Cain (3 page)

Cain deposited the Danish in the trash
and dumped the milk in the sink before throwing the cup away too.
His temper was simmering when he walked back to her bed. “You had
surgery yesterday morning. You are on a clear liquid diet and you
have him bring you Danish. Un-fucking-believable! If this is how
you plan to act while I’m helping you, then you may as well go back
to California now. I won’t put up with this shit.”

“
You always did hate your
dad. He wasn’t all that bad, Cain. He tried to go straight and the
system kept at him until he just snapped. I would think, as his
only son, you’d have more compassion for him. He is your dad, you
know.”

Cain had heard this all before. From
the time he was old enough to know better until he was able to get
away, his mother had been defending Roscoe Waite.

“
Yes, Mother. It was
always everyone else’s fault but his. I’m sure prison wasn’t his
fault either. That man he killed by driving up onto the sidewalk—I
suppose that wasn’t his fault either?” Cain bit the inside of his
cheek before he said anything else. He waited until after she was
taken to physical therapy before he left to see his patient. This
room was in direct contrast to the one he’d just left.

Where his mother’s room was filled with
light and a television blaring, Julie’s room was dark and quiet.
Guinevere Waite’s room was filled with flowers and even a basket of
fruit that she would never eat. Julie’s was bare. Cain thought that
Julie’s was more welcoming—well, except for the girl, of course. He
smiled.

Julie was sitting in a chair when he
walked in and she was crying. The nurse making up her bed was
talking to Julie, though Cain thought “talking” was a very
subjective term for what she was doing.

“
...take a bath because
you stink. I think I’ve smelled dirty diapers with a sweeter odor
than you have. And how you keep the lice out of your hair
is—”

“
That’s quite enough,”
Cain thundered. He didn’t have to look at the name tag to know this
was the dreaded Becky. “You ever treat my patients like I just
heard again and I’ll have you fired so fast your head will spin.
And why is Julie in a chair? I gave specific orders for her to be
on bed rest for the next two days.”

When Becky Noose didn’t answer, Cain
turned to Julie. She was pale and he could see the pain etched on
her face.

“
She said she wasn’t
touching my skanky ass no matter what some old fart told her to do.
She also –”

“
Shut up, you stupid bitch
before I—”

“
Before you what? Don’t
move from that spot.” Cain stepped into the hall and stopped the
first nurse he saw. “Could you find Damon Grant for me and tell him
I need him stat? Also, your charge nurse, please. Tell them both to
meet me in this room.”

With a hurried, “yes, sir,” she was
off. Cain stepped back into the room just as Nurse Becky was
drawing back to hit Julie. But before Cain could intercede on
Julie’s behalf, Becky was on the floor and Julie was standing over
her.

“
Take that, you fucking
bitch.” She staggered a little then said, “fuck,” and was falling
to the floor.

Damon stepped into the room in time to
see Cain rolling Julie off Becky. Cain glared at him when the older
man laughed.

“
She actually tried to hit
her. This Becky person tried to hit my patient! I want this girl
fired today, Damon. She was going to hit a patient after she’d made
her sit in a chair to make her bed.”

Cain picked up Julie and waited for
Damon to finish the bed before laying her into it. Blood, fresh and
dark, spread across her gown. While Cain took the padding off the
wound, Damon stepped back to the nurse on the floor.

Julie came around while Cain was trying
to stop the bleeding. “I thought you sent her in to punish me. I
couldn’t...I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to you. Why you hate
me so much,” Julie whispered to him.

Cain looked at her and was moved again
by her tears. “I don’t hate you. I’m sorry she hurt you, Julie. I
promise she won’t again.”

“
Yes, she will. Everyone
does it. I’m used to it by now. Everyone begins to hate me after a
while.”

