Jon Talton - The Pain Nurse

Will and Dodds had rolled in as the primary homicide team. Berkowitz claimed Cecil had been reaching for a gun even as he tried to drive away. No gun was found in the car. A witness said Berkowitz had never identified himself as a cop. Berkowitz claimed he had. Why had he approached the BMW? Berkowitz said it was suspicious. Will knew what that meant: a black man in a fancy new car. Cecil was a lawyer from Cleveland, and the city ended up paying a big settlement to his family. But somehow Berkowitz got out of it. Command wanted the problem to go away. Internal Investigations took over the case. Stan stayed on the force another three years before retiring. In a city of such long memories, some things could be easily shoved in a closet. But Will knew the Robert Cecil story wouldn’t go over well with the bosses at University Hospital, who were putting a premium on community outreach, doing the right thing. The philanthropist hospital board ladies, married to big shots at Procter, American Financial, Kroger, and Federated, might wonder about the cop who killed Robert Cecil. So might the hospital’s CEO, a black woman. Berkowitz knew it, too. He delayed his meeting “off-site” and talked to Will for another thirty minutes.

Cheryl Beth stood in the doorway, watching as Will slowly stood and stepped into the walker. Every move looked painful, but he took one step forward, then another. It made her smile when the hospital actually helped people. Then she felt her pager vibrating.

It was a new consult on the fourth floor. The nurses’ station didn’t have the chart, which wasn’t unusual, so she walked down to the room. She remembered a meeting in the fall, when the hospital brass and the people from SoftChartZ had talked about the progress on the computer project. All medical records would be on PC workstations, which would be available to nurses and doctors all over the hospital. A patient’s history, medications, and orders would be available at the touch of a key. It seemed almost too good to be true. Cheryl Beth didn’t remember the boyish CEO from SoftChartZ being at this meeting. Christine had led it and taken questions. She had worn a very attractive blue suit that day-she always wore a skirt at work, unless she was in scrubs. And she had spoken with more passion, more compassion for what this might mean for patients, than Cheryl Beth had ever seen from her. She knew Christine as prickly, icy, tightly wound, businesslike. Never caring. Cheryl Beth had broken off the affair with Gary that night.

The room was at the end of the hallway, where it ended in the fire stairwell, and the door was closed. As she had so many times before, she knocked twice, then opened the door and stepped inside. The nearest bed was empty and neatly made up. The bed by the window was concealed by a curtain.

“Hello?”

She felt the air rush of the heavy door being closed behind her even before she heard it slam shut.

Gary Nagle stood behind the door, wearing nothing but a fierce erection. He leered at her. “Hey, baby.”

She instantly grabbed the doorknob, but he was stronger and kept the door shut.

“You used to like this…”

She was momentarily in a coma of surprise and shock. His eyes were an animal’s. Beneath her animal fear, her mind began processing: this is it… this is what the moment before being raped feels like. She vowed to herself she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

“Gary.” She tried to keep her voice calm, but heard it waver. “You’re not yourself. Your wife died…”

“Ex!” He shouted it and made a flourish with one hand. “Yeah, poor Chris. Poor, poor Chris…the whore!” His eyes narrowed and he thrust his right hand out toward her in a half-fist.

“Slash! Slash! Slash!” He made violent cuts back and forth with an invisible knife, crouching down like a street fighter. His hard penis shook like a diving board. “You know I can use a knife! Chris, you whore. For what you did to me…”

He stepped toward Cheryl Beth, but his effort to hold the door kept him just enough off balance.

Springing to the foot of the first bed, she slid the rolling table that usually held a patient’s dinner tray between them.

“Gary, I swear to God I’m going to start screaming.”

“You used to like this, Cheryl Beth.” He stroked himself. He had always been irrepressibly proud of his endowment, bragging about how difficult it was to find size thirteen shoes. Now the memory made her shudder.

“You’re acting like some kid resident, not a seasoned physician,” she said, making her voice sound a haughtiness she didn’t feel. “And I’m sure not a nurse looking for a doctor husband.”

“Oh, Cheryl Beth, we had such fun…”

There he was with his finely toned physique, but she felt nothing. It was just a body. Another fragile container of bone and muscle and tissue in the hospital. Nursing aides giving sponge baths often caused male patients to have erections. It wasn’t sexy. It was kind of sad. She felt all this, but only below the incoming waves of fear.

He could see her take a deep breath to call for help and began speaking rapidly.

“You’ve got to help me, Cheryl. The cops came to my apartment this morning, with a search warrant. That big black detective.” He held his hands in a pleading position. “He thinks I killed Chris. They took away things. Evidence. Please, please…” His chiseled, confident face dissolved into tears and he slid down against the wall sobbing. “Please, I need you.”

“Put your pants on or I’m out of here.” She squared her shoulders and gave him her nastiest look. She wouldn’t let herself show fear. “And step away from the door.”

“You’ll talk?”

“If you step away from the door.”

He pulled himself up and walked slowly to a chair that held his clothes. She saw the clothes only now-they might have been a clue to stay out if she had seen them earlier. As he moved, she kept the rolling table between them. With the door unguarded, she made two wide strides to it, threw it open, and started out.

“Please!”

She turned to face him. “I’ll stay for the moment, if you don’t piss me off or get weird. But get dressed. And don’t call me Cheryl. You know what my name is.”

“Sure, sure.” He was half mumbling as he slid into his boxers and his slacks. She dropped down the doorstop so the door was half open, and she leaned against the wall by the jamb.

“God, I need to fuck right now.”

It was true: he used sex to relieve stress. It took her awhile to realize that he was most aroused when he was under the greatest pressure. Soon after that, she came to understand that she might just as well not have been there. She was just a female body to him. A way to work off stress. Another conquest.

“Talk to your pal, Amy.” Cheryl Beth folded her arms, half feeling sorry for him, but still drunk with adrenaline fear.

“That bitch.” He slipped on his dress shirt and quickly buttoned it. His face was a caricature of little-boy petulance. She half expected to see him use his sleeve to wipe his runny nose. “She sold me out.”

“Sold you out?”

“The cops said she didn’t back up my story that we were together that night, the night that Chris was killed.”

“So she told the truth.” She was comforted by the sounds of a housekeeping crew working in the hallway close by.

“Do you know how much money I bring into this hospital as a neurosurgeon?” His adult voice was back, but with an angry edge.

“I know, you’re the famous two-million-dollar man.”

“They told me this would go away. They said it would not touch me!”

“Who told you? What are you talking about?”

“The hospital! Jim Bryant!” The CEO of Memorial. Cheryl Beth had a hard time believing such a thing. Gary’s eyes were still wild.