Cat Bearing Gifts

26

RYAN DESCENDED THE stairs, not talking to her hidden passenger even with the ruse of her cell phone. The scrutiny of that man by the pond had made her edgy. Light from the main pavilion shone from behind her down the wide stairs; she imagined Kit peering out beneath the leather flap at the sunny vistas and at the paintings spaced along the walls, oils and watercolors, many of the bright California coast. At the bottom of the stairs she followed the signs through a long waiting room; three women sat at a little round table at the far end, all talking at once. Passing them, she moved on down the hall to the ICU. As she entered, no one paid any attention to her, the nurses were all busy with patients or at the computers. When she found Pedric’s glass cubicle, the clear doors and the canvas curtain were wide open. His hospital bed was empty, the white covers neatly turned back. When she turned, a slim, dark-haired nurse stood behind her, green scrubs, gold earrings, hair sleeked into a bun at the back.

“Where’s Pedric? Mr. Greenlaw? I thought he was in room 7.”

“You are . . .”

“Ryan Flannery,” she said. “I’m a friend, I’m on his health care directive.” Did they keep lists of those permitted in the ICU? The nurse moved to a desk within the open nurses’ station, peered into a lighted screen and pushed a few keys, then glanced up at Ryan. “Mr. Greenlaw is having an MRI. Later today, sometime after he returns, he’ll be moved over to the west wing, into a room there.”

“Why is that? He’s not worse?”

“Oh, no, his own doctor wants a few more tests, that’s all. And he wants the surgeon to go ahead with the arthroscopy on his knee, for the torn meniscus. That’s usually an outpatient procedure, but with the other complications, Dr. Bailey wants it done while he’s here, wants him to stay for at least a day or two.”

“Can you tell me where the new room will be? What number?”

“We don’t have a number yet, they’re still cleaning the rooms. If you want to come back in, say, an hour, we should know.”

Ryan nodded, and left the ICU, glancing in at the rows of bedridden patients, each tethered to their iron bed like a prisoner, she thought dourly. Heading for the waiting room, she thought that Pedric must not have known he would be having another scan and then would be moved, or he wouldn’t have called the house asking for Kit.

In the lounge she chose a love seat as far from the three noisy women as she could. The room was furnished with dark rattan chairs, small rattan tables, and three leather love seats. Potted schefflera plants the size of small trees cast the room in gentle shadows. The place smelled of coffee, from an urn sitting on a console against the longer wall. Paper cups, a basket full of artificial creamer and fake sweetener, all the accompaniments a health-conscious hospital would want to furnish. Setting the backpack down beside her on the cushion of the love seat, she fished out her cell phone. The pack shifted only slightly as Kit peered out the top, scowling at the boisterous women, at their frantic exchange as each tried to get in one more word. “Why do women go on like that,” Kit whispered, “tearing their husbands apart? You don’t do that, none of my human friends do that.”

Ryan shrugged, holding her cell phone to her ear. “You said a few things about Pan,” she pointed out.

Kit said nothing. Inside the pack, she curled up again, closed her eyes, and tucked her nose under her paw. Maybe, Ryan thought, after her long and arduous night she would sleep now, would drift off into happier dreams and would wake less angry. Ryan closed her own eyes, but the women’s too-loud voices racketed into her thoughts as sharp as hail on a metal roof; when she did doze off, her dreams were filled with fog and craggy cliffs, with the gleam of a coyote’s eyes and the sharp smell of gunpowder, with regret at the kill but with deep satisfaction that Kit was safe.

WHEN VIC CAME down from the cafeteria into the ER, the nurses were too busy to pay attention to him. He moved on past the nurses’ station glancing into each glass cubicle trying to look like he knew where he was going. He walked the entire square, all four sides, but Birely was not in any of the rooms. At last, revving up his nerve, he asked a nurse.

“I’m his neighbor, I stopped in to see how he’s doing.”

The little blonde was young, her hair tumbled up atop her head like a bird’s nest and secured with a strip of white bandage. “Mr. Miller just returned from surgery, he’s over in the ICU. They repaired his nose. It’ll be some time, after that heals and his breathing’s steadier, that he’ll be ready for surgery to remove the spleen.”

