Dead On Arrival

Eight

The ambulance ride went smoothly with Buzz Lightyear driving, considering Virginia vacillated from crying to wiping her nails, to chanting and stripper maneuvers. Occasionally she’d say an Our Father, which, I might add, she did damn well for a Jewish girl-except for saying “who aren’t in heaven” instead of “who art in heaven.” I had to wonder what that said about her beliefs.

Dano seemed to ignore her while he wrote on his daily run sheet, but did occasionally stick the nasal cannula back in her nose so she got her oxygen.

I leaned back to rest and contemplate my job.

Suddenly she bolted up on the stretcher.

“Get down, Virginia, before you get hurt,” Dano ordered. “What the hell are you doing, anyway?”

She leaned toward him, “I’m waiting for the Immaculate Conception.”

I bit back a smile and said a quick prayer for some type of mental-health recovery for the girl. How the heck did a Jewish girl even know about that?

“Fine. Good. Lie back down,” Dano said, barely looking up from his clipboard.

She lay down. “I’m a virgin, you know.”

Dano and I looked at each other. “Of course you are,” he said, in what I thought a very professional tone.

He’d almost convinced me.

Virginia remained still.

Amazingly enough, riding in the back of an ambulance wasn’t anywhere near as motion sickness inducing with Buzz Lightyear driving. “How sad about Payne,” I said to Dano. Not sure where that came from-other than the fact that I needed to pump him for fraud info. Being stuck back here with self-proclaimed Virgin Virginia seemed like an opportune time, since she wasn’t in critical condition or requiring us to be working on her en route.

“Sad. Yeah, but not surprising.”

Bingo. Had to be a “Bingo” with that statement. “Not surprising?”

Dano never looked up. “Come on, Pauline, I’m sure an intelligent woman like yourself has figured out that Payne Sterling was a weirdo and not well liked. Not only was Payne nuts, he was hated.”

“By?”

Dano started to open his mouth, and before I could move, Virgin Virginia was trying to stand up on the stretcher.

“Oh!” I shouted.

“Get down!” ordered Dano, who looked as if he was trying to get up, the clipboard still at his chest. In seconds, Virginia was on top of said clipboard-and said Dano.

The way she straddled him said she was not a virgin.

Dano tried to struggle free, but Virginia had long nails, which she dug into the back of his neck.

“Aye!” he shouted. “A little help here, Nightingale!”

I started to get up to help. Suddenly a sharp pain centered on my abdomen, sending me sailing back toward the wall, down the side of the bench and into the corner of the ambulance, only to realize Virginia’s leg had been aimed straight at me. The drug-crazed vixen had kicked me!

Now the pain came from the back of my head, and stars danced around both Dano and the proclaimed virgin.

He kept trying to get her off, but she was like Velcro, the way she kept sticking to him, all the while her nightie bunching up around her thighs from what I could see with my blurry vision. Nausea sped up my throat from the smack on my head, and I couldn’t move if I wanted to.

“You all right, Pauline?” Dano shouted, as he tried to break Virginia’s death grip on his neck.

“Mentally ill people are very strong,” was all I could manage.

Dano turned toward the window to the driver’s area. He couldn’t reach it, but leaned over far enough to kick it with his black boot.

Jagger swung around, his eyes wide open, while he shoved the glass to the side. “What the hell. Dude, cut it out! Pauline? Stop the ambulance! Dano, cool it! Help Pauline!”

Virginia yelled, “He’s mine!”

And Jagger countered with, “Trust me, I don’t want him.”

Dano growled. “Get her the hell off of me, but don’t piss her off. Those nails are lethal.”

Buzz must have been confused, but we all sloshed about as he pulled over to the side of the road. My head throbbed like the dickens and my vision hadn’t cleared.

I tried to take a few deep breaths and leaned to the side when suddenly the back doors opened-and I landed in Jagger’s arms.

“Jesus, Pauline!” He held me for a few seconds. “Get her off of Dano,” Jagger ordered a very confused-looking Buzz.

