you must always look your best,” Diana said, playing with the girl now.
“Anyhow, is she going to be okay?”
“Yeah, fine. Barely a graze, really. Three stitches. Lucky girl, she is.”
Diana picked up a clipboard, the last vestige of the days when she was in the newbie’s position. Several nurses carried electronic clipboards, but Diana was lagging behind on her required training. She started toward the corridor that led to Tori Connelly’s private room, 561D, arguably the best room on the floor. It was smaller than the others, and because of that it, was never converted to a tandem. There was no sharing of a bathroom. No feigned interest in one patient’s malady from across a curtain suspended by grommets and a steel tube. Diana Lowell let her eyes wander over the woman in the bed. She could tell that the patient was watching her every move, though her head stayed stationary. Diana could feel those eyes follow her as she rotated the bag containing clear liquid that was a mixture of saline and anti-anxiety meds. Not enough to knock her out. Not enough to keep her from complaining. If the woman in 561D was a complainer, that is.
In time, most were.
Diana flipped the crisp new pages of the printed chart and scoured its contents. Tori Connelly certainly had the pedigree to be a complainer. Her home address was an exclusive street in North Tacoma. Her hair was cut with the messy precision of a stylist who probably charged half of what Diana made in a day. The color was good, too. Blond, the hue of wheat on a bronze-lit summer day. Not the DIY color from the bottle that Diana and her sister used because they were “worth” it.
“How are we feeling?” Diana asked, catching the patient’s stare. “You slept all day yesterday.”
“We,” Tori said, moistening her parched lips. “We have been shot.”
Diana smoothed a bedsheet. “Of course, I know that. How is the pain? You know you can increase the dosage by pressing the button.”
Tori was annoyed. “You are pressing my buttons now,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “Just trying to be helpful.”
“I want to know if my husband’s okay. He was hurt, too.”
Diana knew what had happened to the patient’s husband, of course, but it wasn’t her place to say anything. The doctor could tell the new widow. A cop could.
She set the chart down and focused on Tori.
“The police are here now,” she said, moving toward the hallway and catching the eye of the man lingering by the doorway. “They’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“The police?”
Diana looked at her. “Yes. The shooting, remember?”
“I look like a wreck,” she said. “Besides, I’ve already answered questions galore.”
This one was going to be memorable in every way.
“You look fine. You know, considering all you’ve been through.”
Tori ran her fingertips through her hair. In doing so, she tangled the tubes taped to her wrist. She indicated the IV line.
“This hurts,” she said.
Diana bent closer and unwound the tubes from the bed rail. “Let me help you.” She gently splayed them out from Tori’s wrist to the bag of solution.
“Will I be all right?”
“You’ll be fine,” Diana said. There were times when that phrase was said as a white lie, only to bolster a patient’s dwindling prospects. But Tori Connelly would be as good as new. At least physically.
“I bet I look like twenty miles of bad road,” she said.
“Not hardly.” Diana studied Tori. She’d been shot, yes. She’d lost blood. Yet somehow she held herself together enough to allow her vanity to come into play. The woman in 561D was one of those women with nerves of platinum and an unbending concern for how things appeared.
A man appeared in just inside the doorway and Diana motioned in his direction. It was Eddie Kaminski.
“She’s resting comfortably, but she can talk, Detective,” she said, walking out the door and past the detective.
Kaminski knew that the victim’s recollection of the crime would be most accurate closer to the event, rather than later. Tori Connelly’s doctors told him that she was on pain medication and fluids, but was lucid and given the circumstances would be able to share what she knew about what had transpired.
“Ms. Connelly,” Kaminski said, ducking into her room. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”
She barely looked at the man in a seasonally questionable black overcoat, dark slacks, and a rumpled white shirt.
“Ms. Connelly?” he repeated, this time a little louder, but modulated for the hospital setting. “I’m Detective Kaminski, Tacoma P.D. I’m here to talk about the shooting.”
She moved her lips. Her eyes fluttered.
“Yes,” she said.
He found a place by her bedside. Not so close as to invade her personal space, but with the narrowest of proximity to hear her words. Tori Connelly’s hair was swept back and her skin quite pale. Her eyes rested in charcoal hollows. She was fine featured. Despite her ordeal, however, she was an attractive woman.
She looked up, eyes damp. “There was so much blood. Everywhere.”
He nodded. “Yes, there was.”
She lowered her eyes and then looked out at the Tacoma skyline. “He didn’t make it,” she said, more a statement than a question. “My husband, I mean.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not.”
A tear rolled from the corner of her eye, leaving a shiny trail as it traveled to the white linen of the hospital pillow.
“But you did,” he said.
She held her words inside a moment.
“Yes, yes, I did.”
Kaminski took out a notepad and started writing. He’d given up the idea that he could remember every word uttered by a witness. It wasn’t that he was struggling with early-onset Alzheimer’s. It was simply the recognition that a notation was a safeguard against forgetting when it came time to tap out the report.
“Did he suffer?” she asked.
Kaminski stopped writing and looked up. “The coroner doesn’t think so. Death was instantaneous or thereabouts.”
She stayed quiet for a moment and then let out a long breath. “That’s a blessing.”
“I’d like to talk about what happened. From the beginning, if you don’t mind. I know you’re exhausted.”
He didn’t really care that she was tired, but he’d
