Part 95

When she got to the hospital, Quinn went around to all of her patients. Presently, she saw she had a new patient. She went to check the chart as she always did.

"Oh, no," she said, "Look, Joanna."

Joanna read the name on the chart. "Emily Quartermaine! Geez, what happened to her?"

Quinn read from the chart, "MVA, concussion and bruises."

Quinn went into the room and checked the equipment. The patient's treatment was to put her into a state of extreme sedation, or sleep, so that she didn't move around, which would hinder healing of the concussion.

Several of the Mansons were in the room.

"Why the heck was she asking for Zander?" Dr. Monica Quartermaine asked. "What did he do now?"

"Nothing, that makes no sense," AJ said. "She was only half conscious. We were talking about him at the party immediately before she left it, so maybe she was thinking about that conversation when we crashed."

"What were you talking about in the car before the crash?"

"Nothing. She wasn't in the mood for talking," AJ said. "She was in a low kind of mood most of the evening."

When Quinn next saw Joanna, she said, "Oh brother! I can't have this patient. I think I'll go and talk to Nurse Spencer in the morning. She was asking for Zander, and the Mansons are all in there wondering why. I think they'll find a way to blame him for her injury."

"I know you're joking," Joanna said. "By now, they wouldn't do that."

"Oh yeah? They can find a way."

"It's not so serious a case, relatively speaking, though. You can do your straightforward job. I wouldn't feel too bad about it. Might be more trouble than it's worth. She won't be here that long."

"I really don't want Zander having to listen to her," Quinn said.

"She might forget. Probably will. She must have been raving."

"AJ said they were talking about him at a party right before she left."

"Right, so it's just the last thing she remembered. What could she have to say to him now?"

"Nothing, I guess. She can have nothing to say to him by now. She hasn't communicated with him since Christmas vacation. That I know of. Why is she here? Spring Break?"

"Yeah, she couldn't go to Florida could she? But heck, when she wakes up, if she remembers whatever about Zander, it will be her problem to arrange her social life. She'll have to get one of the Mansons to hunt him down for her. And he gets along with them so poorly. He won't cooperate."

"I guess you're right. I really don't want him to talk to her. He's about to take that GED, and working hard on studying. He really doesn't need a talk with her. It won't be anything but an unpleasant distraction."

"The Mansons hate him anyway. They'll talk her out of it, if she hasn't forgotten already."

"Yes, you're right. I'm worrying over nothing. You're the best, Joanna!"

Nevertheless, when she got off work at 8, Quinn went by Nurse Spencer's office and explained the situation.

"My boyfriend used to go out with her. I heard she was asking for him last night. She hasn't talked to him in months. And I know all kinds of things about her from him. Things I normally would not know about a patient."

"I have confidence in you," Nurse Spencer said. "In your abilities, and that you can be objective on medical matters. Your very recognition of it shows you know you are aware of it and will be a little extra careful."

"Thank you, Nurse Spencer. Have you ever had a situation like this?"

"I have, in fact, and more than once. Situations that were a lot worse, too. You aren't in the midst of any rivalry for the guy right?"

Quinn smiled. "No, I don't think so. I think he's all mine."

"You'll do fine."

"Thank you," Quinn said, getting up.

"I could tell you all kinds of stories," Nurse Spencer said, "Patients I was related to, in love with, used to be in love with, their former and present and future girlfriends, and friends I had just had fights with! All with the background of a lower level of technology, of course."

Quinn laughed. She felt better. She went back to get her purse and keys and leave.

"Well, I have a meeting I have to go to," one of them was saying. "Skye is out of town. It looks like there is no one that can stay with her."

"Mom and Dad are right here in this very hospital!" Quinn recognized this as AJ's voice.

"But they can't sit in the room," said the other. "They have to work! So does Jason. You should stay. You were driving!"

"I have to go to day care with Michael," AJ said, as they came out of the room just ahead of Quinn, who had stopped in the hall when she heard them. She continued behind them to get back to the nurse's station. "There's a special little show they are doing for parents today, and I promised him I would go."

"That was before you caused this accident!"

"Michael is 3 years old! He doesn't understand that. Emily would. Anyway, she'll be all right. This is a hospital and her parents are in charge of it. Get a grip, Ned! Go to your damn meeting and come back when it's over. Or skip it if you think your cousin's life is threatened if there's no family member sitting in the room."

"Still, someone should sit with her. How about Lucky Spencer?"

