Sammy Keyes and the Kiss Goodbye Read Online Free Page B

want to seek a physician’s help for his condition. “Your snoring’s been shaking the walls since I got on shift,” she said as she checked Sammy’s vitals. “If that didn’t wake this girl, nothing might.”
    “What was that?” Sergeant Borsch asked, because Nurse Joanna had muttered the last part and the lawman was still fighting through the thick, sticky cobwebs of a nightmare in which he was strapped down on an operating table while a man in a ski mask held a scalpel over his heart.
    “Nothing,” Nurse Joanna replied, unwilling to repeat something she shouldn’t have said in the first place.
    But Gil Borsch was still transitioning from one nightmare to another and was having trouble picking up on obvious clues. “Did you say she might not wake up?”
    The nurse fiddled with Sammy’s IV bag. “Aren’t you supposed to be posted
outside
the room?”
    This did not answer the question, but it did bring the lawman’s questioning to an immediate halt, as it reminded him that he was there under false pretenses. And regardless of how legitimate those false pretenses might
seem
, since there had been no official watch ordered for Sammy, not only would his deception get him booted from the ICU, it would put him in major hot water at the station.
    “Sleeping on the job’s nice work if you can get it,” the nurse added, tossing him a scowl as she left the room.
    Clearly, Nurse Joanna knew how to deflect and destroy. And although it was only 5:45 a.m., Gil Borsch’s mood was, indeed, destroyed. (Not that he ever woke up chipper, but in addition to the bad dream and the bad news, his bad sleeping posture had given him a bad kink in the neck.)
    He got up and hovered over Sammy. “Wake up, would ya?” he growled, and when there was no response, he reached in and nudged her. “Sammy! Sammy, wake up!”
    He was answered only by the silent blipping of her heart monitor. And the more he stood there, watching, the more the peaceful look on Sammy’s face tortured him. What was with that angelic look? Where was the little hellion he’d grown to love?
    Perhaps it was a form of emotional survival (or maybe just the call of addiction), but after he’d spent another minute searching Sammy’s face for answers, his thoughts turned to coffee. He could feel a headache creeping up on him from behind, and experience had taught him that he needed to take it out before it had a chance to get a stronghold. (Or, in this case, join forces with the kink in his neck, which he also knew from years of experience was a wickedly crippling combination.)
    So he needed coffee.
    Now.
    Unfortunately, he was faced with the complications of his lie. During a
legitimate
police watch placed on a patient, the attending officer couldn’t just leave his post. One officer would relieve another, round the clock, until the watch was lifted.
    But he needed coffee.
    Now.
    Asking at the nurses’ station seemed like a dead end. Besides, there was the whole shaking-the-walls thing, and Gil Borsch did have a certain level of pride. He did not want to be the butt of jokes at the nurses’ station, but since he most likely already was, he didn’t want his face associated with those jokes.
    Still.
    He needed coffee.
    Now!
    Thinking through his options, he realized he did have a couple of things going in his favor: First, since he’d conducted his “watch” from inside the hospital room, therewas the distinct possibility that his absence would go (by and large) unnoticed. And second, just a few yards away at the end of the hall was a door marked EXIT that (according to the door’s graphic) accessed a stairwell.
    Together these conditions would provide a surreptitious departure if he could manage to get to the exit door without being seen.
    Now, it did cross his mind that he was a cop.
    One who prided himself in walking the straight and narrow.
    At designated intersections.
    Between the white lines.
    (Which is why jaywalkers sent him into such a tizzy.)
    So