A/N Just a quick note before I start. I wanted to thank everyone for
reviews to date and also a big thanks to the people who emailed me, it made
sure that this was never far from my mind, even if it did take a while to
finish.
I hope this doesn't seem to dwindle into nothing and has been worth the wait. I'll apologise now for any type-o's, I'm so keen to get this up. I am now complete! (
Thanks again to everyone for keeping reading. Take care.
Jo. xx
PARTNERS IN CRIME
DISCLAIMERS AS BEFORE
Chapter 15 - Truths Revealed
"My goodness. You've been through all that in the past couple of days?" asked Maria between mouthfuls of what could only be described as brown slop.
"Uhuh. What is this stuff anyway?" asked Jesse. Maria shrugged.
"Meatloaf!" said Steve confidently.
"And you can tell that how?" asked Jesse, "If you sent it to the lab you'd be lucky if they could find traces of anything that is even remotely edible."
"Anyway, Susan," Amanda interjected as curiosity finally got the better of her, "you never told us why Jocelyn Smart wanted to kill you."
* * * * *
The group, which had now grown to eight, say in a quiet room tucked down a corridor seemingly at the back of beyond. The room was something like an on- call/sleep room. The 'engaged' sign on the door had been flicked across, so they would not be disturbed.
The walls were a calming heather colour, a soft purple-lilac. There was one small window, covered by a metallic blind. There was a row of halogen lights inset in the ceiling and a desk lamp on the small lamp. At the desk was a chair, on which Steve sat. there was also a small sofa, which was the refuge for Susan, Maria and Jesse, and on the bed sat Amanda and Mark. C.J. and Dion sat in the middle of the floor on a couple of cushions from the sofa.
* * * * *
"Where do I start?"
"The beginning would be good." Jesse started back. Maria shuffled uncomfortably between Susan at one end of the couch and Jesse at the other. She guessed that she had gotten herself into the middle of a somewhat prickly situation.
"I trained with Jocelyn. We were both registered at the same time and my big brother, Tommy used to be in lots of clubs and societies with her brother, Clarke at school. As a group you could say that we were inseparable and that our connections ran very deep."
"Clarke?" Steve interrupted. "Wasn't that the train guard's name?"
"Yeah." Amanda smiled. "The one you said would make a lovely couple with our Ms. Smart."
"Thanks for the reminder, Amanda. And I have to say, I think that it was rather unfair of you to remind me that I was wrong about one tiny little detail."
"What's that Cupid?" Jesse grinned slyly. "You were getting ready to set them up on a date for a minute there!"
"Hey, I got that they were the pair, I just figured it in slightly the wrong context."
"Carry on, Susan." Mark urged, eager to get to the bottom of things.
"Well, Clarke and Joss used to get on real well with Tommy and me; we would all go out bowling, to the movies."
"Susan, how do you account for the age difference between you all?"
"Well, Tommy's the oldest in our family and he went to school with Clarke. I was a late arrival, but because the boys grew up together I knew the family real well. Then, as I said, I trained to be a nurse with Joss, she may be older than me but we both began training at the same time."
"Why was she so late starting nursing?"
"I told you before, Joss has a brilliant mind. I mean, she is so clever, but her high intelligence means that she always needed to be challenged, everything she did until she began nursing was mundane to her. Nursing allowed her to connect with people, something that didn't come easily to her, so there was the element of challenge involved. She thrived on challenge. That was where the trouble started."
Maria shifted in her seat uncomfortably. She had followed the proceeding with her eyes as one might watch a game of tennis. She made to stand up.
"Perhaps I should leave you guys to it. You don't want me in here holding things up." Maria stepped towards the door.
"Don't feel that you have to leave, Dr. Hart." Jesse said. "We might need your help. Someone that knows the lie of the land. We want. I mean, I want you to stay."
"Oh." Maria blushed. "Call me Maria, please."
"Maria, please stay. Besides, if you go it means that I have to sit next to HER and I don't think that I could stomach that."
"Oh, stop it, Jesse. You're behaving like a spoilt brat."
"And you, Susan ROBINSON, have no regard for other people. As long as Susan is all right, then that's fine with you."
