Deadly Choices

Chapter 1

“Psst. Annie.” After a long career on the stage projecting her voice so ticket holders in the theater’s back row could hear a whisper or shout equally well, Mrs. Moore’s voice was probably audible at the far end of the nursing home parking lot. Amused, I stepped into her room, wondering how many people up and down the hall heard her signature, ”Psst,” and turned down their TVs to hear Mrs. Moore’s newest scandal. Her gossip was always more entertaining than watching people eat bugs.

Propped against the headboard of the narrow sleigh bed she brought from her childhood home, she leaned forward and beckoned me with a crooked finger. Her eyes sparkled with gleeful anticipation. “I have an unbelievable story. You will especially love this one.”

She tapped the edge of her bed to indicate that I come closer. I did. Mrs. Moore had a gift for uncovering damning secrets. The weirder the better. I loved her gossip, even when I was the butt of her searing wit. There aren’t many laughs in nursing homes.

“You will not believe what happened last night. They…” We both jumped at a shriek from the hall followed by the sound of shattering glass.

“Be right back.” I ran. Hair standing on end in wispy gray clumps, a toothless woman resembling one of the dried apple dolls sold in the West Virginia mountains crouched in the middle of the hall. An array of glass shards glittered at of her feet. A radiant smirk of triumph lit her usually expressionless face.

Jill Quigley, the aide who works with me on the evening shift wrapped her arms around the old woman’s torso in a firm embrace; I lifted her feet. The old woman did not resist. She had made her protest. We lifted her back to her bed, put up the side rails and moved all breakables beyond her reach. Her smile stayed put. I bent and put my cheek against hers. “I know, Gertrude. I wish you could be in your own house too.” She patted my head.

The moon was full, always a wild time in a nursing home. Shrieks are frequent, an un-remarked part of a nursing home’s ambience. But the sound of shattering glass triggered the patients’ barely suppressed hatred of their current helplessness. Mayhem reigned for the next two hours. Well-meaning family members often brought flowers in glass vases. We would find glass shards behind furniture for the next week.

When I finally had a free moment, I slipped into Mrs. Moore’s room. I closed her door behind me and froze. There was absolute silence. Even at rest, a subtle hum of sound emanates from the living. She was dead. Her mottled arms spilled over the sides and dangled below the narrow bed’s edge. Pooling blood tinged the tips of her fingernails in a macabre manicure of lurid red. They matched her lipstick. She would have liked that.

My tears blurred the sight of her still face. I noted the time and automatically went through the dry routine of verifying her death.

The door opened. Jill appeared at my side. “Oh Lord, Annie. She’s dead, isn’t she? What could have happened? She seemed perfectly normal when I got her ready for bed.”

“She had a bad heart. I imagine it just gave out. She looks peaceful. Whatever happened, it didn’t hurt.”

“Who closed her eyes?”

“Interesting question.” I considered Mrs. Moore’s calm face. “Maybe she fell asleep.”

 Jill shook her head. “Not likely. She was too full of herself. Like a four-year-old waiting for Santa Claus. Razzed me while I put on her stage makeup then told me I had missed my calling. I should have been a make-up artist, not someone who creates oversized oil paintings of dead factories.” Jill swiped at her eyes. “Damn! Why did it have to be her instead of some dork we wouldn’t miss?”

She glanced at her watch. “I’ll get the morgue gurney and help you shift her. Can I give you a hand washing off her makeup?”

I considered the artificial bloom of health on Mrs. Moore’s round face and shook my head. “You know what? I’m leaving it on. Her chart says she’s to be cremated without a service of any sort. The men from the funeral home will be her last audience. She would hate facing them with a bare face.”

Jill sighed. “Wish I could be there when the guys from the funeral home get a load of her make-up.”

“Yeah. Makes me hope there’s a heaven and she’s watching them.”  

I patted Mrs. Moore’s arm. “You would enjoy the whole scene, Mrs. Moore. You always did have a whacked out sense of humor.” Jill went to get the morgue gurney without comment. She’s used to me.

