Note: Thank you for your encouraging words. I'm glad you all like this as much as I like writing it.
Jill certainly felt a bitter coldness when Nurse Stone pulled her curtain open. "Hi," Jill spoke uneasily, shifting herself upright in the bed. "Which one are you again?"
"Nurse Stone." This was a different tone than she'd used with Kelly earlier, lacking its grandmotherly feel. Jill watched the older nurse fling the curtain shut with one hand and wondered briefly if Kelly had done something in the other room to upset her. But despite her obvious irritation, she seemed to be harmless enough, Jill thought, though it didn't change the ill feeling in her stomach. "Bruce said you'd like something for your pain?" Nurse Stone asked in that same clipped tone.
"Yeah, he said he'd come back with some ice." Jill replied, though before the words left her mouth she'd realized that the nurse hadn't been waiting for an answer. Nurse Stone was on spot and holding out a cold compress which the detective took immediately from her. She exhaled in pleasure as she placed it on her face.
"Bruce had to consult with the doctor, he asked me to give you this."
Jill followed her gaze and saw that she'd brought with her a small metal tray lined with thin white paper. On it was a few cotton swabs, a bottle of alcohol, and a large syringe filled with an unknown clear substance. The sight of it made Jill uneasy. "Oh, no thanks. I don't think I need that. Can you tell me how Kelly's doing?"
The nurse smiled a tight lipped smile and began rolling up Jill's sleeve. "Don't worry about her. Let's worry about you for a few minutes, okay dear?" She answered impatiently.
Jill frowned. No, that was not okay. She'd already decided she didn't want the shot, but out of politeness and desire for answers, she sat still and let Nurse Stone wipe down her upper arm with one of the cotton swabs soaked in cold alcohol.
"You know, I think I'm fine with just the ice, thanks." Jill sighed, the moment Nurse Stone released her arm. "What I really want to know is how my friend is."
"She's just fine." Nurse Stone said quickly, readying the needle despite Jill's refusal. "And this will take the edge off of your pain. Don't worry so much, Ms. Munroe," An even wider smile stretched uncomfortably across her face, tightening her eyes into a squint. "It's terrible for your health."
Before she could protest much further or mention anything of Kelly's pregnancy – if Kelly hadn't already, the needle was stuck into her arm and injected. Jill expected that immediate feeling of warmth and fogginess that would normally accompany pain medicine. Yet, she was not fazed. "What was that?" She urgently asked, a small squeak in her voice.
"A small dose of morphine, it might take several minutes to kick in. Just stay lying-"
The swiping sound of the curtain being yanked opened made Jill jump, and Nurse Stone's smile quickly turned into a frown. She twisted her head to see young Anna bustling toward her. She was not able to scold the girl for interrupting before Anna grabbed her uniform and pushed her mouth against her ear. Jill couldn't make out the words of the harsh whispering Anna was spattering. The expression on Nurse Stone's face was not one Jill could read.
"What? What is it?" Jill started frantically, "Is it Kelly? Is it her baby? Please let me see her!"
Nurse Stone, however, composed herself and shook her head. "No, no, it's another patient... upstairs." She explained quickly, pushing down on Jill's shoulders until the detective was forced to lie back down. "Bruce should be back soon and you will be able to see your friend."
With that, she abandoned Jill and snatched the arm of the younger nurse. The two exited swiftly and left Jill in a cloud of confusion. She sat up and slipped off of the bed, looking around the small room for a phone. Once she'd gotten to her feet she felt slightly dizzy, realizing the medicine must be getting to her much quicker than she'd thought it would – though it hadn't yet dulled the pain.
Brushing it off, she moved away from the bed, carefully poked her head out of the curtain and scanned the area. Perhaps it was the peculiar nature of the nurses that made every instinct she had kick in, making her move in extreme silence so she would not be heard. Much to her surprise, she recognized the back of Bruce standing in front of her room, fumbling around with something in his hands. Wasn't he supposed to be consulting with a doctor? Even if he had seemed trustworthy, Jill was beginning to think otherwise. She stepped out quietly and moved in the other direction. Surely there was a phone in the near vicinity.
Jill glanced around, knowing there had to be one if Gunther had called the hospital after their arrival. That's when her eyes laid upon it.
The nurses desk. Perfect. Nobody was there and she could hide underneath it to call Sabrina.
With her gaze locked on Bruce to make sure he was still distracted, Jill tenuously crept across the dark, empty room. It was unnerving being out in the open and she briefly wondered if her racing heart was due to that or the injection she'd just been given. The quicker she called Sabrina the better.
"What are you doing!?"
Jill's already racing heart nearly burst through her chest at the angry shout in such close proximity to her. Nurse Stone, shit! She whirled around and was just about to blurt out an excuse to be out of bed when the older woman, flanked by the younger Anna rushed past her, not ten feet away.
