Deadly Diversion: A Medical Thriller (10 page)

Sighing, I put my vase down and looked inside the bag. A small baggie, zipped shut, held four hand-wrapped joints, their papers twisted at the ends. A few leaves of the tell-tale light green matter spilled into the bag beside a yellow Bic lighter.

“Just what we need—more trouble,” Ruby said.

“I’ll get rid of it.” I folded the bag into itself and shoved it in my lab coat pocket.

“Right now we’ve got work to do.”

MAX WAS SIGNING REPORTS when I found him later, perched on a stool in the lab. He looked up and smiled. “Hey, Monika, got more work for me? Like I need it.” He nodded toward the open door of the exam room. A gleaming steel table stood below overhead lights, a tray of dissecting instruments was next to a backless stool, and a recording microphone hung suspended from a stand next to the stool. Lockers held the bodies that waited in cold storage for their turn on the table, Huey’s among them. I’d only had to witness one autopsy while I was in nursing school. It was one too many.

“Are you short-staffed, too?” I asked Max.

“I’m down to two techs, both inexperienced.”

“I know what you mean. We’re so low on nurses it’s not safe.”

“At least our patients can wait around until we get to them,” he said, sighing. A rotund man with a fringe of white hair that formed a sort of halo on his otherwise bald head, Max had been St. Teresa’s pathologist for as long as I could remember. “So, what can I do for you?”

“I came down to tell you why I wanted you to save that patient’s blood, Castle’s.”

“One of the techs put it in the refrigerator. We usually save a couple of tubes for a few days anyway in case they’re needed.”

“Would you check it for alcohol? The last time he was in a buddy of his snuck him some booze and, along with all the narcotics he was getting, his respirations were depressed enough to scare him.”

“You’re worried that might have contributed to his death?” He peered at me through the thick lenses of his glasses.

“Let’s just make sure it didn’t.”

“I’ll run a blood alcohol and let you know.”

“Another thing. Have you done the post on Guardino? He died Wednesday.”

“I’ll check,” he said, stepping off the stool. “If it’s typed up, it should be in my office.” He gathered up the stack of reports, and I walked with him out of the lab into the administrative area. He handed the papers to a man who was listening through earphones and typing on a keyboard.

Max motioned me into his office and scooped several books off a chair for me. He sat down and rummaged through a stack of files on his desk. “Yep, here it is.” He pulled out a manila folder and flipped it open. ‘“Primary cause of death,”’ he read. “‘Acute cardiovascular accident. Secondary causes: intervening pneumonia right lower lobe and cardiac arrhythmias.’” He closed the folder. “Stroke, complicated by pneumonia and heart problems, in layman’s terms. Why’d you want to know? Isn’t this consistent with his diagnosis?”

“It is,” I said, chewing on my lower lip.

“And? What’s the problem?”

1 reached behind me and closed the door. “The nurse on duty when he coded didn’t intubate him. Or shock him. He thought the man was a B code when he was a full code.”

Max shook his head. “It wouldn’t have made any difference, Monika. I doubt he could have been resuscitated no matter what anyone did, and even if they did get his heart pumping again, it was only a matter of time before it gave out.” Max opened the folder again and adjusted his glasses. “This guy was seventy-nine years old, he had multiple health problems. Just let it go.”

Max’s phone rang. I waved a goodbye as he picked up the receiver.

EIGHT

Saturday, 11 August, 0925 Hours

“AUNT MONNY! AUNT MONNY!” screamed the twins, slamming through the gate. Catastrophe, my white angora, streaked toward the opening.

“Stop her!” I yelled as my cousin Hannah scooped her up, snuggling her nose in Cat’s warm fur who, in turn, nestled down in Hannah’s arms as if she hadn’t just been trying to run away a few seconds before.

I was in the backyard trying to tame the weeds that threatened to overrun the spindly annuals I’d planted along the fence row. The bedding plants had been displayed so enticingly at Shades of Summer, our local garden shop, that I’d bought too many and ended up giving some plants to Hannah. She had told me to fertilize them when I planted, and then reapply fertilizer every few weeks, but I kept forgetting to buy the fertilizer. When she finally brought some over, the only plants I’d fertilized were the weeds.

