Читать книгу Night Shift - Annelise Ryan - Страница 9

Chapter 2

Danny is subdued as we walk him out to the car and settle him in the back seat with Roscoe. I strap Danny in, and Roscoe stretches out on the seat beside him, his head in Danny’s lap. I don’t have the means to strap Roscoe in but given the short drive and the fact that we won’t be going much over twenty-five miles an hour, I think it will be okay. Hopefully, Allie is a good driver.

As soon as Allie and I are strapped into our respective seats in the front, she starts the car, backs out of her driveway, and pulls out at a nice, leisurely pace.

“How often do you ride around with the cops?” she says, once we’re on the street.

“For now, I’m doing four shifts a week, Thursday through Sunday, from eleven at night until seven in the morning. My hospital hours got cut back some, so I don’t work Fridays there now. Overall, the two jobs mesh well. It’s going to be a little dicey on Thursdays because I have to work my regular hospital hours and then in the evening, when I could potentially sleep before the cop gig, I have my grief support group. By the time I get done with everything on Friday mornings, I will have been up for over twenty-four hours.”

“Yuck,” Allie says. “That must be hard to do.”

“I’m hoping it will get easier,” I say with a chuckle. “Last night was my first Thursday into Friday shift and I managed okay, but I was also excited about starting the new job and I think that gave me a bit of extra oomph. Once the newness wears off, I might have to rethink things. Maybe my grief support group will be willing to change the night we meet to Tuesday or Wednesday.”

“Well, I’ll say it again. I think it’s a great idea to have you riding around with the cops. I know they mean well, but they just don’t get Danny and his illness. There have been some difficult and scary confrontations in the past.” She flips on her turn indicator—something I’m starting to think is a rarity among drivers these days—and takes a shortcut down a road that backs along the river and skirts along the length of the city cemetery.

I hear a whine from the back seat and I’m not sure if it came from Danny or Roscoe. When I turn to look, I see Danny’s eyes widen with fear as he stares out his side window at the cemetery. Crap! Clearly the drive past the cemetery wasn’t a good choice given Danny’s issues, but it didn’t register with me at first, and obviously it didn’t register with Allie either.

Danny starts breathing faster, and shallower, moaning slightly.

“Danny, it’s okay. There’s nothing there,” I say, twisting my body around so I can see him.

Roscoe pushes his head higher onto Danny’s lap, but there’s no comforting him at this point.

“Look!” Danny whispers, pointing toward the cemetery. “There he is.” His voice breaks and he is practically whimpering. One hand reaches for the door handle. I sense he’s ready to whip that door open and jump out of the car, an insane and illogical move if he thinks the ghost is here. His chances of escape are far better in a car, but logic isn’t putting in much of an appearance for Danny right now.

I reach back and take hold of the wrist closest to me, knowing that if Danny makes up his mind to bolt, I won’t be able to stop him. But I’m hoping my touch will have a steadying, grounding effect. “Danny, look at me,” I say in my best commanding voice. “Right now! Look... at... me.”

He doesn’t. His eyes are glued to the cemetery. Allie has slowed the car down to nearly a crawl and I fear she’s about to pull over. Part of me thinks that’s a smart move in case Danny does try to jump out, but another part of me realizes that we need to get as far away from the cemetery as we can, as soon as we can.

Behind us, Devo turns on his lights.

“Danny, look at me!” I say again, more sternly this time. I squeeze his hand hard to try to break his concentration on the cemetery. This works. He turns and looks at me, his eyes wide with fear. Beads of sweat have broken out on his forehead, and his color is so pale he looks like a ghost himself.

“Allie, drive.” I say. “Get us past this cemetery.”

She does what I tell her, hitting the gas and making the car lurch forward. To an outsider watching all of this, it would look like Devo is trying to do a traffic stop, and we, the culprits, have just decided to run. Fortunately, Devo doesn’t make any other maneuvers to stop us, though he does keep his lights on. At least he isn’t using the siren. Not only might it attract unwanted attention, I have a feeling the sound of it would escalate Danny’s panic.

“It’s okay, Danny,” I say in my best soothing voice. “You’re completely safe here. Roscoe is with you and he’ll protect you.”

