"Sounds as long as med school," she said, compressing the site of the puncture to stop the blood.
"I'll say it is, except I find philosophy and human thought more intriguing than learning how all the nerves and muscles work."
Minutes later Jimmy Fitzpatrick walked away wearing a shiny but small gold ring in his right ear.
As Jane cleaned up, Susanne stuck her head through the door. "I must say, you're looking better."
"Me? I didn't know I'd been looking worse."
"You know what I mean. You didn't seem to be yourself."
"So I'm told."
"Father Jimmy have something to do with cheering you up? He's out in the nursing station, showing off your handiwork. Like a kid, he is, telling everyone who'll listen, 'J.S. is a marvel. Didn't feel a thing.'"
Jane smiled. "He's something, all right. And yeah, he really knows-" She almost said "how to treat women" but thought it not proper.
"Knows what?" Susanne asked, tidying up the counter.
"Really knows people and the right things to say to them."
Susanne stopped midway through tossing the used gauze into a biohazard container. "You like him?"
Jane continued to wash her hands. "Sure. Doesn't everybody?"
Susanne watched her a few seconds more. "You know what's interesting about Father Jimmy? His mother."
"He told me about her. Sounds like quite a lady."
"Did he mention her father was a priest?"
Jane stopped in midscrub. "What?"
Susanne scanned the counter for anything they'd missed and picked up the piece of paper that listed the totals for the supplies. "Yeah. He served in what's called the Eastern Orthodox Church, at least the Greek Archdiocese of it. There the priests can marry, as long as it's before they're ordained. Jimmy explained it to us once, at one of the ER parties."
"I didn't know."
"Same goes for Father Jimmy. Because of his mother's connection, he's received permission to be ordained in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. He doesn't make a big deal about it, so as to avoid confusing the patients. 'Being a hospital chaplain,' he once told me, 'is about spiritual comfort, not religion or what church I belong to.' I guess understanding that is what makes him so good with all sorts of people."
"Yes, I see."
To anyone listening, Susanne's easy chatter would sound no different than the usual running conversations coworkers often engage in during down times. Except Jane knew that her boss detested gossip, and that for her to say anything about anybody's personal life, there had to be a good reason.
Susanne held out the paper she'd picked up. "What room is this inventory list for?"
Jane refocused on matters at hand. "Oh, that's from the supply room beside re-sus. I did it to keep busy."
Susanne shook her head. "I hate to tell you, but I did the place this morning. And you must have miscounted the syringes." She handed over the list, tapping where Jane had totaled the ten-cc size.
"What's wrong with it? That's the count I got."
Susanne frowned. "Do you mind checking with me again?"
"Not at all."
Five minutes later they'd confirmed Jane's numbers were correct.
Susanne's frown deepened. "Shit!"
Jane couldn't remember her ever using the word. "What's the matter?"
"This morning I got fifty more than you did."
"Maybe you lost track? It's easy enough to do. Besides, how can you remember so exactly what you got?"
Susanne sighed. "Keep this under your hat, but I've been keeping a close watch on syringes that size."
"Why?"
"Because I think someone's stealing them."
"What?"
Jane spent the next fifteen minutes quietly verifying that none of the other nurses had grabbed a handful of needles from the storeroom to replenish one of the many bins they kept them in, ready to grab on the fly. As she worked, her mind wandered back to Susanne's unusually candid remarks about Father Jimmy and why she felt Jane should know that he could marry.
A crude attempt at matchmaking? No, that would go totally against Susanne's own fastidious insistence on privacy. Besides, she already knew about Thomas and seemed to approve. So what then?
"Because I didn't want you to feel uncomfortable about finding him attractive," Susanne explained when Jane asked her.
"But I didn't find him attractive."
Susanne laughed. "Then that would make you the only woman in the department who hasn't."
"But-"
"Relax. He's never indicated a willingness to date anyone he works with. But let's just say men and women give out subliminal signals about their sexuality in spite of themselves. On that front he's liable to seem as available as the next man. This is why I think he let the rest of us know he can have a woman in his life, so none of us would feel guilty about normal chemistry and an innocent, unspiritual 'what-if* or two. In anyone else, I'd call that kind of thinking the height of conceit. But with him, I figure it's just his way of keeping unnecessary tensions out of an already charged work space."
"Well, he needn't worry about me," Jane insisted, still not willing to admit she'd had her own moment of attraction to him. But finding out that he hadn't been sworn to celibacy somehow helped her feel a little less weird about what happened.
"Now how about my needle count?"
Jane shook her head. "No sign of the missing fifty."
Minutes before the end of her shift at three, a half dozen ambulances arrived within minutes of each other.
"Figures," she muttered, running into the supply room to find more IV bags. Grabbing them, she noticed that Father Jimmy had forgotten his specimen cup on the counter. Odd, it being what he'd come for in the first place.
That night, 11:45 p.m.
I let myself in the basement door and closed it softly behind me.
A piercing squeak in a hinge sounded inches from my ear, and I froze, listening for any response upstairs.
Standing in pitch darkness, I heard the soft purr of a freezer somewhere nearby, but otherwise the muffled silence of being belowground remained intact.
Then a slight creak came from the floorboards above my head.
The dog?
I held my breath not daring to move.
Nothing else stirred.
I strained to hear the telltale click of her claws on wood or linoleum.
Still nothing.
The freezer clicked off.
Now absolute quiet reigned.
I exhaled through my mouth, careful to make no noise at all, still alert for a hint of anything stirring, man or beast.
The house seemed reassuringly dead.
I snapped on a penlight and tiptoed to the foot of the stairs leading up to the kitchen, then paused.
The steady dry click of an electric clock ticking off the minutes came somewhere on the ground floor. Otherwise, the rest of the house remained as hushed as the basement.
I'd have to be extra careful if I didn't want to wake the dog.
I sat down on the cement floor and played my light around the room, looking for what I'd need, checking the diameter of the pipes overhead, and fine-tuning my plan.
Yes, this would work well.
Very well indeed.
Wednesday, July 9, 1:30 a.m.
Janet rose, unable to sleep, and pulled on her housecoat. She heard Muffy stir in the dark at the foot of the bed, then the soft sound of her paws hitting the carpet. The dog would routinely accompany her to the door when she left on a delivery, and be waiting there on her return. Earl, having trained himself to sleep through such nocturnal excursions a lifetime ago, didn't so much as vary his breathing.
Their bedroom remained pitch-black, the usual glow from the street lamps unable to penetrate a fog thick as silt.
She went down to the kitchen, made herself a mug of hot chocolate, and curled up on the living room couch. Despite the murk outside, she cranked open a window and let the sweet scent of her nicotinia bed waft through the darkness.