Code Triage

by Candace Calvert

  What would he do if he knew the truth?

  +++

  Riley expected to see Leigh at the hospital but was surprised to find her sitting alone in the chapel. She was at the respite table, tall leather riding boots crossed at the ankles and dark hair spilling around her shoulders. She hadn’t turned on the lights and the soft glow of candles—dozens offered in memory of Cappy Thomas—lit her features just enough to hint that she’d been crying. The Kleenex box, pulled close, proved it like forensic evidence.

  “Hi,” Riley said as Leigh raised her head. Oh, you look ragged, my friend. “I don’t want to disturb you, but I saw you in here, so . . .”

  “No problem. You’ll save me from being struck by lightning. God probably knows I’m only here for the juice and crackers.” She smiled ruefully. “And that if I’d stayed another minute in Sam Gordon’s room, I would have tied her oxygen tubing in a knot. That alone buys me a jillion heavenly volts.”

  “Was it that bad?” Riley took the seat beside her.

  “Worse. You don’t want to know.”

  “I do . . . if you want me to.”

  Leigh picked at the seeds on a cracker, then snapped it in half. “She summoned me there to tell me how I’d failed as a wife.”

  Riley’s mouth sagged open. “As chaplain, I’m supposed to ask something like ‘And how does that make you feel?’” She grimaced. “But as your friend, I want to say . . . I got a badge for knot tying in the San Jacinto Council of Girl Scouts. Where’s that oxygen tubing?”

  Leigh’s quick laugh was accompanied by a heartbreaking rush of tears. “I’m sorry. Oh, why did I go see her?”

  “Because I asked you to.” Riley handed her a fresh Kleenex. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  “You and the nursing staff shouldn’t have had to put up with her badgering. It wouldn’t have stopped.” Leigh sighed. “I’m usually so much tougher, but . . .”

  Riley waited, sensing more.

  Leigh’s shoulders rose and fell, and she glanced toward Cappy’s candles. “She said that I wasn’t willing to give Nick what he wants most—a family. But . . .” Her voice choked. “The truth is that I was pregnant when we separated. Almost too early to confirm with a test, and I’ll admit I waited to take one. We were having trouble. I asked him to move out.” Leigh looked up at Riley, her dark eyes huge and shiny in the dim light. “I didn’t know how I felt about being pregnant. I hadn’t planned to have a baby. I didn’t want it to be the only reason to try to work things out. I didn’t trust that we could make it.” A tear slid down her cheek. “Before I could come to grips with it, Nick’s best friend was killed and then Sam was in the picture.” Leigh shredded the Kleenex. “While I was struggling to deal with that, I had a miscarriage.”

  “So many losses, so fast.”

  “I never told him,” Leigh whispered, staring at her hands. “I didn’t see the point of it. Afterward, I mean. But this past year, during all of this, I’d lie awake at night wondering if it would have changed things. If I should have told him, even after I lost the baby. I finally stopped thinking about that. Put all those doubts behind me. Or at least that’s what I thought. Until tonight. When Sam accused me of refusing to give Nick what he wanted most in this world, it made me so angry, and it stirred it all up again.” She swallowed, shaking her head. “Like I said, I’m usually so much tougher.”

  Riley touched her hand. “But it’s been a couple of miserable days. And you’re human. You’re an incredibly skilled doctor, but you’re still human. None of us should expect to function business-as-usual in the face of what’s happened here. We’re all feeling it. That’s why I’ve been talking with the staff. To get a feel for who might need a little extra support and who might benefit from a staff debriefing.”

  “Are you saying I’ve just been counseled?”

  Riley squeezed her hand. “I’m saying you have an offer of help from a friend, if you should need it.”

  Leigh’s lips hinted at a smile. “Beyond knot tying.”

  “Yes.” Riley smiled back. “And I’m going to remind you that God’s here for you too. With love and understanding, not lightning bolts. When you’re ready. And when you are, I’d be happy to . . .” She stopped midsentence as Leigh stiffened in her chair and peered at the chapel doorway.

