In His Protective Custody

by Marie Ferrarella

  Kady looked at her much the way a parent looked at a child who had one exceptional trick to their repertoire. “Is that what you honestly think?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  With another melodious laugh, Kady slipped an arm around Alyx’s slim shoulders. “Oh, Grasshopper,” she teased, “you have much to learn. But I’m here now, so let the teaching begin.”

  Though having Kady’s arm around her comforted her, Alyx drew back slightly. She had to leave no room for doubt about herself and the handsome young patrolman.

  “Officer Calloway was the cop who answered my 911 call—”

  Kady nodded. “So you said.”

  “And this morning, he turned up in the ER with a bullet wound. He and his partner had saved a convenience store clerk’s life,” she added, although it was Zane who’d probably done most of the heavy lifting. There wasn’t a scratch on his partner and every hair had been in place. With Zane, only one hair had remained in place.

  “Heroic, the best kind,” Kady declared with approval. Byron had struck her that way from the moment he’d taken charge of the situation. “And he got shot in your vicinity so he could be brought to Patience Memorial, how very thoughtful of him.”

  “It’s not like that,” Alyx insisted loyally.

  Kady shook her head. “It can always be like that,” Kady countered. “Life is full of opportunities begging to be taken advantage of. Nowhere does it say that if you’re shot, you have to pay your attending ER physician back by practicing CPR on her or by walking them home.”

  “We drove,” Alyx corrected.

  “Even better.” Kady smiled knowingly. “Trust me, Alyx, he’s into you. Now the real question is—” she studied her cousin’s face with interest “—are you into him?”

  Alyx felt herself shoring up her beaches. “I don’t know him.”

  Now there was a line of bull if she’d ever heard any. “Honey, extensive knowledge isn’t necessary in this case—unless he turns out to be a serial killer or an ax murderer—or wears black socks to bed and nothing else,” she allowed.

  Confusion creased Alyx’s brow. “Excuse me?” she asked.

  Kady laughed. “Like I said, you have much to learn, and lucky for you, I seem to have a night to kill. Now, the first question I have for you is, is there any ice cream in the freezer?”

  Alyx thought for a moment. “I think I saw a half-full container of Spumoni in there—it was there when I moved in and I just haven’t gotten around to clearing it out,” she confessed.

  Kady nodded, approving of the wording that her cousin had used.

  “Half-full, not half-empty. Good, that means that you really are one of us. And there’s only one way to get rid of ice cream—and throwing it away isn’t it,” Kady added.

  “One of you?” Alyx repeated, still puzzled.

  “Yes. An optimist,” Kady clarified. “If you were a pessimist like…like…” She tactfully let her voice trail off.

  “My mother?” Alyx supplied.

  “Well, yes, like your mother,” Kady allowed. “Then you wouldn’t be a true Pulaski. We see a lemon seed, we’re already planning how many glasses of lemonade we can make once it germinates,” Kady confided to her. “So, let’s bring out the Spumoni, two spoons—your choice on the size—and we’ll have a heart-to-heart discussion.”

  Alyx looked at her warily. She wasn’t given to talking about her feelings. Her mother had always discouraged it.

  “About?”

  “Life, medicine and men,” Kady said with a flourish of her hand. “Not necessarily in that order,” she added with a conspiratorial wink. “In between, you can tell me how it’s going for you in the ER. Is that doctor—” she paused for a moment as she tried to remember the doctor’s name “—Gloria something or other still the prime candidate to replace the Wicked Witch of the West, or has she softened up a little in her old age?”

  “Gloria Furst,” Alyx supplied, then laughed shortly, remembering her last experience with the woman this morning. “I don’t think the woman knows how to soften up. She’s still hell on wheels and the prime candidate to take the witch’s place. Unless she decides to retire sometime soon.”

  “The undead never retire,” Kady told her. “They continue forever and they thrive on the blood of innocent, struggling interns.” And then she grinned. “Ah, Grasshopper, let me give you a few tips you might find useful for surviving the curse of the undead…” Kady offered, guiding Alyx toward the kitchen, the Spumoni and salvation.

