Page 14 of The Undead

“Disrupted?” I rubbed my forehead and found it still wet with sweat. The dream image of Maggie’s corpse rose in front of my eyes. “Is she giving you trouble?”

“Well, that all depends on what you call sneaking out of her room and wandering all over the building. We had quite a little adventure finding her, I’ll tell you, and then Dr. Gregory prescribed some Valium to keep her quiet—I’ve been trying to give it to her for the last fifteen minutes. She insists on talking to you. I told her you were in surgery last time I checked—”

“Yeah, I got out about half an hour ago.” No wonder I’d had the bad dream. I’d sweated through six hours of lung biopsies, only to be greeted by the cheery news that one of my favorite young patients had quietly died in his room, exhausted by chemotherapy and pain. It had been—what? fourteen hours?—since I’d watched Maggie being wheeled in and the day had shattered like glass. The pieces just kept falling,—and it felt like they were cutting me up in the process. “Sorry. I checked after surgery and they assured me she was okay. I thought I’d catch a little rest myself.”

“No problem, Doctor,” Grant said unconvincingly—but she was winding down. Still had a full head of steam, though. “We thought she was sleeping. I don’t know how she managed to get by without being seen, but I’m going to grill everybody up here until I find out.”

“I’m on my way up, Viv. I’m not so sure about the Valium, but—”

“It’s that or tie her down and gag her,” Grant snapped back. I winced and wondered what Maggie had done to endear herself so personally to a professional nurse.

I expected I’d find out, in exhaustive detail.

While I waited for an elevator to grace me with its presence, my brain insisted on cataloguing the day’s losses. The rape victim I’d signed in, Julie Gilmore, had died, conscious and aware to the end. On top of that, Maggie’s prisoner Angelo, the one who’d ventilated her shoulder and seemed to have such a close personal friendship with Nick Gianoulos, had rewarded Dr. MacGreavy’s marathon bowel-resection efforts by lapsing into a flat-line coma. MacGreavy was very, very pissed, though he knew as well as anybody how often gutshots tended to end up fatal. Staff and cops, including Nick, were busy pointing fingers and trading insults. No one seemed to have any idea about what had happened, and I was too tired to care.

Gilmore would be in the morgue by now, awaiting a thorough postmortem. Angelo, very likely a corpse-in-waiting, wouldn’t be far behind. No, it didn’t make for an encouraging evening, all around. I stepped into the elevator—for a wonder, it was empty except for a single tech armed with a tray of equipment—and watched the silvery reflecting doors slide shut in front of my face.

Panic.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not claustrophobic, I don’t have trouble with elevators, even crowded ones. But just then, thinking about the morgue and silver drawers, I didn’t much like the sensation of metal closing over my face. I must have pulled in a deep breath, because I saw the tech look at me oddly over his armful. I let it out just as quickly, and concentrated on making my heart rate do normal things.

“Breathing exercises,” I explained. The tech just nodded, too well used to doctors to do anything else. We finished the ride in silence.

I could hear Maggie the minute I stepped into the hall. Her voice, bless her, had that ringing tone of authority that cops are either born with or are taught in the academy, and Grant’s effort to be pleasant sounded patently fake next to it. I hurried my pace a little. I’d heard that tone in Maggie’s voice before—but not often, and I didn’t have any fond memories of it.

“—either you take this or I’ll have to restrain you and give it to you forcibly, Mrs. Bowman. The doctor prescribed—”

“The doctor,” Maggie said sweetly, a rose with razor petals, “can fold it, light it, and stick it up his ass. Do I make myself dear? You try to put that in my mouth again and I’m going to take a few fingers with it. I’m not taking anything until Michael gets here.”

“Look, you—” Grant muttered something under her breath. I turned the corner into the room. Neither woman noticed me. Grant thrust a little paper cup under Maggie’s nose. Maggie, never one for argument when a little physical demonstration could get the point across better, slapped the nurse’s hand and sent the two Valium capsules sailing like miniature cannon shot across the room. I winced and moved in to pull Grant back from whatever violence she was contemplating.

Maggie did not look good. She was sallow and shaky, and sweat glittered on her exposed skin; she’d pushed herself right to the farthest reach of her strength. Again. But when she looked at me and smiled, emotion sheeted through me like heat lightning.

“Doctor—” Grant began hotly, but I only patted her on the back and steered her toward the door. Once I had her around the corner, I bent close and whispered in her ear. She smiled at me beatifically, made a smug OK sign with her fingers, and sauntered off to get the Valium.

“Hey, Mike, don’t let her knock me out, okay?” Maggie whispered when I turned back to her. I pulled up a chair and straddled it with my chin resting on the back.

“You seem to be doing a pretty thorough job without her help. Grant tells me you took off. How come, baby?”

“I wasn’t real dear when I first came around. Painkillers—” Maggie shrugged, then winced. Her lips went pale as she bit them. I made a mental note to send the Valium back and take a good hard look at her chart. “Anyway, I had things to do, so I got up and went.”

“What a stupid—”

“—Damn fool—” she supplied wearily.

“—idiotic thing to do,” I finished without heat. “What in the hell was so important that you’d do something like that?”

“I wanted to keep an eye on Angelo.”

Her voice was carefully neutral. I watched her for a minute, but she didn’t add anything. Vocally.

“That’s mighty forgiving, considering he put a fairly serious hole in you,” I said. ‘They didn’t need you, you know. MacGreavy told me he was guarded.”

Actually, MacGreavy had said he couldn’t breathe without rubbing up against the cop assigned to watch. But guarded was one way to put it.

“Yeah,” she agreed gloomily. “Guarded. You know, it was really strange, when Nicky and I showed up to reel him in, Angelo got really upset and didn’t want to go after all. He was pretty antsy around Nick. Didn’t trust either one of us.”

I thought about that, and watched her think about it. Her eyes were tired and narrowed.

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