Free Nothing Personal by Eileen Dreyer

demanded. “Tony’s? Kemoll’s? Dominic’s?”
    It was Tim’s turn to shuffle. “The cafeteria. Security has been warned not to let you past the front door. Said it’s bad for hospital PR.”
    She shook her head. “No sense of humor. Would you mind swinging by the ER? I wanna say hi.”
    “You wanna harass Phyl, and you know it.”
    Kate flashed him a big grin. “I know it.”
    Tim shook his head like a patient father. Kate could see he understood, though. It was what had gotten her through that first day upright: the promise of getting down to where the real heart of the hospital was for her. She’d been sitting in that damn chair all afternoon like a kid waiting for her mom to get home to take her to the park. Well, it was time to get her shoes on and go. Back home where the trauma code roamed. Noise, lights, action. It was just too damn quiet up here, where sick people thought silence would heal.
    By the time Kate managed to straighten all the way back up into walking position, B.J. was at the door on his way out. B.J. was not the park and field-trip type. “Well, if you remember anything interesting, let me know.”
    “Interesting?” Tim echoed, instinctively moving closer to help Kate along. “You talking about Warner?”
    That brought Kate to a full stop. “God, I forgot. What did you find out?”
    B.J. shot her quite a look. “Give away clues to the prime suspect? Don’t be absurd.”
    “Thank you, Hercule Poirot. What did you find?”
    “Carbamazepine in her coffee and a big bleed in her head.”
    “Subarachnoid?”
    He nodded. “She blew like a bad boiler on the Titanic .”
    Kate had her crutches fitted. She was itching to visit her friends. She didn’t move. “From carbamazepine?”
    B.J. shrugged. “From something. Maybe you just pissed her off one too many times.”
    Kate offered a particularly charming grimace as Tim passed over Kate’s official Pig Nurse’s cap to cover the buzz. “Why not? I already have Attila on my head. I probably killed Warner too. While you’re at it, check and see if I was in Dallas in 1963.” She settled the cap so the pink snout pointed forward and the white nursing cap pointed backward, right between the pink pointy ears. It’s the small details that make a difference.
    “So it wasn’t murder?” Tim asked, forehead puckered, hand at Kate’s elbow.
    B.J. shook his head. “I didn’t say that, either.”
    And that was that. Kate could see it in the set of his features.
    Murder. Kate tried rolling the sound of that one on her tongue and found she didn’t like the taste at all. Even with Little Dick’s histrionics, she hadn’t really believed Mrs. Warner had been murdered. After all, everybody in the place talked about revenge. It was the favorite topic of conversation, after sex and bad shifts. But nobody would ever seriously think of doing it. Murder went against everything they’d been trained for, had dedicated themselves to.
    Did she really believe that, though?
    “Who’d do it?” she demanded, suddenly feeling a little more tired.
    “Little Dick Trainor thinks you did,” B.J. said.
    “He doesn’t count. Who’d really do it?”
    For a moment there was silence as the three of them considered implications. The hospital went on around them, voices drifting in from the halls, the elevators dinging softly, an IVAC beeping on somebody’s IV. Familiar, comforting sounds to Kate, who had burrowed into hospitals like a mole uncomfortable in the light outside. But B.J.’s announcement took Kate’s sense of balance with it.
    “Ridiculous,” she said, straightening, as if that would carry her conviction. “Check her insurance policies. I bet one of her family offed her to get money. Murder’s always committed by next of kin.”
    B.J. just lifted an eyebrow.
    “Well, all you have to do is watch America’s Most Wanted ,” she protested lamely.
    “ Code blue, Medical ICU, room five. Code blue, Medical ICU, room five ,” the intercom