by Tami Hoag
“Dr. Garrison to ER. Dr. Garrison to ER.”
She slipped her coat off and folded it over her arm.
“God, there you are!” Kathleen Casey blurted out as she skidded around the corner and hustled down the hall, the tails of her white lab coat sailing behind her. The thick, cushioned soles of her running shoes made almost no sound on the polished floor. Not a fraction of an inch over five feet, the nurse had a leprechaun's features, a shock of thick red hair, and the tenacity of a pit bull. Her uniform consisted of surgical scrubs and a pin that proclaimed No Whining. She drew a bead on Hannah that had all the power of a tractor beam.
Hannah tried to muster a wry smile. “Sorry. God may be a woman, but she's not this woman.”
Kathleen gave a snort as she curled a hand around Hannah's upper arm. “You'll do.”
“Can't Craig handle it?”
“Maybe, but we'd rather have a higher life form with opposable thumbs.”
“I'm not even on call tonight. I have to pick up Josh from hockey. Call Dr. Baskir—”
“We did. He's in bed with your friend and mine, Jurassic Park flu, also known as tracheasaurus phlegmus. That's one butt-kicking virus. Half the staff is down with it, which means I, Kathleen Casey, queen of the ER, may press you into service against your will. It won't take long, I promise.”
“Famous last words,” Hannah muttered.
Kathleen ignored her and started to turn as if she had every intention of towing all five feet nine inches of Hannah in her wake. Hannah's feet moved of their own accord as the wail of an ambulance sounded in the distance.
“What's coming in?” she asked with resignation.
“Car accident. Some kid hit a patch of ice on Old Cedar Road and spun into a car full of grandmas.”
Their pace picked up with each step, the low heels of Hannah's leather boots pounding out a quick staccato rhythm. Her fatigue and its companion emotions slipped under the surface of duty and her “doctor mode,” as Paul called it. Power switches flipped on inside her, filling her brain with light and energy, sending a rush of adrenaline shooting through her.
“What's the status?” Hannah asked, her speech taking on a sharper, harder quality.
“They flew two critical to Hennepin County Medical Center. We get the leftovers. Two grandmas with bumps and bruises and the college kid. Sounds like he's banged up pretty good.”
“No seat belt?”
“Why bother when you haven't lived long enough to grasp the concept of mortality?” Kathleen said as they reached the area that served as a combination nurses' station and admissions desk.
Hannah leaned over the counter. “Carol? Could you please call the hockey rink and leave word for Josh that I'll be a little bit late? Maybe he can practice his skating.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Garrison.”
Dr. Craig Lomax arrived on the scene in immaculate surgical greens, looking like a soap opera doctor.
“Jesus,” Kathleen muttered half under her breath, “he's been watching Medical Center reruns again. Get a load of the Chad Everett hair.”
Strands of black hair tumbled across his forehead in a careless look he had probably spent fifteen painstaking minutes in front of a mirror to achieve. Lomax was thirty-two, madly in love with himself, and afflicted with an overabundance of confidence in his own talents. He had come to Deer Lake Community in April, a reject from the better medical centers in the Twin Cities—a hard truth that had not managed to put so much as a dent in his ego. Deer Lake was just far enough outstate that they couldn't afford to be choosy. Most doctors preferred the salaries in the metro area over the chance to serve the needs of a small rural college town.
Lomax had arranged his features in a suitably grave expression that cracked a little when he caught sight of Hannah. “I thought you'd gone home,” he said bluntly.
“Kathleen just caught me.”
“In the nick of time,” the nurse added.
Lomax sucked in a breath to chastise her for her attitude.
“Save it, Craig,” Hannah snapped, tossing her things on a waiting area couch and moving forward as the doors to the ER slid open.
A stretcher was rolled in, one paramedic at the rear, one bent over the patient, talking to him in a soothing tone. “Hang in there, Mike. The docs'll have you patched up in no time.”
