My eyes are glued shut and I can feel something sticky and gooey all over my face. At first I can’t remember where I am or how I got here, but then the male voice is speaking again, closer to me and softer in tone.
“Miss? Can you hear me? My name is Hal and I’m an EMT. You were in a car accident and we’re here to help you.”
I try to nod but a horrible pain knifes through my head and neck, freezing me in place. I manage a moan.
“Damn it, Chuck,” Hal says. “Get a grip and get in here. She’s got a pretty extensive head injury and I need some help.”
Then I hear another male voice, this one much shakier. “Sorry,” the second voice mutters. “It’s just that I’ve never seen brain matter all over the place like that.” With that he gags and I hear the retching sounds again.
Then his words sink in. Brain matter? Is he talking about me? That can’t be very good. How is it I’m able to think if my brains are leaking?
In order to survive as a nurse, particularly an ER nurse, there is a certain skill you must have: the ability to override your natural instinct to panic in highly stressful situations. For some it comes naturally; for others it must be learned. I am one of the lucky ones; my fight or flight reaction is so dulled that theoretically I should have been weaned from the gene pool centuries ago, my kind stomped to death by charging wooly mammoths. But a number of people like me survived the odds and you’ll find the majority of us in fields like emergency medicine, police work, and search and rescue.
That instinct kicks in now as I try to make sense of how I can hear, see, and feel things if my brains are playing Humpty Dumpty. Logic tells me it can’t happen but there’s no one else in my car.
Wait. Maybe I’m dead. Maybe this is what it’s like in the afterlife, or in those few moments before your soul says I’m outa here and flees the premises. Except I feel pain. Do dead people feel pain? Having never been dead before, this question momentarily stumps me.
Then I take a strange mental segue and remember how my hairdresser, Barbara, helped me plan out my funeral. I recall how good I looked when we were done and find some solace now in the knowledge that if I have to be dead, at least I’ll look stunning during those last good-byes. I have absolute faith in Barbara’s ability to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Then I hear another voice, one I recognize, one that makes my pulse quicken—though I suppose that could be because I’m hemorrhaging.
“Christ, that’s Winston,” Hurley says. His voice sounds a bit shaky.
“You know her?” Hal asks.
“I do. Is she okay?”
“Too soon to tell,” Hal says, sounding worried. “It appears she has a serious head injury and as soon as my partner here can get his stomach under control enough to help me, we’ll get her immobilized and out of the car. Then I might be able to give you a better idea of her condition. In the meantime, if you want to talk to her, offer some encouragement, there’s a good chance she’ll be able to hear you even if she’s in a coma. You never know what might make a difference.”
A second later I hear Hurley’s voice again. “Damn it, Winston. This is no time for games. You get it together now. And if you think this is going to get you out of our steak dinner bet, you have another think coming.”
I assume, based on the tremor in his voice, that this is what passes for concern in Hurley’s world. I’m touched, and I want to open my eyes and see him, but they are glued shut.
I hear the second EMT, Chuck, clear his throat and say, “I think I’m okay now, Hal. Let me help.”
Hands gently cradle and move my head as I feel the cold plastic of a cervical collar being slid into place behind my neck. As the collar is being secured, a gloved hand rubs up against my cheek, pushing something wet and sticky onto my upper lip. And then it hits me: the smell of strawberries. At first I think I might be having an olfactory hallucination, smelling things that aren’t there because of whatever damage has been done to my brain cells. Then another smell registers, one that bears a faint resemblance to sour milk.
Suddenly it all makes sense. I raise one of my hands and take a swipe at my eyes. It makes the smells intensify and I manage to get one eye open a slit’s worth, though the other one is staying stubbornly closed. Through the open one I can see a red haze mixed with a few whitish-gray chunks on my fingers. I stick them in my mouth and give the goo a tentative taste test.
Just as I thought: it’s the remains of my lunch.
I hear a symphony of gasps, a sickly moan, and then a loud thud.