"Oh and like you always put in so much effort. "Fancy getting a bite to eat, Susan." I hope for something romantic, and all nice and quiet, but no! It's always BBQ Bob's."
"Hey! What's wrong with Bob's?" Steve asked, deeply wounded. His question, though, seemed to go unheard.
"You never had time for me, Jesse. It was always the hospital that came first, one of those little research projects and drug trials, or Bob's or any other of your countless and more important obligations!"
"At least I was always honest with you!"
"Will you let the whole Greg thing drop?"
"I'm sorry Susan, but no I cannot. As time goes on I wonder how many more things you have hidden from me."
"Oh, that is so rich coming from you. Lecturing me on trust! It wasn't me who flirted with every woman I met, pretty or otherwise, who came within a forty kilometre radius."
"Susan, I never."
"No, Jess. Look at you. You're even flirting with her."
"I am not!"
"Yes, Jesse, you are. "Please stay." "We want you to stay." If that's not flirting, then I don't know what is."
"How dare you say that about me? I was not flirting with Doctor Hart! What do you think I am?"
"I refuse to answer that on the grounds that might incriminate me! Come on Maria. Dr. Travis there's flirting with you. Does it make you feel special? Even if I tell you about all the other girls he's tried before. They were all flattered at first, but each of them saw the light. It only serves to make me wonder what took me so long to realise. So, Dr. Hart, how do you feel? How do you feel?" Maria Hart just sat as still as a stone. She did not know quite how to react. "Well?"
"Leave her out of this, Susan. This is your mess and you and that HUSBAND of yours have dragged the rest of us into it. You risk all of our lives, you kill your husband, whom you claim you love so much and is incomparable to me on so many levels, yet you really don't seem too bothered about it all. Still you've not told us why you dragged us all here. Come on Susan, it's time the procrastination stopped!"
"Well, you're not letting me get a word in edgeways."
"You've already said too much without explaining anything. So please stop wasting our time, tell us why we're here so that we can sort out your mess and I can get back to something that matters."
"So, I meant nothing to you?"
"Snap out of it, Susan. You're head won't get through the door otherwise. Your halo will get stuck."
"Oh, now I remember why I left you."
"Why you left me? You've only just remembered? He was a chiropractor called Daniel Robinson. You forget about your husband, you know the one that's dead. What kind of a wife are you?"
"One that would do anything for her husband and one that wanted to protect her friends. And, believe it or not, I wanted to protect you."
"You wanted to protect us, did you? Well tell me then Susan, why did you lead those two homicidal maniacs to us?"
"They'd already found you before Jesse, don't you get it?"
"Well, let me see. No. I do not."
"Jesse, stop it. Let Susan speak, the sooner you let her talk, the sooner we can get something done, sort this mess out and get out of here."
"Fine Mark," Jesse grumbled, "but she's not making any sense."
"Let her finish. Susan?"
"As I said before I was interrupted, Joss found nursing to be a challenge. She was in her element. It was the first time in her life that she was able to form genuine bonds with someone, other than me, of course. Then she started working in the ITU. She ran a very tight ship and was meticulous to say the very least. She would work with all the people who had debilitating conditions, people who had poor quality of life, she began to love these people and she began to feel with them too."
"What did she do Susan? Why does she want to kill you, and why does she want to kill us." Steve asked.
"Joss also worked for a very brief while at Community General, I had only just started work there and I was still finding my feet. She was just a temp and worked round all the wards; surgery; the ER; ICU, you name it.
"Anyway, Joss felt so aligned with her patients, those who were terminal, those with progressive conditions that would lead to a vegetative state, dependence or helplessness and anyone who asked her, she euthanised. She would inject them with something. The cases were terminal in many cases, there was no need for an autopsy. Either that or she would inject air into their system. She would give them an air embolism and cause them to die."
"That's exactly what she did with Daniel!" Amanda said.
"How did you find out about that? What she was doing?" Steve asked.
