Текст книги "Brain Dead"

Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Chapter 19

Timmie made her coffee. Murphy made his own copy of the list and went home. The house got very quiet. Too quiet, with just the hum of the refrigerator and the hall clock for company. Too still with nothing in motion but a second hand. Timmie hummed. She paced the kitchen and consigned a couple of piles of debris to the trash. She took a dozen swings at the Nerf ball and cleaned up the sewing box she'd left out and watched the clock until Meghan was due home, like a prisoner ticking off the days of her sentence.

At exactly 3:10, the door slammed and hard-soled footsteps clattered across the floor. Timmie and Meghan met in the middle like those freight trains in the infamous math problem. And Timmie did it looking much saner than she felt.

"Hiya, punkin, how goes it?"

"Look who I found outside!" Meghan crowed, swinging around in Timmie's arms like a carnival ride.

"Not Renfield again," Timmie begged. "I just put him back upstairs."

Meghan slid out of Timmie's reach. "You let Renfield out?"

Timmie tousled the dark head of hair and thought again how much she wanted her little girl to belong to her. "Funny, that's the very same question I was going to ask you. I don't think I'm the person he always talks into breaking him out of stir."

Meghan straightened with outrage. "I would never let Renfield out. He might get lost or run over or eaten by a cat!"

"I did it," Cindy announced from the hallway. "Disguised him as a tree frog and bribed the guards to look the other way."

Meghan giggled. Timmie wondered if Murphy knew how lucky he was that he'd missed this. "Hi, Cindy. How's it going?"

"You didn't answer my calls," she said, clacking across the hardwood in the new red-leather cowboy boots she sported with her studded denim dress. "I thought something was wrong."

"I just got home myself. Anybody for milk and cookies?"

Meghan pulled quite a face. "Really, Mom. That's so retro."

"Retro?" Timmie echoed. "Where the heck did you learn that?"

"Billy Peebucket."

Timmie turned her little troop for the kitchen. "That's Parbagget, young lady... ooh, Cindy, eau de Betadine. You working today?"

Cindy sniffed her armpits, which made Meghan giggle all over again. "Half a shift. I didn't know I carried it home."

"My mom has the best nose in the West," Meghan boasted.

"How was it?" Timmie asked because she didn't want to talk about boyfriends, which was what Cindy had come to talk about.

"Biker heaven. I think I'm in love."

"Which means, I guess, that you're over your loss."

Cindy's grin was fierce. "You don't want Meghan to hear what I think of that. There's some hot gossip at the hospital, by the way. Word's going around they're trying to hush up some patients getting intentionally stiffed." She snorted unkindly. "Like with the doctors we have they'd need any help."

Timmie opened the refrigerator and pulled out sodas instead of milk and apples instead of cookies. "Who says?" she asked, trying hard to be nonchalant.

"Ellen, I think. She heard it over in Restcrest. They're all on full alert over there. Seems to me, somebody should man the ICUs first. You ever worked with some of those Nazis up there? They'd drop you with a look."

"Why Restcrest?" Timmie asked as she passed out the snacks. "Have you seen anything up there to make you suspicious?"

"You want the truth?" she asked. "Mary Jane. She creeps me to the max, and she's always around when something happens."

"It's her job to be around when something happens."

"I don't know," she said with a shrug. "Ellen said to tell you, though, that she thinks your dad's safe. She doesn't think his unit's involved."

"I'm heading over to see him now. Might not be a bad idea to make sure. Want to go along to see Grandda, Megs?"

Meghan didn't exactly stop in her tracks. She did dip her head and clutch her apple with white-knuckled hands, though.

"I'll be happy to stay with her," Cindy offered.

Meghan said not a word. Timmie got the message, though. Meghan did not like Restcrest. Not for her grandda.

"That would be fine," Timmie allowed. "I'll pay you in pizzas. You call, I'll buy."

