Chapter Thirteen The Mystery in the Morgue
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It’s a trauma response. From my nightmare. Dr. Rogers always said our dreams leak into our waking life the next day. That’s all it was. That’s all I saw.
Get it together, Brie.
…So why did my mom’s necklace start to glow?
She stared at her pendant as the last of the light faded away.
Well, at least the nearest psychiatric facility is only three floors up.
The door opened again, and the lights clicked on. This time, Brie couldn’t help but yelp in alarm. This was met by a moment of silence and then: “Weldon, are you under the table?”
Brie closed her eyes.
Of course.
“Yes, ma’am.” She picked up the DVD and popped up. “I was about to change the discs when this one got away from me.”
Denise looked at her without a trace of humor. “You good?”
The question caught Brie off guard. She didn’t think Denise was the sort to ask about the well-being of her subordinates. “Yes, fine. Why?”
“You’re whiter than usual. And shaking.”
“Oh.” She fumbled for a reply. “Probably low blood sugar.”
Denise grunted. “Do you have any questions about the procedures and policies video?”
Brie unzipped her backpack and pulled out her journal, skimming over her notes and trying to remember if she’d wanted clarification on any particular point.
“You took notes?”
Her eyes snapped up. “Yes, ma’am.”
Denise stared at her for a moment. “Go get an orange juice. Then watch the HR video. You’ll be fine.”
She left without another word.
Brie stared after her for a second, still trying to process whatever had happened just a few minutes before. She slipped her journal into her backpack and made her way to a vending machine she’d seen in a nearby hallway. As she gave it her dollar and punched in her request, she kept running it over and over in her head.
In the end, she didn’t much care if Dr. Matthews was in some sort of trouble. He was a perfectly vile man who couldn’t be bothered to do his job correctly or with any amount of empathy, even in cases of life or death. It almost made sense that he’d pissed off some rich, scary, powerful woman who was now blackmailing him. If he was trapped in a situation that made it likely he was going to get his comeuppance, so be it. Karma had a way of sorting people like him out.
That wasn’t what was bothering her.
Who is the child? And what had he “chosen to become?”
“Excuse me, miss. Are you going to get that?”
She jumped and realized another nurse was waiting behind her. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
She grabbed her bottle of orange juice and looked at the young man apologetically. He shrugged it off with a friendly gesture. “No problem. Are you new here? I haven’t seen you around.”
“It’s my second day.”
“Oh, well, nice to meet you. I’m Aaron. Pediatrics.” He gestured over his shoulder at the station just beyond the hall, then offered her a hand.
“Brianna.”
As they shook, she was struck with a question. “Hey, did you happen to see Dr. Matthews pass by your way a few minutes ago? With a blonde woman in black? I was wondering if you know who she is.”
He frowned. “Matthews rushed past, yes. I only clocked it because he looked even more terrible than usual. But there wasn’t anyone with him.”
“Oh. Well, is there another way out of this wing?”
Aaron looked at her strangely, then pointed. “No, there isn’t. The only exit is past those doors at the end.”
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Brie didn’t pay any attention to the next video. Instead, she let her mind wander and tried to think through what she saw logically.
Her instinct was to tell Cameron immediately. But he’d recently melted her phone, and it wasn’t as though he had some celestial phone number that she could dial anyway.
Besides which, he was…
She sighed heavily and rubbed her temples with her fingers.
In another world entirely, one that acts as a membrane between Heaven and Hell, through which all human souls must pass on their way to the Great Beyond.
She picked up her pendant and stared into its strange, opaline depths.
Again, the psych ward is just three floors up. One short elevator ride and a brief explanation of the past few days, and I’m sure they’d give me a nice, warm, white room to stay in for weeks on end.
Cameron was right. There wasn’t anything more she could do without a better understanding of what the hell was happening and why it all seemed to be suddenly intersecting with her. In the meantime, the best she could do was simply the best she could do. She’d do her job and try to do it well. She’d live her life and try to live it well.
What was that Teddy Roosevelt quote her mom always used to say? “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
So, figure out what the next right thing to do is. Then do it. Then do the next right thing after that. Over and over.
That’s how you move forward.
The video wrapped up with a panning shot of nurses and doctors of every color and creed holding hands and smiling in front of the hospital. Brie popped out the DVD, collected her things, and went to find Denise at the nursing station.
The rest of her afternoon passed by in a blur. She shadowed Denise and struck as many skills from her checklist as possible. She met her unit manager. She got the feeling that though he was technically in charge of her orientation, Denise was law in these parts, and he’d never dream of questioning her recommendation for a moment.
