Mercy

by Rada Jones

  I deserve gratitude, but you gave me the cold shoulder instead.

  People don’t give me the cold shoulder. Not for long!

  That morphine was just a little warning. I hope you got the message.

  I’ll give you another chance. One more.

  You should take it. Or you’ll be sorry.

  Look at Carlos. Don’t you think he’s sorry?

  If he isn’t, he should be. And it’s not over. His fun is just about to begin.

  Take care, Emma! Make good choices!

  I’d hate to lose you!

  73

  That night, Emma spent hours awake in her bed. Without wine to dull her senses and help her through her misery, her heart felt like a huge hole. A void, sucking her. She was the center of pain. Inside her there was nothing but loss.

  She felt foolish to be so distraught about losing somebody she had only met a few times. She barely knew Boris. He wasn’t really part of her life. But he taught her hope. He told her that she was worthy and beautiful just the way she was. She felt worthy and beautiful with him. Now that he was gone, she was back to feeling useless and empty. She hadn’t been able to save him. She did her best to be a good doctor, a good mother, a decent human being. She failed, more often than not.

  She got up to pour herself a glass of milk. Guinness followed, so she poured her one too. They sat on the green sofa, looking at the black windows. She needed to refocus. Give her brain a task. Feeling sorry for herself wasn’t getting her anywhere. May as well think about something useful.

  She thought about Carlos. She remembered Faith saying that he killed those patients, then, driven by remorse, tried to kill himself.

  “That’s bullshit. That girl is crazy. Batshit crazy. Is she the one who’s framing Carlos? She has a motive. She’s mad that he ditched her. Let’s say it was her. How would she do it?”

  Guinness cocked her head, listening with rapt attention.

  “Getting his ID and PIN is a piece of cake. They lived together for years. She knows everything about him. She got in the system under his ID and used his PIN to sign that he gave those meds. Still, those meds weren’t enough to kill his patient. So she gave him more, then signed as Carlos.”

  Guinness laid her head back on her paws, her ears up. She kept listening, waiting for her favorite words — walk, ball, frisbee, eat, bacon. Not coming.

  “Giving fentanyl to the woman with the broken hip was a piece of cake. Same with the morphine for the patient in Room 15. She looked so peaceful and relaxed when I went to see her. I thought she was doing better. Instead, she was dying, overdosed on morphine. Taylor’s patient? That was the easiest. It was Faith’s patient too. She knew Carlos had just been there. She pretended to flush her IV, but she pushed the propofol instead. But how did she get the vial?”

  Guinness had no idea, and didn’t care. By now she was asleep.

  “She stole the kit. She waited until Carlos left the room, then stepped in and grabbed it. But Carlos had signed that he discarded it. What if it wasn’t Carlos? It was Faith, signed in as Carlos.”

  It all makes sense. She could do every one of these things. But that doesn’t mean that she did. I have no proof. What if I’m wrong? What if I accuse an innocent person, a friend who saved my life, of something so horrific?

  In her heart, Emma knew she was right. That had to be the truth, even if she couldn’t prove it.

  How can I prove it? Follow her. Where? That’s silly. I don’t know how to do that. Check her house? There may be something there. Drugs, or Carlos’s ID. But how do I get in? And what if I get caught? I’ll speak to Carlos. He’s got to know something.

  I could try to catch her in the act. Who would she go for next? Carlos. She hates him. He knows things about her. She already said that Carlos tried to kill himself. He’s in the hospital, sick. He’s an easy target.

  Carlos may be next.

  74

  A few hours into her shift, and many more left to go, Taylor didn’t feel well. She needed a break, but they were busy. She couldn’t leave Faith to deal with everything by herself. She was going to push through.

  Something to eat, or at least something to drink, would help, but they weren’t allowed food or drinks at the desk. The administrators, bless their hearts, didn’t like it. What if JCAHO, the hospital accreditation committee, came for an unannounced visit? They could get cited for irregularities. Maybe even fined. Better keep the staff hungry and thirsty.

