“What about the study? What’s the lowdown on these patients?”
Delores hefted her purse onto her shoulder and was definitely ready to take off. “What low down?”
“Okay. What do you think—?”
“What’s there to think about?” Delores started down the corridor, looked back at Gina and said, “Didn’t Ethan tell you … the patients in this facility are finished with the study.”
“Yes, but—”
Delores just kept walking and was gone in an instant.
Chapter 9
Gina was at a loss for words; she was actually dumbstruck as she watched Delores leave the unit, move toward the elevator, and vanish from the floor.
How unprofessional.
The departing nurse had not given a report or breakdown for expected patient care. No guidance, no direction of any kind for the new girl in town. Boom! Gina Mazzio, RN, would be giving nursing care to fifteen people she knew nothing about; their lives had been entrusted, no, thrust into her hands.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. In fact, nothing like this had ever happened to her before, except during an emergency. She needed some insight—the ins-and-outs of the facility, hard facts about the patients on the Wing A unit. That’s what nurses did for each other, part of what made them professionals.
And this whole set up feels out of whack.
She mentally back-stepped and went over the introduction to the facility step by step—Ethan had specifically told her and Harry that although these patients had been part of a Phase III national clinical drug trial, they were the failures. They were only here for medical care.
What kind of medical care?
“You better get a move on,” Rocky said, “or we’ll both be in trouble.” He’d come back to the nurses’ station without her seeing or hearing him.
“What do you mean by trouble?” Gina snapped. She could feel the muscles in her neck bunching up. She didn’t like or trust this goon. Now he was telling her … the charge nurse … how to do her job. That was no small matter. There was a lot at stake here for her. She had a license on the line; she didn’t even want to begin to think about what would happen to her if she lost that.
“Where are the patient profiles, Rocky?”
He sneered, yes, sneered at her, putting her flat-out into attack mode. “I don’t see you moving,” she said, looking around the desk; pretending to be lost in a search. She shifted papers, deliberately looked under the desk, shrugged her shoulders. “I still see no charts here.”
“This is the twenty-first century, lady. They’re in the computer.”
And there it was, just like when she grew up. Another bully trying to push her buttons, shove her around, stake out a territory at her expense.
She paced out a long stride, putting her into his personal space. “Let’s get one thing damn straight here, Rocky. When I say jump … you jump! Don’t give me a lot of smartass back talk. Pull those profiles up on the screen … and do it now!”
She could see he didn’t exactly know how to change gears, but he planted his butt in the chair at the computer and scrolled his way into the nurse’s notes for every in-house patient.
Gina sat down in a rolling desk chair, waved her hand for him to scoot over so she could move in front of the monitor. She scanned through the entries, and without exception, they all only dealt with a variety of drugs for pain management for each individual. Not only that, all of the patients were due for their first morning dose now.
“Where are the medicine cards?” She had to slow down, calm down; she heard the panic in her own voice. These patients were pretty much getting narcotics like clockwork, four times a day, and right now they were probably climbing the walls.
“Go check up on everybody, Rocky. Tell them I’ll have their meds PDQ.” But he didn’t move; he just sat there. “Look, man. We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot with each other this morning, but we’ll settle that later. Right now we’ve got to take care of these people.” She waved toward the patient rooms. He held out a packet of medicine cards and she took them. The orders on them would allow her to move at top speed. She held out the other hand for a high five. “Truce?”
Rocky’s eyes narrowed but he smacked her open palm—a little too hard.
* * * *
A piercing scream echoed throughout the unit. Harry bolted down the hall; it was coming from the far end of the corridor.
He checked the posted name outside the room: Rhonda Jenkins.
He stepped inside and saw the woman hunched over, standing at the barred window crying. She was leaning with all her weight on the sill, trying to hold herself up.
Harry moved to her side and slipped an arm around her fragile waist. She jerked as though he’d punched her.
“It’s okay, Ms. Jenkins. I’m one of the new nurses and I’m here to help you.”
She looked at him with the opaque eyes of a trapped animal. “The pain. I can’t stand it anymore.” She held out a pleading hand; her fingers were disfigured by tight contortions that made Harry wince.
“Here, Ms. Jenkins, let me get you to a chair, then I’ll be right back with your medicine.” He tried to support her arm but the pressure made her cry out. “Let me bring the chair to you. He stretched out and grabbed onto an armrest and dragged it over.
She was still sobbing, but she’d calmed down and had stopped screaming. “What’s your name?” she asked. “Are you a nurse?”
“Yes, I’m a nurse. My name is Harry Lucke. But you can call me Harry.”
A fleeting glimmer of humor reflected in her eyes. “And you can call me Rhonda.” He placed a hand on her head and gently smoothed her hair. “I’ll be back with your medicine very soon.”
Harry returned to the nurses’ station to find a display of red lights. Everyone on the unit was buzzing for help. He quickly read Rhonda’s medicine card, then opened the narcotics box
Demerol 100 milligrams, IM.
Considering her age and condition, it was a lot of juice to take on a regular basis. He quickly brought up her profile on the computer. It confirmed what he already guessed: Rhonda had an advanced case of osteoporosis. Along with being almost blind, her whole body was not only crumbling, she was in a deep depression, complicated by total exhaustion.
