‘I’ll take you there,’ said Lourdes.
Angela followed the older nurse down the hall. They turned left at the intersection, passed an exit sign and the stairwell and were soon standing in front of another door.
‘This is it,’ said Lourdes as she pushed the door open. ‘Jenny, Dr. Crawford is here to…oh my God, Jenny!’
Jenny O’Hearn’s lifeless body lay on its side on the cold white terrazzo floor. Angela ran over and grabbed her wrist to check for a pulse.
‘There’s no pulse,’ she screamed to Lourdes.
Angela checked again. Nothing. When she rolled Jenny over, she saw a hypodermic needle and a tourniquet on Jenny’s upper arm.
‘Lourdes, get help! Call a code blue and have the emergency room get me a dose of Narcan. STAT!’
‘Oh my God, Jenny,’ wailed Lourdes. ‘This can’t be happening. Not to Jenny.’
‘Now, nurse, now!’ screamed Angela.
Lourdes ran down the hall shouting orders at various aides while Angela started CPR and tried to get Jenny’s heart going. Twenty seconds later Lourdes returned.
‘They’re coming,’ she shouted, out of breath. ‘The EMS crew should be here in less than a minute.’
Angela continued to administer CPR but without the Narcan, she knew it was probably pointless.
‘Oh my God, that poor, sweet girl,’ said the older nurse, looking down at Jenny’s pale, limp body. ‘Is she breathing?’
‘No,’ said Angela between breaths.
‘Oh my God,’ cried Lourdes again, tears running down her cheeks.
‘Nurse, I’m trying to save her life,’ said Angela, still pumping Jenny’s chest. ‘Either help me or get out.’
Thirty seconds later, an EMS team rushed into the room followed by Dr. Horowitz. Soon the EMS guys moved into position.
‘How long has she been this way,’ asked one of the EMS technicians while the other took over the CPR.
‘I found this,’ said a panting Angela, holding up a vial of Dilaudid and the tourniquet. The technician looked at it and nodded. ‘Overdose,’ he said to his partner as he pulled out a shot of Narcan and plunged it into the muscle of Jenny’s upper thigh. Everyone waited as the EMS guys continued CPR and assisted with the breathing. After three minutes, the Narcan elicited no reaction from the young nurse.
‘She’s not responding,’ said the EMS tech.
‘Give her another dose,’ demanded Angela. ‘Sometimes patients respond to a second dose, isn’t that right?’
Dr. Horowitz pulled out a second Narcan syringe and this time plunged into the muscle on Jenny’s upper arm while the techs continued CPR. Two more minutes passed and finally Jenny took a breath.
‘We’ve got a pulse,’ shouted the EMS technician with a smile on his face.
‘Thank God,’ said Lourdes, wringing her hands.
The technicians busied themselves with additional testing and prepared Jenny to be moved.
‘Do you know how long she’s been like this?’ asked the EMS tech.
‘I spoke with her two hours ago,’ said Angela. ‘This must have happened sometime since then. Did anyone see her in the halls in the last hour or two?’
Lourdes started to cry. ‘I can’t believe it. This isn’t right. Jenny didn’t use drugs. I would know if she did. We were very close. She’s like a daughter to me.’
Angela shook her head and sighed.
‘Thank God you two got here when you did,’ said Steve Horowitz. ‘Another five minutes and I don’t think we would have saved her.’
The EMS team loaded Jenny onto a gurney and prepared to move her out of the room over into the ER next door.
‘Is she going to be all right?’ asked Lourdes. ‘She looks so pale.’
‘She wasn’t breathing for a long time,’ said the technician. ‘We won’t know for a while. What we do know is that she’s alive right now.’
They pushed Jenny’s body out the door and raced down the hall with Dr. Horowitz right behind them.
‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ said a crying Lourdes, leaning against a wall to steady herself. ‘I’m telling you, Jenny didn’t use drugs.’
Angela closed the door and turned to the weeping nurse. ‘This goes no further because I’m breaking confidentiality rules, but about Jenny and drugs, that’s not true. Jenny was treated for substance abuse a number of years ago.’