In a few minutes, I was sitting on the bench with an ice pack on the back of my head. The virgin was nestled all snug in her stretcher-with restraints to hold her in place, after ER called in the “problem” and got orders from the ER doc-and Jagger was sitting next to me.

I vaguely remember he and Dano arguing about who would sit in the back for the rest of the ride.

I smiled at Jagger, squinted from the pain, and looked at Virginia, who grinned at me and said, “He left me. Aren’t there eight ways to leave your lover? Eight?”

Eight? Eight?

Was that coincidence or something to do with the threat against me and my case?

Because Robotman had used that exact word.

Dano ordered me to sit in a wheelchair and Jagger pushed me into the ER following the stretcher containing Virginia, who was now chanting in tongues.

“She banged her head,” he said to a male nurse who hurried over to me.

“Hi, I’m a nurse here. Ted. Ted Grosch. How you feeling?”

“How do I look?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Gorgeous.”

I laughed, grabbed my forehead and said, “Ouch.”

Jagger stepped forward. “Come on, buddy. Cat-scan her or MRI her or something. Could be internal bleeding.”

Ted paused and glared at him. “You a doctor?”

Jagger ignored the dig and said, “Do something fast!”

This time I had to chuckle, no matter how much it hurt.

In a short time, Ted had me in the exam room (who wouldn’t, with Jagger standing guard?), seen by the doc and off for a scan, which-thank the good Lord-came back negative. Once the doctor pronounced me just bruised with a prize-winning egg-sized bump, I was released.

When I was rolled out to the waiting room, I smiled-to myself, since it hurt less than the real thing. There sat Buzz, wiping at the spot on his shirt. I think Virginia had spit on his sparklingly crisp top. ER Dano leaned against the wall with his eyes shut, but opened them when Ted said my name, and Jagger, who looked the worst for wear, straightened up.

“What a pathetic-looking crew,” I said.

Dano stood up and grabbed Buzz by the shoulder. “Back to work. She’s all restocked.”

I knew he meant the ambulance was restocked with supplies from the ER but he didn’t go out with Buzz. Oh, no. There seemed to begin a challenge between him and Jagger as to who would sit in the back-to watch me.

How cute.

In a few minutes I was sitting on the bench next to ER Dano.

Hmm. Jagger seemed to have lost his grip on that one. I guessed Dano was king in his ambulance, and no one, not even the mysterious, infamous Jagger, could knock him off his throne.

Did that mean Dano had a stake in the company? He had been there a very long time. Being so burned out, one would think he’d have quit and moved on in life to something less stressful.

I leaned back, shut my eyes and sighed.

“What?” I heard him say.

I opened one eyelid. “Hmm?”

“You made a sound.” He leaned forward as if expecting me to pass out.

“Oh. I’m fine.” I sighed again, just on principle. “It just feels good to be all right. My head is better.” It really hurt like hell, but if I told him, he’d probably insist I lie down on the stretcher or something.

Dano leaned back again. “Good. Good.”

I smiled to myself. Sitting next to him was not unpleasant at all. For some strange reason (and I was blaming it on hormones) I wanted to touch him. Anyplace. His arm. His hand. His thigh. Yikes. I wanted to touch ER Dano!

Get a grip, I told myself, rationalizing that the knock on my head was causing strange reactions in my libido.

However, ER Dano was one hot guy. Even Jewish, pseudo-Catholic Virgin Virginia had thought so.

Then again, she was whacko. I looked at Dano, told myself to change the subject in my head and asked, “How long have you been working at TLC?”

He looked surprised at the question, and I was guessing, if I hadn’t been injured earlier, he wouldn’t have answered. But he did look at me and say, “Long time.”

I forced a chuckle. Sounded pretty damn good to me. I wondered if I should take some acting courses to help out with this career. “What’s a long time?”

“It’ll be twenty-one years pretty soon.”