He drew up the med for Rhonda, rushed down the hall, and found her in her chair, head almost bent to her knees. Intermittent sobs wracked her body. Pete was in the room straightening her bed. He seemed oblivious to either one of them. For the moment, Harry ignored him and gently moved the patient’s underclothes aside and gave her the injection in her hip. She gave a soft whimper.
Pete and Harry left the room at the same time.
“I noticed Rhonda was dressed already. Did the night shift dress her?”
“Yeah.” The orderly moved into the next room while Harry continued down the corridor.
Once again in the nurses’ station, Harry quickly arranged medicine cups and syringes on a large tray; every medication was an opiate of some kind. The dose level in each and every case was in the stratosphere. He worked quickly and it didn’t take him long to get everything ready.
He went from room to room at top speed, introducing himself and administering the pain killers.
Every patient looked at him as though he had in some way betrayed them.
Chapter 10
It was 4 pm when Gina buzzed Harry. “It’s quiet enough now … I can get away. How about we coordinate and have our dinner break together?”
“Wish I could, babe, but I think my evening meal is going to consist of catching up on nurses’ notes.”
“Rough day?”
“You don’t know the half of it. See you back at our apartment around 7:30.”
Gina was disappointed; she’d looked forward to seeing Harry before the end of the shift, but his response didn’t surprise her—this was the first time she’d had a free moment the entire day. She’d spent most of her time with agitated patients and a sulky, aggress
ive Rocky. She wanted to talk to the orderly about their edgy start, but he continued to make her jumpy. Each time she was on the verge of apologizing for not playing nice, she was back to snapping at him for some new insult he’d tossed her way. When he called her a “California short-timer,” that ended any kind of truce between them. She got the message, in a not too subtle way: He was telling her that she would be gone in three months, and so who cared what she thought? Sort of a king-of-the-mountain mentality. It was so childish she didn’t really get mad, but she was still irritated—the guy kept pushing her buttons. Besides, it seemed strange for anyone to call her a Californian. She still thought of herself as a New Yorker.
When the two of them had delivered all the patient dinner trays, she took the elevator to the third floor and wandered into the cafeteria. She wasn’t terribly hungry, but not eating wasn’t an option—she faded quickly without having food every couple of hours. She usually carried some kind of snack she could pop into her mouth when her energy dipped. Today it had been raisins. But they were long gone.
The place was empty. The heavy silence made her lonely for the normal hospital cafeteria environment, a place where people from all the different units and specialties had a chance to exchange information and gossip. There was always something going on and it was rare that she ate alone.
She looked at the vending machine, with its limited assortment of sandwiches. She chose turkey on a roll, then went to the soda machine and bought a diet Coke.
It was hard to get comfortable in the room’s molded fiberglass chairs. When she took the first bite of the sandwich, she knew it was the last time she would be buying anything from that machine—the bread was dried out and the poultry was more like mystery meat. She drowned the small bite with the Coke and wondered if all her dinner breaks were going to be this bad. At least if Harry had been here they would have found something to laugh at.
Man, its way too quiet here.
Her watch told her she still had enough time to hurry to their apartment and make a bowl of soup, or at least find something else. She tossed the sandwich into a trash basket across the room, gave herself two points for the shot, and left the lounge. At the hallway leading to their apartment, she hesitated, then walked back to the elevator.
She decided to go see Harry, see if she could help him. When she started to press “2”, she noticed a black square under “1.” Just a plain square with no writing. Underneath it was a narrow three-inch slot. It had to be an unadvertised destination to a lower floor.
Probably the kitchen. Maybe I can grab a free meal, or at least nose around.
She tapped it.
The car moved down and then clunked to a halt. The door remained closed.
Wadda you want, “Open Sesame?”
She laughed at herself and quickly checked her watch. At this rate she knew there’d be no food until after work. The slot and the closed elevator door kept staring at her. She pulled her ID card from around her neck and shoved it into the slot.
Whoosh, the door jerked open.
Mmmmm. Funny, Ethan didn’t say anything about this.
At first her feet refused to drag her into the dimly lit area, but then she forced herself to step out into the corridor. She’d been holding her breath and was startled when the elevator snapped close and started its climb again.
It was a weird, shadowy area, and hard to see much of anything. But like the second floor patient units, there seemed to be only two wings. She could either go left or right. No, wait a minute: straight ahead was a narrow tunnel-like pathway that disappeared into darkness. Her eye did that twitch thing, like it always did when she was scared or cornered.
Well, I’m not going there. No way!
The tunnel made her think about being a kid again, about the deserted old studio in her rundown neighborhood. Most kids said it was haunted—they all stayed away from it, including Gina. But one day the place became the only way to get past a gang of boys without taking a beating—or something worse.
That was when the twitch started.
* * * *
Five boys, ranging from 10 to 12, were standing in a don’t-cross-me line on the sidewalk. And they were only a short half-block away. They tried staring her down, stood tall with their thumbs hooked into their jeans, sure that she was going down, was going to have to take whatever they tossed her way. And they were in no hurry—they wanted her to think about it, wanted her to be really scared.