  They were almost out of the living room when they heard the sound of an object crashing against their neighbor’s wall. Alyx instantly froze.

  Listening.

  Waiting for more.

  She’d found an excuse to give that waste of skin a piece of her mind and once more to call in the police. This time she would insist that Harry be arrested, even if she had to fabricate testimony. She had the uneasy feeling that Abby, despite a pep talk she’d given the woman in the elevator yesterday morning, would never stand up for herself.

  “What’s the matter?” Kady asked.

  “Our neighbor.” She nodded her head toward the other apartment. “He beats his wife.”

  Kady stiffened, her smile instantly fading. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve seen the bruises.” She was still listening, still waiting. But the crash had no accompanying noise, no raised voices. Nothing but silence came from next door. “I guess maybe he’s reined himself in.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Kady agreed. “Now, about that ice cream…”

  “Already there,” Alyx assured her, decreasing the distance between herself and the refrigerator quickly.

  “So tell me some more about Officer Hunk,” Kady encouraged as she dished out their servings.

  Chapter 7

  I t had been a hectic shift, but a good one, Alyx thought with a smile as she signed out her last patient of the day.

  Any shift without Dr. Gloria Furst breathing down her neck, finding fault with everything she did, everything she attempted to do, she considered a good shift. All told, she’d seen forty-one patients today.

  And none of them had died.

  That, to her, was her ultimate goal: keeping everyone alive and putting them on the path to health, if at all possible. Most of the people she’d dealt with today had been sent home with instructions and, in some cases, with prescriptions.

  Three of the forty-one patients had been admitted. There was the weekend warrior who’d fallen off his ladder as he was painting his house. The man had cracked his thigh, a feat she was still trying to reconcile in her mind. An arm, a leg, this she could understand. But getting one leg caught in the ladder and bringing it and himself down onto the concrete in such a way that he cracked his thigh still mystified her.

  There was the octogenarian with what the elderly woman referred to as “heart flutters.” She had to be admitted because she was actually in the middle of an unresolved, very mild heart attack and not just a “fluttery episode.”

  Admitted too had been the four-year-old boy with the one hundred and three fever. But everyone else had been discharged and sent on their way home again, freeing up the beds both in the ER and in the hospital proper.

  Despite the hectic pace, Alyx felt pretty satisfied as she started to clock out. God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

  Card in hand, she was about to push it into the slot to register the time of her departure when the ER rear doors—the entrance that all the ambulance attendants used—dramatically burst open. For the most part, the paramedics always staged dramatic entrances, no matter who they brought in or what the patient’s actual condition was. It broke up the day.

  This time, they actually ran with the gurney, as did the haunted-looking young woman hurrying beside it.

  Sobbing, she clutched the hand of the person on the gurney.

  As their paths crossed, the young woman looked up at Alyx, tears streaming down her face. “I should have gone over sooner. I should h
ave gone. I knew something was wrong. I could feel it in my stomach. Maybe, if I’d gone over earlier, I could have stopped him.” She was almost choking on her sobs by now.

  Alyx stopped and put her card down.

  “Katie,” she called over to a nurse who was just approaching the nurse’s station from the opposite end of the room. “Could you help out here, please?”

  Because no other doctor was in the vicinity, Alyx remained, judging that she could at least assess the case until one of the other physicians on duty became available.

  That was when she looked down at the patient on the gurney.

  Her pulse instantly quickened as recognition set in. Because of the discoloration, the swelling and the blood, it took her a moment to make the connection. She recognized the clothing before she recognized the beaten face.

  “Oh my God,” Alyx whispered in stunned disbelief, her eyes widening. She could feel her heart twist in her chest. “Abby,” she cried, leaning in over the gurney. “Abby, can you hear me?”

  There was a barely discernible flutter of the woman’s eyelashes, as if that was the only part of her that could still respond.