This had to be more than the nurses were supposed to tell a stranger, and Vic smiled at her in a friendly way. “Sounds like he’s getting good care. I’ll stop over there a little later, then, when he’s feeling stronger.”

Leaving the ER, he had a time finding his way to the ICU. The halls led every which way, and many of the heavy double doors were locked. By the time he found Birely his hands were sweating with nerves. The layout was pretty much the same as the ER, big room maybe fifty feet square, nurses’ station in the middle fenced off by open counters with their ever-present computers.

Big chrome machine on the counter near him with spigots for hot and cold water, another machine for brewed coffee, regular and decaffeinated, just like a fancy café. Again he circled the nurses’ station but when at last he found Birely there was too much traffic around him, nurses moving in and out of the other rooms. Beneath the white blanket, Birely looked small and weak. He had a white bandage across his nose, a tube sticking out of each nostril so he could breathe, and the usual IV tube attached at his wrist, held in place by heavy tape. His eyes were closed, as if he slept. Even as Vic watched, a nurse moved past him and inside followed by a white-coated doctor. Vic glanced at them casually and stepped on along as if heading for a room around the corner. Damn place was crawling with doctors and several of them glanced at him, looking him over as if he had no business there. He moved along paying no attention to them, as businesslike as he could manage, until an older nurse stopped him, an overweight redhead in blue scrubs, braces on her teeth, asked what patient he was looking for. He gave her Michael Emory’s name. She carried a trench coat over her arm, and a brown leather purse as if she were headed home. Stepping to a computer, she said Michael Emory was over in the ER, and she told him how to get there. She was pretty nice, she didn’t treat him like scum. It had paid to get cleaned up and wear expensive clothes. It was nearly five, and he was sure the shift had already changed. Eight to four, four to twelve, midnight to eight, that was the way most places broke up their time. He waited until he saw the redhead leave, hurrying down the hall carrying her trench coat and jingling her car keys. When he was sure no one was looking, he slipped into an empty room where he could see they hadn’t cleaned up yet, bedsheets wadded in a heap in the middle of the mattress, trash can overflowing with blue plastic pads of some kind and lengths of used tubing. Metal table cluttered with pieces of bloody gauze and used tape, and two used syringes with no needles in them.

He found the rubber-glove dispenser on the wall beside the door, pulled a pair from the section marked LARGE, worked one onto his right hand, and dug into the trash. When he couldn’t find a syringe he turned to the hazardous-waste bin, which was also attached to the wall.

The first three syringes were useless, just the blunt plastic end. Digging deeper, he found one that someone hadn’t broken off the needle. Retrieving it, he hoped to hell he wouldn’t pick up some kind of lethal disease that’d put him in the ER or leave him sick and helpless.

Well, hell, if he didn’t pull this off he’d be looking at worse than a hospital bed, looking at a lumpy metal cot behind steel bars. If the cops went nosing around Emmylou’s after she’d called the ambulance, if she told them she’d had a break-in and they were camping up there, and the cops came up here to the hospital asking Birely questions, and the dumb little twerp started talking about the money, that would put him on the hot seat. Cops picked up even one fingerprint in that stone shack, ran it through the system, they’d have his whole damn record.

Dropping the syringe in his pocket, he left the ICU still trying to look casual. Made his way out to the stairs, thinking to wait a while until maybe there was less action in there and until people forgot they’d seen him looking in the rooms. He was passing the waiting room to the ICU when he saw her again, that dark-haired woman contractor sitting right there only a few feet from him, and he stepped back out of sight.

She sat in there drinking a cup of coffee and talking on her cell phone. Sounded like she was talking to a carpenter, going on about door sizes and the delivery of some kind of flooring. She sat turned away from him, and silently he slipped on by. What was she doing here?

Well, hell, people got sick. Birely didn’t have a corner on the market. He moved on down a long hall to another part of the hospital thinking to wait a while until people forgot about him, then go back and take care of Birely. He knew he was putting it off, he told himself he was being cautious, that he wasn’t scared. He wandered the halls until he’d got himself thoroughly lost again and began to feel shaky.

