Urgent Care

by C. J. Lyons

  As Janet walked away, Gina’s tears were finally free to fall, splashing onto Jerry’s cheek where they glittered in the harsh overhead exam light.

  She sat there, head bowed, eyes closed, trying hard not to think, not to remember, not to feel. A man laid his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t need to look to know it was Ken Rosen.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, standing behind her.

  No one had asked that. They asked about Jerry, asked about what happened, asked about the gunman.

  Only Ken had wanted to know about her. She bit her lip, desperate to tell him the truth. Her shoulders quivered with the effort it took to hold herself together, but she refused to surrender.

  She straightened, tucked in the sheet around Jerry, and folded her hands in her lap, still not looking back at Ken. Jerry’s diamond was sharp against her sweaty palm. “Why’d you keep the bulletproof vest, Ken?”

  He sucked in his breath, his fingers curling against her shoulder. Holding on tight. As if he needed her strength. Hah. Not Mr. Zen Master.

  “That day back in July,” he finally said. “I didn’t save those kids because I was any kind of hero. Just the opposite. Those guys started shooting and there I was and all I could think was it was my chance to—” He faltered, his fingers slipping from her shoulder. Gina reached back, anchoring his hand beneath her own. “I thought I’d be with my family. At last.” He cleared his throat. “Silly, since I don’t believe in heaven or anything. But I was . . . ready.”

  His words hung in the air until the beeping of Jerry’s heart rate on the monitor scattered them. Gina sneaked in a breath, afraid to say anything. Behind her, Ken shifted his weight.

  “Anyway, that’s when you showed up. Saved me.”

  She shook her head, glad he couldn’t see her face. “Wasn’t me. It was Jerry—he gave me the vest. Without it, we’d both be dead.”

  He spun her in the chair so that she faced him, her back to Jerry. He took her hand in both of his and crouched down until they were eye to eye. “Don’t you believe that, Gina. Jerry wasn’t out there on that street. You were. You were the real hero. You are a real hero. Even if you don’t want to believe it.” He squeezed her fingers so tightly they hurt. “Don’t you ever forget that. I won’t. You saved my life.”

  The icy numbness that had encased Gina was slow to crack. Something splintered inside her as his words chiseled into her awareness. Then he surprised her by kissing her forehead, his lips warm against her chilled skin. “Thank you.” He walked away.

  Gina wanted to say something, wanted to race after him, wanted desperately to believe his words.

  But she needed time.

  She sat there, watching him leave, her eyes glazed over. He looked back at her once, before the ICU doors closed behind him. A wistful glance that told her everything she needed to know. She let her breath out and curled her fingers around Jerry’s ring.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” she whispered. Jerry’s heartbeat beeped steady. She took that as a sign. “I’ll make it right. For everyone. I promise.”

  “NICE JOB,” LUCAS TOLD AMANDA WHEN SHE FINALLY turned away from Zachary’s bedside. The little boy had surprised them all. His lungs were working, keeping him alive. “You have a talent for this. Have you thought of critical care medicine?”

  This discussion wasn’t about her choice of specialty, and they both knew it. Amanda motioned him into the break room. He followed her, standing motionless at the door, while she paced the room, finally coming to rest at the window overlooking the snow-covered cemetery. Even the vandalized angel where Karen had been found looked peaceful in the snow.

  “I owe you an apology,” she started. “I’m sorry. It all just kind of—”

  He shook his head at her sternly. “No. That’s not the problem. It’s not about your overeager need to solve the problems of the world. It’s about the fact that if I were any other attending in this medical center, hell, in the state, you’d be on your way to being dismissed from medical school right now. It’s about your gambling with your career and using me to do it.”

  His anger propelled her back against the window despite the fact that he hadn’t raised his voice or taken a step in her direction. It didn’t help matters knowing that he was right.

  “I was wrong not to talk to you,” she admitted. “I should have called you as soon as I confirmed the teratoma.”

  “Yes, a phone call before my patient was whisked away to surgery would have been most appreciated.” He scowled, crossing his arms over his chest, still not moving toward her.

