The Devil's bed

The St. Croix Regional Medical Center stood on a hill overlooking Stillwater and the St. Croix River. The wing that housed the trauma intensive care unit faced east, with a good view of the historic old town and of the broad, beautiful river that had been designated a national scenic riverway. The rooms in trauma ICU were all single patient rooms situated around the central nurses’ station like spokes around the hub of a wheel. The lovely view from the windows was lost on Tom Jorgenson. He lay unconscious in his bed, living through tubes and wires. His head was wrapped in a thick gauze turban. His eyes were black as a raccoon’s, as if he’d been beaten. A tube from a ventilator snaked down his throat. Another tube had been inserted into the side of his chest. Lacerations and bruises covered his arms. Even to Bo, who didn’t love him nearly as much as did Annie and his daughters, he looked like death already.

Bo didn’t enter the room, just stood in the doorway. Keeping vigil at that hour were Ruth and Earl. Ruth Jorgenson, who’d kept her maiden name after marriage, had a successful law practice in St. Paul and was the attorney for her father’s Institute for Global Understanding. Like most attorneys with whom Bo was acquainted, she always seemed to be long on responsibilities and short on time. However, sitting at her father’s bedside, reading aloud fromWind in the Willows, one of Earl’s favorite books, she appeared to be in no hurry at all. Bo knew from his own experience that tragedy had this effect. It slowed the world so that every second of life counted. Earl sat near her, listening with a big smile on his face as she read.

Bo returned to the nurses’ station where he’d previously flashed his ID. The nurse there, a stout woman with silvering hair and a name tag that identified her as Maria Rivera, R.N., asked, “What can I do for you, Agent Thorsen?” She spoke with a slight Hispanic accent.

“Can you tell me who treated Tom Jorgenson last night?”

“Dr. Mason was in charge in the E.R. I believe she oversaw the treatment of Mr. Jorgenson herself. Let me just check the chart.” She started to reach toward a rack of charts filed by room number but stopped abruptly and snapped sternly, “Mr. Cooper, stop that.”

Bo followed her eyes. A large aquarium tank sat on a stand against one wall of the Trauma ICU. The bottom of the tank was covered with colorful marbles. An old man in a white robe had his arm in the tank, almost up to his shoulder.

“You put those marbles back.”

The old man opened his fist, and an array of marbles sank back to the bottom.

Nurse Rivera shook her finger at him. “You wait right there. Don’t move.” She dialed a number and spoke with exasperation, “Mr. Cooper is up here again. You’d better bring a dry bathrobe.”

The old man looked duly chastised. He waited until an orderly arrived, and he let himself be led away.

Nurse Rivera shook her head. “He means no harm. He comes up from the geriatric unit on the floor below. The marbles have some significance with his childhood, I think. If we don’t watch carefully, he takes a handful and disappears. He ought to be restrained, I suppose, but he’s really no danger to himself. Just a nuisance to us. Now then.” She pulled Tom Jorgenson’s chart. “Yes, it was Dr. Maggie Mason.”

“Is she on duty now?”

“I’m not sure. I’d be glad to check.”

“Thank you.”

Bo waited while she made the call. Waited uncomfortably. He hated the smell of hospitals, a smell that took him back to the days when Freak was dying and the doctors could do nothing but try to make him comfortable. Bo had never felt so helpless. He and Otter had sat at the bedside, taking turns holding their friend’s hand while the life slipped away little by little until Freak was gone and no one but Bo and Otter seemed to have noted his passing.

“Agent Thorsen?”

He came back mentally. “Yes?”

“Dr. Mason’s in the E.R.”

Bo headed to the elevator and pushed the signal button. When the car arrived and the doors opened, a man stepped out. He was a hard man to miss. The first thing that caught Bo’s attention was the scar tissue. It was thick and agate colored and bubbled up from beneath his shirt collar to spread over his neck and right cheek. His right ear didn’t look natural, and Bo was certain it had been reconstructed. Bo stepped back to let the man pass, then got on the elevator himself.

He caught the doctor between patients, a fisherman with a hook imbedded deep in his thumb and a seven-year-old boy who’d fallen from a garage roof and was being prepped for an X ray.

“I’m interested in the blow to Mr. Jorgenson’s head,” Bo explained.

Dr. Mason, a woman in her late forties and with long dark hair just beginning to streak gray, glanced up from the intake form she was scanning. She didn’t seem pleased at the interruption. “Which one?”

“What do you mean?”

“There were two blows. One to his forehead.” She indicated a place above her right eye. “And one to the back of his head.”