The Pain Nurse (Will Borders: Cincinnati Casebook 1)

Cheryl Beth tried to lighten her voice. “Did you have fun with her?”

“Oh, yeah,” he rasped. “I never knew it was possible.”

She started the car and drove slowly out of the park and into the downtown streets. As the defroster cleared the windshield, rain began pecking at the glass.

“You blame yourself.”

He was staring out the passenger-side window as they passed Fountain Square, decorated for Christmas, an impressionist painting as umbrella-shrouded office workers and shoppers scurried across, the buildings dissolving in the rain. He stared past her into Garfield Park, magically lit by the ornate streetlamps. It was five thirty and full dark. Cincinnati still had the bones of the major American metropolis it once was.

“Let’s just say when the tumor was found, I figured that God had given me what I deserved.”

“How can you say that?” Cheryl Beth gripped the wheel tightly. “I grew up with that crap, and that’s not the God I worship. Stuff happens, Will. Some gene betrayed you. It’s not the Lord’s punishment for anything you did or didn’t do with Theresa. You’re not to blame for what happened.”

He laughed mordantly. “Well, I haven’t had an erection since the surgery, so let’s say I don’t have to worry about women anymore.”

They were stopped at a traffic light. Cheryl Beth turned to him. “Stick out your tongue. Go ahead, I’m a nurse. Stick out your tongue.”

He did.

“You’ve got everything you need to make a woman happy.”

The light changed and her tires spun on the pavement. She could feel herself turning bright red. That was a routine she had done before with spinal patients, a little bit of fun, strictly professional. Now she was burning with embarrassment. It faded only slowly as she drove up the hill on Vine Street and the windshield wipers revealed the sleet that was now coming down hard. She drove with extra care. The sleet clung to the hood of the car, slathered the street. If it froze… But she also drove slowly because she didn’t want the day to end.

“Did you miss being a homicide detective?” She felt herself talking nervously, to break the spell that had fallen into the car.

“Some days,” he said. “I loved my job. That may be different from a lot of cops. They start out loving it, showing up at work early, everything’s new, they work past their shift without even thinking about filing an overtime slip. Later, it changes. A lot of them get bitter, hate everybody, marriages fall apart. Then they wait for their pensions. The best ones get in a zone. They know the job, the politics, how to put a case together and testify. They make friends off the job.”

“Internal affairs must have been hard. Other cops don’t like you.”

“That’s true,” he said. “But there’s a freedom to it, if you do it right. There are two kinds of Internal Investigations cops—the yes men, and the ones who believe in getting the facts and serving the public and your fellow officers. You want to make the bad cops go away and make sure the good ones stay. You have to be willing to ask important people embarrassing questions sometimes, and that upsets the bosses. But the chief has had my back.”

Cheryl Beth gave him a gentle laugh. “You sound like an idealist.”

Will laughed and shook his head. “An idealist and a philosopher. And a realist. That’s a good cop. Dodds is that way, I give him that. But you can never let the idealist or philosopher part show, because you’re surrounded by colleagues who believe the world is fucked. Pardon my language. They’re the realists.”

“That’s too bad. Have you ever shot someone?” She was instantly sorry she had asked.

“I have no problem killing bad humans.”

He said it dispassionately, then quickly asked about the politics of her job. “Me? I fight the bureaucracy, but mostly I try to put people at ease, make them laugh. Get them to trust me. I ask myself, ‘How do you get people to do things they’ve never done before?’”

“You mean the bosses?”

“Bosses, patients, doctors, nurses.”

Finally the neuro-rehab entrance became unavoidable, and she pulled under the overhang.

“Thank you,” Will said. “I had…”

“I know.”

“Tomorrow’s Christmas eve. I couldn’t get out to buy you a Christmas present, so this will have to do.”

He reached in his pocket and handed her a piece of white paper. It was folded into the shape of a card, and on the cover were pencil sketches of a decorated tree and a pretty good likeness of Cheryl Beth in her lab coat and scrubs. “My best gift this Christmas…” was written in block letters. She opened it and read, “is no pain.” It was signed, “Thank you, Cheryl Beth—Will.”

“You drew this?”

He nodded.