life-support machine beeped away in the darkened hospital room, echoing the reassuring sound of a heartbeat through the air.
Senior nurse Deborah Lewis checked the wires and tubes attached to the body of the tiny baby boy. His parents watched closely, grief and bewilderment evident on their faces. The deterioration of their son had come quickly, and they were unprepared.
Deborah put a hand on the mother’s shoulder. “He’s in good hands here,” she said. “Harborcreek Community Hospital has the best pediatric care in Pennsylvania.”
One of Deborah’s nurse colleagues, Diane White, appeared in the doorway. “Deborah,” Diane called into the room. “Do you have a moment?”
Deborah clipped the medical chart onto the end of the steel bed frame and smiled at the couple. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”
She joined Diane in the corridor and closed the door. The atmosphere in the pediatric unit was somber. Six children had recently fallen gravely ill; three of them were now on life support. It had been a bleak few days for the medical staff of Harborcreek Hospital, which was just a few miles from the lakeside city of Erie.
Diane held a pile of laundered sheets close to her chest, looking around anxiously as she spoke. “Frank Carlisle has been here,” she said in a whisper. “He says he wants to talk to you about something important.”
Deborah stood a little closer to Diane, noticing that her friend’s baby bump was straining against the fabric of her scrubs. The mention of Frank Carlisle caused a ripple of anxiety to flow through Deborah’s body. Frank, the hospital administrator, was responsible for overseeing the smooth running of the entire hospital and was well-known for maintaining a tight ship. News of the sudden spate of emergencies in the pediatric unit had displeased him. Usually she gave Frank Carlisle a wide berth, but in this instance she needed him to listen to her. And to take action. She suspected possible medicine tampering and had raised her concerns with him over a week ago, yet he had done nothing.
“I heard you spoke to him about the number of kids falling sick in the unit,” Diane said. “And I also heard you want him to open an investigation. Are you sure that’s necessary?”
“I’m really worried,” Deborah whispered. “All these sick children are showing signs of renal failure. It just doesn’t make sense. Up until now, we’ve only seen children over ten years old with these symptoms, but now we have a baby with failing kidneys, as well. His body might not cope with the strain.”
A hospital orderly passed by, pushing an expectant mother in a wheelchair, and Deborah ushered Diane to one side. “I’ve never seen anything like it before—six children have been struck down with kidney failure in the space of just three weeks. I’m starting to wonder if someone has been interfering with patient medicine.”
Diane clutched the sheets closer to her chest. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly serious,” replied Deborah. “Frank thinks I’m being ridiculous, but I told him we need more security in our unit to be on the safe side—cameras, barriers, better alarm systems.”
“But there’s no evidence of drug tampering,” Diane said. “Do you really think Frank will spend that kind of money just as a precaution?”
Deborah raised her eyebrows. “Frank would do anything to avoid a public scandal. The good reputation of this hospital is all he lives for.” The pager on the waistband of her pants began to beep. She pulled it off impatiently. “I gotta go to the morgue.” She held the pager in her hand, shaking her head. “Why would the morgue be paging me?” Then a thought struck her and she gasped. “We haven’t had a child die recently, have we?”
“No,” Diane replied. “But maybe a dead child has been brought in and taken straight to the morgue. They might need you to do the family liaison.”
Deborah sighed. She hoped not, but as a pediatric nurse, that job fell to her from time to time. “Maybe,” she said, holding out her hands to take the bedding from Diane’s grip. “You want me to take these somewhere for you on my way?”
Diane shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Deborah put a hand gently on Diane’s growing belly. “Are you sure? If you need a break, please tell me. You’re eight months pregnant. You’re entitled to rest once in a while.”
“I’m okay, honestly,” Diane said as Deborah’s pager began to beep again. “You go.”
Deborah smiled and started to walk quickly down the corridor, feeling her blond curls bounce in rhythm with her sneakered feet. She pressed the button to call the elevator and as soon as she was shut away inside she let the smile fall from her face. Her friend’s pregnancy should be a cause for happiness and joy, yet it only served as a reminder that her own biological clock had started to tick. When she had been young and naive, she had assumed she would be a longtime wife and mom by the time she turned thirty, raising a family in the beautiful surroundings of her hometown of Harborcreek, where she lived close to her mom and dad, and a whole bunch of friends who made her feel loved and blessed. The only thing missing from her imagined vision of the future was the man she’d thought she’d marry—Cole Strachan.
She exited the elevator and began walking to the morgue, concentrating on the sound of her rubber soles squeaking on the tiled floor, trying not to remember the day Cole had ended their relationship. He’d done so shortly after enlisting in the navy, telling her that he was too young to settle down, that he needed to live a little. Come on, Debs, she muttered to herself. Ten years is too long to still be grieving. Get over it.
She fixed her gaze on the end of the long corridor as she walked through the warm sunlight streaming in from the large windows lining the passageway. Cole may have broken her heart but he had not broken her spirit. She was stronger than that.
She walked a little closer to the wall when she saw a man approaching carrying a stepladder. His head was bent over a piece of paper in his hand, no doubt trying to work out his location in this large hospital with its maze of linked corridors. Her pager began to beep again and she yanked it from her waistband, furrowing her brow at the display. The man with the stepladder passed her by, engrossed in studying his scribbled directions, narrowly missing her head with the metal rungs. She considered reprimanding him for his carelessness, but the pager alert had been upgraded to level one. She picked up her pace to seek out the hospital’s autopsy attendant, Dr. Kellerman, in order to ask him why a pediatric nurse would be required so urgently in his department.
The morgue was quiet. The front desk where the clerk normally stood to sign in new admissions was empty. Deborah used her hospital security card to open the door of the morgue, feeling the coolness of the room rush over her face.
“Dr. Kellerman,” she called. “This is Nurse Deborah Lewis from Pediatrics.”
No reply.
“Dr. Kellerman,” she repeated, edging her way through the door. “Are you here?”
She walked into the room, averting her eyes from gurneys where deceased patients were covered with white sheets, feet poking from the ends, paper tags tied around gray skin on big toes. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her shoulders, creeping between the rows, heading to the room where the steel refrigeration compartments stored the bodies until collection by a funeral home. A creak on the floor caused her body to give a sharp, involuntary jump. She stopped in her tracks and took a deep breath, shaking her mane of curly hair and mentally chastising herself for allowing the presence of death to cause her this level of unease.