“Shit,” Hal mutters. “There he goes again. Damn it, Chuck!” Then I hear sniffing sounds. “I’ll be damned,” Hal says. “I think this is cottage cheese and jelly.”
“Huh?” Hurley asks.
Hal leaves my side, presumably to attend to his fallen partner. “I thought that crap all over her head and face was blood and brain matter but it’s not. It’s food. It must have gotten spilled on her during the accident.”
“So is she okay?” Hurley asks.
“I think I am,” I manage to mumble.
“Hey! There you go,” Hal says. “I think she’s in better shape than my partner here. I’m going to have to call for a backup ambulance for him. I’m afraid seeing a patient eat her own brains was simply more than he could take.”
Forty-five minutes later I’m safely ensconced on a cot inside the ER with Dr. Allan Connor examining my injuries. I can hear Hurley beyond my curtain asking one of the nurses on duty if he can come in and see me. He says it’s so he can get information about the accident though I’m pretty certain traffic accidents don’t fall within the scope of duties for a homicide detective. But since I was planning on finding him anyway before I was broadsided, I’m anxious to have him come in and chat. I want to share what I uncovered about Luke Nelson.
I’m glad Allan is the doc on duty. I worked with him years ago when I staffed the ER and I know he’s a thorough, no-nonsense guy with superb diagnostic skills. He’s already cleared my cervical spine and removed the collar, and one of the nurses was kind enough to clean the jam off my face, allowing me to open both of my eyes.
Allan finds a small laceration on the back of my scalp that will need a few stitches, but other than that I’m home free. He warns me that I’ll likely be plagued with aching muscles tomorrow, but doubts I’ll have any other symptoms. “You’re damned lucky,” he says. “The EMT showed me a picture of your car and the damage was quite extensive.”
“Is it totaled?” I ask.
Hurley pushes aside the curtain, steps in, and provides the answer. “Yup. It’s crusher fodder.”
“What about the other car? Who was in it? Are they okay?”
Allan, abiding by the strict confidentiality requirements imposed on all healthcare providers, says, “All I can tell you is that there was just the driver, who sustained a few injuries, though nothing that appears life-threatening at this point.”
I blow out a sigh of relief.
Allan says, “I need to go check on a couple of other things and then I’ll be back to stitch up your head.” He disappears from my tiny cubicle, leaving me with Hurley.
“You’re not bound by the privacy requirements,” I say to him. “Can you fill in any of the blanks for me?”
“I can tell you that the driver was a teenager and that it looks like he was texting someone on his phone when he hit you. Several witnesses saw him blow through the red light.”
I wince, knowing I’m almost as guilty as the kid since I was trying to make a call on my cell phone when I was hit.
“He busted one of his legs but his car had air bags and he was wearing his seat belt so at least he wasn’t totally stupid,” Hurley goes on. “The car is his dad’s Lexus so I’m guessing the kid will be suffering more pain at home than he will be here.”
“I’m just glad he’s okay.”
“Where were you headed?”
“Back to the office to help Izzy with the autopsies. Actually, I was hoping to hook up wit
h you there, to share some information. I managed to wrangle a lunch meeting with Luke Nelson.”
“Really?”
“Yup.” I try not to look or sound too smug but I can’t resist skewering him just a little bit more. “He mentioned that he was supposed to meet with you later today so I figured I could make that easier for you by sharing what I managed to find out. You know, to keep us from duplicating our efforts.”
“I see.”
I expect him to look put out, or at least chagrined, but instead he looks amused.
“So, do you want to know what I found out?”
“Sure, one second.” Up to this point he has been standing beside my stretcher. Now he disappears from the cubicle only to return a few seconds later with a chair. He sets it down beside my cot, settles into it, and then takes a notebook and pencil out of his shirt pocket. “Go ahead,” he says.
