Graveyard Shift Read online

  Patrick had been shot shortly after someone had attacked his girlfriend.

  Patrick had made at least one enemy who'd been taken into custody. But I'd have to research Jesse and make sure he was still incarcerated. Even if he was behind bars, it was possible Jesse’s friends could seek revenge, although that seemed less likely.

  More recently, the guards had beaten an indigenous couple who were now bringing media attention to and legal action against St. Joe's.

  And more specifically, a psychiatric patient had threatened Patrick’s balls.

  I tossed on my side, mindful not to squash my glasses. The plastic pillow cover crinkled under my ear, and I rolled again.

  Then I sat up and started searching on my phone.

  The indigenous gentleman, Curtis Hayden, came up immediately because of his media conference. Now I had the time to watch his video interview. He was a big guy, slightly overweight but in good shape, probably around 27, like me. He looked at the reporters who held a camera in his face and spoke to a woman with a curly bob.

  Lou was crying. She was trying to get them off me. She tried to beat ‘em, too, but I yelled at her, "Don't do it, just film the bastards, we'll put it on Twitter and let it go viral."

  She got out her phone. One of ‘em knocked it out of her hands, smashed it on the floor. Well, hell, that was our only phone, you know? Mine broke last month.

  I lost it. I tried to pick up one guy, the old one, grabbed him by the crotch and shoulder. I was going to heave him out.

  He had a baton. You know, those metal things? He whacked my ribs so hard, I just about passed out. Then he whacked me again, three, four times.

  The other ones joined in. I could feel my ribs break. I heard ‘em crack.

  I yelled at Louisa to get out. I don't care what happens to me, but I can't let them hit her like that. She'd die. She's, uh, not very strong, you know? Me, I've been beat'n so many times, ever since I was a little kid. My dad, my uncle used to whale on me. They said that's how they make you a man. Anyway, I know how to take a beat'in'. I can take a lot.

  She wouldn't go. She was crying, and she was screaming, "I'm gonna sue you."

  I couldn't breathe. The last thing I heard was Lou screaming, "I'm gonna sue."

  I would've laughed if I could've. But at the end, I couldn't do nothin'.

  21

  I closed my eyes. Curtis Hayden sounded like he was telling the truth.

  The guards swore that they stopped hitting him as soon as he got off of Patrick.

  The facts probably lay somewhere in between, but Curtis Hayden remembered them whacking him in the ribs, and he ended up with a documented hemothorax-pneumothorax. He’d probably win his case.

  Curtis wouldn’t get any money if he shot Patrick and bashed up his girlfriend and ended up in prison, right?

  Unless he got so angry that he changed plans.

  Would he resort to homicide? For Lou? It sounded like he loved her as fiercely as Dr. Dupuis loved Dr. Chia.

  I know how to take a beat'in'. I can take a lot.

  I drummed my fingers.

  I couldn’t reach out to Curtis Hayden easily. I was a doctor at St. Joe’s, and therefore in the enemy camp. He’d gone to UC afterward, which was the trauma hospital, but maybe also because he never wanted to come back to St. Joe’s.

  All I could do was speculate. I shelved Curtis for now.

  Then I switched villains.

  Combing slowly through the Internet, zeroing in only on Montreal cases of beaten children, I found one man who had been convicted of beating a three-year-old—over a year ago. He'd been released before Christmas.

  Would Jesse really wait one more month to kill one guy who'd stood up to him?

  And would he try to choke Patrick's girlfriend as an appetizer?

  It seemed far-fetched, but not impossible. The guy had beaten a three-year-old. I wouldn't put anything past him.

  Switching to the third potential villain, the psychiatric patient, I’d have to quiz Linda to ferret out his name and piece together his location. For now, he’d uttered threats, but so would at least half the patients getting "walked out." The would-be ball-eater had come up with a more descriptive threat, no more. And of people who’d uttered threats, I’d guess that less than half would raise a hand at the time, let alone a week later. They were blowing off steam and saving face, not seriously announcing a dietary change to cannibalism.