The offer was met with enthusiasm, and Timmie was caught between the dread of visiting Restcrest and staying home to hear about the boyfriend Cindy had decided to stop mourning.

"I should tell you who he is," she said, as if Timmie had asked, which made Timmie decide. Restcrest it was.

* * *

It could have been worse. By the time Timmie arrived, dinner was over and Joe was washed and clean and smiling from a beanbag chair in the main room. Timmie knew the chair kept him from wandering off, but she couldn't imagine trying to get him out of the thing.

"Hello, Da," she greeted him, crouched down on her haunches.

He blinked at her.

"He's been kind of quiet today," one of the nurses admitted. "We've been watching him for a fever or a urinary tract infection, but we haven't caught anything yet."

Timmie did her own laying on of hands and came away with the feel of cool, papery skin. Her father blinked again and turned away. Timmie fought that stupid sense of abandonment that hit every time he failed to recognize her and climbed back to her feet.

"No recitations?" she asked. "No obscene army tunes?"

The nurse, another young soul named Tracy with tidy brown hair and small hands, actually patted Joe on the head. "Not even a limerick. He may just be a little tired. He's still trying to settle in."

"I understand."

Timmie found herself looking off toward the fifth wing, where Mrs. Worthmueller waited in silence for that last graduation party. She needed to check on her. Make sure nobody was shoving something lethal into her IVs. Even so, Timmie curled up on the floor next to her father for a requisite twenty minutes or so, all the while trading aimless chatter with other residents who wandered through.

It wasn't until she got ready to move that she realized she'd wrapped her arm around her father's leg, or that he'd rested a hand on her head. The customary position they'd assumed all those years ago when he'd ruled story hour at the Brentwood Library up in St. Louis.

Timmie could still call up the sensual memory of it: the scents of lemon wax and binding glue and paper; the hush of reverent voices and careful feet; the tactile joy of those first books her father had placed in her hands. It had been a magical place, set to the music of her father's voice and the laughter of the children he'd enchanted on Wednesday afternoons. And Timmie had spent every one curled up at his feet like a faithful pet waiting her turn.

Only it had never been her turn.

"Going already?" the nurse asked when Timmie lurched up.

Timmie started. Why had she told Murphy? What good had it done? Now he was confused and she was ashamed and her father was still her father. And she had some investigating to do.

"Uh, no," she said, straightening her clothes. "I thought I'd go check on a couple of folks I took care of the other night."

The nurse looked surprised, then relieved. "Oh, that's right. Mary Jane told me. You got pulled from ER, didn't you?"

"Yeah. I'm amazed, but I kinda got attached, ya know?"

The nurse patted the top of Joe's head again as if he were a Labrador, which made Timmie want to tell her to stop. "I know. I can't imagine doing anything else."

Timmie couldn't quite take her gaze off her father, whose eyes were closed to the touch of the nurse's hand. "I wish I had your talent."

She didn't mind the bald lie so much when Tracy smiled. Nurses like Tracy were needed. Nurses who walked that slow walk and didn't mind repeating an action a thousand times a day because the person they were working with forgot. Nurses who didn't have to carry the baggage of an imperfect life for the patients they liked. But Timmie wasn't that kind of nurse, so she smiled, checked her father a last time to find his eyes still closed, and headed off the hall.

The funny thing was that after all those nerves, Mrs. Worthmueller looked good. Sitting up in her bed, her Posey neat and clean across her chest, her hands picking at the sheets. Timmie noticed that her cheeks were pink and her vitals stable.

"Can I help you?"

Timmie turned to find the regular unit nurse smiling that "You'd better explain yourself fast" smile at her. Timmie gave her a professional recognition version to negate the picture she presented of a stranger in jeans and Cardinals T-shirt holding a patient chart. "Oh, hi, you must be Gladys."

Gladys, for God's sake, on a thirty-year-old. She even looked like a Gladys, a little tight, a little prim, as neat as hell, and as organized as an accountant. What she wasn't was amused by Timmie's intrusion.

