The Pain Nurse

by Jon Talton

  “Just act like you belong,” she said out loud, pulling to the curb three houses down. Suddenly a pair of headlights appeared behind her and swept across the dashboard. She was clammy with guilt. What if they live here? She slid down in the seat, trying to let the headrest conceal her. But the black sedan drove on by and turned into a cul-de-sac farther on. Only after it passed did she think to turn off the engine so the fog from the tailpipe was not visible. She had never been a sneak. It felt strange.

  At the house, the garage door stayed open as long minutes passed. Then she saw Judd Mason emerge on the driveway, still wearing only his scrubs. He stood at the top of the long driveway, seeming to survey the street. She unconsciously slid down further in her seat. He walked down the driveway. In his hand he held a plastic bag. He looked around again, then deposited the bag in the trash hamper sitting by the curb. With quick, long strides he walked back to the garage and the door closed behind him. She tracked him through the house as lights came on in the front room, then went off, followed by the lights turning on in the second story.

  Cheryl Beth sat in the car as the cold infiltrated the windshield, came through the door, took control of her feet. She tried not to breathe so deeply. The windshield was starting to fog up. She could hear herself lightly wheezing and she took a puff of the Combivent. Cincinnati was hell on asthma. Sinus Valley. Anxiety was hell on asthma, too. She pulled out the bright red Tylenol lanyard that held her ID and her yellow pain card and started fiddling with it. She had been a nail-biter in high school. Now she pried at the lamination on the yellow card showing the Wong-Baker faces pain rating system. It started with a circle with bright eyes and a smile and moved up the scale to a circle with tears and an inverted U as a mouth. She had felt that way lately.

  What happened next was pure impulsiveness. She started the car and crept down the road with the headlights off until she was in front of Judd Mason’s house. His upstairs lights went out. She took a quick look around—all the houses on the street were asleep—and opened the door, stepping out into the chill. She counted the steps to keep herself calm: eleven. Then she was in front of the heavy plastic trash hamper. The lid came up easily and the plastic bag was right on top of a pile of white, tied trash bags. She grabbed it, set the lid down carefully, and walked back to the car, only ten steps this time, her throat tight with tension. Then she was safe in the car and moving. She didn’t turn on the headlights until she was another block away.

  She came out on Galbraith Road alone. Or she thought she was, until she saw headlights appear out of the same side street. Her stomach tightened. Surely Mason couldn’t have seen her and given chase. She accelerated and left the headlights far behind her, then she was around more cars as she neared the freeway. At the red light, she turned and picked through the trash. There it was: the white envelope with Christine’s name written on it. She had stolen it. Was it stealing if something had already been thrown away? Was it stealing something that had already been stolen? What was this nurse doing with an opened envelope belonging to Christine?

  She turned back toward the city and merged into the fast lane, exhaustion starting to make her body feel heavy. Now she was really looking forward to home, and hoping that everybody could make it through the night without a page to return to the hospital. The heater was a relief after sitting so long in the cold.

  The rearview mirror was irresistible. Was that the same pair of headlights that had followed her out onto Galbraith? Now she was just tired and guilty and paranoid. She would decide tomorrow what to do about the letter. She would read it tonight, though. She plucked it out of the trash and slipped it in the lab coat pocket that held her other notes from the day. Then she settled in the seat and drove as the freeway made its gentle descent toward downtown and the Ohio River.

  She eased off the interstate and turned onto Taft, the one-way that would take her home. She crossed Reading and it turned into Calhoun. The bundle of buildings of Pill Hill blazed with lights, dominated by the vast University Hospital complex. Farther to the east was the imposing deco tower of Cincinnati Memorial. Soon she would be passing the University of Cincinnati on the right, as she did every night. But her stomach was folded in on itself. She was sure the same car had followed her off the freeway and was just a few blocks behind her. She cursed each red light, but it gave her a chance to look back. The car was right behind her at Vine. It wasn’t the Accord. But it might be the black sedan that had passed her back in Kenwood. There was only one occupant, but she couldn’t see more because of the glare of the headlights. When she looked forward again the light was green.

  She was overreacting, she just knew it. The car would pass on when she turned left on Clifton Avenue to head home. But it didn’t. Both her hands clamped the steering wheel until they ached. The driver was brazen now, right behind her. It was the black sedan. Panic flooded her limbs. Now she was in her neighborhood of old bungalows and century-old trees, but he was right behind her. She couldn’t let herself be trapped on her dead-end street. So she turned on Warner, doubled back north on Ohio and turned right on McMillan. Traffic was light and all the businesses that catered to the university were closed. Only a couple of bars were open. The black car stayed with her. She accelerated and turned south on Vine, not yet sure what to do. Her right hand fished out her cell phone. Should she call the police? Maybe it was all a mistake.

  The skyscrapers of downtown shimmered ahead as Vine dropped down through the dreary blocks of the ghetto. She raced past the dark, abandoned buildings toward Central Parkway. She hit sixty. She never drove this fast in the city. The sedan paced her. The light at Central Parkway was green and she turned onto the wide boulevard. It had once been a canal, and the decaying, unfinished subway was underneath it. But tonight it was just a wide, desolate expanse. The Kroger building looked like a silver shoebox set on its side. The needle on the gas gauge was below an eighth of a tank.

