We exclaimed at each other in unison. I asked what she was doing on the orthopedic floor.
She grinned a little. “Probably the same thing you are, Vic. Since I helped find her I feel responsible for her. I come over every now and then to check on her.”
“But in uniform?” I asked. “Did you come straight from Lotty’s?”
“Actually, I took a job in the night trauma unit.” She laughed self-consciously. “I was spending all this time over on the AIDS ward with Guillermo, and of course exchanging shop talk with the nurses on duty. They’re always shorthanded here and it just sounded like a great opportunity. When Guillermo goes home I can still look after him during the day.”
“And when do you sleep?” I demanded. “Isn’t this going from the frying pan to the fire?”
“Oh, I suppose, in a way. I’m only spending afternoons at Lotty’s for a few days until her new nurse feels up to taking over full-time. But… I don’t know. You can do real nursing here. It’s not like most hospitals, where all you do is fill out forms and act like a grunt for the doctors. Here you’re working with patients, and I see so many different kinds of cases. At Lotty’s it’s mostly babies and old women—except when you come in with your body rearranged. Anyway, it’s only been two nights now but I’m loving it.”
She checked Mrs. Frizell’s bedding. “It’s good that you got her to say something else, another word. You should come more often: it might help her recovery.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. That sounded like one of those good deeds that make the angels in heaven cheer but prove a burden to the doer.
“Yeah, I could try to get over more.”
I explained the information I was after and why. “I don’t suppose you could think of a way to get her to talk about her bank.”
Carol looked cautiously down the hall to make sure no one was in earshot. “I might, Vic. Don’t get your hopes up, but I might come up with something. Now I’ve got to get back to the trauma unit. Walk you to the stairs?”
Once again the elevators were out of service. It was too much like my own office for me to complain. On the way downstairs I asked Carol whether she had a concrete plan in mind. “I’d like to find out about her money while she still has some.”
“What—you think those neighbors of yours are defrauding her? You got proof of it? Or you just don’t like them?” Carol’s tone was derisive.
I forgot that Carol had seen me showing my hackles at Todd Pichea and Vinnie. I flushed and stammered a bit as I tried to explain myself. “Maybe I am mounting a vendetta.
It’s because of the dogs—it seemed to me the Picheas raced around to get guardianship rights just to put the dogs to sleep so that they could safeguard their property values. Maybe they were being altruistic. But I still don’t understand why they had to muscle in like that, kill the dogs before she’d even been away from home a week.“
My voice trailed away uncertainly. I should be spending my energies on Jason Felitti and Diamond Head; it looked as though I might have stumbled onto something hot there. I should stop being a pest in the neighborhood and just let Todd and Chrissie work things out however they chose. After all, Mrs. Frizell wasn’t the most wonderful specimen to be spending time on. But all my hectoring myself on the subject could not stop the nagging in my brain that I should have done something more to protect the old woman and that I should be looking after her now.
Carol squeezed my arm. “You’re too intense, Vic. You take everything too hard. The world won’t stop spinning its way around the sun if you don’t rescue every wounded animal in your path.”
I grinned at her. “You’re a fine one to lecture me, Carol, after leaving the intensity of Lotty for the laid-back leisure of the Cook County trauma unit.”
She laughed, her teeth gleaming white in the dim stairwell. “And on those words I’d better get back there. It was quiet when I left, but now the sun is setting the bodies will start streaming in.”
We hugged each other and went our separate directions. I’d parked the Impala on the street, a few blocks west of the hospital. One thing about driving an old car with a rusty body, you don’t worry so much about strangers helping themselves to it. As I started the engine I could hear sirens in the distance. Ambulances bringing in their first loads of the night.
It was dinnertime and naptime, but I didn’t want to go home just now. I figured I could get one more free pass into the building through the alley before the guys in the Subaru realized how I was coming and going. I didn’t want to waste it on supper.