Disaster Status Read Online Free

“Nana?”
    Her grandmother, tall and willowy and dressed in classic gabardine slacks and a shirt the same shade of blue as her eyes, smiled warmly from behind a sawhorse barricade. She brushed a wavy tendril of rust-colored hair back into her tidy upsweep, before waving heartily. “Apparently I’m not to be allowed in.” She raised her fist. “And I’m thinking of marching in protest!”
    Seventy-seven-year-old Iris Mallory Quinn had done that more than once in her youth. And had a scrapbook of clippings to prove it. Erin walked over to her grandmother and hugged her over an awkward expanse of sawhorses. “No more agitators, please,” she teased, nodding toward the remaining pair of environmental protestors hoisting blue umbrellas and No Poison Rain signs. “We’ve had enough to deal with. Seriously, why are you here? You found my note?”
    “Note? No, I haven’t been home yet. Actually, I saw you on TV,” Nana explained. She smiled at the confusion on Erin’s face. “The chamber of commerce said the community’s biggest need for volunteers is right here at the hospital. So I came to apply. Can you imagine, volunteering at the same hospital I worked for way back when?”
    Volunteer . . . here?
    Her grandmother continued. “When I saw the newscast, I hurried down to be sure you were okay.”
    Erin saw the concern in her eyes, the same shadow of anxiety she’d bravely tried to hide all the long months her husband was dying. Erin made a mental note to do whatever she could to discourage her grandmother from accepting a volunteer position. She didn’t need to be around any more sickness and tragedy.
    Nana sighed. “Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and give you a kiss, darling.” She looked past the barricades to where Scott McKenna stood guard. “Except I’m not allowed in. That man does everything by the book, believe me.”
    “Hmm,” Erin said, hoping the terse firefighter had at least been polite with her grandmother. If he hadn’t, well . . . Erin patted her grandmother’s hand and nodded. “I’ll call you before I leave for home. It shouldn’t be long. But right now I need to talk with Captain McKenna.”
    She watched until her grandmother made it safely back to her car, then walked toward Scott.
    But before she could get to him, a reporter shoved a microphone in her face. “Amy Carson, Action News, here with . . .” The heavily made-up and rail-thin blonde squinted to read Erin’s makeshift name badge, a strip of adhesive tape scrawled with a magic marker. “Yes, we’re talking with Pacific Mercy Hospital employee Eric Quinn, RN. Will you answer a question for us, Eric?”
    Eric? Erin frowned, hoping it was her hasty penmanship and the shapeless OR scrubs that accounted for the gender mistake. “It’s Erin. And I don’t have anything to say.”
    “Can you at least confirm that one of your staff, the wife of a local paramedic, was successfully treated for symptoms of this very toxic exposure?”
    “No.” Erin took a step back from what appeared to be a camera lens the size of her head. Where on earth was the hospital’s public information officer?
    “No? You’re saying the treatment wasn’t successful?” Amy Carson raised a well-sculpted brow and pressed eagerly forward. “There’s been a fatality?”
    “Fatality . . . fatality?” A hungry roar erupted from the gathered news crew, and several reporters surged forward as if someone had thrown raw meat. A second and then third microphone were thrust at Erin’s face.
    “Channel 7 news, Eric. What exactly is the hospital doing to ease panic among the patients? Is it true an OB patient called an ambulance to transport her newborn out of harm’s way?”
    What? “Please, I can’t comment.” Erin stepped backward again, stumbled over a traffic cone, and struggled to regain her balance. She caught a familiar scent of citrus mixed with smoke, seconds before a strong hand gripped her arm from behind.

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    After Scott