The Pain Nurse

by Jon Talton

  “Great job today,” she said. “You’re just doing great.” When the other therapist left to deal with a different patient, she whispered. “Thank you for talking to me the other night. I feel better telling the truth.”

  “I know.”

  ***

  It was nearly three p.m. when he wheeled himself into the newest wing of the hospital and through the highly polished wooden doors that led to the administrative offices. Stan Berkowitz didn’t just have his own office, he also had a secretary, a petite young woman who seemed shocked to see a patient in a wheelchair in a hospital. She gave him the brush-off, but then he showed his badge and told her he and Stan were old friends. Her manner instantly changed from brusque to cooperative. The old cop who had broken Will in on the homicide detail had told him that a good detective rarely needed to show his badge, that he should be able to get answers just by the way he handled himself. It was true—real detectives didn’t flash badges with the repetition of their counterparts on television. But now Will needed any edge he could get. The woman reappeared and said Stan would be happy to see him.

  Berkowitz didn’t look that way.

  “Just when I start thinking happy thoughts, Mister Internal Affairs shows up again.” Berkowitz was sitting on a round, cherry wood conference table dangling his legs over the edge like a child. He looked like a man with too much time on his hands. It wasn’t as if a doctor had recently been murdered in his hospital. He wore a dark blue suit and a red paisley tie. Will wore his usual sweatpants and T-shirt, hating them. He had always worn suits on the job. A suit said serious detective.

  While much of the hospital looked threadbare, Berkowitz’s office was comfortably outfitted with an L-shaped desk, leather sofa, and the conference table flanked by three chairs, all of it new. His old CPD badge was mounted on a plaque behind his desk, along with several framed community awards. A large tri-fold of family photos sat on his desk.

  “My sons,” he said, pointing to the photos, showing two teenage versions of himself. “At Country Day. Never could have afforded that on a cop’s salary. What part of town you grow up in, Borders?”

  “Oakley.”

  “Getting kind of fou-fou now,” he said.

  “It wasn’t back then.” Will rolled up to the table and faced Berkowitz, who continued to swing his legs playfully, a man without a care in the world. Will was sore and constipated. He fought to keep it off his face.

  “Don’t you have a son? How’s he doing?”

  “Fine,” Will said. There was nothing more to say, certainly not to Stan Berkowitz.

  “So what, aren’t they treating you right down in rehab?”

  “I just have a few questions…”

  Berkowitz laughed, showing bright white teeth, looking relaxed and congressional again. “Wish I could help, a former brother officer and all that, but Dodds told me not to talk to you.”

  “Huh.” Now it was Will’s turn to laugh. He started to wheel around but Berkowitz’s voice stopped him.

  “What the hell is that for?” A cop harshness crept in.

  “I’m just surprised you’d listen to Dodds, considering what he’s said about you and all, David.”

  “Don’t fucking call me David!” he sputtered. “What are you talking about? What about Dodds?”

  “I’ve said too much.”

  “Hell, no. Tell me.”

  Will turned back to face him, looking him in the eye, then looking away and sighing. “Oh, hell, Stan, not your fault you washed out of homicide. It’s a shit job anyway. Look where you are now. Better than any of us.” Berkowitz had stopped swinging his legs and now had his hands flat on the tops of his thighs, his suit jacket open wide, exposing a little .38 Smith & Wesson in his belt. Will went on, “Let’s just say Dodds wasn’t your friend when you were on loan to the detail…”

  “Goddamn it!” Berkowitz slapped the table, slid down, and walked heavily over to his desk, seeming to seek safe harbor. “I always knew it, always knew it. Shit, he wouldn’t even have that job if the department wasn’t under pressure to hire people of a Nubian persuasion, if you get my drift. All the shit we used to take from the Sentinels—hell, they have their own organization! They won’t even support the FOP! I always knew Dodds did me in. I was a good detective.”