  “You could have trusted me,” she protested, her own anger beginning to flare.

  His eyes grew wide with surprise, and he dropped his arms to his side. “I do trust you. I would believe you if you told me the sky was polka-dot,” he said. “But don’t ask me to change the way I treat patients, not based on a gut feeling. I need facts. I can’t risk their lives on anything less.”

  “But I had facts—”

  “One case study is not a fact. It’s one person out of six billion.”

  “Two. Now it’s two. Plus those reports Dr. Koenig has.”

  “Unpublished reports don’t count.” He waved Dr. Koenig’s cases aside. “I can’t practice medicine with my gut instincts, not like Lydia. And you’re still learning; you should learn how to interpret things like case studies, how to be a little cynical about what you read, research methodology, conclusions—”

  The door burst open and Tank rushed in. He’d somehow conned his mother into agreeing to let him stay at Narolie’s bedside.

  “She’s awake!” he shouted. “She said my name, she’s talking and everything!”

  He slammed the door again, dancing a little jig as he rushed back to Narolie’s room across the hall. Amanda felt her heart rise with joy.

  “See?” she said to Lucas, joining him at the door and taking his hand. “There are two cases. You just needed to have a little faith.”

  “Faith? Faith had nothing to do—” His words stalled as he got a faraway look on his face. “There are two, aren’t there?”

  “Lucas?”

  “There are two! You still need to do a research project for your senior thesis, right?”

  “I was going to do a chart review—”

  “No. You’re going to learn how to do real science. Not some piddly chart review where the computer does all the work for you. You’re going to learn how to think.” He held her around the waist as if they were waltzing. “How to think like a real scientist. So next time you won’t need to trust in faith to save your patients.”

  “You want me to document the antibodies that caused Narolie’s symptoms? But how? Would we need her brain tissue?”

  “Think it through.” He stood at arm’s length, his hands on her hips, head cocked as he watched her.

  “Wait. We have her blood. Before and after the tumor was removed. And”—her face lit up—“we have the tumor. We can tag the white blood cells, bathe the tumor in them, do an immunofluorescence stain—”

  “Right, and we can do follow up titres a month or two out.”

  “Lucas, it’s perfect. We can even get it published, I bet!”

  “I’m sure of it.” His smile lit his face. “Only one problem.”

  “What’s that?” Amanda asked, her mind still spinning through the science.

  “I won’t have time to plan a wedding if I’m working on a new research project with you.”

  She laughed. “Actually, I think that would be the best gift you could ever give your future mother-in-law. She’ll love taking it on.”

  Amanda stopped. Through the glass walls of Narolie’s room she saw Narolie sitting up, beaming as she gestured animat edly to Tank. “Look at those two. It’s so beautiful. You know what? We need to run a quick errand before we go in.” She tugged at his hand, leading him toward the PICU doors.

  “Wait, where are we going?”

  “Outside, where it’s snowing, Lucas. Snow! We’re goi
ng to get Narolie a wheelchair and take her out to see it. You and Tank can show her how to make a snow angel.”

  His laughter echoed through the hallway, startling a nurse’s aide walking from the elevator. He pulled Amanda tight to him. “You’re the only angel I need.”

  LYDIA LAY ON HER BACK, HER FINGERS TRAPPED in small cages that held them suspended as the ortho resident added more weight to the stack hanging from her right arm. He’d been trying for almost an hour to realign the bones in her forearm. A broken ulna and radius and an assortment of bruises were her only injuries from Glen Bakker’s attack.

  She still had to deal with the nonphysical fallout. Starting with the police questioning her endlessly, and now Trey, who had rushed over but had been kept waiting until the police were done.

  Wincing as the weight settled into place, she turned to face Trey. It seemed like their conversation kept spinning in the same circles: that she somehow should have abandoned Nora to Glen, how she should have called Trey—as if that would have done any good with him across town at his parents’ house—and that she needed to stay in the hospital overnight to be on the safe side.

  Wrong on all counts.

