The Pain Nurse (Will Borders: Cincinnati Casebook 1)

***

Cheryl Beth padded along on the new, heavy-duty carpet of the hallway into Four-East. It was already looking ratty. She was surprised to see Denise there, away from her usual floor.

“Angela was sick, so they moved me over at the last minute,” Denise said. “I’m sorry to get you up here, baby girl. I called his doc and he said to call you. It’s a compliment, really.”

“Right.” Cheryl Beth looked around the chart caddy for the paperwork. As often happened, the chart was missing. She squinted at the white board, which gave a basic rundown of the patient and his meds.

“Sorry,” Denise said. “This station is a mess. Blunt chest trauma as a result of an auto accident. Chest tube. It’s been in for a week and he’s really hurting. Why are your hands shaking?”

Cheryl Beth stripped off her coat and sat heavily, studying her hands. They never shook. But a tremble ran through both. She knotted them into fists and it stopped. “The cops don’t think Lennie is the killer,” she said.

“What?”

“That’s what I said. But it gets worse. This one detective, he’s acting like I’m a suspect. Denise, I could get fired and blackballed. Stephanie Ott already hates me. I don’t know what to do.” She folded her arms across her chest, feeling her breasts through the soft fabric of her scrubs. They were softer now. Her body was becoming a stranger in middle age. She looked up at Denise. “It looks bad on the surface. The thing with Gary…”

“I know.” She said it low and sympathetically, but Cheryl Beth angrily waved her hands.

“Everybody in this fucking hospital knows!” She brought her voice down. “Sorry. Sorr

y.” She held her hands out and they were steady. “Let’s get to work.”

“Baby girl, nobody could think you had anything to do with it. That’s crazy. I was with you that night. I gave you the message to go down there.”

“That would play well before a jury,” Cheryl Beth said, laughing ruefully. “Did you take Christine’s call that night?”

“No,” Denise said. “The ward clerk handed it to me. It must have come in when we were working on poor Mrs. Dahl.”

So Christine might have called just before she was killed. Why did she call when she could have paged her? Why did she want to talk at all—what more was there to say? The details of the night came rushing back upon her.

“So you came on duty at eleven?”

Denise nodded. “And that poor old lady was hurting so bad. I say, ‘enough of this, I’m calling Cheryl Beth.’ So I paged you.”

“Had you seen Lustig that night?”

“On that floor? No way. Anyway, she wasn’t even cutting any more.”

“So I came in around eleven-twenty, say? We worked with Mrs. Dahl for maybe half an hour and I spent another half an hour writing the new orders.”

“Makes sense.”

“So it was nearly twelve-thirty and I was about to leave when you saw the message?”

“Right. It must have come in while we were in the room with Mrs. Dahl. It definitely wasn’t there when I came on duty.”

Cheryl Beth made herself stand and they walked toward the patient’s room. She could hear moaning in the distance. She stopped and faced Denise. “Ever run into a nurse named Judd Mason?”

“Creepy dude, huh?” Denise said. “No bedside manner at all. You know he used to be an OR nurse for Lustig?”

Cheryl Beth stopped and held Denise’s shoulder. “What?”

“He scrubbed in with her for years,” Denise said. They stood in the dim hallway next to the code cart, speaking in low voices. Except for the moans coming from the next door, the only sound was loud snoring. “He was good in the operating room, I hear. Lot of those nurses love the teamwork, the stress, the autonomy. They don’t have to be great with direct patient contact.”

“So were they still together?”

“Nope, they had a falling out. This was before Lustig went on leave to do the computer project.”

“What do you mean, ‘falling out’?” Cheryl Beth felt revived by an adrenaline shot through her system.