"I am. And you are?"

"Timmie Leary. Joe's daughter from over on unit three. I work down in the ER and got pulled here last night when you were off. When I came in to see Dad I thought I'd make sure little Bertha was okay. She really had me worried."

Gladys's defenses flickered and died in the space of Timmie's speech. "She had us all worried. Isn't she a dear?"

Considering the fact that the only communication Timmie had shared with Bertha the night before had been a bellowed "Bertha?" or two, Timmie couldn't really consider her opinion valid. She smiled harder anyway. "A dear. She looks a lot better tonight. What was wrong, the flu? I have to tell you, this just isn't my gig. I felt like an alligator on ice up here."

Gladys patted Timmie as if she were one of the patients. "Oh, you'll get used to it. I'm sorry I was so defensive. It's just that we have to be very careful to protect our clients."

Timmie nodded enthusiastically. "I can't be more impressed with the care my dad gets over here."

That got a real smile from Gladys as she retrieved the chart Timmie had been perusing. "Well, you must have done something right," she said, turning toward the room. "She's so very much better today. We figure she just had a little upset. It seems all better now, though, DOESN'T IT, BERTHA?"

Timmie checked to see Bertha picking away, oblivious as ever to the sound of her name being brayed. "We've been getting a lot of your old folk lately, it seems," she said to Gladys.

Gladys clutched the chart to her chest like a Bible. "I know."

"It must be hard on you. You get so attached to them."

A nod, a wince of pain that seemed all too real. "Mary Jane keeps saying I'll understand some day. I don't think I will."

"Understand?"

"Why they're so afflicted. Why they have to suffer. Why we lose them..." Gladys actually gasped, tapped Timmie's arm again in odd commiseration. "Oh, I'm sorry. Here I am saying that, with your father here. You know, of course."

"It does worry me a little, Gladys," she said, leaning closer. "I mean, I know what kind of care you give up here, but people in the ER have been questioning... well, all the patients who've been... uh, graduating lately."

Gladys patted her again with a hand that trembled just a mite. "Nothing to worry about, I'm sure. You know how it happens. One of the dears fails, and the others tend to follow. They just want some rest, I think, from their suffering. You aren't worried about your father, are you? Why, he's as hale as a teenager."

Which meant that Gladys wasn't the one yearning to share her outrage. On the other hand, she might be one to watch.

"Thank you," Timmie said, sidling away. "I really appreciate the update. I told Mary Jane she needed more staff up here so you guys didn't keep getting amateurs filling in."

Gladys followed Timmie right to the door. "It would be nice," she agreed. "But I can't say a bad thing about the girls we get from the emergency department. Especially Ellen and the other girl. Our little people just love them."

Timmie nodded. "That sounds like Ellen."

Gladys waved Bertha's chart once like a salute and slid it back in its door slot. "You thank her for me when you see her."

"I will. And you take care of Bertha for me, okay?"

"Of course."

Timmie headed back to unit three to be greeted by the smell of popcorn. It was snack time, and the old folks were making for the kitchen like zombies trolling for fresh blood. All the way across the room, Timmie could see her father's nose twitch and then his head swivel unerringly toward the smell. She couldn't help but grin. He adored popcorn. All his favorite taverns had served it. She was going to have to get him a bowl. And maybe one for herself. Nothing sent a hospital staffer's saliva glands working faster than the smell of fresh popcorn.

Timmie had just turned to take her place in the migration when she heard the commotion behind her. A yell. A clatter. Even through two sets of doors, the clear notes of a distinctive voice screaming, "Oh, no, help! Call a code somebody!"

Oh, hell. That was right behind her, which meant unit five.

Which meant Bertha.

Timmie spun on her heel and crashed back through the doors into unit five in time to see Gladys desperately trying to punch three successive nines into the phone without any luck. Nursing home nurses were wonderful at patience and encouragement and calming. They didn't manage crises quite as well.