The young man on the stretcher groaned and tried to sit up, but chest and head restraints held him down on the backboard. His face was taut and gray with pain above the cervical collar that immobilized his neck. Blood ran down across his temple from a gash on his forehead.
“What have we got here, Arlis?” Hannah asked, shoving up the sleeves of her sweater.
“Mike Chamberlain. Nineteen. He's a little shocky,” the paramedic said. “Pulse one twenty. BP ninety over sixty. Got a bump on the noggin and some broken bones.”
“Is he lucid?”
Lomax cut her off on the way to the stretcher with a move as smooth as glass. “I'll handle it, Dr. Garrison. You're off duty. Mavis.” He nodded to Mavis Sandstrom. The nurse exchanged a glance with Kathleen, her expression as blank as a cardshark's.
Hannah bit her tongue and stepped back. There was no point in fighting with Lomax in front of staff and the patient. Administration frowned on that kind of thing. She didn't want to be there anyway. Let Lomax take the patient who would require the most time.
“Treatment room three, guys,” Lomax ordered, and ushered them down the hall as a second ambulance pulled into the drive. “Let's start an IV with lactated ringers . . .”
“Dr. Craig Ego strikes again,” Kathleen growled. “He has yet to grasp the notion that you're his boss now.”
“No biggie,” Hannah said calmly. “If we ignore him long enough, maybe he'll stop trying to mark territory and we can all live happily ever after.”
“Or maybe he'll flip out and we'll find him in the parking lot, peeing on car tires.”
There wasn't time to laugh. A heavyset EMT from the second ambulance charged into the reception area.
“We've got a full arrest! Ida Bergen. Sixty-nine. We were bringing her in with cuts and bruises, and as we pulled into the drive, bam! She grabs her chest and goes—”
The rest of her words were lost as Hannah, Kathleen, and another nurse bolted into action. The emergency room erupted into a whirlwind of sound and action. Orders shouted and relayed. Pages sounding for additional staff. The stretcher wheeling into the reception area and down the hall. The trauma cart and crash cart thundering into the treatment room.
“Standard ACLS procedure, guys,” Hannah called out. “Get me a 6.5 endotracheal tube. Let's get her bagged and get some air into her lungs. Do we have a pulse without CPR?”
“No.”
“With CPR?”
“Yes.”
“BP forty over twenty and fading fast.”
“Start an IV. Hang bretylium and dopamine and give her a bristoject of epinephrine.”
“Goddammit, I can't get a vein! Come on, baby, come on, come to Mama Kathleen.”
“Allen, check for lung sounds. Stop CPR. Angie, run a strip. Is respiratory coming?”
“Wayne's on his way down.”
“Gotcha!” Kathleen slipped the line onto the catheter and secured it with tape, her small hands quick and sure. A tech handed her the epinephrine and she injected it into the line.
“Fine v-fib, Dr. Garrison.”
“We need to defibrillate. Chris, continue CPR until my word. Allen, charge me up to 320.” Hannah grabbed the paddles, rubbing the heads together to spread the gel. “Stand clear!” Paddles in position against the woman's bare chest. “All clear!” Hit the buttons. The old woman's body bucked on the gurney.
“Nothing! No pulse.”
“Clear!” She hit the buttons again. Her eyes went to the monitor, where a flat green line bisected the screen. “Once more. Clear!”
The woman's body convulsed. The flat line snapped like a cracking whip and the monitor began to bleep out an erratic beat. A
cheer went up in the room.
They worked on Ida Bergen for forty minutes, pulling her out of the clutches of death, only to lose her again ten minutes later. They worked the miracle a second time, but not a third.
Hannah delivered the news to Ida's husband. Ed Bergen's chore clothes emanated the warm, sweet scent of cows and fresh milk with a pungent undertone of manure. He had the same stoic face she had seen on many a Nordic farmer, but his eyes were bright and moist with worry, and they brimmed with tears when she told him they had done their best but had been unable to save his wife.
