Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lance could feel the sorrow, as palpable as a drop in room temperature.
They hadn’t called him.
It can’t be Mom.
He paused just before he reached his mother’s doorway, dread weighing his steps like his boots were filled with concrete. He and his mother had fought her mental illness for decades. Her demons had taken up permanent residence. But every time they’d advanced, she’d rallied and driven them back. Her whole life had been one battle after another. She won some and lost others. But overall, she’d been winning the war. Inch by inch, she’d chipped away at their advantage. She’d finally made real gains, only to fall victim to someone’s sick game.
As he pushed forward for the last two strides, Morgan’s grip on his hand tightened.
But everything in the room looked the same. His mother slept. The ventilator hissed. The heart monitor beeped in a steady rhythm.
It’s not her.
When he exhaled, he was light-headed for a few seconds.
In the chair near the bed, Hannah Barrett looked up from her book. Her face was grim, her eyes sad. Lance glanced into the next room. The sheet had been pulled up over the patient’s head. Two women in scrubs were unplugging equipment and tubes, coiling the untethered ends onto the bed.
The old man was dead.
Equal amounts of relief and guilt flooded Lance. The old man was someone’s father or grandfather. Someone would be brokenhearted at the news.
Hand in hand with Morgan, he went into his mother’s room. The nurse bustled in and hung a new IV bag. Her eyes and nose were red from crying.
“How is she?” Lance asked.
“She’s hanging in there.” She sniffed, then gave him an update on her vital signs. “Her kidney function showed some improvement today.” She flushed the IV port, attached the new bag of fluids, and pressed buttons on the infusion pump.
The bed and medical equipment filled one half of the large room. A supply and computer station was built into the other. The wall that edged the hallway was made of glass, with a curtain that could be drawn across if needed.
The nurse scanned the monitors and then went to the computer and typed. “Let me know if you need anything.” She left the room.
Hannah stood and greeted them.
“I can’t thank you enough for being here,” Lance said.
“I don’t mind.” Hannah brushed a lock of short, spiky blonde hair off her face. “Do you have any idea who might have done this to her?”
“We have a few solid suspects.” But not solid enough, thought Lance. “You’ve been here all day?”
Hannah nodded. “Brody will be here soon to relieve me for the evening, and Stella said she’d take the night shift. One of us will be with her all the time.”
“I’m grateful,” he said.
“No one can be in two places at once.” Hannah moved toward the door. “Since you’re here, I’m going to stretch my legs and grab a cup of tea.”
Morgan squeezed his hand. “Do you want a few minutes alone with her?”
Lance nodded. Morgan and Hannah left the room.
He went to the bedside and took his mother’s hand. Her fingers were freezing. He wrapped his hand around hers to warm it. The doctors thought she would survive, but would she? And if she did, what kind of permanent damage had her body sustained?
The nurse seemed satisfied with her progress, but Lance didn’t see any improvement. His mother’s face was lifeless, her skin colorless, almost blue tinted. Her lips had no color at all. In fact, she seemed to be fading as he watched.
One of the machines beside the bed began to beep. The nurse appeared in the doorway, her mouth turned down as she watched the monitors. An alarm sounded.
Lance startled. Sweat broke between his shoulder blades, and his stomach flipped over. “What’s wrong?”
“Her heart rate is decreasing,” the nurse said. She pressed a button and the blood pressure cuff inflated.
A doctor rushed into the room.
“Heart rate and blood pressure are down.” The nurse rattled off numbers and readings. “Her vitals were all normal ten minutes ago.”
More nurses hurried into the room. Someone nudged Lance out of the way. He stepped sideways, toward the doorway.
“Fingernails are blue.” The doctor lifted his mother’s eyelids with his thumb. “Her pupils are constricted.” He went to the computer and scrolled. “If she wasn’t in the ICU, I’d say she is presenting as a new opioid overdose. Her original drug panel came back positive for opioids.”
They’d been right.
“Someone poisoned her,” Lance said. “This wasn’t a suicide attempt.”
Could someone have sneaked into the ICU and given his mother a drug?
“Was anyone else in this room?” Lance scanned the room, then the doorway. People rushed past. Medical personnel wore IDs. Visitors checked in at the desk in the lobby and received ID badges. But how hard would it be to sneak into the hospital? This was not the city. The community hospital gave excellent care, but they didn’t even have metal detectors. But even if someone did manage to get into the ward, Hannah said she’d been with his mother the entire day. That’s the whole reason she was here. Had she gone out for coffee or to use the restroom?
The doctor shot a look at him. “Are you suggesting . . .”
“Someone tried to kill her once,” Lance said. “I don’t know how they could have gained access to her here, but this is a busy place.”
More medical personnel crowded around the bed.
“Could a medication have been swapped?” Lance moved farther out of the way, until his shoulder hit the glass wall next to the door.
“We have strict dispensing protocols.” The doctor watched the monitors while he talked to Lance. “Medications are checked and double-checked.”
“Her heart rate is still falling,” someone called out.
