Tess Gerritsen - The Sinner

R IZZOLI STEPPED OFF the hospital elevator, strode past the sign announcing ALL VISITORS MUST CHECK IN, and barrelled straight through the double doors into the intensive care unit. It was one A.M., and the unit lights were dimmed to allow the patients to sleep. Coming straight from the bright hallway, she confronted a room where nurses were faceless silhouettes. Only one patient cubicle was brightly lit, and like a beacon, it drew her toward it.

The black woman cop standing outside the cubicle greeted Rizzoli. "Hey, Detective. You got here fast."

"She said anything yet?"

"She can't. She's still got that breathing tube in her throat. But she's definitely awake. Her eyes are open, and I heard the nurse say she's following commands. Everyone seems really surprised that she woke up at all."

The squeal of the ventilator alarm made Rizzoli glance through the cubicle doorway at the knot of medical personnel huddled around the bed. She recognized the neurosurgeon, Dr. Yuen, and the internist Dr. Sutcliffe, his blond ponytail an oddly disconcerting detail in that gathering of grim professionals. "What's going on in there?"

"I don't know. Something about the blood pressure. Dr. Sutcliffe got here just as things started to go haywire. Then Dr. Yuen showed up, and they've been fussing with her ever since." The cop shook her head. "I don't think it's going well. Those machines've been beeping like crazy."

"Jesus, don't tell me we're gonna lose her just as she wakes up."

Rizzoli squeezed into the cubicle, where lights shone down with a brilliance that was painful to her tired eyes. She could not see Sister Ursula, who was hidden within the tight circle of personnel, but she could see the monitors above the bed, the heart rhythm skittering like a stone across water.

"She's trying to pull out the ET tube!" a nurse said.

"Get that hand tied down tighter!"

"... Ursula, relax. Try to relax."

"Systolic's down to eighty"

"Why is she so flushed?" said Yuen. "Look at her face." He glanced sideways as the ventilator squealed.

"Too much airway resistance," a nurse said. "She's fighting the ventilator."

"Her pressure's dropping, Dr. Yuen. It's eighty systolic."

"Let's get a dopamine drip going. Now."

A nurse suddenly noticed Rizzoli standing in the doorway. "Ma'am, you're going to have to step out."

"Is she conscious?" asked Rizzoli.

"Step out of the cubicle."

"I'll handle this," said Sutcliffe.

He took Rizzoli by the arm, and his grasp was not gentle as he led her out of the cubicle. He slid the curtain shut, cutting off all view of the patient. Standing in the gloom, she could feel the eyes of other nurses, watching her from their different stations in the ICU.

"Detective Rizzoli," said Sutcliffe, "you need to let us do our jobs."

"I'm trying to do mine as well. She's our only witness."

"And she's in critical condition. We need to get her through this crisis before anyone talks to her."

"She is conscious, though?"

"Yes."

"She understands what's going on?"

He paused. In the low light of the ICU, she could not read his expression. All she could see was the silhouette of his broad shoulders and the reflection of his eyes, glinting green from the nearby monitor banks. "I'm not sure. Frankly, I never expected her to regain consciousness at all."

"Why is her blood pressure falling? Is this something new?"

"A little while ago, she started to panic, probably because of the endotracheal tube. It's a frightening sensation, to feel a tube in your throat, but it has to stay in to help her breathe. We gave her some Valium when her pressure shot up. Then it suddenly started to crash."

A nurse pulled back the cubicle curtain and called through the doorway: "Dr. Sutcliffe?"

"Yes?"

"Her pressure's not responding, even on dopamine."

Sutcliffe stepped back into the cubicle.

Through the open doorway, Rizzoli watched the drama playing out only a few feet away. The nun's hands were balled up in fists, the tendons of her arms standing out in taut cords as she fought the restraints that bound her wrists to the bed rails. The crown of her head was encased in bandages, and her mouth was obscured by the protruding endotracheal tube, but her face was clearly visible. It looked swollen, the cheeks suffused a bright red. Trapped in that mummifying mass of gauze and tubes, Ursula had the eyes of a hunted animal, the pupils dilated with fear, her gaze frantically darting left, then right, as though in search of escape. The bed rails rattled like the bars of a cage as she yanked against the restraints. Her whole torso lifted off the bed, and the cardiac alarm suddenly squealed.

Rizzoli's gaze shot to the monitor, where the line had gone flat.

"It's okay, it's okay!" Sutcliffe said. "She just disconnected one of her leads." He snapped the wire back in place, and the rhythm reappeared onscreen. A rapid blip-blip-blip.

"Increase the dopamine drip," said Yuen. "Let's push fluids."

Rizzoli watched as the nurse opened the IV full bore, unleashing a flood of saline into Ursula's vein. The nun's gaze met Rizzoli's in a final moment of awareness. Just before her eyes started to glaze over, before the last spark of consciousness flickered out, what Rizzoli saw, in that gaze, was mortal fear.

"Pressure's still not coming up! It's down to sixty"

The muscles of Ursula's face slackened, and the hands fell still. Beneath drooping lids, the eyes were now unfocused. Unseeing.

"PVCs," the nurse said. "I'm seeing PVCs!"

Gazes shot straight to the cardiac monitor. The heart tracing, which had been ticking rapidly but evenly across the screen, was now distorted by dagger thrusts.

"V tach!" said Yuen.

"I can't get any pressure! She's not perfusing."

"Get that bed rail down. Come on, come on, let's start compressions."

Rizzoli was shoved backwards, out of the doorway, as one of the nurses pushed toward the doorway and called out: "We've got a Code Blue!"

Through the cubicle window, Rizzoli watched as the storm swirled around Ursula. She saw Yuen's head bobbing up and down as he performed CPR. Watched as drug after drug was injected into IV ports, and sterile wrappings fluttered to the floor.

Rizzoli stared at the monitor. The tracing was now a line of jagged teeth cutting across the screen.

"Charged to two hundred!"

In the cubicle, everyone stepped back as a nurse leaned forward with the defibrillator paddles. Rizzoli had a clear view of Ursula's bared breasts, the skin blotchy and red. It struck her as somehow startling, that a nun would have such generous breasts.

The paddles discharged.

Ursula's torso jerked, as though tugged by strings.

The woman cop standing beside Rizzoli said softly: "I got a bad feeling. She's not gonna make it."

Sutcliffe glanced up, once again, at the monitor. Then his gaze met Rizzoli's through the window. And he shook his head.

An hour later, Maura arrived at the hospital. After Rizzoli's phone call, she had rolled straight out of bed, leaving Victor asleep on the pillow beside her, and had dressed without showering. Riding the elevator up to the ICU, she could smell his scent on her skin, and she ached from the rawness of the night's lovemaking. She had come straight to the hospital while reeking gloriously of sex, her mind still focused on warm bodies, not cold. On the living, not the dead. Leaning back against the elevator wall, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to savor the memories for just a while longer. One more moment of remembered pleasure.

The opening of the door startled her. She jerked straight, blinking at the two nurses who stood waiting to step in, and she quickly exited, her cheeks flushing.