  Taylor got the urine specimen from Room 6. Urine is always hard to get. You’d think you were asking for gold. She sent it to the lab, then went to draw blood in Room 5. She got dizzy. She held on to the corner of the desk. She waited a moment, then headed to Room 5.

  The next thing she knew, she lay on a stretcher. Worried faces looked down at her.

  “Are you OK?” Faith asked.

  “Yes, thanks.” Taylor tried to get up.

  They held her down.

  “Stay right there. We need to check you out,” Dr. Crump said.

  “I’m OK, really. I just got up late and missed breakfast. Then I didn’t drink enough.”

  “Does your neck hurt?”

  “No.”

  “How about your head?”

  “It’s fine.”

  They checked her out. Everything looked good.

  “You need some fluids,” Dr. Crump said. “Faith, let’s get an IV and give her a liter.”

  “No, thanks, I’m OK, I can drink.” Taylor hated needles.

  “Will you drink a liter?”

  “I will.”

  She did.

  An hour later, Dr. Crump stopped by to see her. Eric had dropped in. He ran back to the ICU to his patients.

  “Nice young man,” Dr. Crump said. “Is he...” He looked at her belly.

  Taylor blushed.

  “He’s my fiancé.”

  Dr. Crump smiled.

  Taylor felt that she owed him more.

  “Dr. Crump, regarding our conversation the other day…”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s something you need to know.” She took a deep breath, forcing herself to say it. “When I became pregnant, my boyfriend at the time and I, we were doing drugs. A lot of drugs.”

  “I see,” Dr. Crump said, his face darkening.

  “I haven’t done any in months, but I don’t know how this has affected the baby. He may not be normal. I thought you should know.”

  “I know. Still, thanks for telling me, Taylor.”

  “It wasn’t Eric.”

  Faith came to get her vitals. She attached the blood pressure cuff to her arm.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “The baby’s father. It’s not Eric.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s Dr. Umber.”

  The IV cart crashed with a bang.

  75

  Carlos opened his eyes. He didn’t recognize the place. He couldn’t remember how he got there. He looked around. Suspended ceiling. White walls. A window, framing an aspen. That reminded him of something. Something scary.

  He tried to sit up. He couldn’t.

  There was something in his mouth. He tried to take it out.

  His right hand didn’t move. He tried the left. That didn’t move either.

  Where am I? he screamed, but no sound came out.

  Things beeped. Alarms rang. Somebody came.

  A young man. Blond. In scrubs.

  “Carlos? I’m Eric, your nurse. You’re in the ICU.”

  Carlos’s eyes shouted a question. Eric heard it.

  “You were in a car accident. Do you remember?”

  Night. Rain. Long road. Running away. Trying to escape. Changing my mind. Coming back. Then the left turn. The aspen.

  He blinked yes.

  “Good. You’re doing much better. You hit your head. You were in a coma for days. You also had chest injuries. You had to have a pericardial window and a chest tube. They took out your spleen because you were bleeding inside. You understand?”


  Carlos blinked.

  “I’ll tell Dr. Roth you’re awake. He’ll be happy to hear. Now that you’re awake, they’ll look into extubating you. I’m sure you’d rather have this tube out of your throat.”

  You don’t know how much.

  “You’ve had a lot of visitors,” Eric said, showing him a pile of “Get Well Soon” cards. “George, Brenda, Dr. Steele, Taylor, Faith. They all asked me to call them if there’s any change.”

  Carlos frowned and shook his head no.

  “You don’t want me to call them?”

  He shook his head again.

  “None of them?”

  Carlos blinked.

  “Which one? George? Faith? Dr. Steele?”

  Blink.

  “OK. I’ll call her. She was here only this morning.”

  She came an hour later, dressed in her faded scrubs as usual. The scrubs looked tired. She did too, her hair in a messy knot, her lipstick gone, her eyes bloodshot. She smiled when she saw him awake.

