for my sleepless night.”
Dugan laughed. “Okay. Whatever floats your boat, Nguyen.”
* * *
Dugan didn’t get to the hospital that morning. Nor did he managed to get there the whole day. The investigation into Gomez’s murder kept him and Nguyen busy.
It wasn’t until the following morning that he finally managed to scrape together a little time for himself. He used it to swing by the hospital.
On his way over to Aurora Memorial Hospital, he decided to give himself a total of fifteen minutes there. Twenty at the most.
Despite the fact that it was only eight in the morning, finding somewhere to park was a bit of a challenge—at least, if he wanted to park somewhere close to the front. The hospital always seemed to be busy.
He wound up parking toward the very back of the lot. Because he was short on time, he decided to sprint. He told himself that a quick sprint would be good for him. It was either that or drive around a few times until someone decided to free up a spot and leave. He didn’t have time for that.
The city had too many people, he thought, getting out of his car. Used to be, according to his uncles—at least, the ones who had been born in this city—that Aurora was so small it hardly warranted a hospital at all, much less two.
It had been a huge deal when the second hospital, Aurora Memorial was finally opened. At the time, the hospital was half the size it was now and there had been empty beds on occasion. But that was because the city hadn’t done all the growing that it had of late. Back then, it was more like a one-horse town than a city.
He smiled to himself. According to his uncles, there’d been three lights down the main drag. One at one freeway, one at the other and one that was halfway in between.
There’d been cows here instead of all these people, and crime had been almost nothing. Now the cows were gone and crime was on its way up, although he and the rest of the Aurora Police Force were definitely trying to do something about that.
Okay, this is supposed to be your downtime, Dugan, remember? No shop talk, just a nice, quick visit. Something to remind you that you’re capable of doing good deeds once in a while and you’re not just a police detective, but a human being as well.
Approaching the main doors, Dugan waited until they sprang open. He preferred opening his own doors, but progress seemed to have other ideas, so he waited. Once the doors had pulled apart, slowly, he walked into the hospital.
The last time he had been here, everything had looked different. But the hospital had gone through a new wave of building again, or modernizing, as it were. For one thing, the lobby didn’t look the way it used to.
It took him a moment to get his bearings. Looking around, he finally spotted the information desk. Relieved, he approached the two people who were sitting there—a man and a woman—looking more than a little bored. They both came alive when they saw him.
“May we help you?” the attendants asked almost in unison.
“I need to get to the maternity floor,” Dugan told them.
“That would be the third floor,” the young woman said, smiling at him.
As he began to walk away, the male attendant called after him. “If you give us the patient’s name, we can tell you which room she is in. It’ll make it go faster for you.”
“Okay.”
Backing up, Dugan returned to the desk and then looked for a way to say this that didn’t make him look like some kind of mindless fool.
“Well, this is a little awkward because I just know her first name.” He saw the two attendants exchange looks and he could almost guess what they were thinking. “No, it’s not like that,” he assured them. “I’m a cop. She went into labor in her car. I happen to be passing by so I helped her give birth.”
“All right,” the male attendant, Dale, said guardedly. “What’s the woman’s first name?”
“Her name’s Scarlet,” Dugan told him.
Dale skimmed down the screen, then looked up, a slightly dubious expression on his gaunt face. “I’m sorry but there’s no one named Scarlet registered at the hospital.”
“Look again,” Dugan instructed, feeling exasperated. “She was admitted with her baby a little after midnight two days ago. The ambulance brought her here.”
Looking really skeptical at this point, Dale skimmed over the names a second time. “Sorry,” he announced. “No Scarlet.”
“Let me look,” the second attendant, Rita, said, taking over the screen. Her superior attitude vanished quickly. Looking up, she shook her head. “I’m sorry but he’s right. There is no one named Scarlet on the maternity floor.”
Dugan frowned at the two attendants at the reception desk. “That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe she had complications and she was admitted to another division,” he suggested. “Look to see if there was anyone admitted to any other section of the hospital by the name of Scarlet.”
“That is highly irregular,” Dale informed him, taking umbrage. However, the look that Dugan shot at him had the attendant quickly skimming through the records. Finishing, he shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. There was no Scarlet admitted to the hospital in the last two days on any of the floors.”
“All right, maybe they made a mistake with her name,” Dugan said. “Was there anyone admitted a little after midnight two days ago to the maternity floor? She had a newborn daughter.” He knew that at least that much was right.
Glancing at the screen, Rita did a quick search and then announced, “Yes.”
“Finally,” Dugan cried. He needed to get away from these two people before he lost his temper. “What room is she in?” he asked as he began to walk to the elevator.
“She’s not,” Dale called out after him. “She checked herself out yesterday.”
“You’re serious?” Dugan asked the attendants. This just wasn’t adding up. “She just had a baby,” he said. “Aren’t you people supposed to keep them here for at least three days?”
“This isn’t a prison, officer,” Dale told him, obviously taking offense at the implication that they or the hospital had failed in some way. “Patients are free to go home at any time.”
“What about the doctor?” Dugan asked. “Wouldn’t he or she have ordered against something like that? And by the way, it’s detective, not officer,” he said, pointedly correcting the man.
“Well, detective,” Dale said with an exaggerated bow of his head, “the doctor can make a recommendation, but if the patient chooses to disregard that recommendation, the patient is free to just sign herself out and leave whenever she wants to. Unless, of course, if she’s being restrained,” he added, glancing toward the woman beside him to make sure he was right. Rita
