Plague

Chapter 10 Day 2 12:30 AM

Chapter 10
Day 2
12:30 AM

Jacob and Stephan left the stairwell on the second floor and took one of the back elevators to the Pediatric Unit. Stephan was relatively quiet until they found Joan and regrouped in the nurse’s conference room.
“Well, what are we going to do now?”
Jacob told Joan what they had found downstairs and that he thought playing detective might not be such a bad idea. The three of them would separate and talk to as many people as they could.
Jacob started with the Unit secretary, who had seen neither nurse Mulvihill nor Mrs. Sedgwick, the dead woman. By the time this was established, the secretary, twenty one years old if she was a week, grew comfortable with the idea of talking to a doctor, alone and at night, and asked if Jake would join her for a drink when her shift was over.
“Just what I need,” thought Jake. He had to stop himself before he screamed at her to go back to the desk. She must have sensed his discomfort because she glanced back at Jake and simpered as she left the room.
After that, Jake was a bit gruffer with the others that he saw. He was also tiring of the fact that nothing was being accomplished. Finally, he hit some pay dirt in the person of Alma Temple, a housekeeper who worked with Mrs. Sedgwick.
“Alma, have you seen nurse Mulvihill tonight?”
“No sir, not since that poor child up and died. I saw her before that and she was sort of walking funny, you know, like she had too much to drink. Now please don’t get me wrong, but we all know she drinks a bit too much. I don’t want to get nobody in trouble, but one of the other housekeepers found a bottle of whiskey in a linen closet one night, after she saw that nurse coming out of it. But don’t ask me no names, you see, I don’t want to get her into no more trouble. She’s my friend.”
“What do you mean by no more trouble?”
“You mean you don’t know about Cloris and the way she acted tonight? Well then, I ain’t going to say no more. She is my boss you know. It wouldn’t be right.”
It would have been a very touching scene if it wasn’t for the very self-satisfied smirk on good old Alma’s face, Jacob thought. He let his voice show some anger and asked, “What is Cloris’ last name?”
“Well, if you wasn’t one of the doctor’s I wouldn’t tell you.” She looked at Jacob and her smirk broadened into a sneer.
“Sedgwick, Cloris Sedgwick.”
“Oh,” Jake said to himself, “Oh shit!”
“Just what did Mrs. Sedgwick do that was so bad, Alma?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you. She’s a friend of mine, like I said.”
“Goddamn it, Alma, what happened to Mrs. Sedgwick tonight?” Jake roared.
“Like I said, young man, you may be a doctor but you got no call to talk to me like that. No sir!”
“Look, I’m sorry, but that information is important. Don’t you know what happened to her tonight?”
“No. I hope it, I mean, it wasn’t bad was it?”
She sat forward in her chair, with a decidedly vulturish look on her face.
“No, Alma, you first. What happened tonight?”
“Well, I was cleaning the rooms in the North Hall. I was taking some trash out to the main hall to throw it down the chute and I saw Cloris stumbling down the hall, sort of holding onto the walls. She wasn’t carrying nothing. She just kept walking and falling onto the wall and once, even the floor. I knew that she must have done something bad, because she looked scared as hell about something. She got to the elevators just as one of the doors opened and she sort of fell in. The door closed and I ain’t seen her since.”
“Do you have any idea where she was coming from?”
“No, she was about halfway down the hall and there was a lot of doors on the side she was going down. Mostly closets and utility and such.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to her?” Jacob asked.
“No. Now you tell me what happened to her. You promised.”
She was practically slobbering in anticipation. Jacob felt a little sick.
“She was found dead in the elevator you saw her get on.”
“Are you kidding? Wait till the girls hear about this! And I’m next up for her…. I mean that’s too bad. She was my friend you know.”
With that, Alma got out of her chair and hustled out of the room. With friends like that, well, Jacob thought, the hell with her.
Jake then rounded up Joan and Stephan, who had no new information to contribute. Stephan returned to the morgue and to run some more tests on the two bodies and Joan still had some more kids to see. They agreed to meet in Jake’s office in an hour or so.
Jacob went to the main elevators and pressed the down button. His memory was jogged as he looked up the empty hall that Cloris Sedgwick had stumbled down and he started to walk up to the main utility closet when the elevator door opened and Lt. Hudson got out.
He snarled something officious and pointed to the elevator. Jake got in and as the doors closed he heard a final “…till I call you, you fucking creep!”
The doors opened again on his floor and Jake headed towards his office.
He sat at his desk with another two fingers of scotch. Not knowing what else to do, he finished his drink, lay down on the couch and closed his eyes, thinking about brains with holes carved into them. This only made him begin to fidget. He tried to breathe deeply, from his abdomen, remembering the relaxation techniques he taught his patients, but could never master himself.
Finally, in between his swirling thoughts and his trying to relax, he fell asleep.