Danny stares at me but I don’t think he sees me. All he sees are the frightening images playing out in his head. But at least the hand that was on the door moves away from the handle.

“You’re safe and you’re okay,” I repeat. “We’ll be at the hospital in another minute or two and then we can get you checked out, look at your meds and make sure everything is the way it needs to be, okay?”

Danny doesn’t answer, but his breathing slows and a hand settles on Roscoe’s head and begins stroking the soft fur there.

I glance off to the side and see that Allie is turning into the parking lot of the hospital. She pulls up to the entrance to the ER and shifts the car into park.

“We’re here,” I tell Danny. He seems calm, so I undo the latch on my seatbelt and turn around to face front. I’m out of the car in seconds and opening the back door beside Danny. Devo has pulled up behind us and he’s already out of his car standing next to me. I take Danny’s hand and give Roscoe a sideways head nod. Roscoe backs off Danny’s lap, rising to a sitting position beside him. I tug gently at Danny’s hand and he climbs out of the car.

“What happened back there?” Devo asks.

“Just a moment of panic. We got through it fine. Can you put Roscoe back in your car?”

Devo hesitates, frowning. I’m not sure if he’s put out by the fact that I’m giving him directions and not filling him in on exactly what happened, or if he’s worried about not accompanying me when I take Danny inside.

“Everything is under control,” I tell Devo. I look up at Danny, who is standing beside the car’s back door, staring off into space, chewing on the side of his thumbnail. “Ready to get things straightened out, Danny?” I say.

He nods, still chewing, his eyes scanning the surrounding area.

Devo hesitates a few seconds longer, his scowl deepening, but then he sighs and turns to the inside of Allie’s car. “Come on, Roscoe,” he says, and my dog obediently hops out of the back seat and follows Devo to his car.

I breathe a sigh of relief, whisper “good dog,” under my breath, and then Allie and I steer Danny inside to the registration area of the ER.

* * *

An hour later, Danny is lying on a stretcher in a glass-walled room, sound asleep. The curtains to the room are open so the ER staff and anyone else in the area can see him clearly. He’s been given a shot of medication to relax him and it’s working like a charm. Allie and I are seated in the hallway outside his room and the doctor on duty, Susan Finnegan, is listening to a brief history of Danny’s mental health issues provided by both me and Allie. She is new to the doctor’s group on staff here and doesn’t know Danny the way some of the other doctors and the nurses do. The way I do.

“Typically, when he starts hallucinating and behaving like he did tonight it’s because he’s off his meds,” I explain. “Though his reaction tonight is a little different from his usual. Danny typically has auditory hallucinations, the classic schizophrenic voices in his head. To my knowledge he’s never had a visual hallucination before, so that’s new. Right Allie?”

She nods, looking worried, and chewing on the side of her thumb the same way her brother had earlier.

“Allie has assured me that she’s been checking his pill dispenser every day to make sure the meds are being taken,” I go on. “And ever since they changed Danny’s meds a few months ago, he’s been good about taking them. He tended to stop them before because they made him feel so dead and leaden, but he says the new ones don’t do that.”

“Just because the pills are no longer in the slots in the pill dispenser doesn’t mean he’s actually taking them,” Dr. Finnegan says. “He might be removing them from the dispenser and flushing them down the toilet. Do you watch him swallow the pills?” she asks Allie.

Allie is staring off into space, her mind clearly elsewhere, and she doesn’t answer. Dr. Finnegan looks at me over Allie’s head and arches her brows.

“Allie,” I say, nudging her with my arm. “Dr. Finnegan asked you if you watch Danny actually swallow the pills each day.”

Allie blinks several times rapidly and stares at first me, then the doctor. “Sorry,” she says. “And no, I don’t watch him swallow them. I leave for work earlier than him so I’m not there to supervise him. Besides, he doesn’t like it when I treat him like a child. I do ask him every day and he’s said he has. He’s not a very good liar and I can usually tell when he’s trying to put one over on me.”

