SOME CUTS NEVER HEAL
By Timothy Sheard
Originally published by Carroll & Graf, 2003
CHAPTER ONE
“Yo, Lenny, come help me move the stiff!”
“Okay, Fred, hold on!”
Plunging his mop into a bucket of soapy water, Lenny Moss ambled across the hall to the opposite room,
where he found the old morgue attendant leaning across a battered steel gurney tugging on a sheet.
“I wouldn’t bother you,” Fred explained, “but I got a big tomato here, and nobody’s got time to help me.”
“It’s the damn hiring freeze,” said Lenny. “Everybody’s working short.”
“You telling me? Every Friday they ask me for overtime; I need time off.”
Lenny eyed the large mass wrapped in a white plastic shroud as he approached the bed. An
unprepossessing man dressed in custodian’s blue work clothes and black, steel-tipped shoes, Lenny had
thick black eyebrows arching over dark eyes that could change in a flash from impish to deadly serious.
Pressing his hands against the cold, soft flesh, he bent his knees, saying, “Okay, Fred, on three. One .
. . two . . . three!”
Crack!
The cadaver’s head made a hideous sound as the two men jerked the body from the bed onto the metal
stretcher.
Fred attached a weathered canvas canopy over the stretcher to conceal the body, saying, “Man, this is
gonna be one juicy son of a bitch. You got to come down the morgue and see when Dr. Fingers slices him
open. Why-”
“Uh, Freddie, I don’t mean to cut you off, but I have a shit load of work to do.”
“Right-o!” answered Fred, as he maneuvered the stretcher out of the room. “Hey, I got a new joke.
Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?” said Lenny with a groan.
“Ivana.”
“Ivana who?”
“I vana hold your h-an-d. . . ”
“Har, har,” said Lenny, laughing more from the pain than the humor. “Tell me. Is the supervisor giving
you any more grief about your sick time?”
“Nah. Childress ain’t said boo to me ever since you won that last grievance.”
“Good.” Lenny watched the morgue attendant slowly wheel the body away, noting his protruding belly
and skinny legs, and recalling the many battles he’d waged to keep Fred’s job.
Alcoholism was a bitch.
He’d just finished mopping the hall, when Gary Tuttle, RN, asked him to strip the floor in room 709.
“Jeez, Tuttle, I don’t have time for that, they have me covering three areas.”
“I’m sorry, Lenny, but the floor is disgusting from that GI bleeder. Since the admission was canceled, now
is the only time you’ll be able to do it.”
Grumbling under his breath, he gathered the materials and began the job. He poured out the strong-
smelling stripper and worked it into the floor. Once the old wax was removed, he began pouring out a puddle
of new wax just as the Central Supply clerk came in carrying an admission kit.
“Ain’t there a new patient in this room?” she asked.
“Admission was canceled.”
“Nuts,” she said. “I ain’t got time to come back for the next one. I’ll leave the kit.” She placed the plastic-
wrapped washbasin in the bedside cabinet, then hurried out of the room.
Lenny resumed spreading the sweet-smelling liquid wax with his mop. He’d covered half the floor when
he spied his friend Moose Maddox, a dietary aide, standing in the doorway, holding a tray of food. Moose
was a tall, muscular black man who had played football in high school and, for a time, tried his hand at
amateur boxing.
“Where’s the patient?” asked Moose. “I got a late breakfast tray for a Mrs. Blackwell . . . Blakewill . . .
something like that.“
“Gary says the admission was canceled.”
“You sure?”
“Hey, ask him, I’m just the custodian.”
“Okay,” Moose said, and walked away.
Bending down, Lenny used a putty knife to pry from the floor a piece of gum? Tissue? Snot? It was
hard to tell. He poured out more of the wax, inhaling the bubble-gum scent, and thinking it was funny that,
after years of working in James Madison University Hospital, he’d actually gotten to like the smell. It wasn’t
as if he had to deal with the putrid odors that Freddie had. Like rotting flesh. Old blood. Formaldehyde.
Moose stuck his head back in the room. “You were right, the admission’s canceled. I left the tray in the
pantry just in case. You coming down for morning break?”
“I will if people stop interrupting me.”
“Bitch, bitch,” said Moose, with a grin. “I’ll see you later.” He turned and headed down the hall.
