by Mary Daheim
Judith flinched. “No change from earlier this evening?”
“That’s correct.”
“Officially, you mean,” Judith said. “But can’t you tell whether he’s a little bit better or…not?”
“There’s been no change,” the nurse replied and yawned in Judith’s ear.
Judith and Renie hung up at the same time, then stared at each other.
“Well?” Renie inquired.
Judith’s features sagged with disappointment. “No change.”
“I told you they’d let you know as soon as anything happened,” Renie said. “Take it as a good sign. Wouldn’t you think that if Joe wasn’t going to pull through, he would have gotten worse by now? It’s almost ten o’clock.”
Judith flopped back on the pillows. “Maybe.”
Renie waited a few moments before speaking again. “Tony says Bill has the Chihuahuas in his workroom in the basement. He sits down there watching them. Then the dogs watch Bill. And he watches them watch him.”
“Maybe it’s better than watching what’s on TV,” Judith said without much interest.
“Bill doesn’t usually conduct those kinds of experiments,” Renie fretted as Avery, the night nurse, came in for the relentless vital signs routine.
“Maybe,” Judith suggested after submitting herself to the procedures, “he did that kind of thing while he was still teaching at the university. You just never knew about it.”
“Dubious,” Renie replied before the thermometer was stuck in her mouth.
Judith bided her time, drumming her fingernails on the bedclothes. After the nurse left, she turned to Renie.
“I can’t stand it,” Judith announced. “I’m getting out of here.”
Renie sighed. “I should have known. That’s why you didn’t take your Valium a while ago.”
“Yes.” Judith signaled for Renie to be quiet. A full five minutes passed as she listened for the voices to die down and the patter of feet to fade. “They’re settling in for the night. Help me get into the wheelchair.”
“No.” Renie glared at Judith. “You’ll do yourself some harm. Besides, we’ll get caught.”
“We won’t,” Judith asserted, laboriously starting to get out of bed. “Come on, give me a hand.”
“That’s all I’ve got,” Renie shot back. But, seeing that Judith was determined, she got out of bed. “I really don’t want to do this, coz. Where are we going? As if I couldn’t guess.”
“You can,” Judith replied. “The ICU, of course.”
“Of course.” Renie shoved the wheelchair next to the bed, then used her good arm to help Judith stand. “Didn’t you tell Woody you thought we were in danger? Isn’t this trip a trifle risky?”
“It’s also necessary,” Judith declared.
Renie sighed again as she helped her cousin prepare to sit down in the wheelchair. “Are you okay?”
Judith waited to make sure she didn’t feel dizzy. “I’m fine.” She let Renie help ease her into place and put a blanket across her lap. “Let’s roll.”
Just down the hall, an older nun sat at the nurses’ station. She looked up and eyed the cousins curiously. “Excuse me,” she said with a faint lisp, “where are you going this time of night?”
“The chapel,” Judith replied. “My husband is in the ICU. Perhaps you’ve heard. He was stabbed earlier today. I want to pray for him.”
“I see,” the nun replied with a benevolent smile. “You know where the chapel is? The second floor.”
“Thank you,” Judith replied as Renie leaned into the wheelchair to aid her cousin’s progress.
The elevator was empty. “Blasphemy,” Renie muttered. “What next?”
“I really would like to go to the chapel,” Judith said. “Luckily, it’s on the same floor as the ICU.”
“That makes sense,” Renie said as the elevator stopped on two. “Gosh,” she remarked, giving Judith a shove into the hallway, “it’s dark around here. Which way, I wonder?”
Metal light fixtures with three bulbs hung from the ceiling at twenty-foot intervals. The somber dark green walls were relieved only by the tan linoleum floor. A wooden sign with flaking gold letters and arrows directed the visitor to the operating rooms, the intensive care unit, the isolation unit, the waiting room, and the chapel.
“To the left,” Judith said, steering herself. “Everything but the ORs are that way.”
Heavy glass-and-steel double doors bore a sign that read “No Admittance—Staff Only.” Perplexed, Judith paused. “Now what?” she asked.
