by Sophia Gray
“Hey, hey, hey,” Jagger said, walking over to grab her by the shoulders, pulling her back from the trash can so she couldn’t hurt herself anymore.
“Don’t try to fucking talk me down, okay?” Abby said, a warning tone to her voice. “It’s not going to work. I know what I saw. He was fine. He was fine!”
“I know,” Jagger said softly, still holding on to her arms. His grip was firm but gentle. In the back of Abby’s mind, despite how angry she was, she couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to have him grab her little harder, hurt her a bit, maybe even throw her around. The idea helped her calm down, imagining what it would be like to be hurt by him. She knew it was fucked-up, even sick, but it soothed her nonetheless. She imagined fresh bruises popping up all over her body. Once again, she had failed Robert. She left him behind in the hospital and made him vulnerable to an attacker she had refused to believe in. She fucked up medically and let him die before his time. Either way, she had earned her punishment and she needed to be hurt.
Jagger looked straight at her, his wide dark eyes bearing down as hard as they could, intensely staring into hers. “I believe you, okay? I believe you,” he said slowly. And the thoughts of self-harm left her brain as quickly as they had arrived.
“You think somebody hurt him, don’t you?” Abby asked in a soft whisper, looking from side to side to make sure that none of the hospital staff were listening. For all she knew, someone who worked there would be involved in Robert’s death, even if it had been an accident as a result of negligence. She couldn’t risk letting anyone know that she knew and give them a chance to cover their tracks before she could discover them.
“I do,” Jagger answered her, nodding slowly as their eyes met again. “I believe you, Abby.”
The words hit her like a shot to the chest, causing her blood to freeze in her veins. “You do?”
Jagger didn’t say anything, just communicating silently with his eyes. She couldn’t detect any doubt on his face, no matter how hard she searched. It meant so much, more than he could even begin to understand, to have someone believe in her. You know why. You know why it feels good to listen to, she thought to herself, but she cut off that train of thought as quickly as possible, not wanting to follow it to its natural conclusion. She wasn’t ready to go down memory lane and trace the traumas of her teenage years right now. So, what— No one listened to her when she complained about symptoms as a teenager, and she’d gotten sicker and sicker as a result. It was about time that she got over it. It was in the past, right? Besides, she had bigger fish to fry.
She opened her mouth to say something in response, not exactly knowing what was going to come out of her mouth ahead of time. “Thank you,” she mumbled as softly as she could. “Thank you for…. Yeah. You know,” she said.
“So, what are we going to do about it now?” Jagger asked, and his gaze turned intense, almost fiery as he stared hard at her. She knew what he wanted. He wants me to lie, she thought to herself. She bit down on her lip, the pain more comfortable than the uncertainty that swirled around in the pit of her stomach.
“I don’t know. I just don’t,” she said. “I wish I could help.”
“You can help,” Jagger argued. “You know you can.”
“Just let me think,” she started to say, but then out of the corner of her eye, she saw a familiar face walking down the hallway. “Wait, wait, there she is, there she is!” Abby whisper frantically before chasing after the nurse from the night before. “Excuse me, excuse me,” she said, trying to get the nurse’s attention as subtly as she could. “Excuse me, can I talk to you?”
The woman turned around to face her, sighing deeply, clearly overworked. “What?” she asked.
“Um, you probably don’t remember me,” Abby began, quickly formulating a lie to use. “I came here visiting my dad last night, um, before he passed away…”
The nurse’s face changed, softening immediately. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said sympathetically.
“Thank you. Yeah, um, I was just wondering. My siblings live nearby, but we don’t have a good relationship. Did either of them come by to visit him after I left last night? His name was Robert Sharp. Do you remember him?”
The nurse rolled her eyes to the ceiling, obviously trying to think hard to remember the previous night. “I believe there was a man who tried to come by after you,” the woman said a minute later. “But I didn’t let him in. Mr. Sharp needed to sleep.” She finished, a sad smile touching her lips.
“Thank you. That must have been my brother,” Abby said, faking a smile as best as she could. “I’ll give him a call.”
There it was. Somebody tried to get in to see Robert. It’s not proof of anything, her inner voice argued, but she didn’t give a fuck right now. As far as Abby was concerned, this was clue number one, and she was going to follow the trail until she found out what really happened.
# # #
Jagger
Jagger waited next to the water fountain, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible while Abby talked to the nurse from the night before. He figured it was better to let them talk by themselves, nurse to nurse, woman to woman. A few moments later, Abby walked back to Jagger, grabbing him by the elbow to lead him toward the waiting room. “A man tried to visit him last night. Maybe he found a way to get in when the nurse wasn’t on-duty and slipped something into his tubes. Is there any way we could get our hands on the security tape, do you think?”
