by Diane Hoh
If someone really were trying to kill her, wouldn’t that be the perfect way? Would anyone even question her death?
No, they probably wouldn’t. They’d blame it on her fever.
Her mouth set grimly, Duffy grabbed the call button and pressed on it, not releasing her hold until she heard soft footsteps approaching her door.
Amy Severn, looking anxious, came into the room. “What’s wrong, Duffy?”
“What are you still doing here?” Duffy asked with surprise as the Junior Volunteer hurried to her bedside. “It must be after midnight.”
“It is. Two of the nurses have the flu and none of the volunteers wanted to help out tonight. So I said I would.” Amy sighed heavily. “Cynthia and Smith and Dylan all work nights sometimes. I don’t know how they do it. I’m beat! We’ve had two emergencies already, and old Mrs. Creole is giving us fits. That woman is the worst patient on this earth. She makes you look like a saint!” Another sigh. “At least I can sleep in tomorrow.”
Ignoring that, Duffy asked, “Amy, have you heard anything about any missing medication? I overheard one of the doctors talking…”
“Oh, Duffy, the patients aren’t supposed to know anything about that. As if we didn’t have enough problems tonight, Dr. Brooks has everyone scrambling, hunting for a missing bottle of digoxin. He’s really upset that we can’t find it.”
‘What’s it for? The digoxin.”
“Heart.”
“What does it look like? Not the bottle, the medicine.”
“Capsules. I think the bottle they’re looking for was part of the inventory in Mr. Latham’s room, and now they can’t find it.”
“Who’s Mr. Latham?”
“A patient. He died. Duffy, is this why you called me in here? We’re awfully busy.”
Amy turned to leave, but Duffy stopped her. “Wait, Amy! I’m not just asking out of nosiness. I heard the doctor talking about the side effects of that medication. And I have all of them.”
Skepticism showed on Amy’s face.
“I do,” Duffy insisted. “Really. They started right after the nurse gave me the first capsules, when they took my IV out. My stomach’s upset, I’m dizzy…and I heard him say something about the lights looking strange. Well, when I look at the lights, I see weird little halos. They were never there before.”
“Duffy…” Amy’s voice was weary. “There’s no way your medication could have been mixed up with that digoxin.”
“But you’re not sure that it didn’t get mixed up, are you?” Duffy pressed relentlessly. “And if it did, you don’t know what it would do, do you?”
Amy shook her head. “No…I haven’t read as much about medications as Cynthia and Dylan and Smith. You should ask one of them.”
“I want you to have my medicine checked out. Make sure they’re not giving me that missing heart stuff by mistake, okay? You can do that, can’t you?” Duffy knew how neurotic she sounded, how paranoid. She couldn’t help it. Amy had to realize how important this was.
The weariness in Amy’s voice was replaced by annoyance. That surprised Duffy. She didn’t know Amy ever got annoyed. “Duffy, really, I wish you’d quit worrying. The nurses are very careful with medications. They don’t screw up on something that important.”
Duffy pounced. “They lost a whole bottle of medication, didn’t they?”
Amy shrugged. “People lose things all the time. The bottle will turn up. It’s not as if some nurse made a mistake and gave the digoxin to the wrong patient. It’s just misplaced, that’s all.”
Duffy’s voice rose as she fought panic. Amy had to listen to her. “You don’t know the wrong patient isn’t getting that missing medicine. I’m telling you I have all the symptoms the doctor was describing, and I want you to check my medication to make sure I’m not being given that digoxin stuff by mistake.” Out of desperation, her voice hardened. “You wouldn’t want my parents suing this hospital because you didn’t do your duty, would you? The hospital board wouldn’t like that at all. They’d blame you.,”
Amy’s face crumpled in dismay and then, for the first time since Duffy had known her, she lost her temper. “You’re being hateful, Duffy Quinn!” she whispered in a hushed, angry voice. “People are just so sick and tired of you making such a fuss all the time. Why can’t you be like other patients and sleep? You’d get better faster. Then you could go home and we’d all be happy!”