Lourdes’ mouth dropped open.
‘It was brief, the hospital dealt with it and Jenny bounced back. We all moved on. As far as anyone knew there were no other incidents. I guess when you’ve been an addict it’s always lurking underneath.’
‘But not Jenny…’ Lourdes started again, tears spilling down her cheeks.
‘I can’t talk about this right now. I’ve got to call her family,’ said Angela, grimacing. ‘I suppose I need to call the police, too,’ she said with a sigh as she opened the door and ran to catch up with the gurney.
42
The EMS squad raced into the ER with a clatter and moved the wheeled stretcher into a berth. Within seconds, many hands attached tubes and monitors onto Jenny O’Hearn’s small, still body. An oxygen mask was placed over her face as the soft blip of the heart monitor pulsed in the background.
Dr. Horowitz came in right after the EMS team and stared down at the young nurse. It was hard to believe that the lifeless body of the girl in front of him was the vibrant, saucy girl that he had spent good times with in empty hospital rooms and closets. At that moment, he knew he probably shouldn’t have tainted her and felt a pang of guilt.
All the young nurses looked up to the doctors and it was so easy to pick them off. Jenny was so eager to please that he barely had to wink at her before he had her in his arms behind some old filing cabinets in the back of an empty storage room. His wife was pregnant with twins, and she had made it clear that she was always hot and uncomfortable and didn’t want him to touch her. What was he supposed to do for the entire nine months? He told himself his affairs with Jenny and the other nurses and aides were really just to help his wife out, so he didn’t have to bother her with his physical needs. Still, he actually liked Jenny.
‘How is she?’ said an anxious Steve Horowitz to the attending ER doctor.
‘Hard to say until we run some tests,’ said the ER doctor. ‘We know she injected Dilaudid but we don’t know how much or how long she was lying there unconscious. The EMS team said they gave her two shots of Narcan. That’s not good. She was really gone.’
‘I’m going to stay here with her for a while,’ said Horowitz. ‘I just don’t get it. She wasn’t currently using drugs, I would have noticed. I know what that looks like and Jenny’s eyes were always clear.’
‘I’ve been working in the ER here in Oceanside for ten years,’ said the ER doc as he walked to the doorway. ‘There’s a big drug problem down here in South Florida and a lot of opportunity to get drugs in this town if you want them. I’m sorry to say, I see this all too often.’
‘I had heard she had dabbled with drugs a few years ago,’ said Horowitz. ‘But I saw no signs of it now.’
‘Some people hide it really well,’ said the doctor about to walk out of the room, ‘especially a nurse, they’d know how to get it and how to hide it.’
Steve Horowitz sat by Jenny’s bedside for twenty minutes remembering how their long flirtation went on for weeks until it came to a head.
‘But you’re married, Dr. Horowitz,’ Jenny had said, pulling away from him after he cornered her in a vacant hallway.
‘That doesn’t change the fact that I still find you extremely attractive,’ he had said. ‘I’m married, not blind.’
Jenny laughed and walked away as she wheeled a food cart down the hall to a patient’s room. Later that same day, he walked into a break room and found she was the only other person in there.
‘You got a new haircut since this morning,’ he said.
‘Did it on my lunch break.’
‘I like it. It looks good.’
&n
bsp; ‘Thanks,’ she said, smiling as she looked into his eyes.
‘It’s sexy. Very French.’
Jenny giggled. ‘Merci.’
He remembered that moment well. The air felt so thick he could almost cut it with a knife. He felt his heartbeat quicken and his palms grow moist. She continued to stare up at him with her big aqua-blue eyes flecked with yellow and blinked several times making her appear even more innocent and vulnerable. When she licked her lips, he reached over and gently grabbed her upper arm and pulled her towards him.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he whispered while she looked up and parted her lips. He wasn’t sure if that was a signal for him to kiss her but decided it was. He leaned over and took her mouth into his. After several seconds passed, Jenny pushed him back and straightened her hair and shirt.