Finally, passing a big, glassed-off garden right in the center of the building, he saw the cafeteria ahead, and knew where he was. He stopped off there, had himself another cup of coffee to steady his nerves, and another one of them cinnamon rolls. Jangled nerves always made him hungry. That garden he’d passed, big as a city lot, hospital rooms and glassed hallways facing it on all four sides, garden had a big rock formation with a waterfall, three stories of rooms looking out on it. Pretty damn fancy, he wished he had half the money it’d taken to build this place. What couldn’t he do with that kind of cash?

Finishing his coffee and sticky roll, he headed back to the ICU. Moved on in past the nurses’ station and across to Birely’s room. He was about to step inside when he saw a nurse in there and another doctor. He moved on by, glancing around, and into the room next door. The patient was sleeping, snoring softly. Slipping past him to the connecting wall, he stood listening.

The doctor’s voice was deep, it reached him easily, he must be standing right there on the other side. The glimpse Vic had had of him, he was a big man, his shoulders rolled forward as if maybe he had a weak back. He was talking about the IV, giving the nurse instructions. “Keep him on fourteen milligrams of Demerol every three to four hours, until his nose is less painful. I want him to lighten up a little now, not so deep under. I want only nurses in here, no trainees, I want him handled with care. I don’t want any pressure on the abdomen. None. Do you understand?”

Vic couldn’t make out what the nurse said, her voice was too soft. He was so intent, listening, he almost missed seeing Emmylou pass by, he barely glimpsed her through the crack between the curtain and the wall as she turned into Birely’s room.

Had she seen him out there, coming into the ICU? But hell, she didn’t know him, either. He was too edgy. Just because he recognized someone didn’t mean they knew him. If Emmylou’d ever seen them and knew they were living up there, she’d have called the cops long ago. And with his change in looks, his long hair gone, why would she recognize him now? The doctor was telling her that when Birely’s nose had healed some, he’d go back into surgery and they’d take out his spleen, same as that nurse had said.

“If the spleen doesn’t rupture,” Emmylou said, “before you get him back into surgery?”

“We’re taking the best care we can,” the doctor said coldly. “You have no idea what happened to this man?”

“None,” she said. “I found him hurt like that, lying in a sleeping bag half-conscious and moaning.”

“Found him where?”

“In an old vacant house at the back of my property, no one was supposed to be in there.”

“You reported it to the police?”

“I called the ambulance. I don’t plan to file a complaint, so why call them?”

There was a long silence. The doctor said no more. Emmylou said, “I’ll come back in a while, see if he’s awake. He . . . I’d like a word with him, when he wakes.”

Vic watched through the crack as she left. Soon the doctor left, and then the nurse. He watched the nurses’ station as personnel moved back and forth, going about their business, all so damned organized. The ward grew quieter, some of the nurses disappeared into patients’ rooms, the pace seemed to slow. Vic moved out of the room past the sleeping patient, his rubber-gloved hand in his coat pocket, caressing the syringe. He was about to slip into Birely’s room when two nurses came around the corner wheeling a gurney, came straight toward him. He stepped away, looking with curiosity at the patient, his head all wrapped in white like a turban, his face white as death itself. They turned into a room two doors down, both nurses looking up at him. He smiled at them and nodded, annoyed that they looked right at him, that they could identify him in a damn minute entering Birely’s room. Angrily he moved on out of the ward, down the hall and out of sight. He’d wait a while and go back. Or come back tonight after another change of shift, when maybe the ward would be quieter?

Right, and when every visitor would stand out all the more. Best to walk the halls a while and then go back again, get it over with, this time, before he lost his nerve altogether. Strolling the hall pretending to look at the pictures on the walls, he stopped at a picture of boats in a stormy harbor, the water wild with whitecaps that made him cold just looking at them. He walked on, feeling shaky, and at last headed back to the ICU. Passing the waiting room, he saw that carpenter woman was still in there, and Emmylou had joined her, she sat right there beside her, talking earnestly. Moving on beyond the open door past the big leafy plant beside it, he paused in the shadows to listen.