"He's at work, I imagine."

"I can't think of any friends she has from high school. That's because she has none, of course, thanks to Zander."

"Really!" Quinn said, forgetting everything in a sudden fury. "How do you manage to blame him for anything and everything and still do it after a year?"

"You got Nurse Connor's Irish temper up, Ned," AJ turned, grinning.

"Because he's the cause of it, that's why!" Ned answered Quinn's question, to her amazement.

"Nurse Connor is his girlfriend now, Ned. You should shut up before you really get it."

"If Nurse Connor is stupid enough to be his girlfriend, that's her problem. That doesn't take away the fact that Emily lost all her friends by dating a drug dealer and that's why she's alone now."

The injustice of this was too much for Quinn, who was in the midst of grabbing her keys and purse from the nurse's station. "She's not alone! Gee, I dated a guy in high school and that didn't mean I couldn't have any friends. I still have friends from high school!"

"Because you didn't date a drug dealer in high school, you did not lose your friends. You waited until you were an adult, apparently. What's your excuse, Nursie? You can't plead innocence."

"Get lost, Ned," AJ said. "Come on Nurse Connor, I'll take you down."

During the day, Quinn called Nurse Spencer and told her of the argument.

"Now I'm really not sure I should handle this case."

"You handle families of patients really well, but this one is exceptional. I'll go and talk to Dr. Alan and we will see what we can do to get the family members to mind their own business."

"Thank you. Thank you so much, Nurse Spencer." She hung up but wondered why they couldn't simply change Miss Emily to another nurse and give her the next new patient.

Then she giggled. Nurse Spencer had called the Quartermaines "family members."

"Oh Zander," she said, when Zander came over that evening, "did you hear?"

"No, I haven't heard." He took her in his arms and kissed her.

"About Emily?" she asked, stiffening up a little. She led him over to the couch to sit down.

"No. Nothing about her."

"Well, she's all right. But she was in a car accident. AJ was driving. He crashed the car into a tree. He wasn't drunk. He couldn't have been, or they'd have mentioned it for sure. But she has a concussion. And she's my patient."

He pushed her hair back.

"Poor Quinn," he said.

"What about poor Emily?"

"Emily will be fine. She has the best medical attention. But the family will make a bigger deal of it than it is."

"They already are, and I've already lost my temper with one of them. I only hope I don't get into trouble. I usually do OK thinking of Joe's saying that temper will bring the Irish low. I forgot all about that."

"Which one ticked you off?" he asked, massaging her shoulders.

"Ned is his name, I believe?"

"He's such a jerk. You can safely ignore all he says, and you won't miss anything."

"Thank you. But have they tried to get a hold of you?"

"No, why would they?"

"Emily is under sedation now, but she was asking for you at first. AJ says it was because they were talking about you before the crash. And I want you to study for your test, and not get drawn into her dramas."

"I won't," he said. "I'm not going to go and talk to her, and they won't want me to. That part will go away, I promise, nurse."

"I've already talked to Nurse Spencer twice about getting another nurse on the case. She said she has confidence in my objectivity, but I'm starting to lose that."

"I want you off the case so that she doesn't bother you. Or, more importantly, so her family members don't!"

Quinn giggled. "Thank you. You know, Nurse Spencer used that same word. She said she would help me with getting the family members to mind their own business!"

"See, she has experience with them!"

"She handled it generously, though. I started it, really. They were talking, but loud enough for me to hear, and this Ned said something that got my Irish up."

"This Ned can do that to anybody within 20 seconds. For the Irish, maybe, it would take 10."

Quinn smiled, and said: "What is it about Little Emily? Why can't she go to Florida for Spring Break like normal people? Or if she comes home, why can't she have a nice vacation, like the rest of us do on Spring Break? How is it that she gets into an auto accident and ends up in the hospital?"

"Everything happens to her."

"Yeah. All the dramas."

"I have an EKG real early. I'll come and get you when you get off of work."

"You don't have to."

"I'll be right there, Quinn! If one of the members is around, I'll draw them off - they can yell at me rather than you. I'm sure they would prefer that anyway."

"Zander! No, the point was they're part of my job. But they don't have any right to interfere with you!"

"Well, if they weren't there, I would come by, you're part of my life. So they aren't going to stop that."

She sighed, and reached over to unbutton his shirt.

The shift was uneventful. Quinn blessed her lucky stars that she was on midnight shift, for once. Even the Mansons went to bed at night. And none of them were abroad when Zander came by in the morning.

