Dead On Arrival

Twenty-Three

Dano and I were dressed and heading out the door when my cell phone rang. I opened it and brought it to my ear.

“Pansy’s awake. Meet me there.” Then Jagger hung up before I could scream at him about the Dano situation. In my mind though, I knew Jagger always had my back. He never would have let me come here tonight alone if he didn’t really know who ER Dano was.

But did Jagger really know what Dano and I had done?

Yikes. I hoped to hell he couldn’t tell about my “glow” like perceptive Lilla could. Naw. Guys were not perceptive.

“We need to get to the hospital. Pansy woke up.” Pansy woke up. Perfect.

Dano turned to look at me. “That Jagger?”

Oh, yeah. Jagger had known. I’d kill him for sure and not with a cell phone but a real knife!

“Yep,” I said as Dano threw his keys at me.

“You drive. I’m indisposed as far as night vision. My truck will get us there faster than your yuppie Volvo.”

I wanted to argue that it was not yuppie, but that’d be a losing battle since my car, in fact, was. Hey, I bought it secondhand from a financial advisor in suburban Glastonbury, CT. Couldn’t get any more yuppie than that.

On the way to the hospital, I kept apologizing to Dano about the pepper spray until he made me pull over and said, “Stop that. You did the right thing. I wouldn’t have expected any less out of you, Nightingale. You’ve got guts and chutzpah. That, my dear, is why you make a fantastic nurse, investigator, and…sex-”

“I get it. Thanks.” Phew. I really didn’t want him going into that-even if it sounded like a good compliment coming on. There was that Catholic-school-induced-conscience thing, and once you heard something out loud, it became all too real.

Premarital sex. Or pre no-plans-for-marriage sex. Yikes.

We drove off and soon were pulling into the parking lot of Saint Greg’s.

“There’s Jagger’s SUV,” Dano said, pointing to the left side of the parking lot.

At first it surprised me that Dano would recognize Jagger’s SUV, but working with Jagger, I’d learned not to be bowled over by Jagger-induced shockers any longer, and that obviously pertained to Dano-induced shockers too. “Let’s see if he waited for us in it.”

I opened my own door since even after having sex with ER Dano I wasn’t expecting any changes. Truthfully, I didn’t want any. He was hot and perfect the way he was and there was enough chemistry between us to blow up a small building. Nope. I liked ER “as is” and no amount of wishing and hoping could produce that amount of chemistry-and apparently, I liked it.

And, hey, since he was still talking to me after pepper spraying him-he had to feel something close to it too.

Jagger got out and walked toward us.

I could swear he looked at me as if he knew about…you know. But then I told myself that was my stupid conscience acting up again. No way could he tell-but when we got closer, he stepped next to me and touched my arm. “Let’s go inside,” he said.

Wow.

Was that a possessive kind of touch?

I decided to concentrate on the case at hand and not try to figure out my romantic involvements/non-involvements. Besides, a thirty-something who up until now hadn’t had a date or sex in X (truthfully I didn’t want to know the real number because it’d be too embarrassing) number of months was in no position to figure anything out.

Walking between these two, though, proved more difficult than I thought-especially when they both went to put their arms around my shoulders-at the same time!

We made it up to Pansy’s floor without any more physical contact on anyone’s part, and not a word of explanation either.

I, however, smiled to myself all the way up on the elevator.

We stopped at the desk, and ER Dano explained that we were all employees who had come to visit their boss.

The stern-looking nurse glared at me.

Geez! At first I worried that she might have recognized me as a past employee from there. But she didn’t look familiar. I let my hair slip forward to partially cover my face and took a step backward.

As if he read my mind, Jagger leaned forward until I was nearly hidden from Nurse Ratched’s view. She did have a similar-looking expression to the nasty nurse in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

“Visiting hours are over.” She stepped back and folded her arms across her chest.

I started to turn around, but both Jagger and Dano pulled out the charm-nonstop-and before I knew it-and in quite a whirlwind of confusion-we were walking down the hallway to where the guard sat.

I could only shake my head in amazement at these two hunks.

Not only could these two hunks sweet-talk their way into a patient’s room after visiting hours, but also they could talk an armed guard into letting us get by.

I figured he knew who Jagger was anyway, so this time I didn’t let myself get too impressed.

“Lieutenant Shatley’s in there,” the guard said, mostly to Jagger, who nodded.

“Maybe we should wait?” I suggested.

But they were both putting on their isolation outfits and damn, but they both looked so tasty in Johnny coats (unfortunately over their clothes) and masks.

Couldn’t decide whose eyes were sexier.

Then I concluded-both were.

“Okay. Okay.” I dressed up and followed them into the room, certain they didn’t want any discussion out in the hallway and in front of Barney Fife.

When Jagger stepped aside and Dano walked toward the bed, I got a glimpse of Pansy. Yikes. She looked awful. Then again she had been stabbed, suffered quite a blood loss, survived surgery and a whopper of an infection and a temperature, not to mention the trauma her body had endured.

What struck me most was the glassy look in her eyes. For some reason, Pansy didn’t look back to normal. Normal for her, that is. She and her brother were pips and often had the most unusual looks on their faces. Ones that no one got except them. I chalked it up to “twin telepathy.”

Right now she was glaring at…me!

I moved to the side behind the lieutenant. “Hey,” I said.

He nodded and turned toward Jagger, who was next to me. “Not much useful stuff yet. She’s hopped up on meds, is my guess.”

