Deadly Diversion: A Medical Thriller Read Online Free Page A

Judyth frowned.
    “This is a reportable incident, a license violation.”
    She pressed her hands down on the desk and levered herself up to her full six feet. “You don’t call anyone,” she said with emphasis. “You don’t talk to anyone about this.” She handed the incident report back to me. “You just get up there...” she nodded toward the ceiling “...and take care of the people you’ve got.”
    I was dismissed.
     
    “JESSIE’S IN WITH Huey right now,” I told Father Rudolf, who had come in right after lunch. “She should be out in a minute.” Rudolf glanced at his watch. “I just need to tell him I’ve set up the meeting he wanted.”
    “Meeting?”
    “Uh, just someone he needs to talk to.”
    “A lawyer?”
    “I can’t talk about this, Monika.”
    “I just need to know if it’s going to compromise his condition.”
    Father Rudolf smiled. “If anything it’s going to help. He’s going to feel a lot better afterward.”
     
    “THAT MAN WHO JUST LEFT,” I asked Ruby later, coming onto the unit from my office. “What was he doing up here?”
    Ruby had the phone cradled on her shoulder and she didn’t look up. “A visitor, that’s all.”
    “Who was he visiting?” I said, my voice rising.
    “What you getting so bothered about, girl? He just in talking to Huey.”
    “Is he a relative?”
    “I ain’t got time to shoo people out. They want in, they in.”
    Although hospital policy restricted visitors to ICU to immediate family only, we’d been bending the rules lately, trying to keep patients and visitors alike happy. We needed the business.
    “Who?” Serena asked, walking up.
    “That guy in with Huey,” Ruby told her. “Probably one of his army buddies. Miss Nosy here wants a report on everyone coming and going. I ain’t got time fer all your questions.” She dropped the phone in its cradle with a thump.
    “You know him?” Serena asked me.
    “Is Huey okay?” I asked her, without answering.
    “He kinda gives me the creeps. With that arm and all.”
    “Just check on him.”
    She gave me a puzzled look as she turned toward his room.
    Dog, that was what he was called when I’d known him. I never knew his real name. His droopy jowls and sad eyes made him look as if his face had been made out of rubber that had been released from its mold too soon, causing his face to sag. No telling his age. He had the same rolling walk I remembered, too. He was a runner for the some of the bookies in town. I felt my face getting warm as I remembered the times when he’d picked up my money wrapped inside a slip of paper shielding my choice of numbers for that week. Since the lottery had become legal, though, the numbers’ business had dropped off. I thought they had gone out of business. Maybe Dog was the person Father Rudolf said Huey wanted to see.
    But it hadn’t made him feel better. When Serena came out of his room she said Huey was upset and in more pain. Serena checked his chart and told Jessie that Huey could have another shot.
    “That should help,” Serena said.
     
    “WE LOST ONE TODAY,” I told BJ when she joined me at Dolph’s Restaurant later.
    BJ had been my best friend since childhood. We had grown up together in the Dutchtown neighborhood of South St. Louis, long home to the city’s German immigrants. Both our families descended from those earlier settlers, and the Southside remained a close-knit community. Most people, though, had moved farther south and west as inner city decay had encroached into the area. Dolph’s bordered Dutchtown where it met up with the Holly Hills neighborhood, where I had moved.
    Tall, blonde and blue eyed, BJ looked typically German, and although I had fair skin and blue eyes, my short stature and the coal-black mass of unruly curls that I kept cut close to my head hid my ancestry.
    Now BJ was a St. Louis city cop.
    She laid her cap on the seat beside her and rubbed the crinkled red line on her forehead that the cap had left. Sweat stained