“There’s some kind of buzzer system on the wall to punch in what must be a code,” Renie replied. “As you may have guessed, we don’t know what it is.”
“Drat.” Judith gripped the arms of the wheelchair and peered through the glass. She could see nothing except for a short hallway and another set of doors about ten yards away. “Double drat.”
Behind them, they heard the elevator doors open and close, followed by a beeping sound. “Robbie!” Renie exclaimed. “He’s headed this way.”
The robot cruised down the hall, swerving to avoid the cousins. The double doors swung open at his approach. Hurriedly, Renie pushed Judith inside. Instead of going straight ahead, Robbie swung to the right where a single wood-frame door said “Keep Out.” Again, Robbie was given access and disappeared as the door swung shut behind him.
“What’s that, I wonder?” Judith murmured.
“How should I know?” Renie replied. “Hey, this second set of double doors doesn’t have a code system. Shall we?”
The cousins passed through, using the wheelchair for leverage to open the heavy doors. Almost immediately they came upon a nurses’ station that looked out through glass at the patients in the ICU.
“Oh!” Judith gasped. “Joe must be in there. Where is he?”
A middle-aged nurse with a jutting jaw stared at the cousins. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, whipping off her glasses.
“Where’s Joe Flynn?” Judith asked, refusing to be put off by the nurse’s fierce countenance.
“You don’t belong in this area,” the nurse retorted. “This is off-limits to anyone but medical staff. Please leave at once.”
“Where’s Joe Flynn?” Judith persisted as Renie tried to angle the wheelchair so that they could see into the dimly lighted ward that lay behind the glass windows. Some half-dozen patients lay in small cubicles with elaborate lighted monitors that looked as if they belonged in the cockpit of a jumbo jet.
“If you don’t get out,” the nurse growled, “I’m calling Security.”
“Look,” Renie said in the voice she reserved for dealing with dimwitted CEOs and obstinate public relations directors, “this is Mrs. Flynn, and the least you can do is point her husband out to her.”
“That does it!” the nurse cried, and reached under the desk. A soft but persistent alarm sounded, making Judith jump.
“Come on, you old crone,” Renie railed at the nurse. “Give this poor woman a break! She’s just had hip surgery and her husband may be at death’s—”
Torchy Magee appeared as if from nowhere, huffing and puffing through the near set of double doors. “What’s up?” he wheezed, practically falling against the desk.
“Get these two out of here,” the nurse ordered. “They’ve broken into the ICU without permission.”
If Torchy had still had his eyebrows, he probably would have raised them. Instead, he merely stared at the cousins. “I know you two. Aren’t you from the third floor?”
“Y-e-s,” Judith said, as something moving in the shadows of the ICU caught her eye. Probably a busy nurse, prompting Judith to worry that Joe was in there, requiring immediate medical attention.
Torchy shook his head. “Now, now, you should know better than to come into an area like this. It’s staff only. Didn’t you see the sign?”
“Yes,” Judith began, “but—”
“In fact,” Torchy said, scratching his bald head, “how did you get in her
e?” He gave the nurse a questioning look.
“I didn’t let them in,” the nurse snapped. “They must have tripped the code somehow and opened the outer doors.”
“Is that what happened?” Torchy asked, looking stumped.
“Something like that,” Renie answered. “Look, as long as we’re here, couldn’t Hatchet-Face at least point out to Mrs. Flynn where her husband is in the ICU?”
The nurse fingered her glasses, scowled at Torchy, then looked down at her charts. “If I do, will you leave right away?”
“Yes,” Judith promised. “Just point him out and tell me how he’s doing.”
The nurse turned to her computer screen. “What was the name again?”
“Joe Flynn,” Judith said with emphasis.
There was a long pause. The nurse scrolled the screen up and then down. She slowly shuffled through the charts on her desk. “Sorry,” she said with an expression of supreme satisfaction, “you must be mistaken. There’s no Joe Flynn here.”
