20. Death Traps
Death Traps
NORA
Barb found us a duplex on the east side. Three days after I told her what happened, she called back with a name and a number. A friend of hers had a rental open. Two bedrooms, a full kitchen, and enough room for three people to live without climbing over each other.
Ian was compliant. Curfew every night, no contact with anyone from Rudy's, enrolled at the new school because the court required it.
I walked him through the building myself on registration day.
He was quiet, polite, cooperative. He was the Ian I remembered from before the fire.
The easy boy who never gave me a reason to worry.
I was washing dishes after dinner when Ian came into the kitchen. He stood next to the counter with one hand in his pocket.
"I got you something. For your birthday."
I turned off the faucet and dried my hands. "My birthday's in a few days."
"I know. But I have it now, and I wanted you to have it."
He reached into the pocket of his jeans and held out his palm.
A moonstone. Small, milky white, cool in the light from the kitchen window. I knew what it was before he said anything.
"I know you lost all your crystals in the fire." He looked at the stone in his hand. "I bought it before..." He stopped. Swallowed. "Before everything."
Before the arrest. Before the precinct, before the charges, before the room with the cinder block walls and the things he'd said to me that I was still carrying even though he'd taken them back.
"Ian."
"I'm sorry, Nora." His voice was quiet. "What I said to you at the precinct. I didn't mean it. I know you were there. I know everything you gave up for me. I was angry and I took it out on you, and I'm sorry."
I put my arms around him and pulled him into me. He hugged me back, tight, the way he used to when he was small and something had scared him.
"I love you," I said.
"I love you too."
I pulled back and looked at the moonstone in his hand. I picked it up and held it to the light. The surface shimmered, that soft blue glow that only shows when you turn it at the right angle.
"It's beautiful," I said.
He smiled. It was the first real smile I'd seen from him since before the fire.
I was charting at the station across from bay twelve when Sullivan's voice cut through the floor noise.
"Who has this patient?"
Lori looked up from the IV she was labeling. "I do. Endorsed from Liz about an hour ago."
Sullivan was at the bedside monitor. He didn't look at Lori. He was looking at the rhythm strip. "Pull up this patient's labs."
Lori set the IV bag down and opened the chart. Sullivan didn't wait. He was already at the computer on the wall, pulling the results himself.
"Potassium came back at six-eight forty minutes ago." His voice was flat. "Critical value. No acknowledgment in the chart. No physician notification. No medication hold." He turned to face her. "This patient is in a widening QRS and you are standing here labeling an IV bag."
Lori looked at the screen. I watched the color leave her face.
"I didn't get a critical flag, Dr. Sullivan. There's nothing in the working chart."
"The result is in the system. It has been in the system for forty minutes.
This patient needed calcium gluconate and insulin thirty-nine minutes ago, and instead his heart is deciding whether it wants to keep beating.
" He pulled the crash cart to the bedside himself.
"Get me calcium gluconate, ten milliliters of ten percent, IV push now. And page cardiology."
Lori was already moving. I was on my feet too, pulling the med from the cart while Lori opened the line. Sullivan pushed the calcium himself, his eyes on the monitor, waiting for the QRS to narrow.
It took ninety seconds. The rhythm started pulling back. Sullivan watched it for a full minute before he spoke again.
"That man was heading toward a cardiac arrest because a critical lab sat in the system for forty minutes and nobody acted on it.
" He looked at Lori. "I don't care who had this patient before you.
The moment he became yours, his labs became yours.
This goes in an incident report, and your name is on it. "
Lori nodded once. She didn't argue.
Sullivan left the bay without looking at either of us.
I found her in the locker room forty minutes later. She was sitting on the bench with her back against the wall, still in her scrubs, her face blotchy and her eyes swollen.
"Lori."
"I checked the chart, Nora." Her voice was thick. "When I got the endorsement, I checked the chart. There was no critical flag. There was no pending result. I had no reason to go pull his labs independently because nothing told me to."
I sat down next to her.
"He's right that someone should have caught it. But I don't understand how a critical potassium sits in the system for forty minutes without generating a flag. That doesn't just happen."
I thought about the Zofran discrepancy months ago. The number that didn't match the order. I'd noticed it, filed it, and moved on because it was small enough to explain away.
This wasn't small.
"Sullivan's writing me up." She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. "A near-miss critical lab failure. I've never had an incident report with my name on it."
She dropped her hands and stared at the row of lockers across from us. Then she started crying, quietly, with her forehead against my shoulder.
I put my arm around her and held on.
The locker room door opened. Josie stood in the doorway, took one look at Lori, and came in without a word. She sat down on the other side of her and put a hand on her back.
"I heard," Josie said. "I'm pulling you off the floor for the rest of the shift. You're done for today."
Lori shook her head. "I can finish."
"That wasn't a question." Josie's voice was firm but her hand was gentle. "You're done, Lori. I'll cover your bays."
Josie looked at me over Lori's head. "Nora, I need you back out there."
I squeezed Lori's arm, stood up, and left her with Josie.
