Recalling mental notes, he only writes down what he knows for sure in green.
In purple sharpie, he notes the ‘they implied’ information. He scrawls never practiced or state licensed shrink on Jane’s card. He wonders how hard it would be to find out how many people have a degree and never used it.
Jesse laughs. Plenty of Walmart door greeters who never used their degree. The one checkout girl he flirted with told him once she, too, had earned a criminal justice degree, but there were no jobs and she didn’t want to move away from where she grew up.
Maybe if he knew the state Jane killed in or attended school, it would narrow the list to maybe dozens after he eliminates any males in the same jobs.
The hospital would have covered up the deaths if they thought they were mysterious and how many fresh out of prison women go back to drugs? She’s got her niche plotted well. With those kinds of search parameters, it would take forever to find her. I need another clue from her.
She is my buddy. Sponsor. Whatever the hell she labeled it. If the urge to kill blossoms, I contact her through the chat room. What could I say? What would make her reveal to me where she attended school? Just knowing the state she attended school in and I might locate her.
How do you even get there? I could mention there is this girl at college who frustrates me so much I want to choke her out. Ask her if she had these thoughts when she went back to school after she lost her nursing license. She implied she did. He writes in purple, Psych degree? When?
He chews the cap of the purple Sharpie. What about triangulating the distance between the meetings? We held two in different states. The third might be all he needs to determine how far she travels to officiate.
Jesse shoves the unseen photos of his sister under the envelope, so they fall behind the desk. He snags the police report:
The female, naked, approximately sixteen to eighteen years of age, was found supine, ligature marks and bruising at the wrist and ankles from being bound.
Jesse halts.
How can I read what happened to my sister? It’s one thing to know she was raped and murdered. But to read about it? To read about the tears in her vaginal wall. Having pictures of the bruises the rope left behind. He falls onto his bed. The stack of documents taunts him from behind the desk. He closes his eyes. Sleep might help. Guessing about what happened terrified his sleep for years, but to know what they did to his Big Sissy? He knows it will haunt him. Haunt him beyond any story those in the group share.
His eyes scan down the Xerox of the hand printed text of the police report:
“Fuck!”
He crumples the paper. Rolling off the bed Jesse flings all the top of the desk contents to the floor. The cheap Walmart desk set and phone clang on the carpet. His class papers flutter harmlessly like leaves on the wind to the floor.
How do I read about her rape?
How do I not?
Jesse reaches for the fallen stack of papers.
If I want to find her killer I must read the reports. I can’t use what I thought I knew before. I must know what happened to her in order to do this. The professor was correct, I can’t investigate my own case objectively.
He picks up the house phone from the floor, still a hardline push button telephone in his dad’s office. He must hang up and dial the number a second time.
“Hello, Professor Arnett. I thought about what you said, and I think it’s time I speak to the FBI.”
I
“I WANT POSITIVE references and your full support behind any new job I apply at.” If she smoked this is where Jane would lean back in the chair and light up in defiance of the hospital’s non-smoking policy.
The two fancy suited men are affronted by her bluntness. The one on the right with the poor combover speaks first, “I don’t think you understand what kind of trouble you are in, lady. You’re in no position to demand.”
Jane imagines releasing a long puff with enough smoke to fill the room and flicking ash on the floor of the makeshift interrogation room.
“If we go back two years you were on the same shifts as Charles,” the second man with dimples says.
Jane knows they have nothing. She never stole too many drugs or too often. It was the last one, the mentally challenged kid who spent his days drooling on himself and observing Clifford the Big Red Dog on PBS. Mom insisted it was his favorite because he blinked—blinked the most during the show. They brought in a VCR and a television so he could watch it while he was in the hospital for pneumonia. She had been giving him tapioca pudding through his feeding tube. It was crusted inside and likely was ripe with bacteria—and mom’s fault.
It didn’t matter. Mom and Dad were some big contributors to the church, and the church supported the hospital. After all, Jane was employed by St. Mary’s. The parents demanded a target, someone to persecute for the death of their son. The hospital launched an investigation, and someone would lose their job because it was the fault their child died.
Jane thought it was ironic. What if this was a death she didn’t encourage? Sometimes people get sick and die. Some people are meant to die. People worry about the growing number of childhood ailments and how it is an epidemic across the country. It’s chemicals in the food. It’s lack of clean drinking water. Mom smoked. Mom tried crack. Dad’s sperm was weak. Fuck some of the dumbest ideas as to why so many underperforming special needs kids are being born. There are no more being born, it’s medicine. Doctors are too good at their job. As much as people don’t want to be the asshole who explains how nature already determined those kids should not have lived after birth, science trumped natural selection.
Nature.
Darwin’s assessment was accurate and medical science pisses on it. Now these kids live and are destined to a life of medical issues because Nature had already determined they were to have died shortly after birth. Science and the money driven society screams NO! We keep the kid alive and you’ll have to make monthly pilgrimages to the doctor and charge the insurance companies millions. How much is your child’s life worth?