She helped an orthopedic surgeon reset a dislocated shoulder. She hung three banana bags for dehydrated hikers who’d read their map incorrectly and gotten lost in the woods for two days. She took vitals, took histories, and a patient threw up on her shoes. She didn’t take bathroom breaks, didn’t take coffee breaks, didn’t complain, and didn’t slow down.
By the end of her shift, she was ready to collapse.
That’s when Denise handed her a tablet. “Use our system to update all the patient files from the cases you worked on today,” she instructed without batting an eye. “Give it to Charlie when you’re done. Do not make mistakes. He will tell me if there’s so much as a typo. Do not call me with questions. I’m going home.”
Brie took the tablet and looked at Denise’s retreating form. Then, she stood at attention and saluted.
She recognized the mirthful, pealing laughter before she even turned around to grin at Sherry. She was walking towards her from the nurses’ station with a hot chocolate in each hand.
How lucky am I to have a best friend who always seems to turn up at the perfect time with the perfect beverage? I bet other people’s best friends always turn up to hot cocoa situations without the cocoa.
“Looks like you’ve managed to impress El Commandant. However did you manage?”
Brie gestured at the tablet. “Are you kidding? I’m dead on my feet. That woman has run me into the ground for two days straight, and now I have hours of charting left to do before I can go home and sleep. In what conceivable way have I impressed her?”
Sherry shrugged with a grin. “Well, usually, she yells at the newbies for their mistakes until they cry or quit. I haven’t even heard her raise her voice at you once.”
Brie sipped her hot chocolate and considered this. “Did she yell at you during your orientation?”
“Of course not. I’m practically perfect in every way.”
She grinned. “Obviously. My apologies. So, how did your day go?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Helped deliver a baby in the parking lot.”
Brie almost choked on her cocoa. “You did what?”
Sherry’s eyes sparkled. “The mom started crowning in the ambulance on the way over, so there was no way to get her up to labor and delivery, and she was screaming so much over the radio that we thought it was an incoming trauma, not an incoming birth, so I got to help deliver a baby boy today.”
“Aw!” Brie made a noise usually reserved for tiny, large-eyed baby animal sightings. “Lucky. I rehydrated some morons who read their nature map upside-down, and a drunk threw up on my shoes.”
“So that’s what I’m smelling.” Sherry wrinkled her nose in good-natured disgust. “Well, thank goodness it was those shoes.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Let’s go shopping this weekend!”
Brie had to laugh. No matter how exhausting or terrible the day was, Sherry always lifted her spirits. “Deal. But first, I need to get this charting done.”
“May I make a controversial yet brave suggestion?”
“Go for it.”
“Chart somewhere where people can’t smell you.”
Brie stuck out her tongue, and Sherry giggled. “Call me when you’re done?”
“I can’t. Cameron drowned my phone in eggs.”
“Oh, that’s right. Well, I’ve got some things to wrap up myself. Meet back here in an hour?”
“Better make it an hour and a half. If you want to go home, I can always call a taxi.”
“Nonsense. There are at least fifty people in this hospital I haven’t told about the parking lot baby yet, and it’ll take me at least that long to rectify the situation.” Sherry tilted her head thoughtfully. “Maybe the mother will name it after me.”
“I thought it was a boy?”
“I don’t see your point.”
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Five minutes later, Brie knocked on the door of the morgue. Rashida answered with her customary friendly smile and ushered her in. “How did your second day go?”
“Oh, you know, just orienting.” Brie grinned and held up her tablet.
Rashida nodded knowingly. “Some of the preceptors like to take six months to get the newbies settled in. Denise always does it in three. Very sink or swim, that one.”
Brie put her backpack down on a table and settled into a chair, sipping her cocoa. “I didn’t get you a coffee. I don’t know what your caffeine cutoff time is.”
Rashida laughed. “If you’d asked me five years ago, I’d have truthfully said that I sometimes have a shot of espresso before bed. But these days, I switch to tea at five o’clock, no exceptions, or else I’m up all night.”
“How disgustingly healthy of you.”
“Indeed.” Rashida wrinkled up her nose. “No offense, Brie, but you kinda smell.”
“Oh.” Brie looked desolately at her feet. “I’m so sorry. A patient threw up on my shoes, and I forgot to put backup sneakers in my locker. I tried to clean them off in the bathroom…”
“No problem. Pop them off. I have just the place.”
“Really?”
“Of course. No need to prolong your suffering. Or mine.”
Brie took off her shoes and was more than a little surprised when Rashida put on gloves and popped them into one of the horizontal cold storage body lockers.