SIXTEEN
JUDITH WILLED HERSELF not to faint twice in one day, but she definitely felt light-headed. She couldn’t find her voice. The words formed in her brain but wouldn’t come out.
“You’re crazy,” Renie yelled at the nurse, banging her left fist on the desk. “Joe Flynn had surgery this afternoon and was moved to the intensive care unit. Dr. Garnett operated on him. Look again.”
“Look for yourself,” the nurse smirked, turning the computer monitor so that Renie could view the screen. “Do you see any Flynn?”
“No,” Renie gulped after carefully eyeballing the patient list, which included a Kyota, a Fairbanks, a Diaz, a Gustafson, a Littlejohn, and a McNamara—but no Flynn. “When did you come on duty?” she demanded with a lowering stare.
“Tonight.” The nurse still seemed smug. “Ten o’clock.”
“You mean you just got here?” Renie asked.
“That’s right,” the nurse replied. “About fifteen minutes before you two showed up.” She leaned past Renie to look at Torchy Magee. “Can you get these pests out of here? I’ve got patients to monitor.”
“I’ll see these ladies home,” Torchy said with a chuckle. “Come on, let’s head back to the old corral.” He grasped the wheelchair firmly and steered Judith through the double doors.
She regained her speech only when they got to the elevator. “Mr. Magee,” she said, sounding weak, “can you check this whole thing out for me? I swear to you, my husband was in ICU until…until whenever he was moved.”
“I’ll try,” Torchy replied as the elevator doors opened, “but I’m the only one on duty tonight. My backup couldn’t get here in this snow.”
“Please.” Judith sounded pitiful. Then, summoning up all her courage, she asked the question that had been uppermost on her mind: “If something happened—that is, if my husband didn’t make it—wouldn’t they tell me right away?”
“Oh, sure,” Torchy replied breezily, hitting the button for the third floor. “Say,” he said, looking around the car, “where’s the other one?”
Judith gave a start. For the first time, she realized that Renie wasn’t with them. “I don’t know. Wasn’t she right behind us?”
“If she was, she didn’t get in the elevator,” Torchy said as the car began its ascent. “I hope she’s not still down in the ICU, giving Bertha heat. Bertha’s pretty tough.”
“So’s my cousin,” Judith said. But her worries rose right along with the elevator.
“I’ll check on Mrs. Jones after I get you to your room,” Torchy said as they exited into the hall. “Maybe she didn’t make it into the car before the door closed. She’ll probably show up in a few minutes.”
When Judith and Torchy passed the third-floor nurses’ station, the nun at the desk looked up. “Your mind must be at rest after going to the chapel,” she said with a smile. “Prayerful moments with our Lord before bedtime are much better than any sedatives.”
Judith uttered a response that was supposed to come out as “My, yes,” but sounded more like “Mess.” Which, Judith thought dismally, was more appropriate to her situation.
“Please,” she begged after the security guard had gotten her back into bed, “can you find out what happened to my husband?”
“I’ll give it a try,” Torchy said. “What about your cousin?”
“She’ll be all right,” Judith said, though not with complete conviction. “For now, I’m more worried about Joe.”
Torchy nodded half-heartedly. “Okay, I’m off.”
It was impossible for Judith to get comfortable. She called the main desk and asked for Sister Jacqueline, but the nun was unavailable. Then she dialed Woody’s number at home.
Woody sounded half asleep when he answered. Judith briefly apologized before explaining that Joe had gone missing.
“How can he be missing?” Woody asked, sounding confused.
“Maybe that’s the wrong word,” Judith said as she heard Sondra’s sleepy mumbling in the background. “But I don’t know where he is. Which makes him missing as far as I’m concerned.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Woody said. “Frankly, I think it’s just a mix-up. Try to calm down. It isn’t good for you to get yourself so upset after surgery.”