"I happened to walk by one day, I saw her through the window, the rooms were like goldfish bowls so you could see right in. Anyway, I saw her standing over this patient, the end stages of MND, much longer and the woman would have been in a very bad condition. I saw her inject the woman and I knew she had had her meds. because I had given them to her earlier on. She stayed in there for a while until the machines started beeping, the cardiac monitors made such a din, but she switched them off as soon as they had started, I saw her. Then she came to the nurse's station a couple minutes later and told us that the woman had died. After that, I kept my eye on her."
"What's that got to do with her time at CGH?" Mark questioned.
"When she was in the ER, several critical trauma cases that Jesse worked on died. Yes, they were in a serious condition, but they would have recovered. Maybe not completely, but they were alive. Jesse had worked so hard to save them and yet they died. Their injuries, again were sever enough not to warrant an explanation but she was frightened that Jesse might notice a pattern. All the critical patients of his that died, he had worked on with her. I had my suspicions, but there was nothing substantive. I guess that I was afraid, both of what she might do to me and that I might lose my job. I was so frightened."
"She killed MY patients?" Jesse turned a very funny shade of red. "I can't believe that she killed my patients."
"She thought that if I had gotten in touch with you, saying what I knew, you could dredge out the records from Community General and that we may be able to start building a case up against her. So she tried to kill me. Then she followed Daniel, and Daniel led her to you."
"I see that there was a certain amount of reconnaissance work that went into this." Amanda commented. "No one could accuse her or her brother of not going the full mile."
"That's quite a story you've got yourself there, Susan." Mark concurred. "We have to find out where they are now and devise a plan."
"Dad." Steve warned.
"I think we got ourselves some criminals to catch." Steve groaned. Jesse brightened at this and Steve groaned.
"Mark, what about the boys?" Amanda was concerned
"I could find somewhere they could stop here."
"I can't ask you to look after them, Maria." Amanda said.
"Hey, I'm coming with you. I was thinking of finding a nurse we could leave them with."
"Susan should stay here. She can look after C.J. and Dion. I think that it could be too dangerous."
"You want me to stay here and play babysitter?"
"I think that it would be best." Mark attempted to reassure, though Susan didn't seem quite so convinced.
The next bit was the most difficult. They had to some up with a plan of action. They had to find some what they could get to Jocelyn and Clarke.
I hope this doesn't seem to dwindle into nothing and has been worth the wait. I'll apologise now for any type-o's, I'm so keen to get this up. I am now complete! (
Thanks again to everyone for keeping reading. Take care.
Jo. xx
PARTNERS IN CRIME
DISCLAIMERS AS BEFORE
Chapter 15 - Truths Revealed
"My goodness. You've been through all that in the past couple of days?" asked Maria between mouthfuls of what could only be described as brown slop.
"Uhuh. What is this stuff anyway?" asked Jesse. Maria shrugged.
"Meatloaf!" said Steve confidently.
"And you can tell that how?" asked Jesse, "If you sent it to the lab you'd be lucky if they could find traces of anything that is even remotely edible."
"Anyway, Susan," Amanda interjected as curiosity finally got the better of her, "you never told us why Jocelyn Smart wanted to kill you."
* * * * *
The group, which had now grown to eight, say in a quiet room tucked down a corridor seemingly at the back of beyond. The room was something like an on- call/sleep room. The 'engaged' sign on the door had been flicked across, so they would not be disturbed.
The walls were a calming heather colour, a soft purple-lilac. There was one small window, covered by a metallic blind. There was a row of halogen lights inset in the ceiling and a desk lamp on the small lamp. At the desk was a chair, on which Steve sat. there was also a small sofa, which was the refuge for Susan, Maria and Jesse, and on the bed sat Amanda and Mark. C.J. and Dion sat in the middle of the floor on a couple of cushions from the sofa.
* * * * *
"Where do I start?"
"The beginning would be good." Jesse started back. Maria shuffled uncomfortably between Susan at one end of the couch and Jesse at the other. She guessed that she had gotten herself into the middle of a somewhat prickly situation.
"I trained with Jocelyn. We were both registered at the same time and my big brother, Tommy used to be in lots of clubs and societies with her brother, Clarke at school. As a group you could say that we were inseparable and that our connections ran very deep."
