Chapter 13
“He said what?” Sal hollered through the phone after Hayley had stepped outside Randy’s room to call her boss and let him know what was happening, and why she would be late to the office.
“He says he saw a man hold Chef Romeo down and inject something into one of his tubes right before he suffered a fatal heart attack.”
“What do the doctors say?”
“Well, obviously the coroner is going to have to conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death, but Randy has already reported what he saw to the police.”
“Of course Bruce would have to be out of town when something like this comes up! Okay, Hayley, don’t worry about coming in today. I want you to stick around the hospital and see what you can find out. You’re always butting into police business all the time anyway, you might as well be the one to fill in for Bruce and cover this story while he’s gone.”
She opened her mouth to protest his assessment that she was always butting in, but realized that he was, for the most part, 100 percent correct, so she declined further comment. “Okay, Sal.”
“One more thing,” Sal said. “There is a rumor running around town that you’re taking over Chef Romeo’s restaurant. How the hell are you going to juggle your full-time job here at the Times and run a restaurant?”
“I’m not,” Hayley explained. “I only agreed to help Romeo out when he was on the mend from his heart attack. Now that he’s sadly passed, there is no point in me even taking over temporarily. I’m sure there will be some provision in his will as to what to do with his business.”
“Okay, good. I don’t want you stretched too thin. You have very important responsibilities here at the paper that need to be taken care of,” Sal warned. “By the way, if you do swing by here at some point today, could you bring me a half dozen of those cream-filled glazed doughnuts from the Cookie Crumble Bakery?”
Somehow tending to her boss’s insatiable sweet tooth did not strike her as a serious responsibility.
But as usual, Hayley bit her tongue and replied, “Of course, Sal.”
Hayley ended the call, stuffed her phone in her bag, and wandered down to the nurses’ station where Nurse Tilly was on her feet, phone clamped to her ear, in obvious distress. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, but I can’t cover this whole floor all by myself. Can you please spare one person to come up here and help me?” Tilly wailed. “I told you, I don’t know where he is! I’ve got three call buttons buzzing right now and nobody up here but me to answer them!”
Tilly slammed down the phone, rushed out from behind the circular desk in a state of panic, nearly mowing down Hayley as she raced to see what all the patients needed.
Hayley headed in the opposite direction toward the bank of elevators. She was starving and planned on buying a Danish and coffee down in the cafeteria. When she returned about ten minutes later, the Danish already eaten and carrying her second cup of black coffee, Tilly had returned to her station and appeared a little less frazzled, although still slightly annoyed.
“Busy morning, I see,” Hayley said, sipping her coffee.
“It’s been nonstop since last night, one thing after another, and one of our nurses decides to pull a disappearing act, leaving me here all by myself! Anyone who knows me can tell you, I have never dealt well with too much pressure!”
If that was true, entering the nursing profession seemed an odd career path, in Hayley’s opinion, which she kept to herself.
“Who disappeared?” Hayley asked.
“The new guy, the good-looking one,” Tilly said brusquely as she shuffled some papers at her desk.
“Fredy?”
“Yes,” Tilly sighed.
“Could he just be taking his break?”
“No, he started at midnight and would have taken his break long before this. His shift is scheduled to be over in less than an hour. I have no clue what could have happened to him!”
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. A nurse, short and stout, late fifties, no-nonsense, hustled out, shaking her head as she approached the nurses’ station. “I searched the whole hospital. I can’t find him anywhere.”
“I’ve been trying his phone,” Tilly said. “It keeps going directly to voice mail.”
The stout nurse stopped and grabbed the desk to steady herself, out of breath. “I just can’t imagine where he went. This is so unlike him. He always seemed so conscientious and responsible.”
“And the patients adore him,” Tilly said. “Oh, well, I guess you never really know about someone.”
“Well, I am not going to waste any more time trying to figure out why he left,” the stout nurse snorted. “What can I do to help pick up the slack?”
“The urinary-tract infection in two-thirteen slept through breakfast and they took her tray away and now she’s hungry, and the hip replacement in two-nineteen is going to need help with going to the toilet,” Nurse Tilly said.
“I’m on it,” the stout nurse said before waddling off.
Hayley finished her coffee and held up her paper cup. “Is there a trash can around here?”
Without looking up, Tilly shot out a hand. “I’ll take it.”
Hayley handed it to her, and Tilly dumped it in a can underneath the desk.
“Thank you,” Hayley said.
Tilly didn’t respond.
Her eyes were glued to a medical chart.
“Tilly, I know you’re crazy busy, but I was just wondering: Were you on duty last night when Chef Romeo died?”
Tilly popped her head up. “What?”
“I was just wondering—”
“I heard the question. Why do you want to know? Are you accusing me of not acting fast enough to save him after he went into cardiac arrest?”
Hayley threw up her hands. “No, of course not!”
“Good, because this is a hospital. Things like that happen all the time,” she said, flustered.
Hayley studied Tilly.
She noticed her hands were trembling as she closed the file folder and set it aside.
“Tilly, I’m sorry, I did not mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset.”
She was clearly upset.
“Besides, I was not even here when it happened,” Tilly said. “Fredy was supposed to be here, but apparently he wasn’t. So if they’re going to blame anyone, they should blame him!”
“Were you on your break?”
The question seemed to startle Tilly.
She paused, not sure how to answer the question.
A very simple question.
And that’s when poor Nurse Tilly began to visibly melt down. “It’s none of your business what I was doing! Now if you don’t mind, I have a job to do, and I don’t have time to be hanging around here talking to you!”
Desperate to get away from Hayley, Tilly bolted out from behind the nurses’ station and fled down the hall to the break room, violently slamming the door behind her, leaving no one but Hayley standing at the nurses’ station, puzzled as to what she had said or done to upset Nurse Tilly so much.
Her erratic and suspicious behavior was suddenly raising a very big red flag.