  “It’s Nick,” Leigh said, voice just above a whisper. “He must be going up to see Sam.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. He called me a little while ago to say that he was meeting Kristi Johnson at the ICU.” Riley glanced at her watch. “The doctors took Kurt Denton off life support about an hour ago.”

  +++

  “Heather is watching Abby and Finn,” Kristi told Nick, glancing toward the door of the ICU. “Abby knows I went to see her daddy, but not why. She’s so confused by everything that happened.” She swallowed. “I am too. When the chaplain called to tell me they’d turned off the machines, I didn’t think I wanted to come. But . . .”

  He nodded, still reeling from the news of Denton’s death and Kristi’s request that he accompany her to the hospital. Riley had said that seeing Denton might help her with “closure.” He wondered if it would feel that way to him, too. He watched as the young mother searched through her tote bag. She lifted out the bedraggled toy pony and her eyes filled with tears.

  “Abby wants him to have this. The new Child Crisis investigator returned it after the police finished with the hospital room. But Abby told me that she wanted her daddy to have it. She thought it would make him feel better, make him remember happy things.” She brushed a finger over the pony’s frayed yarn mane. “Kurt bought it for her at Disneyland.” A tear slid down her cheek. “It did seem like a fairy tale back then. Like one of those happily-ever-after moments. I guess I wanted to believe it could stay that way forever. You know?”

  Nick cleared his throat. “I do.”

  He held the door for her and they walked into the darkened ICU toward the curtained room where Kurt Denton lay. As they got closer, Kristi’s breath shuddered and her hand rose to her mouth.

  Nick watched Kristi’s face, remembering how shocked he’d been at the sight of Kurt earlier, wanting to spare her that. Wishing he could go back, do it all differently somehow. Give them that fairy-tale ending, instead of—

  “Oh no,” Kristi murmured between her fingers. She swayed and Nick slid an arm around her. “He’s really gone.”

  The staff had done the best they could to soften the shock: turned the lights down low, removed the tubes—and the handcuffs. They’d freshened the linens and moved the equipment away. But the deceased patient lying against the pillow, bandaged and bruised, in no way resembled the young man who’d walked into the hospital Tuesday morning, high on drugs and determined to claim his family. The killer who, in his last conscious moments, stared straight into Nick’s eyes.

  Kristi stepped to the bed, hugged the stuffed pony close for a brief moment, and then laid it on the sheet over Denton’s chest.

  “Your daughter wanted you to have it,” she whispered. “I . . . won’t . . . say bad things about you, Kurt. I promise. We’ll give our babies that much.” A sob escaped and she stepped away.

  Riley appeared in the doorway. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Kristi folded her hands across her chest and watched Kurt’s face for a moment. “Would it be okay to say a prayer? He wasn’t much on church. But I think I’d feel better if . . . maybe we could say the Lord’s Prayer? Abby would like that. We say it together at bedtime. Every night.”

  “Of course.”

  They stood there beside the bed: chaplain, mother of the deceased man’s children, and the cop who’d killed him. A moment of silence framed by the distant sounds of ventilators and whispers of caregivers; then three voices saying the words Jesus had offered so long ago.

  Nick closed his eyes, whispering around the ache in his throat for Kristi, her children, and for the happy ending that would never be. “. . . for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Foreve
r and ever . . .”

  Nick waited in the dark parking lot while Kristi unlocked her car door, knowing that only yesterday morning and mere yards from where they now stood, he’d aimed his gun. “Are you sure you’re okay? I could drive you home.”

  “I’m fine. And I want to thank you . . .”

  “No,” he said. “Don’t thank me. I should be telling you how sorry I am. That I wish it hadn’t happened like this. It’s true. I wish—”

  “It’s okay,” she said, peering at him. “It’s okay. You did what you had to do. I know that. He would have killed you. Look what he did to Miss Gordon and Cappy and . . .” Her voice broke as she touched Nick’s sleeve. “You’re a good, decent man. I wish Kurt had had someone like you to show him how to be that way. I’m glad you’re here for all of us in the neighborhood. You make us feel that someone cares, that at least one person really wants us to have a happy life.”