Before he could respond, she closed her
eyes and slipped into unconsciousness. Calling Damon over, they
worked to get her bleeding stopped. Neither man spoke as they
worked, not even when the charge nurse, Molly Shield, walked up and
started to help. It took them twenty minutes to put the stitches
back in and another fifteen to get her cleaned up again. It looked
like Julie would be staying the ten days after all.

Cain was seething with anger. While he
paced outside Molly’s office waiting for his turn to speak, Damon
sat calmly in the chair. Cain had never run across anything like
this in his entire career.

“
Cait, my sister-in-law,
is on her way in. As Chief of Surgery, I’m pressing criminal
charges against Rebecca Noose. Cait will need to take your
statement too,” Damon said as he leaned back in the plastic
chair.

“
All right. What do you
suppose is going on in there? You think Noose will talk her way out
of this?” Cain hoped the hell not.

“
No. Molly’s good at her
job. It was only a matter of time before Nurse Noose got in over
her head. I’m just glad that it was Julie that she messed with and
not someone who couldn’t defend against her.”

Cain didn’t want to point out that
Julie shouldn’t have been able to defend herself either. But he did
understand what Damon had meant. Cain still couldn’t believe that
Julie had punched that nurse like that. He chuckled.

“
I’d hate to mess with
Julie when she is at full strength. I’m betting she’d hold her own
against anyone. Including me.” Cain sat next to his mentor and
friend. “Julie thought I had sent Noose in to punish her. She
thought that I hated her.” He wanted to go back to Julie’s room and
make sure she was all right. He wondered at that then decided it
was because she was his first patient since moving here from Maine.
When the door opened and Molly motioned for them to enter, both men
stood.

The office was plush. There were four
chairs in front of the desk. Becky Noose sat in one, Damon in one
over with a space between, and Cain next to him on the end. Molly’s
phone rang before they could begin.

“
I’m sorry, I have to take
this,” she told them as she picked up the receiver.

The wall behind the desk was covered in
photos. Most of them were of people, lots of kids. But there were a
few landscapes, vacation pictures he was sure. Two of them he was
sure were of Martha’s Vineyard. The wall to the left was covered in
ceiling to floor book shelves. There were more pictures here, but
mostly there were books. The wall to their right was also shelves,
but these held treasures. Cain knew they were treasures because of
the way they’d been displayed. He also knew that Molly had a story
about each item there and she would know the dates and the people
involved with each one.

“
That was Human Resources.
They will need to sit in on the rest of this. I hope Julie will be
all right, Dr. Waite,” Molly said as she hung up.

Cain nodded. To be honest, he wasn’t
sure if he would be able to stop at “yes, she will.” The girl
beside them looked positively happy about this whole
thing.

The door opened a few minutes later.
The man who walked in had a file in one hand and a cup of coffee in
the other. Cain didn’t think this was going to go well. Damon, when
Cain looked at him, looked...well, bored. Before anything could be
said, Cait Grant walked in.

“
This is a closed meeting.
You’ll have to wait in the—”

“
I asked Captain Grant
here. She is going to take Julie’s statement after she takes
Doctors Waite’s and Grant’s.” Molly reached into her drawer and
pulled out a plastic bag with a specimen cup inside. “Becky, you’ll
need to take a drug test. It’s just a formality.”

“
Drug test? For what, may
I ask? This is just a case of a misunderstanding. It’s my
understanding that the woman Becky...err Nurse Noose supposedly hit
is nothing more than a homeless person.”

Before Cain could stand up and punch
Mr. HR in the nose, Damon put his hand on Cain’s arm to stop him.
He bristled. If this was the way this hospital worked, he wasn’t so
sure he wanted to work here.

“
Becky, take the test or
Captain Grant will take you to the emergency room to draw blood.
When there are damages done to the hospital property, a blood or
urine test needs to be performed.” Cain wasn’t sure, but he thought
Molly was enjoying this.

“
What damages? I hadn’t
touched her yet and she punched me before I could. There weren’t no
damages. What?” Becky snarled at HR representative Donald
Chesterfield when he reached for her arm.