  Will didn’t bother to correct him: black officers were members of the Fraternal Order of Police, too. The right hot button had been pushed, and how. Will hadn’t exactly lied: Berkowitz had failed to make it in homicide and Dodds had thought he was a lightweight. When the shouting stopped, Will spoke again.

  “So tell me about Judd Mason.”

  “Yeah, screw Dodds.” Berkowitz flopped into his chair. “Judd Mason. I know him. He’s a circulating nurse. Used to work in the OR.”

  “He worked in the operating room with Dr. Lustig.”

  “That’s right, now that you mention it.” He rubbed his chin and stared down at the neat piles of papers on his desk. “I always wondered about him. We had a nurse here a couple of years ago, said he was a stalker. I guess they had a thing going and she tried to break it off. We try not to get involved in these kinds of things—hell, there’s more screwing going on around here than you’d believe. But she filed a complaint and I talked to him.”

  “Is she…?”

  “She left. Moved to Columbus. He left her alone after I talked to him. But he kind of seemed to have a screw loose.”

  “How so?” Will asked.

  Berkowitz shrugged. “Just something about the guy. Something quiet and strange. I guess he’s an okay nurse. Strange to me to see guys as nurses anyway. What’s their thing unless they’re homos, right?”

  “So did you think about Mason when Dr. Lustig was killed?”

  “Not really,” he said, crooking his mouth into a downward U. Will looked at him long enough for him to exclaim, “What?”

  “Just seems kind of strange,” Will said. “He was stalking a nurse. He had worked with Lustig. She received telephone threats.”

  “Didn’t seem connected to me.” Berkowitz held out his hands guilelessly.

  “Did this Mason have any cop connections?”

  “Huh? Cop connections?”

  “Did he have cop friends? Drop any names when you talked to him about stalking?”

  He waved it away. “Hey, I’d love to visit all day, but I’ve got a meeting. Off-site, as they say. I’ll let you in on a little secret, Borders. I’m about to leave this dump and take a job as head of security at University Hospital.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Hell, yes. Thanks. This place…who knows what’s going to happen. Those neuro docs wanted all the paperwork put on computers. I heard they were going to pull out their practice if it didn’t happen. So they bring in these kids from Silicon Valley, get a big federal grant, and a year later, nothing. Your Dr. Lustig was part of this. Now that she’s dead it’ll be delayed even longer. This place can’t survive on just treating the ghetto. Neuro’s good, though. You were lucky. Lucky to have that city insurance, too. Anyway, University is where this old cop is headed. No more budget cuts. No more worrying about gangbangers coming in to finish off some schmuck they shot down in the ’hood.”

  “Why is the hospital covering up this murder?” Will tossed it gently, just as Berkowitz took a breath to continue speaking.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A doctor murdered at a city hospital. When I was on homicide that would have been a red ball. Unless somebody had the juice to make it go away.”

  Berkowitz sprang up—that effortless move to his feet seemed like a miracle—and started for the door.

  “Buddy, I got no comment on any of that. Get my drift? You need to get feeling better.”

  “Do the bigs at University know about Robert Cecil?”

  Berkowitz stopped midway to the door, his skin suddenly drained of color.

  ***

  It was difficult to explain cops and race to civilians. When Will and Dodds had caught up w
ith Craig Factor, crashing at a crack house on the edge of Liberty Hill, he had sprinted outside and down the street. As usual, it had been left to Will to lead the chase. He knew Dodds would come huffing behind, but he had the speed. He had gotten close enough to grab Factor’s shoulders and wrestle him down to the pavement. They were in the middle of the street. Factor was a big guy, at least two hundred and fifty pounds, and wrestled and swung punches. By the time Dodds had arrived, the two of them were able to get Factor under control, face down, Will’s knee in his back, as they cuffed him. The schools were on spring break, and at least two dozen young black men with nothing to do had gathered on the sidewalk, watching, then catcalling. Then one threw a bottle. It might have gotten uglier if a lot of backup hadn’t arrived quickly. But, Will knew, if a news crew had been filming the arrest, many civilians might have assumed that there was no more to the story than the image of a big white cop abusing a handcuffed black man.

