Getting off the elevator on the third floor, Ronnie rounded the bend and headed down the hallway toward the SICU. As he approached, he could see that the two officers had been changed. Now sat two significantly older white-haired Caucasian patrolmen who seemed much more at home in the hospital. The thinner of the two was tipping back precariously in his metal folding chair as he engaged his partner in an animated conversation replete with exaggerated Italianate hand gestures. Although they were in full uniform, both had removed their hats, which were on the floor beside their seats. As Ronnie neared, they quieted down, and the one who had been leaning back tipped forward with a thump.
As he had done earlier, Ronnie merely nodded an acknowledgment at the two officers and tried to breeze by. He was surprised when the stockier officer, whose name tag read don ware, stuck his hand out, bringing Ronnie to a halt as if he had hit up against a locked turnstile.
“Excuse me, Doctor,” the officer said. “May we see your ID?”
Rolling his eyes, Ronnie lifted the ID that was hanging around his neck and showed it to the officer. As he did so he said, “I’m not a doctor. I’m the nursing supervisor.”
“Excuse me,” the other officer said. His name tag read louie ambrosio. “Do you have business in the unit?”
“Of course I have business,” Ronnie said with demonstrable exasperation, as it were a ridiculous question. The gun in his pocket was close to the officer’s hand and he knew he’d be hard put to explain it, despite having a license to carry. “I told you I’m the nursing supervisor. I have business in the entire hospital.”
The two officers exchanged a glance and then a mutual shrug.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Don Ware said as he retracted his restraining arm.
“I’m the nursing supervisor, not a doctor,” Ronnie snapped as he pushed through the doors.
Once inside, Ronnie stopped to get himself under control. He knew he was tense and the minor interaction with the officer had demonstrated it. But glancing around the interior of the SICU was reassuring, and he calmed quickly. Most of the activity of nurses caring for their assigned patients was within the cubicles in the opposite end of the room from Jack Stapleton’s, which was definitely opportune. Looking in the other direction, he could see no activity in Jack’s cubicle, suggesting Aliyah Jacobs was elsewhere, lending a hand to her colleagues, as she had been doing the last time Ronnie had checked.
Directing his attention toward the central desk, he could see that Patti was involved in an animated conversation with several nurses while Irene was busy with paperwork along with one of the surgical residents. Farther down, Dr. Benn and Jack’s wife were situated behind separate monitors, seemingly preoccupied.
As he would often do, Ronnie started going into each cubicle for a brief check on the status of each patient while working his way down toward Jack Stapleton’s. As he passed the central desk, Patti interrupted her conversation to acknowledge Ronnie. In response, Ronnie stepped over to the counter.
“I trust you’ve been informed about the aneurysm case going on in the OR,” Ronnie said. “It will be coming here to take one of your empty beds.”
“I did hear,” Patti said. “No problem.”
Ronnie gave her a thumbs-up and went into the next cubicle as Patti returned to her conversation.
Coming out of the cubicle right next to Jack’s, Ronnie looked back at the central desk. No one was paying him any heed. It seemed that the timing and the circumstances couldn’t be better. Reaching into his pocket, he fingered the syringe, and then in a blink of an eye stepped out of sight into Jack’s cubicle. Without hesitating, he quickly moved up along the right side of the bed, and with the flow controller he shut off the large-bore IV that he had inserted in the ED. Rapidly taking down the saline container, he pulled out the syringe from his pocket and removed the needle cap with his teeth. After plunging the needle into the container’s port, he used both hands to rapidly distribute the entire contents of the syringe into the saline. He then rehung the saline bag and opened the flow controller completely to allow the IV to run at a rapid rate. He was confident the bag would empty rapidly.
It had all taken mere seconds. In the next instant, he was back out into the main part of the SICU with the empty syringe in his pocket. Resisting an urge to run, he moved as nonchalantly as possible past the central desk. To his relief, no one paid him any heed, other than Irene, who gave him a passing glance. Reaching the swinging doors, he pushed through, once again interrupting the two policemen’s spirited conversation, which he now could tell was about the travails of the Knicks.
With a slight, condescending nod, Ronnie walked past the police and proceeded down the hall. As he got farther away, he had the nearly irresistible urge to shout hurray and punch the air with his fist in celebration, but he did neither. Instead, when he reached the elevator lobby, he calmly pressed the button, knowing full well that within minutes he would be called for a code in the SICU.
Chapter 37
Thursday, December 9, 2:52 a.m.
It didn’t take Laurie long to start feeling sleepy again despite the additional coffee. The stultifying boredom of watching the unchanging cursors trace across the monitor in front of her was like a narcotic. The only relief was when Colleen would occasionally come and sit down next to her and chat for a few moments before making an entry into the hospital computer on a patient’s status like she was doing at that very moment.
To try to engage her mind and keep awake, Laurie thought about Lou’s phone call and how she wished she could take him up on his offer to come to the hospital to keep her company. Lou was truly a long-term, dear friend whose well-being was a concern for her since he lived alone and his entire world revolved about his job. Thinking about Lou reminded her of his mentioning Jasmine Rakoczi, the serial killer she had exposed so many years before, back when Laurie was single and even had had a crush on the chief medical officer of the MMH. She shook her head at the thought of the psychotic woman since the whole situation had been such an ugly experience on so many levels and had come very close to killing her after she had killed the chief medical officer.
“Okay, that’s done,” Colleen said, interrupting Laurie’s musings. Colleen stood up and stretched by extending her arms over her head. “I think I’m going to make a quick run to the cafeteria for some fruit or maybe even something naughtier. Can I bring you something? Anything at all? What about a banana? You must be starving.”
“A banana would be great,” Laurie said.
“Anything else? A piece of pie? Ice cream?”
“A banana is fine,” Laurie said, but then her attention was caught by a slight change in Jack’s ECG as it traced across the screen. The T wave, a graphic representation of the repolarization of the heart’s ventricles after a heartbeat, suddenly began to grow. Laurie could tell because a rapidly fading shadow of the previous beat still existed on the monitor over which the new beat was surcharged.
“A banana it is,” Colleen said as she leaned back over the desk to log out of the computer she’d been using. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
As Colleen started to leave, Laurie reached out and stopped her by grabbing her arm.
“What do you make of this?” Laurie questioned, pointing at the fading image of a T wave.
“Make of what?” Colleen asked. She paused and bent over Laurie’s shoulder to get a closer look at the monitor.
“I’m years away from my clinical residency,” Laurie confessed. “But suddenly there seems to be a change in the T waves, or am I hallucinating?”