  “Carlos! I’m so happy to see you! We were worried we lost you!”

  Who’s we?

  She heard the unspoken question. “The ED folks. George, Brenda, Taylor, me, many others. How are you?”

  He shrugged.

  “I have something for you.”

  She took out a notebook and a pen. She sat them on his chest. His hands were loosely tied to stop him from pulling out his ET tube. She untied them.

  “There. You can talk now.”

  He laughed. He heard a gurgle inside his throat. The alarms went crazy. She laughed.

  “I guess laughing is alarming, here in the ICU. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Carlos took the pen. He bent his knees to support the notebook. His stiff, unsteady fingers, scribbled huge drunk letters. Four words covering the whole sheet.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Kill them.”

  “I know. I never thought you did.”

  Peace spread inside him. There was at least one person who knew he was innocent. He thought they were all against him.

  “The question is: Who did? Do you know?”

  Carlos closed his eyes, thinking. He opened them and shook his head.

  “You don’t?”

  No.

  “Are you sure?”

  No.

  “You don’t really want to know.”

  Carlos said nothing.

  “I think I do. I have a theory, but I have no proof,” Emma said. “I need your help.”

  What?

  “Say, just for the sake of the argument, that Faith had something really important to hide. Something that nobody should ever find. Where would she put it?”

  Carlos frowned.

  “You don’t think it’s her?”

  Tears streamed down his cheeks leaving a shiny path. They dropped, darkening his pillow.

  “You don’t want it to be her?”

  Carlos closed his eyes. He was tired. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say. He didn’t want to think what she suggested. He was heartbroken.

  But she was right. He opened his eyes again, grabbed the notebook, and scribbled: “My stuff.”

  “Your stuff.”

  He nodded. If Faith wanted to hide something that nobody would find, and even if they found it, it wouldn’t incriminate her, she’d put it in with his stuff. The boxes he failed to recover were still in her spare room. It was a no-brainer to put it there, whatever “it” was. If anyone found it, she’d say he left it there. Faith was a smart girl. She knew damn well how to play her cards.

  She’d played him pretty well.

  76

  The following morning Emma went back to work after another sleepless night. She worried about Carlos. She wondered how to keep him safe.

  She had asked Eric to keep an eye on him. He stared at her as if she’d lost it.

  “Of course. I keep both eyes on him, every shift, all the time.”

  She had dropped it. What else can I say? Watch out for his ex? She’s an ER nurse. Nice girl. She may try to kill him.

  Back from seeing Room 4, Emma found Faith waiting. She had brought coffee and stopped for a chat. She smiled, friendly as always, but Emma had trouble looking her in the eye.

  “How about a spa day tomorrow? I have some coupons.”

  “Sorry, Faith, I can’t do tomorrow.”

  “The day after tomorrow?”

  “No, sorry, I can’t. I’m working,” she said. She remembered that the schedule was posted in the office.

  Faith will see I’m not on it. She’ll think I lied. She won’t know that I have administrative work. Oh well. It was time to cool it down anyhow.

  Faith hugged her and left. Emma shuddered, threw away the coffee she had brought and went back to work. She rechecked her orders once more. She’d gotten paranoid since that monstrous morphine order. She hadn’t done it—but maybe a typo? She mis-clicked? She’d tried to order 50 mg of Benadryl or metoprolol and she somehow clicked the wrong box?

  Deep inside she knew she hadn’t, but her old self-doubt was back. There was no explanation for it. It had to be her fault.

  She’d been thinking about Carlos. She replayed their “conversation” in her head over and over. He still cares about Faith. He’s not sure she’s the killer.

  Emma wasn’t sure either, but she was getting close. She had no better explanation. In the meantime, she watched her back.

  She rechecked her orders again: steroids, nebs, Zithromax. Nothing there to kill anyone. She signed them. She logged off and went to see the shoulder pain in Room 9.