He stood in the room with her, looking at Emily, who laid almost still, moving a little here and there even with the sedation. Her eyes were closed, and she looked like she was in a fitful sleep. IV tubes and other equipment were hooked up, and a monitor was flashing.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Quinn explained, thinking he could still be rather worried. She figured she'd hate to see Paul or Sean like that. "When you have a head injury like this, you have to stay still, yet the injury causes you to thrash about, because you don't totally control your arms and legs. So the treatment is to keep you asleep. So she is not unconscious naturally. She would be conscious by now, but for the treatment."

Zander put his arm around her. "She has the best nurse," he said.

"Dr. Jones is a good neurologist," Quinn said. "He thinks she will recover fine."

A secretary came by and said she was looking for Quinn. Dr. Alan Quartermaine wanted to see her.

"I'll be right there," Quinn said. "Gee, I think I'm in trouble."

"I'll go with you," Zander said. "Without me in your life, Little Emily wouldn't be this much of a problem for you. I mean, I'll stay outside. You handle him much better than I can. But I'll be there when you get out. OK?"

"You're adorable," she said.

"I'm sorry I lost my temper," Quinn apologized to Dr. Alan Quartermaine. Before she could go on, he waived his hand. "I think highly of your professionalism and that's why I want you to stay on this case. Nurse Spencer always said you are the best she has when it comes to handling patients and their families."

Quinn marveled at these words. She hadn't had any idea she was any such thing, or considered so by anyone. It almost felt like he was talking about someone else.

"But this family, even without its position in regards to the hospital, is too much to ask anyone to handle. I want you to be able to attend to your job. So if one of them says anything to you beyond hello and goodbye, call me; that's all I want you to do. Don't even try to handle them. Do your job at patient care, and call me the minute any of them becomes an issue at all. If you can't reach me for some reason, call Dr. Jones or Dr. Monica. If they somehow get in at night, call security immediately. They will know what to do. Will you do that?"

"I will," she said, haltingly. She was still amazed. "Thank you," she said, as she left his office.

"What a relief!" She almost fell into Zander's arms.

Zander walked her away, an arm around her. "What did he say?" he asked.

"I couldn't believe it. He said to call him if any of them say anything to me! Do my job, don't try to handle them, at the first sign of trouble with them, call him. "

"He knows them."

"He said the nicest things! And I was sure he would yell at me!"

"He and his wife are kind of fair minded. At least, in this building they are."

Quinn checked her patients when she went back in at midnight.

Readjusting something on Emily Quartermaines' bed, she noticed something.

Some abrasions, rather minor, but still visible, on the chest.

Nobody had bothered to make a record, having checked and found no internal bleeding.

But she wasn't driving, so why did she have abrasions on her chest?

Quinn wondered if she was supposed to even think about this. Dr. Jones would have taken care of it if it needed taking care of, and Quinn thought, "I'm not part of the police force. She could have struck the dashboard. Her head obviously struck the windshield. Clearly no seat belt."

Unable to contain her curiosity, Quinn looked. No bruising or damage to the clavicle, and no abrasions to her inner arms, which might occur from the airbag. Without a seat belt, the air bag would not have been much help. No abdominal bruising, which could have occurred from the belt or the airbag.

These bruises on the chest could not have been due to a seat belt. But they could have been due to an impact with the steering wheel.

Out in the hall, Quinn looked for a record of blood alcohol content. They would have taken that record even if a person was a car passenger, where they thought they had been drinking, so that they could determine what medication to give them now, and how much. The staff needed to know what drugs might be in a patient's system, before administering more.

"Joanna!" Quinn said, at break time, "come out onto the balcony!"

"What's up"?" Joanna said, following her.

"I have this suspicion. But I want to tell you so you can tell me if I'm an overreacting jealous girlfriend first."

"Emily?"

"Yes."

"What suspicions?"

"That she was driving. And she has a blood alcohol of .11."

"Over the limit," Joanna commented. "But why do you suppose she was driving?"

"Chest bruises. I know she could have them anyway," Quinn said. "But they look like the chest bruises people usually have when they were driving, not wearing a seat belt, and hit the steering wheel."

"Are they recorded on the chart?"

"No," Quinn said.

"They should be. I don't think you'd be paranoid to at least do that," Joanna said. "In fact, I'm a small bit suspicious they aren't."

"Would you look and see if you agree with me?"

"Sure."