  “She needs more fentanyl,” Trey protested when she gritted her teeth and her heart rate spiked on the monitor above her.

  “No, I don’t.” She wanted to keep a clear head. The cops had told her about Jerry—what little they knew, at any rate. “Did you reach Janet Kwon yet?”

  “She said she’d be down as soon as she checked on Jerry.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Bad. They evacuated an epidural hematoma but there’s swelling already and no one knows—”

  She squeezed her eyes shut at his words. “He’ll be okay.” He had to. She had to hang on to that. “And Seth?”

  “Did fine, no airway damage, so they actually extubated him in recovery. I don’t think they even sent him to the SICU—at least he wasn’t there when I called up.”

  “Good.”

  The resident finished smoothing the fiberglass cast. “Okay, I think I got it. Let me get an X ray and we’ll see. If not—”

  “I don’t want to go to the OR,” Lydia muttered.

  “You want to use that wrist again, don’t you?” Trey said, sounding a lot like his mother.

  She rolled her eyes as the X ray tech wheeled the machine in. The tech laid a lead apron on top of Lydia. “You’ll have to step out, sir.” Trey obeyed, and Lydia had peace and quiet for a few minutes until Trey and the resident returned, waving the X ray in triumph.

  “Perfect alignment,” the resident boasted. “Let that dry and you’ll be good to go.” He waved a hand and left once more.

  Before Trey could settle into the chair beside her, Janet Kwon appeared in the doorway, her usual frown lines deepened into furrows.

  “Trey, why don’t you go home?” Lydia asked.

  “But—”

  “I mean it, Trey. I’ll meet you at home.”

  He narrowed his eyes, debating. After a long moment he gave her a grudging nod and left.

  Janet slid into his place beside Lydia. “He’s not a happy camper.”

  “Not many are tonight. You saw Jerry?”

  “Just came from there.” Janet’s voice cracked the smallest bit. Something she would surely deny. “He’s stable.”

  Neurosurgeon talk for still having vital signs, but nothing else was certain. Jerry might not make it through the night. And even if he did . . .

  “We got a hit on the shooter’s prints with Live Scan. The guy’s a hired thug, got two strikes against him already in California,” Janet continued, her voice now holding an edge. “Gina tells me you might know why he decided to visit sunny Pittsburgh. Said the gunman had an old picture of you and your mother.”

  Lydia startled so violently that she rocked her cast and the newly positioned bones inside it. Pain screamed along her arm, up her neck, clamping her jaws together with a snap.

  “Help me up,” she gasped. Her stomach was churning, if she was going to vomit, she didn’t want to be lying down. Janet took her good arm and supported her as Lydia swung her legs around and sat up. Her vision went black for a moment, but after she heaved in a few breaths, it cleared.

  “I know you had Jerry working a cold case,” Janet continued, her fingers still gripping Lydia’s arm. “You need to tell me everything.”

  “I don’t know much.” Quickly she explained to Janet about her mother’s murder by an unknown man wearing a law enforcement uniform eighteen years ago. “Jerry asked a friend of his in LAPD to see what, if anything, they had on the case.”

  “A friend? You mean Mitchell Epson?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  Janet’s face clouded, and Lydia knew there was more bad news coming. “He was found dead in his home. Murdered. He’d been there a few days—probably happened three, four days ago. LAPD has no leads. But according to Gina, it was Epson who gave the killer Jerry’s name, sent him here to Pittsburgh.”

  Lydia recoiled as if she’d been sucker-punched. “Why? There wasn’t anything new on Maria’s case.”

  “It gets worse. From what Gina said, sounds like the man who shot Jerry found another Jerry Boyle—an Officer Jeremiah Boyle from Zone Two—and tortured and killed him yesterday.”

  Acid clawed its way up Lydia’s throat, and she had to swallow hard to control her nausea. Jerry had been shot because of her—Gina almost killed as well. And two more police officers dead. All because she’d told Jerry her secret, told him the truth about Maria’s murder.

