The hospital security guard outside the ER looked up from his iPhone as Ted approached. Ted gave him a nod and marched onward in the hope that the man would go back to his Candy Crush.
“Can I help you, sir?” the guard asked. He was a minimum-wage mercenary in a polyester uniform. Ted hoped the NYPD was putting up a more aggressive defense inside.
Ted could see the young skateboarder and his mother in a glass-walled office up ahead. They were being interviewed by a severe-looking nurse.
“No, thanks.” Ted gestured vaguely in their direction, imitating a man impatient to catch up with family.
The guard shook his head. “Just a moment, sir.” This time he hit the last word with enough force to slow Ted’s progress.
Damn. Ted tried a different maneuver: let the guy think he was a medical professional. “I’m checking on a patient.”
The guard put down his phone. A bad sign. “Are you a doctor?”
Brazen it out. “McKenzie Zielinski. Concussion. Fractured tibia. She was brought in last night.” Ted knew he was saying too much. Doctors never explained. The tibia was a leg bone, wasn’t it?
The man stood. The game was over. “You’ll need a pass.” He pointed down the hall to the reception desk at the main entrance. “Someone there can help you.”
Reception was staffed by a blue-haired woman wearing pearls and an open white smock. Rhinestone glasses hung from a silver chain around her neck. Two more security guards were there to back her up, but neither gave Ted a look. They were both engaged in examining something compelling on a computer monitor.
“I’m here to see a patient. McKenzie Zielinski.” He spelled it. “She’s probably still in the ER.”
She tapped on her keyboard for a moment. Her smile changed to a pursed-lip moue. “She’s not in the ER.”
“Was she released?” He’d missed her. How was he going to maneuver around her parents to get to see her?
“It seems she’s been moved to the ICU. Are you family?”
“ICU” sent Ted into a tailspin. A fractured ankle didn’t land you in intensive care, so it must have been the head wound. He felt a cold sweat form on the back of his neck.
“I’m her fiancé,” he said. He couldn’t risk being turned away.
The woman answered a phone and without a greeting said, “Hold, please.” She looked up at Ted as though he had only then appeared. “Yes?”
“I need a pass for the ICU,” he said with as much forbearance as he could muster.
She tapped some more. A small device on the counter began to chatter, and a visitor pass chugged out of the printer. “Second floor.”
The two uniformed guards had never looked up.
The elevator traveled between floors with the speed of a sloth on painkillers. Ted would have taken the stairs, but he didn’t know where they were. When the doors finally parted, he was through them and down the corridor in a flash.
He swiped his pass at an electronic lock, and the door swung open onto another corridor. This one was quiet, with muted lighting. The walls were all glass so that every occupied bed could be seen from the nurses’ station. Ted stopped there.
“McKenzie Zielinski?” he said.
There were six people working at computer monitors behind the counter. Not one person looked up.
“Room four.”
Ted didn’t stop to figure out who had responded. “Thanks,” he said over his shoulder.
He stopped at the door of room 4 and stared. Kenzie was hooked up to even more monitors. A breathing mask covered much of her face, and a saline drip had also been added. The long bruise on the side of her head and face had cast multicolored tendrils across her forehead and cheek. But she appeared peaceful.
“You can go in,” a voice said from behind him. He turned. A nurse in blue scrubs was standing there. The suggestion had the feel of an order.
“What the hell happened?” Ted said. “When I left her in the ER last night, she was hurting but she was okay.”
“I’ll see if a doctor will talk with you.”
“Is she asleep?” Ted knew she wasn’t, but he had to ask.
“She’s in an induced coma.” The nurse must have decided that his distress needed immediate attention. She spoke quietly. “There was some bleeding in the brain, which caused swelling.”
Ted felt light-headed. His blood pressure must have spiked—or dived. He wanted to sit.
“The swelling results in elevated pressure,” the nurse said. She sounded tremendously offhand to Ted. “She’s sedated. The fluids will disperse, and the swelling will go down. Then we will take her off the heavy meds, and she should be fine.”
“Or?”
“This happens with head injuries sometimes. And this is pretty standard treatment. Are you family?” The question was rote; her eyes were already moving on.
He was losing her, but he needed answers. “Fiancé. Is there a chance she won’t wake up?”
“I’ve got other patients.” She looked down the hallway as though hordes of ill and injured were awaiting her ministrations.
“What about permanent brain damage?”
“Go sit with her. The doctor will have to answer any other questions.”
This time Ted had the good sense to back off a touch. “Thanks. Will she know I’m here?”
Ted could see her take a moment to decide whether or not to continue the conversation. Compassion briefly won out over procedure. “We think she can hear and is processing at some level, so, yes, speak to her—quietly.” She drew herself up and reasserted her dominion. “And don’t bring up any stressful or emotional BS. I’ll know and I’ll kick your butt out of here.” She turned to leave.
