Code Triage

by Candace Calvert

  She startled, feeling immediately foolish as the blood pressure cuff inflated on his arm, Velcro crackling. She watched the digital display as the machine searched for his systolic pressure. The device hummed and inflated further, and then numbers appeared: 260, 240, 220 . . . Her eyes moved to his heart rhythm, sinus bradycardia, slower than normal at barely 50 beats per minute. High blood pressure, slow pulse, signs of intracranial pressure—ominous. He’d been given a death sentence. Kurt Denton would pay for his crime.

  The memory intruded before Riley could stop it. Houston, her father. At her hospital bedside.

  “I’ll see that there’s justice, baby girl. We’ll find this guy if I have to do it myself. What I’d give to feel my hands around his throat. As God is my witness, I’ll make him pay. He could have killed you!”

  But they hadn’t found him. And worse—what still left Riley with nightmares—was that they’d never discovered any motive for her attack in the medical center parking lot. A hooded man in the shadows of the stairwell, hands around her throat; then the ruthless shove that sent her hurtling down the steps. Why? Why? Her purse had been found on the landing, cash and credit cards in place; not a kidnapping, no attempt at sexual assault. Riley’s stomach roiled and she wrapped her free arm around her sling. “A random act of violence,” the Houston papers had reported, as if that would make it feel less personal somehow, bring peaceful closure.

  Riley jumped as the monitor alarm sounded.

  “His pressure isn’t responding to the medications,” the nurse said, stepping to the bedside to reset the alarm. “Any luck reaching family?”

  “No. According to the mother of his children, he’s been estranged from them for years.” Riley glanced at the nurse’s ID badge, saw she was from a local staffing registry. “We appreciate your coming in to relieve our nurses.”

  “Not a problem,” she said, smoothing the sheet over Denton’s chest. “I’m a ‘traveler,’ new to the area, so I don’t know the staff that were shot.” Her brows scrunched. “Maybe I’d feel different if he were awake, staring at me. But at least we know why he did what he did: some really messed-up attempt to keep his family together. In my mind, that feels easier to accept, safer, than some random act of violence.”

  Riley hugged her sling close. “Yes.”

  The nurse pressed a button, raising the head of her patient’s bed a few inches. “I saw the critical stress information you left at the nurses’ station. Those tips about eating right, exercising, and listening to music.” She glanced up and smiled. “I was working at Sierra Mercy during that day care explosion last year. When Claire Avery—she’s Claire Caldwell now—did CISM peer counseling and a staff debriefing. It was a good thing, made me feel like someone cared. I’m glad you’re doing it for these folks. If I can help you in some way, I’d be happy to.”

  Riley felt a rush of warmth. “Thank you. I’ll be working with the senior chaplain and social services to get that going. And I have a small hospital ministry in place that I hope will help, too. We meet in the chapel before our shifts.”

  “Faith QD. Erin Quinn started that at Sierra Mercy. I still have my T-shirt with that stenciled nurse’s lamp.” The traveler nurse’s smile broadened. “It looks like you’ve got it covered, Chaplain.”

  Riley glanced at the comatose patient and exhaled softly. “I’m trying.”

  +++

  “Is this all the water he’s taken today?” Leigh asked, staring down at the large rubber bucket the stable staff installed in a corner of Frisco’s stall.

  “I’m afraid so.” Patrice sighed. “I turned off the automatic waterer and filled the bucket myself so I could keep an accurate record. Dr. Hunter’s up-to-date. He said the water he gave through the stomach tube helped, but if this keeps up, he’ll need to give some IV fluids.” She reached out and brushed Frisco’s dark forelock aside. “But his vital signs are normal. And he isn’t in pain; you can see that.”

  Leigh’s throat tightened at the dull look in her horse’s eye, his depressed posture. She glanced around the stall thickly bedded with pine shavings. “No manure?”

  “Not yet. But I still hear bowel sounds.”

  “So we wait.” Leigh thought of Sam lying in a hospital bed with her own belly problems.

  “You’re off duty tomorrow too, aren’t you?” Patrice asked. “That awful incident yesterday hasn’t changed things for you?”

