Alex's smile was fond and worried. "It's enough, honey. You look like you lost a prizefight. Although I hear you have a heck of a tattoo."
Timmie blushed, scowled, and grumbled, "I know some EMTs who should be running for their lives this very second."
"Are you really okay?" he asked, all joking aside as he lay a hand on her shoulder.
"I'm sore," she said to the ceiling. "Do you have any idea how hard these damn backboards are? My butt's asleep, and I'm gonna be picking adhesive off my chin for a week."
He grinned. "You don't sound too injured to me."
"Yeah, well. That's what I've been trying to tell them."
"I'm glad you're okay." His smile was radiant. "When I heard from Ellen, I ran right down. If you need anything... I mean, I have to head out of town for a couple of days, but if there's anything, I mean, anything I can do."
Tell me why people are dying in your unit. Tell me if you told someone to do this to me.
"Thank you, Alex. I'm fine."
"My car. You can use the Lexus while I'm gone."
Timmie's laugh was a surprised bark. "Why? You need that crash-tested, too?"
"I'm serious."
"Okay. Thank you. If you really want to help, though, tell Chang to get me off this damn board before I walk it down the hall."
Alex, knowing better, just patted, and Timmie was left to wonder.
* * *
Timmie ended up with X rays of everything but her ankles, four staples in her head, and an excuse from work that afternoon, which Angie accepted with predictable bad humor.
"But that's all right," she said with an alligator smile. "I have the perfect place for you to recuperate. Since you're supposed to work tomorrow, why don't you just do your ten over in Restcrest? They're short, and we're not, and you shouldn't be running around anyway, isn't that right?"
Timmie didn't have to lie about wanting to go to Restcrest after all. She did everything but call Angie a Republican. Ellen saved her job by appearing just then to take her home.
Barb caught up with the two of them as they reached the driveway. She was wearing virtually the same expression as Alex, although Timmie had to admit that it didn't look quite as attractive on Barb.
"You idiot!" the big woman snapped.
Alex had also said "I worried about you" better. The problem with that was that Barb was the one who was going to make Timmie cry. So Timmie bluffed her way through it.
"You shoulda been there, Barb," she teased. "I could see all the way to my house. I swear that poor farmer thought we were doing a remake of Smokey and the Bandit."
Barb just planted herself in Timmie's way, tears sparkling in her soft gray eyes. "You... total... idiot!"
No, Barb. Laugh. Don't make it real. Timmie swallowed hard against the fear Barb's concern was going to let loose again.
"I'm fine," she insisted, holding her arms out as if to prove it. "Really."
Barb glared harder, the tears brighter. "Don't... ever do that to me again," she said. "When I heard what happened—"
Timmie didn't know how else to shut her up. It looked silly as hell, but Timmie didn't know what else to do but put her arms around her friend. Which she did, barely. On her toes.
"I'm not in the mood for more funerals," was all Barb could manage.
It took a few moments, but when Barb straightened, she was dry eyed and in control. She held her hand out to Ellen. "Give me the bag. I'll take her home."
"But..."
Barb didn't say another word. Ellen just handed it over. "Thank you, Barb," she said. "I really did want to get back over to the unit. Little Mrs. Worthmueller isn't doing very well right now."
Timmie thanked her for taking the time, and Barb held her tongue until Ellen had made it inside the door. Then Barb, carrying the plastic personal effects bag that held Timmie's bloodied and scissored clothes like a dead mouse, turned a scrub clothes and Doc Martens-clad Timmie back toward the parking lot.
"So what happened?" she demanded.
Sucking in a steadying breath, Timmie told her.
"Why?" Barb asked. "It makes no sense. All that stuff's in the computer already."
Her attention more on negotiating a suddenly high curb with very sore hips, Timmie shrugged. "To give them a chance to change something on the records they didn't want anybody else to know?"
Barb shook her head. "Then they would have done it by now. I spent the morning looking everything up, and it isn't any different. There were fifteen patients from Restcrest turfed to the ER to die, another six who died in the unit because the family wouldn't allow them moved, and four more who died of cardiac arrest before the policy change. Of those, only six died of something else definable."
Timmie slowed almost to a near stop right in the middle of the traffic lane. "You really think they were killed."
"I looked through at least seven charts. Every one of those deaths was a surprise. Sudden respiratory arrest. Sudden cardiac crash. Amazing how surprised a nurse can sound with just the words 'patient had been stable until arrest.'"
Timmie had almost made it past that first jolt of fear. This stopped her dead in her tracks. Last chance to escape the inevitable, and Barb had closed the door. There were people dying, and other people covering up the fact. Not a huge surprise in a hospital. It happened. Nobody liked to admit mistakes, especially when mistakes tended to cost lives and millions in litigation. But this...
This.
Timmie sighed, closed her eyes. "Fuck."
Barb looked way down at Timmie the way a mother does when her child first realizes that the world isn't a place Santa Claus would live in after all. "Let's get you home," she suggested. "We can finish the editorial portion of this program then."
Timmie started walking again, but the questions began to circle relentlessly. If that guy hadn't wanted the list, what had he wanted? If there were deaths being covered up, just who was committing them? And who was covering them up?
Timmie stood there shivering while Barb unlocked the Volvo's door, and all she could think of was that she wanted to sleep. For hours. Days. Weeks. Amazing how predictable the body was. When in danger, run. Or hide. Or both. Down at the end of the lane, one of the security wagons was trolling for problems. Timmie didn't pay a lot of attention.
"I'm going to have to talk to those nurses up there tomorrow," she said, thinking specifically of one very dedicated nurse. "They'll know..."
Something. She'd been about to say it. She lost the word somewhere in the millisecond of time it took to see the security guard waving hello to Barb as he trundled past. The guard with the thick black hair and potbelly.
The guard with the cat's-eye-and-gold ring on his left pinkie.
Well, no wonder, Timmie thought as she stood there gaping like a Kansas farmer in Manhattan. She'd been right. It hadn't been a cop. It had been somebody who played one on his job. A security guard. From the hospital.
"O-o-o-h, shit," she muttered, struggling not to make eye contact or run. Probably a good thing. The look the guard shot her on the way by left no doubt that he was here to make sure she didn't recognize him.
"Oh shit what?" Barb asked, throwing the bag with Timmie's clothes in the car and holding the door open for Timmie to follow.
Wondering how it could be that nobody else seemed to be able to see her shake, Timmie tried to grin. "I'll tell you later at the house."