Hannah sat down beside me on the warm grass, continuing to stroke Cat, who lay back with her belly exposed, purring softly. The girls, both talking at once, elbowed each other to be first to show me her treasure. Tina proudly displayed the latest Goosebumps book while Gena shoved Yu-Gi-Oh cards in my face.

“Those are for babies,” Tina said, pointing to her sister’s cards. She tossed her blond pigtails for emphasis.

As usual, the girls were dressed nearly alike in matching halter tops, one pink, the other a pale green, and blue-jean shorts.

Tina had folded the legs of her shorts up higher, and Hannah absently rolled them down as we talked.

“No, they’re not,” Gena argued, chewing on the end of one braid. “Are they, Aunt Monny?”

Strictly speaking, I wasn’t their aunt. Their mom was my cousin and we were both only children of twin brothers. So while we were growing up Hannah and I had pretended we were sisters. Her ten-year-old twins and their three older brothers were the nearest thing I had to children of my own.

“I thought everybody wanted Pokemon cards,” I said, looking at Gena’s cards as Tina shoved her book onto my lap.

“Oh, Aunt Monny, those are old,” Gena said with a sniff. “Nobody wants those now.”

Cat pounced on one of Gena’s cards on the grass, and she snatched it up. Squealing, the girls ran after Cat and chased her inside.

Hannah examined my gardening. “You need mulch,” she said, not for the first time. Hannah was appropriately attired for gardening, a loose T covering long denim shorts, her unruly auburn curls caught up under a bandana.

“I wanted to do it myself.”

“Uh-uh.”

“I did,” I told her. “I want to feel the earth in my fingers, to feel like I’m really a gardener. I don’t want to smother the weeds with some phony mulch.” I sat back on my heels.

“That’s how nature does it,” Hannah said. She picked up a trowel and began to loosen the soil between the flowers. “Old plants die or trees lose their leaves and you have instant mulch that builds up, layer over layer, year after year, the bottom layer disintegrates, providing nutrients, and the top layer prevents weak seeds from getting in, or other sprouts from poking through.” She tamped down the soil around a geranium and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Ginger-colored freckles stood out on her face, and I could smell the sunscreen she wore religiously all summer.

“Okay. So it needs more work,” I said, calculating the distance to the end of the fence row. My backyard had looked so small when I had bought the simple brick bungalow on a quiet street a little more than a year earlier. Now the yard seemed to have grown in size along with the weeds.

I sat down cross-legged on the ground and rubbed dirt and grass off my knees. Sweat had plastered my T-shirt to my body and my gray gym shorts were soil-spotted.

Next door white sheets were stretched tight on the clothesline, motionless in the August heat. On the other side, play equipment in bright, primary colors stood empty, waiting for the two toddlers who lived there to return from vacation. The temperature was predicted to reach one hundred degrees by afternoon; it felt close to that now.

Saturday-morning cartoons on TV blared through the door the girls had left ajar.

“I’ll tell you what,” Hannah said. “As soon as it cools off a little I’ll bring the boys over and we’ll help you get this weeded.” She shoved sunglasses up on top of her bandana and squinted at me. “So what’s wrong? Something’s bothering you, I can tell.”

I sighed. “It’s work. As usual.”

“Come on, Monika, you’ve dealt with a lot of work problems over the years. It can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, no? I’ll tell you what,” I said, digging up a clump of grass and tossing it aside. “Administration’s so caught up in accreditation, derailing the union and a few missing meds that the important problems are being ignored.”

“Like what?”

“My boss has her priorities mixed up. She’s worrying about meds we’ve been too busy to chart instead of helping improve the staffs morale. It’s in the toilet now.” I stabbed a recalcitrant dandelion through its middle. “Just so we look good. That’s all she’s worried about.” I pulled the severed weed out but the roots stayed in the ground.

“Have you lost any more nurses lately?” Hannah sat back on her heels and pulled off the gloves she’d been smart enough to bring along. She tucked a strand of hair back into her bandana.

“No, thank goodness. But it’s probably just a matter of time.”

“So then you have enough for now.”

“No, Hannah, we still have open positions that haven’t been filled. That’s the problem. We’ve been understaffed for months.”

“Then I’m glad you agree with me.”

“Agree about what?” I studied another dandelion’s fat, white root.

“That gardening is a stress reducer.”

“Sure, I’m not stressed anymore.” I flung the weed toward the pile I’d been accumulating before Hannah had arrived. “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said, pushing my trowel under a clump of crabgrass.