  Alyx shifted her attention to the young woman who had come in with her badly beaten neighbor. “What’s your name?”

  “Beth.”

  “Where did you find her, Beth?”

  The young woman hiccupped as she swallowed her sobs.

  “In her apartment. She didn’t show up for work this morning and she wasn’t answering her phone. I knew that Abby wouldn’t just take off like that, so I came over during my break. I rang her bell, but there was no answer so I told the superintendent that I was her sister and I begged him to open up the apartment.” She pressed her lips together to try to collect herself. “He did and that was when we found her. On the kitchen floor. She wasn’t even bleeding anymore. The blood on her head and face was all crusted and dried.”

  Beth’s smoky-brown eyes were wild as she looked to the ER doctor for answers. “How could he have done that to her? Harry’s supposed to love her. She kept telling me that he swore he loved her. You don’t do this to someone you love,” she insisted.

  Alyx frowned and shook her head. “That kind never loves anyone but themselves,” she declared angrily. They’d reached the edge of the accessible portion of the ER. “Put her in Trauma Room Three,” she told the paramedics, pointing out the location of the room in question.

  They eased the gurney into the room, then lined it up with the bed. Alyx got into position with them. “Okay, on my count. One, two, three,” she cried. The paramedics, Alyx and one of the attending nurses eased the woman from the gurney onto the hospital bed.

  Alyx heard Abby whimper softly.

  Like a dog whose spirit had been broken, she thought, shaking her head.

  She leaned over the woman as the nurses hooked up monitors. “I’m sorry. Abby, I know it hurts. But I promise you, it’s never going to hurt again. He’s never going to hurt you again,” she declared fiercely. Alyx turned to the orderly closest to her. “Get me a camera, Roddy,” she instructed. “I need to document all these bruises.”

  Abby opened the only eye she could. Her left one was temporarily swollen shut.

  “No.” The single word was hoarsely enunciated through swollen lips. The protest might have been vehement in spirit, but it came out barely audible.

  Frustrated, Abby tried to take hold of Alyx’s wrist to stop her. “No,” she whispered again. “He loves me. He said he was sorry.” With each word her voice faded a little more.

  Alyx could only feel pity when she looked down at the woman. What she saw this time was worse, far worse than the other two times she’d seen the effects of her neighbor’s temper.

  “He’s not going to hurt you anymore, I promise,” she repeated.

  But even as she spoke to her, the light went out of Abby’s eyes. The nurses had just finished hooking the young woman up to monitors whose sole function was to measure her vital signs.

  She was flat-lining.

  “Crash cart, I need a crash cart!” Alyx cried. “Stat!”

  Beth covered her mouth with her hands to hold back a nervous scream. “What’s happening?” she cried, looking at Alyx. There was fear in every syllable. “Is she going to be all right?”

  Ordinarily, this was the time that Alyx sugar-coated her answers. She believed in giving a person hope until the last moment. But this time, this time the words that came out of her mouth were unvarnished. And they didn’t deal with hope, they dealt with reality, a word she had come to hate at times.

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But I certainly hope so.”

  Another one of the nurses came hurrying over with the crash cart and Alyx instantly seized the paddles. Holding them upside down, she waited until Roddy had applied the lubricant to both surfaces and then she yelled out the warning, “Clear,” before she applied the paddles to Abby’s small chest.

  Abby’s body convulsed like a marionette whose strings had suddenly all been pulled in one direction, then released. For a split second, part of her body had lost contact with the mattress. And then she fell back down as if the strings had all been cut.

  Four more attempts with the paddles yielded the same macabre dance with the same results. The flat line on the monitor remained.

  “Dr. Pulaski?” Katie left the rest of her question unspoken but they both knew she was asking her to call the time of death.

  Alyx felt her heart twist again inside her chest as if someone was squeezing it.