I talk to dead people. Not because I think they hear me; more as a gesture of respect for the person I knew them to be. A psychiatrist overheard me talking to a newly dead woman when I started working at the nursing home. He looked startled then recovered and said it was probably my way of grieving. I guess that’s better than being told I’m crazy.

When Mrs. Moore was ready to be wheeled back through the hall, Jill glanced at her watch. “Oops. It’s almost twelve. Do you mind if I don’t go to the morgue with you, Annie? I don’t want to be late for my date. I think it might turn into a sleep-over. And I don’t get enough of those.”

I did mind, but said, “Of course not. Have fun.” I worked hard to hide the fact that I fear the morgue, even from Jill. I hate my irrational side and do my best to keep my fears to myself. The morgue’s association with death did not bother me. It was the room itself. I have a selective form of claustrophobia. Small spaces and elevators do not worry me. I can be jammed into a subway car with barely enough room to take a breath and feel nothing more than irritation at the people around me who fart. But I can not even read about miners trapped underground or imagine exploring a cave without feeling as though my heart is trying to leap out of my chest.

In the nursing home basement, the elevator door opened on an echoing hall across from the dark kitchen. Like the upstairs hallways, bland prints and watercolors of generic country estates hung on the upper half of the walls above soft green wainscoting in case a patient or visitor ventured into the basement by mistake. When I pushed the gurney through the double swing doors prominently marked, ‘DO NOT ENTER,’ at the end of the kitchen corridor, the pleasing aesthetics stopped abruptly. Only staff or people from the funeral homes came this way.

I shuddered the minute the heavy hall doors whooshed closed behind me. Overhead, a line of sparse forty-watt bulbs in wire cages lit the rust stained cement floor just enough to make creepy shadows that shifted as I moved. Dark storerooms lined the corridor. These were full of discarded medical equipment that looked like props in a Frankenstein movie. My eyes did their usual involuntary side-to-side flicker just to make sure no one was lurking in the storerooms. Probably not, but it never hurts to check.

The morgue’s oversized doors opened into the hallway at the far end. Once inside, I flicked on the lights in the anteroom.  My heart was already banging in the staccato tempo of a Flamenco dancer’s heels. I had the doors to the refrigerated room where the body would be stored opened and secured in record time. Breathing in as little of the dank, old-death tainted air as possible, I shoved the gurney against the far corner so hard, Mrs. Moore’s body bounced. Before I could turn and dash out, the switch in the outer room clicked and the lights went out. I shrieked. Sensing a presence behind me, I lashed out and landed a blow on what felt like a stomach. Barely lit by the hall lights, a dark shape that looked like an arm lunged at me and shoved with so much force I catapulted forward, whacked my chin on the gurney and crashed to the floor. The door slammed shut behind me followed by the unmistakable sound of the latch clicking into place and the dull thunk of the hall door closing.

Bleating little panicky shrieks, I struggled to my feet, slid my hand along the wall, found the door and whacked the handle. “Shit! The push bar’s still broken.” I pounded on the door. “Help. Help, I can’t get out.” I whacked my hip against the push bar, hoping repeated tries might force it to release. Nothing. I banged on the door some more. “Help! Help! Help! I pounded and shrieked until my throat was raw, my hands and hip bruised.  I finally sagged against the cold steel and listened. The only sound was the whir of the fan relentlessly forcing cold air through the vent in the ceiling behind me. I had been abandoned. At this thought, a trancelike calm forced the panic to the edge of my mind. “Abandoned. I know all about that. I just have to concentrate.”

My chin hurt and still dripped blood. My palms were abraded and both wrists hurt. I took my small flashlight out of its holder and pressed the switch. Adequate for checking throats from a distance of less than a foot, its tiny, high intensity beam was about as useful as a jar of fireflies. I aimed it at my watch. 1:03 in the morning. I had been screaming and pounding for just over an hour. I did not know all the maintenance men. Some new hire without imagination could have turned off the light not knowing the latch was broken then was pissed off when I belted him and decided to give me a scare. Or maybe he was afraid I would get him fired, closed the door and ran down the hall, assuming I could get out.

My cell phone was still hooked up to the charger in my car. Most of the nursing home was inside a black hole so I rarely bothered to bring it inside.