“Wait. Didn’t the police have a guard on her?”
The nurse shook her head.
“They said they would,” Ted said, pushing it. It was important.
She half shrugged with a sad smile.
Ted took one of the two chairs next to the bed. It was hard, unyielding plastic. A place to perch only. No one over the age of eight would have been comfortable sitting there for any length of time.
He was angry. The detectives had blown him off. But anger would do nothing to solve the problem. He needed to think.
The blood pressure cuff on her arm expanded, paused, and, with a ping, subsided. The ventilator whooshed quietly. He heard the soft murmur of conversations from the adjoining rooms. Talk, the nurse had instructed him. What does one say to a woman in a coma?
“Hi. It’s Ted. Ted Molloy. We had dinner last night.”
Kenzie continued to breathe regularly.
“We kissed,” he said.
Her eyes did not fly open. She did not sit up and smile at him. But she did keep breathing. Or was the machine doing it all for her?
He took a deep breath and tried to shake off the anger and anxiety. “The rain stopped. It’s a beautiful day out. I’d like to take you for a walk in the park.” He sounded like an idiot. “Maybe I could bring a book and read to you.”
Pressure. Bleeding in the brain. So maybe they had given her blood thinners. Wouldn’t that work? What was he thinking? How would he know what treatment was right? Just talk. Tell her something positive.
“I’m waiting to talk to the doctor, but the nurse was very encouraging. She said you’re going to be fine.” It wasn’t a lie; he’d simply left out the qualifier, “should.” “And you look good. Except for that bruise, you look healthy. Strong. And beautiful.”
A gurney passed by the doorway, propelled by a stout Latino in green scrubs. A tall, pencil-thin woman in white coat followed. The doctor? Would he be able to get some of his questions answered? The wheeled patient and entourage continued down the corridor and out of sight.
“I know if I tried apologizing, you’d sit up and tell me off. You make your own decisions. Take your own chances. But if you do sit up, I won’t care if you’re putting me in my place. I feel bad for dragging you into this. I’m sorry.”
She did not sit up. She exhaled and the machine made a chuckling sound, which he took as encouragement.
“So, you know. I liked kissing you.”
He was terrified and doubly terrified of allowing it to show.
“I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone quite like you. No, let me rephrase. I’ve never met anyone like you before. You are unique. Powerful, funny, smart.”
She looked so at peace.
“Sorry. I sound like a commercial for McKenzie Zielinski.”
She exhaled.
“Great. Now you’re laughing at me. You should be. I’m pathetic. Maybe I’ll sing something. Do you like the Pogues?”
Inhaled.
“They’re an acquired taste, I guess.”
If he stopped talking, he was going to start crying, and that was simply not going to happen.
“It’s just as well. I’m not much of a singer.”
Words weren’t coming easily. Emotions were.
“Do you have any clue how hard this is? You should try it sometime. Ah, hell. You’d probably be brilliant.”
But the longer he kept up this admitted nonsense, the better he felt. She could hear him. She was going to survive. Kenzie would come out of this and smile at him again.
“Look, since I’m doing such a shit job of talking about nothing, why don’t I talk about something real? And if it upsets you, then you say so and I’ll stop. Deal?”
A citrus-tinged chemical aroma blew in through the open door—some kind of antiseptic or cleanser. The odor overwhelmed the other stray smells that his senses had barely registered. Rather than hiding them, however, the cleaner forced them to his attention. Both fresh and soiled bedding, various unidentifiable medicinal smells, coffee too long in the pot, a touch of hope, hints of despair. Ted tuned them all out.
“Fine. Cheryl’s boyfriend tossed my apartment last night. I wasn’t there, of course. Lester and I spent another night in the church. Anyway, I’m now in the market for a new apartment and furnishings.”
Her chest rose and fell. The machine whooshed. He noticed, for the first time, the hint of a blue vein in her cheek. Had her pallor revealed it, or did she keep it hidden with a dusting of makeup? He felt like he knew her better having discovered this minor secret.
“You okay? I’m not upsetting you, am I? At first I was sick over it. And scared. Now I’m just pissed off. Like you said, it’s time to go get these SOBs.”
Whoosh.
“Not SOBs. Bastards. That’s what you said. Bastards.”
He paused.
“So how do I do that? Suggestions? The floor is yours.”
Silence, broken by a soft sob from the corridor. A bent woman in raincoat and rubber boots—a visitor who must have arrived during the deluge the night before—passed down the hall and out the electric-gated door.
“Yeah. I draw a blank, too.”
And a thought came to him.
“Where’s your phone?”