Jagger was at a loss for words for a few seconds, absorbing what Abby had said. He was a little taken aback by how energized Abby suddenly seemed, how passionately she was talking to him, completely different from what she was like the night before on the phone. “I—I don’t know,” he finally said. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Abby’s eyes unfocused, staring off into the distance, obviously lost in thought. “It must be the responsibility of the security team, at least that’s what it’s like at my hospital. I have—” She paused, staring down at the watch wrapped around her wrist and frowned. “I have like an hour before I’ve got to go visit one of my patients across town. Do you think you can help me get into the security office? We’ve got to look at the tapes before someone erases them.”
Jagger nodded slowly, trying to come up with a plan. “Who would they listen to? Like would they let a nurse in to see the tapes? If they think you work here, they might let you in to review them.”
“You don’t know a whole lot about hospitals, do you?” Abby said, a smile appearing on her face. Jagger wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen her smile before, at least not genuinely. “Nurses get no fucking respect. If I try to get in, they’ll shout me down or threaten to report me, and then we’ll get kicked out.”
Jagger chewed on his lower lip, pulling it hard between his teeth. It was a nervous habit that helped him think. “What if you weren’t a nurse, though? What if you were a doctor? What do you need— A lab coat? A stethoscope?”
“Essentially,” Abby agreed. “But I don’t know if I can pull that off. There’s not a lot of female doctors in this hospital; not that I can see, at least,” she said, looking over her shoulder.
“Right,” Jagger said, biting his tongue until his thoughts came together. “They’d notice a female doctor, is what you’re saying. They’d know you aren’t from this hospital.” He looked around, scanning up and down the hallway for a bathroom. “But a male doctor… That would blend right in.”
“You thinking of stealing some scrubs and playing dress-up?” Abby asked, her eyebrows raised so high that they almost disappeared into her hair.
“I can fake it. I’m a paramedic, I know at least some medical shit,” he said, feeling weirdly defensive. “I can do this. I know I can.”
Abby pursed her lips a little, clearly skeptical, but a second later she sighed and nodded. “Okay, I can help you pull it together. We’ve got to get you into some scrubs and a white coat, and then we’ve got to find the main security office. I’ve got to leave in li
ke half an hour though, so let’s get moving,” she said before breaking into a brisk walk, so fast that Jagger felt a little spark of panic in his chest before he broke into a light run to follow after her.
“Yo, slow down,” he said as he trailed behind her. “You’re drawing attention to us by going too fast.”
Abby just shook her head and scoffed at him. For some reason, it made Jagger smile and chuckle a little bit under his breath, rather than offend him. She was so fucking sassy. Most people around him acted submissive when they were with him, both in the fire department and in the motorcycle club, because he’d done so much for so long and earned the respect. It was almost refreshing, being around somebody who so obviously didn’t give a single fuck about his ego.
“You don’t know shit about actual hospitals, do you?” Abby said, her voice almost teasing. It was nice, seeing her relaxed enough to make fun of him. Jagger wanted to hear more of that. “Doctors and nurses run everywhere they go. Otherwise, nothing would ever get done. Hold on, stop here,” she said, suddenly freezing in place. Jagger almost skidded as he slid to a stop behind her, looking as she pointed to the far corner. “There. That’s a locker room. Go in and steal some scrubs and a coat.”
“Where?” Jagger asked, trying to find the room that she was pointing out.
Abby groaned and rolled her eyes, sticking her hand out again to direct him toward a room four doors down. Again, Jagger couldn’t help but to be amused by her, despite the intensity of the circumstances. He complied with her directions, casually walking across the hall and into the locker room as covertly as possible. He held his breath as he walked into the lover area and looked around to see if anybody else was inside. There was one male doctor, shrugging out of a T-shirt before changing into a set of scrubs, but if he noticed Jagger, he didn’t appear to care. Jagger walked over to an open locker, grabbing a pair of scrubs and changing into them as quickly as possible without looking frantic or panicked. There was a stethoscope, but no lab coat. He figured he’d just go ahead with what he had rather than wasting precious time.
He casually walked back out into the hallway, shutting the door of the locker room behind him to look as natural as possible before heading over to Abby, who was playing on her phone. “I’ve found a map of the hospital,” she mumbled, trying to keep her voice as low as possible. “It’s not labeled, but there’s a big room on the top floor that I think might be what we’re looking to find. Let’s go.” She immediately began moving again, heading toward the stairs at the end of the hall.
“There’s an elevator, you know,” Jagger said, gesturing in the opposite direction. He saw it on his way in, a little over twenty minutes before.
Abby shook her head. “Everyone’s going to use that. We don’t want anyone to see us, right?”
Jagger was a little lost for words, shocked at how quickly Abby had adjusted to a secret investigation. He’d been doing this for months now, sneaking around, but it was immediately obvious that she had a mind for it. At least when it came to hospitals, she keenly observed her surroundings to form the best strategy to find out the information that they needed. He followed her lead, letting her walk him toward the stairway and quickly took the steps until they hit the very top of the building. “Okay,” she hissed in a low whisper, gesturing toward the door to the top floor. “Go there and look for a security center. Tell them you need to monitor the patient in room one-three-three. That’s the room that Robert was in last night.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?” Jagger asked, and he must have said it too loudly, as Abby frantically waved her hands in the air, wordlessly telling him to shut up.