Or hiding something, was mine. But I didn’t want to say anything that was accusatory, as I really didn’t have any evidence. I looked around the room of masked professionals and decided I’d need ironclad proof for this gang.

Jagger stepped forward. “Hey, Pansy. Jagger here. Remember me?”

She nodded, but I don’t think she meant it, and I’m sure Jagger realized that. “Jagger.”

“Yeah, I’m a new paramedic, Pansy. I’m still on orientation.” He touched her hand, which was holding onto the side rail.

Actually, I wondered what she was thinking with this group in here. Pansy probably was frightened. Yeah, that made sense, when I looked at her face.

I walked next to Jagger. “Hi, Pansy,” I said in my softest, friendliest voice. I’d reverted back to my old nursing tricks and before long, I seemed to have her trusting me. At least she held my hand instead of the railing. I let her, thinking she wasn’t going to have a baby right now like Angie, so I was safe as far as a broken hand went.

Jagger started to talk more about work, trying to get her mind into focus, I assumed.

Every time she answered, she looked at me.

I caught Lieutenant Shatley looking at me and winking. He wanted me to get her into my confidence. Okay. I could do that. I’d worked psych before. And I’d worked neuro, so between the two, I should be able to get Pansy’s mind off the gang in the room and get her to tell us something.

Dano made a kind of groaning sound as if irritated, or more like it, impatient. I looked to see him edge his way toward the bed, kinda pushing Jagger out of the way.

Oh…my…God.

They looked at each other and remained calm, although I felt the tension.

“Hey, Pansy. It’s me, Dano. ER Dano.”

Suddenly I felt as if Pansy had just returned from Oz and the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and Lion Jagger were all re-introducing themselves to gain her confidence. Only thing was, in Oz Pansy would’ve only had to worry about a “non-waterproof” witch, where in Hope Valley, there was a potential killer on the loose.

She kept looking at me as she spoke, and I had to admit, she got a hundred percent of the answers-wrong. Didn’t know who the president was. Said the year was 1951, and although the guy was an enigma, she really didn’t know who ER Dano was, despite the longevity of his employment with TLC.

I looked at the men in the room and we collectively frowned. A few of them cursed.

“Pansy, do you know where you are?” I asked, hoping my femaleness might give me an upper hand over the guys.

She made a coughing noise. I checked her monitor and her heart rate and respirations were okay, although a little fast, which I chalked up to stress. Who wouldn’t be stressed with this gang in their room interrogating them right after they’d woken up from a few days of a deep sleep?

I waited until she calmed down and said, “That’s all right. How do you feel?”

She looked at me. “I’m fine, Pauline.”

My eyes widened at that lucid statement! Everyone in the room looked hopeful, so I continued on with my line of questioning. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

“Of course. What the hell are you all doing in those stupid outfits? Is it Halloween?” She started to chuckle and it turned into a cackle.

The hairs on my neck stood on end.

I gulped and felt myself being nudged from behind. Jagger. Natch. He’d had my back all right, but was pushing me forward as if the woman in the bed was some sweet young thing who’d just awakened like a harmless Sleeping Beauty.

I think the only time Jagger touched my back was to push me into something or someone.

I looked at Pansy, and her face contorted into a shape that made me remember the witch with the poison apple in Snow White.

Jagger nudged.

I turned around and said, “Stop that!” Again, Stella Sokol’s tone.

He didn’t look as if he were smiling under the mask. “Ask her.”

Oh, great. He wanted me to ask her who had stabbed her, which was the same as asking who had killed her precious clone of a brother. Yeah, right. My luck would be that Pansy would drift off into a self-induced coma in fear of her life.

So, I chatted more until she answered a few questions correctly. However, Dano looked at me and said, “Those are pretty generic. She could be just mumbling.”

“She might be,” Jagger interrupted with, “but we have nothing else. Go for it, Pauline. We could lose her again.”

Whoops. Pauline. Pauline. There it was. The serious tone. The serious name. The one word that got my knees knocking, and I stepped forward in some out-of-body experience and asked, “Who stabbed you, Pansy?”

She looked horrified. Then she turned toward me and spat!

Thank goodness for masks, I thought. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Pansy.”

She started to babble, and often I wasn’t even sure it was English. Visions of the Exorcist came to mind. She yelled. She screamed, and then she whimpered like a little child, all the while thrashing about and yanking on the IV tubing.

Tears streamed from her eyes, and she babbled on for a few more minutes.

I grabbed her hand and released the IV tubing so she wouldn’t pull it out. “We need to leave,” I said, so the patient wouldn’t relapse in front of our eyes and it’d be my fault. “Someone get the nurse,” I ordered and Jagger pushed the call button.

Then Pansy started to say random names. They all seemed to be either employees or family, which was only Payne, come to think of it. She repeated his name over and over.

The door opened and in walked Nurse Ratched, who gave us all the evil eye. It didn’t take us long before we were hurrying out the door and disrobing from our isolation garb.

I breathed a sigh. I felt relieved to get the hell out of there, until the nurse opened the door while we were disrobing isolation gear and asked, “Which one of you is Pauline?”

I curled my lips at her since I was the only female there and raised my hand and waved it at her. “That’d be me.”

“Well, she said she wants to talk to you and-” She stuck her head back into the room and asked Pansy, “Who?”

“Jeremy.”