“Yes?”

“You don’t want to be a patient at St. Teresa’s now. Or any other hospital for that matter.” The crabgrass came loose with a jerk, spraying dirt into my face. “I say a prayer every day,” I began, spitting dirt out of my mouth, “that nothing happens.”

Hannah tamped down the earth around a cluster of marigolds that had come loose when she’d picked out sprouts of grass around them.

“I’m worried someone did something or didn’t do something they should have.” I unfolded my knees and stretched out on my back on the grass with a sigh and examined my dirt-encrusted nails.

“Didn’t you get more nurses this summer? When they graduated?”

“Not enough to fill all the open positions in St. Louis. And every hospital in town competes for them. It seems like the hospital administrators steal staff from one another, trying to top their competitors’ offers with higher bonuses. Or they entice nurses with goodies, like housecleaning for a year.” I raised up on my elbows, stretched my legs out in front of me and wiggled my bare toes.

“Wow. Sign me up! For a year of housecleaning, I’ll go to nursing school.” With five children and a husband, Hannah often said she never got the whole house clean at one time.

“Another hospital is offering a full-body massage for every forty hours worked. That would do it for me,” I said, sitting up and rolling my shoulders.

The back door banged open as the twins ran out, chasing Cat into Hannah’s arms.

“I think I’m done gardening today,” I said. “Too hot.”

“Are we still on for tomorrow?” Hannah asked, dropping Cat and scooping up the pile of weeds.

“The Deutsch Fest?” I asked, referring to Hannah’s question about Sunday’s plans.

“Even in this heat?” Hannah asked.

“Of course we’re going. We couldn’t miss it,” I said. The annual German street festival in South St. Louis was a tradition for our family and many others. “I can smell those brauts already.”

The girls chased Cat around the yard until she slid under a peony bush and refused to come out.

“Why do you think they moved it?” Hannah asked, standing. “At least by Labor Day we had a chance for cooler weather.”

“Politics.”

“Politics? What does a street fair have to do with politics?”

“The election’s next week. This gives the politicians time to meet-and-greet in the flesh,” I said.

In unison the girls reminded their mother that she’d promised to take them to Ed Crewe’s for a concrete at St. Louis’s famous frozen custard stand, a landmark in South St. Louis. And they were ready to go, now.

“Help your aunt carry everything to the garage first,” she said to them with a nod toward the tools scattered in the grass. Hannah went out my back gate to deposit the weeds we’d dug into a Dumpster in the alley.

After we’d stowed the last of my garden tools in the garage I wiped my face with a rag I’d left on the shelf.

The girls giggled.

“What?” I asked them.

“You look funny,” Gena said.

Even Hannah was trying not to giggle. “Well,” she said, “that rag left black smears all over your face.”

“The better to scare you, my dears!” I jumped toward the girls. They squealed in delight. I growled and chased them out to the street and into Hannah’s SUV.

“You can’t catch us now!” Tina shouted through the closed window. She stuck out her tongue, put her thumbs in her ears and wiggled her fingers at me.

Hannah opened the driver’s-side door and Tina leaned out the opening.

“Ha ha ha ha,” she taunted in the time-honored singsong children’s chant. I waved them a smiling goodbye, grateful for the help and the distraction. Hannah was right. Gardening is good for stress.

The PARTY WAS IN full swing by the time I arrived at the career fair in a downtown hotel. A jazz combo played on a dais at the far end of the ballroom, which was crowded with display booths. I squeezed my way through the aisles jammed with students. Interspersed among the hospital booths were equipment companies, book publishers and representatives from graduate schools. Hospital recruiters hawked their giveaways—candy, penlights, key chains—and grabbed any takers with their spiel. Most glanced over me, my age and determined look discouraging them. Young, energetic ones were the prize they all sought.

I’d grabbed a quick shower after Hannah left and donned white pants, a red-and-white striped top and white clogs that I usually wore with scrubs to work—the ones without any bodily fluids left on them.

St. Teresa’s had a small exhibit space along one wall. Dressed in khakis and a moss-green polo shirt, Tim stood beside a table spread with brightly colored brochures that touted the benefits of working in a small, urban hospital. Pictures of nurses caring for patients—mostly photogenic infants, of which St. T’s had precious few—were tacked on the felt board propped atop the table.