For such people who profess to live as God’s plans, they sure don’t follow it. God’s determined your baby wasn’t strong enough to be a part of His plan, so you turned to science to defy the law of the universe. And those professing to do His works demand payment. Jane laughs.
“This is serious, lady,” Combover scolds.
“Why are we here, gentlemen?”
“To determine if any wrong doing occurred by our staff…”
“Fuck.”
Both mousy men go into cardiac arrest over a professional woman using the word ‘fuck.’
“Now there is no reason for a lady to use…”
“Fuck you.” Jane’s eyes flame. “Lots of nurses were on shift with Charles. And there was never any evidence of his involvement with the death of anyone, other than he was on shift at the time of some deaths of people who were already dying.”
“Three codes on the burn ward at the same time was suspicious.”
“And a good union defense lawyer would destroy the case with toxicology. I read the reports on all three people.” Jane reminds them these were people, people who needed to be released from this world. “People. Unless the hospital lied on their own reports, they all passed from natural causes. One had lasted weeks longer than the doctors projected. But your investigation did cause a murder. You scared Charles into thinking he was facing triple murder charges. Triple murder! No wonder he blew his brains out.”
Jane has a mild stirring in her sex drive. She controls the room and these two flaccid—impotent overweight middle-aged men know it. She would bet dollars to donuts Combover has pictures of underage girls on his computer. Not pedophile prepubescent shit, still illegal fifteen-year-old little girl shit. If not, he might, if she gets a chance to try all the computer shit she’s been reading up on.
“I would bet you have a dozen nurses on the same shift as those deaths. All determined as natural—unless—the hospital has been coveri
ng up suspicions.”
“Now…”
“Now, fuck you! Let me tell you what. Either I go back on shift cleared of all—whatever the fuck this is. Or if you’re just fishing for blame to shut the grieving family up, keep their donations to the church and hospital flowing, I want references. My performance is impeccable. I demand fucking great references.”
“Nobody said anything about anyone being fired. We are just making sure…”
“We had an old lady pass two weeks ago. She was in her nineties and there was no investigation.” And she did pass naturally.
“There was nothing unusual about the boys…”
Jane rises to her feet, towering over Combover. “Then we. Are. Finished. This is a witch hunt and you have no witch. You’re going to upset a lot of competent nurses for no reason. Upsetting them causes them to second guess all their choices and that causes mistakes—mistakes cause a death. If someone dies in the next few days it is on you two. You two are the cause because this little meeting jumbles some poor, young nurse’s decision-making skills. You caused Charles to opt for a gun to his temple.”
“It was under his chin,” Combover corrects.
Jane knew. She just couldn’t appear to know anything not in the newspapers.
The meeting ends.
Jane returns to her shift.
No more nurses are questioned.
Jane knows she painted a target on herself.
A target she could handle, since what she did was not for the standard hero complex or the sexual thrill. She would just have to witness people needlessly suffer so the hospital could bill eighty dollars for an aspirin.
II
JANE POPS THE door release bar hard. The metal rectangle misses the man approaching from the opposite side by half an inch.
“Whoa.” His leap back lacks grace, but it keeps him from being impacted on the nose.
“Sorry.” Her apology lacks any earnestness nor quells her anger.
“Bad day?” He does convey a tone containing mild concern.
“Even if I was I wouldn’t discuss hospital matters with anyone.” Jane recovers her composure. She discovered as a new nurse she had to quell her emotions. When a family witnessed a loved one in distress she never displayed emotion. She had to remain professional.
“I’m not some reporter,” he says. “I hear they are roaming the corridors.”
“Never thought you were.” Jane flashes an eye toward her car, eighty-seven feet away, but her keys are in her pocket.
“I actually was waiting out here for you.”
Some men have fantasies about nurses and sponge baths. Worse since female nurses convey a strong maternal instinct some men have a mommy fetish. No man has used an original pickup line in her last five years of sporting the white hat. The brashness of these men astounds her, especially when they’re sick, or worse, their pregnant wife is in a room upstairs squeezing out their kid. The craziness of human behavior has led her to reenroll at the university and continue her education. She examines the man with her chocolate eyes. “I doubt it was me.”
“I’m not making a shitty pass at you, Nurse Jane.”
Shock should grab her, but her name, emblazoned on a golden bar on her chest, shines for everyone to see. “I’m sure your wife needs you upstairs.”
“I’m not married, it’s my father. He is hooked to all these machines on the fourth floor and my mother won’t let him go. They are keeping him alive and I know he wants released.”
She studies his blue eyes and even though it appears he might drop a tear, he forces the pain.
“That’s between your mother, the doctors…and your God.” But he doesn’t give a shit.
“I thought maybe you might be able to assist him.”
“When I’m his nurse, all I’m able to do is make him comfortable, to follow the doctor’s directive for the best possible care we offer.” This guy wants her to pull the plug, but he’s no grieving son. He has more an ex-military commando vibe, and she’d bet her license the hospital employed him to scope her out. He carries his shoulders not quite as a police officer would. He might be a private dick.
