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“I need to go to my place and pick up a few things.”
“All right.” When she didn’t immediately move, he added quietly, “I overheard a few comments from the experienced-looking docs who came out of there. Everyone seems to think it could have happened to any of them.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey.” He touched her arm, and she closed her eyes.
“Don’t. Not here.” The muscles in her shoulders and neck were tight, the steel rod of her will holding her up. “You probably should have stayed in the truck.”
“I had a different opinion. I wasn’t going to be more than a hundred feet from you while you were dealing with this.”
She glanced toward the waiting area. “Based on what I know of the auditorium’s square footage and the distance down this hall, I’d say you were about two hundred feet away.”
“Smart ass.”
A smile tried to reach her lips, but the effect was a rock hitting an already cracked windshield. The breaks started to expand in all directions, not just across the outside, but over what was holding her together inside. “Okay, let’s get out of here,” she said desperately.
He put a hand to her lower back. “Closest stairwell to the main floor is over here.”
Of course a fireman would have scoped the exits. But it wasn’t going to be that easy. As they approached the door, she saw a stocky woman with thick and tinted blond hair waiting for them. Agatha Needham. She was an ER nurse, one with special training for pediatric patients, hence her pink scrubs with puppies printed on the top.
She’d been on staff the night Llanzo was brought in. Both times. She was a good nurse, and had provided useful guidance to Les on her rotation.
“Be good to your nurses, because they’re your best chance of not killing anyone.” Dr. Jack had told Les and her fellow ER rotation students that. The male nurse standing at the duty desk had shot them a “you know that’s right” look that made them all smile, albeit nervously.
Had Agatha struggled with what happened as much as Les had? She expected Martin or someone else in Legal had talked to her, since they’d interviewed everyone involved.
“Hi, Les.” Agatha looked tense.
Les saw flint in Brick’s gaze and put a hand on his side. She could handle this, whatever it was. “Did you need to talk to me?”
Agatha seemed to consider the question. Her gaze traveled down the hallway, over the waiting room, and back to Les. She sighed. “Mrs. DaCosta…she lives near me. We’re not friends, but since we’re neighbors, she recognizes me. The night she brought Llanzo in, you might remember we were chatting when you examined him.”
Les hadn’t held onto that detail, since there were other far more significant ones about that night. But now she remembered. “I’m not sure what you want to discuss, and I definitely don’t want to be rude, but they told me not to talk about any of this.”
“I know. That’s not what this is about. I’ve been asked to pass on a message. I’ve struggled with it. I know what Legal would say, what anyone would say, even myself. But in the end, we’re all human, aren’t we? Even when they tell us not to react like one.”
Les’s brow furrowed. Brick’s hand had gone from a light touch on her lower back to a firmer, more supportive pressure. If something happened here that required it, she need only give him a sign, and he would extricate her from the conversation with a polite but firm dismissal.
As if she sensed that shift, Agatha glanced at him, then met Les’s gaze again. “I’m sorry if this is the wrong thing to do. You don’t have to act on it, but I felt like you deserved to make your own choice.”
She handed Les a piece of paper. “Mrs. DaCosta wants you to text her. She wants to meet with you, face to face. Just the two of you.”
“You think it’s a setup from the DaCosta’s lawyer? Trying to get you to say things outside the M&M they can use?”
Brick opened the passenger door of the truck, steadying Les as she used the strap to pull herself up into the seat. He stayed where he was after he asked the question, resting a loose wrist on the door. He gripped the cushioned head rest near her face, his foot braced on the running board.
He looked nice, she realized. Her mind had been on other things when they prepared for the drive this morning. Firefighter T-shirt tucked into belted jeans, his tan, thick-soled work shoes without scuffs. He’d shaved. He exuded reputable “first responder,” enough to have been unhampered by any desk checkpoints between him and the auditorium.
“I guess it’s possible. But my gut says no. She’s got to be in a terrible state right now. Her lawyer isn’t going to use her for some kind of sting operation. That could go just as badly for their side, if she gets emotional and says anything that could be used by the hospital to suggest she might have contributed to the situation. I’d like to say they wouldn’t do that, but we all know how court cases can go. I’m surprised she’s coherent enough to reach out and ask for something like this.”
But there were a lot of stages to grief, including those where the person fixated on things, tasks, anything to keep from drowning in that well of grief and loss. Realizing that thought contradicted what she’d just said, she sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the information. Maybe nothing. I’ll think about it over Easter.”
“If you want, I could run the situation past Tish, see what she says about the risks and what might be going on. We won’t use any names, but you can trust her not to take it any further than us.”
Les looked at her hands. “Mr. Sully says there’s already been local news coverage on it.”
“Aw, hell. I’m sorry, Les.” He touched her arm, a light stroke over her skin. She’d removed the coat, leaving her in the short-sleeved blouse beneath. “But all the more reason. Before she was an ADA, Tish was a corporate attorney for a pharmaceutical company. She handled her share of liability cases where people were seeking damages for physical or mental harm. You can trust her. I promise.”
