Stephen King - End of Watch

Hodges keeps his pad in his back pocket, just as he did when he was a Detective First Class. He scribbles two words – Call me – and adds his cell number. ‘Give this to Norma Wilmer once Smaug spreads his wings and flies away.’

Intern Two takes the note and folds it into the breast pocket of his scrubs. Then he looks expectant. Hodges takes out his wallet. Fifty is a lot for delivering a note, but he has discovered at least one good thing about terminal cancer: you can toss your budget out the window.

Jerome Robinson is balancing boards on his shoulder under the hot Arizona sun when his cell phone rings. The houses they are building – the first two already framed – are in a low-income but respectable neighborhood on the southern outskirts of Phoenix. He puts the boards across the top of a handy wheelbarrow and plucks his phone from his belt, thinking it will be Hector Alonzo, the job foreman. This morning one of the workmen (a work woman , actually) tripped and fell into a stack of rebar. She broke her collarbone and suffered an ugly facial laceration. Alonzo took her to the St Luke’s ER, appointing Jerome temporary foreman in his absence.

It’s not Alonzo’s name he sees in the little window, but Holly Gibney’s face. It’s a photo he took himself, catching her in one of her rare smiles.

‘Hey, Holly, how are you? I’ll have to call you back in a few, it’s been a crazy morning here, but—’

‘I need you to come home,’ Holly says. She sounds calm, but Jerome knows her of old, and in just those six words he can sense strong emotions held in check. Fear chief among them. Holly is still a very fearful person. Jerome’s mother, who loves her dearly, once called fear Holly’s default setting.

‘Home? Why? What’s wrong?’ His own fear suddenly grips him. ‘Is it my dad? Mom? Is it Barbie?’

‘It’s Bill,’ she says. ‘He has cancer. A very bad cancer. Pancreatic. If he doesn’t get treatment he’ll die, he’ll probably die anyway , but he could have time and he told me it was just a little ulcer because… because…’ She takes a great ragged breath that makes Jerome wince. ‘ Because of Brady Fracking Hartsfield! ’

Jerome has no idea what connection Brady Hartsfield can have to Bill’s terrible diagnosis, but he knows what he’s seeing right now: trouble. On the far side of the building site, two hard-hatted young men – Habitat for Humanity college volunteers like Jerome himself – are giving a beeping, backing cement truck conflicting directions. Disaster looms.

‘Holly, give me five minutes and I’ll call you back.’

‘But you’ll come, won’t you? Say you’ll come. Because I don’t think I can talk to him about this on my own and he has to get into treatment right away !’

‘Five minutes,’ he says, and kills the call. His thoughts are spinning so fast that he’s afraid the friction will catch his brains on fire, and the blaring sun isn’t helping. Bill? With cancer? On one hand it doesn’t seem possible, but on the other it seems completely possible. He was in top form during the Pete Saubers business, where Jerome and Holly partnered with him, but he’ll be seventy soon, and the last time Jerome saw him, before leaving for Arizona in October, Bill didn’t look all that well. Too thin. Too pale. But Jerome can’t go anywhere until Hector gets back, it would be like leaving the inmates to run the asylum. And knowing the Phoenix hospitals, where the ERs are overrun twenty-four hours a day, he may be stuck here until quitting time.

He sprints for the cement truck, bawling ‘ Hold up! Hold UP, for Jesus’ sake! ’ at the top of his lungs.

He gets the clueless volunteers to halt the cement truck they’ve been misdirecting less than three feet from a freshly dug drainage ditch, and he’s bending over to catch his breath when his phone rings again.

Holly, I love you, Jerome thinks, pulling it from his belt once more, but sometimes you drive me absolutely bugfuck.

Only this time it’s not Holly’s picture he sees. It’s his mother’s.

Tanya is crying. ‘You have to come home,’ she says, and Jerome has just long enough to think of something his grandfather used to say: bad luck keeps bad company .

It’s Barbie after all.

Hodges is in the lobby and headed for the door when his phone vibrates. It’s Norma Wilmer.

‘Is he gone?’ Hodges asks.

Norma doesn’t have to ask who he’s talking about. ‘Yes. Now that he’s seen his prize patient, he can relax and do the rest of his rounds.’

‘I was sorry to hear about Nurse Scapelli.’ It’s true. He didn’t care for her, but it’s still true.

‘I was, too. She ran the nursing staff like Captain Bligh ran the Bounty , but I hate to think of anyone doing… that. You get the news and your first reaction is oh no, not her, never. It’s the shock of it. Your second reaction is oh yes, that makes perfect sense. Never married, no close friends – not that I knew of, anyway – nothing but the job. Where everybody sort of loathed her.’

‘All the lonely people,’ Hodges says, stepping out into the cold and turning toward the bus stop. He buttons his coat one-handed and then begins to massage his side.

‘Yes. There are a lot of them. What can I do for you, Mr Hodges?’

‘I have a few questions. Could you meet me for a drink?’

There’s a long pause. Hodges thinks she’s going to tell him no. Then she says, ‘I don’t suppose your questions could lead to trouble for Dr Babineau?’

‘Anything is possible, Norma.’

‘That would be nice, but I guess I owe you one, regardless. For not letting on to him that we know each other from back in the Becky Helmington days. There’s a watering hole on Revere Avenue. Got a clever name, Bar Bar Black Sheep, and most of the staff drinks closer to the hospital. Can you find it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m off at five. Meet me there at five thirty. I like a nice cold vodka martini.’

‘It’ll be waiting.’

‘Just don’t expect me to get you in to see Hartsfield. It would mean my job. Babineau was always intense, but these days he’s downright weird. I tried to tell him about Ruth, and he blew right past me. Not that he’s apt to care when he finds out.’

‘Got a lot of love for him, don’t you?’

She laughs. ‘For that you owe me two drinks.’

‘Two it is.’

He’s slipping his phone back into his coat pocket when it buzzes again. He sees the call is from Tanya Robinson and his thoughts immediately flash to Jerome, building houses out there in Arizona. A lot of things can go wrong on building sites.

He takes the call. Tanya is crying, at first too hard for him to understand what she’s saying, only that Jim is in Pittsburgh and she doesn’t want to call him until she knows more. Hodges stands at the curb, one palm plastered against his non-phone ear to muffle the sound of traffic.

‘Slow down. Tanya, slow down. Is it Jerome? Did something happen to Jerome?’

‘No, Jerome’s fine. Him I did call. It’s Barbara. She was in Lowtown—’

‘What in God’s name was she doing in Lowtown, and on a school day?’

‘I don’t know! All I know is that some boy pushed her into the street and a truck hit her! They’re taking her to Kiner Memorial. I’m on my way there now!’

‘Are you driving?’

‘Yes, what does that have to do with—’

‘Get off the phone, Tanya. And slow down. I’m at Kiner now. I’ll meet you in the ER.’

He hangs up and heads back to the hospital, breaking into a clumsy trot. He thinks, This goddam place is like the Mafia. Every time I think I’m out, it pulls me back in.