| |
Michaela snuggled under her down comforter and clicked on her Kindle to do a bit of reading. She had made herself some warm milk because she couldn’t get to sleep. Her mind was too alert from recent events to focus on the new historical fiction novel she’d just downloaded from Amazon. And there was a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that something just wasn’t right.
After a few minutes of tossing and turning, Michaela threw back the covers, jumped out of bed and pulled on her sweats and tennis shoes. She patted Angel on the head.
“I’m going out for a while, buddy, to see our friend Danielle at the hospital, but I’m gonna leave you here to rest up.”
Angel thumped his tail weakly against the wooden floor in her bedroom and laid his head back down on his huge orthopedic bed.
"You remember Danielle, don’t you, Angel? She is the pretty lady we met earlier today."
Angel looked up at his mistress, searched her eyes and licked her hand. Mic knew he was concerned about her leaving him at home.
Mic smiled and leaned down as Angel offered her a nose kiss. "I’ll be okay and yeah, I knew you’d remember her. You never forget anyone, do you, boy?" Michaela squatted down and gave her beloved dog a big kiss on his head. "Get some rest, I'll be back shortly."
Angel rose from his bed and followed her to the front door. He didn’t want her to go alone.
Mic pulled her warm vest, hat and gloves from the hall closet and put them on. She squatted and ruffled Angel’s ears, reassuring him she’d be back soon. She dressed as warmly as she possibly could but was still unprepared for the blast of frigid air that almost knocked her down when she opened her front door. The temperature was in the single digits. For once, the weatherman had been right. She walked carefully down her wooden steps and jumped over piles of snow and ice. Thank goodness, Slade had delivered her truck quickly from downtown. She felt an urgency to get to MCV, and that sense of urgency bothered her. Her gut was her sensor, her barometer, and she trusted it implicitly. She had a strong feeling something was wrong at the hospital.
Mic drove quickly and pulled her vehicle up to the emergency entrance, spoke quickly to the security guard, who checked out her creds and badge and took her keys. He promised to park the truck for her. A blast of wind snatched her scarf, and she quickly chased it to the sidewalk and grabbed it. She noticed a man in scrubs talking on his cell. He wore a dark hooded sweat shirt and had a strange tattoo on his hand. She shook her head and wondered why he didn’t move into the warmth of the hospital. She quickly walked back to the double doors and entered via the emergency room as she savored the blast of warm air that enveloped her. The emergency room clerk was busy shuffling papers but promised Mic she’d get the doc who had treated Danielle as soon as she could.
Mic took a seat in the corner of the emergency room and looked around the large, busy waiting room filled with patients and families. The place was jammed. An elderly lady walked in through the front door, her right foot leaving large puddles of blood with each step she took. Mic ran to get a wheelchair and called for help when she noticed the puddles of blood that stretched for about fifty feet, outside on the concrete and in the snow. Two nurses rushed toward the elderly woman with a stretcher. One nurse caught her just before she crumpled to her knees, probably from dizziness and loss of blood. Mic shook her head as she watched the team of nurses work. I could never do this kind of work. I don’t have it in me.
The nurses rushed her quickly to the back, one nurse calling for five units of O negative blood, while the other monitored the woman’s vital signs. Gradually, the noise died down as the double doors separating the acute care area from the waiting room closed. Michaela watched absently as a cleaning lady appeared with a bucket of water and mop and started cleaning up the trail of blood the woman had left.
Michaela returned to her seat as a thirty-something-year-old white male entered the emergency department. It was the same guy she’d seen outside the entrance just before they’d parked her car. He had on a pair of dirty scrubs and an old down jacket with a hood that hid his face. Her gut tightened as he spoke to one of the cleaning people and headed toward the patient care entrance. The guy bothered her, and there was that weird tattoo on his hand. Mic had seen it outside when he’d been on his cell phone. It looked like a tattoo of a snake. Hadn’t someone called him Snake Man or had they called him Tattoo? She heard someone call her name, and she turned to face the emergency department doctor.
“Hi, I met you earlier. You were with the police. I don’t remember your name, I’m sorry,” the young physician said and smiled at her.
Mic extended her hand and said quietly as her eyes followed Snake Man towards a bank of elevators. "I couldn't sleep, and I was wondering how Danielle was doing, so I decided to come back downtown and check on her.” She gave him a bright smile. “Do you think it's possible for me to see her?"
The young physician scratched his head. "I'm sure you can. But we transferred her upstairs to the trauma intensive care unit a while ago." He smiled at her, "I’ll call up there and persuade the nurses to let you see her."
Mic nodded. “That’d be great.”
The physician gave her a concerned look. “You look upset. Is there something we should know?” He watched as fear flickered and uncertainty registered on Mic’s face.