  However, Jesse and Curtis had both earned a spot on my list of suspects. Should I share this with the police?

  Probably.

  I called and got snared in voice mail hell. Montreal police had taken a leaf from Ottawa and were trying to avoid human contact. Eventually, I left a message and touched my camera icon so I could look at photos of Ryan.

  Ryan had bought me my iPhone. In fact, he bought me two of them, after I lost the first on 14/11. This device was one of my last ties to him, not to mention my way to communicate with the outside world.

  My phone buzzed with a text from Tucker:

  He took the dog.

  A single four-word text from Tucker, and my throat closed up again.

  Ryan booked two weeks off work, and he took Roxy the Rottweiler. He was splitting a foster dog. It was complicated, but neither he nor his friend Rachel had much time to take care of a dog, so Ryan took Roxy 60 percent of the time. It wouldn’t surprise me if he adopted her, because he adored her, but for the moment, she was still officially on the market. She could go anywhere.

  She could leave him. Like me.

  I tried to review this news rationally.

  Ryan took Roxy. That meant he was planning to live, right? You don’t take a dog if you want to off yourself. It would have been much easier to leave Roxy behind, with her other caretaker.

  No, Ryan took Roxy somewhere.

  On a trip?

  Two more facts: Ryan blocked my phone number, and he wasn’t answering his parents. He’d cut ties with the past.

  It still made me dry heave, but when I tried to think dispassionately, like an engineer, it didn’t sound slam dunk suicidal. It sounded like someone breaking free.

  Ryan and Roxy would keep each other sane. Once, when we were disagreeing, Roxy started barking at us. We petted her. She lolled on the floor and pushed on Ryan with her paws before licking my wrist with her tongue, and Ryan and I laughed.

  I feel about Ryan the way some people feel about hiking and running. He keeps me sane. And Roxy is now a part of that healing.

  Tucker and I almost adopted an American dog together. That didn’t work out. Someone else wanted him, a relative with a better claim, plus it made zero sense for us to own a dog. We can barely find clean underwear in the morning.

  I exhaled.

  I was at work. I couldn’t leave my patients. Ryan was gone, but Tucker was proving his investigative talents by searching him out.

  I had to trust both my guys and let go.

  "Let go and let God," one of Ryan’s churchy female friends once told me, while earnestly holding my hand and looking into my eyes.

  "No, thanks," I’d said at the time, which hurt her feelings so much that I had to stop going to Ryan’s church for a bit (world’s smallest violin). But that was how I felt, creeped out and going for an automatic no.

  I’d finally figured out what church girl was trying to tell me: if I couldn’t do anything, then I wasn’t responsible for it. I could relax and concentrate on looking after these patients in the ER.

  So I still couldn’t let go and let God. But maybe I could release my death talons on Ryan and let Tucker keep tabs on him. That, I could live with.

  Before I turned back to the ER, I combed through social medial for Curtis.

  ME AND MY POSSE! he'd posted at 1 a.m. It was a selfie at what looked like a bar.

  Now, I know you can schedule posts. Social media is not a good alibi. But it was something. An idea where he was tonight, and that was definitely not the parking lot of St. Joe’s—if I had the right guy, which is als
o never a hundred percent on social media.

  But if I were a betting woman, I'd put my money on Jesse.

  Did he do something on Friday? Did he enter St. Joe’s, if not for Patrick, then for revenge against Julie?

  And if so, where was she now?

  22

  I couldn't find Julie. I didn't even know her last name.

  Andrea, who'd promised to play seeker, seemed to be on break.

  Hark, the major pitfall of delegating: no guarantees the job would get done.

  After pacing the ER, from the kitchen to the crash carts to triage and back again, I asked the secretary to keep an eye out for Julie. Then I ducked into room 13.

  Alyssa had extended both arms to hold her phone above her face, an awkward position necessary because she was still lying flat on her back, neck immobilized in the C-collar.

  I moved into her central vision so that she didn’t have to shift her head to read my lips. "Hi Alyssa."

  She placed the phone on the bed and forced the words out of her own bruised throat. "He's dead, isn't he."

