“Um, sorry,” Richard muttered sheepishly as he glanced between his wife and his mother-in-law, both of whom were wearing smiles that were disturbingly similar. For a brief moment, he stood there, rooted to the spot as he found himself wondering if, over the course of time, the woman he had married would eventually look like the decrepit wretch in the bed, the one who had not only come to dominate their lives but was beginning to put an intolerable strain on his relationship with Ellen.
Coming to her feet, Ellen took up her purse from the nightstand next to her mother’s bed and made for the door. “I’ve so got to use the loo,” she muttered as she made her way past Graham. “Do be a dear and keep an eye on Mother.”
Before he could ask why Helen Walton, a woman who was hooked up to monitors and IV drips rendering her as helpless as a newborn, needed to be watched, his wife was gone, leaving him standing there like the hapless dupe he imagined he was quickly becoming.
From her bed, Helen looked over at Graham and gave him that smile, the one that was beginning to irk him. “How are the children?” she asked.
Though he had little doubt Ellen had already gone over every conceivable detail of what their children had done in the past twenty-four hours, Graham saw he had no choice but to tell the old woman again. With a sigh, he made his way over to the chair his wife had vacated, sat down, and pitched into his account with as much enthusiasm as he could, which, at the moment, wasn’t much.
Just as she was about to enter the clinic, Anna Morgan, the head night nurse, found she was forced to jump back, lest she be smacked in the face by the clinic’s door that a man had brusquely shoved open. He was followed by a woman who was snapping at his heels. Without missing a beat, the woman, whom Anna recognized as being the daughter of Helen Walton, took up a running argument the pair had obviously been engaged in before leaving the building. “She’s my mother, you self-centered bastard,” the woman barked without breaking stride. “Dear God, she’ll be gone soon enough.”
Having heard and seen it all before, Anna didn’t need to wait to hear how the man responded. Someone, she snickered as she stepped up to the door and entered the clinic, was going to be spending a cold, lonely night on the sofa.
After checking in with the head nurse currently on duty, Anna made straight for the pharmacist’s office. It was the first of the month, the day when all the passwords to the hospital’s computer systems were changed. She’d need to retrieve the unique password Christine Alsop had assigned her for the month, one that would allow her to access the spreadsheet where all the dosages for their patients’ medications and the schedule by which they needed to be administered were recorded.
Upon finding the door to Christine’s office unlocked, Anna shook her head and chuckled. In the morning, she’d have to remind the woman she needed to be more careful, lest the hospital administrator, a retired Royal Army Medical Corps officer, cited her for being lax with security again. Finding the lock to the lower left-hand desk drawer had been jimmied didn’t come as a surprise, either. Besides holding paper copies of all medications the current patients required, it was where Christine locked her purse away during the day when she was working in the clinic’s pharmacy. No doubt, Anna told herself, the woman had up and lost yet another key. Fortunately, the pharmacist, a woman who was otherwise a perfectly switched-on professional, would need to go to someone else to replace the lock.
After taking a seat in the pharmacist’s chair and pulling the drawer out, Anna leaned over as far as she could before reaching deep into the opening. Ever so carefully, she took to feeling about the rear of the drawer with her fingertips, wrapping them over the rear panel until they lit upon a Post-it note stuck to the back of it. Taking great care, Anna removed it, sat up, and read the password scribbled on it, pleased the pharmacist had taken her time to write it out, rather than using the illegible scrawl she so often used when jotting out prescriptions. When Anna was sure she had it memorized, she took her time replacing it and ensuring it had stuck before sliding the drawer back in place and heading out to relieve the evening nurse.
Hours later, the earsplitting squawk of a cardiac monitor shattered the early morning silence. As if jolted by an electric shock, Anna Morgan and the auxiliary nurse with her all but leaped out of their seats. The flashing of a light above the door and the rapid blinking of the computer screen told them the patient in room six, a fortyish gentleman of Arabic persuasion, was in cardiac arrest.
They didn’t waste any time wondering how an otherwise fit man who was recovering from surgery to piece together a compound fracture had managed to slip into cardiac arrest. That was not their concern; keeping him alive was.
Coming to their feet, the two nurses were about to take off at a run when two more monitor alarms began to sound. Realizing there was no way they could handle the unprecedented emergency they were faced with, Anna ordered the auxiliary to call for every able-bodied person on duty to report to their floor stat.
Anna didn’t waste any time trying to work out the whys or hows of the situation she had to deal with. Her entire being was focused on making the decisions many medical professionals have nightmares over but few ever have to face. What she did appreciate was that in the next few seconds, she would need to decide which patient she would go to first and who would have to wait. It was a decision she knew could very well turn out to be a death sentence to those Anna did not choose, but there it was. All she could do was what she was trained to do as best she could, as quickly as she could.
For Helen Walton, Anna Morgan’s best simply was not good enough.
2
As he rounded the bend of the jogging track, Andy Webb smiled to himself when he realized his timing, as it was more often than not, was pitch perfect. Slowing his pace the second he spotted the tall redhead with a lean runner’s physique, he did his best to pretend he wasn’t eyeing the woman as she went about finishing up her stretching. The redhead knew he was watching her. And he knew she knew. But it was a game both enjoyed as evidenced by the bright smile and wink she flashed him as she stood upright before turning and setting off at an leisurely pace, one she increased bit by bit as she settled into a well-measured stride.
Ever a sucker for a girl with red hair, Andy picked up his pace to match hers as he gamely followed the bobbing red ponytail, mesmerized by the way it fluttered gaily about in rhythm with the girl’s hips, arms, and legs. The idea of actually catching up with the woman and chatting her up had never entered his mind. To have done so would have spoiled the game for both of them. As they did each time they “happened” upon each other, the two runners simply settled into a comfortable pace, engaging in a harmless spot of fun, the kind most people would never understand and even fewer would be able to appreciate.
On this day, Andy’s pursuit of happiness was short lived, for a unique ringtone that was as annoying as it was unwelcome set his iPhone squawking. The idea of not answering, of ignoring the call from a man who had a maddening habit of ringing him up at the damnedest of times and continuing along the shaded jogging path in pursuit of a fluttering red ponytail was tempting, but it was one Andy was unable to give in to. Slowing his pace to a walk, he veered off the jogging track while smoothly pulling the mobile out of the little holster that was nestled in the small of his back. It was in the exact same spot where he had once hidden his Walther P5K when the people he was chasing were not quite as alluring as the redhead who was now moving farther and farther out of sight.