  “Damn!” Her voice sounded as if it were coming from far away.

  Then she saw salvation in the squat, plain building that was Cincinnati police headquarters. She swung onto Ezzard Charles Drive and stopped directly behind a police car where the officer was getting out. She slammed the gearshift into park and leapt from the car.

  “Help me!” Cheryl Beth ran to the cop. “I’m being followed.”

  She saw in terror that the black sedan had stopped right behind her.

  “That’s the car.”

  The cop was an overweight man in his forties in a dark uniform jacket and the white peaked cap that always made her think of an ice-cream man. She pointed again, seeing that the car had turned off its headlights. She could see one silhouette behind the wheel. She looked at the gun in the officer’s belt for comfort.

  He arched his black flashlight against his shoulder and pointed at the car.

  “I can understand, ma’am,” he said. “Black male. Menacing behavior. He’s been a problem before.”

  She was about to speak but then saw he was smiling at her. Then she saw Detective Dodds emerge from the sedan.

  “What’s the matter with you!” She had stomped over to him and was yelling before any prudent centers of her brain could take hold. “Are you crazy? What were you trying to do?”

  The big man adjusted the collar on his camel hair coat and arched his eyebrows.

  “You took quite a way home, Cheryl Beth. And why were you digging in other people’s trash?”

  “Damn you! Why were you spying on me, following me!”

  “Since you left the hospital.” He looked at her with easy suspicion.

  She could feel herself close to crying, which she did when she was really mad. She hated it because it made her seem weak. She shook her head vigorously to stop it and let herself feel the cold. Her foggy breath was coming out in quick, angry bursts.

  “I’m sure you won’t mind if I search your car.”

  She stared at him, suddenly afraid, feeling naked. “I sure as hell might mind.” She struggled to keep her voice calm.
She settled herself down with an effort, like riding a bicycle uphill. “What’s going on?”

  He was about to speak when his cell phone rang. He held out a finger and answered it.

  “What do you want? What the hell?” This was followed by worse profanities, his face pinched with rage. He put away the phone and rested his hands on his hips, looking uncertain. Then he gave her arm a light but firm pull.

  “Come with me.”

  She felt her pager buzz and pulled back, studying the number on the readout.

  “Sorry, I’ve got to go back to the hospital.”

  He took her arm again, gripping more tightly this time. “That’s fine. I do, too.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “So what does a pain nurse do? I’ve never heard of a pain nurse.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

  “Never spent a day of my life in the hospital.”

  Cheryl Beth glanced across the seat at Detective Dodds. He stared ahead, one big hand on the steering wheel. He drove across Central Parkway and through the dense, narrow streets of Over-the-Rhine.

  “Then it’s your good luck,” she said.

  “So what does a pain nurse do?”

  “You keep asking that question.” Cheryl Beth stared ahead, too. She made herself put her hands flat on the tops of her thighs. It was a posture she had learned to keep calm.

  “I’m just curious,” he said. “My daughter has talked about going to nursing school.”

  “Well, we need good nurses. Now pain management is a recognized specialty. You have nurse practitioners doing it, too. She could look at the American Society for Pain Management Nursing…”

  “Is that what you studied in school?”

  “No. It took a long time for pain management to get respect. A lot of doctors didn’t think pain was a critical issue. But I scrubbed in with a fabulous surgeon. What a character! He was a tyrant. Every day he would scream at me, ‘Had enough?!’ I would scream back, ‘I like you!’” She looked at Dodds to see if he was capable of a smile. His face stared ahead like the bow of a battleship. “But he was a big patient advocate and really cared about pain. I would check on his patients the day after surgery. He taught me a lot. I worked in the OR for eight years. Then I worked in a hospice for three years. They were doing cutting-edge stuff. Eventually, I ended up doing pain management seminars and Memorial hired me.”

  “But why pain?”

  “It really matters. I hate to see people suffer.”

  “So this is personal. You had some experience with this in your life?”

  “Yes,” she said, her mouth dry. “Someone I loved.”

  They rode several minutes in silence before he spoke again. She didn’t like being alone with her thoughts and the silence.

  “Where do you work?”

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “Do you work in a ward, in the recovery room?”

  “I work all over.”

  “So you have the run of the hospital. Interesting.”

  The way he said it made her uncomfortable again. He wasn’t just making conversation.

  “Detective…”

  Just then something dark raced across the windshield and shattered on the roof of the car. She visibly jumped. Around them were lovely derelict buildings and an empty street, no sign of an assailant.

  “Just the neighborhood knuckleheads.” Dodds drove on at the same steady pace. “I don’t have time to go start a riot tonight.”