Why risk it? Why end someone at this moment? She was just cleared of any wrongdoing. She doesn’t have the desire. Nothing drives her to end someone. She has complete control…over…she contemplates. She desires to kill. No…she does it to help people, to keep the hospital from stealing. She protects families like a modern-day Robin Hood.
“But I can’t stand him suffering. Mom would keep the machine breathing for him. He would never want to live as a vegetable.”
Jane takes two long strides toward her car. “I’m not sure what you’re asking. But as long as your mother speaks for your father we will provide all the medical care possible. I’m going to end this conversation now.” In his heavy trench coat, he could hide a recorder.
“Would you at least check his chart? See he’s not going to wake up?”
“I don’t work on the fourth floor.” Now I know he’s a…plant. If they catch me investigating a patient on a floor I don’t get assigned and he dies, then they might have a case. I know how to play the game. I did the same to Charles. She speaks plain so any recording device picks up her professional fuck off message, “I’m leaving now. If you persist, I will notify security.”
He backpedals, but not because he believes she’s not capable of being a plug puller, but more because she won’t snap at his hook.
“I thought you were the person to help me.”
“Not one nurse in that building will do anything to harm a patient.” Her statement would have all the conviction of truth because it was true. Jane was outside. Enduring life is not always the proper choice.
Jane marches toward her car. She contemplates how to check this man’s story. Is there a dying man on the fourth? Yes. They house most terminal patients on that floor. Should she carry this all the way and report the man for good measure?
Let it go.
He chases after her. A real distraught son might. Now she will report him just to cover herself. Because no random patient would have any reason to suspect she ends pain, they sent him after her. She fishes in her pocket for the keys.
“But Miss Jane, you are the only person who can help him.” His pleas are disingenuous. She doubts anyone would fall for him.
“Leave me alone, or I will contact security.” She fumbles through the keys until she finds the one for her car door. She flicks it at him as if she held a butcher knife ready to lacerate his throat. “And if you approach another nurse I’ll…I’ll make sure you’re never allowed on hospital grounds again. How would your poor mother feel about that?”
He raises his hands in a defensive gesture. “Sorry.”
“Back off!” She jams the key into the lock.
Mashing down the pedal she peels off, leaving a trail of rubber from one tire. Two blocks away she parks. Jumping the curb—frantic—she hops out, with every bit of her shaking she fumbles into the payphone booth.
“9-1-1 what is your emergency?” chirps the voice.
Jane quivers, “Yes…I’m…”
“9-1-1 what is your emergency?”
“I’m, a nurse…I’m a nurse at St. Mary’s and this man in the parking lot he…he…”
“I have your location ma’am. An officer has been dispatched. Are you able to stay on the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Is this man still there?”
“No. No. I left the hospital. He was...he was waiting for me out…the employee entrance.” Keeping her voice trembling, Jane smiles to herself. Once clear of the hospital’s radar, she’ll punish them.
III
“IT’S YOUR DAY off.” Tina, the thin as a rail nurse, points out as Jane reaches for a patient chart.
“They called me in,” Jane says. “I guess Debora called in again.”
Tina reaches across the desk, her uniform hanging baggy on her bony arms. She scoops up a disposable coffee cup marked in black Sharpie—D
ebora. “She’s been sick a lot lately.” Using just two fingers to hold the cup she dangles it over the trash. “She was up for a promotion. I think all these sick days will harm her chances.” She drops the cup, caramel liquid splashing in the metal bucket.
Jane leans in so her voice doesn’t carry. “It might if her sickness is a sign of a more permanent condition.”
“What’s wrong with her, do you think?”
Jane pats her own flat stomach.
“She’s not married,” Tina whispers.
“Women have been having children without being married for millennia.” Jane raises an eyebrow.
The wheels turn for Tina. “But this is a religious hospital. If she is pregnant and unwed they might fire her.”
Jane never understood how some people graduated nursing school. “They certainly won’t promote her,” Jane says. “You want to work the desk or do rounds?”
“Desk,” Tina says.
Of course, because your bony ass can barely pick up a newborn. “I’m going to check the ward, then get some fresh coffee. Want some?” Jane smiles. Maybe I’ll add to yours what I gave to Debora.
“Please.”
• • • • •
Jane slips from the kitchen with a handful of new coffee filters in her hand. Someone just mopped the floor and her sneakers squeak. She chews her bottom lip at the high-pitched scrunch. Not even proceeding on her toes cuts out the noise. As she rounds a corner she ducks back into the corridor hiding from the two men.
She recognizes the combover and the man who she reported to the cops. They wrote down his description and assured her no one fitting his appearance had a father on the fourth floor.
The hospitable promised to add extra security. Vindicated he was a plant part of her wants to confront them both. She desires Debora’s promotion. The medicine she adds to her coffee won’t kill her, but it will damage her performance. She listens.
“She ran and called the cops on me. A woman willing to kill doesn’t call the cops.”
SKA: Serial Killers Anonymous Page 21