“We’ll try naloxone.” The doctor called out.
Lance glanced over his shoulder. On the other side of the glass, two bags of saline lay on a cart, along with other supplies. In the open. Unattended.
He stepped forward. “The nurse changed her IV fluid bag five minutes before this happened.”
The doctor unplugged the IV. “Get a fresh bag of saline.”
“Not one that was sitting in the hallway,” Lance shouted as the nurse bolted for the door. He watched, helpless, as the ICU staff worked. Bodies blocked the view of his mother.
“Keep that bag,” Lance called to the nurse moving the bag off the hook. “It could be evidence.”
She set it aside.
A nurse administered an injection through the IV line. Naloxone, also known as Narcan, blocked the effects of opioids and reversed an overdose. When he’d been a patrol officer, Lance had carried a dose in his vehicle. Heroin addiction and overdoses had drastically increased over the past decade. Narcan acted fast, sending a true addict into almost immediate withdrawal. If his mother had been given opioids, the antidote would work within minutes.
If Lance was wrong, then Narcan would have no impact on her condition. But she would continue to deteriorate, and they would have lost valuable time.
Come on.
Lance’s heartbeat echoed in his ears. Sweat dripped down his back, and the fists at his sides went clammy. Everything inside him curled up into a tight ball, waiting. Cold slid over him like a blanket, as if his emotions were preparing for the worst.
Please.
He was so numb, so focused, he didn’t see Morgan and Hannah in the hallway.
“What happened?” Morgan grabbed his arm.
But he couldn’t take his eyes off the heart monitor.
Tick tock.
“Her heart rate is up,” the doctor said. “And climbing.”
The ICU staff drew a collective breath. In ten minutes, her pulse and blood pressure had returned to normal levels.
Lance let out the air he’d been holding in his lungs.
Morgan slipped her arm around his waist. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” He rubbed his face. It was wet. He dried it with the heels of his hands.
“Come into the hall.” Morgan steered him out of the room. “What happened?”
He explained.
“I didn’t even step out of the room for coffee,” Hannah said. “The nurses brought me food. No one was in her room except the nurse and doctors, and only the nurse administered medication.” Her eyes narrowed. “I watched.”
“It had to be the saline.” Lance dragged in air, his lungs shaky. He felt like he’d lived three days in the last fifteen minutes. “Tampered with out in the hall. I need to call Stella or Brody. They can pull the hospital surveillance tapes.” He glanced through the glass wall. Nurses and doctors still surrounded his mother.
“I’ll call Brody,” Hannah said. Phone in hand, she walked down the hallway.
The doctor emerged from the room. “She seems to be stable.”
“How much of a setback will this be for my mother?” Lance asked. She’d already been at risk for organ damage.
“We can’t say just yet.” The doctor yanked his gloves off. “I don’t know how this could have happened.”
A woman walked by, her hand over her face. Sobbing, she entered the room next to his mother’s.
The old man.
“Did you have a code earlier?” Lance asked.
The doctor followed his gaze. “Yes. Not long ago. But he’d been sick for a long time. He’d been here for weeks. His death was not a shock.”
“But codes are chaotic,” Lance said.
“They are,” the doctor said turning back toward Jenny. “Excuse me.” He went back into her room and checked her vital signs on the monitors again.
Morgan’s face went grim. “A code would provide a convenient distraction.”
“They should check the old man for opioids,” Lance said. “In case he was murdered.”
Hannah returned. “Stella is coming with Brody. They’re going to request a police guard for your mother.”
But the saline had been tampered with before it even entered his mother’s room. This killer had murdered by strangulation, hanging, shooting, and poison. He was using whatever method would get the job done.
“I’m going to call Sharp and tell him what happened.” Morgan moved down the hall.
Who knew how long it would be before his mother woke up? And if she would be able to identify her poisoner . . . Lance pushed that thought away. He couldn’t deal with the possibility of her sustaining brain damage. Not now. Tonight, he had to keep her alive.
Brody and Stella arrived and took charge of the investigation. Lance gave them a summary. As he described the events of the night, the numbness retreated like a shadow at noon, leaving anger as bright and clean as winter sunlight in its place.
He would find the man who did this.
Maybe he was the same man who’d killed Lance’s father. Maybe not. But Lance knew that whoever had hurt his mother would have those answers.
“A patrol officer is bringing up a drug field test kit,” Stella said. “We’ll be able to tell you in a few minutes if the saline was contaminated.”
Lance paced while the officer arrived and opened his notebook-size case in the corner of Jenny’s room. While the ICU staff attended to Lance’s mother, the officer selected a pouch from his kit. He took a small sample of the saline solution. Police officers often needed to test substances for the presence of narcotics. Lance had performed enough field tests in his career. It was far better to identity a random white powder in the field than to arrest someone for possession of crack cocaine when the powder was actually baking soda.
In five minutes, the officer looked up from his mini chemistry kit. “Positive for opioids.”
Jenny had been poisoned. Twice.