Angel of Mercy Read Free Page B

analogy.
    “And just when you were supposed to teach me how to be a real detective, street smart.” She smiled. “I’m just glad you’ll be okay.”
    “Thanks.”
    “I’d better get to that report,” she said as she started to leave.
    “Hey, Flores.”
    “Yea?”
    “I still think you ought to marry that accountant and raise a flock of chicks.”
    She laughed and left the room. Frankie turned toward the wall. Alone for the moment, he permitted a small tear to emerge out of the corner of his eye, his way of saying goodbye to the young, determined, and dedicated policeman who had once inhabited his body.
    All the time he’d been in law enforcement, he’d worried about taking a bullet from the gun of some street punk, but now the bullet had come from within himself instead.
    Where does our youth go when it evaporates, he wondered as he lay back, waiting for his doctor’s return.
    The heart monitor beeped weakly and then suddenly went into a flat line.
    Faye Sullivan ran to the door of the hospital room and screamed:
    “Stat.”
    The unlucky intern on the floor, Dr. Brad Hoffman, looked up from the chart he was casually perusing and mouthed, “Oh, no.” It was, after all, his first emergency, his first time all alone. He dropped the chart and turned from the elderly man who had been staring at him with liquid, dark eyes and hurried down the floor to the private room in which Sylvia Livingston had been recuperating. Faye was performing CPR, but stepped back respectfully as soon as Hoffman appeared.
    The young intern looked at the monitor and at the patient and screamed for the defibrillator. Before he could request it, Faye Sullivan handed him a hypodermic of adrenaline. She smiled at him warmly and he gazed at her for a moment. Later, he would recall that smile. It was almost as if they were in the cafeteria and she had just handed him a cup for his coffee. There was also something very sexual about the way she focused on him and pursed her lips. It had made him hesitate a moment to gather his thoughts. Then he pulled back the sheet and injected the medicine directly into Sylvia Livingston’s heart muscle.
    The defibrillator was quickly wheeled in. He stared up at the heart monitor, hoping for a miracle before he began, but there was none visible. The line was deadly flat. He turned the defibrillator up to two hundred and placed one pad over Sylvia Livingston’s right breast and one just under her left.
    “Clear,” he cried. The jolt lifted the fifty-five-yearold woman off the bed, but the line on the monitor remained flat. He glanced frantically at Faye. Again she wore a soft expression, her eyes gentle, but this time her smile calmed him. He knew she was an experienced nurse, and he thought she was attractive, even beautiful in an angelic way. At that moment she looked just like a competent special-duty nurse should look, he thought: no panic in her face, no flood of emotion in one direction or another, just a quiet efficiency. It filled him with renewed purpose and he attempted to revive his patient again, turning the defibrillator up to four hundred. Once again, nothing changed. He tried again, and again it was in vain.
    When he looked at Faye this time, she shook her head softly. Just to go through the motions and convince himself and her he was doing all that he had to, he made one final attempt. The flat line didn’t change a split second. Hoffman stepped back. “We lost her,” he announced.
    “She looks peaceful,” Faye said, gazing down at the dead woman. No matter how many times she confronted it, Death was still fascinating.
    Sylvia Livingston’s eyes glimmered like stones under a cool mountain stream.
    Hoffman stared at Faye for a moment and then looked at the expired patient. Faye was right. There wasn’t any grimace; the patient’s face was in repose, the eyes glassy and still. Death had already made its claim and turned her into a specimen, Hoffman thought. She was quickly beginning to