"Wish somebody'd do for this soul what they seem to be doin' upstairs," Mattie muttered on the way by. "No matter what Walter and his God say. It just ain't right."
"Mattie, you can't mean that," Ellen whispered. "Not you."
Shifting the Chux and catheter supplies in her arms, Mattie glared. "Me."
Mattie was right, Timmie thought. She should just go home. Leave them to tag Alice with her statistics and then wrap her like a pork roast and send her off to the freezer where someone would mourn, but not as much as if she'd lived.
Instead, Timmie turned and walked back upstairs.
* * *
When she reached Restcrest, it was to find even more of a commotion than when she'd left it an hour earlier. Not raucous, by any means. That would have upset the patients. The patients were upset anyway, because like children and horses, they could sense distress just from the way they were handled.
The cries were harsher, more strident, more frequent. From the level-two areas Timmie could hear the heightened babble of conversation and more than one argument. And on unit five, where she'd planned on talking to Gladys and collecting Alice's medications for analysis, she found not one nurse, but two, stiff-lipped, dry-eyed, and as tense as a terrorist cease-fire. The second nurse was one of the evening supervisors, which suited Timmie's purposes perfectly.
"I'm sorry," Timmie said, greeting Gladys. "She didn't make it."
Gladys closed her eyes. "I don't understand it," she insisted. "I just don't."
"Well, Miss Arlington's on her way in now to make us understand," the supervisor said dryly.
Miss Arlington. That meant Timmie didn't have much time.
"I need a favor," she said, holding up the evidence box she'd scooped up on her way out of the ER. "Alice's medications. I need to get them analyzed."
Gladys blanched. "Oh, I don't know..."
The supervisor, God bless her, held firm. "Well, I do. Take 'em before Mary Jane gets here. If something's going on, she's the last one who's going to want to know."
Timmie hesitated. "You're sure."
"I'm sure. Just make sure it's worth my job."
"I'll need you to sign and date the sealing tape," Timmie told her. "So we can protect the chain of evidence."
Gladys looked as if she were going to pass out. "Evidence."
The supervisor didn't say a word. She just reached out her hand until Gladys handed over the nurse-server key.
The supervisor helped Timmie clean out the medicine drawer and came away with handfuls of Dulcolax and Maalox dose packs, Ticlid, Digoxin, Tranzene, Nitropaste. Vials of Lasix and Compazine, and bottles of IV potassium chloride. Haldol and procainamide and half a dozen things Timmie recognized but couldn't immediately identify. Nothing Timmie wouldn't have expected, though.
Timmie and the supervisor both signed the red tape that Timmie stretched over the edge of the box, and Timmie thanked her. They were just finishing up when they both heard Gladys's surprised greeting. Ms. Arlington had wasted no time.
"I'm holding you responsible, Gladys," she was saying.
Timmie walked out of the room to see Gladys's mouth opened wide enough to show her uvula. "How could I...?"
Which was about when Mary Jane caught sight of the co-conspirators. "What are you doing here?"
"She helped code Alice," Gladys defended, now flushed and trembling. "And now she's—"
"Going back to see my father," Timmie allowed, the sealed evidence box safely tucked inside the jacket she'd balled up and held in her arms.
"I just can't believe that Alice is gone," Gladys said to no one in particular.
"Me, either," Timmie said. "I expected it to be Bertha Worthmueller."
Mary Jane's eyes snapped open so fast Timmie could see the tiny scars from her lifts. Her mouth opened, too, but she couldn't seem to manage anything. It was as if Alice's death was the final straw. It certainly seemed to be for Gladys, who was crying and glaring at the same time.
"It shouldn't have happened," she insisted, wringing her hands. "It never should have happened."
Timmie tried her best to assess each reaction. Gladys was distraught, the supervisor outraged, and Mary Jane... Timmie couldn't figure out what Mary Jane was, except cautious. Ah, hell. She might as well go for the gold.
"You really don't know who's doing this, do you?" she asked Gladys.
"No, we don't," Gladys said, her eyes lighting a little. "Do you?"
"Doing what?" Mary Jane asked just a little too late.
Timmie knew way back in her head that Mary Jane outranked her by at least ten levels of administration. She even remembered that Mary Jane might be a murderer with about as much conscience as Lucrezia Borgia. It didn't prevent her from reacting to that little piece of disingenuity with disdain.
"Come on, Ms. Arlington. At least twenty people have died on this unit. Fifteen of them have been the old-timers who've been costing this unit a ton of money. That's why I was worried about Bertha in there. She's the last one. What was it about Alice that made her a target?"
"There are no targets," Mary Jane insisted with less enthusiasm. "This is just an unfortunate... uh..."
"Murder," Timmie filled in for her. "And if it wasn't to save the unit money, what could it have been for?"
"That's why it shouldn't have been Alice," Gladys insisted. "She was going to leave the wing a grant. A fortune!"
Mary Jane snapped to attention. "Gladys!"
"I can't anymore, Miss Arlington. I just can't! Somebody needs to know. Alice isn't from here. Her family transferred her from Kentucky, and they were going to meet her here next weekend, after she got settled. They were so excited she was going to be safe and cared for. What we heard was that if they liked what they saw when they came to see her, they were going to donate a huge amount to the unit. Well, they won't once they find out she's been murdered!"
"She has not been murdered!" Mary Jane insisted.
"But somebody murdered those other people," Timmie retorted, her voice still very quiet. "And you all know it. Why didn't you say anything?"
It was Mary Jane's turn to glare, and she did it quite well. "Do you know what you're doing to Restcrest's reputation?"
Timmie wanted to scream. "I'm not the one doing it, Ms. Arlington. The murderer is. And the people covering it up."
Mary Jane damn near had a stroke. "Don't you threaten me, young lady."
"She told us not to say anything," Gladys insisted.
Mary Jane spun on her, but Gladys had had one too many deaths on her hands.
"But you knew what was going on, didn't you, Gladys?" Timmie asked. "How did you know?"
"They were dying for no reason at all," Gladys all but wailed. "I took such good care of them. Such good care! Do you know what this looks like on my record?"
"Did you see anything suspicious? Anyone suspicious?"
"This is absurd!" Mary Jane protested, ramrod straight and trying hard to keep her hands at her sides. Must have been tough not to have a clipboard or patient file to hide behind when she needed to show authority. She didn't even have glasses to wave around. "You'd better think a little harder about what you have to lose before you continue making accusations like this."
Timmie didn't even listen to her. She was focused instead on Gladys, who was still shaking her head as if it would help settle her suspicions and frustrations into a more identifiable pattern.