Joanna came out. "I agree with you."

"I'm going to make a record," Quinn said.

"If they are really perpetrating a fraud like this," Joanna said, "somebody ought to take pictures."

"You're right. But are we in a position to call a cop? I'm her nurse. As such, I don't care how it happened."

"Yeah, we've got a duty to report suspected child abuse, but this, I don't know."

"Man," Quinn said, "she's almost as bad as Zander himself. I already feel like I've pestered Nurse Spencer enough on this case."

"I'll do it," Joanna said, "I'm not on her case. I could have happened to run in there for you any time. You make the records. It's your job. Maybe I'll talk to that nice cop, the lady, and ask her."

"V. Ardanowski. That's a good idea, Joanna. Some of those others will jump at the chance to make a big deal of it, but she'll be sensible, I think. She won't jump all over it if I'm making too much of it."

Quinn told Zander of her suspicions.

"I don't feel entirely objective," she said. "I asked Joanna for help, so as not to drag in the bosses. Joanna's going to be the good citizen. I feel almost like it is wrong to deal with the patient in such a way. AJ said he was driving. And it was his car, is what I heard. And he wasn't drunk, or I'd have heard all about that. So why would he let her drive when she'd had a few drinks and he had none; his own car?"

"Key to this investigation, nurse," Zander said, "is that you know that the Quartermaines are willing to manipulate the system. You know that if one of Little Emily's family members caught her driving under the influence, they'd do what they could to help her get away with it. They learned this approach to life from the very Grandfather that attempted to fake an assault, medical records included. So my first deduction is that AJ was never in that car, at least, not before the accident."

Quinn sat down. Zander sat next to her, and took her hand. "She's as bad as you," Quinn said. "First she's asking for my boyfriend, then she is part of this Quartermaine plot - all while under sedation."

"Just wait till she wakes up," Zander grinned.

"She was found in the passenger seat."

"AJ moved her over."

"You should never move someone who has been injured."

"Right. You wait for the paramedics, right?"

"Yes. They know how to immobilize the person. Anyone who doesn't know what to do can do further damage."

"AJ is a Quartermaine. He may have risked it. Maybe he is trained a little. They're all doctors in that family. Maybe they taught him the first rate first aid course, including how you should move an injured person when you have to."

"You can learn that," Quinn agreed, "in a rare case, if the car was on fire and you had to get someone out of there without waiting. Two doctor parents. I suppose it would be possible – they know how important it is for people to learn CPR and First Aid. They could have sent him to a class – even an advanced one. And he could have moved her without doing major damage, even if he didn't know how to do it right."

"To get her out of a charge like DUI," Zander said. "He might have. How dangerous is it? Could he have killed her?"

"Probably not," Quinn said. "Though he would not have realized that, if he knew he didn't know enough about accident scene treatment. Hey, I had a thought. Remember at Gettysburg, talking about being trained for something and then being able to use it to act quickly?"

"Of course. I don't think I'll ever forget a minute of the whole trip."

"Well, paramedic, emergency medical tech. It's something to think about."

"Why?"

"For you, silly."

"For me, how?"

"To become one someday!"

"Oh."

"A thought only. Do you think you wouldn't like it?"

"I don't know. I suppose I could."

"Have you ever thought about what you want to do?"

"No," he said, "not much. Pete and I talked about it and all we came up with was he wanted to be an astronaut when he was eight."

"I think you could do that too. Usually nowadays they are trained in some scientific subject."

"Alexis is on this, too," he said. "She shows me stuff she is working on for Dad. She thinks I should look into what they do."

"I could see where you could have inherited an aptitude for that. Mom thinks you are a born teacher. Is an athletic coach much like a teacher?"

"Somewhat. Dad did that once, too. He could tell me about it. That is something you'd have to think about, more."

"I don't know. You can talk to Mom about it, too. I'm sure she would love to. You probably do think on your feet, a lot. You are trained and prepared for the class, but once in there, you are on your feet. I've heard plenty of stories about that."

"I'm not sure. You're handling people, children. There are times I think I am worst at that. The paramedic, emergency medical thing – that would be better, maybe, because you are only handling the person physically. Now when it comes to mental things – I can get into arguments with people faster than anything. Maybe I should be a lawyer."

"You've really got firsthand observation on how that is."

"I can explain things, I think. I might make a good teacher for good students. Willing students."

"Like adults – these days there could be all kinds of things. Computer programs. I remember Dad talking about the people who came to teach them how to use the computer programs when they first got them at McKinley."