Amy’s voice rose as Duffy, her mouth open, stared in astonishment. “I am sick and tired of being nice to you when you don’t care a thing about how I’m feeling! I don’t know what Dylan sees in you, why he would dump me for you—? Her voice broke and, near tears, she turned on her heel and rushed out of the room.
Duffy’s nausea returned, turning her stomach into a seesaw. Feeling sick and abandoned, she buried her head in her pillow, moaning.
If Amy—quiet, gentle Amy, who always listened and who always seemed interested—didn’t believe her, no one would. No one.
She was alone.
Did Amy really think Dylan had “dumped” her for Duffy?
Oh, God, I am so sick, she cried silently, self-pity overcoming her and wiping out thoughts of Dylan and Amy. She was nauseated and headachey and dizzy. Terror suddenly struck Duffy like a sledgehammer…could she be dying? Was this what dying felt like? Was she right about someone deliberately giving her the digoxin, and now it was killing her?
If the digoxin had been in the capsules all along, ever since Duffy started taking them, she’d had more than a dose or two.
How much of that stuff would it take to kill someone?
She wasn’t taking any more of them. If no one would listen to her and have the medicine checked out, she wasn’t going to let another capsule pass her lips. She didn’t care how mad the nurses got. Let them kick her out of the hospital if they wanted to. It would probably be the best thing that could happen to her.
Duffy lay awake all night, fighting nausea and fever, huddled deep in her covers.
Several times, panic overtook her and her hands flew to the call button. Then, remembering with bitter disappointment Amy’s disbelief, she let the call button drop into the sheet folds. What was the use?
They all thought she was hysterical…or crazy…or delirious…or all three.
It was hopeless.
She had to find a way to prove the digoxin was in her capsules. First thing in the morning…
But morning seemed very far away.
Chapter 14
FRIGHTENED BY HOW SICK SHE was feeling, Duffy appealed to her doctor the following morning.
She knew there was no point in sharing her suspicions with him. He wouldn’t believe that someone had switched her antibiotic with the missing digoxin any more than Amy had. She would have to try a different tack.
“I think the new pills are making me sick,” she said as he glanced at her chart. “I feel sicker than I did when I came in here. Maybe I’m allergic to them. You’d better give me something else.”
Dr. Morgan tugged at his earring and frowned. “That’s just the drug fighting your infection,” he said brusquely. “There’s a war being fought in your system and I guarantee the medication is winning. We’re pretty sure you’ve got the flu. The blood tests rule out anything more serious. You’ll feel like new in a day or two. Just hang in there, okay?”
And without waiting for an answer from Duffy as to whether or not she was willing to “hang in there,” he left.
“Those pills are making me sick!” she cried after him, but it was hopeless. He wasn’t listening.
No one was listening. Where Duffy Quinn’s fears were concerned, the whole world had gone stone-deaf.
The ceiling light blinked down at her coldly, its strange little halo reminding her that there was something very wrong with her “system” and it wasn’t a war being waged by an antibiotic. There was no antibiotic in her system. She was convinced there was only digoxin.
A clattering sound out in the hallway preceded Smith’s curly
head appearing in the doorway.
Something about the sound made Duffy tilt her head and listen carefully. It was probably just one of hundreds of ordinary hospital noises, but…
“How’s it going?” Smith inquired, leaning against the doorframe. “You recovered from the heebie-jeebies?”
“Go away,” she said rudely. “I don’t want to talk to people who think I’m crazy.”
“Hey,” he said, moving into the room, “I never said that. You’re sick, that’s all. You’d be surprised by some of the stories we hear from patients on heavy doses of medication. I know you think what happened was real, but—?
“It was real,” Duffy said, but her voice lacked conviction. She had tried during the night, throughout the long, sleepless hours, to think of a reason why someone would want to harm her, and she’d failed.