Within seconds, I was shivering. When this changed into hard shuddering, I knew I had to do something before my core temperature dropped to the point where I would not be able to recover without a heater. Hypothermia kills people.

I aimed the pale beam of light at Mrs. Moore. Three sheets. A doubled one under her and two more on top. Not much insulation from the relentless blast of cold air that would continue without pause until everything in the room was below forty degrees.

“I’m sorry I have to take the sheets, Mrs. Moore. I wouldn’t if there were any other way to keep warm. When I get out of here, I promise I’ll put them back over you before anyone sees you.” I patted her shoulder Hands already clumsy with cold, I rolled her side to side, pulled out the sheet beneath her and draped all three sheets on her stomach. I checked the pockets in the utility case hanging from my belt and found bandage scissors, a roll of paper adhesive tape and two large safety pins.

Wrapped in the sheets with tape and pins securing them close to my body, I jumped up and down to stop shuddering. When I stood still, the chill resettled into my bones within minutes and my teeth chattered. “Shit, I have to do something more.”

I aimed the light at Mrs. Moore. No time for sentiment; the flashlight beam was fading. I tore two strips from the bottom edge of the makeshift sarong, looped and knotted one of these around Mrs. Moore’s right ankle, bent the leg at the knee and forced it back as far as her bulk allowed. Leaning all my weight against the leg, I tied the narrow strip of sheeting to a side strut then repeated the process on the other side. The coroner would flap, but there was no time to worry about postmortem marks on her body; I was running out of fuel. I pulled out the pillow under Mrs. Moore’s head then cringed when her head banged the gurney. “Sorry, sorry.”

Grateful for the diaper we always place on newly dead patients, I climbed onto the gurney and tucked myself between Mrs. Moore’s encircling legs with my back to her lower abdomen. Knees up to my chin to conserve as much warmth as possible, I looped the tape around her left calf, across her pillow, now covering me from chin to just above my toes and around her right leg. Hands tucked under this makeshift mini-quilt, I hugged myself as much for comfort as warmth.    

Was this whole incident just an innocent mistake or did someone hate me enough to kill me? Mind-less panic skidded back into the center of my mind. I dug my nails into the soft skin above my elbows and fought the urge to leap off the gurney and throw myself at the door. Screams I couldn’t fight back echoed off the unhearing walls again and again then diminished into hoarse wails. My tear soaked face pressed against the pillow; I slumped into a nightmare-filled doze.

I woke rigid with horror. I could not allow myself to sleep. I had to stay alive. My son, Luke, dreaded being different from the other kids in school. Seventeen years old, he was one of those kids who spent his life trying to be invisible. Not easy when you are six feet, four inches tall and always at the top of the honor roll without trying. Even in a relatively permissive environment, there were kids who made snide remarks about his too young, never married mother. They would have a field day if his mother died of hypothermia tucked against a corpse’s groin. The fact that Mrs. Moore had been famous at one time meant the story would probably make it into the local newspaper.

I wiggled my toes and fingers, shrugged my shoulders and flexed my thighs and calves to stay awake, but kept dozing fitfully then startling awake to painfully stiff legs and aching joints. I turned on the failing flashlight just long enough to check my watch. 2:34. I listened for sounds from the floor above me. Nothing. The morgue was under the physical therapy room. No one would be there at this time of night. Even if I shrieked, no one was there to hear me. When did the physical therapist start? At ten?  Was there something I could use to pound on the ceiling if I heard noise above me? I could stand on the gurney. Something metal. My flashlight? No way. I need the flashlight even if its light is only a faint glimmer.

The uncomfortable feeling I was forgetting something nagged at me. Something important. Something to do with physical therapy. Oh God! It’s Saturday. No one has therapy on weekends.

The next time I checked my watch I think it was 3:10. I find it easier to clock someone’s pulse rate with my old analog watch so I still wear it to work. The beam from my flashlight had dimmed to little more than a glimmer. Like trying to read by moonlight. I had to squint to see the hands on the watch clearly.

I started shivering. Not good.  I could be here until Monday when Mrs. Moore’s lawyer got the message I left on his machine and called a mortuary to have the body picked up. Could I last that long?

