And who would rise to claim this pitiful legacy? Rachael had told Alberta that she had a will. There were a few belongings in her apartment, and the doll shop, of course. In her apartment, though, would be only a few old photos, some well worn dishes, dented pots, a few things spoiling in her refrigerator, bed clothes dotted with fuzz pills, some costume jewelry, a few threadbare dresses in her closet, an eight year old TV, and a tiny collection of old movies to play on her VCR. There would be Excalibur , Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood , El Cid. Rachael Raddenburg’s fantasies were of knights, kings, princesses, honor, courage, and courtesy. Doll shops, in addition, were like some restaurants and saloons: the place was what it was because of the owner. The new owner makes it a different place. Raddenburg’s Doll Hospital died along with it’s owner.
Rachael had given the nurses a few names and they had managed to track down two of the woman’s grown children. One of them, an attorney in Oregon, couldn’t come to his mother’s side due to the immense pressures of his schedule. In a few days, perhaps. Perhaps not.
Her daughter, a San Francisco real estate agent, had hung up on the nurse who had called.
Erico Ramos looked down at the empty bed. Whatever did you do, Rachael Raddenburg, to rate such a response from your offspring? What were your crimes? Child abuse? Neglect? Over indulgence? You tried too little? Tried too hard? Failed to stroke an ego or refused to bless a particularly foolish choice? What do your transgressions amount to now that the main concern of those around you is to get you to a drain table before your bladder and bowels relax? Is that what it comes down to: making the least mess on the way out?
He sealed the bag and paused as he mused over the fact that there was something else concerning him. Two days earlier Rachael Raddenburg and he had something in common: a terror of death. Now Rachael had a smile on her lips and death still sat in Erico’s pocket.
Had he become a nurse to join the fight against death? If so, he thought, it had been a childish move. He knew who it was who always won in the end. Erico Ramos had learned that lesson four hospitals ago. Everyone who is born is born to die. Every person who studies to heal is studying to lose.
But Rachael Raddenburg had been wide eyed with terror two nights ago. Last night she had been calm. She had even made a couple of small jokes to cover her embarrassment about having to use the bedpan. He remembered laughing with her, and wondering if she had bent her perception into a sufficient form of denial that she could blot out that this was it: the end; two minute warning, get your shit together. If it had been denial, it had lasted all of the way through the next day until her death at twenty-two after eight PM.
The look on her face, however, had been one of genuine bliss. Nurse Ramos had seen the giddy manner, bad jokes, and harsh laughter of those attempting to jolly themselves out of the big dark. Eventually the jokes end, the fear fills every corner, and all he could do was give them a hand to hold as he tried to swallow his own terror.
Erico Ramos had seen hospital death in its many forms. He had seen the stare, the frozen scream, lips and tongues bitten through, tears pooled in the corner of an eye, and every now and then indifferent oblivion. All but the last had fought death down to the last gasp from sheer panic. Terrible ways to go, all of them.
He had never before seen the blissful expression that had been on Rachael’s face; not until he had come to Northvale General. He had hung onto, fought for, lost, and cleaned up after six losers at Northvale, and all of them but one had carried the same joyous expression. Nurse Ramos had checked out the one exception. Patient Ben Crawford had been in ICU for only three days, then he had died, and without a happy face. In fact, he had bitten his tongue clean off. Rene Boniface, the morgue orderly, had been out that week with a virus.
Weekly staff meeting, Room 1113. Emergency room staff, the attempted malpractice suits stemming from the interstate pileup the previous November had been thrown out as frivolous. Hang onto your notes, though. One of the patients was looking for a new lawyer. Wilbur Stokes’s kidney, as well as Doctor Pinell’s work on it, will be featured in the February JAMA . Two ICU deaths the past week, both righteous and routine.
Question time.
Erico Ramos had never done anything in those meetings before except answer direct questions. This time he stuck up his hand. “Yeah, I got a question.”
“Yes, Erico?” said Doctor Janice Landry, who was chairing the exercise.
“First, what gets said in here stays in here, right?”
Dr. Landry nodded. “Of course. Those are the rules.”
Erico leaned forward until his elbows rested upon his knees. He glanced first at Alberta, then back at Dr. Landry. “It’s Rene down in the morgue. What can anyone tell me about him? The reason I want to know is that he seems to have some strange kind of relationship with the terminal patients — a strange effect on them.”
An actionable hush fell over the room. Doctors, nurses, lawyer, and administrator racing through their memories, reexamining their cases and orders, making certain their asses were covered. The hospital’s attorney blanching at the possibility of a big mistake and an even bigger scandal. There was nothing bigger than a serial killer secretly flitting from bed to bed, leaving corpses behind. Remember Donald Harvey, the nurse’s aide in some hospital out in Ohio, who snuck around injecting arsenic and cyanide into the IVs? He never would’ve been caught except that one of his victims had been in a motorcycle accident and the law had required, in such cases, an autopsy.
Rene Boniface? No. That would be nothing but rank projection, thought the attorney. It had nothing to do with the morgue orderly. Not yet. Nothing had been proven. The attorney quickly reviewed the provisions of his own malpractice protection.
“What kind of effect do you mean, Erico?” asked the attorney.
“Look, I’ve been at Northvale a little over a month. In that time, up in ICU we’ve had six deaths.”
“That’s not unusual,” said Dr. Landry. “This is a very large facility in a very large city. In addition we’re closest to center city and the interstate. We get the majority of the Saturday night stabbings and shootings, the attempted suicides, and the traffic accident trade.”
“I’m not talking about the body count, doctor. I’m talking about how they looked when they died.”
“Then, what do you mean?”
“Look, one of those deaths, Benjamin Crawford, was like every other death I’ve ever seen. Maybe even a little more grim. He bit off his tongue, died, and that was that. The other five deaths were different.”
“Different how?”
As it came out of his mouth, Erico knew how silly he sounded. “They were smiling.”
Laughter interrupted Erico, and when it died down, Dr. Kramer the staff pathologist asked, “What does this have to do with Rene Boniface?”
“He visited every one of those five when they were still alive. Rene never got to see Crawford.”
Dr. Kramer held out his hands. “I don’t get it. What are you saying? Are you suggesting that Rene had something to do with causing their deaths?”
“No. No, I don’t.”
“Then what are you getting at?” Dr. Kramer faced the room at large. “Rene has been my orderly for more than two years. He is competent, uncomplaining, and he does his work with efficiency, compassion, and respect. I admit he seems a little strange at times, but for Christ’s sake, he works in a morgue.” He turned back to Erico. “Look, all of this highfalutin anonymity notwithstanding, this is exactly the kind of thing that can permanently damage someone’s reputation. If you’ve got a charge you can substantiate, then let’s hear it. If not, then let’s call it a day and get the hell back to work.”