  “I never asked Jerry to look into Maria’s murder. I told him to leave it alone. It was so long ago—” She looked up at Janet, frowning in confusion. “I don’t understand. Why is this all happening? Now, eighteen years later?”

  “You tell me. What the hell is so important about your mother’s murder that two cops were killed and my partner—my friend—is lying upstairs in a coma?”

  “Believe me, Janet, I wish I knew.”

  Before Janet could ask more questions that Lydia had no answers to, a nurse bustled in, carrying a sling and a sheaf of discharge instructions. “Let’s get you out of here, Dr. Fiore,” she said. “It’s been a long night for you.”

  “We’ll talk more tomorrow,” Janet promised. “You think of anything, you call me.”

  “I will.”

  Janet started out the door, then stopped. “And Lydia, be careful. Jerry will kill me if anything happens to you.”

  After fleeing the ER and avoiding the press gathered around the hospital, Lydia walked the familiar route past the cemetery, her fingers gripping her keys so tight they bit into her flesh. The police had taken her gun, of course.

  She paused at the locked cemetery gates, hauling herself up one-handed to see past them. The movement jarred her broken arm, the pain knocked her teeth together, but in a way it was welcome. Gave her an edge.

  The weeping angel was draped in snow, most of the graffiti now hidden, with only a few remnants of crime-scene tape visible to memorialize the horror that had occurred at her feet. In the dim light, with her curling hair chiseled around her shoulders, she looked a little like Maria. The same distant, sad expression Maria used to get. As if she could see the future but was powerless to stop the pain that was coming.

  Lydia’s good arm shook with exertion. She reluctantly stepped back down to the pavement. Her entire body was trembling as she turned her back on the angel.

  Despite the blowing snow she kept her hood down, the better to see at the extremes of her peripheral vision. After years of running from a faceless, nameless danger—after all that time—the danger had found her. It was out there somewhere in the night, stalking her.

  Taking aim at anyone near her.

  She stopped at the end of her drive, listening intently. The tall hemlocks blocked all light except the faint pinpoint of her porch light.

  She pulled out her keys, fingering them with her left hand until she found her car key. She could lea
ve. Now.

  There was nothing at the house she needed except Trey and the cat. They could take care of each other—better than she could.

  Wind sighed through the trees, cascading snow all around her as if she were caught in a snow globe. She stood there long enough for her toes to grow numb, her fingers white with cold as they gripped the flimsy piece of steel.

  She could run. She should run. But for the first time, she didn’t want to run.

  Arching her neck, she glanced over her shoulder at the street behind her. Then she took a step. In the opposite direction. Toward home.

  She wouldn’t run. Not this time.

  As she approached her house, Trey and Ginger Cat appeared in the front doorway. Both looked worried: Trey by the way he held himself back, giving her the space she needed. And Ginger Cat by the way he rushed past her, darting over the threshold, searching for danger, then slipping back inside before she could close the door.

  “You okay?” Trey asked, taking her coat from her, taking care not to jostle her sling or cast. “You’re freezing. I was getting worried.”

  “I’m fine.” Damn, wasn’t that what Nora had kept saying? She squared her shoulders, her decision made, no regrets.

  Before he could say anything more, she rubbed her palm against his cheek, circling to the back of his neck and pulling him down for a kiss. His lips were warm, as were his arms as he wrapped them around her, ever so gently. Even after the kiss was over, he held her there, his chin resting on her hair, her face pressed against his chest.

  “Thought you might like your Christmas present early,” he said when they finally parted. “Close your eyes.”

  Too tired to argue, she complied. He took her hand and led her through the archway into the dining room. “Okay, open them.”

  She gasped. In the corner where her surfboard used to stand was a large Douglas fir, complete with lights and sparkling ornaments.

  “Surprise!” Trey’s parents, Ruby and Denny, stepped out of the shadows. “I’m sorry the kids had to leave, it was past their bedtime,” Ruby said.

  “But we old folks could wait up for you,” Denny added, brushing Lydia’s cheek with a kiss. “So what do you think of your present?”