Page 82 of Tough Justice

Raised voices came from the corridor. Suzie and another nurse rushed past with a crash cart. As much as she wanted to run down the hall and help, she had her own patient who was counting on her. Tori patted the boy’s shoulder, giving his mother a meaningful look. “You’ll be fine, I promise. No more trampoline for a while.” If she ever had children, there’d never be a trampoline in their yard. Kids loved them, but they were responsible for an outrageous number of broken bones.

After finishing with her patient, she followed the direction of the crash cart and found ER 4 crammed with medical personnel. Ethan was no longer there, but Wil was. The man who’d been shouting lay on the table, unmoving. Leads from his chest led to a cardiac monitor. The flat green line indicated his heart had stopped.

Suzie and the other nurses looked to Wil, waiting for direction.

Wil glanced at the clock on the wall. “TOD six-oh-five.”

Time of death? Tori couldn’t believe it. The man had been fine less than thirty minutes ago. “What happened?”

“Heart attack,” Wil said, remorse evident in his eyes. “Came on out of nowhere.”

While Suzie unhooked the leads, Tori did a quick visual assessment of the man’s body. He was younger than she’d originally thought, maybe thirty-five tops, and in relatively good shape, judging by the muscles in his arms. The only thing seemingly wrong with him had been what looked like a relatively minor wrist injury.

Half an hour later, she was still disturbed by the man’s death. Something wasn’t right about the whole incident. And the argument she’d overhead between Ethan, Wil, and the now-dead man… The man had been given something in Sheridan? Something that had nearly killed him. But neither Ethan nor Wil practiced medicine outside North Metro, so what did that mean?

Tori stopped in at the nurses’ station. “What was the name of the man who just died?”

“Damon Sanchez,” someone said.

She came around the desk and sat in front of a computer. After entering her username and password, she pulled up Sanchez’s chart. He’d come in for a deep laceration in his wrist. For someone so young, he was taking small amounts of potassium chloride. Officially, he was Ethan’s patient, with Wil supervising as the ER’s attending physician. Every doctor knew that potassium supplements were often prescribed to prevent or treat hypokalemia, low blood levels of potassium. If not controlled, too little or too much potassium in the blood could result in a heart attack.

She scrolled down to see what he’d been given in the ER. The portion of the record prior to going into cardiac arrest was blank. If Wil had been holding a syringe and used it, Ethan would have entered the injection in the man’s chart.

Worry buzzed in her head like a mosquito that refused to fly away.

Tori looked up to see Wil leaving ER 2.

“If anyone needs me, I’ll be grabbing coffee in the lounge,” she overheard him tell the nurses. “And when you see Dr. Dexter, tell him to join me.”

Tori watched him disappear down the corridor. Had Ethan made another mistake? Regardless, that wouldn’t stop Sanchez’s family from digging into what happened. She needed to talk to Wil when Ethan wasn’t around.

She scooted back the chair and headed for the lounge. When she pushed through the door, Wil was pouring coffee into a mug. He turned abruptly, sloshing coffee onto the front of his coat.

“Shit.” He jumped back. More coffee spilled from the cup, splattering the tips of his shoes. He set down the cup then yanked off his coat and began running the stained portion under cold water at the sink. “Great.” Taking the dripping coat with him, he headed to the doctors’ locker room.

Tori leaned against the counter, waiting for him to return. A locker slammed shut, then Wil came back, shrugging into a clean coat and refilling his cup as if nothing was wrong. As if a man hadn’t just died for no explicable reason.

She crossed to the locker room, cracking open the door to verify they were alone, then returned to the kitchenette. “We should talk.”

“About what?” To her astonishment, he actually looked as if he had no idea what she wanted to discuss.

“Isn’t it obvious? About the man who just died.”

He took a sip of coffee. “What about him?”

Wil had to be joking. “I just looked at his chart. There was no medical reason for him to die of a heart attack. He came in to have a laceration sewn up. That’s it.”

“You looked at his chart?” Her friend frowned. “He was Ethan’s patient, not yours.”

“I was concerned. I’m worried for Ethan, and I’m worried for you.”

“Why?”

She still couldn’t be certain she hadn’t seen a syringe in his hand. “There’s no record of Ethan giving him anything.”

“That’s because he didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”