  “I do.”

  “I know.” Kristi opened the car door. “And I want that for you and Dr. Stathos. You be happy too. Promise me that.”

  “Sure,” he murmured, glancing away.

  He watched her drive off before walking to his car. He unlocked the door, then leaned against it, listening to the sounds of traffic in the distance and staring at the moon. Thinking about Kristi and Finn and Abby—the little girl who’d sent her favorite toy to the man who dragged her mother down a hospital corridor. She wanted him to remember Disneyland; she wanted to believe in happy endings. Nick did too . . . or used to. Now he wasn’t sure anymore. That chance was waning like the moon, and—

  “Nick?”

  He looked down to see Leigh standing in the moonlight.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Leigh had never seen Nick look so awful, even in those days he’d slept in his car outside their house trying to convince her to talk with him. He’d been both scattered and intense then, desperate. Even so, there’d been a flicker of hope in his eyes. But now . . . Her heart squeezed. He’d killed someone. Why hadn’t she considered how he’d feel about that?

  “I saw you out here,” she said, looking at him. “Are you okay?”

  His smile was forced, grim. “On a scale of one to ten, I’d say a strong two and holding. Maybe.”

  “Riley said you met Kristi Johnson here.”

  “Yeah.” He scraped his hand across his mouth in gesture she’d seen him do a hundred times before. “They took Denton off life support. He’s dead.”

  Leigh nodded. Only five days ago he’d rescued the man’s baby.

  “His little girl,” Nick said, his voice hollow and low, “sent her favorite stuffed toy to him—a pony she carried everywhere with her.”

  Leigh remembered it, could still see it lying on the floor next to the overturned lilies.

  “When I told Denton to drop his weapons, he stood there for a few seconds. Looked right into my eyes. As if he knew I’d use deadly force, and it was okay with him. Like . . .”

  “Suicide by cop,” Leigh whispered, giving voice to it and aching for Nick.

  “Yes.” He stared up at the sky for a moment, then looked back at her. “I got involved because I wanted to help Kristi keep her family together. And look what’s happened. I don’t know, Leigh. I don’t know. . . .”

  She reached for his hand without thinking. “You’ve talked with the investigators at the department?”

  “Right on down the line, ending with Buzz.” He shook his head. “Something strange about being expected to officially spill your guts to the guy who’s been letting you sleep on his couch. And now I’m on administrative leave. Through Friday, and . . .” He stopped, brows furrowing.

  Friday. The same day the divorce was final. Leigh felt his fingers move against hers, knew he was thinking the same thing.

  “Thank you,” he said. “For coming out here. I didn’t expect—”

  What she didn’t expect was to step forward and wrap her arms around him and for tears to come. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her face burrowed against his shirtfront. “I hate it that this happened to you, Nick. I know—oh, I know—how much you try to help these people.”

  She felt his arms move tentatively around her. His heart thudded beneath her ear.

  “And you,” he said gently, “worked hard to save Cappy. You didn’t give up; you kept going. I saw that, even from a distance.” His arms tightened and he drew her close, his palm cradling the back of her head as her tears continued.

  “I did . . . I did try,” she whispered. “But it was too late.” She started to tremble and Nick stooped down, touching his lips to her temple and caressing her hair gently as if she were a child in need of comfort. She closed her eyes and breathed in the familiar scent of him, letting it soothe her like a balm. Pretending, just for a moment, that nothing else mattered, that she hadn’t come here tonight because she’d been rudely summoned by—

  “You’re in your riding clothes,” Nick said, his breath warm against her hair. “It’s your day off. Did you get called in for an emergency?”

  “I . . .” She stepped away from him, felt his arms slide from her. “Caro,” she hedged, “is working p.m.’s, so . . .” She hugged her arms around herself, missing the comfort of his arms and feeling a lonely vacuum in the space between them. Sam’s sharp laugh, her words, swept back: “It sounds to me like you always had space—you liked it that way. The more space the better.”

