The exam was finished. “You’re strong,” the doctor said. “You’re doing well and a lot of people are looking out for you.” He patted her leg. “I’ll be back to see you soon. Until then you’re in the best hands, I think.”
A door opened and closed. She rolled her blurry eyes toward the sound. “Who?”
Thayer slid a chair over. “That was Dr. Michael Bryant. You might know him already but I just met him. You’re in Critical Care but you’ll probably be moved down to a room later today.”
She frowned, confusion and pain were all she was sure of as she tried to make sense of the words. “Thayer?”
“Yes, hi.” She sat on Corey’s right. “I’m really happy to see those beautiful blue eyes.” Tears glistened on her lashes.
Her hand fumbled toward Thayer’s face, brushing clumsily at her cheek before Thayer gripped her hand in her own. “You’re crying.”
“Yeah.” Thayer half laughed and half sobbed. “I can’t remember the last time I cried this much.”
Corey could only stare at her, her muddled mind unable to process the information. “Were we in the car? I can’t remember. Did we crash? Are you hurt?”
“No, honey, I’m not hurt.” Thayer pressed Corey’s hand to her lips, letting the tears fall freely. “You fell through the floor at the construction site. Your left arm is fractured, you have three fractured ribs that punctured your lung, soft tissue and muscle damage to your neck and back and a severe concussion. You’ve been unconscious for two days.”
Her fog was starting to clear but she still couldn’t remember. “Is that all?” She tried to sit up.
“No. Don’t.” Thayer placed a hand against her shoulder. “Hold on.”
There was a whirring sound and the bed lifted, raising her head. The change in position made her head swim and her stomach turn slightly. She swallowed heavily.
“Here.” A plastic dish was placed under her chin and a cool hand behind her neck helping her forward. “It’s okay,” Thayer murmured as Corey painfully retched up the little water she’d just drank.
Thayer disappeared for a moment and returned with a cool cloth to wipe her face. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “Shit, that hurt.”
Thayer sank back down in the chair. “You’re going to be okay.” Her voice wavered like she was convincing herself as well. “You have a chest tube in place to drain the air and blood from your pleural space and keep your lung inflated. We don’t yet know what long-term effects you may experience from your head injury. There were no skull fractures or hemorrhages but there was some swelling of your brain.” Thayer frowned. “Headaches, maybe, vision problems. You may never be able to fight full contact again. Your arm will heal just fine but you may need physical therapy for your neck and back.”
Corey blinked and looked at her left arm. It was propped on pillows, immobilized and wrapped in a moldable brace from her shoulder to her hand. Corey understood the words she was saying—physical therapy and head injuries—but couldn’t process what it all meant for her. “Jesus, Thayer, anything else?”
“I’m sorry.” Thayer shook her head. “I don’t know what role to play right now.” She stood and raked her hands through her tangled hair as she turned away from the bed.
Corey measured her breathing, working on inhaling fully despite the pain. “Is there any good news?” she finally asked on an exhale.
Thayer barked a hysterical laugh and turned back around, fresh tears shining in her eyes. “You scared the shit out of me, Corey.”
“Are you angry with me?” Corey tried again to remember something and was rewarded with stabbing pain to her skull.
Thayer turned away again, seemingly unable to look at her. “No, of course not.”
“Thayer,” she whispered, feeling the pull of sleep, but pain kept her lucid as she fumbled her hand toward her. “Please come closer.”
Thayer spun and immediately gripped her hand, dropping into the chair. “I’m sorry. It’s been…I’ve been… You’re here and you’re awake. That’s the best news. And somehow your stitches held, so there’s that.”
“Two days, you said.” She searched Thayer’s eyes. “Have you been here the whole time?”
“Is that weird?” She breathed a laugh.
Corey attempted a smile but the pain was overwhelming. “Yes.” Her voice was tight, sweat prickling the skin on her face and neck. “But weird in a good way.”
Thayer looked at her with concern. “Oh, honey, hold on,” she said as she disappeared out the door.
Corey looked up at the ceiling and tried to remember what had happened. The last thing she vaguely recalled was being at the memorial reception with Thayer and then wanting to go back to the site.
She wondered if her memory would ever return and if she even wanted it to. It didn’t seem important now and she pushed the thoughts away. Searching for memories that wouldn’t surface made her feel like someone was splitting her head open with an ax.
Thayer returned with Dr. Bryant, who smiled reassuringly as he came around to the monitors on her left side. “How are you feeling, Corey?” He studied the displays for her O2 saturation, respiration, and heart rate.
“Like I fell through the floor at a construction site, I guess.”
“I guess.” He leaned over her and checked her pupil reactivity again. “The thing you need the most right now is rest, so we’re going to help you with that.” He thumbed a button on her infusion IV pump and the numbers on the display ticked up, increasing her medication.
Corey sighed deeply as the pain receded and her body felt like it was sinking into the bed. “Oh. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiled and disappeared again and so did she.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Thayer pulled up a chair in Corey’s new private room. She hadn’t awakened again, and Thayer had taken the time to go home, power nap and get dressed for work. She only had an hour now before she was on shift. She couldn’t ask for another trade, and in fact, needed to start paying them back and then some. She would only be able to see Corey when the ED was slow enough for her to slip away and before and after her shifts, when she could manage.