‘We can’t do this,’ she said, shaking her head as she walked out of the room leaving him alone and wanting more. After that, Steve Horowitz couldn’t get Jenny O’Hearn out of his head and spent the next two weeks in hot pursuit until she, overwhelmed and flattered by the physician’s persistence, succumbed. For both of them, it had been worth the wait. After that, at least for a time, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
For the next few months the two of them would steal away into a supply room, a walk-in closet, an empty car—wherever they could grab a few seconds alone. Jenny was charming, sweet and childlike, which turned Horowitz on. In his arms she felt tiny, like a little doll, as opposed to his fat wife who looked and felt like a baby elephant with two kids growing in her swollen belly.
For Jenny, Dr. Horowitz was the ultimate trophy—a doctor. He was on the top of the totem pole. Every nurse wanted to snag a doctor, preferably a single one who they could marry. Despite the fact that Steven Horowitz had a wife already and would soon have two children, there was something about him that Jenny couldn’t resist. Maybe it was his MD or maybe it was just that he was so insistent she was the most intelligent, beautiful and sexy creature he’d ever known. His adoration was intoxicating. For a while, Jenny was all in with her secret married doctor boyfriend and he was of a similar mind—at least until his twins were born. Horowitz had promised himself that once the babies arrived, he’d stop all his nonsense and reacquaint himself with his fat and often demanding wife.
Then, everything came crashing down. The last time they had been together, Jenny had asked him about their future.
‘What’s going to happen to us now?’
‘I told you, I just need a little more time,’ said Steve, getting prickly. ‘My wife needs a lot of support at the moment. You’ve got to give me a little breathing room.’
‘You said you and your wife barely spoke to each other, and if she hadn’t gotten pregnant you were going to divorce her. You swore to me the only reason you were staying with her was because she was a high-risk pregnancy,’ said Jenny.
‘Can we talk about this another time?’ said Steve, looking around worriedly as other hospital staff passed by within earshot. ‘Wait until after the babies are born. I promise then we can make our plans.’
‘Despite what everyone around here says about you, and they say a lot,’ said Jenny, ‘I believed you. Be straight with me, if we’re not going to be a couple, I think we should end this before it goes any further.’
Horowitz remembered how he had enjoyed every minute he had spent with the young nurse, every stolen kiss, each transgression. It had been exciting, fun, silly, sexy and secret.
Now, he was looking down on this same woman, attached to so many tubes, electrodes and machines and no one knew if she was going to live or die. There was a knock behind him and he turned his head. Lourdes was standing in the doorway.
‘Anything change?’ she asked.
‘No, she’s not regained consciousness,’ said Steve.
‘What did the doctor say?’ asked Lourdes.
‘He didn’t know anything. It’s a waiting game. It’s possible she’ll die or she won’t ever wake up.’
Lourdes walked over to Jenny’s bed and took her hand in hers and rubbed it.
‘C’mon, Jenny, you’re a strong girl. You can do this,’ she whispered. ‘We need you to come back to work.’
‘I don’t understand any of this,’ said Steve. ‘Did you know anything about Jenny using drugs recently?’
Lourdes moved closer to Steve and spoke very softly so no one else would hear.
‘I never saw that sweet girl be anything but cold sober,’ said Lourdes, inching closer to Horowitz and positioning her mouth a few inches from his ear and whispering. ‘Dr. Crawford told me that Jenny had a history of drug use and the hospital had even sent her to rehab several years ago. Must have been before we started working together.’
‘I had heard something once a long time ago,’ said Horowitz, beginning to squirm, ‘but I never saw any evidence of it.’
‘No one did,’ Lourdes replied, tearing up again as she looked down at her young friend.
43
Jenny’s overdose had taken McQ and Blade by surprise. As the two detectives walked briskly towards Oceanside Manor’s front entrance, in his peripheral vision, McQ saw Tommy Devlin and his cameraman interrogating a man wearing scrubs.
‘Would you look at that, Anita,’ whispered McQ to his partner and tilting his head in Devlin’s direction. ‘Freakin’ Devlin already smelled this one. How did he do that? We got the call about the nurse’s overdose ten minutes ago and Devlin beat us down here. The guy is practically psychic. It’s downright creepy.’