Judith had confidence in Woody, but realized that the most he could do at the moment was try to send a couple of patrol officers to the hospital. They might get the runaround, too. She cudgeled her brain to think who else she might contact for help. Feeling impotent and distraught, Judith considered taking the Valium to settle her nerves. But it might fuddle her brain, so she set aside the yellow pill in its tiny pleated cup. It was almost eleven o’clock; she considered turning on the late-night news. She might see the story on Joe. But, she decided, that would only upset her.
For a quarter of an hour, she twisted, tossed, and turned—at least as much as she could without disturbing the artificial hip. She was about to ring the front desk again when Renie staggered into the room.
“Coz!” Judith cried. “Where have you been? Did you find Joe?”
Dragging herself to her bed, Renie shook her head. “No. But he’s not dead. I finally got that much out of Bertha down there in the ICU. They moved him to a private room on the fourth floor.”
Judith clutched the bedsheet to her breast. “Does that mean he’s better?”
“It may,” Renie replied, collapsing onto the mattress. “Bertha wouldn’t give me any details. The only way I got any information was to grab the power cord to her computer with my good hand and threaten to unplug her. To tell the truth, I don’t think she knew anything else. Remember, she just came on duty. Joe was moved before she got there.”
Judith grabbed the phone. “I’m calling the nurses’ station on four.”
A man with a foreign accent answered. “Very sorry,” he said after Judith stated her request for information. “We cannot give out any word on that patient.”
“But I’m his wife,” Judith protested. “I’m next of kin.”
“Very sorry,” the man repeated. “We must follow strict orders.”
“Tell me this much,” she persisted. “Would they have moved him if he’d still been on the critical list?”
“No word on that patient. Good-bye.” The man hung up.
“Damn!” Judith cried. “Is this some kind of conspiracy?”
“I don’t know,” Renie said in an exhausted voice. “But at least you found out Joe’s still in one piece.”
“That’s not a great deal of comfort,” Judith moaned. “And why move him at all?”
“It gets zanier,” Renie declared. “Didn’t you wonder how Torchy Magee arrived so fast after Bertha hit the alarm button?”
“No,” Judith admitted. “I didn’t even think about it. I was too upset about Joe.”
“Torchy may run hard, but he doesn’t run fast,” Renie pointed out. “He’s too bulky. Anyway, I figured that the only place he could have come from in that short period of time was the room we saw R
obbie the Robot enter. After giving Bertha the third degree, I peeked inside the door. Robbie was still there, all beeped out. The room is where they keep some of their records, and it has a paper shredder that had been left on. I figured that Torchy was in there shredding documents, maybe some that Robbie had delivered. Sure enough, Torchy had left a couple of undamaged pages next to the shredder.” Renie looked hard at Judith. “They bore the name ‘Joe Flynn.’”
At first, Judith was baffled. According to Renie, the two sheets appeared to be only the standard admitting forms. Except for Joe’s identification, the date, the time, the type of injury, and the signature of the hospital staff member who had signed him in, there was nothing of interest.
“That’s why I didn’t swipe them,” Renie explained. “As long as they didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, I thought that stealing the two pages would cause more trouble than it was worth.”
Judith frowned. “I wonder how many records from this place have gone through that shredder in the past month or so?”
“You mean like Joaquin Somosa’s and Joan Fremont’s and Bob Randall’s?” Renie suggested.
“Exactly.” Judith was silent for a few moments, then turned to Renie again. “There is a cover-up, but I’m beginning to think it doesn’t have anything to do with the hospital’s reputation per se.”
“What do you mean?” Renie asked.
Judith shook her head. “I’m not sure. I just have this feeling that maybe it’s more personal than professional.” She saw that Renie looked confused. “I have to think it through, really, I do. By the way, did you notice someone moving around in the ICU while we were there?”
Renie made a face. “I don’t think so. Why? Did you?”
Judith hesitated. “I did, and my first reaction was that it was a nurse, but there was something not quite right about whoever it was. Except for all those monitors with their red, green, and yellow lights, it was completely dark. I could only make out a form. But now that I think about it, the person wasn’t wearing a nurse’s cap or scrubs.”
“It could have been a male nurse,” Renie said. “They don’t wear caps. It might even have been a doctor.”