"There's a lot of different things," Zander observed. "More than meets the eye."

"You've got time to think about it."

"You helped broaden my view, Quinn."

"I like to. I care what becomes of you, and I hope it's going to be good. I think it will be."

"Man, this is terrible," Nicholas was saying.

"All of the doctors say she is going to be fine," Gia said, half to reassure him but half in disgust. This would happen to her, Gia thought. Wonder why this didn't happen to Cheryl, or to Elizabeth? Is it really random, Gia wondered, or does Emily have something to do with her continual "bad luck?"

Edward Quartermaine interrupted these thoughts, coming into the room. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

Gia wanted to go. There was no point in arguing with that unpleasant old man. "Come on, Nicholas."

"I'm here to see Emily, Mr. Quartermaine," Nicholas said. "And I'd appreciate it if you'd be a little more appreciative."

"Appreciative for what?" Edward responded, "Dragging her all the way out there to that house of yours for a party, giving her too much to drink and a headache, so she had to get AJ to take her home early?"

"Surely, I don't see how you can consider us responsible –"

"Come on, Nicholas," Gia cut him off. "There's no point."

"You're upset because of what happened to Emily," Nicholas said, "and so I'll chalk this up to that. Good night, Mr. Quartermaine."

"Young lady," Edward said to Quinn when she came in, "see to it that young man and his so-called fiancée don't come back again."

"Yes, sir," Quinn said.

"And let's see, who else, oh, that deviant Zander Smith. Do you know what he looks like?"

"Yes, I do," Quinn said.

She finished what she was doing and went out and called Dr. Alan.

In a few minutes, Quinn saw Alan go into Emily's room. "Get out of here, father," he said.

Quinn heard the grandfather argue with Alan, but eventually, he came out with him.

"He and that Gia Campbell were standing here, and no one was around but them," Edward was saying. "I had shooed them out by the time the nurse came in."

"Yes, yes, father, we will see to it," Alan was saying to him, escorting him to the elevator.

One of the elevators opened, and the grandfather went into it, exhorting his son again to get the nurse to be more on the ball. The other opened, and the Connor family came out of it, to Quinn's amazement.

"We brought you some pizza," Kathleen told Quinn. Danny, Joe, Tim and Brad and she had gone out to Diego's for pizza."

"Thank you, Mom," Quinn said. Dr. Alan will still standing there, so she introduced him to Kathleen, Danny, Tim and Brad.

"We haven't had the chance to go out to dinner in so long," Kathleen said. "We decided to go out instead of cook. We realized you weren't there, all grown up and at work. We missed you!"

"I know how that is," Dr. Alan said, "The nest starts to empty. Your daughter is an excellent nurse. We're fortunate she is on our staff."

"Thank you," Danny said. "We think you are, too."

"Is Quinn the oldest?"

"Yes," Kathleen answered. "These are all of ours, right here, the three of them."

"We have four," Alan smiled, "two girls and two boys. Our youngest, Emily, is home for Spring Break, and got into an auto accident. She is Quinn's patient, in fact."

"You must have a lot of faith in Quinn," Danny said, "to let her work on the case of her boyfriend's old girlfriend."

"I know she is professional enough not to be bothered by that," Alan answered. "by her handling the case of Zander. She worked long and hard on that. He was a much more difficult patient. As to handling him personally, Quinn is older than Emily, out of school and working in her career. She must be able to handle him better. He hasn't been arrested in what, two weeks?"

"Well, his parents are in town now," Danny said, "They'll take care of him. "

"I hope they do," Alan said. Dr. Jones came by and wanted to talk to him, so he parted from them.

"I got the pictures developed, Quinn," Kathleen said. She handed Quinn the photo of Quinn and Zander on Little Round Top. "I knew you'd want that for your desk area."

"Thanks," Quinn said. "Thanks, Mom. I like it." She looked at the photo. It had been a pretty day, and it looked like they were out in an open field – you couldn't tell it was a battlefield. Zander had smiled, but not too broadly, and tilted his head towards her a little. His arm was around her back with his hand on her shoulder. She was smiling, too, a nice natural smile, that didn't look put on for the camera, her arm around his back.

Later, she put it on her board, along with her nursing school graduation, prom and family pictures. "Paul, you have been replaced," Joanna's voice woke Quinn out of a reverie.

"Looks so, doesn't it?" Quinn grinned. "Who would have thought it?"