"Whiplash."

"From falling off the display counter."

"Hey!" Mrs. Carlson was yelling as she swung a lovely maroon silk bra like a lariat over her salon-blond head. "Hey, damn it! I'm hurtin' in here! Somebody out there call me a nurse!"

"If I call her a nurse," Timmie asked, "does that mean she has to call me a drunk?"

"She lookin' for you, girl," Mattie informed her.

"Not me," Timmie assured her, hands up so she couldn't land the chart. "Drunks don't like me. Especially friends of Jack."

More truthfully, Timmie didn't like drunks. And bourbon drunks were much, much worse. Timmie detested bourbon drunks. She couldn't so much as smell the stuff without wanting to vomit.

"In that case, it's curtain number two," the triage nurse said with a smile, which was when Timmie heard what she should have all along, wafting over from room three like an evil miasma.

"Help!... Help!... Help!"

"Oh, no." She moaned, recognizing the sound. High, quavering, relentless.

"Mrs. Clara Winterborn," Mattie announced with a grin, her head tilted as if she were identifying a rare birdcall.

"Help!... Help!... Help!"

Timmie's stomach hit her knees. "She's a frequent flier, isn't she?"

"Memorial Med Center's Gold Ambassador Club."

Timmie grabbed the chart. "You guys set me up."

"It's hell being a hero," Mattie assured her and laughed as she walked off into Mrs. Carlson's room.

"I don't suppose there's a third option, is there?" Timmie all but begged.

"Being pulled to rehab for the shift," the triage nurse offered with a nasty grin. "They're short and we're not."

"That's obscene."

"No, it's not. Being pulled to Restcrest is obscene."

Timmie gave in with little grace. "I'm playing this game under protest."

Nobody listened. She turned around and trudged toward her penance.

Mrs. Clara Winterborn, the chart read. Eighty-nine years. Complaint: fever of unknown origin. Address, Golden Grove Nursing Home. Timmie sighed and stepped into the room, to be assailed by the stench of old urine and new bedsores. A brace of nervous, almost identically fidgety women in their sixties hovered at the head of the cart, evidently unable to do more than groom the few tufts of white hair left on the head of the creature in the bed.

A bird. A tiny, frail, bent bird. Mouth open, eyes wide and empty, body curled in on itself, wrapped in blue Chux, tied in place with Posey and wrist restraints, propped into frozen position with half a dozen pillows. The North American Gomerus decripidus, Timmie heard her first nursing supervisor intone in her head. More frequently referred to as the Common Gomer, the moniker being an acronym for Get Out of My Emergency Room. Those patients who seemed to break down faster than old Fords, never got better, and used up all of medicine's time, talent, and tenuous empathy on their decaying, brain-absent bodies. The worst nightmare in medicine.

"The nurse is here, Mother!" one of the women screamed in the creature's ear. "Everything will be all right now!"

"Help!... Help!... Help!"

"She has a fever," the other said. "Golden Grove should have called us sooner. They know how anxious we get when Mother is ill."

The old woman had bedsores and contractures and about as much meat on her brittle little bones as a picked-over Thanksgiving carcass. Timmie spent a frantic moment searching the record for some kind of signed stop-treatment form. She didn't find one. She wished she were surprised.

"How long has she been... ill?" she asked.

Another quick smile and pat. "Mother's been at Golden Grove about ten years since her first stroke, haven't you, Mother? I think we're in here about once every other month. We know some of the nurses so well, we send them birthday presents."

Timmie turned away with the excuse of getting out gloves, blood tubes, and thermometer. What she was really doing was hiding her rage. Her blind, flashing frustration at these two very nice, very sincere women who spent their waking hours torturing their mother because they loved her.

Not only that, they tortured her in a place that shouldn't even be allowed to elicit confessions from Inquisition prisoners, much less treat helpless old ladies. If Mrs. Winterborn had been a cat, the ASPCA would already have had Golden Grove up on charges of cruelty to animals for the kind of care they gave her.

"Hello, Mrs. Winterborn!" Timmie yelled close to her ear without getting any response. "What's the matter?"

"Help!... Help!... Help!"

"Timmie Leary, to the desk," Ron intoned over the PA, as if she weren't four feet and a curtain away.

"What?" she called out as she wrapped a blood pressure cuff around that wasted arm.

It was Barb who stuck her head in the door. "The chief wants you. Something about Billy Mayfield's chart?"

Great. Another complication. Timmy noted a pressure of 110/56, probably high for old Mrs. Winterborn, and nodded. "In a minute. You know the Winterborns, Barb?"

"Of course she does," one sister said with delight. "I hope you liked the cookies, Dr. Adkins."

Timmie ignored the exchange to finish her quick evaluation, which produced a catheter bag full of foul-smelling, cloudy urine, atrial fibrillation on the monitor, and a definite rattle over the left chest. A couple of tubes of blood later, she traded places with Barb and prepared to face her supervisor.

"Timmie Leary, line one," Ron intoned over the PA.

Timmie stopped long enough to wash her hands before heading for the phone, all the while praying it wasn't a new problem. "Timmie Leary-Parker," she said in a rush.

Nothing.

"Hello?"

Empty space.

"Ron?" she asked, hanging up. "That wasn't Cindy, was it?"

The secretary looked up from where he was reading GQ. "Cindy?"

"She's baby-sitting for me tonight."

"Not unless she's taking testosterone, honey. That was a man."

Timmie spent a blank moment staring at the phone, her stomach doing a sudden dive. "A man. And he asked for me?"

"By name. He wasn't there?"

She shook her head, now decidedly unhappy. "It better not be who I think it was."

Ron forgot his GQ. "Mad stalker?"

"Worthless ex-husband. He calls again, get a name, okay?"

"Is it worth getting his phone number, too?"

Timmie finally laughed. "He doesn't do guys. He doesn't even do girls. He does intimidation." She did everything but shake herself off. "And on that happy note, I'm off to see Angie."

Ron rolled his very expressive eyes. "I'll pray for you."

"Help! Help! Help!" Mrs. Winterborn screamed.

"And, Ron," Timmie said on her way by. "Have Barb help that woman."

* * *

Angie McFadden had an office on the other side of the waiting room, where she couldn't be bothered by noise from the ER she allegedly supervised. Timmie knocked on the pressboard door to what had once been a supply closet and stepped in to find not just Angie waiting for her, but a middle-aged man as well. The mystery guest was in his fifties, balding, with a salt-and-pepper beard and the pocked, pasty skin of a career smoker. He wore a Mobile work shirt with Tucker sewn in script over the left pocket, and passed the time fondling an unlit cigarette.