  Most cops weren’t racist, but in a city like Cincinnati, with a huge underclass, the police spent most of their time dealing with crime and trouble in black neighborhoods. You could become jaundiced after one shift. You had to fight to remember, most of the people in those neighborhoods were law-abiding, trying to get by. They were under siege. Drugs and guns and too many unemployed young men were a lethal combination. Will had taken the classes, heard the sociology, back when he thought he might get a master’s degree. On the streets, it was a scary reality not covered in the studies and the textbooks. Being a solitary cop at night in a hostile neighborhood.

  Too many black men were being shot by the police. Will had investigated some of the shootings; some were righteous, some there was a question. He always tried to do those cases by the book. He knew that he hadn’t been there in that moment of terror, when a life-and-death decision had to be made. When he had been fighting with Craig Factor, before Dodds got there, Factor had been wildly reaching for Will’s gun. Another cop might have just shot the son of a bitch. Will might have, too. Then the first thing the media would have reported was that Will Borders was “a white police officer.” Nothing else would matter but race.

  But some cops were racists, and Cincinnati was in many ways a Southern city, right across the river from Kentucky. The color line was hard, reinforced by the city’s makeup of Germans and briars, fierce loyalties and old grudges, built up over time like geologic sediments. Ten years ago, Robert Cecil might or might not have been aware of this history when he pulled off the interstate to eat at a White Castle. He was driving a new BMW, went through the drive-thru, and pulled into the parking lot. It was a warm May night, a little before midnight, so he rolled the driver’s side window down. That was when a white man came up behind him, produced a gun, and ordered him to get out of the car. Cecil instead dropped the car into reverse and tried to get away. The white man fired eight shots through the open window and every one connected. Robert Cecil was black and the white man was an undercover police officer named Berkowitz.

  Will and Dodds had rolled in as the primary homicide team. Berkowitz claimed Cecil had been reaching for a gun even as he tried to drive away. No gun was found in the car. A witness said Berkowitz had never identified himself as a cop. Berkowitz claimed he had. Why had he approached the BMW? Berkowitz said it was suspicious. Will knew what that meant: a black man in a fancy new car. Cecil was a lawyer from Cleveland, and the city ended up paying a big settlement to his family. But somehow Berkowitz got out of it. Command wanted the problem to go away. Internal Investigations took over the case. Stan stayed on the force another three years before retiring. In a city of such long memories, some things could be easily shoved in a closet. But Will knew the Robert Cecil story wouldn’t go over well with the bosses at University Hospital, who were putting a premium on community outreach, doing the right thing. The philanthropist hospital board ladies, married to big shots at Procter, American Financial, Kroger, and Federated, might wonder about the cop who killed Robert Cecil. So might the hospital’s CEO, a black woman. Berkowitz knew it, too. He delayed his meeting “off-site” and talked to Will for another thirty minutes.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Cheryl Beth stood in the doorway, watching as Will slowly stood and stepped into the walker. Every move looked painful, but he took one step forward, then another. It made her smile when the hospital actually helped people. Then she felt her pager vibrating.

  It was a new consult on the fourth floor. The nurses’ station didn’t have the chart, which wasn’t unusual, so she walked down to the room. She remembered a meeting in the fall, when the hospital brass and the people from SoftChartZ had talked about the progress on the computer project. All medical records would be on PC workstations, which would be available to nurses and doctors all over the hospital. A patient’s history, medications, and orders would be available at the touch of a key. It seemed almost too good to be true. Cheryl Beth didn’t remember the boyish CEO from SoftChartZ being at this meeting. Christine had led it and taken questions. She had worn a very attractive blue suit that day—she always wore a skirt at work, unless she was in scrubs. And she had spoken with more passion, more compassion for what this might mean for patients, than Cheryl Beth had ever seen from her. She knew Christine as prickly, icy, tightly wound, businesslike. Never caring. Cheryl Beth had broken off the affair with Gary that night.

