The Pain Nurse

Chapter Seventeen

She wanted nothing more than a long, hot shower and a Bushmills on the rocks. She could almost feel the softness of the robe against her as she waited to take her first sip. She would make it downstairs, bring the drink up to her bedroom, and lock herself in with her music and a book. With the commotion and arrest today, there was no reason she couldn’t get back to her old habits and just enjoy the downstairs. But not tonight. The day had been too intense. In addition to Lennie, she had been overloaded with patients. Just as she had been leaving, she had been paged to the emergency room with Trauma Team One. An ambulance had brought in a burn patient.

He should have gone straight to the burn center at University Hospital, but there had been a mix-up. Now they had to stabilize him. A twenty-three-year-old kid who had been using gasoline to set a building on fire. He had deep, thick burns on both legs and the smell of burned flesh filled the exam room. The usual morphine dose didn’t work, of course-too many years using narcotics on the street. He moaned and screamed like a child. Just seeing the team set up made him more agitated. Cheryl Beth pushed as far as she could to ramp up the IV morphine dose, but he never really settled down. She could still smell the burned flesh.

A hot shower and a Bushmills would settle her down. She might even smile recalling how the cop in the wheelchair had taken Lennie down. But after she left the parking garage, she pulled into the valet parking lane at the hospital and watched the garage behind her. Soon the Honda Accord emerged. She couldn’t explain why she did what she did next. It just happened. She let the car reach the end of the block, where the long red light annoyed drivers, and she pulled out behind him. It was as simple and foolhardy as lingering beside that car, which had caused her to see the letter inside, addressed to Christine Lustig.

She was only half a block along when he turned right on Madison and disappeared. She gunned the little Saturn engine to keep up and made a rolling stop at the light. He was already several blocks down the avenue. Traffic was light and the asphalt was dry. Would he keep going straight into Walnut Hills, Mount Lookout, and Hyde Park? No. He turned onto Interstate 71 and headed north. She felt her stomach in a vise, but pushed to make it through the light so she could follow him. Soon they were both going seventy. Cheryl Beth had never tailed anyone in her life. She had only seen it done on television. It was an odd guilty, exhilarating feeling. She hung back several car lengths, trying to keep herself from being distracted by other taillights.

The Accord took the Galbraith Road exit, shining silver under the streetlights as it exited the freeway. Cheryl Beth followed, slowing to let another car get between them. They took the green light and drove past the deserted Kenwood Towne Center and its vast parking lot. The normally crowded suburban roads were placid. The business signs glowed merrily. She was so far behind on her Christmas shopping. That all seemed a grotesque joke now. All the Santa Claus red only reminded her of Christine on the floor, awash in her own blood. She nervously started checking the gas tank: the gauge showed a quarter of a tank.

They went more than a mile on Galbraith and turned into a residential street, then followed a spaghetti of streets past cul-de-sacs and look-alike houses with big garage doors. This part of town had a mix of houses, older subdivisions with ranches and tri-levels from the 1950s and 1960s, some very old surviving farmhouses, and the newer, large houses that had been built as the mall expanded. She couldn’t believe how much it had grown since she had first moved to Cincinnati to go to nursing school. These houses looked only a few years old. The trash hampers were all neatly moved to the curb for tomorrow’s pickup. Cheryl Beth hated it out here. She imagined Andy was now living in a house just like these somewhere on the outskirts of Corbin, with his new wife and children. New wife! Cheryl Beth and Andy had been divorced for more than fifteen years. She laughed at herself, hanging as far back as she could without losing the red taillight beacons ahead. The Accord suddenly slowed and swung into a driveway, as a garage door opened and the garage light flooded into the cold night.

“Just act like you belong,” she said out loud, pulling to the curb three houses down. Suddenly a pair of headlights appeared behind her and swept across the dashboard. She was clammy with guilt. What if they live here? She slid down in the seat, trying to let the headrest conceal her. But the black sedan drove on by and turned into a cul-de-sac farther on. Only after it passed did she think to turn off the engine so the fog from the tailpipe was not visible. She had never been a sneak. It felt strange.

At the house, the garage door stayed open as long minutes passed. Then she saw Judd Mason emerge on the driveway, still wearing only his scrubs. He stood at the top of the long driveway, seeming to survey the street. She unconsciously slid down further in her seat. He walked down the driveway. In his hand he held a plastic bag. He looked around again, then deposited the bag in the trash hamper sitting by the curb. With quick, long strides he walked back to the garage and the door closed behind him. She tracked him through the house as lights came on in the front room, then went off, followed by the lights turning on in the second story.

Cheryl Beth sat in the car as the cold infiltrated the windshield, came through the door, took control of her feet. She tried not to breathe so deeply. The windshield was starting to fog up. She could hear herself lightly wheezing and she took a puff of the Combivent. Cincinnati was hell on asthma. Sinus Valley. Anxiety was hell on asthma, too. She pulled out the bright red Tylenol lanyard that held her ID and her yellow pain card and started fiddling with it. She had been a nail-biter in high school. Now she pried at the lamination on the yellow card showing the Wong-Baker faces pain rating system. It started with a circle with bright eyes and a smile and moved up the scale to a circle with tears and an inverted U as a mouth. She had felt that way lately.

What happened next was pure impulsiveness. She started the car and crept down the road with the headlights off until she was in front of Judd Mason’s house. His upstairs lights went out. She took a quick look around-all the houses on the street were asleep-and opened the door, stepping out into the chill. She counted the steps to keep herself calm: eleven. Then she was in front of the heavy plastic trash hamper. The lid came up easily and the plastic bag was right on top of a pile of white, tied trash bags. She grabbed it, set the lid down carefully, and walked back to the car, only ten steps this time, her throat tight with tension. Then she was safe in the car and moving. She didn’t turn on the headlights until she was another block away.