Grabbing the phone from Gladys, Timmie punched the numbers. "Code blue, Restcrest, unit five," she announced. "Room four."

"No!" Gladys shrilled, grabbing her arm. "Not Bertha. Alice!"

Timmie stared. "Alice?"

"Code blue, Restcrest," the announcer droned. "Unit five, room four."

Gladys spun for the patient, and Timmie ran for the crash cart. "Alice?" she demanded, incredulous. "Are you sure?"

Alice. No doubt about it. The skinny, cranky doyenne Dr. Davies had been so interested in the night before was in there thrashing on the bed like a landed fish, her eyes rolled, her tongue lolling, her skin mottling to quick purple. And Gladys, her nurse, stood there patting her head as if that would make all the difference.

Timmie checked for pulses, knowing already what she'd find.

"Gladys, does Alice have a gate pass?" Timmie demanded as she pulled out airways and leads.

"What?"

"A gate pass! A 'Do Not Resuscitate' order." As in, Hi, my name is Peter, I'm going to be your guide through the Pearlies this afternoon...

"No. Of course not."

Timmie sighed. The operator's announcement would bring the ER traveling code team. One look at the chaos in room two would send them in the right direction. In the meantime, Timmie guessed she should do something more productive than say, "Alice?"

"Here, Gladys," she instructed, passing over an ambu-bag. "You bag her, I'll compress. Come on, let's go."

Gladys had tears running down her face. "She wasn't even sick!"

Timmie dragged over a step stool to get better leverage. "Well, honey, she is now."

* * *

It was a cluster fuck, but then most codes coming over from Restcrest were. Luckily, Alice didn't know any difference, and the ER crew didn't mind in the least when they arrived to find Timmie balanced over Alice's skinny chest doing CPR. The code attempt made it back to the ER in ten minutes and then lasted another twenty before Barb called it. No matter what they did, Alice didn't respond. And Timmie was left to wonder just what the hell had made Alice a victim.

"We have to get an autopsy," she told Barb, who was signing off on the chart with a flourish.

Barb looked up without noticeable reaction and proceeded to strip off her gloves.

Already pulling useless lines, Mattie didn't manage the same. "What do you mean?" she demanded, her hands full of tubing. "This poor old thing's nothing but brain waste. Leave her alone."

Timmie looked at Mattie a moment, but she knew she didn't have time to make her understand. She turned back to Barb. "I mean it," was all she said. "Can you do a drug screen on the blood you got? Double-check the levels of her prescribed meds? And don't send her downstairs without letting me know. I'll try and force Van Adder into doing something."

"It's not a coroner's case," Barb reminded her calmly. "How you gonna pull it off ?"

"Friends in high places. Just hold her. Please."

Over at the cart, one of the other nurses was hanging long strips of tape to the edge of the bed to begin wrapping the body.

Barb just shrugged. "Why not? I didn't like working in this county much, anyway."

"What are you talking about?" Mattie demanded. "Does this have something to do with why Walter's walking your girls home from school?"

Timmie didn't have time to answer, because Ellen was leaning in the door. "Mattie, those old ladies need you back in five."

Which was when Timmie heard it. Wafting on the breeze like a birdcall. Continuous, keening, impervious to soothing or shouting or sedating.

"Help!... Help!... Help!"

Timmie knew then why Mattie was so upset that they'd tried to save Alice. Timmie understood why she had tears in her eyes even as she turned for the door where Ellen waited.

"Help!... Help!... Help!"

Mrs. Clara Winterborn was back. Just as brain dead as before, just as brittle and empty and sere. Even older than when Timmie had been forced to save her the last time for another trip to the unit to be tortured and tormented and saved.

Timmie tried to pass the old woman's cubicle without looking in at the disaster that had once been a human, the two frail and fluttery jailers who held her here. She really did.

"Help!... Help!... Help!"

