Day 16 – Saturday midnight, Christmas Eve
Rooftop Helipad, Hillcrest Regional Medical Center
Ginny glanced at the clock. She had some things she had to finish before she could turn responsibility for her patient over to Susan, but she would make it to the helipad on time.
Every year, on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus arrived on the hospital roof with a helicopter full of donated toys, gifts, and food. It took a small army to get them all unloaded and distributed to the various floors, but it was one of the perks of having to work on Christmas Eve.
Every effort was made to send patients home for the holidays, but there were always some too sick to move, and more that came in through the ER doors because of loneliness or to escape the cold. Some years everyone was too busy to help. Not this year, though. The Unit was quiet and the patients mostly stable. What was uncertain this year was the weather.
“It’s starting to snow!” Lisa came back from her foray to the window at the end of the hall.
“Will that interfere with the toy delivery?” June asked.
Lisa pushed one hand into the arm of her coat. “Too soon to tell. We’re only supposed to get a dusting. Come on, Ginny. Get your coat.”
“Coming.” She turned to Susan. “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“Take your time. I’ve got this.”
Ginny hurried into the breakroom and pulled her winter coat from her locker, stuffing her arms into the sleeves as she ran for the elevator. There were already volunteers in the car, one of them holding the door open for her. They rode up to the top floor, then streamed out onto the brightly lit roof. The flood lamps were on to help the helicopter land safely, but they also caught the falling snow, making the air shimmer.
“Look, look!” Lisa was holding her hands out, her face tipped up to the sky. “We’re going to have a white Christmas!”
“Come on, ladies. Say ‘cheese’.”
Ginny turned and smiled into the camera. “Hello, Isaac. Working late again?”
He shrugged. “Part of the job. We’re supposed to be humanizing health care. Besides, it’s not every day you get to see Santa climb out of a helicopter.”
“True.”
“Over here, everyone.”
Ginny turned to find Marjorie Hawkins herding the volunteers into the shelter of the elevator canopy. She was passing out gay apparel: Santa hats, reindeer headbands, strings of flashing colored lights. Ginny had come prepared and was wearing an especially long candy cane pattern stocking cap that wrapped twice around her neck for added warmth.
“We need to stay out of the way until the rotor blades stop turning. As soon as that happens we can start unloading. Management wants pictures, so pretend you’re having fun. Here, Ginny, you get to be Rudolph.”
Ginny took the glowing red nose and placed it over her own, grinning at what she saw reflected in the Plexiglas wall. She felt a hand descend on her shoulder and turned to see Lisa, reindeer headband in place over her fur hat, her cheeks ruddy from the cold.
“No fair!” Lisa said. “I want to be Rudolph!”
Ginny sighed to herself then pulled the red nose off and handed it to Lisa. Anything for a little peace on Earth.
“Of course. It goes with your antlers.” She smiled, trying to put some Christmas spirit into the words, then turned her back on Lisa and moved away.
The helicopter was landing. They all watched as it settled onto the helipad, the rotors kicking up the snow and making a very convincing blizzard around the familiar figure that was climbing out of the belly of the chopper.
“What’s this? I thought you were going to play Rudolph?”
Ginny hadn’t noticed Marjorie Hawkins standing just to her right. She turned and smiled at her boss. “Lisa wanted the nose to go with her antlers. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Lisa? Lisa Braden?”
“Yes. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Isaac! Take my picture!” Lisa pushed past Ginny, posing in front of the helicopter, waving at the camera.
“She looks cute, don’t you think?” Ginny turned to her boss, then instinctively took a step back as the Head Nurse’s cordial public face dissolved in fury.
Marjorie Hawkins grabbed Ginny by the arm, pulled her away from the shelter, then swung her around so that Ginny’s back was to the edge of the roof. Ginny could feel Hawkins’ fingers digging into her flesh, even through the sleeve of her coat.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Let go of me!” Ginny tried to break the iron grip that held her.
“You were supposed to wear that red nose!” She pushed Ginny backwards, towards the edge of the roof.
“Stop it! Let me GO!” With a furious wrench, Ginny tore her arm free and tried to run, but her foot came down on a slick spot. She fell, landing on the rooftop, just shy of one of the concrete wheel stops that kept cars from going over the edge.
There was a sound like a wet kiss, followed by a crack, then a small gasp. Ginny lifted her head and looked at the other woman. She was staring down at her chest.
A cheerful splash of red had materialized on her heavy white sweater, where the pendant of a necklace would have been, had the Head Nurse been wearing one. It might have been any Christmas themed ornament—a poinsettia blossom, a clump of holly berries, a red bulb off a string of lights—but it was none of the above.
Ginny saw the stain growing larger, but the meaning didn’t sink in until she connected it to the sound. She watched in horror as the woman in front of her collapsed, landing just inches from her nose.