She came out on Galbraith Road alone. Or she thought she was, until she saw headlights appear out of the same side street. Her stomach tightened. Surely Mason couldn’t have seen her and given chase. She accelerated and left the headlights far behind her, then she was around more cars as she neared the freeway. At the red light, she turned and picked through the trash. There it was: the white envelope with Christine’s name written on it. She had stolen it. Was it stealing if something had already been thrown away? Was it stealing something that had already been stolen? What was this nurse doing with an opened envelope belonging to Christine?

She turned back toward the city and merged into the fast lane, exhaustion starting to make her body feel heavy. Now she was really looking forward to home, and hoping that everybody could make it through the night without a page to return to the hospital. The heater was a relief after sitting so long in the cold.

The rearview mirror was irresistible. Was that the same pair of headlights that had followed her out onto Galbraith? Now she was just tired and guilty and paranoid. She would decide tomorrow what to do about the letter. She would read it tonight, though. She plucked it out of the trash and slipped it in the lab coat pocket that held her other notes from the day. Then she settled in the seat and drove as the freeway made its gentle descent toward downtown and the Ohio River.

She eased off the interstate and turned onto Taft, the one-way that would take her home. She crossed Reading and it turned into Calhoun. The bundle of buildings of Pill Hill blazed with lights, dominated by the vast University Hospital complex. Farther to the east was the imposing deco tower of Cincinnati Memorial. Soon she would be passing the University of Cincinnati on the right, as she did every night. But her stomach was folded in on itself. She was sure the same car had followed her off the freeway and was just a few blocks behind her. She cursed each red light, but it gave her a chance to look back. The car was right behind her at Vine. It wasn’t the Accord. But it might be the black sedan that had passed her back in Kenwood. There was only one occupant, but she couldn’t see more because of the glare of the headlights. When she looked forward again the light was green.

She was overreacting, she just knew it. The car would pass on when she turned left on Clifton Avenue to head home. But it didn’t. Both her hands clamped the steering wheel until they ached. The driver was brazen now, right behind her. It was the black sedan. Panic flooded her limbs. Now she was in her neighborhood of old bungalows and century-old trees, but he was right behind her. She couldn’t let herself be trapped on her dead-end street. So she turned on Warner, doubled back north on Ohio and turned right on McMillan. Traffic was light and all the businesses that catered to the university were closed. Only a couple of bars were open. The black car stayed with her. She accelerated and turned south on Vine, not yet sure what to do. Her right hand fished out her cell phone. Should she call the police? Maybe it was all a mistake.

The skyscrapers of downtown shimmered ahead as Vine dropped down through the dreary blocks of the ghetto. She raced past the dark, abandoned buildings toward Central Parkway. She hit sixty. She never drove this fast in the city. The sedan paced her. The light at Central Parkway was green and she turned onto the wide boulevard. It had once been a canal, and the decaying, unfinished subway was underneath it. But tonight it was just a wide, desolate expanse. The Kroger building looked like a silver shoebox set on its side. The needle on the gas gauge was below an eighth of a tank.

“Damn!” Her voice sounded as if it were coming from far away.

Then she saw salvation in the squat, plain building that was Cincinnati police headquarters. She swung onto Ezzard Charles Drive and stopped directly behind a police car where the officer was getting out. She slammed the gearshift into park and leapt from the car.

“Help me!” Cheryl Beth ran to the cop. “I’m being followed.”

She saw in terror that the black sedan had stopped right behind her.

“That’s the car.”

The cop was an overweight man in his forties in a dark uniform jacket and the white peaked cap that always made her think of an ice-cream man. She pointed again, seeing that the car had turned off its headlights. She could see one silhouette behind the wheel. She looked at the gun in the officer’s belt for comfort.

He arched his black flashlight against his shoulder and pointed at the car.

“I can understand, ma’am,” he said. “Black male. Menacing behavior. He’s been a problem before.”

She was about to speak but then saw he was smiling at her. Then she saw Detective Dodds emerge from the sedan.

“What’s the matter with you!” She had stomped over to him and was yelling before any prudent centers of her brain could take hold. “Are you crazy? What were you trying to do?”

The big man adjusted the collar on his camel hair coat and arched his eyebrows.

“You took quite a way home, Cheryl Beth. And why were you digging in other people’s trash?”

“Damn you! Why were you spying on me, following me!”

“Since you left the hospital.” He looked at her with easy suspicion.

She could feel herself close to crying, which she did when she was really mad. She hated it because it made her seem weak. She shook her head vigorously to stop it and let herself feel the cold. Her foggy breath was coming out in quick, angry bursts.

“I’m sure you won’t mind if I search your car.”

She stared at him, suddenly afraid, feeling naked. “I sure as hell might mind.” She struggled to keep her voice calm. She settled herself down with an effort, like riding a bicycle uphill. “What’s going on?”

He was about to speak when his cell phone rang. He held out a finger and answered it.

“What do you want? What the hell?” This was followed by worse profanities, his face pinched with rage. He put away the phone and rested his hands on his hips, looking uncertain. Then he gave her arm a light but firm pull.

“Come with me.”

She felt her pager buzz and pulled back, studying the number on the readout.

“Sorry, I’ve got to go back to the hospital.”

He took her arm again, gripping more tightly this time. “That’s fine. I do, too.”