Chapter Three
Daniel stepped out of the driver’s warm, black Soul and snugged his coat tighter against the cold and damp. His good Italian shoes splat-splatted through the parking lot puddles. His briefcase held two roast beef sandwiches and Stephenie Meyer’s novel Twilight. Diana thought it amusing. Daniel couldn’t finish it.
A bored security guard checked Daniel’s ID, opened and closed the briefcase. He held up the book and said, “My wife wants to read this. Any good?”
“My sister liked it.”
“What about you?”
“Not my kind of thing,” Daniel said. “Give it to your wife with my regards.”
The guard thanked him more than the book deserved and motioned him through Harbor Hospital’s ER entrance.
Daniel hung up his coat and hat in the supply room, then plopped his briefcase onto the counter. He noted his co-worker Lou’s interest in the briefcase, but conversation was limited to floor and patient assignments for the night. He was sure this snoop was the one who got yesterday’s day shift’s lunch boxes and backpacks checked on the way out. Daniel quietly filled his cart with cooler, glassware, IV sets, and syringes to make his first set of rounds.
The comatose young marathoner in Trauma Care ICU bequeathed him a unit of O neg that Daniel stashed beneath his rack of blood draws.
Lou met up with Daniel in the lab for their first break and to unload their carts. They set vials with different colored caps into racks with matching colors. Lou wore a new lapel button that said, “The Vampire is in!” Daniel opened a gray-top vial and sniffed the contents.
“Hep C for sure,” Daniel said. “Inactive herpes.” He added a blank label under the patient’s name and placed it into its rack. “Wanna bet?” he asked.
Lou shook his head and didn’t meet Daniel’s gaze. “No, man,” he said. “I lost to you three times last night. I’m a believer.” He crossed to the coffeepot to pour himself a cup and again showed interest in Daniel’s briefcase over the coat rack. “That looks expensive,” he said. “Real leather?” He felt the pebbled exterior, examined the clasp.
“Ostrich,” Daniel said. He walked over to the briefcase, opened it wide enough that Lou couldn’t help seeing inside, and pulled out a sandwich.
“I can’t believe you eat in here,” Lou said, with a head shake. “Some days I’m nervous just drinking coffee in here.” He took a sip and turned to point at their carts. “Think about what’s in all that glassware. Viruses. Spirochetes. Jesus!”
Daniel couldn’t help himself. Through a mouthful of roast beef on rye he asked, deadpan, “Jesus in the glassware?”
“No, no. Viruses and spirochetes in the glassware. ‘Jesus’ for emphasis.” He pointed to Daniel’s sandwich and made a face. “Do you cook that roast beef at all? Godawful bloody mess!”
Lou was the most humorless person at Harbor Hospital, in Daniel’s experience. Also, the nosiest about co-workers’ personal lives. While focusing on the briefcase, he hadn’t seen Daniel toss back the contents of an extra purple-top he’d drawn.
As if reading Daniel’s mind, Lou asked, “Hey, when do I get to meet that mysterious sister of yours? She seeing anybody?”
“I’d love to introduce you, Lou. How about tomorrow after work?”
Lou shook his head. “Off tomorrow,” he said. “Visiting my parents in Tualatin for their anniversary. How about Saturday? Does she like to dance?”
Daniel took the last bite of his sandwich, tossed the wrapper into the garbage and brushed crumbs off his lab coat. “She loves to dance,” he said. “And wrestle. Saturday’s perfect.”
Lou perked up. “Wrestle? Really?”
Daniel invented an address and phone number, then wrote it on one of the labels and handed it to Lou.
“Wow, Hunter, thanks! I thought you didn’t like me.”
Daniel almost slipped to correct his name: “Cazador,” his new ticket to freedom.
Darius Hunter’s dead in a couple of hours, he thought.
Daniel clapped Lou on the shoulder. “It’s not that I don’t like you,” he said. “Just don’t know you.” He pushed his cart to the door. “Here we go for round two.” He had to hurry to lift another unit from the abdominal cramping in 206 before the floor nurse got there.