"Clarke?" Steve interrupted. "Wasn't that the train guard's name?"
"Yeah." Amanda smiled. "The one you said would make a lovely couple with our Ms. Smart."
"Thanks for the reminder, Amanda. And I have to say, I think that it was rather unfair of you to remind me that I was wrong about one tiny little detail."
"What's that Cupid?" Jesse grinned slyly. "You were getting ready to set them up on a date for a minute there!"
"Hey, I got that they were the pair, I just figured it in slightly the wrong context."
"Carry on, Susan." Mark urged, eager to get to the bottom of things.
"Well, Clarke and Joss used to get on real well with Tommy and me; we would all go out bowling, to the movies."
"Susan, how do you account for the age difference between you all?"
"Well, Tommy's the oldest in our family and he went to school with Clarke. I was a late arrival, but because the boys grew up together I knew the family real well. Then, as I said, I trained to be a nurse with Joss, she may be older than me but we both began training at the same time."
"Why was she so late starting nursing?"
"I told you before, Joss has a brilliant mind. I mean, she is so clever, but her high intelligence means that she always needed to be challenged, everything she did until she began nursing was mundane to her. Nursing allowed her to connect with people, something that didn't come easily to her, so there was the element of challenge involved. She thrived on challenge. That was where the trouble started."
Maria shifted in her seat uncomfortably. She had followed the proceeding with her eyes as one might watch a game of tennis. She made to stand up.
"Perhaps I should leave you guys to it. You don't want me in here holding things up." Maria stepped towards the door.
"Don't feel that you have to leave, Dr. Hart." Jesse said. "We might need your help. Someone that knows the lie of the land. We want. I mean, I want you to stay."
"Oh." Maria blushed. "Call me Maria, please."
"Maria, please stay. Besides, if you go it means that I have to sit next to HER and I don't think that I could stomach that."
"Oh, stop it, Jesse. You're behaving like a spoilt brat."
"And you, Susan ROBINSON, have no regard for other people. As long as Susan is all right, then that's fine with you."
"Oh and like you always put in so much effort. "Fancy getting a bite to eat, Susan." I hope for something romantic, and all nice and quiet, but no! It's always BBQ Bob's."
"Hey! What's wrong with Bob's?" Steve asked, deeply wounded. His question, though, seemed to go unheard.
"You never had time for me, Jesse. It was always the hospital that came first, one of those little research projects and drug trials, or Bob's or any other of your countless and more important obligations!"
"At least I was always honest with you!"
"Will you let the whole Greg thing drop?"
"I'm sorry Susan, but no I cannot. As time goes on I wonder how many more things you have hidden from me."
"Oh, that is so rich coming from you. Lecturing me on trust! It wasn't me who flirted with every woman I met, pretty or otherwise, who came within a forty kilometre radius."
"Susan, I never."
"No, Jess. Look at you. You're even flirting with her."
"I am not!"
"Yes, Jesse, you are. "Please stay." "We want you to stay." If that's not flirting, then I don't know what is."
"How dare you say that about me? I was not flirting with Doctor Hart! What do you think I am?"
"I refuse to answer that on the grounds that might incriminate me! Come on Maria. Dr. Travis there's flirting with you. Does it make you feel special? Even if I tell you about all the other girls he's tried before. They were all flattered at first, but each of them saw the light. It only serves to make me wonder what took me so long to realise. So, Dr. Hart, how do you feel? How do you feel?" Maria Hart just sat as still as a stone. She did not know quite how to react. "Well?"
"Leave her out of this, Susan. This is your mess and you and that HUSBAND of yours have dragged the rest of us into it. You risk all of our lives, you kill your husband, whom you claim you love so much and is incomparable to me on so many levels, yet you really don't seem too bothered about it all. Still you've not told us why you dragged us all here. Come on Susan, it's time the procrastination stopped!"
"Well, you're not letting me get a word in edgeways."
"You've already said too much without explaining anything. So please stop wasting our time, tell us why we're here so that we can sort out your mess and I can get back to something that matters."
"So, I meant nothing to you?"
"Snap out of it, Susan. You're head won't get through the door otherwise. Your halo will get stuck."