She opened the door a little and stared out of the crack to the top floor. “Okay,” she said in a barely audible whisper. “There’s nobody coming. Get out there and ask for the security room if you can’t find it yourself. They’ll listen to you. Male doctors get whatever they want.”
Jagger almost smiled at that. Abby’s resentment toward doctors in her workplace was incredibly obvious. “Okay,” he whispered back, opening the door and walking into the top floor, leaving Abby waiting behind him in the dark stairwell.
The top floor was a ghost town. The entire hallway was devoid of any sign of life. Jagger looked around, searching for the security room or something that could point him in the right direction. His eyes landed in the center of the ceiling a little way down the hall. There it was, but the door looked closed. Jagger approached slowly, sweat beginning to form on the back of his neck as he tested the doorknob. It was locked. Shit. There was no way he could find the key to this door. It could have been anywhere in the entire hospital. His only shot was if there were people already in there, but that was risky as hell. Jagger leaned his head against the door, sighing a little to summon up some courage. Fuck it.
Jagger rapped his knuckles against the door lightly, trying not to seem overeager. “Excuse me? It’s Dr. Pataki. Can I come in?”
“What?” A confused voice on the other side of the door said. There were some muffled sounds, and then a moment later it swung open, revealing a short chubby male security guard. “What?” he said again.
Jagger feigned impatience, staring the other man down with as much arrogance as he could muster. “Let me guess. The night shift guy didn’t tell you.”
“Josh?” The young security guard asked, his brows furrowed up in confusion.
“I don’t know his name,” Jagger snapped. He figured the meaner he seemed, the more this innocent-looking guard would yield, not even knowing that he had all the power in the situation. “Well. Are you going to let me in or not?”
“Um, well, regulations say that you have to get a pass first…” The security guard said, scratching the side of his face nervously.
Jagger just stared at him, calculating the best strategy to press this poor guy’s buttons. “Why do you think I talked to what’s-his-face? I already got the permission I needed. Now move aside.” The guard twitched a little, almost jumping up in alarm at how Jagger raised his voice, but he didn’t move out of the way. Dammit. “If you make me wait around for hours until Josh is on shift again, I’ll report this to your supervisor, for wasting a doctor’s time. Do you understand me?”
“Shit,” The guard murmured, blowing out his breath in frustration. “Okay, five minutes, all right? I have to take my break soon.”
“Security guards taking breaks, no wonder this hospital is in fucking shambles,” Jagger muttered as he pushed his way into the room, walking over to a stack of tapes. Each one was labeled with a different day of the week. They must have had a system in place: taping over the footage of a certain day seven times a week. Yesterday was Wednesday, so Jagger quickly grabbed that case of tapes, rifling around between the different options until he found the right room and popped it into the main computer to view.
Jagger fast-forwarded through the bulk of the footage. Bobby was only there in the room for two, maybe three hours before he died. He quickly clicked through at regular intervals, checking every five-minute chunk of the video for anyone other than a nurse or a doctor visiting Bobby’s room. He finally landed on the chunk of time where he and Abby were in the room. Shortly after, there was a period where the nurse from the night before walked in and out of the room several times, after which a male figure dressed in all black appeared in the doorway. The door was so far away from the camera in the corner of the room that Jagger couldn’t make out any details of the man’s face. In any case, the nurse pointed out into the hallway, and the figure retreated. Jagger sighed deeply and clicked ahead in the video, looking for a point when the nurse was gone. But after thirty or forty more minutes of footage, static overcame the images on the tape, a blur of grey and white overtaking all the furniture in the hospital room surrounding Bobby’s sleeping body. “Fuck, fuck!” Jagger muttered under his breath, clicking forward to the last few minutes of the tape. All static, all the way through. There was no way to tell if anyone had reentered the room after the nurse left. “Shit.”
>
“Is the patient doing badly?” The security guard asked from behind him.
“Yeah,” Jagger said. “Really bad. Thanks for letting me look.” He quickly got to his feet, walked out of the security room, and headed back into the stairwell.
Abby was waiting for him, jumping the second he reappeared in front of her. “Well?” she asked, her voice strained and intense even at a low volume.
Jagger shook his head sadly. “There was somebody in there, but it was too blurry. I couldn’t make it out.”
Abby groaned and rocked her body back to lean against the wall, practically cracking her head on the hard surface. Jagger knew that it wasn’t a good idea to ask if she was okay when it was obvious to him that she wasn’t. It almost worried him, seeing how invested she was in this investigation. Maybe this is how other people have felt about me, Jagger thought. For months now he’d heard muffled whispers and murmurs as he approached a group of firefighters before everybody would go silent when he asked what they were talking about. It was clear that his passion had eroded others’ trust in him, making everyone think he was an overly-invested weirdo. Most of the time, he didn’t care. The safety of Satan’s Blazes came first, always. For his job, he depended on trusting his coworkers with his very life, and it made things considerably more difficult when they were talking trash about him behind his back. It was refreshing and illuminating at the same time, seeing his past behavior reflected in Abby.