I tell him about Luke Nelson’s alibis and that he is going to ask the patients he saw that day if it’s okay for us to know they were there and, if necessary, talk with them. Then I tell him about Nelson’s history, his practice in Florida, and his claim that he hadn’t seen Shannon for a week before her death.
“It seems odd that they didn’t get together more recently,” I say. “He claims it’s because he was busy but I got the feeling there was more to it than that.”
Hurley shrugs. “It’s a guy thing. We don’t feel the same need to be together with a romantic partner twenty-four-seven the way women do.”
I arch a brow at him and scoff. “That’s a bit stereotyped, don’t you think?”
He shrugs again. “There’s a reason stereotypes are stereotypes. It’s because they hold true much of the time.”
“You’re right,” I say, setting my jaw and folding my arms over my chest. “You men do tend toward a love-’em-and-leave-’em mentality. It seems rather lonely and sad to me.”
“It’s a defense mechanism,” Hurley counters. “Like the way you women are always being so secretive.”
“I’m not secretive,” I say.
“Really? Then what was Izzy referring to the other day when he threatened to tell us your real name?”
Crap. A little kid’s voice echoes in my head: You sunk my battleship!
“That was just a stupid inside joke,” I say dismissively, but I can tell from the way Hurley is studying me that he isn’t buying it. “Anyway,” I say, hoping to shift the subject, “I figure Allan will spring me from here as soon as I get my stitches and then I’ll check in at the office so I can help Izzy post the Heinrich couple. Then later tonight I’ll hit up the Somewhere Bar and see if Nelson’s alibi there holds up.”
Hurley sighs. “I still say the husband did it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, we need to check out all the possibilities, right?”
“Right.”
“I’d also like to go back to Shannon’s house and have another look around.”
“Looking for anything in particular?”
I shake my head. “Not really. It’s just a feeling I had when we were there the other night. Something I was missing.”
“Okay, but I want to go with you. How about I give you a call?”
“That’s fine.”
There is a moment of silence and then Hurley pushes out of his chair and shoves it off to one side. “I have things to do so I’ll catch up with you later.”
I nod, cursing the whole love-’em-and-leave-’em thing.
He turns to leave, but then hesitates and looks back at me. “I’m glad you’re okay, Winston. You gave us a bit of a scare there.”
He shoves the curtain aside and is gone in a flash. But his words make me smile so wide that the cut on my head starts to throb. And the memory of the way those blue eyes looked at me makes other parts of my body throb, too, but in a much nicer way.
Chapter 20
By the time my head is stitched and cleaned and I’m ready to go, I realize I have no way to get anywhere. With my car totaled, I’m stranded without wheels. I also don’t have my cell phone and assume it is still inside the wreckage somewhere. I curse myself for not realizing my dilemma sooner and asking Hurley for a lift. The idea of using him as my personal chauffeur, even for a little while, is pretty appealing.
I run through a mental list of possible rides and use one of the ER phones to start making calls. There’s no answer at Izzy and Dom’s house and I can’t remember Izzy’s cell number, which was the only number programmed into my own phone, done by Izzy himself when he gave me the thing. I call the office and Cass informs me that everyone is very busy, and that Izzy heard about my accident and called in a couple of coroners from another jurisdiction to help him with the Heinrichs’ autopsies. They are in the midst of doing them now so the good news is I won’t have to assist with the rotting bodies, but the bad news is there is no one in the office that has the time to ferry me around.
Next I try my sister, Desi, but there is no answer there, either. Fortunately the paramedics did bring my purse with me and, after cleaning off the cottage cheese and jelly remnants, I dig out my wallet and check my cash status to see if I have enough for a cab.
One of the advantages of living in a small town is that the cab service is relatively cheap. They’ll take you anywhere in town for three bucks. But the flip side is that the cab service only runs until sundown. That’s because it’s owned and staffed by a group of senior citizens whose ability to see and drive in the dark is limited. Based on the number of dents I’ve seen on their vans, their ability to see and drive in the daytime is not much better. But the risk of a fender-bender is offset by their maximum speed. Those images you see on TV of New York City cabdrivers busting speed limits and weaving in and out of traffic couldn’t be further from the Sorenson truth.