  He was riding a motorbike when he slipped and ran into a ditch. He fell off and dislocated his shoulder. The deformity was obvious. The left shoulder was muscular and rounded, the right sharply squared. His other hand immobilized his hurt arm. His eyes widened as Emma got close.

  He doesn’t want me anywhere near that shoulder.

  She sat by his side, keeping her hands to herself. He got back to breathing.

  “Does anything else hurt? Your neck? Your back?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hit your head? Did you pass out?”

  “No.”

  “Can you move your fingers?”

  Still watchful, he did. He looked good other than the shoulder. Emma ordered an X-ray. He looked relieved that she kept her word and didn’t touch him. Good. I need him to work with me to put that shoulder back. If not, I’ll have to sedate him. That takes time and resources. Plus, with all this shit going on, I’m afraid to do it.

  “I’ll get you something for pain. It will help with the X-ray too.” She ordered Toradol, then reluctantly added 50 micrograms of fentanyl. They’ll take the edge off but they can’t hurt him. She checked the order, then rechecked it. She signed it.

  She rounded on her patients once more. She checked on them often, since she was always afraid to find them dead. They’re all breathing. The chest pain with the wonky EKG in Room 5 looked OK. Room 4 was breathing better after nebs.

  “Dr. Steele to Room 9.”

  Her heart quickened. She dashed to Room 9.

  The kid was blue. George was bagging, Amy was doing CPR, Judy brought in the code cart.

  “What happened?’

  The X-ray tech, , a nice brown woman with gray hair, could hardly speak. “I came to take him to X-ray. He didn’t look right. He wasn’t breathing. I called for help.”

  “Did he have a pulse?”

  She shrugged.

  “No pulse,” George said, “at least none that I could feel.”

  Emma wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw a massive temper tantrum. She didn’t.

  “Epi. And Narcan,” she said.

  “How much?”

  “Two.”

  They gave it. Nothing happened.

  “Two more.”

  Nothing.

  After the third dose, the pulse came back. His face turned pink. He started breathing.

>   Emma grabbed his right arm, bent his elbow for leverage and pulled the arm away. She rotated it outwards, extending it above his head. The shoulder fell back into its socket with a thunk. He opened his eyes.

  “That was cool,” George said.

  “Yes!” Amy nodded.

  “Yep, but what the hell happened?” Judy asked.

  Emma shrugged. She didn’t know what happened. The one thing she knew was that she was toast. Another patient who coded for no reason. Her patient. There was no explaining this away. She was already on notice. This was it.

  She signed in to check his chart. Her orders stared her in the face: X-ray, Toradol, fentanyl. Just like she wrote them. Except the fentanyl. She had ordered 50 micrograms of fentanyl. She had rechecked it twice. Now, it was 500 micrograms. Ten times the dose she had ordered. Her signature.

  How the hell did that happen? Have I really lost it? Am I going crazy?

  That evening she took her stuff with her. She didn’t think she’d be back for tomorrow’s shift.

  She was right. The VPM called her that evening.

  “What happened?”

  She told him.

  “Your order?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry, Emma. There’s nothing I can do. Time for you to take a breather.”

  She was put on leave while they investigated. They’d let her know.

  “I think I’ve lost it,” Emma said. “I really checked that order. I thought I did.”

  Guinness understood. She was ready to help. She went to the kitchen and came back with the leash.

  “How’s that supposed to help?” Emma asked.

  Guinness went to the door.

  “I know what it’s for. I’m asking you how do you think it’s helpful?”

  Guinness barked.

  “A little exercise will do you good. Come on! I need to check my email. And I need to pee.”

  “Oh well. We may as well. I need the exercise, and it helps me think. And I think it’s high time I did some thinking.” Emma laughed.

  Guinness cocked her head.

  “You’ve lost it.”

  77

  In the ICU, Carlos opened his eyes and looked at the window. He could barely make up the aspen, but the fading sky told him that sunrise was just minutes away. It was his last day there. They were going to extubate him today, and move him to a regular floor.