She trailed her fingertips up and down Corey’s right arm, absently tracing the tattoo of the fish and coral reef. Her mind wandered, at first darkly, as she relived the horrible moments of Corey fighting a man twice her size and then crashing through the floor as the wood gave way beneath her. Thayer swallowed hard, closing her eyes against the memories of the sound of her body hitting the floor. She had never been so scared.
She shook her head, dispelling the images and focusing on the woman in front her, alive and recovering. She finally admitted how hard she was falling for Corey.
She picked up on the change in Corey’s breathing a second before her eyes fluttered as she came out from under the medications again. “Hey, tough girl.” Thayer laced their fingers, giving her hand a gentle squeeze to encourage her awake.
“Hey.” Corey blinked and focused on her. “You’re still here.”
“Of course.” Thayer smiled. “Although, here is somewhere new.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Corey looked around the dim room, groggily. “Will you do the thing with the bed?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Thayer hit the button to elevate the bed, watching her carefully.
“I’m good.” Corey sucked in a breath. “Keep going, please.”
Thayer raised the bed to nearly a forty-five-degree angle and stopped.
“Thank you,” Corey sighed.
Thayer sat back down. “How’s your pain?”
“Um, distant, for now.”
“Good.” Thayer eyed her monitors. “They have you on a pretty powerful cocktail of antibiotics and pain meds. They’ve switched you to a patient-controlled analgesia pump.” She showed Corey the button at the end of the long rubber wire running to the pump and her IV. “You want to hold on to it?”
“No. I can barely hold a thought right now.” Corey shifted in the bed and winced. “I think you need to start calling me something else.”
Thayer placed the button across Corey’s lap. “What do you mean?”
“I sure as hell don’t feel very tough.”
Thayer watched, sympathetically, while Corey felt across her body through her gown to the chest tube in place, stitched between her ribs, and skimmed her right hand over the heavy brace around her left arm. She grimaced, slightly, her hand going between her legs.
“You’ve got a catheter in place,” Thayer explained, reading her expression. “I know it’s probably not very comfortable.”
“That’s embarrassing.” Corey winced.
“It’s necessary. It will be removed as soon as you’re stronger.”
“You didn’t place it, I hope.”
Thayer smiled. “I did not. I can remove it when it’s time, if you like.”
“I think I’ll leave it to the professionals.” Corey managed a smile. “Peeing through a tube is decidedly not tough.”
“Oh, no.” Thayer shook her head. “You are absolutely the strongest most courageous person I have ever known.”
“Why? What did I do? What happened?”
Thayer realized her mistake. Corey couldn’t remember and it was better that way, at least until she was stronger. “Oh, you know.” She waved a dismissive hand. “You just never back down from a fight.”
Corey’s brow furrowed in concentration and she stared at the ceiling. The tightness around her eyes revealed the pain was breaking through. “Please, tell me what happened, Thayer.”
“I will. I promise.” Thayer kissed the back of her hand. “What you need to worry about now is getting well, okay?”
“Everyone decent?” Collier boomed from outside the door.
Thayer sighed. She didn’t have much time with Corey until she had to get to work. “Is it okay?”
“Collier’s here?” Corey asked, confused. “Yeah, he can come in.” She managed to straighten herself in the bed as much as possible and raked a hand through her hair.
“You look great.” Thayer smiled at her.
“Hey, Doc.” Collier gave Thayer a nod. “Corey, how you feeling?”
“Corey? Why the hell are you calling me that?” Her eyes widened. “What? Am I dying and no one told me?”
Thayer smothered a laugh and Collier reddened and sighed. “Don’t break my balls, Curtis.”
“Were you worried about me, Collier? How’d you even know I was here?”
Collier shot a look to Thayer. He pulled a file folder from beneath his arm and tapped it in his hand. “Came by right after you got hurt, but you were getting scanned or some shit. Then you might as well have been dead for the next two days.”
“Yeah, well, I’m here now.” She offered him a small smile.
“You mind giving us a few minutes, Doc?” he asked Thayer. “I need to get a statement so I can close this case out.”
Thayer stiffened, her eyes darting to Corey. “She still has no memory of the fall. Isn’t my statement enough?”
“Just being thorough. And yes, we have everything we need. He’s talking up a storm but I’d look like a real amateur if I didn’t have a record of speaking to one of the victims.”
“Victim?” Corey’s gaze flicked between them. “Your victim is right here and she can speak for herself.”
Thayer blew out a resigned breath and stood. “She doesn’t remember and I haven’t told her.” She gestured helplessly to Jim. “But she deserves to know so it might as well be you.”
“Know what? What’s going on?”
Thayer gave her hand a final squeeze. “I’m going to make some phone calls.” She looked to Jim. “I’ll be right outside at the desk.”
“Well?” Corey looked sharply at Collier, who was shuffling his feet. “Are you going to tell me or not?”