  If you only knew. She’d tossed and turned half the night. Then had that text from Nick this morning: “Call me?” “It’s still my day off. Although I promised to work a couple of hours as a favor to one of the doctors. His wife has an OB appointment. Otherwise, I’ll be out here, walking Frisco and trying to coax him to eat.”

  “Good.” Patrice turned as Maria approached, leading Tag at the end of a pink rope. The donkey’s big ears pricked forward as Frisco nickered. “I’m glad you’ll be available,” the stable owner continued. “Gary and I have to make a visit to the family of a former foster child. We’ll be gone until tomorrow night.” She patted Maria’s head. “My sister, Glenna, will be here to watch Maria and generally oversee things. She’s not an experienced horsewoman. But she’ll have the stable hands and access to all the emergency numbers, of course.”

  Maria stepped up to Frisco’s gate and traced her finger along Nick’s name on the contact card.

  Leigh turned to Patrice. “You’d have her call me,” she said quickly. “If anything happens, be sure your sister calls Dr. Hunter and me.”

  “Absolutely,” Patrice said with a reassuring smile. “Your very nice husband ‘isn’t a horse person.’” She chuckled. “I’ll never forget the look on his face when I called him Frisco’s dad.”

  Maria smiled, silently tracing her finger along the final digits in Nick’s cell number.

  “Well, I’ll be available,” Leigh said. “Nothing will keep me away.”

  “Great.” Patrice smiled at Maria. “And Maria will keep an eye on her pal Frisco, too, won’t you?”

  Maria nodded enthusiastically and blinked at Leigh, her shining eyes saying everything her voice couldn’t. Sam’s intrusive meddling had done one good thing, anyway. Whatever the motive, she’d placed this child here, and Maria’s sweet presence seemed evident in every corner of this stable.

  Leigh smiled at her. “I know he can count on you, sweetie.”

  She thanked Patrice again for loaning her the chestnut mare, then led Frisco back out to the same trail she’d galloped along earlier. They walked—heavy, dragging clops and light, booted footfalls—toward the gold-pink glow of the setting sun. Leigh thought about how many times she’d sought this kind of escape during her life.

  Somehow horses had always figured in. In books she’d lugged home from the library as a child—My Friend Flicka, Black Beauty, and The Black Stallion. And in movies. She smiled, remembering how she’d watched National Velvet over and over, copying child star Elizabeth Taylor by tying string to her toes like reins, clucking and racing her imaginary thoroughbred over jumps at the Grand National steeplechase. And those other times, when she’d close the door of her bedroom against her mother’s shrewish rants at her gentle father, gather her plastic horses close, imagine galloping away to someplace peaceful and happy.

  When Alton Evers paid for riding lessons—even before he’d become her stepfather—and leased Leigh’s first horse, it helped to fill the emptiness of leaving her own father behind, then buffered the pain when he succumbed to a heart attack only five years later. It taught her that while nothing good lasted forever, a means of escape made the worst of things tolerable. When life crowded in, she’d seek out the quiet solitude of the stables, breathe it in, pull on her boots, climb in the saddle, and gallop, gallop, gallop. Trying to make the moment, the finite escape, feel as wonderful as a promise of forever. But now . . .

  Leigh stopped and Frisco halted behind her. Then she walked, boots sinking into the soft earth, to a scrubby tree and looped the lead rope over a branch. She watched, encouraged, as he nipp
ed halfheartedly at a few wisps of grass, then sank down beside him and stared at the deepening sun. She traced a circle in the dirt with her finger and tried to remember the phases of the moon. What came after the full moon? Waning, she thought. A slow slicing away of the full moon’s bright surface, finally snuffing its light. Her soul had felt that way this past year—her spirit. Fading away, slice by slice, month by month since she and Nick separated. Worse than any loneliness she’d felt before, an inescapable hollow, a painful hole. Nothing had helped this time. Not work, not distance—she’d tried that at Pacific Point—not this new stable.

