“Call me if you have any questions.”
“Will do.”
I end the call and give Hurley a woeful look. “I have to head over to the hospital to look into a death they had in the ER.”
I’m hoping he’ll look disappointed, or at the least, chagrined, but instead he looks contentedly resigned and says, “I understand. It’s part of the job. We can have dinner some other time.”
Easy for him to say. It seems like every time we try to get together in a nonwork-related way, somebody dies. I feel like I’m trying to date the Grim Reaper. And to make matters worse, I detect a distinct lack of conviction in Hurley’s voice that makes me nervous.
I scarf down two quick bites of the lasagna, which tastes utterly divine, and then take a bite of garlic bread. When I’ve swallowed I tell him, “This is heaven. You’re a very good cook.”
He beams at me. “Thanks. How about I fix you a little to-go container and you can take some of it with you?”
“That would be fabulous,” I tell him, echoing Izzy. I watch as he quickly packs up a meal of lasagna and garlic bread in a plastic container, giving it, some napkins, and a fork to me when he’s done. It’s a sweetly domestic scene and it’s easy for me to imagine a lifetime of such moments with him. It fortifies my faith in the future of our relationship . . . until I remember that he’s been implicated in a nasty murder and solicited my cooperation with a secret investigation.
“Thanks,” I say, carrying my food out to the foyer and setting it on the lowest step of the staircase. He retrieves my coat from the closet while I take off the shirt he gave me and drape it over the newel post. Then he holds the coat for me so I can slip it on. After he settles it onto my shoulders, he turns me around to face him. Our eyes lock for a pregnant pause and I brace myself for the kiss I hope is coming.
Except it doesn’t. All he does is smile and say, “Thanks for everything.”
He hands me my to-go container and steers me out the door. I stumble off the porch in a state of mind- numbing confusion, climb into the hearse, and pull away.
As I head for the hospital, my mind scrambles to make sense of this change in Hurley’s behavior. Damn men anyway! On the one hand they can be so easy to read. Speak to the small brain and they’ll say or do anything. But their big brains function so differently from women’s that it’s like dealing with someone from another planet, maybe even another whole solar system.
The hell with him, I decide. Screw him, David, and all the other men in the world who possess the ability to manipulate my hormones and complicate my life. I mean really, why do I need a man in my life anyway? To fix things around the house? Clearly not, since David is about as inept at those things as a man could be and I can always hire a handyman. For sex? Well, that part is nice but there are plenty of other ways to find satisfaction, maybe even the aforesaid handyman. Children? Thanks to sperm banks and recent advances in modern reproductive science, I don’t need a man for that either.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that I’m on to something. The whole idea of giving up men is oddly liberating; it makes me feel giddy and determined. By the time I reach the hospital, I’ve made up my mind. It’s time to reevaluate my life, reexamine my goals, and focus on myself without any men in the picture. I am Mattie renewed, version two-point-oh, the latest and greatest release.
After parking the hearse, I open my to-go container and chomp down on a slice of buttery garlic bread. The delicious mix of soft, yeasty, still-warm bread, tangy garlic, and fresh butter is enough to make my toes curl with delight.
Damn, but Hurley can cook! Maybe it’s too soon to give up on him altogether. I mean we have shared a few kisses that were hot enough to be a threat to global warming, and it was me he kept asking for when he was drugged up in the hospital. Surely all that meant something, didn’t it?
I realize how desperately I want to believe in Hurley—to believe in
But I can’t help myself. The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that Hurley feels something for me. The question is what? I’m pretty certain he feels some level of attraction, but is it enough? Did I scare him away? Given his current situation, is it possible he’s just leading me on? Stringing me along to make me a happy follower so he can further his own agenda?
It’s clear I’m not going to get any answers tonight so I shove the thoughts to the back of my mind and get out of the car, dragging my pedestal and the sad remnants of my membership card in the feminists’ club along with me. Fortunately I have a death to look into, something I find much easier to deal with than men.
Chapter 7
After popping a couple of Tic-Tacs to mask my garlic breath, I make my way into the ER at a little after six. The waiting room is fairly crowded and as I scan the occupants with a habitual eye toward triage, I don’t see anyone who looks critically ill, just miserable. Most of the folks are coughing, sneezing, and snotting all over the furniture and one another, ensuring the sharing and survival of whatever nasty little virus is dominating this year’s flu season.
The gal behind the registration desk recognizes me and buzzes me into the back patient care area, where things are hopping. Every bed is full. I hear some poor soul barfing up his toenails in one room, and the screams of a miserable child in another. The nurses are all running about in a carefully choreographed dance of controlled chaos. I know from my own years working here that the arrival of the PNB most likely turned what might have been a merely busy shift into one that is now a mad and desperate scramble to catch up.
I make my way to the nurse’s desk, where I see Ricky “Rickets” Masterson standing in front of a full rack of charts. ER nurses have a habit of referring to patients not by their name, but by their bed number and diagnosis. So instead of John Doe, Bob Jones, and Susan Smith you get the Pancreatitis in Room Four, the Bowel Obstruction in Room Two, and the Bitch-On-Wheels Hypochondriac in Room Six. Several years ago when I worked in the ER, a bunch of us decided to make up nicknames for ourselves that were both close to our real names and to a disease or disorder. As a result, Ricky became Rickets, faring a whole lot better than my good friend, Phyllis, who is now referred to as Syph for short.
“Hey, Rickets, are you the charge nurse tonight?”
He shakes his head. “Nope, Lupus is,” he says, referring to a nurse named Lucy. “But she’s tied up at the moment with a Five-Year-Old Head Lac in Room Four who is trying out for a role in the next
“I am.”
He hands me a clipboard containing the code sheets—a written summary of what happened during the attempts to resuscitate.
“Has the family been notified?” I ask.
“There’s a daughter who apparently found him and called it in. She was here when he first arrived but I don’t know if she’s still here or not. Check with Constance.” Constance, who was hired after the nicknaming session, has remained just Constance, probably a good thing since her last name is Pate and I’m pretty sure she’d be known as Constipation by now.
“Do you know where she is?”
Rickets gives me an apologetic look and shakes his head. “Sorry, it’s been a zoo here tonight.”
“Can you log me onto a computer so I can review the PNB’s chart?”
“Sure.” Rickets gets me into the computerized charting program and then leaves me to my own devices. After grabbing a notepad and pen, I glance at the data at the bottom of the code sheet and write down the man’s name—Harold Minniver—and his age, which is seventy-two. Next I look up his chart on the computer and start taking notes. A scan of his medication list shows that he was on several heart drugs as well as one for high blood pressure, and his medical history includes a three-vessel heart bypass surgery five years ago. So far so good, I think, since these facts make the likelihood his death is attributable to some type of cardiac event that much higher.
