"Yes, ma'am." I nodded as I helped Liz up. I walked slowly hoping that Mrs. Rikka would let us go without further questioning. The sound of the supervisor's shoes clicking on the floor told me that she was leaving, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I looked at my friend.
"Liz, what have you been doing?" I whispered.
"Nothing, I’m just tired. Get off my back," she mumbled as I kept her moving.
In the ER, Leslie set up a cot to one side and we maneuvered Liz onto it so that the resident could check her out. Leslie let me take Liz's vitals and pronounced them normal as she did a few tests to see how awake and aware she was.
"Looks like she might have taken something," Leslie commented as she pulled up Liz's eyelids and checked her pupil reflexes. "But then again, she might be sick. We’ll run some tests and see what shows up. Do you know of anything she might have taken?”
"No, I don't," I said, shaking my head. I turned to Liz and asked, "Liz, are you on drugs?"
"Drugs? What the hell?" Liz said a little more coherently. "Jesus, I told you, I’m just tired. Would you all back off?”
"She's been saying that since I found her in the hallway." I shrugged. "No idea what it means."
"She'd better be careful," Leslie warned. "If Frau Rikka finds her--"
"She already did." I sighed. "She ordered me to bring her to find out what's going on."
"Aww, shit," Leslie said, shaking her head slowly. "There's gonna be a report about this, and you're going to have to most likely answer a ton of questions. And if Liz has been doing drugs, it’s likely she’ll be expelled from the program."
"Shit," I muttered under my breath.
"Indeed." Leslie nodded. "Rikka is a hard ass about rules, and she rarely does anything that doesn't completely conform to them. She's a bitch in heels, and she runs a tight ship."
"What can I do?" I asked. "How can I help Liz?"
"Well, the good thing is that Rikka has made so may enemies in every department that we'll have a fairly good chance of thwarting her with a proactive approach," Leslie said as she looked out from behind the curtain trying to find the resident. "The second thing is that we've got time on our side. No investigators will be in until morning, so if we can stall the resident, then we can give Liz a chance to recover a bit. I'll hook her up to an IV line, and we'll see if we can't flush her system out a bit just in case she did take something."
"Just tell me what to do," I said as I watched Leslie wipe Liz's arm with an alcohol pad and then quickly slide the needle into her vein. She hooked up the IV and slipped the bag onto the stand.
"You stand guard," Leslie said. "I'm going to clear out the rooms and get things quiet around here again, then we'll see how Liz is doing and get the resident in here to examine her."
I nodded as I watched Leslie disappear into the bustling ER. I turned and looked at Liz. She looked so small lying on the bed and she was unusually pale, even for her. For the next hour, I watched her like a hawk as Leslie did her best to steer everyone clear of the curtain.
"Liz," I whispered. "You're going to have to tell me what's going on when you wake up."
"Back the hell off, Pierce," Liz said in a sharp tone that she’d never used with me before now. “I’m just tired.”
It took Leslie two hours to clear the ER, and by then Liz was back on her feet and declared she felt fine.
"You're kidding me," I said, looking at her skeptically.
"Nope, not at all," she said. "I told you I just needed a nap. Let's get this needle out and get back to work. I'm sure they could use a hand or two about now."
"Liz, you're going to have to be checked out," I said as she tugged on the needle in her arm trying to decide if she was going to pull it herself. "Mrs. Rikka didn't give you a choice. You have to be seen by a doctor."
"Oh, bullshit," Liz said, sticking out her tongue. "That old biddy has no idea what I need."
"Liz, can you at least wait until Leslie comes back and pulls the IV?" I pleaded as I held her arm and hoped she'd listen to me.
"Fine, whatever." Liz sighed. "But get her back here soon to get it out, would you? I can't stand the way it feels in my arm."
I helped Liz back to the cot and to find Leslie who was in Trauma 1 finishing up the paperwork on another gunshot victim. There was blood all over the floor beneath the table, and I asked if she wanted me to clean it up.
"Nah, housekeeping will get in here when it's this bad," she said, waving me off. "You can't clean blood as well as they can."
"Liz is up and around and she wants the IV line out," I said. "She was trying to pull it herself and I stopped her. I...I...I..."