The Pain Nurse (Will Borders: Cincinnati Casebook 1)

“Buddy, I got no comment on any of that. Get my drift? You need to get feeling better.”

“Do the bigs at University know about Robert Cecil?”

Berkowitz stopped midway to the door, his skin suddenly drained of color.

***

It was difficult to explain cops and race to civilians. When Will and Dodds had caught up w

ith Craig Factor, crashing at a crack house on the edge of Liberty Hill, he had sprinted outside and down the street. As usual, it had been left to Will to lead the chase. He knew Dodds would come huffing behind, but he had the speed. He had gotten close enough to grab Factor’s shoulders and wrestle him down to the pavement. They were in the middle of the street. Factor was a big guy, at least two hundred and fifty pounds, and wrestled and swung punches. By the time Dodds had arrived, the two of them were able to get Factor under control, face down, Will’s knee in his back, as they cuffed him. The schools were on spring break, and at least two dozen young black men with nothing to do had gathered on the sidewalk, watching, then catcalling. Then one threw a bottle. It might have gotten uglier if a lot of backup hadn’t arrived quickly. But, Will knew, if a news crew had been filming the arrest, many civilians might have assumed that there was no more to the story than the image of a big white cop abusing a handcuffed black man.

Most cops weren’t racist, but in a city like Cincinnati, with a huge underclass, the police spent most of their time dealing with crime and trouble in black neighborhoods. You could become jaundiced after one shift. You had to fight to remember, most of the people in those neighborhoods were law-abiding, trying to get by. They were under siege. Drugs and guns and too many unemployed young men were a lethal combination. Will had taken the classes, heard the sociology, back when he thought he might get a master’s degree. On the streets, it was a scary reality not covered in the studies and the textbooks. Being a solitary cop at night in a hostile neighborhood.

Too many black men were being shot by the police. Will had investigated some of the shootings; some were righteous, some there was a question. He always tried to do those cases by the book. He knew that he hadn’t been there in that moment of terror, when a life-and-death decision had to be made. When he had been fighting with Craig Factor, before Dodds got there, Factor had been wildly reaching for Will’s gun. Another cop might have just shot the son of a bitch. Will might have, too. Then the first thing the media would have reported was that Will Borders was “a white police officer.” Nothing else would matter but race.

But some cops were racists, and Cincinnati was in many ways a Southern city, right across the river from Kentucky. The color line was hard, reinforced by the city’s makeup of Germans and briars, fierce loyalties and old grudges, built up over time like geologic sediments. Ten years ago, Robert Cecil might or might not have been aware of this history when he pulled off the interstate to eat at a White Castle. He was driving a new BMW, went through the drive-thru, and pulled into the parking lot. It was a warm May night, a little before midnight, so he rolled the driver’s side window down. That was when a white man came up behind him, produced a gun, and ordered him to get out of the car. Cecil instead dropped the car into reverse and tried to get away. The white man fired eight shots through the open window and every one connected. Robert Cecil was black and the white man was an undercover police officer named Berkowitz.

Will and Dodds had rolled in as the primary homicide team. Berkowitz claimed Cecil had been reaching for a gun even as he tried to drive away. No gun was found in the car. A witness said Berkowitz had never identified himself as a cop. Berkowitz claimed he had. Why had he approached the BMW? Berkowitz said it was suspicious. Will knew what that meant: a black man in a fancy new car. Cecil was a lawyer from Cleveland, and the city ended up paying a big settlement to his family. But somehow Berkowitz got out of it. Command wanted the problem to go away. Internal Investigations took over the case. Stan stayed on the force another three years before retiring. In a city of such long memories, some things could be easily shoved in a closet. But Will knew the Robert Cecil story wouldn’t go over well with the bosses at University Hospital, who were putting a premium on community outreach, doing the right thing. The philanthropist hospital board ladies, married to big shots at Procter, American Financial, Kroger, and Federated, might wonder about the cop who killed Robert Cecil. So might the hospital’s CEO, a black woman. Berkowitz knew it, too. He delayed his meeting “off-site” and talked to Will for another thirty minutes.

Chapter Twenty-two

Cheryl Beth stood in the doorway, watching as Will slowly stood and stepped into the walker. Every move looked painful, but he took one step forward, then another. It made her smile when the hospital actually helped people. Then she felt her pager vibrating.

It was a new consult on the fourth floor. The nurses’ station didn’t have the chart, which wasn’t unusual, so she walked down to the room. She remembered a meeting in the fall, when the hospital brass and the people from SoftChartZ had talked about the progress on the computer project. All medical records would be on PC workstations, which would be available to nurses and doctors all over the hospital. A patient’s history, medications, and orders would be available at the touch of a key. It seemed almost too good to be true. Cheryl Beth didn’t remember the boyish CEO from SoftChartZ being at this meeting. Christine had led it and taken questions. She had worn a very attractive blue suit that day—she always wore a skirt at work, unless she was in scrubs. And she had spoken with more passion, more compassion for what this might mean for patients, than Cheryl Beth had ever seen from her. She knew Christine as prickly, icy, tightly wound, businesslike. Never caring. Cheryl Beth had broken off the affair with Gary that night.

The room was at the end of the hallway, where it ended in the fire stairwell, and the door was closed. As she had so many times before, she knocked twice, then opened the door and stepped inside. The nearest bed was empty and neatly made up. The bed by the window was concealed by a curtain.

“Hello?”

She felt the air rush of the heavy door being closed behind her even before she heard it slam shut.

Gary Nagle stood behind the door, wearing nothing but a fierce erection. He leered at her. “Hey, baby.”

She instantly grabbed the doorknob, but he was stronger and kept the door shut.

“You used to like this…”

She was momentarily in a coma of surprise and shock. His eyes were an animal’s. Beneath her animal fear, her mind began processing: this is it…this is what the moment before being raped feels like. She vowed to herself she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

“Gary.” She tried to keep her voice calm, but heard it waver. “You’re not yourself. Your wife died…”

“Ex!” He shouted it and made a flourish with one hand. “Yeah, poor Chris. Poor, poor Chris…the whore!” His eyes narrowed and he thrust his right hand out toward her in a half-fist.

“Slash! Slash! Slash!” He made violent cuts back and forth with an invisible knife, crouching down like a street fighter. His hard penis shook like a diving board. “You know I can use a knife! Chris, you whore. For what you did to me…”

He stepped toward Cheryl Beth, but his effort to hold the door kept him just enough off balance.

Springing to the foot of the first bed, she slid the rolling table that usually held a patient’s dinner tray between them.

“Gary, I swear to God I’m going to start screaming.”

“You used to like this, Cheryl Beth.” He stroked himself. He had always been irrepressibly proud of his endowment, bragging about how difficult it was to find size thirteen shoes. Now the memory made her shudder.

“You’re acting like some kid resident, not a seasoned physician,” she said, making her voice sound a haughtiness she didn’t feel. “And I’m sure not a nurse looking for a doctor husband.”

“Oh, Cheryl Beth, we had such fun…”

There he was with his finely toned physique, but she felt nothing. It was just a body. Another fragile container of bone and muscle and tissue in the hospital. Nursing aides giving sponge baths often caused male patients to have erections. It wasn’t sexy. It was kind of sad. She felt all this, but only below the incoming waves of fear.