I checked my watch. The big hand was close to the four and the little hand seemed to be pointing at the twelve. The flashlight was fading too fast. I had to stop checking the time and just work harder to stay awake.

Maybe someone would die. I did a quick mental survey. No one obviously at the brink on my floor. The patients on the second or third floors had a couple of maybes. There was only slight discomfort at the macabre turn of my thoughts. It was not as though I were wishing anyone dead.  But if some patient who was done with life were to pick tonight to die I would be grateful. If the poor soul had no family, the nurse would not even wait until the end of the shift to bring the body to the morgue.

Checking my watch was now a reflex. This time, before I turned on the flashlight, I stopped myself. It did not help to watch time going by. More important, I needed to know there was still a promise of light, however faint. Better to think of possibilities for rescue.

Wilton McLoughlin, Mrs. Moore’s physician was at the shore. The woman at his answering service said he had standing instructions he was not to be called over the weekend for any reason. The covering doctor could sign the death certificate.

Luke was on a weekend fishing trip with a friend. If previous experience predicted behavior, they would show up at my house Sunday afternoon with barely enough time for Luke to grab a change of clothes and shoot back out the lane without time to notice I was not there.

Adam Moyer, my lover for the last two years, was in England. We were together three days ago. He would have no reason to call.

A sudden noise jolted me fully alert. I heard the outer hall door open. Two men were arguing. “What idiot set this thermostat at thirty degrees? And how come you didn’t hear the alarm when the temperature went below thirty-two degrees?”

“Don’t gimme grief,” a deeper voice cut in. “I been up on three west repairing the sink the nurses use.”

“Hey! Let me out!” My voice sounded like the croak of an ancient frog. I tried to get off the gurney to pound on the door, but could not make my legs move fast enough.

There was a moment’s silence then a worried voice said, “You hear something?”

“Maybe. Whaddya think it is?”

The comment about the thermostat set at thirty degrees suddenly sunk in. Someone did try to kill me. I was so jolted by the realization that this grim scene was not a mistake, I shrieked, “Let me out. It’s Annie Marsh. Open the door!”

Light flooded the morgue. Two of the maintenance men stood framed in the open doorway, mouths open. “How come you’re in the morgue? You could’ve froze to death!” one man said.

“I think that was the point.” My mouth felt so stiff it was hard to form intelligible words.

“They could’ve killed you. Why would anyone wanna do that?” The younger man sounded indignant.

Mrs. Moore’s legs had stiffened against my sides pinning me in place. The harsh overhead light revealed coarse hair, vivid against the waxen skin on her thick calves. Pooled blood mottled the flesh above each band of tape. She deserved better. “Can you guys help me down? I’m stuck.” Once on the ground, I had to hold on to the gurney to keep from toppling over.

The older man reached for my arm. “You want us to carry you?”

I shook my head. “Just help me undo her legs and get out of these sheets. I promised to cover her up as soon as someone opened the door.” The men exchanged uneasy glances.

“Damn it, I’m not nuts. I know she’s dead…” Tears welled up and spilled down my cheeks. “Either cut the ties or give me your utility knife. My hands are too stiff to untie knots or undo safety pins. I don’t need your editorial comments even if they aren’t out loud.”

Mumbling apologies, they helped me out of the sheets wrapping me and freed Mrs. Moore’s legs. Rigor had begun so they did not lie flat but she looked more dignified. I bent, kissed her icy cheek, said, “Thank you,” and covered her. 

With a man on either side, I limped to the lavatory down the hall from the kitchen. My shirt front was speckled with already drying blood and the cut under my chin was going to need stitches. I tipped my head back and re-tied my hair in its usual neat pony-tail.

My watch said it was 7:04. The day shift had just started. Seven hours of cold had tinted my cheeks and lips a rosy pink that would have been attractive if it weren’t for my steadily dripping, visibly swelling, deep magenta nose. Bloodshot, my dark gray eyes were a good match for the black circles ringing them. I looked like a bag lady after a long binge on a bitter January night.