  She stood, moved close to Frisco, and buried her face against his neck, stretching her arms up and weaving her fingers into his mane. She listened to him breathe, felt his solid warmth, drew in the musky scent of him. Finally she let the tears she’d held back for two days gather and spill over. “Get well, boy, please,” she whispered. “I can’t bear it if I lose you.” Her tears splashed onto her horse, soaking into his soft coat like rain on a velvet skirt. “I can’t lose anything more. I can’t.”

  She squeezed her eyes tight against a cruel barrage of images: Harry McNealy in his backward tux shirt, Caro crying in the kitchen, the dying lemon tree, Cappy Thomas’s widow . . . Nick with someone else’s child in his arms. “Lord,” she murmured, her lips brushing against Frisco’s neck, “why can’t you make one good thing be forever?”

  +++

  Riley grimaced as Leigh’s voice came on the line.

  “It’s Riley,” she said, wishing the doctor hadn’t answered. “I’m sorry to bother you at home.”

  “I’m at the stable. Is something wrong?”

  “Not really.” Riley looked toward the SICU room in the distance. “Only that Sam Gordon insists she needs to see you.”

  “I’m not her doctor. She knows that—you know that, Riley.”

  She flinched against the mild rebuke. “I know, I’m sorry, and I’m fully prepared to argue that again with her. But the fact is she’s been harassing the nursing staff, the hospital operators, the evening crew down in ER . . .”

  “Is it a medical problem?”

  “Um . . . apparently not.”

  There was a long silence. Riley thought she heard the low braying of a donkey. She forged ahead. “I’ll say I couldn’t reach you, or—”

  “Tell her I need to wash away some horse sweat first and pull off my boots and spurs.” There was a grim chuckle. “Scratch that; I’ll keep the spurs. Tell Miss Gordon I’ll be right there.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Leigh passed through the darkened SICU and saw the staff’s eyes widen—maybe because of her riding attire, but more likely because she’d actually responded to Sam’s belligerent summons. Frankly, she didn’t care. It was time to deal with this woman, put things to rest, and move on. She’d left her spurs in the car, but . . . I’m in control; you can’t get to me this time. She squared her shoulders and crossed the last stretch of carpeting to the room—to find Sam dozing, face pale against the pillowcase and one hand curled on her chest with IV tubing trailing.

  Guilt stabbed as she reminded herself of the obvious: this woman, regardless of her sinister role in Leigh’s private life, was a trauma patient. Injured, helpless—

  Sam’s eyes opened. “I knew you’d come.” She ran her tongue over her lips, glanced toward the nurses’ station, then back at Leigh. “Pull up a chair. We need to finish that conversation we were having earlier.”

  “You had me paged to finish a conversation?”

  “We were talking about Nick. What I can give him that you can’t. And I got the feeling you wanted to know.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “You’re here.”

  Leigh thought of the metal twitch on her horse’s lip and brushed her hand across her mouth.

  Sam smiled. “And I’d want to know if I were in your place. I’d need to know what it was that the other woman offered that I didn’t. If that was something as simple as good conversation, a sympathetic ear, or something as important as great, steamy—”

  Leigh slammed the door closed, then perched stiffly on the chair beside the bed. “Let’s get this straight: I’m here because Riley Hale asked me to come to keep you from pestering the staff.”

  “Even if we both know better, I’ll let you have that—but not Nick. You can’t have him.”

  “I don’t think I need to remind you that I’m divorcing him.”

  “No. You’re the one who needs reminding.” Sam shook her head. “And don’t give me that business about needing his help with your neighbors. You called Nick because you can’t stand the idea of him wanting me. And you can’t deal with the reality that your failed marriage has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with—”

  “With me?” Leigh hunched forward, gripping the edge of the chair so hard her fingers cramped. “Are you actually saying that it’s my fault? You slept with my husband, and now it’s my fault?”

  Sam’s eyes swept over Leigh. “If the boot fits.” She touched her oxygen cannula. “I suppose now I’ll really need to worry about this tubing.”

  “What?”

  Sam smiled grimly. “That you’ll pinch it off.”