  He wasn’t smiling. He looked as if he never smiled. She looked back to see several silhouettes emerge into the street behind them. He drove two blocks over to Main Street and turned north. It was a cold night but people were on the sidewalks, nicely dressed and holding hands, going from bar to bar. The restored old storefronts glittered, a startling difference from the disrepair and neglect of even three blocks away. She looked the other way when they passed the bar where she had met Christine that night. They sat in a rear booth and drank. Christine had a martini, and Cheryl Beth ordered her usual Bushmills on the rocks. One was enough. Two was probably more than she could handle. She had drunk two. Christine had downed three martinis. A pair of handsome young men had actually hit on them. Cheryl Beth pulled her coat tighter against her.

  “Detective.” She recovered her voice. “Why are you taking me to the hospital? Why were you following me tonight? I thought you had arrested the man who…”

  “I still consider it an open case.” He spoke calmly, no malice in his voice, but Cheryl Beth felt her limbs go cold.

  “That nutball didn’t do it,” he went on. “You might have. You have motive, because you were sleeping with her husband. You have opportunity: you have the run of the hospital. You can be anywhere, any time. Apparently you met with her the night she was killed. Maybe you two fought, and you followed her back to the hospital…”

  “Wait a minute!”

  “I haven’t read you your rights,” he said—same calm but domineering voice. “So if I were you, I’d just listen. Now it turns out that your lover lied about where he was that night. He has no alibi. So tonight I ask myself, what happens when Cheryl Beth Wilson leaves work? As it turns out, she drives out to Kenwood and trash picks. I find that very interesting.”

  “I can explain.” She had no idea what she would say next.

  Dodds ignored her. “Now maybe on television, something like this happens and the story makes it out to be some boogeyman, some serial killer. In the real world, it’s almost always somebody who knows ’em. Estranged spouses and romantic triangles. It’s usually that simple.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “I’m warning you…”

  “No.” Cheryl Beth could hear the sharpness in her voice. “You’re telling me you didn’t arrest the killer today? It’s not Lennie?”

  Dodds was silent. She felt a sudden wave of nausea knock through her.

  “You’re wrong about me. And there’s still a killer out there and somebody was standing in my damned flower beds looking into my house—after Christine was killed!” She knew she was over the top. She didn’t care. “Now, you either arrest me, or let me out at the hospital, because a patient needs me.”

  They were pulling into the ER parking lot. “Don’t go far,” he said. “I know how to find you. When you’re done, come down to the basement. You know where.”

  ***

  Cheryl Beth padded along on the new, heavy-duty carpet of the hallway into Four-East. It was already looking ratty. She was surprised to see Denise there, away from her usual floor.

  “Angela was sick, so they moved me over at the last minute,” Denise said. “I’m sorry to get you up here, baby girl. I called his doc and he said to call you. It’s a compliment, really.”

  “Right.” Cheryl Beth looked around the chart caddy for the paperwork. As often happened, the chart was missing. She squinted at the white board, which gave a basic rundown of the patient and his meds.

  “Sorry,” Denise said. “This station is a mess. Blunt chest trauma as a result of an auto accident. Chest tube. It’s been in for a week and he’s really hurting. Why are your hands shaking?”

  Cheryl Beth stripped off her coat and sat heavily, studying her hands. They never shook. But a tremble ran through both. She knotted them into fists and it stopped. “The cops don’t think Lennie is the killer,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That’s what I said. But it gets worse. This one detective, he’s acting like I’m a suspect. Denise, I could get fired and blackballed. Stephanie Ott already hates me. I don’t know what to do.” She folded her arms across her chest, feeling her breasts through the soft fabric of her scrubs. They were softer now. Her body was becoming a stranger in middle age. She looked up at Denise. “It looks bad on the surface. The thing with Gary…”

  “I know.” She said it low and sympathetically, but Cheryl Beth angrily waved her hands.

  “Everybody in this fucking hospital knows!” She brought her voice down. “Sorry. Sorr
y.” She held her hands out and they were steady. “Let’s get to work.”

  “Baby girl, nobody could think you had anything to do with it. That’s crazy. I was with you that night. I gave you the message to go down there.”

  “That would play well before a jury,” Cheryl Beth said, laughing ruefully. “Did you take Christine’s call that night?”

  “No,” Denise said. “The ward clerk handed it to me. It must have come in when we were working on poor Mrs. Dahl.”

  So Christine might have called just before she was killed. Why did she call when she could have paged her? Why did she want to talk at all—what more was there to say? The details of the night came rushing back upon her.

  “So you came on duty at eleven?”

  Denise nodded. “And that poor old lady was hurting so bad. I say, ‘enough of this, I’m calling Cheryl Beth.’ So I paged you.”

  “Had you seen Lustig that night?”

  “On that floor? No way. Anyway, she wasn’t even cutting any more.”

  “So I came in around eleven-twenty, say? We worked with Mrs. Dahl for maybe half an hour and I spent another half an hour writing the new orders.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “So it was nearly twelve-thirty and I was about to leave when you saw the message?”

  “Right. It must have come in while we were in the room with Mrs. Dahl. It definitely wasn’t there when I came on duty.”

  Cheryl Beth made herself stand and they walked toward the patient’s room. She could hear moaning in the distance. She stopped and faced Denise. “Ever run into a nurse named Judd Mason?”