She didn't quite make it. Like the time she'd caught sight of her father naked in the bathroom, the first adult male she'd ever witnessed. Hairy and huge and alien. Timmie had been terrified, repulsed, appalled. She'd looked anyway, and kept on looking, because she just couldn't seem to stop. She looked now, just as repulsed. Just as terrified.

"Wish somebody'd do for this soul what they seem to be doin' upstairs," Mattie muttered on the way by. "No matter what Walter and his God say. It just ain't right."

"Mattie, you can't mean that," Ellen whispered. "Not you."

Shifting the Chux and catheter supplies in her arms, Mattie glared. "Me."

Mattie was right, Timmie thought. She should just go home. Leave them to tag Alice with her statistics and then wrap her like a pork roast and send her off to the freezer where someone would mourn, but not as much as if she'd lived.

Instead, Timmie turned and walked back upstairs.

* * *

When she reached Restcrest, it was to find even more of a commotion than when she'd left it an hour earlier. Not raucous, by any means. That would have upset the patients. The patients were upset anyway, because like children and horses, they could sense distress just from the way they were handled.

The cries were harsher, more strident, more frequent. From the level-two areas Timmie could hear the heightened babble of conversation and more than one argument. And on unit five, where she'd planned on talking to Gladys and collecting Alice's medications for analysis, she found not one nurse, but two, stiff-lipped, dry-eyed, and as tense as a terrorist cease-fire. The second nurse was one of the evening supervisors, which suited Timmie's purposes perfectly.

"I'm sorry," Timmie said, greeting Gladys. "She didn't make it."

Gladys closed her eyes. "I don't understand it," she insisted. "I just don't."

"Well, Miss Arlington's on her way in now to make us understand," the supervisor said dryly.

Miss Arlington. That meant Timmie didn't have much time.

"I need a favor," she said, holding up the evidence box she'd scooped up on her way out of the ER. "Alice's medications. I need to get them analyzed."

Gladys blanched. "Oh, I don't know..."

The supervisor, God bless her, held firm. "Well, I do. Take 'em before Mary Jane gets here. If something's going on, she's the last one who's going to want to know."

Timmie hesitated. "You're sure."

"I'm sure. Just make sure it's worth my job."

"I'll need you to sign and date the sealing tape," Timmie told her. "So we can protect the chain of evidence."

Gladys looked as if she were going to pass out. "Evidence."

The supervisor didn't say a word. She just reached out her hand until Gladys handed over the nurse-server key.

The supervisor helped Timmie clean out the medicine drawer and came away with handfuls of Dulcolax and Maalox dose packs, Ticlid, Digoxin, Tranzene, Nitropaste. Vials of Lasix and Compazine, and bottles of IV potassium chloride. Haldol and procainamide and half a dozen things Timmie recognized but couldn't immediately identify. Nothing Timmie wouldn't have expected, though.

Timmie and the supervisor both signed the red tape that Timmie stretched over the edge of the box, and Timmie thanked her. They were just finishing up when they both heard Gladys's surprised greeting. Ms. Arlington had wasted no time.

"I'm holding you responsible, Gladys," she was saying.

Timmie walked out of the room to see Gladys's mouth opened wide enough to show her uvula. "How could I...?"

Which was about when Mary Jane caught sight of the co-conspirators. "What are you doing here?"

"She helped code Alice," Gladys defended, now flushed and trembling. "And now she's—"

"Going back to see my father," Timmie allowed, the sealed evidence box safely tucked inside the jacket she'd balled up and held in her arms.

"I just can't believe that Alice is gone," Gladys said to no one in particular.

"Me, either," Timmie said. "I expected it to be Bertha Worthmueller."

Mary Jane's eyes snapped open so fast Timmie could see the tiny scars from her lifts. Her mouth opened, too, but she couldn't seem to manage anything. It was as if Alice's death was the final straw. It certainly seemed to be for Gladys, who was crying and glaring at the same time.

"It shouldn't have happened," she insisted, wringing her hands. "It never should have happened."