“Maybe he isn’t lying,” Dr. Finnegan suggests. “Maybe he thinks he has taken the pills. If he’s imagining ghosts and people getting murdered, it’s not much of a leap to think that he might be imagining that he takes his pills.”

Allie frowns and looks like she’s about to say something, but then she bites it back. Her eyes go to the floor.

Dr. Finnegan watches her with a concerned expression. “Do we need to look at placement somewhere for Danny?” she asks softly. “Even if it’s only temporary. Perhaps it’s not wise for him to be at your house right now.”

Allie bristles. “No, I want him home with me. Joel is there to help now and I’ll be extra vigilant about his medications and make sure—” Music fills the air, and Allie pulls her cell phone out of her purse. I realize it’s a ring tone and recognize the tune as Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” Allie says, “Sorry, I have to take this call. It’s the funeral home and I’m on call tonight.”

She hops up and hurries off down an adjacent hallway, her phone to her ear. Dr. Finnegan and I look at one another for a second, and then we both burst out laughing. Once we have ourselves under control again, she says, “Let me know what she finally decides to do. We can let him sleep here for now and reassess in a little while if she needs to leave for a call.”

I thank her and wait for Allie’s return. Standing at one end of the desk, I shove my hands into the pockets of my bomber-style jacket—a special police-issue item that Chief Hanson gifted me with on my first day—and feel something round and fuzzy. Puzzled, I pull it out and see that it’s a kiwi. I must have grabbed one from the bowl on the table at Allie’s house, though I have no memory of doing so.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Throughout my adult years I’ve discovered odd pocketed food items from time to time with no memory of how they got in there. My shrinks have said it’s a manifestation of my obsessive-compulsive disorder brought about by the lack of control I felt over my own life while growing up. That’s because I grew up in the foster system after my mother was murdered, and in several of the homes I stayed in there were certain items and privileges that were reserved for the “natural” kids only and not allowed to us fosters. Food treats often fell into that category. If a foster kid did manage to secure a special food treat, it might get stolen by one of the other kids or confiscated by the adults in the home. As a result, I developed a habit of hoarding and hiding food to protect and preserve it.

I can’t blame the foster system for all my quirks. My mother raised me for my first seven years, what the experts consider to be the formative years, but given the fact that my mother was a prostitute and my father was a mystery man who remains unidentified—assuming my mother even knew who he was—I’m guessing my chances at any normal development were slim to none.

I see Allie approaching and shove the fruit back into my pocket, embarrassed and ashamed. Allie has a chagrined look on her face and for a moment I’m afraid she knows I’ve copped a piece of her fruit.

“That was a work call,” she says, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “I need to pick up a body. But the good news is it’s a patient here at the hospital up on the floor.”

“Then you don’t have far to go.”

“Except I can’t very well pick her up in my personal car. I need to go to the funeral home and grab one of the hearses.” She sighs, frowns, and stares at Danny, who looks quite peaceful in his sleep—for now.

“Dr. Finnegan said he can stay here and sleep off the medication they gave him,” I tell her. “Why don’t you go take care of your work detail and then check back with Dr. Finnegan when you’re done. I think she’d be amenable to letting Danny go home with you if he seems okay when he wakes up.”

She gives me a meager smile, and her phone, which she is holding in her hand, goes off again, a different ring tone this time. Allie’s smile falters and I see hesitation in her expression as she stares at the face of the phone. Finally, with a look of resolve, she answers it.

“Hey, Joel,” she says, turning away from me, her voice low.

I listen as she explains to Joel what is going on, stating simply that Danny is doing better with some medication the ER doctor has given him. After telling him she needs to go out on a call, she listens for a long time, then says, “I love you, too,” and disconnects the call.

“Everything okay?” I ask her.

She nods. “Joel is learning... and adapting. He’s been a lifesaver, so eager to help and all, but I don’t think he fully realized how difficult things can get. That’s why I agreed to let him move in with us. I figured if we’re ever going to tie the knot, he needs to know exactly what he’s getting into. He’s embraced it all without hesitation, but I’m reluctant to let him take on too much too soon. I don’t want to scare him off. Having him here has been such a help and relief for me.”

“I didn’t realize you were dating anyone. How long have you known him?”