She sat with him and led him through some of the cruel rituals of death. Even in this time of grief, decisions had to be made, etc., etc. She went through the routine in a low monotone, feeling on autopilot, numb with exhaustion, crushed by depression. As a doctor, she had cheated death time and again, but death wouldn't let her win every time and she had never learned to be a gracious loser. The adrenaline that fueled her through the crisis had vaporized. A crash was imminent. Another familiar part of a routine she hated.
After Mr. Bergen had gone, Hannah slipped into her office and sat at the desk with the lights off, her head cradled in her hands. It hurt worse this time. Perhaps because she felt perilously close to loss for the first time in her life. Her marriage was in trouble. Ed Bergen's marriage was over. Forty-eight years of partnership over in the time it took a car to skid out of control on an icy road. Had they been good years? Loving years? Would he mourn his wife or simply go on?
She thought of Paul, his dissatisfaction, his discontent, his quiet hostility. Ten years of marriage was tearing apart like rotted silk, and she felt powerless to stop it. She had no point of reference. She had never lost anything, had never developed the skills to fight against loss. She felt the tears building—tears for Ida and Ed Bergen and for herself. Tears of grief and confusion and exhaustion. She was afraid to let them start falling. She had to be strong. She had to find a solution, smooth over all the rough spots, make everyone happy. But tonight the burdens weighed too heavily on her slender shoulders. She couldn't help thinking the only light at the end of the tunnel was the headlight of a big black train.
Knuckles rapped against her door and Kathleen stuck her head in. “You know she'd been seeing a cardiac specialist at Abbott-Northwestern for years,” she said quietly.
Hannah sniffed and flicked on the desk lamp. “How's Craig's patient?”
Kathleen slid into the visitor's chair. She crossed a sneaker over one knee and rubbed absently at an ink mark on the leg of her scrub pants. “He'll be fine. A couple of broken bones, a slight concussion, whiplash. He was lucky. His car was turned sideways at the moment of impact. The other car hit him on the passenger side.
“Poor kid. He feels terrible about the accident. He keeps going on and on about how the road was dry and then suddenly there was this big patch of ice and he was out of control.”
“I guess life can be that way sometimes,” Hannah murmured, fingering the small cube-shaped clock on her desk. The wood was bird's-eye maple, smooth and satiny beneath her fingertips. An anniversary gift from Paul four years ago. A clock so she would always know how long it would be before they could be together again.
“Yeah, well, you've hit your patch of ice for the night,” Kathleen said. “Time to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get home to the munchkins.”
A chill went through Hannah like a dagger of ice. Her fingers tightened on the clock and tilted the face up to the light. Six-fifty.
“Oh, my God. Josh. I forgot about Josh!”
* * *
JOURNAL ENTRY
DAY 1
The plan has been perfected.
The players have been chosen.
The game begins today.
CHAPTER 2
* * *
DAY 1
6:42 P.M. 22°
Megan O'Malley had never expected to meet a chief of police in his underwear, but then again, it had been that kind of day. She had not allotted enough time for moving into the new apartment. Rather, she had not allowed for as many screwups as she had encountered before, during, and after the move. She kicked herself for that. Should have known.
Of course, there were things that couldn't have been foreseen. She couldn't have foreseen the key breaking off in the ignition of the moving van yesterday, for example. She couldn't have foreseen her new landlord hitting it big on the pull tabs at the American Legion hall and skipping town on a charter trip to Vegas. She couldn't have imagined that tracking down the keys to her apartment would involve a manhunt into the deepest, darkest reaches of the BuckLand cheese factory, or that once she got into the apartment, none of the utilities that were to have been turned on two days before were operational. No phone. No electricity. No gas.
The disasters and delays clustered together in a spot above her right eye. Pain nibbled at the edge of her brain, threatening a full-blown headache. The last thing she needed was to start her new assignment with a migraine. That would establish her all right—as weak. Small and weak—an image she had to fight even when she was in the best of health.