“Are you sure that’s okay?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“I doubt they’ll mind,” she replied with a wink. “Just remember which locker it is in case you’re here longer than I am. You’d need to fetch them yourself and lock up afterward. Assuming I ever get out of here,” she finished with a sigh.
“Oh, that’s right,” Brie remembered suddenly. “You said you were super busy. What’s going on? I think you used the word ‘bizarre?’”
Rashida’s eyes clouded as she grabbed her thermos and sat down. “It really has been.” She took a sip, staring thoughtfully at the wall. “Everyone has the ones they can’t solve because there’s no evidence after the fact. A tiny blood clot in just the wrong place, an embolism that dissipates by the time I get to the body. It happens.”
She took another draught and shrugged. “But these days…”
Brie was listening with intense curiosity. “What’s happening these days?”
Rashida hesitated a moment, then looked straight at her. “I can’t tell you how many young people have come through these doors with unexplained catastrophic heart failure lately. Like the guy your team lost yesterday. I spent all day on him trying to find some reason, any reason at all, to explain why that poor boy’s heart exploded. But for the life of me, I can’t even point you in the direction of the problem.”
She stared off into nothingness. “It’s like something just reached into his chest and squeezed his heart until it popped.”
Brie choked on her cocoa.
Rashida looked at her and raised a concerned eyebrow.
“That’s quite… that’s vivid,” Brie finally managed.
Rashida flashed a tired grin. “As an ER nurse, I’m sure you’ll see things that make that seem like a bedtime story. But that’s not even the strangest case. Then there are all the ODs with no drugs in their system.”
“What?”
“A lot of them, almost all young men, all obviously lost to some toxin or drug, but every single test I order comes up clean. Now, you tell me,” she turned in her chair, “how can it be that my table is full of people who’ve died of a heart attack, with no conceivable reason to have a heart attack? Or people who’ve died of a drug overdose, with no drugs in their bodies?”
Brie could only answer in a shocked stammer. “I don’t know.”
“Well, neither do I, neither do three independent labs I’ve outsourced to keep up with the demand, and neither does the CDC.”
Brie’s eyes widened. “You brought this to the CDC?”
Rashida nodded. “They issued a statement a few months back asking doctors in the area to report any cases with similar pathologies to these. It looks like this has been going on up and down the coast. Two of my colleagues from med school have been seeing upticks in the same thing this past year.” She shook her head and sipped her tea. “I just don’t see how they haven’t figured out what it is yet. Those guys are no joke.”
It was silent for a moment before Rashida hopped down from her chair. “Well, I need to get back to work. But thanks for listening. I hope I didn’t bore you.”
Brie flashed a worried look. “Absolutely not boring. In fact, keep me in the loop, alright? That’s some pretty alarming stuff, Ida.”
“Aw, you remembered,” Rashida replied, looking pleased. “Sure, if you like. I’ll let you know if I hear anything. Cheers.”
They tapped their drinks together and got to work.
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An hour later, Rashida was done with her postmortem paperwork, and Brie was nearing the last leg of her marathon charting session.
“Alright, lady. I’m off. Can you lock the door behind you when you leave? Unless Bryan’s here already, then just let him deal with it. And don’t forget, your shoes are in number five.”
Brie grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. “You got it. Enjoy your night.”
“I’m gonna enjoy my bed. Even though I’m not sharing it with a big hunk of man candy like you.” Rashida grinned. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten. I have a moral obligation to interrogate you about that handsome young thing sometime in the not-so-distant future.”
Brie forced another smile. “I can’t wait.”
The woman shut the door behind her, laughing, as Brie took a deep breath, bent her head left and right to crack her neck, and got back to work.
Twenty minutes later, once she was satisfied neither Charlie nor Denise would be able to find a single typo anywhere in her charts, she got the tablet ready and packed up her things.
I’m forgetting something. Something important.
She looked down at her socks.
Ah.
With a tired sigh, she went over to the body lockers and found number five on the bottom row, bending down to open it up. There was a moment of natural hesitation before she concluded that not only was the occupant beyond the point of caring, but she really did need her shoes.
She pulled it open and groped around blindly. When she finally grasped her shoes, one lace caught on part of the locker.
Oh, for the love of—
She had to pull the slab carrying the body out before disentangling the laces and yanking the shoes towards her with a look of triumph. She didn’t notice the way her pendant had slid out of her blouse and looped around the corpse’s finger. She didn’t even notice when the corpse sat up and stared around the chilled, locker-filled room in a blinking disorientation.
It wasn’t until a polite voice chimed in, disturbing the quiet, that she realized something was wrong. “Excuse me, miss. Could you tell me where I am?”