Free A Man to Die for by Eileen Dreyer Page B

just kept shaking her head. “And it didn’t…you know, bother you to… see him?”
    “Sure it did,” Casey admitted. “He looked better in my nylons than I did.”
    Janice swiped at her, laughing, and Casey thought she saw relief.
    “You busy after work?” Casey asked. “We’d have a chance to discuss this without benefit of audience.”
    Janice’s expression flattened a little. She dipped her head, clutching the trays to her like high-school books. “Another night?” she asked in a small voice. “I, uh, have somewhere to go.”
    Casey wanted to say something. She wanted to ease the crease that had returned to Janice’s forehead. Something about her friend’s stiff posture held her back.
    “Of course.”
    “Hey, who wanted isolation gowns?”
    Not only Casey and Janice but also Hunsacker and Steve looked up at the strident call from the doorway out to the service hall. One of central supply’s finest stood there, several bundles in her pudgy arms, looking for all the world as if she’d just been asked to share the last of the firewood for the winter.
    Casey made it a point to look at her watch. “Not bad. It only took an hour this time. Good thing we didn’t really need ’em.”
    One look at her uniform belied her gracious words. Blood and Betadine spattered it like a Jackson Pollock painting. There would be little chance of getting it clean. Worse, if Mr. Tarlton had had the chance to pick up any hospital-born infections, Casey wouldn’t be able to kill off the organisms in her wash. She’d just take them home to her mother and bring them back for the next shift of patients. It was too late for frustration. She just felt tired.
    “Well, I got ’em,” the tech protested. “Had to go to isolation. You want ’em?”
    “Sure,” Steve agreed. “That way when isolation needs ’em, they’ll have to come to us.”
    “Ya know,” Casey mused, accepting the load an hour too late. “If I come down with a bad disease, I’m gonna go right up to administration and puke on every one of them.”
    Janice shook her head. “Not good enough. Wipe a pustule on Nixon’s face.”
    Steve lifted a hand. “Then have Ahmed treat him. Think how long he’d suffer.”
    “You guys are really into revenge,” Hunsacker offered.
    “Nah,” Casey disagreed. “We’re into justice. Revenge would be making him work down here under these conditions and then having to take home my paycheck.”
    “I still think you should consider my sniper idea,” Steve offered. “We could all chip in. I’m sure the floors wouldn’t mind.”
    “You certainly have the equipment,” Marva agreed.
    “Too impersonal,” Hunsacker said suddenly, his voice flat and hard. “Get right in and cut his heart out.”
    Casey stopped breathing. She thought maybe Steve and Janice did, too. For an unbearably long moment the three of them froze, silent and waiting. Wondering how they could have just heard what they did. Wondering how they should react to a tone of voice that betrayed more than Hunsacker had intended.
    Then, again, like the flick of a light switch in a darkened room, Hunsacker came to life and flashed them all a rueful grin. “At least that’s what I always said about my ex-wife. Until I found out she didn’t have a heart.”
    Casey was still sitting there, an arm full of packaged gowns, her mouth open, when Hunsacker strolled off toward the elevators.
    “Dr. Hunsacker, line three. Dr. Hunsacker.”
    Instinctively Casey picked up the phone. It took her a minute to clear her throat to answer. “Dr. Hunsacker just left. Can I help?”
    “He was down there?”
    The outrage in the woman’s voice brought Casey right around. “But he isn’t now. Who’s this?”
    “Labor and delivery.” Now she could hear gritted teeth. “We’ve been waiting for him for an hour to do this damn section he was so all fired to do.”
    Casey couldn’t think of anything but the truth. “He was down here watching a code.”
    “Well, if you