"Oh, I was just - "Bruce's startled voice began.
"You were just what?"
Still rooted to her spot by surprise and confusion, Jill blinked her eyes and simultaneously realized that Nurse Stone's angry interrogation was meant for Bruce and that, by some miracle, the dark shadow she was passing through had prevented her from being seen by either nurse as they passed. Jill held her breath and pressed herself against the wall. She didn't dare move for fear of being seen.
Bruce looked like a schoolboy caught cheating. "I... I was just fixing this, Irene."
"You're supposed to be watching her!" Nurse Stone cut him off, pointing fiercely in the direction of Jill's now empty curtained area. She shoved the younger, silent nurse roughly forward, either ignoring or not seeing the younger woman's displeased expression at her ungracious treatment, and then turned that same accusing finger toward Bruce. "We're going upstairs. Don't let her or that other one so much as move, do you hear me?"
Bruce smirked, his devilishly handsome looks shining through. "Loud and clear."
Without another word, the two women disappeared out of the double doors Jill and Kelly had entered through half an hour before. Jill watched them go, her previous uneasiness now developed into near panic. They had to get out of here.
She stayed frozen in her place until long after the women had disappeared, her wide eyes fixed on both Bruce and the phone on the nurse's desk that seemed so far away. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Bruce relaxed and slunk back down into his chair, grabbing up the metal instrument he'd been working on.
"Crazy old bitch." He muttered to himself.
He lowered his head and begin to hum the melody of a Creedence Clearwater Revival song Jill remembered hearing that morning in the car with Sabrina and Kelly. If the humming wasn't enough, his unexpectedly nice singing voice suddenly picked up at the song's chorus, whose lyrics seemed to accurately sum up her day so far.
"Don't go out tonight," His head bobbed up and down to the beat inside his mind. "Well, it's bound to take your life. There's a bad moon on the rise."
Unsure if she should be amused or not, Jill felt safe enough to quickly cover the rest of the distance between her shadow and the nurse's desk. She quickly dropped down behind it and reached up to carefully lift the phone off the desk and pull it into her lap.
Dialing Sabrina's phone number quickly, she pushed the receiver against her ear and waited with baited breath. Her sweaty palms gripped the phone tightly as she sent silent prayers to God for there to be an answer. The phone rang an agonizing three, four, and then five times. In the middle of the sixth, someone finally picked up and Jill fought the urge to let out a whoop of joy.
"Hello?" Came Sabrina's anxious voice.
"Oh thank God!" Jill's breathless voice replied. "Sabrina you have to get your ass here now!" She then winced at herself for being too loud.
"Jill! Where the hell have you been? Where are you? What happened?" Sabrina blurted out loudly in one breath.
"I don't have time to get into all of that. There is an old hospital in the Bridge Grove area somewhere. You have to get to it as fast as you can. Max might know where it's at."
"What? Max?" Sabrina sputtered, frustration and fear evident in her voice. "Jill, are you two okay?"
Jill closed her eyes, knowing once she spoke these words the reaction she would receive wouldn't be pleasant. "Okay, so I kinda hit a deer."
She was right.
"Jesus Christ, Jill!" Sabrina exploded after a beat. "Kelly? The baby? Is she okay?"
"I don't know! This whole hospital is insane! They won't let me in to see her and they forced me to get some kind of shot! You... you just need to get here, please! I'm worried about what they'll do to Kelly and I can't get to her!"
To her credit, Jill could hear Sabrina hurriedly shuffling about on the line, jingling keys and throwing on her shoes. "Shh, okay, okay calm down, I'm coming. I'll call Max from the car, but it's gonna take at least four hours to-" she paused suddenly. "Jill, there isn't a hospital in Bridge Grove. Where the fuck are you two?"
Oh God.
She held the phone away from her ear. "That's another thing. I... sorta took a wrong turn somewhere..."
Sabrina's voice dramatically went up in pitch. "You took a wrong - Goddammit, Jill! How the fuck am I supposed to find you?"
"Well, how the hell should I know! It's somewhere around Bridge Grove, I didn't go out that far!" Jill matched Sabrina's pitch, but found she had made a mistake in doing so when Bruce's singing suddenly stopped. She peered up over the desk and saw him sweep back the curtain to look inside her room. He let out a slur of obscenities before turning and racing down the hallway towards her. Jill pressed herself as far underneath the big desk as she could. "Shit, he knows I'm gone."
"What? Jill, are you okay?" Sabrina asked, unable to contain the tremor that overcame her body. She could now hear Bruce's loud footsteps and muffled voice. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. Jill did not respond, but she could still hear her heavy breathing. "Get out of there, I'm coming!" She shouted, before slamming down her phone and scrambling out of her apartment.