That was the biggest stumbling block to believing and accepting that someone was deliberately trying to hurt, even kill her. Didn’t the police always look for a motive? Wasn’t that the most important thing? The “why” of a crime? And there wasn’t any “why” here.
So, unless there was a crazed psychotic killer in the hospital, one of those weirdos who didn’t need a reason to commit murder, there shouldn’t be anyone after her.
Maybe Smith and all the others were right. Maybe it was the fever.
She would try not to think about it. No point in making herself even crazier when no one was willing to listen. They’d whisk her off to a padded room if she wasn’t careful.
But she was still going to find a way to check what was really in her capsules. She didn’t know how yet, but—
“What was that noise out in the hall?” she asked Smith. “That rattling sound. What was it?”
“Oh, that. A gurney. One of its wheels is loose. Dylan was supposed to fix it, but…”
“A gurney? One of those rolling tables?”
Smith nodded. “Yeah. Taking it downstairs. To the morgue. Why?” He said “morgue” as easily as he might have said “mall.”
Duffy shuddered. The morgue. Where they kept the patients who had…died. Had someone planned to send her there yesterday?
“Why?” Smith repeated. “Why do you want to know what the noise was?”
She shook her head. “Oh, it’s just…” Her voice drifted off. She was positive that the sound was identical to the last noise she’d heard that night.
Why would someone be moving a gurney out of her room? Why had it been there in the first place?
“It’s just that I heard that sound the other night,” she said thoughtfully. “In my room, I think…”
His reaction was the same as Dylan’s had been when Duffy recognized the soft slap-slap of rubber-soled shoes. “Yeah? Well, the hospital is full of them, Duffy. It would be weird if you hadn’t heard that noise before.”
“Yes, but…” Oh, what was the use? Trying to explain was a waste of time. “Forget it.”
Had she learned anything new? Anything helpful?
The gurneys were used sometimes to take patients who had died down to the basement morgue.
Did that mean anything?
“What are you thinking about?” Smith asked, his eyes on her face.
“Nothing.” Why had that gurney been in her room? If two people had been fooling around, as Jane suggested, they wouldn’t have needed a gurney. They had the bed.
Could the rickety old gurney have been outside in the hall and not in her room at all?
Maybe. Sound carried better late at night when the hospital was quiet. Maybe the gurney had been out in the hall, passing by her room.
But it sounded closer than that…
If she’d heard it at all. How could she be sure?
She couldn’t.
“You’ve got that look on your face,” Smith said, snapping her back to attention. “You’re thinking weird things again, I can tell.”
“Did…did anybody die a couple of nights ago? The night everyone tells me was just a bad dream?”
Smith sighed and shook his head. “No, Duffy, no one died. We had a couple of emergencies, just like we always do at night, but everyone pulled through just fine. If you did hear a gurney, it was probably bringing a post-op patient back up from surgery. Or maybe someone was just being moved to another floor.”
No one had died that night.
Then she remembered something Amy had said, about someone dying recently. The man with the missing digoxin…
“What about Mr. Latham? Amy said he’d died. When was that?”
Smith tilted his head, thinking. “Old Man Latham? Pillar of the community, member of the hospital board…I’m not sure exactly when he died…Couple of days ago, I guess. Just before you got here. I wasn’t on duty that night. Everyone was freaked out the next day, though. The old guy had donated mega-bucks to the hospital. Had a bad ticker, I heard.”
Latham had died before Duffy was admitted. So his death couldn’t possibly have anything to do with what was happening to her. Not that she had really thought it did. She hadn’t even known the man.
After admonishing her to “get some sleep, you look awful, Duffy,” Smith left.
When he had disappeared through the open door, a depressed Duffy rolled over on her side and stared out the window. As she turned, the sheets coiled around her legs, imprisoning her. Panicking momentarily, she began kicking out, desperate to be free of the scratchy cocoon.
“What on earth…” Cynthia cried as she entered the room and found Duffy wrestling with her bedding. “Duffy, what are you doing?” Then she added more quietly to Jane, who was directly behind her, “Oh, Lord, she’s lost it! I knew this was coming!” and ran over to grab Duffy’s wrists.
