“No. He asked, and it made sense. I was going to check you out of your room anyway. No need to pay for something you weren’t using. Besides, we still don’t know who is out there,” he said.
“True.”
The door opened and the nurse returned with a plastic cup with ice and ginger ale as well as a pack of saltine crackers. “Let’s see if you can keep these down before they bring you a tray. No need in your trying to eat if you can’t and just throwing it up.”
“I like your frankness,” Quinn said.
The nurse rolled the tray table into place and sat the drink down before she opened the end of the cracker packet for her. She also pulled a paper towel from the dispenser near the sink in the room and laid it on the tray.
Quinn opened the straw wrapper and put it in the cup, adjusting the bent straw to the right angle before she took a sip. The soda burnt going down her throat from where she had been intubated. She swallowed a few times before she finally took a cracker out of its wrapper and broke it into two pieces. She nibbled on the end of it. Then she took a sip of the soda through the bent straw again.
“That was good,” she said and pushed the table down the bed from her. “I think I need to rest.”
“You should try to take another bite,” Grimm said. “Or drink some more fluids.”
“Really. I can’t. I need to rest.”
He looked from Quinn to the nurse. “Something isn’t right. She shouldn’t be responding like this. Can you call her doctor?”
“I really don’t th–” the nurses’ words were cut off by the monitor Quinn was hooked up to suddenly going off.
Quinn began to jerk like she was having convulsions.
The nurse pushed the nurse call button. “I need help, stat.”
She moved the tray table out of the way and lowered the bed so that Quinn was lying flat. By that time two more nurses, a male and a female, had raced into the room and Quinn’s doctor had arrived.
Grimm stepped away from the bed to allow them to work with her wondering what was going on. He walked over to the tray table, picked up the plastic cup, and sniffed the contents. It smelled okay. He removed the straw and took a small sip. It even tasted okay.
Sitting it down, he picked up the other half of the cracker she’d broken in two. He smelled it. Nothing strange there. He took a small bite. Same.
He felt fine.
That meant it wasn’t those, but possibly something in the saline bag the nurse had hung when she came into the room before Quinn woke up. He’d trusted the doctor when he’d said Quinn would be safe here, but that didn’t mean whoever had stabbed her hadn’t found a way into the hospital to poison things coming into her room.
He raked his fingers through his hair and began to pace as time ticked on waiting for them to finish working with her. It seemed like forever before they parted, and she was sitting up in bed again as if nothing had happened.
“Was she poisoned?” he asked.
“Why do you ask?” the doctor questioned.
“Because someone put a toxin in her shower head before we left Altoona. It wouldn’t be out of the question that that same person who stabbed her would find a way in to tamper with her saline bag or something.”
“Were they able to determine what kind of toxin it was that she was exposed to? Mixing that with anesthesia in itself could have caused this reaction.”
“The CI unit was still running tests on the substance when we left. I can call Detective Phillips and see if he can give us the exact name of it,” Grimm said.
“Please do. It will help us know if she could have other complications.”
Grimm made the phone call and it went to the detective’s voicemail so he left a message asking him to call him back immediately and explained why it was so urgent.
“Let’s move her back up to the ICU for observation. And let’s have registration change her name to an alias while she’s here. If someone is trying to get to her then we need to make it absolutely impossible for them to find her,” the doctor said. “Also, cover her with a sheet as if she has passed away when you take her from the room in the event this room is being watched. Even take the elevator down to the morgue if you must before going back up to the ICU floor to be precautious.”
The male nurse nodded. “I’ll take her.”
Grimm grabbed Quinn’s toiletry bag he’d brought.
One of the female nurses opened the door and the male nurse pushed the bed out into the corridor and passed the nurses station to the elevator. Grimm followed, hearing the murmurings of those working the floor as they watched the solemn procession go by.
