going to render some first aid until the rescue team arrives, okay?” Her voice wavers as if she is about to burst into tears.
“I really don’t think first aid will help at this point,” I tell her as I make my way back to the bathroom. I wince when I see the bloody footprints I’ve tracked across the floor. “He’s dead.”
“Please,” she says. “Stay calm and listen to me. What you and I do in the next few minutes may save this man’s life.”
I can hear the frantic rustling of papers in the background and figure it is her step-by-step CPR instructions. I sigh. “Pardon my bluntness, ma’am, but nothing you or I can do will save this man’s life. He is dead. Very dead.”
“We can’t be sure of that,” she says quickly, her voice high and squeaky. “Sometimes people only look dead.”
“No, I’m certain he’s dead. Totally and completely dead.” Some dark corner of my mind urges me to sing out in a Munchkin voice: “He’s really most sincerely dead.”
“Now, please, don’t panic. Just do what I say. I want you to go to the man and look to see if he is breathing.”
“Look, I’m a nurse. I know what I’m looking at here and this man—”
“If he isn’t breathing, then you will need to give him artificial respiration, or mouth-to-mouth breathing. To do that, you first need to open his airway by tipping his head back. Place one hand beneath his chin and the other one on his forehead.”
There is a rote quality to her voice that tells me she is reading what she’s saying. “You don’t understand,” I interrupt. “He—”
“Then you need to tip his head back by lifting up under the chin and exerting downward pressure on the forehead. Then—”
“Lady, he doesn’t have a forehead!” I say it a bit more abruptly than I mean to, but it is the only way I can think of to break through this woman’s automaton frame of mind.
There is a moment of startled silence. Then, in a high, squeaky voice, “What did you say?”
“I said he doesn’t have a forehead. Not much of one anyway.”
“He doesn’t have a forehead?”
I hear more papers rustling and stifle a bizarre urge to laugh. “I don’t think your instructions will tell you what to do if someone is missing a forehead,” I say calmly. I hear her swallow—a big, echoing gulp—followed by a little cough. “You’re kind of new at this, aren’t you?” I say.
“Um, yeah. Is it that obvious?”
“Probably not to everyone. But I spent several years working as a nurse in the ER, so I’m kind of jaded.”
I hear a noise and turn to find a uniformed police officer standing in the doorway to the showroom. It is Brian Childs, one of the cops I know from working in the ER, and he looks wired and ready to jump. As soon as he sees me he relaxes a little, though his hand hovers close to the gun strapped to his side.
“Mattie, hi,” he says. “Are you okay?”
I nod. He looks around the room warily.
“Are you alone?”
“Far as I know,” I tell him, to which the 911 operator says, “Pardon me?”
“Sorry, I was talking to an officer here.”
“An officer is there?” She sounds greatly relieved.
“Yes. Brian Childs.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
“What’s your name?”
“My name?” She sounds shocked that I would ask such a thing. “It’s Jeannie. Why?”
“I just wanted to know. Thanks for your help, Jeannie.”
“I wasn’t very good, was I?”
I realize then that she probably thinks I want her name so I can file a complaint about her. “You did fine, Jeannie. Honest. The first few times are always rough.”
“I guess.”
“Hey, someday I’ll tell you about a few things I bungled back when I first started working in the ER. It will make you look like a pro.”
She lets forth with a nervous little laugh but I can tell her tension has eased some.
“Look,” I say, seeing Brian signaling to me, “I need to talk to Officer Childs, so I’m going to hang up.”
“Okay.”
“And, Jeannie?”
“Yeah?”
“Hang in there. It gets easier.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” she says. “But thanks.”
Brian speaks to me as soon as I disconnect the call. “Dispatch said there was a shooting here?”
I point to the bathroom door and say, “In here,” though I could have saved my breath since he is already heading in my direction, his nose wrinkling at the acrid smell of blood.
“Whoa!” he says, sticking his head through the opening in the door and looking inside. “Guy did a number on himself, didn’t he?”
“He did that,” I agree, peering over his shoulder to see if it is as awful as I remember. It is.
Brian lifts a walkie-talkie to his mouth and hits the button. “All clear in here, Junior.”
Junior, I know, is Jonathan Feller, another cop about my age.
“Shit, Mattie. This is a mess, ain’t it?” Brian says.
It certainly is, enough of a mess that my lunch begins to churn menacingly in my stomach. I gulp in a breath of air and not only smell the thickening blood that suddenly seems everywhere, I swear I can taste it. My stomach lurches, tossing a burning dose of acid up my throat, and I swallow hard several times, hoping to convince my GI tract that down is the only way to go. I get a brief reprieve when I hear the door to the front showroom open. I turn, grateful for the distraction and expecting to greet Junior.
But it isn’t Junior; it’s Steve Hurley. He sees me and frowns, not quite the response a girl hopes for from the man who kissed her silly just the night before. He walks toward me, and I can’t help but wonder if he is remembering the kiss, too.
The mere sight of him gets my pulse racing, and when he stops and looks at me with those gorgeous blue eyes, my legs begin to shake. My stomach gets this odd, squishy, butterfly feeling and his closeness seems to rob me of all self-control, leaving me stunned and senseless.
All thought escapes me. As does my cheeseburger, the remnants of which splatter all over his shoes.
Chapter 25
As Hurley reveals his impressive knowledge of profanity, my mind clicks back into detached clinical mode as I eye the mess I’ve just barfed all over his shoes. A pickle slice, whole and intact, rests on his laces and I make a mental note to try to chew my food more thoroughly in the future.
“Jesus Christ, Winston!” he says, shaking his foot. “Couldn’t you have tried to make it to the bathroom?”
“Well, I suppose I could have,” I say crossly. “But there’s the little matter of a dead body in the only bathroom I see here, which is what made me lose my lunch in the first place.”
“Oh, that’s just great,” Hurley mutters. “How the hell am I supposed to clean this off my shoes if I can’t use the bathroom?”
“Try this,” I offer, grabbing a bottle of sterile water and a package of waterproof bed pads from a nearby shelf. I notice some bottles of mouthwash nearby and grab one of those, too, stuffing it in my pocket. I don’t normally condone theft or shoplifting, but I figure in this case it is for the greater good, a benefit to mankind…well, at least the mankind who have to share breathing space with me.
Hurley is working at cleaning the vomit off his shoes when Junior comes in through the back door. As soon as Junior joins Brian in the bathroom and I’m certain Hurley is well distracted, I head for the door Junior just came