Timmie tried her best to assess each reaction. Gladys was distraught, the supervisor outraged, and Mary Jane... Timmie couldn't figure out what Mary Jane was, except cautious. Ah, hell. She might as well go for the gold.

"You really don't know who's doing this, do you?" she asked Gladys.

"No, we don't," Gladys said, her eyes lighting a little. "Do you?"

"Doing what?" Mary Jane asked just a little too late.

Timmie knew way back in her head that Mary Jane outranked her by at least ten levels of administration. She even remembered that Mary Jane might be a murderer with about as much conscience as Lucrezia Borgia. It didn't prevent her from reacting to that little piece of disingenuity with disdain.

"Come on, Ms. Arlington. At least twenty people have died on this unit. Fifteen of them have been the old-timers who've been costing this unit a ton of money. That's why I was worried about Bertha in there. She's the last one. What was it about Alice that made her a target?"

"There are no targets," Mary Jane insisted with less enthusiasm. "This is just an unfortunate... uh..."

"Murder," Timmie filled in for her. "And if it wasn't to save the unit money, what could it have been for?"

"That's why it shouldn't have been Alice," Gladys insisted. "She was going to leave the wing a grant. A fortune!"

Mary Jane snapped to attention. "Gladys!"

"I can't anymore, Miss Arlington. I just can't! Somebody needs to know. Alice isn't from here. Her family transferred her from Kentucky, and they were going to meet her here next weekend, after she got settled. They were so excited she was going to be safe and cared for. What we heard was that if they liked what they saw when they came to see her, they were going to donate a huge amount to the unit. Well, they won't once they find out she's been murdered!"

"She has not been murdered!" Mary Jane insisted.

"But somebody murdered those other people," Timmie retorted, her voice still very quiet. "And you all know it. Why didn't you say anything?"

It was Mary Jane's turn to glare, and she did it quite well. "Do you know what you're doing to Restcrest's reputation?"

Timmie wanted to scream. "I'm not the one doing it, Ms. Arlington. The murderer is. And the people covering it up."

Mary Jane damn near had a stroke. "Don't you threaten me, young lady."

"She told us not to say anything," Gladys insisted.

Mary Jane spun on her, but Gladys had had one too many deaths on her hands.

"But you knew what was going on, didn't you, Gladys?" Timmie asked. "How did you know?"

"They were dying for no reason at all," Gladys all but wailed. "I took such good care of them. Such good care! Do you know what this looks like on my record?"

"Did you see anything suspicious? Anyone suspicious?"

"This is absurd!" Mary Jane protested, ramrod straight and trying hard to keep her hands at her sides. Must have been tough not to have a clipboard or patient file to hide behind when she needed to show authority. She didn't even have glasses to wave around. "You'd better think a little harder about what you have to lose before you continue making accusations like this."

Timmie didn't even listen to her. She was focused instead on Gladys, who was still shaking her head as if it would help settle her suspicions and frustrations into a more identifiable pattern.

"I've gone over it a hundred times," the nurse said. "I can't figure it out. None of us can. It mostly happens on late shifts, but that's when most of our patients pass anyway."

"Clients," Mary Jane ground out.

Die, Timmie wanted to say. But it wasn't exactly the time to dip Gladys's toes in the reality bath.

Gladys was way beyond caring. "Patients. There isn't a pattern we can figure out. No one nurse who was on every time. There wasn't anything obvious we could point a finger to."

"And nobody asked you about it?"

"We've been told it's being looked into. It's not, is it?"

"Of course it is," Mary Jane insisted instinctively.

Timmie had had enough experience with middle management to know that Mary Jane wasn't going to admit anything in front of her staff. Besides, a good threat was always best made in private. If Ms. Arlington wasn't the murderer, then Timmie needed her acquiescence. If she was, Timmie needed her to feel pressured.