  Leigh thought about denying the temptation but didn’t see the point. She glanced toward the monitor, watching the blips on the darkened screen, hearing this woman’s very viable heartbeat, and struggling against the sudden threat of tears. She told herself it was because she was tired, because the last few days had been horrific and she was sick with worry over Frisco, and . . . “What?” she whispered finally. Her eyes connected with Sam’s. “What do you think you can give Nick that I didn’t?”

  “Respect, for one thing. For his career. I know how much it means to him to be a police officer, how much it meant to my brother. And I can accept the inherent risks without whining at him night and day about the dangers.”

  “I was worried.” Leigh’s stomach tensed the way it had all those times she’d listened to the police scanner. “I couldn’t stand the idea of his being hurt or . . .”

  “Killed? Like Toby?”

  Leigh swallowed, the memory flooding back. “When I heard about the squad car rollover—an officer being pinned in the car—I thought it was Nick. I made calls trying to find out. I was frantic.”

  “You kicked him out. Weeks before that.”

  “We agreed that we needed time . . . space.”

  “It sounds to me like you always had space—you liked it that way. The more space the better.” Sam’s laugh was short, sharp. “How many miles is it to that stable?” She shook her head. “You should know Nick resents that nag as much as you resent me.”

  Leigh doubted it was possible.

  “But I’ll be there for him,” Sam continued. “He’ll know he’s my first priority—the center of my whole life. Any ‘space’ will be our space together. Nick and me and Elisa.”

  Leigh flinched at the memory of the child in Nick’s arms, hers around his neck. She began to tremble inside.

  “He’s crazy about my baby girl,” Sam said. “And that’s what I’ll give Nick that you can’t. That you wouldn’t.” Her frosty eyes pinned Leigh. “A family. Children. You know how much he wants that.”

  Leigh fought the memory of pain so much deeper than the relentless cramping that had kept her curled up in bed last December. God, don’t do this to me.

  “I’ll give that to him,” Sam repeated. “The family he’s never had. And would never have if he stayed with you.” Her lips twisted into a sneer. “Because having Nick’s baby would crowd Dr. Stathos’s all-important ‘space,’ and—”

  “Stop it!” Leigh growled. “Don’t you dare say another word. You know nothing about me, nothing about what I’ve been through.” She pressed her fist against her belly, hunching against the memory, but stared into Sam’s eyes. “And everything I suffered because of you. What your ugly intrusion into my life cost me.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, knowing she was about to say wor
ds she’d never spoken aloud before. “I was pregnant. . . . I was carrying Nick’s baby. I miscarried after I found out about you, and—” She stood up so quickly that the chair tipped over. She tried to breathe, felt it stick in her chest as a wave of anger and pain rose with suffocating ferocity. I hate her, hate her. It’s all her fault.

  “Nick never said you’d been pregnant.” Sam’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute. . . . You didn’t tell him?”

  Leigh bolted for the door, her mind a blur as she flung it open and strode—then began jogging—toward the hallway door. The faster she moved, the slower it felt. Almost as if her words, her unexpected revelation to Sam Gordon, had turned her escape route to quicksand. And at any moment she’d be swallowed up completely.

  +++

  Sam watched as the nurse checked the bags of IV fluids and confirmed the settings of the sequential pressure sleeves on her legs. Then she made a point of thanking the woman, knowing this nurse had likely gotten an earful in report about the “difficult” patient who’d insisted on paging an ER doctor at home.

  But it had been more than worth it to see the arrogant Leigh Stathos stomp in here in those knee-high boots like she’d come to correct an unruly horse. Then run out like the coward she really was—after handing Sam a gift better than any bouquet of flowers or get-well card: a weak spot, as vulnerable as an exposed nerve under a dental instrument. Leigh had been pregnant and kept it a secret from Nick. Sam could use that; she could . . .

  Sam battled a wave of guilt remembering the pain on Leigh’s face. She lost a child; Sam was a mother too. Still . . .

  She shook her head, remembering Nick’s words, his continued defense of a woman who had never deserved him. “Leigh doesn’t lie.”