Critical Condition by CJ Lyons Read Free Book Online Page B

stride—everything she didn’t feel. She pushed through the doors to the ER and saw Jason, the ER day-shift desk clerk, sitting at his usual place behind the nurses’ station, playing a handheld video game as he lounged in a well-padded office chair.
    “Have you seen Nora?” she asked, scanning the patient board. Still slow. Only two patients, both marked as discharged. Gina took a banana nut mini-muffin from the basket in front of Jason and crammed it whole into her mouth, unable to resist. It took everything she had to fight the urge to grab the entire basket and gobble them all down. So much for calm and confident.
    “She and Jim Lazarov just headed out to triage. How’s Jerry?”
    Gina choked on a last swallow of muffin, forcing it down even though it gouged her throat. “A little better. I guess.”
    “Remember that news guy who got hit in Iraq? They removed like half his skull, but a year later, he’s walking and talking and back doing the news.”
    It was the same kind of miracle story everyone kept sharing with her. But they had the opposite effect on Gina—as if for every other person she heard about who beat the odds, it meant that Jerry’s chances at a winning ticket in the traumatic brain injury lotto were diminished. But she nodded her thanks anyway.
    Surreptitiously, her hand jammed deep into the pocket of her sweater, Gina slid a cigarette from the pack she’d bought off the patient in the elevator and rolled it between her fingers. Wondered if she could sneak outside for a quick smoke before heading back up to Jerry. Maybe grab some cookies from the lounge on her way back. Her need to binge tasted like burnt caramel—made her salivate with anticipation as she allowed her urges to stampede over her willpower.
    Even better would be the pain when she purged. Pleasure and pain, spiraled together in a macabre dance, that was her. A whirling dervish. Out of control. Just like her life.
    Gina hadn’t given in to her eating disorder since Jerry was shot—weeks of restraint, surely she deserved one little binge? It would feel so good.
    The thoughts and emotions sprinted through her mind. She forced them aside, turning a calm façade to Jason. “Was there a guy here, looking for Lydia?”
    Jason snorted. “Suit. Flashing a badge and a gun—you’d think after the shootings, they wouldn’t let anyone with a gun in here.”
    Unfortunately the hospital security guards, like the entire hospital, were seriously short-staffed and administration had temporarily forbidden them from carrying any weapons other than pepper spray—which, in Gina’s mind, made them more liabilities than assets.
    She continued to caress the pack of Marlboros in her pocket as she fought to keep her attention on what Jason was saying. “So the guy with the suit and the gun, where did he go?”
    “When I told him he’d have to talk to Mark Cohen if he wanted any info on an attending, he grabbed a copy of the schedule.” Jason gestured to a ripped remnant of paper hanging from his well-ordered corkboard. “Too bad it was an old one. From before Lydia broke her arm. It listed her as working today, so he’s probably combing the hospital for her.”
    Gina didn’t like the sound of that. “Which way did he go?”
    “Mark blew him off the first time around.” Jason jerked his head toward the ER department head’s office. “But I think the suit headed back for round two.”
    “Thanks.” Gina jogged down the maze of corridors to Mark Cohen’s office. The door was closed, which was unusual—if Mark was here, his office door was always open. She pushed it open without knocking and walked in to find a man sitting in Mark’s chair, rummaging through his desk. “Can I help you?”
    The man jerked his shoulder, but otherwise hid any signs of being startled. “You’re not Dr. Cohen.”
    He stated it as a fact, dismissing her. He was about Jerry’s height, just shy of six feet, brown hair, brown eyes, totally unremarkable.