  “No, not yet,” she cried. “I can get her back. I can.” She resorted to regular CPR, using her fist to pound on Abby’s shallow chest rather than simply doing compressions. “C’mon, c’mon. Damn it, Abby, don’t let him win,” she entreated, frantically trying to raise a response from the woman’s heart.

  For a moment, there was a glimmer on the monitor and she held her breath, praying that it would continue and grow strong.

  But instead, it faded. Alyx felt as if her own heart had stopped as the blip on the monitor returned to a single line. The line eerily continued, emitting a single note that went on indefinitely, sounding an unsettling death knell.

  She’d lost her. Abby was gone.

  Stepping back, blinking away the tears that filled her eyes, Alyx stripped off her rubber gloves and tossed them in the wastepaper basket. She felt as if she’d just intercepted a direct blow to the gut and found herself struggling not to throw up.

  “You did all you could, doctor,” the other nurse, Evangeline, an older, grandmotherly woman told her kindly.

  “No, I didn’t,” Alyx retorted between gritted teeth. She was losing the battle against her emotions. Right now, they were overwhelming her.

  “What more could you have done?” Vangie asked.

  “I could have insisted the bastard be arrested.” Anger bubbled up within her at her passiveness. Alyx thought of the crash she’d heard last night. Had that been Abby? Had Harry, in his rage, flung his wife against the wall? Had Abby been lying on the floor all that time, dying by inches until her friend had discovered her? “I could have gone over last night and demanded to see her when I heard that crash,” Alyx cried in frustration. Why hadn’t she? she silently demanded. Why?

  “What crash?” Abby’s friend asked in between heart-wrenching sobs.

  But Alyx didn’t hear her. She was on her way out of the trauma room, intent on finding the nearest phone. She needed to call the police.

  She needed to talk to Zane.

  When the call came through over the dispatch line, Ryan answered it because Zane was driving. “Officer Lukkas, what can I do for you, lovely lady?” he asked, flirting with the woman on the other end.

  For once, Patrice, the brunette on the other end of the line, was all business. “Tell Officer Calloway he has a call.”

  Zane could hear Patrice loud and clear. He exchanged glances with Ryan. Private calls over the dispatch line were frowned upon so they were usually turned away. It d
idn’t sound as if that was the case this time.

  “A call? You’re kidding,” Ryan said. “I thought the brass vetoed all personal calls.”

  “Woman says it’s urgent,” Patrice told him, then recited, “that she has to get in touch with Calloway. She called it a matter of life or death.”

  Ryan handed the receiver to Zane. “You get someone pregnant, Calloway?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Not unless I’m doing it in my sleep,” Zane replied cryptically.

  “More fun when you’re awake,” Ryan told him, not bothering to suppress a grin.

  “So they tell me.” One hand on the steering wheel, Zane pressed the button that allowed his voice to be conveyed back to the precinct. “Calloway here.”

  In the background, he heard dispatch tell someone, “Go ahead, ma’am.”

  The next moment he heard someone angrily announce, “He killed her.”

  It took Zane a second to place the voice. Even when he did, he wasn’t really sure it was her. He wouldn’t have thought that Alyx would have taken the trouble to call him.

  “Alyx?” Beside him, Ryan had sat up, noting the change in his partner’s tone.

  “He killed her,” she repeated. There was both anger and agony in her voice. “Did you hear what I just said?” she demanded.

  He had questions of his own for her. “Who, Alyx? Who was killed and who did the killing?” Zane asked. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  She took a deep breath, trying desperately to remain coherent. “My neighbor. McBride. He killed his wife. They brought her in by ambulance less than an hour ago. I hardly recognized her, he’d beaten her that badly. There was nothing we could do.” No, this fell on her. This was her loss, her fault. “Nothing I could do to save her. He killed her,” she repeated.

  “You sure it was him?”

  She took in a breath and released it, then another in an attempt to calm down and remain civil. She pressed on. “They found her in the apartment, on the floor. She’d apparently been there a long time. Beaten to a pulp. So what do you think?”