Her eye started twitching. Gina had almost been caught by these same boys before and she’d seen them beat on some poor jerk … like her. It would be serious.
She stood near the ten-foot, iron-bar-fence that surrounded the creepy deserted movie studio; she wouldn’t be climbing up and over it, that was for sure—each bar had a spiked top. Her only way in would be to squeeze through. The bars were pretty close together and she wasn’t sure she could suck in her gut enough to get through to the courtyard.
She walked past the old studio most days. The place was falling down, and she was sure it was haunted. That’s what everyone said. Her apartment house was right next to it but at the other end of the two-block-long building. She would stand on the fire-escape outside her bedroom window and try to see inside one of the dirty windows of the old studio. But she never saw anything.
The boys must have figured she had enough time to freak out and would really be scared; besides, they were probably tired of standing around and doing nothing. They began to walk slow and easy in her direction. She checked behind her again, but thugs from the same gang were standing at the other end, blocking her escape.
They suddenly let out a war whoop and ran full out. She held her breath, sucked everything in and tried to squeeze through the bars. She didn’t think she was going to make it, but she pulled her gut in so hard she couldn’t breathe … And finally slipped through.
The five of them now stood right outside the spiked fence, looking in at her. One of them yelled, “You stupid bitch, you better come out of there before the vampires suck you dry.” Then they laughed.
Someone else screamed out, “Leave that to us, you little pussy.”
“Here, kitty, kitty. Here kitty, kitty.”
She knew they couldn’t get in this way—they’d never fit through the bars. Besides, all their tough talk didn’t hide their fear of the old studio. She was safe here.
Or was she?
One thing she knew: she wasn’t going out where they were. No way. She’d just have to run through the two-block length to the other end of the studio. It was the only way home.
I gotta, gotta.
Gina started running in large circles to work up speed. With her eyelids half closed, she took off.
Dear God, please, please, help me. I promise I’ll never be bad again. I promise … I promise … promise … help me … help me.”
She ran flat out, her heart hammering in her chest, her shoes crunching down hard on scattered glass, which made her slip and slide, over and over again. Creepy moans were all around her. She ran harder, faster, until she was panting so rapidly she couldn’t catch another breath. She stopped, bent over, hands on her thighs, and looked around.
When she calmed down, not only an eerie sense of courage, but a feeling of inner peace made her really look at her surroundings. She studied the spooky building.
One wall of the three-story structure was crumbling. Dirty old stucco was peeling off the other walls. She’d never seen the inside before.
She walked up a cobblestone pathway to a loading platform. Rotted, splintered crates were tossed everywhere. A thick rope hung from an open second-floor window over the platform; it swayed in the breeze, frayed strands spread out like pleading fingers. And the moaning? It was coming from the wind blowing through broken doors and smashed windows. One long moan that never stopped.
There was nothing here to be afraid of … at least if she stayed on the outside.
She whooped, tossed out a wild laugh, and did an Indian dance of joy, round and rou
nd in a circle before she walked the rest of the way home.
* * * *
Gina looked at the dark underground tunnel-like area and smiled. But she still wasn’t going in there. Instead, she turned toward a buzz of voices far down the dimly lit corridor. She walked carefully, trying to keep her sneakers from squeaking.
The male voices got louder and louder the farther in she went. There was light ahead, coming from a pair of swinging doors. Each door had a glass panel high up and there was a two-inch or so crack where the door’s rubber flaps didn’t quite match up.
Gina tried standing on tiptoe but the glass was too high to see inside. She bent close in to the flap and could make out a long kitchen counter against a wall and a wooden cutting block in the middle. She leaned into the door and slipped—knocked her shoulder hard against it.
The conversation behind the closed doors stopped. Gina jolted up, turned and ran down the long hallway back to the elevator.
She heard the men far down the corridor as she hammered the button with her fist. “Come on, come on!”
The elevator door sprang open, but a large hand grabbed her arm.
“Where do you think you’re going, sister?”
Gina’s heart froze in her chest. She tried to pull away as she looked into the man’s intense eyes—they seemed to burn a hole through her.
“Hey, Bernie, can’t you see you’re scaring―” the other man leaned over and read her name tag, “―Gina.” He lifted the hand away from her arm like it was something slimy or diseased. The man smiled and said, “I’m Jeff. Don’t let this animal scare you. We’re just not used to seeing any pretty ladies down here.” He reached over to a switch on the wall next to the elevator door and gave the area more light. The place was still pretty creepy, but Jeff seemed friendly enough. He was tall and slender, and he seemed to be going out of his way to make her feel at ease.
“What’s going on? What are you doing here?” Jeff’s voice was probing, but polite.
“Actually, I just started this job … it’s my very first day and I came looking for the kitchen. The food in the vending machine in the cafeteria was a disaster.” She smiled at the two of them. “I mean, it’s not like I can run into the Golden Arches down the street. I was hoping you had something decent to eat down here.”
Bone Pit: A Chilling Medical Suspense Thriller (The Gina Mazzio Series Book 3) Page 6