Mic shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know how to say it, but I'm a bit concerned about her," she admitted. "I’m concerned for her safety." Her eyes locked with those of the emergency doctor.
The physician nodded. "Then, by all means you should go see her. She was doing quite well, and she was stable when we discharged her upstairs," he assured her.
“I just have this feeling in my gut. I appreciate your letting me see her for a few minutes."
The doctor nodded and pulled out his cell.
"I guess my years as a homicide detective taught me to pay attention to my gut," she said apologetically.
"You don't need to apologize to me about instinct and gut," the young man said. “I depend on my gut all the time, regardless of what I see in a patient or on diagnostic tests. That's what I've learned from being an emergency room physician."
Mic smiled at him. “I guess we have that in common,” she said as she waited while he talked to the intensive care unit.
“Hold that thought,” the doctor said as he talked on the phone.
“I think it’s simply about the kind of work we do,” he said, when he ended the call. “Go past the sofas and take the bank of elevators on the left to the third floor and follow the signs. They’re expecting you. I hope your friend is doing well," he said as he pointed to the direction of the elevators.
Mic flashed him a grateful smile. She found the elevators, pushed the button, and watched as the elevator slowly descended from the top floor. Her anxiety increased as the elevator got closer to the ground level. I just know something’s wrong. Mic’s stomach was churning, and the hairs on her arms were standing up, all clues pointing to danger. It was the sixth sense she’d inherited and honed over the years. The elevator door opened and Mic quickly covered the distance between the elevators and the trauma ICU. She rang the bell at the door. A voice answered, and Mic identified herself as “with the police” and gained entry. She sprinted toward the double doors of the intensive care unit and waited while they slowly opened. A young, dark-headed nurse met her at the door.
"You're here to see Danielle Alvarez?" the nurse asked.
Mic nodded and looked at the young woman. She was young, attractive and appeared competent in green scrubs that matched her green eyes. "Yes, yes I am. How’s she doin’?"
The nurse smiled as her eyes searched Michaela’s face. "She's doing better. I think she’ll wake up again soon and be even more alert.”
Mic’s heart leapt with hope.
“We’re noticing a lot of rapid eye movement, and that's usually a really good sign," the nurse told Mic. "By the way, my name is Patricia." She offered Mic her hand.
Mic sighed in relief and clasped the nurse’s hand. "Wow, that’s great news. This place really is the Miracle College,” she said with a broad smile. “Do you think I could see her?"
"Absolutely, let me take you to her room. Would you like to stop for cup of coffee?"
"No, I'd better not. It'll keep me awake, and I really am hoping to go to bed sometime tonight."
"We have decaf," Patricia said, "though we rarely drink it up here. I can bring you a cup of decaffeinated into Danielle's room if you’d like." A generous smile lit her face.
"That’d be great!" Mic exclaimed. "Lots of cream and sugar. If I can't have the caffeine, I'll just have a sugar high."
The nurse laughed. "Sounds good to me. Second door on the left, pull up a chair, and I'll be there in a moment with your coffee, and I’ll explain what’s going on with all the tubes in her room."
Mic walked to the door and paused for a moment outside, gathering the strength she needed to see Danielle and imagining what she would look like. Even though she was a hardened homicide detective, hospitals gave her the willies because she didn’t understand them and they were out of her comfort zone. The tubes that snaked around the bodies and all the machines with their mysterious beeps, bangs and gurgles, and the hanging bottles and plastic bags totally unnerved her. She didn’t understand them and felt out of control.
Mic took a deep breath. She figured that Danielle probably had a head bandage and black eyes. Where was the police officer guarding Danielle? She entered the room and saw someone standing by Danielle's bed. The officer must be on break since someone’s in the room, she assured herself.
Mic moved closer and stood next to the caregiver. It was a man with a syringe in his hand. He was searching for a port, a rubber stopper in Danielle's IV tubing, so he could inject the medicine.
"How is she doing?” Mic asked. “Does she look like she's going to wake up to you?’
The man turned sharply and looked at her.
"I'm sorry,” Mic said when she saw the startled look in his eyes. “I guess you didn't hear me. These tennis shoes are quiet," she quipped as a huge pain of recognition doubled her over. The man uncapped the syringe and started to inject the medicine into the IV. Something was wrong. She saw the tattoo on his hand. It was Snake Man.
Mic screamed, grabbed the man's hand and attempted to grab the syringe. Her elbow turned over Danielle’s water pitcher and knocked a stainless-steel basin to the floor. The man gripped the syringe tightly and pushed the plunger and squirted the medication into Danielle's vein so it would quickly spread throughout her body.
"You bastard," Mic screamed. "You're not going to get her."