I went back to the floor, picked up my charts, and started reading through the updates on my bays.
The ambulance bay doors opened. I heard the rattle of wheels on linoleum and the paramedic's voice running the handoff.
"Thirty-two-year-old male, motorcycle versus vehicle, thrown from the bike at approximately thirty miles per hour.
Helmet on at time of impact. GCS fifteen, alert and oriented.
Multiple abrasions to the left arm and shoulder, contusion to the left hip, suspected sprains to the left wrist and ankle.
No loss of consciousness, no midline tenderness, no obvious fractures. "
I was moving before I made the decision to move. I reached the gurney and looked down.
Knox.
"Nora."
"Knox?" My hands were on the rail. "What happened?"
"A group of bikes boxed me in on Tropicana coming back from Travis's." He winced as the paramedic shifted the backboard. "One of them braked in front of me. I had to lay it down."
His left arm was raw from the road, blood seeping through the gauze the paramedics had taped over the worst of it. His jacket was shredded at the shoulder. His helmet was clipped to the rail, cracked along one side.
Cliff Sullivan was already coming down the hall. He saw the gurney, saw Knox on it, and stopped. For a second his face did something I'd never seen it do. Then he turned to the charge desk.
"Page Harlan. I need another attending on this patient."
He stepped back from the gurney.
Harlan arrived in under a minute. He looked at the paramedic's report, looked at Knox, and started ordering. "Let's get X-rays on the left wrist and ankle. Full series. CBC, chem panel, and a CT if anything looks off on exam. Clean those abrasions and get me a better look at the shoulder."
I took the orders. I pulled the supply cart to the bedside, gloved up, and started cleaning the road rash on his arm. Knox held still while I worked. His jaw was tight but he didn't make a sound.
The X-rays came back clean. No fractures. The bloodwork was normal. His ankle was sprained, his wrist was sprained, and the rest was abrasions and bruising. He'd been lucky. The helmet had taken the worst of it.
I peeled my gloves off and looked at him.
"Do you see what I mean now?"
He looked at me.
"The motorcycle, Knox. Do you see what I'm saying?"
He leaned his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes. "Yeah. I'm not going to be riding it again anytime soon."
"Good."
He opened one eye. "That was a very calm 'good' for someone whose hands were shaking two minutes ago."
I put my hand on his face. He leaned into it.
"You scared me."
"I know." He covered my hand with his. "I promise I won't do it again."
"I doubt that." I almost smiled. "But thank you."
I leaned in. His eyes were on my mouth, and I was close enough to feel his breath on my lips when the curtain pulled back. Sullivan stepped into the bay. He looked at Knox on the bed, at the gauze on his arm, at the wrist brace.
"What happened?"
Knox sat up straighter. "A group of motorcycles boxed me in on Tropicana. One of them cut in front and braked. I went down at about thirty."
Sullivan's jaw tightened. "Your recklessness hasn't changed, has it?"
Knox looked back at his father.
Sullivan held his gaze, then looked at me. "Make sure he has proper discharge instructions. Wound care for the abrasions, ice and elevation for the sprains, follow up with his primary in forty-eight hours. And make sure he actually follows them."
"Yes, Dr. Sullivan."
He left without saying anything else.
I watched him go. Then I looked at Knox.
"He seems concerned."
Knox looked at the curtain his father had just walked through. "Yeah. That's about the best he can do."
I was writing up Knox's discharge instructions when a man I didn't recognize came through the ER entrance. Dark suit, badge on his belt, a folder under his arm. He scanned the floor, spotted Knox's bay, and walked straight to it.
"Knox Sullivan?"
"Yeah."
"Detective Kieran Thorne. Gang Crimes, LVMPD.
" He showed his badge, then pulled a chair to the bedside and sat down.
"I'm here about the motorcycle incident on Tropicana.
We pulled the traffic camera footage. The group that boxed you in was riding in a coordinated formation. That's not road rage. That's targeted."
Knox didn't say anything.
"We've identified two of the bikes from the footage. Both are associated with individuals in our gang database." He opened the folder and glanced at his notes. "Mr. Sullivan, are you connected to anyone currently involved in gang-related criminal activity?"
Knox looked at me.
"I'm his girlfriend," I said. "My brother was arrested a few weeks ago in connection with a chop shop operation. Rudy's Auto Shop, off Boulder Highway. He's seventeen. He's at home right now on juvenile probation."
Thorne looked up from his folder. "What's your brother's name?"
"Ian Avery."
He wrote it down. "And the individuals arrested in that raid. Does your brother have ongoing contact with any of them?"
"No. There's a no-contact order. He hasn't spoken to anyone from that shop since the arrest."
Thorne nodded slowly. "So this could be retaliatory?"
I looked at Knox. Knox looked at me.
"We don't know," I said.
Thorne wrote something else in his notes, closed the folder, and stood up.
"I'm going to look into the connection between the riders on that footage and the operation your brother was part of.
If there's a link, we'll know soon." He pulled a card from his jacket pocket and set it on the bedside table.
"If anything else happens, anything at all, you call me directly. "