As of today she was a field agent for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, one of the top law enforcement agencies in the Midwest. As of today she was one of only eleven field agents in the state. The only woman. The first female to crash the testosterone barrier of the BCA field ranks. Someone somewhere was probably proud of her for that, but Megan doubted that sentiment would extend to the male bastions of outstate law enforcement. Feminists would call her a pioneer. Others would use words omitted from standard dictionaries for the sake of propriety.
Megan called herself a cop. She was sick and tired of having gender enter into the discussion. She had taken all required courses, passed all tests—in the classroom and on the streets. She knew how to handle herself, knew how to handle anything that could shoot. She'd done her time on patrol, earned her stripes as a detective. She'd put in the hours at headquarters and had been passed over twice for a field assignment. Then finally her time had come.
Leo Kozlowski, the Deer Lake district agent, dropped dead from a heart attack at the age of fifty-three. Thirty years of doughnuts and cheap cigars had finally caught up with him and landed poor old Leo facedown in a plate of post-Christmas Swedish meatballs at the Scandia House Cafe.
When the news of his demise swept through the warren of offices at headquarters, Megan observed a moment of silence in honor of Leo, then typed yet another memorandum to the assistant superintendent, submitting her name for consideration for the post. When the day for decision-making drew near and she had heard nothing encouraging, she gathered her nerve and her service record and marched to the office of the special agent in charge of the St. Paul regional office.
Bruce DePalma went through the same song-and-dance he'd given her before. There were reasons all the field agents were men. The chiefs and sheriffs they had to work with were all men. The detectives and officers who made up their network were nearly all men. No, that wasn't discrimination, that was reality.
“Well, I've got another dose of reality for you, Bruce,” Megan said, plunking her file dead center on his immaculate blotter. “I've got more investigative experience, more class time, and a better arrest record than any other person in line for this assignment. I've passed the agent's course at the FBI academy and I can shoot the dick off a rat at two hundred yards. If I get passed over again for no other reason than the fact that I have breasts, you'll hear me howling all the way to the city desk of the Pioneer Press.”
DePalma scowled at her. He had a Nixonesque quality that had never endeared him to the press. Megan could see him playing the scene through his mind—reporters calling him evasive and uncooperative while the cameras focused on his deep-set, shifty eyes.
“That's blackmail,” he said at last.
“And this is sex discrimination. I want the assignment because I'm a damn good cop and because I deserve it. If I get out there and screw up, then yank me back, but give
me the chance to try.”
DePalma slumped down in his chair and steepled his fingers, bony shoulders hunched up to his ears, a pose reminiscent of a vulture on a perch. The silence stretched taut between them. Megan held her ground and held his gaze. She hated to stoop to threats; she wanted the job on merit. But she knew that the brass was especially skittish of words like harassment and gender bias, was still smarting from the sexual harassment charges several female employees had made against the outgoing superintendent months before. It may have been a risk, but the reminder might be just enough to make DePalma pay attention.
He scowled at her, jowls quivering as he ground his teeth. “It's an old-boy network out there. That network is essential to successful police work. How do you expect to get in when everyone else thinks you don't belong?”
“I'll make them see that I do belong.”
“You'll hit a stone wall every time you turn around.”
“That's what jackhammers are for.”
DePalma shook his head. “This job calls for finesse, not jackhammers.”
“I'll wear kid gloves.”
Or mittens, she thought as she fiddled with the car's heater setting. Frustrated and cold to the bone, she smacked the dashboard with a fist and was rewarded with a cloud of dust from the fan vents. The Chevy Lumina was a nag from the bureau's stable. It ran, had four good tires, and the requisite radio equipment. That was it. No frills. But it was a car and she was a field agent. Damned if she was going to complain.
Field agent for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The BCA had been created by the state legislature in 1927 to provide multijurisdictional investigative, lab, and records services to the other law enforcement agencies in the state, a scaled-down version of the FBI. Megan was now the bureau's representative to a ten-county area. She now served as liaison between the local authorities and headquarters. Consultant, detective, drug czar—she had to wear many hats, and as the first woman on the job, she would have to look damn good in all of them.