  It wasn't a question. Her eyes already knew. I took a deep breath and kept it simple. "Yes. We did everything we could, but we couldn't bring him back. I'm sorry."

  "Because they shot him in the throat."

  Maybe she'd read about it on the news or social media. Maybe someone texted her, or she overheard us talking at the nursing station. No matter how she'd figured it out, I nodded again. Sometimes, there are no words.

  She closed her eyes and clenched her fists. The rage that electrified her body gave me the space to ask the key question. "Who did it, Alyssa?"

  She started to shake her head from side to side.

  "Please don’t move your head until we clear your cervical spine, which I’ll try to do as soon as we have nurses available. Please, Alyssa. Whoever shot Patrick—I bet it’s the same people who attacked you. Luckily, your CT head was negative for bleeding, although it won’t show a concussion. They fractured your nose and left cheekbone and almost ripped off your ear. Please tell us who did it. We'll protect you."

  She choked back a laugh or a sob as her voice rasped, "That's the last thing you can do."

  "Please. You have to trust us."

  She squished her bruised eyes shut. I waited, tense. Alyssa could unlock the entire mystery for us, right here, right now.

  She compressed the rest of her face. I had never seen anything like it, the brows and the mouth folding in on itself like origami, but I understood that this was her expression of grief. You’re not allowed to scream in a hospital, her voice had been nearly choked out of her, and she had been stretched out like a modern day mummy while her lover was murdered.

  "Get me out of here," she said.

  "You’re going to plastics at University College Hospital after 8 a.m. I can clear your C-collar if everything is normal. Give me a second."

  "Get me out!" Her voice cracked.

  "Just a second!"

  I rushed out of room 13 and found Linda, who was in the middle of changing a dressing in bed 9, but I persuaded her to steady Alyssa's head while I removed the collar and checked her neck for any single point of tenderness.

  "It's fine. I'm going home."

  "Wait. Try to move your chin toward the ceiling and then back toward your chest. It doesn't have to be much. Whatever you can tolerate. Does this hurt? Do you have weakness, numbness, or tingling in your arms or legs?"

  "No." She tried to sit up.

  At least her neck truly didn’t seem to bother her. "Alyssa, you're going to University College Hospital to meet plastic surgery after 8 a.m. You have to—"

  "I'm getting out."

  "No, Alyssa, you should get—"

  She stood up, stumbled. Linda grabbed her on the left side, and I belatedly tried to support the other.

  "It's not safe to go out there!" My voice splintered too. "We're kind of—well, two men tried to grab me in the parking lot, even before Patrick died—"

  She made a wounded noise and pointed to her IV’s. "Get these things out of me."

  "Alyssa, I don't think you understand the risks of going home. Mentally and physically. Plastic surgery will take care of your facial fractures after 8 a.m.—"

  She tried to rip the IV out of her left hand.

  Linda covered the IV with her own palm and called, "You want to call a Code White?"

  "NO!" Alyssa howled. It was the most dreadful sound she'd made, worse than when I told her Patrick died.

  "I need some more Ativan," I said, catching a hold of Alyssa’s right hand, but she clawed at me, nearly dislodging the IV in her right antecubital when it got hung up on my arm.

  "I can't let go of her," said Linda.

  "Agreed. Okay, I’ll call a Code White." But when I opened my mouth to shout with the remnants of my vocal cords, Alyssa screwed her eyes shut and stopped twisting.

  I paused, mouth agape. Alyssa’s arms and legs had gone rigid. Her wrist trembled under my fingers. For a second, I thought she might be seizing, normal CT notwithstanding. But when tears leaked out of her eyes, I understood that anguish had conquered her body.

  We waited, our hands gentler now, but still resting on each arm while her muscles shook, reminding me of a trapped horse.

  I felt like a torturer. I could hardly speak. "I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you and Patrick."

  She shook and shook and shook.

  "I can get that Ativan," said Linda, but I shook my head. As soon as she left for meds, Alyssa might pluck those IV’s out and deliver an uppercut to my jaw.