  “You stopped by on your way home from the stables to see her,” Nick finished.

  She glanced away, knowing she’d skirted the truth and trying not to wonder if Sam was right about Leigh’s need for space. Then told herself it didn’t matter anymore. “And now I guess I should go home and pull off these boots.”

  “Don’t,” he said, taking hold of her hand. “Come with me . . . just for a while.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t want go back to Buzz’s right now. And I don’t want to be alone. I thought I did, but now . . .” His thumb brushed across the back of her hand.

  “I’m in riding clothes and probably have hay in my hair.”

  “I know a place. Coffee and pastry—barn casual.”

  +++

  He took the long way though he knew all the shortcuts from chasing suspects, with lights and sirens, in his squad car. And long before that, from the days when he’d hopped fences as a kid, trundled his suitcases up and down the steps of foster homes. But tonight he wanted to take the long way because it might be the last time he drove through his favorite city with his wife.

  She was onto his plan way too soon.

  “You’re kidding, right? Lombard Street? What do you think I am, a tourist?”

  “I think you’d better hang on tight.”

  He steered the Z4 downward into the first of eight hairpin turns on the one-way section on Russian Hill, between Hyde and Leavenworth, known as “the crookedest street in the world.” A steep redbrick-paved road on a 27 percent grade with a posted speed limit of five miles per hour. “No sweat,” he said. “We took these turns during training. I could do this at a raging six miles an hour . . . chewing gum.” Her grin made his chest warm.

  “And wipe out an entire bank of hydrangeas,” she said, pointing across the lush hedges and leaning back—way back—in her seat. “Don’t be a maniac, Nick.”

  He nosed the car into the next switchback and hit the button on his CD player, filling the car with blues, then thought of Antoinette and Harry dancing to Tony Bennett. And remembered holding Leigh only minutes ago. Maybe he’d drive slower; 5 mph was too fast for a last ride.

  He left Lombard and drove southeast toward Mission, then onto the Embarcadero, weaving in and out of traffic under the jumble of electric bus wires, passing a double-decker sightseeing bus and a group of helmeted tourists navigating the crowded sidewalk on Segways. Then drove downhill toward Beach Street, Fisherman’s Wharf, and the view of the bay beyond the marina that always made his breath catch.

  He skirted Golden Gate Par
k on the loop back, breathing in the familiar scent from the huge, peeling, and silvery green stands of eucalyptus that lined it—sweet, clean, sharp . . . a hint of camphor. The same scent, in subtle traces, was in Leigh’s favorite herbal shampoo, and he’d teased her more than once that she smelled like his favorite city. Like home . . . He sneaked a glimpse of her, noticing that she’d closed her eyes and relaxed against the headrest. Almost as if she were sleeping. He tried not to think that he’d never see her that way again.

  When he finally pulled the car to the curb, miraculously finding a space, Leigh opened her eyes. Her brows drew together and he wondered if he’d made a mistake.

  “It’s Niko’s,” she said, turning to look at him.

  “Reynaldo’s.” He pointed to the sign. “See? Macaroons, conchas, quesadilla cake.”

  “Quesadilla cake?”

  “And Mexican hot chocolate.” He waited, holding his breath.

  “Okay—you got me with the hot chocolate.”

  +++

  Sam left a third message, knowing that he’d turned his phone off. When she called Buzz’s apartment, the chaplain had said only that he had no idea when to expect Nick back. He’d offered nothing more, though he’d politely inquired about how she was feeling. Sam frowned. What she was feeling was frustrated. She’d dozed off not long after checking on Elisa—she was playing hide-and-seek with her cousins and giggling her head off. The nurses hadn’t awakened Sam for Nick’s call. She’d been hoping to at least talk with him, find out what time he was coming in the morning. He was on administrative leave, so no excuses about time. She’d suggest that he pick up Elisa at Tina’s, take her for the day—the zoo again or the Discovery Museum. Then come back here, so they could all be together. Nick, me, and Elisa. Just the way she’d told Leigh.

  Except she couldn’t make any of that happen until she talked with Nick.