‘Maybe he was already here,’ said Blade. ‘From what I can tell lately, this parking lot is where Devlin reports for work every morning. I suspect he also has a lot of friends around town who tip him off when something happens. He’s been relentless and riding this story for everything it’s worth. I heard he wants to be on TV permanently.’
From the other side of the parking lot, as if Devlin had a sixth sense they were talking about him, he ditched the guy in scrubs and made a beeline over to them.
‘Detectives, ya got a minute?’ asked Devlin with a smarmy smile.
McQ gave Blade a weary look and turned to face the reporter. ‘Actually, we don’t,’ said McQ as he and Blade continued into the building.
‘Not a problem,’ shouted Devlin as the two cops walked past him. ‘I’ll be waiting here when you come out.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ McQ said over his shoulder.
When they approached reception, they were told to go next door to the ER at Oceanside Medical. As they turned to leave, Angela Crawford came walking directly towards them, passing through small groups of hospital personnel all talking in hushed tones.
‘I was the one who found her,’ Angela said, tears in her eyes. ‘She called me a few hours before saying she’d uncovered something peculiar regarding Eliza Stern. I was in the middle of a meeting with the hospital’s lawyers so I told her I’d come to see her in a couple of hours. When I arrived at the room with Nurse Castro, Jenny was on the floor with a syringe of Dilaudid in her arm.’
‘Was she breathing?’ asked Blade.
‘No. I checked for a pulse and couldn’t find one,’ said Angela, visibly shaken. ‘I screamed for help and told them to call the emergency team from the hospital next door right away while I started CPR. A few minutes later, Dr. Horowitz relieved me and administered a shot of naloxone, you’d know it as Narcan, an opioid antagonist used for the reversal of an overdose.’
‘We’re unfortunately all too familiar with Narcan. Did Ms. O’Hearn respond right away?’ asked McQ.
‘No,’ said Angela. ‘Dr. Horowitz had to administer a second dose. At first there was no response but finally she coughed and took a breath.’
‘Being a nurse in a hospital, would she have had access to these kinds of drugs here?’ asked McQ.
‘In a normal hospital she would have some access although controlled substances are highly monitored. We’re not a traditional hospital, we’re a resident care facility,’ said Angela. ‘
We don’t have a lot of those types of medications here, but there’s probably a small amount of Dilaudid available. It’s an opioid used for pain. To answer your question, it is possible she got it here, somewhere.’
‘And could she have gotten access to it over at the hospital, too?’ asked McQ.
‘It wouldn’t be easy. Those kinds of drugs are all locked up, but I guess it’s possible,’ said Angela.
‘Were you aware of Ms. O’Hearn ever using drugs before?’ Blade asked.
‘There are hospital privacy laws. I’m not sure I’m at liberty to discuss personal medical records.’
‘Dr. Crawford, we need to know how this happened,’ said Blade.
Angela let out a sigh. ‘I wasn’t in this administrative role at the time, but according to the employee files, my predecessor, Dr. Farwell, put Jenny into a drug rehab program several years ago. He might be able to give you more information on that.’
McQ and Blade each made some notes and continued their line of questioning.
‘Dr. Crawford, you said that Jenny had called you because she had found some important information,’ said McQ. ‘Do you know what it was?’
‘Not really,’ said Angela. ‘I was in a meeting with our lawyers. It was something about medication that she said she had to show me. That’s why I was going to see her.’
‘Here’s what puzzles me,’ said Blade. ‘She knew her boss was coming to talk to her and she had something important to tell you. Why would she have chosen that moment to take such a powerful drug knowing you were on your way?’
‘Those are both questions I keep asking myself,’ said Angela, shaking her head and getting teary. ‘She wouldn’t tell me on the phone exactly what she’d found. She said I had to see it. Jenny taking the drugs when she knew I was coming to meet with her struck me as odd, even reckless. If I had known her drug problem had resurfaced, I could have done something to help her. I just didn’t know.’
‘Drugs are unpredictable,’ said McQ to Blade. ‘How many overdose calls do we get every week? Too many. I’m sure none of those people thought they would end their party night in a hospital and those are the lucky ones.’
Without Her Consent Page 15