Free New Year's Eve Kill by Hudson Taylor Page A

How are you feeling?”
       “My head is killing me. But besides that I’m OK.”
       “Don’t worry Ms. Cunningham. You sprained your leg in the fall and got yourself a nice concussion as a side dish. Now as you can see on the board there. I’m your nurse, Trish Donahue. We go by first names here. So you can call me Nurse Trish or just Trish.”
       “Nice to meet you. Do you know when I can get out of here? I’m worried about my dog—“
       “I’m going to take your blood pressure now, and then the doctor will be by soon and you can ask him any questions you have. The doctor wants you to take these pills.”
       Ethel looked at the different colored pills and took them with her paper cup of water. After the nurse left the room, Ethel was happy she had given her some personal things that one of her friends must have packed for her in a plastic bag.
       After putting down her cell phone, Ethel was happy to hear that her friend Jim, who worked for her at her coffee shop, The Bold & the Bean, and also lived in Clover Court, was taking care of Ace. She had laughed when she heard that Bernice and Barney, of all people, had called an ambulance for her.
       As Ethel sat back in her bed, she was starting to relax. With an aching head, she didn’t have a chance to run, so she decided to just deal with it. With everything that had went on within the last year, maybe this hospital stay could be the forced rest she needed.
       She almost dozed off until she realized what hospital she was in. Christmas hospital! The dreaded, run down hospital that her friend, and New York coroner, Anita worked at, as well as her handsome, but too short—for her—neighbor, Faren worked at. In some of the cases she had help solve for the police, she had gone to the creepy hospital to talk to Anita and always vowed never to return.
       Her hospital room was painted pale blue, and held two beds. The bed next to her was empty, or so she thought. The curtains were around it and she couldn’t hear any sounds coming from behind the fabric. Her bed was near a big window and she was thankful for that. What a view! The way the room was designed she couldn’t see the entrance to the room. It made her feel like she was alone.
       As she looked at her IV and wondered how quick she could pull it out and run, a tall Indian man with a big mole and white jacket came into her room with his nose in a file.
       “How are you today, Ms. Cunningham?”
       “Ready to jump out the window—when can I leave?”
       “As of now, you have a bad concussion. So we have to monitor you and see how things go in a day or two. I am Dr. Dutter.”
    Ethel smiled, and tried not to think his last name rhymed with butter. After the doctor examined her, he was just about to leave when his phone rang. “Excuse me. He went behind her curtain to chat. The room was so quiet she could hear every word he said.
       “I told you not to call me here…because I’m working…no…do not come here. It’s going to be a long night…I said don’t come here!”
       Dr. Dutter came back over to her. “I don’t want you to overstress yourself.
       “Of course.” Ethel tried not to think about the scary aspects of the hospital.
       “And I’m sorry about the roommate situation but we are so full and short staffed. A lot of falls due to the weather, and heart attacks, due to seeing a lot of family around the holidays, I would imagine.” The doctor’s lame excuse for a joke wasn’t lost on Ethel, but she just didn’t feel like encouraging him to tell another by smiling.
       “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
       “Old Mr. Grant will probably sleep throughout the night.”
       “Old Mr. Grant?”
       Ethel looked at the ugly, yellow and blue curtain that hid the strange man from her view. She did have a roommate and it was a man. How strange that nurse Trish and now the doctor didn’t go in to see him first since he was by the door.