded with activity, loud and
frantic, even after someone turned the alarm off. The Walshes moved stiffly
toward the rear as the team surrounding the bed put electrodes on Jenna’s
chest, and checked the crash cart’s oscilloscope.

“Everyone off the bed!”

This was too terrible. Jill’s eyes stung with tears and she
pressed both hands to her face.

Keenan was leaning over the bed holding the paddles, and an
intern pressed a button on the defibrillator. Jenna’s upper torso arched, then
fell back to the bed like deadweight. Keenan peered fast at the oscilloscope.

“She’s still fibrillating.”

“Not good,” Tricia murmured sorrowfully. Jill barely heard
her. The awful images were back, rushing at her mind. The scene in the ER with
the snake sliding from Jenna’s sweater, Jenna
just yesterday full of double
life
, turning into a shortcut alley…

The residents turned up the voltage, and tried again. And
again, the pathetic, jerking arch of Jenna’s body.

“Ohh…”

Jill turned to see Dara Walsh behind her, her hand to her
mouth. Brian Walsh’s face was slack; he clutched his jacket tightly to him.

Even in shock and dismay, Jill’s overburdened mind raced.
“Step back, please!” she told Dara and Brian authoritatively.

They glanced at the two detectives watching grimly from the
door, and stepped back further, backs to the wall, almost.

At the bed the doctors tried the paddles again, this time on
higher voltage. Jenna’s body arched frighteningly higher, and collapsed back
onto the bed with a deadened
whump
.

It was so awful to watch. Jill gave out her own emotional
“Ohh,” and stumbled back into Brian’s jacket. Pretended to lose her balance,
pressing harder against it. His back was to the wall; he squirmed but had no
way to duck her.

By the bed they were giving up. Jenna responded to their
final try with the same violent lurch and collapse. Her ventricular pattern on
the oscilloscope petered out to a wide, formless curve for a few seconds, and
then straight-lined.

A thin, electronic wail punctuated the hushed silence in the
room.

Faces fell.

“Okay, I’m calling it,” Keenan said heavily. He looked up at
the clock. “Time of death, 4:36 p.m.”

Trembling, wiping tears, Jill pushed her way out with Tricia
sorrowfully following. She reached Brand and Blasco by the door and said, her
throat tight, “Got your fibers. It’s murder now.”

They nodded, but there was something new in their eyes.

From behind them stepped Detective Sergeant Gregory Pappas,
Jill’s and David’s friend from last July.

“Make that two murders,” he said gravely. “We just found
another one.”