"Ms. Arlington," she said in the most supplicating tone she could manage, "could I talk to you alone for a minute? Please. I think it will help Alex."

Mary Jane took a couple of looks around and then nodded. Timmie followed her into Alice's room, where the bright yellow-and-blue coverlet was still spilled off the side of the bed from the frantic fight for Alice's flickering life.

Timmie had been in plenty of rooms in which patients had died. In some, she'd been able to feel a sense that somebody was still around, maybe dragging their heels before departure or just keeping an eye on things. Probably checking her procedures. Alice, evidently, hadn't been interested. The room was as empty as Timmie's bank account.

Mary Jane didn't bother to make either of them comfortable before Timmie shut the door. "I know this must make you nervous," she began, a hand up to corral a wisp of wayward hair. "With your father up here and all. I just want to assure you—"

"Something has to be done," Timmie said. Her heart was pounding and her hands were sweaty, and all she could think about was that she hoped Mary Jane didn't notice. "Ms. Arlington, I know what's going on here. The whole hospital knows. If the public finds out before it's stopped, Alex will be ruined."

Mary Jane did everything but shudder. She stood as straight as a deb, her hands at her sides, her breathing controlled. "You would only hurt Alex if you let this out," she accused. "You wouldn't do that."

Timmie raised an eyebrow. "And if I don't do something, I could be hurting my father."

"That's absurd! He's perfectly safe."

"How do you know that? I thought Alice was perfectly safe."

Mary Jane looked away, as if Timmie's argument were simply beneath her. "What did you want to ask?"

Timmie sucked in a slow breath. Organized her thoughts. She wasn't stupid enough to ask for what she already had, so she made a stab at what she suspected.

"We need to act, Ms. Arlington," Timmie insisted quietly. "Or it's going to happen again. You need to ask Alex to request a postmortem on Alice."

Mary Jane was already shaking her head. "I can't. He's busy. He isn't even in town."

"You mean you don't call him when he's out of town to tell him a patient died?"

Mary Jane couldn't quite look at her. "All you're doing is making trouble for yourself. You're making wild accusations that threaten the viability of this unit, and I won't have it."

Timmie didn't move. "I won't stop, Ms. Arlington."

Mary Jane closed her eyes. Timmie held her breath, because she couldn't manage anything more. Was Mary Jane simply protecting Alex, or was she protecting herself?

"I can't." The woman moaned. "I just can't."

"Then I'll do it."

That got Mary Jane's eyes open, and Timmie once again saw that instinctive fear. That protective reflex that made her wonder if Mary Jane wasn't just protecting Alex, but pretending she didn't suspect him.

Alex.

It couldn't be Alex. Timmie wouldn't let it.

So she asked the most difficult question she had ever asked in her life. "Do you think Alex is involved?"

"No!"

Too sudden, too certain. Way too frightened. Timmie wanted to vomit.

"Can you think of anyone else it might be?" she asked instead, and realized that her fingers hurt. She looked down to see white knuckles from where she'd clamped her hands together around the hidden box.

"There isn't any problem," Mary Jane said, again too quickly. "But if there were, Alice's main nurse was Gladys. Or Trudy, or, uh, Penelope."

Ah, ever the administrator, Timmie thought with new disgust. When in doubt, jettison the faithful staff.

"May I talk to them?"

Mary Jane damn near sneered. "You don't need my permission for that. You'll just find out where they live and harass them there."

"And the postmortem."

Mary Jane blinked, looked away. "Maybe. I'll see."

Nothing definite. At least the seed was sown. "Bertha Worthmueller," Timmie said. "I think the hospital should give her a private-duty nurse for a few days. Maybe somebody from outside the hospital, just to be sure."

Mary Jane turned for the door. "Bertha is perfectly safe."

"There is one other thing," Timmie said, figuring this would be her last chance. "I'm sure you've already asked Mr. Landry about my trip into orbit the other day. I found out it was to keep me from sharing a directive I'd stumbled on. I just don't know why."