Cain laughed. He couldn’t help it. Not
only had Noose admitted to hurting Julie, but in front of witnesses
too. And Mr. Chesterfield seemed to of known all about
it.

“
Becky, either take the
drug test or I have no recourse but to terminate you pending a full
investigation,” Molly said. This time, Cain was sure Molly was
enjoying it. The humor in her voice was very evident. When she
shook the plastic bag, Cain started to laugh again.

When Noose leaped at Molly, Damon was
knocked into Cain. He tried to steady himself, but with the
combined weight of Chesterfield and Damon, Cain couldn’t move. But
Cait Grant had no such trouble.

Before the men were completely
untangled, Cait was reading the nurse her rights and cuffing her.
Molly was just putting her desk to rights when Chesterfield stood
up to leave. That’s when Damon stood as well.

“
Donald Chesterfield, it
is with great pleasure that I terminate you. I have it on good
authority that you have been falsifying company records for over a
year where Miss Noose is concerned. Then there is the added charge
of theft with intent to distribute.”

“
No. No, you can’t fire
me. I’m needed. I have to...who told you? Whoever it is lied. I
demand to know who said anything.” Cain looked at the man in
amazement as spittle ran down his chin.

“
I did,” Molly said as she
sat back down. “I told Damon three weeks ago that I caught you
having sex with Becky in one of the rooms. Did you forget the
cameras, Donald? Shame on you! And with a patient right in the next
bed. Anyway, after that, we had you under surveillance the entire
time you were here.”

Two armed police walked in as Molly was
finished speaking. Donald, AKA Mr. HR, sobbed all the way out the
door. Cain sat in stunned silence.

“
Well, that was fun. And a
lot more eventful than I thought it would be. Thanks, Molly.
Coming, Cain?”

Cain looked at Damon as he smiled at
Cain. “You planned this? Both of you, you planned this whole
thing?”

“
Sort of. Not with Julie,
but with the drug test. Today just happened to be the way we got to
do it. We’ve been waiting for Noose to take her rage out on someone
else before we could act. She’s been too clever for us to actually
catch her up until now.”

Cain looked at Damon. “Please tell me
that you didn’t send Noose into Julie’s room to make this
happen?”

Damon looked back at him in shock.
“Never! I know you would never ask that if you weren’t so stressed.
Your mother, is she all right?”

Cain looked at Molly. She would
probably find out sooner or later anyway. “My father is here. He’s
been visiting her. He actually brought her a Danish and milk this
morning.”

Damon looked at Molly. “Cain’s mother
is on the surgical floor. His...father was just released from
prison. He isn’t a very nice person.”

Cain thought that was a gross
understatement.

~CHAPTER FOUR~

Julie woke to a strange room. It was
very nice and filled with flowers. Moving very slowly, she rolled
to her back and saw that not only were there flowers and a huge
basket of fruit, there was a woman curled up in a chair. She was
sleeping in the room’s recliner. Julie pulled the call button for
the nurses’ station, but kept an eye on the woman. The noise of the
nurse answering woke the woman up.

“
Yes, Miss Julie. What may
I do for you? Actually, a nurse will be in shortly.”

“
But I...” Julie was about
to pull the cord again when the woman spoke. She was pretty and
wearing very nice clothes.

“
They’ll be working very
hard to make sure you’re happy and satisfied. I’m here to make sure
of that. I’m Ronnie Grant, by the way.”

“
Where am I and how the
hell do I get out of here?” Julie never panicked. But she was
somewhere she couldn’t control with people she didn’t
know.

“
Cain said to tell you
he’ll be in to see you soon. It’s all right, Julie. Everything is
going to be fine.” The voice seemed to be coming from a long
tunnel.

Julie’s air felt cut off. She couldn’t
seem to breathe and her heart felt ready to explode. The room
seemed ready to close in on her and she tried to draw a deep breath
to scream. Suddenly, someone grabbed her chin and jerked her face
around.