In a low, shaky voice barely above a whisper, Benny the Clown said, “Please help me.”
Jenny fought to conceal her smirk. “What happened?”
“This terrible clown squirted my little girl and she defended herself. Now she’s stuck on his filthy clown hand.”
The little girl said something that came out like, “Mmmmhhhggggggggg.”
“I was making the birthday princess a balloon poodle,” Benny the Clown said, “and she reached up and squeezed my nose. That activated the flower.” Benny the Clown pressed his rubber proboscis and turned his head. A stream of water shot out of the center of the flower, sprinkling onto the tiled floor. “When the birthday princess got squirted, she locked her precious little birthday chompers onto my hand.” Benny the Clown leaned closer to Jenny. “You can’t tell because I have a smile on my face, but I can feel the wire digging into my bone.”
Jenny nodded, trying to appear sympathetic. “I wish I could help, but I don’t work at this hospital. I’m just here with one of my hospice patients.” She pointed toward the gurney where doctors and nurses swarmed around Mortimer. “You’ll have to check in at the front desk.”
Even with the painted-on grin, Benny the Clown looked suicidal.
Jenny hated to turn away any patient in need, but she could be sued for administering care in a facility she’d been fired from. She watched them trudge off, then turned her attention back to the phone.
Just do it. Get it over with.
Jenny picked up the receiver and dialed Room 318. She knew it was 318, because every one of the thirty-eight messages she’d received from Randall had begun with, “Hi, Jen, it’s Randall, I’m in Room Three-One-Eight.”
Before the first ring ended, Randall was on the line. “Jen, is that you?”
The last thing she expected—or wanted—to feel was comfort at the sound of his voice, especially with all the chaos going on around her. But it was so familiar, like they’d just spoken yesterday. The comfort died in a surge of anger at the memory of all the heartache his drinking had put her through.
“Hello, Randall. How are—?”
“You coming to visit?” Randall interrupted. “I’m in room Three-One-Eight.”
Jenny sighed. She watched Dr. Lanz charge the defib paddles. “Yeah, I know. You said it on every message you left for me.”
“You listened to them? All of them?”
“All thirty-eight, Randall.”
“Thirty-eight? It couldn’t have been anywhere near that many. But I wasn’t sure you were getting them. You been having a problem with your phone?”
Yeah, you keep calling me. “I’ve just been busy. So how are you doing?”
“Dry ninety-seven days now. I don’t even want to drink anymore, I swear. I’m a changed man, Jenny.”
So he’d said in all thirty-eight messages. She was impressed if it was true, but he’d done a lot of lying in his drinking days. And even if it were true—too little, too late.
“I meant your injury, Randall.”
“Oh.” His voice suddenly lost the excited, almost child-like tone. “I got seventy-seven stitches. Everyone thinks it’s real ironical that I cut the back of my leg.”
“You mean ironic, Randall,” Jenny corrected. She’d been the one to teach him the meaning of the word, but he had yet to get the pronunciation right.
Winslow—a wisp of a woman who became head nurse when Jenny was fired—squirted conductive gel onto Mortimer’s bare, hairless chest. Jenny’s patient was convulsing—v-fib or v-tach. Even from across the room, she could see that Mort’s eyes had rolled up into his skull, the whites protruding like two eggs. Flecks of foam and blood still sprayed from her patient’s mouth, dotting Dr. Lanz’s face and his pristine, white lab coat. Lanz’s expression twisted in disgust as he wiped his sleeve across his lips, and the fastidious, meticulous doctor actually spat over his shoulder.
Should have put on your face mask, Dr. Jack Ass.
Jenny spotted Shanna, looking a little green, scurrying through the doors into the main hospital. Everyone in the ER looked on as Lanz applied the paddles, even Benny the Clown, Oasis, and her mother.
“Jenny? You there? Hello?”
Jenny only turned her eyes away for a second, trying to gather herself, not ready to see Mortimer die. Rude and self-important as he was, she’d found things about the old man to admire, and even like. She also wondered when she would work again. This was a small town, and hospice nurses weren’t in constant demand.
Full of shame at the selfish thought, she forced herself to look back, to say a final, silent goodbye.
She was shocked to see Mortimer—standing—on top of the gurney, restraints broken off and dangling from his ankles and wrists, his mouth wide and—
Is he hissing?
The sound came from deep in Mortimer’s throat, less like a threatened cat, more like a tea kettle coming to boil. It kept rising in pitch until it became a shrill whistle, the noise unlike anything Jenny had ever heard.
It was inhuman.
“Jenny? What’s wrong?” Randall said.
“Oh my God.”
“What? What, Jen?”
Mortimer’s teeth. Something was happening to them. They were falling out—no—he was spitting them out, spitting them at Lanz and the nurses who were frantically trying to coax him off the gurney.
“Randall, I have to go. There’s something happening in the ER.”
“You’re here in the—?”
She hung up the phone and started toward Mortimer. No doubt Randall would be trying to call her back on her cell, but she had the ringer turned off—the hospital took its no cell phone rule seriously.
Mortimer abruptly stopped hissing, and Jenny could hear Dr. Lanz ordering him down off the gurney.
Stiff as a plank, Mortimer fell face-first onto the floor.
Jenny rushed to him. She didn’t care anymore about hospital protocol, or Lanz having her thrown out. Mortimer needs me. Jenny had never seen anything like this in twenty-five years of health care.
She pushed her way through the nurses surrounding Mortimer and knelt at his prone body.
“Jenny Bolton? What the hell are you doing in my hospital?” Dr. Lanz demanded.
“This is my hospice patient,” she said, touching Mortimer’s neck and seeking out the pulse of his carotid. To her surprise, she didn’t have to press hard. His entire neck was vibrating, his artery jolting beneath her fingers like a heavy metal drum solo. The only thing she could compare this to was a crystal meth OD, the heartbeat raging out of control.
Jenny patted the old man’s back, checking to see if he was conscious.
“Mortimer, can you hear me? It’s Jenny. I’m right here. We’re gonna help—”
“I’m going to help him. Somebody get security.”
She felt Dr. Lanz’s hands grip her shoulders, dragging her away from Mortimer just as her patient grabbed her hip.
Jenny felt instant pain, and not only from the pressure of Mortimer’s grip. Something sharp was digging into her skin through her uniform.
That can’t be Mortimer’s hand.
It was more like a claw. A bloody, ragged claw. Jenny stared, mouth agape. Mortimer’s finger bones—the phalanges—were extending out through his fingertips, splitting the skin and coming to five sharp points.