“Wow. Twenty-one years at TLC. I’m impressed.” I really was, along with wondering how the heck old he was.

“Started at nineteen, Nightingale,” he said as if he’d read my mind.

“So this has been your only job?”

He nodded. “I started at TLC right after taking courses.” He looked off into space and said, “Hadn’t really thought about it being my only job.”

Dano sounded a bit melancholy, which was certainly out of character for someone so tough, so rough around the edges and so…edgy.

Still looking into space he said, “Twenty-one freaking years. No one should have to go through this that long.”

Wow. I should have remained silent, but I said, “Through this? What is this?”

Without looking at me he said, “Everything we see. Everything that can happen to a human body. Everything that can be done to a human body.”

“It is a tough job.”

He swung around toward me. “Tough? You don’t know tough.” He leaned back and sighed. “Every night. Nightmares. Bodies. Parts. The ones you know won’t make it. The ones you know won’t make it and there’s no freaking thing you can do about it.”

I touched his hand. He barely acknowledged me, but at least he didn’t push me away.

“It’s like a bucket. Keeps getting filled with pain, dying, death. But there’s holes in the bucket so the shit filters out.” He turned, looked me in the eyes and said, “But it always gets refilled. Always.”

I patted his hand very gently and then took mine away. “I guess it never would get any easier no matter how long you work at it.”

“Nope.”

Time to lighten the mood, I decided. “Oh, yeah. TLC. How’d it start doing so much better?” I asked also to see if his story jived with what I already had heard.

Dano proceeded to tell me about Payne and Pansy’s uncle, who had started the company after owning a gas station near the interstate. His wreckers were often forced to be used to take patients to the hospital, since Hope Valley didn’t have its own ambulance service. It was serviced by a few companies from Hartford and surrounding towns like Bloomfield and Glastonbury.

“When he got sick, his…nephew took over.”

“That’d be Payne?”

Dano didn’t look at me. “That was Payne.”

A chill raced up my spine. Suddenly I pictured him dead on the floor and the knife…sticking out. I swallowed in order not to get nauseous. “Who do you think killed him?” flew out of my mouth.

Dano froze.

Yikes.

For some reason I looked toward Jagger. Even the back of his head gave me some comfort. Dano really shouldn’t scare me. He was not a killer, I told myself without a shred of evidence other than my gut instinct-which had served me well in my nursing career.

But did I want to trust it when the issue was murder?

Well, I had nothing else to work with other than my gut instincts and very little evidence, so I looked directly into his eyes and waited.

Dano squinted at me. I wondered if that was so I couldn’t read his pupils. Never could remember if constricting pupils meant someone was lying-or was it dilating ones? What the hell good was looking into his eyes, then?

“If I knew that, Nightingale, wouldn’t I have already told the police?” He turned away-so I couldn’t see his eyes?

I sat still for a few seconds, contemplating the ever-confusing ER Dano. On the surface, he was hot, gorgeous, all man. On the inside, he was beginning to be as mysterious as Jagger. But at least with him, I knew it was always on the up and up. Jagger was the cowboy who should have worn the white hat.

I mentally looked up to heaven and mouthed, “What did I do to deserve this?” Had to be to keep me on my toes and not become bored. “Of course I know you would have, Dano.”

He looked at me as if confused.

“Told the police. I know you would have told them. Actually, I’d have no way of knowing if you told them or what you told them, since I’m only a nurse and new employee to boot. Well, even if I wasn’t new. I mean, even if I was a longtime employee like you, the police wouldn’t share any investigative information with me.”

I actually bit down on my own tongue.

What the hell had just happened? Dano had me spewing out words in a ramble by merely sitting next to me. I reached up and rubbed my head to make him think I was going insane from the fall.

Obviously Dano was used to dealing with crazies, since he ignored me and said, “But if I had to speculate as to who offed Payne-”

The ambulance stopped, most likely on a damn dime, ’cause I flew toward Dano. Then the doors opened and Jagger stood there, with me…in Dano’s arms.