Mic shot her knee up into the man's groin, and he bent over in pain and fell to the floor. She kicked him in the back and shoved him under the bed with her foot as she reached for the first shut-off clamp on Danielle’s IV to prevent the spread of the poison the man had injected. She then instinctually moved to the code emergency button and rang it as she screamed for help. Thank God for my CPR training.
The man slithered out from under the opposite side of the bed, and clutching his groin, ran quickly from the room.
Several moments later, nurses, doctors and respiratory therapists poured into Danielle's room. Danielle’s cardiac monitor was going crazy, and Mic watched as her blood pressure quickly fell.
A nurse screamed at her and shook her. “What happened?” as another nurse reached for Danielle’s IV to put something in it.
“No, no,” Mic said loudly. “A man just injected a drug in her IV. Look, the syringe is on the floor,” Mic pointed to the syringe halfway under the bed. “I clamped it off as best I could.”
The first nurse ripped out the tainted IV line just as another nurse started a new IV line.
Suddenly, the loud speaker went off again. “CODE BLUE, CODE BLUE. Surgical ICU, Bed 4,” and more and more people entered the room.
Mic ran from the room, to alert hospital security, but a man in a business suit stopped her.
“Come with me, now,” he ordered.
Mic ducked into an empty patient room with the man who asked harshly, “What the hell happened in there? Who are you?” His face was red and ugly, his voice demanded answers.
Mic pulled her identification from her pocket and shoved it at him, her shield shining in the florescent light. “I’m a retired homicide detective, RPD. I’m working on her case. Where’s the officer who was guarding Ms. Alvarez? He wasn’t outside her room when I got here.”
“I don’t know,” he said looking around for a staff member who wasn’t involved in the Code.
“Who are you?” Mic snarled.
“I’m the night superintendent for the hospital, and I’m in charge of the entire facility.” He spotted Danielle’s nurse racing through the hall. She’d been on a coffee break and returned when the Code was announced.”
“Where’s the police officer who was guarding Ms. Alvarez?” he barked.
Patricia was white as a ghost. “He went on a bathroom break when he saw us walking toward the room. He’d told me he was going,” she said gesturing toward Michaela.
Fear almost paralyzed Mic, but she asked quickly, “Where’s the bathroom?
“Follow me,” Patricia commanded. Patricia and Mic ran to the staff restroom around the corner. They jerked open the door and immediately saw the young cop crumpled in the corner of the large, handicapped bathroom, his body bent behind the door.
Patricia checked his carotid pulse. “I can’t get a pulse. Pull the Code alarm next to you.”
Mic felt sick as she looked at the young man. She pulled the alarm and helped Patricia straighten the young man on the floor. Within seconds, a second Code team appeared and Mic and Patricia left the restroom and returned to the nursing station.
Mic sat down for a moment and said, “I’ve got to call this in. We’re looking for a medium tall man with dark hair and a tattoo of a snake on his right hand. He has on blue scrubs.” She checked her watch. Less than three minutes had passed.
Patricia nodded and called the hospital switchboard and security and relayed Mic’s information. Then she went to check on Danielle.
Mic explained what had happened to a security guard and ran towards the stairwell, taking the steps, two at a time in pursuit of the tattooed man.
By the time she reached the emergency room door, she knew they’d lost him. Hospital security was standing there, as were several members of the Richmond Police Department. Mic recognized one of the officers.
"Brenner, a guy upstairs, white guy in a pair of scrubs, just tried to kill a young woman and a police officer from Baltimore. I think he’d beaten her up earlier this evening. He's about five feet eleven, with dark hair. That's about all I can tell you right now. Oh, wait. He has a tattoo on his hand. Have them put out an APB.” She faltered for a moment and added, “I think he killed one of our officers as well, the uniform who was protecting Danielle. I just found him in the bathroom with no pulse. They’re working on him.”
Brenner nodded and said, “We’re on it, Mic. We’ll get him.”
Mic nodded and fished her phone out of her jacket pocket and dialed Slade. He answered on the first ring. “Mic, I thought you were asleep by now, what’s up?”
Mic was breathless. “I’m at MCV. Someone tried to murder Danielle. A man, I’ve given a description to Brenner.”
“How’s Danielle, did she make it?” His voice was a low bark. Mic knew he was furious and could picture him standing at his desk, fists balled in defiance, and his black eyes glittering with hate.
“I don’t know. I’m going back up there to see. I’ll call you. But it gets worse.”
“How can it be worse?” Slade asked, confused.
“I think he killed the police guard, the policeman who was guarding her,” Mic said, her voice tight with fury. She paused for a minute to take a breath. “Oh, Slade, he was such a young officer,” she murmured. “I’ve gotta go.” She hung up the phone and walked toward the elevators.
Slade McKane cursed like a sailor.