She wanted him to never be afraid or lost again.
She'd known since she was five years old that her father was really her responsibility. It was only since the moment she'd been given the chance to permanently hand that responsibility off that she'd accepted it.
"Do not go gentle, Da," she said, hoping that someday soon she'd really mean it. And then she turned around and walked away before the doubts could creep back in.
She didn't even make it to the door. Just the sound of her voice, evidently, was enough to call him back tonight.
"Timmie?"
Timmie all but held her breath. "Yes, Da?"
He smiled. A beatific smile that Timmie hadn't seen in months. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said, reaching out for her hand.
She gave it to him, even less sure of herself. He knew it was her. The contact was there, that indefinable something in his eyes that clicked so rarely now, and Timmie knew she had him back.
"What for, Da?"
His smile widened. Damn near glowed, so that Timmie was sure that even Murphy saw it and smiled back. "You're such a good daughter... you always have been... but... did you know there's a bird on your shoulder?"
And damn it if she didn't look.
Timmie smiled until he went back to sleep. Then she walked out the door, sat down in one of the chairs, and burst out laughing. Murphy would probably tell her she was an idiot, but she considered it a sign from God that she really had done the right thing. Which made her laugh harder, until there were tears in her eyes and the nurse started casting nervous little looks at her.
"Feeling better, Leary?" Murphy asked dryly.
Timmie wiped her eyes and laughed some more. God, it felt so good. A cliché, but like water in the desert. She'd been parched for it. "That's why he has to hang around," she said. "Nobody else in this town is as nuts."
Murphy snorted. "I wouldn't put any bets on it."
"Okay, they may be nuts. But they're not as much fun."
He nodded. "You got me there."
It took a second, but Timmie pulled herself together again. Then she got to her feet, straightened herself, and reclaimed her box. "All right, kids. Let's kick some angel-of-death butt."
Amazingly enough, Cathy jumped to her feet as if Timmie had just called the troops to order. "Thank heavens. What can we do?"
So Timmie told her. And then, Murphy trailing behind like an aide de camp, she headed over to find out just what she could about Alice Hampton's death.
It wasn't Gladys who was staffing unit five this late at night, but her compatriot Penelope, a softer, rounder woman with mocha skin, grandma's eyes, and a slow walk, who couldn't quite keep her gaze away from the rectangular box under Timmie's arm.
"You the one went up against Ms. Arlington, aren't you?" she asked Timmie when she'd introduced herself. "Gladys told us."
"Do you know if Alice's chart is still here?" Timmie asked, shifting the box against her hip like a baby.
"Sure. We kinda haven't been able to find it as fast as the review committee wanted. 'Specially since Dr. Raymond hasn't seen it yet, and since Gladys said you might want to take a look at it."
She seemed to glide over to the wall shelves, where all the research books sat, and reached behind the PDR and Merck's to pull out a thick wad of paperwork in a familiar manila folder. Timmie smiled her thanks. Penelope's answering smile was much brighter and more telling. Another big fan of Mary Jane's. What a surprise.
"You really don't have any suspects in mind?" Timmie couldn't help but ask.
Penelope shook her head in frustration. "Weird, isn't it? Most times you know damn well who's the problem."
From the list Timmie had gotten from Conrad, absolutely true. Taking half an hour to skim it while waiting for her call, she'd been amazed at the suspects everybody had fingered for possible serial murderer in their hospital and nobody had been able to reel in. It had been rarer that no suspect was named than vice versa. Which was why Timmie still thought that whatever was happening at Memorial was a conspiracy rather than a lone act. Lone actors tended to get recognized in hospitals. At least by the nurses.
"You haven't seen Dr. Raymond tonight?" Timmie asked as she sat down and began flipping through the chart.
"No. He's not due back till tomorrow."
"Seen anybody interesting?" Murphy asked.
Penelope's eyes widened. "On nights? In an old folks home? Who you expect, honey, Madonna?"
Timmie took that as a no and concentrated on her reading.
Around her the patients rustled and whimpered and snored. The lights were dim, with the occasional monitor glowing green in the dark and IV pumps whirring in tidal syncopation.
Timmie had always hated places like this. Too quiet, too final. Much too real. For the first time Timmie could remember, though, the sights and sounds calmed her. It was as if she were finally seeing how this place was choreographed to soothe the end-stage patients toward sleep. Toward rest and peace and finality. They'd had their fireworks. It was time to shut off the lights and ease away.
"Here," Timmie said, pointing to the medication schedule. "Gladys bolused her with eighty of Lasix ten minutes before the arrest."
"Alice had bad kidneys," Penelope said. "We'd been upping the dose for a while. That couldn't'a killed her, though. She hadn't even had a chance to make pee yet."
"Not Lasix," Timmie said with a considering look at her evidence box. "Dij. I'm hoping there's a Lasix multidose vial in there that's chock-full of Digoxin. And since Lasix comes 10 milligrams a cc, that would make 8 ccs of Lasix. Make that 250 micrograms of Digoxin per cc instead, and that means Gladys ended up bolusing Alice with 2000 micrograms of Digoxin, which is about eight times the loading dose.... And here's Alice's dij levels at 1.85, which means she was bumping right at the top of therapeutic anyway..."
Penelope looked appalled. "It would have dropped her like a rock. Oh, my God, that poor thing."
"Not a word," Timmie warned. "Not till we've proved this."
"Whatever you need," she said, her placid eyes sparking sudden rage. "Nobody does that to my little old people."
Timmie almost cried. She felt like Lot trying to find one just man, and actually succeeding with three seconds to brimstone. "Thank you, Penelope. We'll do it. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to do some perfectly illegal copying of this chart before anybody with less altruistic objectives can get hold of it."
"It's not Dr. Raymond," Penelope insisted.
Timmie smiled. "I know. But it's somebody."
Timmie copied the pertinent sheets and passed them to Murphy, who tucked them in the inside pocket of a twin of that ratty jacket he always wore. Then it was time to check for possible surprise visitors. Since the only way they could have gotten in was the same way Timmie and Murphy had gotten in, they both headed back to the ER.
The secretary was no longer sitting in the triage area by the time Timmie and Murphy made it back there. Instead, Ellen and Cindy were perched on the desk, clad in identical hospital greens, their backs to the front doors. A sure sign that the place was empty. Not only that, the lights were down and the monitors off, leaving the place looking spectral.