  The room was at the end of the hallway, where it ended in the fire stairwell, and the door was closed. As she had so many times before, she knocked twice, then opened the door and stepped inside. The nearest bed was empty and neatly made up. The bed by the window was concealed by a curtain.

  “Hello?”

  She felt the air rush of the heavy door being closed behind her even before she heard it slam shut.

  Gary Nagle stood behind the door, wearing nothing but a fierce erection. He leered at her. “Hey, baby.”

  She instantly grabbed the doorknob, but he was stronger and kept the door shut.

  “You used to like this…”

  She was momentarily in a coma of surprise and shock. His eyes were an animal’s. Beneath her animal fear, her mind began processing: this is it…this is what the moment before being raped feels like. She vowed to herself she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  “Gary.” She tried to keep her voice calm, but heard it waver. “You’re not yourself. Your wife died…”

  “Ex!” He shouted it and made a flourish with one hand. “Yeah, poor Chris. Poor, poor Chris…the whore!” His eyes narrowed and he thrust his right hand out toward her in a half-fist.

  “Slash! Slash! Slash!” He made violent cuts back and forth with an invisible knife, crouching down like a street fighter. His hard penis shook like a diving board. “You know I can use a knife! Chris, you whore. For what you did to me…”

  He stepped toward Cheryl Beth, but his effort to hold the door kept him just enough off balance.

  Springing to the foot of the first bed, she slid the rolling table that usually held a patient’s dinner tray between them.

  “Gary, I swear to God I’m going to start screaming.”

  “You used to like this, Cheryl Beth.” He stroked himself. He had always been irrepressibly proud of his endowment, bragging about how difficult it was to find size thirteen shoes. Now the memory made her shudder.

  “You’re acting like some kid resident, not a seasoned physician,” she said, making her voice sound a haughtiness she didn’t feel. “And I’m sure not a nurse looking for a doctor husband.”

  “Oh, Cheryl Beth, we had such fun…”

  There he was with his finely toned physique, but she felt nothing. It was just a body. Another fragile container of bone and muscle and tissue in the hospital. Nursing aides giving sponge baths often caused male patients to have erections. It wasn’t sexy. It was kind of sad. She felt all this, but only below the incoming waves of fear.

  He could see her take a deep breath to call for help and began speaking rapidly.

  “You’ve got to help me, Cheryl. The cop
s came to my apartment this morning, with a search warrant. That big black detective.” He held his hands in a pleading position. “He thinks I killed Chris. They took away things. Evidence. Please, please…” His chiseled, confident face dissolved into tears and he slid down against the wall sobbing. “Please, I need you.”

  “Put your pants on or I’m out of here.” She squared her shoulders and gave him her nastiest look. She wouldn’t let herself show fear. “And step away from the door.”

  “You’ll talk?”

  “If you step away from the door.”

  He pulled himself up and walked slowly to a chair that held his clothes. She saw the clothes only now—they might have been a clue to stay out if she had seen them earlier. As he moved, she kept the rolling table between them. With the door unguarded, she made two wide strides to it, threw it open, and started out.

  “Please!”

  She turned to face him. “I’ll stay for the moment, if you don’t piss me off or get weird. But get dressed. And don’t call me Cheryl. You know what my name is.”

  “Sure, sure.” He was half mumbling as he slid into his boxers and his slacks. She dropped down the doorstop so the door was half open, and she leaned against the wall by the jamb.

  “God, I need to fuck right now.”

  It was true: he used sex to relieve stress. It took her awhile to realize that he was most aroused when he was under the greatest pressure. Soon after that, she came to understand that she might just as well not have been there. She was just a female body to him. A way to work off stress. Another conquest.

  “Talk to your pal, Amy.” Cheryl Beth folded her arms, half feeling sorry for him, but still drunk with adrenaline fear.

  “That bitch.” He slipped on his dress shirt and quickly buttoned it. His face was a caricature of little-boy petulance. She half expected to see him use his sleeve to wipe his runny nose. “She sold me out.”