After spreading the wax, Lenny set a fan in the doorway to speed up the drying. Next, he placed a
yellow sign reading, CAUTION! WET FLOOR beside it. Dropping his mop in the rolling bucket, he stood
looking over his work, a nondescript man in work clothes, unnoticed by the doctors hurrying by.
A pharmacy tech came up to Lenny holding a Ziploc bag.
“Damn, ” said the tech, seeing the shiny wet floor, “where’s the new patient? I got a drug profile I’m
supposed to put in the serving drawer.”
“Don’t jump on my ass,” said Lenny, his dark eyebrows furrowed in irritation. “I was told the admission’s
canceled.”
“So how come my computer printout says there’s a Mrs. Blackwell in the room?”
“Ask Gary, he’s the charge nurse. I’m just a simple custodian.”
“Custodian, yeah, but, simple? No frickin’ way.”
As Lenny watched the young man walk away, a mischievous grin erased the irritation from his face.
Hurrying to the nursing station, he found Gary Tuttle, RN, accepting a stack of lab reports from the hospital
messenger.
“Tuttle, I have a great idea!” said Lenny.
“I’m afraid to ask what you’re cooking up this time,” said Gary, who leaned back in his chair and folded
his arms across his chest. He was a stout fellow with receding, sandy-colored hair and soft features.
“The computer still has that admission coming into seven-o-nine, right?”
“Maybe the patient is scheduled after all,” said the nurse.
Celeste, the ward clerk, spun around in her chair. “Gary, I told you, the HMO didn’t pre-approve Dr. Fox’
s admission. That lazy-ass girl in Admissions hasn’t bothered to take the name out of the damn computer!”
“Perfect,” said Lenny. “Everybody thinks there’s a patient in seven-o-nine. Central Supply sent up an
admission pack, dietary sent a breakfast tray, pharmacy sent a printout.”
“And . . .” said Gary, eyeing Lenny with suspicion.
“Let’s act like there really is a patient in the room!”
With a smile like carnival lights, Celeste threw back her head and laughed. She was a tall, smartly
dressed black woman who loved costume jewelry. “Oh, Lenny. You’ve come up with some goofy ideas, but
this one’s the best. I love it!”
Gary’s face was rigid with doubt. “I’m not at all comfortable with this,” he said.
“Why not?” Lenny asked.
“We could get in trouble if somebody found out.”
“So we’ll act dumb.”
“Easy for you,” said Moose, “we got to fake it.”
“Look,” said Lenny, ignoring the jibe, “while we’ve been busting our ass for over a year working short-
staffed, the hospital’s been operating at a hundred percent capacity. Right?”
“More like a hundred fifty percent,” said Celeste, “the way they discharge one patient in the morning and
admit another one by noon. Shoot. You know they bill both patients for the whole day.”
“Work has been awfully stressful lately,” admitted Gary. “All the mandatory overtime . . .the hiring freeze.
. .” He looked at the others. Fidgeted. Shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, all right, we’ll keep the room empty, at
least for a couple of hours.”
“I’ll fill out a menu for lunch and dinner,” said Moose.
“I’ll order a consult,” said Celeste, turning to the computer.
Looking over the clerk’s shoulder at the computer screen, Gary asked, “Whose access code are you
using?”
“I got Mother Burgess’s own log-on number,” she said, giggling.
“Oh, Lord,” said Gary, “not the director of nursing.”
Lenny clapped Gary on the shoulder. “Be strong, Tuttle. It’s just a little joke.”
CHAPTER TWO
Dr. Martin Kadish, a tall, beefy man in a pinstriped suit, ploughed into Seven South like a big cabin
cruiser with the throttle wide open, while the residents and medical students on the transplant service
bobbed in his wake, struggling to keep up. Reaching the nursing station, Dr. Kadish told Celeste, “Get me
Blackwell’s chart, I have a consult. Room seven-o-nine.”
He stared impatiently at the ward clerk, his thick lips turned in a frown, while his big, meaty hands
opened and closed as though preparing for a wrestling match.
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” said Celeste, pretending to look for the chart, “I don’t see it. Maybe one of the
residents took it down to the patient’s room?”
Kadish turned fierce eyes on his team. Each member shook his head under the surgeon’s blistering
stare. Turning back to Celeste, he said, “Find it. The damn thing doesn’t have legs. It didn’t walk away by
itself. I’ll be examining the patient.”