My feet were so swollen I had to untie my shoelaces. Their plastic ends clicked on the cement floor with each step as I limped into the now busy kitchen. The cook ladled out a bowl of hot, rich onion soup. Huddled on a stool with a blanket wrapped around me, I clutched the hot bowl.

“I called Doctor Hess. Don’t you think you better go to the hospital?” The older man said. “I’ll drive you. You can’t drive, shaking like that.”

I did not know what to do. It was hard to stay awake, let alone think clearly. My head felt thickened, as though iced blood sludged through my brain too slowly to nourish the cells. I imagined myself thawing like a flash frozen chicken: my core still ice, my outside skin still chilled and hard to the touch, but slowly softening around the edges.

The two men hung around clearly embarrassed that they had been tempted to flee the area when I first spoke. “I mean, you really sounded like dead people sound on TV, you know? Kind of croaky and weird. You don’t blame us for being spooked, do you?” I shook my head and did my best to smile without drooling hot soup.

The kitchen door banged against the wall. We all jumped and turned. A tall, red-faced man with thinning, sandy hair strode through the door, his portly shape emphasized by a baggy maroon and black striped warm-up suit. He was clutching a tennis racket. “Well, I see you got yourself locked in the morgue and horribly desecrated the body of one of our clients,” he said.

I was not sure what to say to this, so did not reply.

This was the medical director, Doctor Armond Hess. He handled patients well, but had no idea how to set the right tone with the staff. An ambitious man, he had humble beginnings, a fragile ego and made the mistake of staying in the small, ultra-conservative town of his birth where memories were long and charity short. He stratified people based on perceived position. Doctors ranked high. Therapists were next. Nurses were a good step farther down his ladder of importance. Maintenance men were at about the same level as nurses. Aides, particularly the male aides were on the bottom.

I baffled him. I was unfailingly polite, but clearly did not believe he was my superior in anything other than title. I alternated between pity, irritation and contempt. I tried hard to mask these feelings, but suspected that he knew.

A suggestion of unease crept into his voice. “Why are you shaking?”

“Hypothermia.” A sudden flare of irritation made me shake even more. It took all the self-control I had not to shriek what was crossing my mind, “Shock, asshole, what the hell do you think happens when you get locked in a freezer for seven hours?” But I didn’t. In a monotone made tremulous by my shivering, I just said, “And shock from being in a freezer all night.”.”

“Freezer? The controls are at thirty-eight degrees. Just where they’re supposed to be.”

“When we got there they was set below freezing just like Annie says,” Ralph, the older maintenance man declared. He was the head of the maintenance department, the only one who knew how to keep the heating and air conditioning systems going. In an old nursing home, this amounted to tenure. “And there ain’t no one’s gonna make me believe Annie’s stupid enough to turn them controls down herself!”

“Who would bother to push a nurse into the morgue and turn down the temperature?” I noticed he did not address the fact that I had not been able to get out of the morgue without help.

“Someone who knew the inner latch is broken.” My voice was as stiff as I felt.

His face paled around the edges of his tennis tan but he did his best to maintain the upper hand. “Why didn’t you report it if you knew the latch was broken?”

“I did. Two of my reports were signed by the Director of Nursing and by you, as Medical Director.” I got off the stool with difficulty, clutched the blanket around my still shaking shoulders and turned to the older man. “I think I’ll take you up on that offer of a ride to the hospital, Ralph. I’m beginning to feel rotten.”  I turned to Dr. Hess. “If you want to see the reports you signed, call my lawyer, Bill Shoemacher. He has them.”

“You can’t give a lawyer any of our internal documentation. That’s a breach of confidentiality.” Doctor Hess sputtered.

“I was the first one to report it. It was never fixed. I decided I might need copies of the signed acknowledgements to protect myself against lawsuits.”

Doctor Hess shifted his tack. “What possessed you to tie up Mrs. Moore in such a bizarre fashion? Are you some kind of deviant?”

“Just practical. A two hundred pound woman holds a lot of heat.”

“How do you think it would make Mrs. Moore feel to have her body desecrated with such wanton abandon?”

“She would probably be laughing madly and looking around to find someone to share her newest bit of gossip.”