“Why?” she asked.
I shrugged. “She didn’t say and I didn’t ask.”
She removed her gloves and washed her hands. “She’s pretty much stabilized. She thinks she hit her head on the driver’s side window and may have lost consciousness for a few seconds. I’ve given her something for her headache. No other complaints. Vitals are good and she should be going for a head CT any minute now.”
“You’re getting a compound femur fracture. He was medicated in the ambulance, but I haven’t given him anything since he arrived, though I think Dr. Daniels was entering orders for more pain medication when I left. Heart rate and BP are elevated. As soon as ortho gets here, he’ll be going to surgery.”
After I introduced myself and made sure she didn’t need anything, my patient was taken for her scan. “Code Blue, Room Two. Code Blue, Room Two.”
Son of a bitch. That was Roy’s room. I grabbed the crash cart and ran to the room to help. Dr. Alvarez was calling out orders while Dr. Daniels slapped the pads on Roy’s chest. We all watched the monitor for a heartbeat. Nothing. We followed the steps we all knew by heart but Roy never had a shockable rhythm and time of death was called.
“Cancel the ortho consult and see if the secretary got ahold of his son,” Dr. Daniels told Kennedy.
“I can do that if you want to swap patients again,” I offered.
“Don’t worry about it. You shouldn’t have to take care of him, dead or alive,” Kennedy said.
When she couldn’t get in touch with his son or find another family member to contact, I did help her take him to the morgue. “Let’s make this quick. This place creeps me out,” I said.
“Why? It’s just bodies.”
“Exactly my point.”
We helped the attendant slide Roy’s body from the bed to the metal stretcher. Even though I knew it was going to happen, it still scared the shit out of me. As soon as we moved Roy’s body, gasses shifted causing it to sound somewhat like he gasped.
“And I’m out,” I announced and quickly fled the room because fuck that. Noises and movements from dead bodies were not on the list of things I could handle.
Kennedy emerged minutes later laughing her ass off. “I wish I had a picture of your face!”
“Shut it, bitch!”
She responded with her own version of the death gasp.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Judge
I was in my office trying to get ahead of the jobs I had scheduled so I could take some time off during the week to spend with River on the days she wasn’t scheduled to work when I got a phone call from Copper.
“Where you at, brother?” he asked,
“In my office. Why?”
“Need to talk to you. I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he said and disconnected the call leaving me with an uneasy feeling.
When he arrived, he got straight to the point. “Roy Mayfield was in a car accident last night and died at the hospital as a result of his injuries.”
“What?” I shouted.
“Guess that means River didn’t tell you,” Copper surmised.
“No, she didn’t. How’d you find out?”
He smirked. “I have my ways, but that’s not the point. I also found out that Oliver Burgess is Roy Mayfield’s son. So, we should be able to get our hands on the little shit in the next few days.”
“Why does he have a different last name?”
“Fuck if I know. Does it matter?” Copper asked.