“Leave me alone!” Duffy shouted, her face scarlet. “I’m just tangled, that’s all.” She yanked the last bit of sheet away from her bare legs. Glaring up at the blue-uniformed Cynthia, she asked caustically, “Did you really think I was losing it? Did my doctor warn you to watch out for weird behavior in room 417?”
When Cynthia’s cheeks reddened, Duffy knew she’d hit a nerve. The doctor had warned them all to keep an eye on her.
“I brought you some magazines,” Jane said cheerfully, in an effort to ease the awkwardness of the moment. “I hope you haven’t read them.” She was wearing lime-green pedal pushers and a hot-pink short-sleeved T-shirt with the slogan, GO AHEAD MAKE MY DAY GIVE ME A CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE slapped across it in blazing scarlet.
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Duffy said bitterly. “You brought me the American Journal of Psychiatric Medicine and the latest copy of Guide to Mental Health Facilities, right?”
A bewildered expression crossed Jane’s face. “What? What are you talking about?” She plopped herself down at the foot of Duffy’s bed.
“They all think I’m crazy here,” Duffy said heatedly. Then she filled Jane in on the shower incident, leaving nothing out, ending with, “It happened, Jane. But no one believes me. They all think I was hallucinating.”
She didn’t add that there were moments when she agreed with them. Right now, talking about it, reliving it, she was convinced that every second of it had been real.
“Oh, Duffy, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard!” Jane declared, her eyes wide with horror. “Didn’t anyone call the police?” She swallowed a sob, “You could have been killed!”
“No one called anyone. I told you, they all think I made it up.”
“You wouldn’t do that.” Staunch loyalty filled Jane’s voice. “Why would you lie about something so horrible?”
“No one claims she’s lying,” Cynthia said. “It’s just that everyone on the hospital staff knows what fevers can do, that’s all. People see and hear all kinds of weird things when their temperature is sky-high.”
Jane looked doubtful. Duffy could see that she didn’t know what to believe. How could she blame Jane for that? She didn’t know what to believe herself.
“The shower room door was locked,” Cynthia pointed out. “Duffy said so
herself. And the extra key was at the nurses’ station. So how could anyone have gotten into the room?”
Duffy thought about explaining her key theory and decided against it. Jane looked very upset and confused. What good would it do to keep harping on the same old thing when she couldn’t prove anything?
“Never mind,” she said despondently, “forget I said anything.”
Discouraged, depressed, and exhausted from lack of sleep, Duffy was such poor company that Jane and Cynthia stayed only a few minutes. Jane, worry clouding her features, promised to come back later, which gave Duffy an idea, and Cynthia said she would stop in later before she left the hospital.
As they reached the hall, Duffy heard Jane say, “Cyn, Duffy doesn’t invent things. I can’t believe no one is taking her seriously.” Then their voices faded and Duffy couldn’t hear Cynthia’s answer. She was sure it was a calm, sensible one.
But that didn’t matter right now. Duffy had thought of a way she could learn something about what was in her capsules.
If Jane was willing to help.
Chapter 15
WHEN DYLAN STOPPED IN to see how she was, Duffy fought off her nausea long enough to ask a question that had been tugging at her mind.
“Wouldn’t the maintenance crew,” she asked as he sat down on her bed, “have a key to the shower room? Besides the ones hanging at the nurses’ station, I mean. If a pipe burst or the drain backed up and flooded the place, they’d have to get into that room in a hurry, wouldn’t they?”
“Well, if no one was in there, the door wouldn’t be locked. They wouldn’t need a key to get in.”
“Yes, but what if someone was in there when something broke?” she persisted. “And couldn’t get to the door to open it. Like…like a heart patient who had an attack if…if the lights went out. They’d need a key then, wouldn’t they?”
“Not really. They’d use the key at the nurses’ station. It’s hanging in plain sight.”