In the next moment, she realized there were other sounds: men shouting to get down, more gunfire, screams and cursing and someone calling for help and a stretcher. She turned her head toward the sounds and saw the volunteers running, cannonballing into one another as they tried to escape or reach the fallen, all of them in motion. All except one. She was lying on the roof, on her side, a man’s arm around her waist. On her head was a pair of reindeer antlers and on her face glowed a bright red nose.
“Ginny, lass, talk to me!”
Himself knelt down beside her, his artificial beard pulled askew, his eyes shadowed by the arc lights behind him. In the same instant she saw him, the lights went out, to be replaced by flashlights wielded by men in uniforms.
Ginny felt arms slipped under her, turning her over, raising her head.
“I’m all right,” she gasped. “I think.”
“We’ll get you looked at,” someone said. “Come on.”
“Ms. Hawkins—”
“We’ll take care of her, too.”
Ginny was hauled to her feet and supported into the elevator, then out again on the ground floor, into the ER, and straight into Jim’s arms.
“Bring her in here.”
In no time flat Ginny was bundled into the big scanner used to locate foreign objects in trauma victims. When Jim was sure she had not been hit by a bullet, he let her get dressed again, but would not let her go back to her floor. She sat in his office, wrapped in blankets, shivering.
“Drink this.”
The coffee was warm between her hands, but he had to help her hold the mug still enough to drink from it. When she had managed to swallow half a cup, she pushed it away.
“Jim, can you get Himself down here?” she asked.
The Laird must have been nearby for he and DeSoto were there in five minutes. The Laird pulled up a chair and sat down, facing her. “Now, lass, tell us.”
She took a deep breath, hiding her still shaking hands in the folds of the blankets. “It was an ambush.”
Jim’s face seemed to solidify into something harder than granite. DeSoto’s registered a grim satisfaction. The Laird’s did not change, though the shadows deepened. “Go on.”
“It was supposed to be me, and it was Marjorie Hawkins who arranged it.” Ginny explained about the Rudolph nose and how the Head Nurse had reacted when she found Ginny had given it to Lisa. “When she saw the red nose wasn’t going to work, she hauled me over to the edge of the roof.”
“What happened next?” DeSoto asked.
“I thought she was trying to push me off. I was fighting, trying to twist away. I slipped and fell.”
“And in that moment, the shooter put a bullet in her heart. Interesting.” DeSoto’s phone went off and he stepped away to take the call.
Ginny turned to Jim. “What about Lisa? Is she dead?”
“She’s in surgery. She had a stroke.”
Ginny blinked. “A stroke? Not a gunshot?”
“No bullet wound.”
Ginny fell silent, trying to make sense of it. Marjorie Hawkins clearly intended for the shooter to kill the woman wearing the red nose, but he hadn’t aimed at Lisa, not for the first shot, anyway. If he had, she’d be dead.
DeSoto turned back to face them.
“Did you catch him, the shooter?” Jim asked.
“We found the sniper nest, in a van parked on the roof of the garage across the street.” DeSoto slid his phone into his pocket. “He left the gun, the brass, everything. Which means we won’t find a thing on any of it.”
“A pro.”
DeSoto nodded. “He rappelled off the back of the building, leaving the ropes, so the odds are we won’t be able to trace them either, then slipped away into the night. Which means we can’t ask him who his target was.”
“Can you tell anything from the trajectory?” Jim asked.
“We’ve got the forensic team on the roof mapping the scene, but with so many people in such a small area, it’s going to be hard to draw any conclusions.”
He turned to face Ginny. “Except that she pulled you away from the others, toward the shooter, then turned your back to him, to make a large, well-lit target.”
Ginny looked at DeSoto. “You think it was me.” And he’d missed putting a hole in her back only because she slipped on the ice.
“We can’t rule out that possibility.”
Ginny’s mouth felt dry as cotton. “So, I might be shot at again.”
Jim jumped to his feet. “Not if I have anything to say about it!”
“Peace, lad.” The Laird of Loch Lonach rose from his chair and faced DeSoto. “Things ha’e changed. You and I need tae talk.”
The DEA agent nodded. “Give me a couple of hours.”
The Laird nodded. “’Twill gi’e me time tae distribute the gifts. I’ll find ye when I’m done.”
When the other two had gone, Jim pulled Ginny into his arms. “I don’t think I can stand another fright like this. Please tell me you’ll stay out of the line of fire from now on.”
Ginny nodded. “I intend to. But Jim—” She looked up at him. “I can’t live like this. It has to stop, and if I need to help make that happen, I will.”
He drew in a shuddered breath, pulling her closer. “I know,” he whispered. “God, help me! I know!”
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