Stephen King - End of Watch

Her phone chimes the first few notes of ‘Ode to Joy’ and she races to it, thinking Thank God, oh thank God, I’ll ground her for the rest of the win—

Only it’s not her daughter’s smiling face in the window. It’s an ID: CITY POLICE DEPT. MAIN BRANCH. Terror rolls through her stomach and her bowels loosen. For a moment she can’t even take the call, because her thumb won’t move. At last she manages to press the green ACCEPT button and silence the music. Everything in her office, especially the family photo on her desk, is too bright. The phone seems to float up to her ear.

‘Hello?’

She listens.

‘Yes, this is she.’

She listens, her free hand rising to cover her mouth and stifle whatever sound wants to come out. She hears herself ask, ‘Are you sure it’s my daughter? Barbara Rosellen Robinson?’

The policeman who has called to notify her says yes. He’s sure. They found her ID in the street. What he doesn’t tell her is that they had to wipe off the blood to see the name.

Hodges knows something’s amiss as soon as he steps out of the skyway that connects Kiner Memorial proper to the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, where the walls are painted a soothing pink and soft music plays day and night. The usual patterns have been disrupted, and very little work seems to be getting done. Lunch carts stand marooned, filled with congealing plates of noodly stuff that might once have been the cafeteria’s idea of Chinese. Nurses cluster, murmuring in low tones. One appears to be crying. Two interns have their heads together by the water fountain. An orderly is talking on his cell phone, which is technically cause for suspension, but Hodges thinks he’s safe enough; no one is paying him any mind.

At least Ruth Scapelli is nowhere in sight, which might improve his chances of getting in to see Hartsfield. It’s Norma Wilmer at the duty desk, and along with Becky Helmington, Norma was his source for all things Brady before Hodges quit visiting Room 217. The bad news is that Hartsfield’s doctor is also at the duty desk. Hodges has never been able to establish a rapport with him, although God knows he’s tried.

He ambles down to the water fountain, hoping Babineau hasn’t spotted him and will soon be off to look at PET scans or something, leaving Wilmer alone and approachable. He gets a drink (wincing and placing a hand to his side as he straightens up), then speaks to the interns. ‘Is something going on here? The place seems a little riled up.’

They hesitate and glance at each other.

‘Can’t talk about it,’ says Intern One. He still has the remains of his adolescent acne, and looks about seventeen. Hodges shudders at the thought of him assisting in a surgery job more difficult than removing a thumb splinter.

‘Something with a patient? Hartsfield, maybe? I only ask because I used to be a cop, and I’m sort of responsible for putting him here.’

‘Hodges,’ says Intern Two. ‘Is that your name?’

‘Yeah, that’s me.’

‘You caught him, right?’

Hodges agrees instantly, although if it had been left up to him, Brady would have bagged a lot more in Mingo Auditorium than he managed to get at City Center. No, it was Holly and Jerome Robinson who stopped Brady before he could detonate his devil’s load of homemade plastic explosive.

The interns exchange another glance and then One says, ‘Hartsfield’s the same as ever, just gorking along. It’s Nurse Ratched.’

Intern Two gives him an elbow. ‘Speak no ill of the dead, asshole. Especially when the guy listening might have loose lips.’

Hodges immediately runs a thumbnail across his mouth, as if sealing his dangerous lips shut.

Intern One looks flustered. ‘Head Nurse Scapelli, I mean. She committed suicide last night.’

All the lights in Hodges’s head come on, and for the first time since yesterday he forgets that he’s probably going to die. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Sliced her arms and wrists and bled out,’ says Two. ‘That’s what I’m hearing, anyway.’

‘Did she leave a note?’

They have no idea.

Hodges heads for the duty desk. Babineau is still there, going over files with Wilmer (who looks flustered at her apparent battlefield promotion), but he can’t wait. This is Hartsfield’s dirt. He doesn’t know how that can be, but it has Brady written all over it. The fucking suicide prince.

He almost calls Nurse Wilmer by her first name, but instinct makes him shy from that at the last moment. ‘Nurse Wilmer, I’m Bill Hodges.’ A thing she knows very well. ‘I worked both the City Center case and the Mingo Auditorium thing. I need to see Mr Hartsfield.’

She opens her mouth, but Babineau is there ahead of her. ‘Out of the question. Even if Mr Hartsfield were allowed visitors, which he is not by order of the District Attorney’s office, he wouldn’t be allowed to see you. He needs peace and calm. Each of your previous unauthorized visits has shattered that.’

‘News to me,’ Hodges says mildly. ‘Every time I’ve been to see him, he just sits there. Bland as a bowl of oatmeal.’

Norma Wilmer’s head goes back and forth. She’s like a woman watching a tennis match.

‘You don’t see what we see after you’ve left.’ Color is rising in Babineau’s stubble-flecked cheeks. And there are dark circles under his eyes. Hodges remembers a cartoon from his Sunday school Living with Jesus workbook, back in the prehistoric era when cars had fins and girls wore bobby sox. Brady’s doc has the same look as the guy in the cartoon, but Hodges doubts if he’s a chronic masturbator. On the other hand, he remembers Becky telling him that the neuro doctors are often crazier than the patients.

‘And what would that be?’ Hodges asks. ‘Little psychic tantrums? Do things have a way of falling over after I’m gone? The toilet in his bathroom flushes by itself, maybe?’

‘Ridiculous. What you leave is psychic wreckage , Mr Hodges. He’s not so brain damaged that he doesn’t know you’re obsessed with him. Malevolently so. I want you to leave. We’ve had a tragedy, and many of the patients are upset.’

Hodges sees Wilmer’s eyes widen slightly at this, and knows that the patients capable of cognition – many here in the Bucket are not – have no idea that the Head Nurse has offed herself.

‘I only have a few questions for him, and then I’ll be out of your hair.’

Babineau leans forward. The eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses are threaded with snaps of red. ‘Listen closely, Mr Hodges. One, Mr Hartsfield is not capable of answering your questions. If he could answer questions, he would have been brought to trial for his crimes by now. Two, you have no official standing. Three, if you don’t leave now, I will call security and have you escorted from the premises.’

Hodges says, ‘Pardon me for asking, but are you all right?’

Babineau draws back as if Hodges has brandished a fist in his face. ‘Get out!’

The little clusters of medical personnel stop talking and look around.

‘Gotcha,’ Hodges says. ‘Going. All good.’

There’s a snack alcove near the entrance to the skyway. Intern Two is leaning there, hands in pockets. ‘Ooh, baby,’ he says. ‘You been schooled.’

‘So it would seem.’ Hodges studies the wares in the Nibble-A-Bit machine. He sees nothing in there that won’t set his guts on fire, but that’s okay; he’s not hungry.

‘Young man,’ he says, without turning around, ‘if you would like to make fifty dollars for doing a simple errand that will cause you no trouble, then get with me.’

Intern Two, a fellow who looks like he might actually attain adulthood at some point in the not-too-distant future, joins him at the Nibble-A-Bit. ‘What’s the errand?’