Lori Avocato - Dead On Arrival

I looked at her. She stood with one of the other secretaries holding her by the shoulders and glaring down at the body of her brother.

I realized I couldn’t do that if it were a sibling of mine. I couldn’t just stand there looking. Hmm. Maybe it was me, and I shouldn’t let my personal feelings get in the way.

Deciding to have a more Christian attitude, I felt a bit better, until I saw Pansy wiping her face.

No tears.

Had she cried herself out already? Or was it something else? Then again, she could have had some condition that dried up her tears. That was a reality for some people. But she acted as if she was crying.

And made me wonder if acting was the operative word here.

Once the lieutenant said to clear the scene, we all started to move about, and before I knew it, the undertaker was taking out Payne’s body.

And Pansy nowhere to be seen.

I knew, just knew, I’d be following the stretcher along, not ready to let go of a loved one so easily.

Lilla walked past me with a solemn look on her face. “Chéri.” She nodded.

For some reason I needed a bit of confirmation on my thoughts, and I touched Lilla’s arm. Before I let her startled look stop me, I asked, “If that was your brother, would you just let them-”

“Wheel him away like that?” she finished while shaking her head. “Never. I’d be clutching onto their shirttails to not take him.” She shrugged. “Guess we are all different.”

“That we are,” I said, making a mental note to observe dear Pansy much closer. Hopefully I wasn’t shifting suspicion onto her just because my number-one suspect was now deceased.

I hated when that happened.

Although a gloomy air now filled the TLC Land and Air halls, work resumed. No one joked around, but phones rang, clients came in and 911 calls never stopped.

Before I knew it, I heard, “Number Four five six, Code Eighty-three at 114 Buckingham Place.”

ER Dano rushed out of the lounge, grabbed me by the arm and said, “Get going!”

Not able to protest, I remembered why I was here-or make that what my cover was-and obediently followed him. Jagger was nowhere to be seen, and Dano didn’t seem to notice or care.

“Where’s Jagger?” I asked as Dano nearly shoved me into the front seat of #456.

He shrugged and said, “Breathing difficulty. Can’t wait.”

With that I fastened my seat belt, said a fast prayer to Saint T for the patient and myself (the driving, you know) and we were out onto East Main Street, siren blaring and Dano leaning back and driving as if in a kid’s bumper car.

I swallowed hard, refusing to let my lunch even near my mouth again.

After several deep breaths, we pulled into the driveway of a dilapidated house on Buckingham Place-not exactly the ritzy section of Hope Valley. Dano grabbed the bag of supplies, muttered something to me, and we ran up the stairs to the front door, which wasn’t locked.

For a fleeting second I thought, How convenient, until we ran down a long hallway into the kitchen.

Lying on the floor was a rather attractive woman dressed in tight jeans and a slinky black top-with a phone cord wrapped tightly around her neck.

Difficulty breathing?

Her coloring was pale, but her eyes were still open if not watery, and her lips were a bit cyanotic-that horrible grayish blue of someone in need of oxygen.

Dano immediately began unwrapping the phone cord while I dug into the bag for the portable oxygen and a mask. We worked for a few minutes until the woman looked a tiny bit better.

“How’d this happen, ma’am?” Dano asked.

She turned toward him and in a raspy voice said, “Er…I tripped. I tripped and got tangled in the cord.”

Dano and I looked at each other and I controlled the urge to shout out, “Are you kidding us?” Due to the seriousness of her condition, I only raised an eyebrow to Dano.

“Really?” he said, while taking her blood pressure and adjusting the oxygen mask on her face.

I assisted him with whatever he needed until I felt something. Something behind me.

Gradually I turned around to come face to knees with a pair of jeans.

I heard Dano mutter, “Shit.”

And I looked up into the barrel of a shotgun-aimed at my face.

The barrel of a shotgun looks more like a cannon when it’s aimed at your head in such close proximity.

The guy holding it was gigantic, at least from my angle, with a huge potbelly, a red plaid shirt, and a beard that would rival Rip Van Winkle’s. He seemed to growl a bit, then clearly (as if we were morons) said, “If I’d wanted her to live, I wouldn’t have strangled her.”

I only wished that I lived long enough to repeat those words in a trial testimony against him.

Dano looked at me and then the guy. “You know what? You’re right, buddy.” As he spoke, he grabbed my arm and we stood. “She shouldn’t have called us. Fell and got tangled. Ha!” With that, he hustled me past the shotgun, which the guy now pointed at the woman.

I wanted to run and grab it before he shot her right then.

“We can’t leave,” I protested to Dano.

He gave me some kind of look. A dirty look one might say, but I had no idea what it meant. “Nope. She shouldn’t have called.”

“Dano, we can’t leave that woman!” I tried to push at his arm, but, even though I believed in equality of the sexes when it comes to…well…everything, there are things that some women (like moi) are physically not strong enough to do.

Right now, I couldn’t get away from ER Dano if I tried.

Continuing to push me, he said to the gunman, “We’re outta here. Have a nice day.”

“Have a nice day!” I said, as he shoved me out the front door.

I turned to give him a piece of my mind, but he slid into the dining room before the door shut.

“Dan-” If I said anything, he’d get caught. I stopped myself.

I ran to the ambulance, grabbed my cell phone out of my purse and called 911. If I didn’t have to wear stupid scrubs, I would have on a TLC uniform and a phone on my shoulder. “Give me the police!” I shouted, and then told them the situation. I ran around to the back of the house. I couldn’t leave Dano and that woman in there alone.

I peered through a window, which, although covered in dirt and whatever, looked into the kitchen.

Dano had the guy in a choke hold, the shotgun lay on the floor and the poor woman was kicking the guy’s legs. But before I could blink, the guy did some kind of maneuver-looked like ex-military-and now Dano was on the floor next to the patient.

I ran into the house on a surge of adrenaline and not much common sense, and when I got to the kitchen, the guy had picked up the shotgun.

“No!” I shouted and pushed the barrel as a crack! filled the air. A loud crack!

The scene became a madhouse of screaming (me), shouting at me (ER Dano), longshoreman-type cursing (the guy) and the woman on the floor kicking at him with her shoeless foot. When Dano grabbed my arm to shove me to the side, the guy took the gun and aimed straight at Dano’s chest-and I suddenly thought of Jagger.

Not really thought about him. In reality it was more as if I felt him, his presence, and I reached beneath my scrubs and yanked out the pink locket Jagger had given me a few cases back.

This time I shoved my hip into Dano’s side to get past him, aimed, pressed the pump dispenser and let the pepper spray do its job. The guy screamed and cried like a girl.

Despite Dano telling me to get the hell out of there, I grabbed the gun from the guy and pointed it at his legs…despite the fact that I had no idea how to shoot.

“Oh, shit,” Dano murmured as he stepped back and leaned against the counter, more nonchalant than I think Jagger would have been.