  "Could you get another nurse in here with the Ativan?" I murmured. "A milligram should do it." I couldn’t have her either too wild or too sedated for plastics.

  "I'm good. I don’t need drugs," Alyssa whispered.

  It broke my heart that she said she was good. In old movies, they often either slapped "hysterical" patients or tranquilized them. We didn't slap people anymore, and we only tranquilized if necessary. Yet she needed help so badly, and I didn’t have the time or proper training for counselling. I couldn’t leave her like this.

  "Just let me out of here. I have to go home. Please." She blinked back tears. She couldn’t wipe them because we were imprisoning her.

  If Ryan or Tucker had been killed, I would want to go home too. And plastics probably wouldn’t operate on her today. Even if they did, as long as she were fasting, she didn’t have to wait in the emergency room, since her C-spine had been cleared.

  I made a snap decision. "Alyssa, the safest thing is to stay here. But even if you go home, you need someone who'll stay with you and watch you for signs of head injury. You may also not feel safe in your apartment, since that’s where you were injured. Is there someone you can call to come get you in the middle of the night?"

  "My sister. Karen."

  "Okay. Call Karen. She'd have to take you to University College Hospital for 8 a.m. You'd hardly get home before you'd turn right around, and it's safer here. The police might want to talk to you, too, so I can’t promise anything—"

  "Please!"

  "I have to talk to Dr. Dupuis, too. He's the consulting physician on today."

  Despite the tears glimmering on her eyelids, a smile poked at the corner of her lips. "God."

  I couldn't resist a half-grin back. Even a security guard's previously healthy girlfriend knew who St. Joe’s "God" was. "Yeah. We have to listen to God, okay? Let me go get him. It won't take long." With any luck, he wasn't simultaneously running codes on five different floors.

  "I have to go home," she whispered, but quietly. Her torso began to vibrate again as she reached for her phone. Linda wrapped an arm around her in support while I hurried out in search of a tall, stork-like attending physician.

  Medically, Alyssa should stay here, but it was psychological torture to stay at the hospital where her boyfriend had been shot. Maybe I could persuade UC to take her early, even though no one wants a transfer in the wee hours of the morning, and the ambulances are often too tied
up for routine transportation.

  I hustled toward the nursing station entrance across from room 14, eyes raised to catch a six footer in a lab coat, when a certain stillness caught the corner of my eye.

  Across from me, a man-mountain dressed in 100 percent black stood in the hall outside the resuscitation rooms, blocking the opposite opening to the nursing station.

  He could have been a patient, but it was less likely in all his winter outdoor gear. The ambulance patients changed into blue gowns, all the better to wear cardiac monitors. The walk-in patients, who often didn’t require a gown, clustered in the waiting room before they were shuttled, one at a time, into exam rooms. They left through the doors that opened directly into the hallways.

  No fully dressed patients headed into the heart of the ER, toward resus and the nursing station, unless they were lost or searching for a family member.

  I hadn’t forgotten my mission to find Dr. Dupuis.

  But somehow, I couldn't wrench my eyes away from this giant shrouded in black, from the balaclava over his face and the wool coat covering his massive body right down to his ankles, and black boots.

  Maybe the would-be kidnappers in the parking lot had turned me against the colour, but he made my skin prickle.

  My gaze dropped down to his round-toed, heavy-soled lace-up boots, trying to figure out if these were the same pair I'd stomped on in the parking lot, but my memory balked, too clouded by fogged-up glasses, night, snow, and fear.

  "What's happening, Hope?" Linda called.

  I couldn’t linger. Alyssa might flip at any moment.

  Still, my breath hitched and told me this guy was danger. Danger, danger, danger.

  "Can I help you?" I yelped.

  His head slowly rotated toward me. He seemed to be wearing some sort of Bluetooth headset with a mouthpiece next to his masked lips.

  I tried to stand with my feet apart, grounding me on the tile floor, making me appear confident despite my frail voice. My memory pinged, trying to grasp something distantly familiar, as I reviewed his features beneath the knit mask and the coat cloaking his potato body shape.