Chapter 10: The Orderly

I made the drive in ten minutes.

Jude sat in the passenger seat with a hand on the dash, and Ollie drove, and none of us said a word about the speed.

"Stay behind me," I said, getting out.

"No," Jude said.

"You have a bullet in your heart."

"And you have a father on four."

I didn't have time to win that argument.

The fourth floor of Mercy General was quiet at that hour, trays rattling, a television murmuring from a room.

Bree stood at the nurses' station, arms crossed, eyes on a man in a blue orderly's coat.

He stood outside room 412, pushing an empty wheelchair back and forth over the same square of floor.

He wasn't wearing a badge.

His shoes were wrong, too.

Good brown leather, not rubber soles.

"Hi," I said, walking up.

He turned.

It was the beige suit's cousin, or his twin: heavy face, flat eyes.

"Can I help you, ma'am?"

"I'm Glenn Hallett's daughter. I'm a nurse on this floor. I know everyone who works here."

"I'm new."

"Which department?"

"Transport."

"What's your supervisor's name?"

His eyes slid down the hall.

"Look, lady..."

"Great, I'll ask the charge nurse."

I raised my voice, clear and friendly.

"Bree! This man says he's new in transport, but he has no badge. Do you know him?"

Heads came up all along the corridor.

A nurse stopped with a medication cart.

A woman in a visitor's gown peered out of room 410.

"No," Bree said, loudly, "I do not."

"Security," I said, "could you come to the fourth floor, please?"

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