"Oh, now I remember why I left you."
"Why you left me? You've only just remembered? He was a chiropractor called Daniel Robinson. You forget about your husband, you know the one that's dead. What kind of a wife are you?"
"One that would do anything for her husband and one that wanted to protect her friends. And, believe it or not, I wanted to protect you."
"You wanted to protect us, did you? Well tell me then Susan, why did you lead those two homicidal maniacs to us?"
"They'd already found you before Jesse, don't you get it?"
"Well, let me see. No. I do not."
"Jesse, stop it. Let Susan speak, the sooner you let her talk, the sooner we can get something done, sort this mess out and get out of here."
"Fine Mark," Jesse grumbled, "but she's not making any sense."
"Let her finish. Susan?"
"As I said before I was interrupted, Joss found nursing to be a challenge. She was in her element. It was the first time in her life that she was able to form genuine bonds with someone, other than me, of course. Then she started working in the ITU. She ran a very tight ship and was meticulous to say the very least. She would work with all the people who had debilitating conditions, people who had poor quality of life, she began to love these people and she began to feel with them too."
"What did she do Susan? Why does she want to kill you, and why does she want to kill us." Steve asked.
"Joss also worked for a very brief while at Community General, I had only just started work there and I was still finding my feet. She was just a temp and worked round all the wards; surgery; the ER; ICU, you name it.
"Anyway, Joss felt so aligned with her patients, those who were terminal, those with progressive conditions that would lead to a vegetative state, dependence or helplessness and anyone who asked her, she euthanised. She would inject them with something. The cases were terminal in many cases, there was no need for an autopsy. Either that or she would inject air into their system. She would give them an air embolism and cause them to die."
"That's exactly what she did with Daniel!" Amanda said.
"How did you find out about that? What she was doing?" Steve asked.
"I happened to walk by one day, I saw her through the window, the rooms were like goldfish bowls so you could see right in. Anyway, I saw her standing over this patient, the end stages of MND, much longer and the woman would have been in a very bad condition. I saw her inject the woman and I knew she had had her meds. because I had given them to her earlier on. She stayed in there for a while until the machines started beeping, the cardiac monitors made such a din, but she switched them off as soon as they had started, I saw her. Then she came to the nurse's station a couple minutes later and told us that the woman had died. After that, I kept my eye on her."
"What's that got to do with her time at CGH?" Mark questioned.
"When she was in the ER, several critical trauma cases that Jesse worked on died. Yes, they were in a serious condition, but they would have recovered. Maybe not completely, but they were alive. Jesse had worked so hard to save them and yet they died. Their injuries, again were sever enough not to warrant an explanation but she was frightened that Jesse might notice a pattern. All the critical patients of his that died, he had worked on with her. I had my suspicions, but there was nothing substantive. I guess that I was afraid, both of what she might do to me and that I might lose my job. I was so frightened."
"She killed MY patients?" Jesse turned a very funny shade of red. "I can't believe that she killed my patients."
"She thought that if I had gotten in touch with you, saying what I knew, you could dredge out the records from Community General and that we may be able to start building a case up against her. So she tried to kill me. Then she followed Daniel, and Daniel led her to you."
"I see that there was a certain amount of reconnaissance work that went into this." Amanda commented. "No one could accuse her or her brother of not going the full mile."
"That's quite a story you've got yourself there, Susan." Mark concurred. "We have to find out where they are now and devise a plan."
"Dad." Steve warned.
"I think we got ourselves some criminals to catch." Steve groaned. Jesse brightened at this and Steve groaned.
"Mark, what about the boys?" Amanda was concerned
"I could find somewhere they could stop here."
"I can't ask you to look after them, Maria." Amanda said.
"Hey, I'm coming with you. I was thinking of finding a nurse we could leave them with."
"Susan should stay here. She can look after C.J. and Dion. I think that it could be too dangerous."
"You want me to stay here and play babysitter?"
"I think that it would be best." Mark attempted to reassure, though Susan didn't seem quite so convinced.
The next bit was the most difficult. They had to some up with a plan of action. They had to find some what they could get to Jocelyn and Clarke.