“About a year. We hit it off right away and he proposed just a few weeks ago.”

I see Devo standing over by the nurse’s desk, and he gives me a questioning look as he points at his watch. “I need to go back out with the police officer,” I tell Allie. “Danny will be fine here. The ER staff knows him well, and they’ll take care of him until you get back. Are you okay with that?”

She nods without hesitation. “We’ve been down this road before.” She pauses and frowns. “Though the fact that Danny’s having visual hallucinations, and not just hearing his usual voices, worries me. They’ve been quite bizarre, more than just the ghost thing.” She shoots me a worried look and I know she wants me to ask for specifics, so she can use me as her sounding board.

“How so?”

“Before you and the police officer got to my place, he was saying how he’d watched a man get killed and did nothing to stop it.”

“Yes, I heard him say that, too. He seems to think that’s why this ghost is appearing to him.”

“But you didn’t hear all of it. He was very specific about the details of how this man died. He said they put a gun under his chin and blew the top of his head off.” She shivers and gives me a worried look. “There haven’t been any deaths like that in the area, have there?”

I shake my head. “None that I know of. I’ll check with Officer Devonshire to make sure, but I think I would have heard about it if there had been. Heck, in a town this size we all would have heard about it. Gossip goes through Sorenson at lightning-quick speeds.”

Another meager smile graces Allie’s lips. “You’re right.” She looks away, then back at me, her smile faltering. “Danny also said that a spotted purple and pink dinosaur watched the murder.”

I take a second to digest this. I can tell Allie is scared for her brother and worried about what these bizarre and very specific visual hallucinations might mean in terms of his mental stability.

“A spotted purple and pink dinosaur?” I echo, both amused and bemused. “That’s a good one. And you’re right, it’s a bit different from Danny’s usual auditory hallucinations.”

In the past, whenever Danny went off his meds, he’d hear voices telling him to do things. Some of the voices were kindly and suggested he do silly things, but others were more frightening, both in how they came across to him and in what they told him to do, things like taking off his clothes and running into the lake in the dead of winter.

“I’ll mention the dinosaur thing to Dr. Finnegan,” I tell Allie. “Maybe the new meds Danny’s on have visual hallucinations as a side effect.” This suggestion wins me a hopeful look from Allie.

“Oh, if only it’s something that simple.” She reaches over and gives my arm a squeeze. “Thank you, Hildy. You’ve always been so good with Danny and me. We appreciate all your help.”

“My pleasure,” I tell her, and I mean it. I don’t like all my patients, and some I like more than others. Regardless of how I feel about them, I always strive to give them my best. But Allie and her brother have always been high on my list of favorites. I love Allie’s dogged determination and the fierce love she has for her brother. And Danny, while cursed with some nasty mental illness challenges, has a big heart.

I’m expecting Allie to leave, but she’s still standing there looking at her brother, chewing on one side of her thumbnail the same way Danny had earlier.

“What is it Allie?”

“I have to admit, that ghost thing has me a little freaked.”

I dismiss her concern with a pfft and a wave of my hand. “The ghost part of Danny’s hallucination doesn’t worry me nearly as much as the dinosaur. It would be easy for him to misinterpret something like a bit of fog he saw during a period when his emotions were heightened, and his mental status was out of balance.”

Allie is staring at me in a most disconcerting way and I can tell she’s holding back.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask her after a few seconds.

Allie looks around us to see if anyone is nearby or listening in on our conversation. Satisfied that we are alone, she leans in close to me and says, “When we were driving by the cemetery on the way here, Danny said he saw the ghost.”

“Yes, he did. I’m sure seeing the cemetery triggered it. I don’t know what he saw... maybe it was something he cooked up in his imagination.”

“I don’t think so,” Allie says just above a whisper. “Unless I’m as crazy as my brother. I saw it, too.”

I look at her, my brow furrowed. “You saw what?” I say, thinking I must have misunderstood or misheard her.

“I saw the ghost,” she says softly. “It was exactly like Danny said earlier. An older man’s face and body, all wispy and white, easy to see yet with no real substance. And it appeared right out of the trunk of a big old tree in the cemetery when we drove by.”