Collier snapped into professional mode and pulled his notebook from his breast pocket. “Why don’t you start with the last thing you remember?”
“Fine.” Corey tried to relax back against the pillows. She fiddled with the med pump in her lap but didn’t press it despite her growing pain. She needed to think as clearly as possible and her confusion about Thayer’s evasiveness over what happened was upsetting her. “Thayer came with me to the memorial for Gordon Akers. I went to return some personal items I still had.” She left out the details, unsure what Collier already knew. “We maybe had plans afterward. I don’t remember exactly.”
“A date?”
“Um, yeah.” Corey smiled slightly. “I think so, but before that I wanted to go back to the construction site.”
“Back?” Collier’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowing.
Corey winced at his glare. “I was there once before. I wanted to get a look at that airshaft. There were inconsistencies in the skull fracture patterns and I—”
“Jesus Christ, Curtis,” he sighed.
“What?” She tried to glare back but it just sent fresh pain searing behind her eyes. “There was always something off about Gordon Akers’s death and I tried to talk to you…” She swallowed hard and closed her eyes against waves of nausea.
“Are you all right?” He stepped closer. “Do you want me to get—”
“No.” Corey’s eyes snapped open. “I want someone to tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Okay.” Collier studied her a moment longer. “Let’s start back farther. What happened the first time you went to the site? When was that and was the doc with you?”
“No.” Corey worked to breathe evenly. “Cin came with me. We went the day after the post, I think.”
“And?” He was scribbling in his notebook. He now had someone else he needed to talk to.
“And we were messing around the shaft at the bottom floor where he was found. I wanted some better pictures, and I wanted to see if there was something there—a ledge, or whatever—that he could have struck on the way down or at the bottom. Something that would have caused the type of fracture to his skull.”
“Go on.” He was writing furiously.
“There wasn’t.” She shrugged. “It’s smooth all the way down and there was nothing at the bottom. So the ground broke his head apart when he hit, but that didn’t explain this long, rounded, depressed fracture we saw that had to happen before he hit the ground.”
“Did anyone see you there?”
Her brow furrowed in thought. “Yeah, there was this guy there. A worker, I guess. He caught us snooping around. He was a real creep.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Um, big, maybe your size, but heavier, fatter. He was pretty unkempt.”
He pulled a photo from the folder and handed it to her. “This him?”
She studied the mug shot. The guy’s face was pretty banged up but it was clearly the same guy. “Mark Guilford. That’s his name? What did he do?”
“Yeah.” Collier took the photo back and moved on. “So you went back with the doc to find something that could explain the fracture?”
“Yeah, I think that’s right. Maybe? I don’t know.” She sighed.
He pulled out another photo. “Like this?”
Her hand trembled slightly as she took the picture. It was a length of rebar lying near a pile of rubble. “Where did you find it?”
“I didn’t,” he corrected. “The doc did. With you.” He referred back to his notes. “We had it tested and there’s blood on it. It’s being run at the lab now to see if the blood matches Gordon Akers’s and to see if we can match prints off it, more than just the doc’s since she picked it up. Why that idiot didn’t just throw it down the refuse chute is anyone’s guess.”
Corey’s head snapped up and she sat straighter in the bed. “Is this a murder weapon? Whose prints? Was I right about his death?”
“Well, you would know better than I if the blow killed him, but if it dented his skull, it probably disabled Akers enough to push or throw him down the airshaft.
And that’s murder.”
“Who?” she asked again. “Who murdered him? That Mark Guilford guy?”
He eyed her. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
She looked at him helplessly, feeling the burn of frustrated tears pricking behind her eyes. “No, damn it.”
He inhaled deeply and pulled out a stapled sheaf of papers from the folder. “Here.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s the doc’s statement about what happened two days ago.”
Her trembling increased, from nerves, fear, or pain she didn’t know, and she opted to place the sheets on her lap to read them. “Will you raise the lights?”
He looked uncertain. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said sharply. “Please turn the lights up.”
He did as she asked and she immediately felt the pain ramp up at the bright light, her shaky hand going to the side of her head, but she was determined to read the report.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thayer leaned against the desk at the nurses’ station and tapped her foot impatiently. She had already made her calls within her department to set her schedule for the week. Jim was still in with Corey and she was starting to worry about what was taking so long. She was checking her watch again when the door flew open, and Jim, face panicked and eyes darting around, called for her.
“Better get in here, Doc.”
Thayer crossed to the room in three strides, sliding by him in the doorway and stopping just inside the door. Corey was pressed back against the bed, eyes screwed shut and her face a mask of pain. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she was breathing in huge gasping sobs.
“Shit.”
“Is she having a seizure or something?”
“She’s hyperventilating. Can you dim the lights again, please?” Thayer perched on the side of the bed and placed one hand on her chest and the other against her cheek, brushing gently at the tears. “Shh. Shh. Corey, listen to me, honey. You’re okay. Just relax and breathe. You’re safe now.”
Corey’s breath shuddered and began to even out at the sound of Thayer’s voice, her tension easing. “What were you talking about?” Thayer glanced at the pages, crumpled across Corey’s legs.
Gallows Humor Page 13