“I heard they had an argument of some sort a couple of days before she died. Were you here when it happened?”
“Oh, yeah,” Jackie says, rolling her eyes. “It was pretty intense. Shannon served Erik with separation papers and he didn’t take it too well.”
“Do you remember what they said?”
Jackie cocks her head to one side and looks up at the ceiling for a moment, giving me time to eat another spoonful of ice cream. “Well, I remember Erik telling Shannon he didn’t want a divorce. He told her he wanted to try to work things out. But Shannon was pretty adamant about going ahead with it. Erik got mad, called her a bitch, and threw the papers at her. Then Shannon yelled at him to leave.”
“Did he?”
Jackie nods. “He stormed out, got in his car, and peeled rubber out of the parking lot.”
“What did Shannon do or say after that?”
“Well, she was pretty upset, crying and all. It was the end of her shift so she went into the back room for a bit to try to collect herself. Then she came out, ordered a bunch of food to go, and as soon as it was ready, she left.”
“Did you see Erik again after that?”
Jackie shakes her head. “Nope, but he never did come around much. He’s lactose intolerant so there isn’t much here he can eat.”
“Who else was working that day?”
“It was me and Shannon up front here. Mom was working in back.”
“Did your mom witness the argument between Shannon and Erik?”
She nods. “Mom spent some time afterward trying to calm Shannon down.”
“Is your mom here today?” I doubt it since I haven’t seen her, and Jackie confirms my guess with a shake of her head.
“Dad’s here today. Mom had a doctor’s appointment.” She takes out her order pad, scribbles something on a blank page, rips it out, and hands it to me. “Here’s our home phone number,” she says. “Give her a call if you want.”
I take the paper and slip it into my purse. “Thanks. I will. If you can think of anything else about Shannon that might be significant, let me know. You can reach me at the ME’s office.” I give her the number, she writes it on another blank page of her order pad, and stuffs it in her pocket.
“Will do,” she says. As a new customer enters, she gets up and adds, “Gotta run, but it was good talking with you, Mattie. Good luck with the whole marriage thing.”
It only takes me another minute to finish my ice cream because I manage to resist the urge to lick the bowl. Then I get back in my car and head for Mercy Hospital, my old employer.
The hospital is an emotional place for me. Not only is it where both the birth and death of my marriage took place, it’s where I worked for over twelve years. A good portion of my adulthood has been spent there, and I have tons of memories, both good and bad.
Many of the good ones are from my years in the ER. Things there can go from monotonous to chaotic in a matter of seconds, and it can be wonderfully, disgustingly messy—emotionally messy, blood-and-guts messy, and life-and-death messy. I left the ER to go work in the OR so I could be closer to my husband, David. But in the end, I lost two things that were very important to me: David and my job in the ER.
These days I’m a topic of lively gossip at the hospital—the nurse who caught her husband playing tonsil hockey with someone else in one of the operating rooms; the nurse who was suspected of murdering the lipstick on the dipstick; and the nurse who now slices and dices in a whole new environment. Oh, yeah, and the nurse involved in the infamous nipple incident.
It’s been a few months since David and I split and since then there have been other topics to occupy the hard-core gossipers. While those events offered some distraction, they weren’t enough to divert attention away from me altogether. I still get stared at and I swear I hear my name whispered in corners every time I go there.
Hoping to minimize the scrutiny today, I bypass the main hospital entrance and go in through the ER instead. The ER staff is a little less judgmental than your average hospital worker. The scale of what’s weird, newsworthy, and important gets altered once you’ve cared for a man with a flashlight up his rectum, a condition that was later dubbed a “butt light.”
As I walk through the ER doors, I can feel that familiar surge of excitement thrumming just below my skin. The air here always feels different. Today it sounds and smells different, too. Instead of the typical antiseptic smells, there is a distinct odor of feces in the air, and the low thrum of heart monitors, vital sign machines, and soft-soled shoes has been replaced by the sounds of a woman screaming like a banshee from behind one of the curtains. A nurse sitting behind the desk, a veteran ER warrior of some twenty-plus years named Debbie Hanson, greets me.
“Mattie! Welcome to the madhouse.”
I smile and nod toward the noise. “That sounds ominous.”
“It’s a major Code Brown,” Debbie says, lowering her voice. “She’s been on Vicodin for a month without any stool softener and now her bowels are backed up to her eyeballs.”
The screaming reaches a new crescendo and then suddenly stops, replaced by exhausted panting. A moment later, one of the ER techs emerges from behind the screaming woman’s curtain carrying the bucket from a bedside commode. Debbie hops up and walks over to the tech.
“Let me see,” Debbie says.
The tech proffers the bucket and a pungent fecal smell permeates the air.
“Wow,” Debbie says with a look of respect. “I might have to give that one a name and an Apgar score.” She looks over at me. “Want to see?”
“No, thanks.”
Debbie hands the bucket back to the tech and says, “Don’t even try to flush that down the hopper without breaking it up first or we’ll be mopping for the rest of the day.”
The tech nods, makes a face of disgust, and disappears into the dirty utility room carrying her prize. Debbie shakes her head with amazement. “I think that one might have set a record,” she says, stepping back behind the desk and plopping down in front of a computer to make an entry in the patient’s chart. “So what brings you here?” she asks as she types.
“I was hoping to talk to Erik Tolliver about what happened to his wife, Shannon.”
Debbie frowns. “Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Scary stuff.” She pauses and her eyes grow big. “Do you think Erik did it?”
I shrug, not willing to commit one way or the other. “It’s very early in the investigation. I’m still trying to sort through the preliminaries.”
She nods thoughtfully. “How’s the new job going? Do you like it?”
“I do,” I answer honestly. “Like anything new, it has a learning curve and an adjustment period, but so far I’m enjoying it.”
“Good,” Debbie says. “And today your job is a little easier because it just so happens Erik is down here doing a portable in room twelve.”
This is a stroke of luck. “Do you guys have an empty room we can use for a few minutes?”
“Sure. Take the ENT room.”
The ENT room, or ear, nose, and throat room, is one of the few beds in the ER that is contained inside its own room and has a real door as opposed to a giant shower curtain for privacy. Kind of ironic when you consider that it’s typically the only room that doesn’t require the exposure of delicate body parts during treatment.
I stake out room twelve, waiting for Erik, and moments later he emerges, pushing his portable X-ray machine. When he sees me his first impulse is to smile and say hi, but before the word leaves his lips he remembers I’m no longer a coworker, and possibly no longer a friend. His smile fades.
“Hi, Erik,” I say, trying to sound nonthreatening and friendly. “I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes about Shannon.”