Yvonne Neslogites stood in front of Dr. Beauregard’s cluttered desk. Her left eyebrow twitched, and her palms were cold. In her hand she held a book, How to Put on Pounds Sensibly. She beat it against her skinny thigh and breathed in and out like a spluttering engine.
“Okay,” Beauregard said, sitting coiled, his hands clasped in front of him in an effort to keep himself under control. “Let’s go through this one more time. You tell me that you were in charge of the desk, but you left at ten of three to go help Dr. Thompson with a cut-down.”
“That’s right,” Yvonne said. “He was having trouble finding a vein on Mrs. Martin. I had to help him with her.”
“And when you left, June was in charge of the two aides, Jane Hargrove and Sally Rodgers.”
“That’s right.”
“And?”
“They went on break at about two or three minutes before three … they went to the canteen to have a Coke. June was on her own. At approximately twelve after three she got sick and had to leave the desk. We all got back at the same time … about three twenty-six. I know because I happened to look at my watch then. June got back about three twenty-eight. She was weaving, almost fainting. We found Mrs. Goldstein at about quarter to four. When we checked the EKG … but if that buzzer—”
Beauregard nodded his head and cut her off.
“We’ll get to that in a minute.”
He punched his phone.
“Brigette. Send in Hargrove and Rodgers.”
A second later the two aides came through the door. They looked as though they had seen a plane nose-dive onto the Long Island Expressway.
Jane Hargrove had large blue bags under her eyes. Sally Rodgers’s skin looked like oatmeal. Both of them nodded to Yvonne and Beauregard and then dropped their eyes to the floor.
“All right,” Beauregard said, “what happened?”
“I don’t know,” Jane Hargrove said. “I was on a break. I mean we were both on a break.”
“That’s right,” Sally Rodgers said, “but we were only just down the hall. If June would have called us, we would have been right there. But I’ll tell you what was even stranger …”
“What’s that?” Beauregard said.
“The buzzer. It never went off.”
“Maybe you just didn’t hear it,” Beauregard said. He stared at them hard. They both dropped their eyes as if on cue.
“Are you sure you were both in the canteen?” he said. “You didn’t go anywhere else.”
“No,” they both said in unison.
Jane Hargrove ran her long fingers through her black hair. “We sat in the canteen the entire time. If the oscilloscope had gone off, we would have heard it.”
“How about June?” Beauregard said. “Was she too sick to hear?”
Everyone was silent.
Beauregard pounded a huge fist on the table, scattering his papers around the room. Sally Rodgers gasped.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t have time to play politics here. A patient has died. There is going to be a goddamned big deal made out of this. I don’t like the looks of any of it … and if you two don’t cooperate with me, you’re through here. You understand. Now, what was wrong with June?”
The women exchanged nervous looks, and Beauregard sat straight up in his chair.
“She was sick,” Jane Hargrove volunteered. “She was very sick. She said it just came over her … She felt she was going to faint …”
“Yes,” Yvonne said. “She said … she fell in the ladies’ room. She hit her head on the sink when she was trying to put some cold water on her face.”
“Did you know that June was sick, Yvonne?”
“No.”
Beauregard got up again and punched his fist into his open palm.
“She never mentioned she was sick at all?”
“No, Doctor, she didn’t.”
“Where is she now?”
“Home. She has the flu … I called her this morning. She had to go see Dr. Chapman.”
“That’s very strange,” Beauregard said. “Very weird … Everybody leaves, and nobody hears the buzzer.”
“But I’m telling you,” Hargrove said. “If that buzzer had gone off, we would have heard it. You know how loud those things are. We checked the ‘scope and it was on.”
Beauregard punched his phone again.
“Brigette, send in Jimmy Myers.”
Beauregard waited, tapping a pencil on his fingers. The door opened and a monstrous man weighing three hundred pounds came waddling into the room. He wore size forty-six chinos with huge tool pockets which seemed to hang down to his ankles. Hammers, screwdrivers, saws, and wiring hung off him. He looked like a junk sculpture. His hair stood out like spokes and his cheeks were blotched red. In his chubby pink fingers were two Hostess Twinkies.
“Hi ya, Doc,” Jimmy Myers said.
He turned and bowed to the nurses.
“Madams,” he said.
“Jimmy,” Beauregard said, “I want you to look over the oscilloscope that was in Esther Goldstein’s room, the woman who died of a heart attack, Number Six on Coronary Care.”
“Right, Doc. What’s the problem?”
“It didn’t go off last night. I want you to determine what happened to it.”
Jimmy Myers stuck an entire Twinkie into his mouth. He looked over at Yvonne’s book, took it out of her hand, smearing icing across the cover.
“Just what I need,” he said. “Sensible pounds … most of the ones I’ve got are downright crazy. I get me a couple of them sensible pounds, I’ll be a more well-rounded person.”
He gave a tremendous horselaugh and nudged Yvonne in her skinny ribs.
“Well-rounded, git it?” he said.
Then he turned around and waddled out the door, dropping his Twinkie wrapper in Jane Hargrove’s lap.
“Jesus,” Jane said.
“Yeah,” Beauregard said, “he’s a little weird, but he’s a very good technician. If there was anything wrong with that machine, he’ll find it. And if there wasn’t, he’ll find that too.”
Beauregard gazed intensely at the three women and all of them dropped their eyes.