Though I’m not too keen on risking my involvement in another car accident, my choices are limited so I place the call. The cab’s office is only a few blocks from the hospital and the dispatcher assures me she has someone there waiting to go, but it takes a full half hour for my van to arrive.
Behind the wheel is Bjorn Adamson, an eighty-something gentleman I know from working at the hospital. I took care of him a few times in the ER: once when he was having problems regulating his blood pressure, once for a nosebleed, and once for a minor heart attack. I’d also cared for him in the OR twice not long ago when he had hernia and cataract surgeries. I recall how his daughter said he was having problems passing his urine because of an enlarged prostate and that she thought he might be showing the beginning signs of senile dementia.
Trying not to worry over the fact that my cabdriver’s current state of health could probably generate enough medical bills to send an internist’s kid through college, I climb into the front seat of the van. I do a quick physical assessment honed from my years of nursing and note that his white hair is much sparser since I last saw him—except for the tufts growing out of his ears and nose—and his skin has so many age spots he appears to have a tan. His clothes are wrinkled and I detect the distinct odor of stale urine.
I greet Bjorn by name and ask him how he’s doing.
He doesn’t answer my question; he just sits there staring at me. I assume he’s trying to figure out who I am and how he knows me, so I offer up a little help.
“I’m Mattie Winston. I’m a nurse here, or used to be, and I’ve taken care of you a few times. Remember when you came in for your hernia surgery a few months ago?”
I think I see a faint spark of recognition in his rheumy eyes and he smiles. “You’re a nurse?” he says.
I nod.
“Thank goodness. I could sure use some help with this dag-gummed thing.” With that he reaches down and pulls up the leg of his pants. There, strapped beside his knee, is a urinary catheter leg bag. I can see the catheter snaking its way up his pants and the bag itself is so full it’s about to burst. “Doc says I need to have this goddamned tube stuck up my wiener so I can pee because my prostrate is so big.”
“Prostate,” I corr
ect him.
“Yeah, that’s right, my prostrate. Anyway, my arthritis has gotten so bad these days that my fingers don’t always work like they should and managing this little cap thingy here about drives me nuts. Every time I try to empty this bag I end up with piss all over my hands and my shoes, everywhere but the toilet. See, it’s supposed to just pop off here when you grab this little tab but I never can seem to. . . .”
With that, he manages to pop the cap off just fine and nearly half a liter of urine starts draining out onto the van floor.
“Aw, dammit!” he whines. “See what I mean?”
I do indeed. It’s pretty hard to miss a river of urine flowing toward your feet. I manage to open the van door and hop out before the flow reaches me. It spreads across the floor in a giant pool.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him. “Let me run inside and get some stuff so we can clean that up.”
He nods, pulls a tissue—one individual, two-ply tissue—from his shirt pocket, and starts dabbing at the urine pool. It’s like trying to wipe up the Mississippi River with a single roll of paper towels.
Inside the hospital I round up a bunch of towels, some sanitizing cloths, some isolyzer powder—a nifty substance that will turn any liquid into a dry, sweepable solid—and some linen, and trash bags. Ten minutes later the cab is as clean as it’s going to get—though the stale urine aroma is still present—and Bjorn’s bag is empty and recapped.
Since I never did get to eat lunch, I ask Bjorn if he’d mind taking me to Dairy Airs before he takes me home. I’m hoping Jackie Nash’s mother might be there. He is so grateful for my assistance with his catheter and the parting of the yellow sea that he offers to take me to Dairy Airs for free. When he finds out that my car was totaled in an accident and I have no idea when I’ll be able to get a replacement, he tries to work out a deal with me.
“Tell you what,” he says. “If you’ll empty this dag-gummed bag for me a couple of times a day, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go for free in return. Whaddaya say?”
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