While Kadish was speaking to Celeste at the nursing station, Nadia Gonzalez, a portly nurse’s aide, went
into room 709 to use the phone, knowing that the admission had been canceled. Halfway into the room she
stopped, puzzled. A slender, redheaded woman dressed in a Kelly green business suit was lying on the
bed, staring at the ceiling.
The perplexed aide approached the bed.
“Miss . . Miss, are you sure you belong here?”
Nadia took one more step, then froze as she realized that the woman’s chest was not rising and that her
eyes were wide open but unseeing.
Feeling panic constrict her throat, she turned to the door, seeking help, where she collided with Dr.
Kadish. She rebounded off the big man. Gasping for breath and unable to speak, she pointed wordlessly
at the woman on the bed.
The doctor stepped forward, bent down over the woman, listened for a breath. There was none. He
placed his fingers lightly on the side of her neck. There was no pulse.
“Call a code,” he said, pointing at the bedside phone.
As a baby-faced intern dialed the hospital operator, Kadish pushed two medical students toward the
woman. “There’s no ambu bag in the room. You give mouth-to-mouth until anesthesia gets here. You do
chest compressions.”
Seeing the gaggle of doctors going into 709, Lenny went to the nursing station.
“Hey, Gary, I thought the room I waxed this morning was empty.”
“It’s supposed to be,” said the nurse. “I haven’t ”
“Attention! Attention! Code Red, Nursing station Seven South, room seven-o-nine!”
Gary stopped in mid-sentence as he listened to the page operator’s overhead announcement. When he
realized that the code was on his floor, he jumped from his chair and ran to the crash cart, unplugged it, and
set off down the hall at a run.
“I don’t understand,” said Gary. “The room is supposed to be empty!”
“Well it’s full of doctors now,” said Lenny, walking hurriedly beside the nurse.
Gary wheeled the crash cart into the room, banging it against the doorframe in his haste. With trembling
hands, he pressed the power button on the cardiac monitor, then opened a drawer and fished for the
electrodes.
A surgical resident ripped open the woman’s blouse and stuck the EKG electrodes onto her chest. All
heads turned to the monitor. The rhythm was a jumble of fat, chaotic, ugly complexes.
“V-fib,” said Dr. Kadish. “Charge the paddles to two hundred joules.”
Kadish glared at Gary as the nurse, stricken by anxiety, fumbled with the dials. Finally, a high-pitched
wail announced that the defibrillator was charging. The resident pulled the paddles from the machine and
placed them on the woman’s chest.
“Clear!” he called, looking up and down the bed. A medical student was pulling the woman’s pants down
over her knees. “Get off the bed!” yelled the resident.
“Wait!” Gary called out, pulling a tube of conducting jelly from the crash cart. But the resident squeezed
the trigger without waiting. The woman’s back and neck arched in a grotesque spasm; then she fell limply
back in the bed. The smell of burning flesh filled the room.
The rhythm was unchanged.
At that moment Dr. Samir Singh, one of the Critical Care attending physicians, came into the room. He
was a bearded, soft-spoken Indian man in a rumpled lab coat and turban. Dr. Singh asked Kadish, “Is this
your patient?”
“I’ve never treated her,” said Kadish. “I found her pulseless and apneic. She’s in V-fib.”
Dr. Singh said softly, “Charge to three-sixty, lubricate the paddles, and shock again.”
As the monitor wailed mournfully, building up the charge, Gary looked at Lenny, who was hovering in the
doorway. Lenny shrugged and moved on.
The resident shocked again, with the same results.
“Another,” said Dr. Singh, staring at the coarse, chaotic rhythm on the monitor.
As the third shock was delivered, an anesthesiologist entered the room with her tackle box. She deftly
inserted a breathing tube. A resident jabbed an intravenous catheter into the groin. Dark blood dripped
from the opening.
“IV!” he called.
Gary hurriedly spiked a bag of intravenous fluid and connected it to the catheter.
“Give three milligrams epinephrine and continue CPR,” said Dr. Singh. He turned to Gary. “Mr. Tuttle,
what can you tell me of the patient?”
Gary felt rats gnaw at his belly. “I’m sorry, Dr. Singh, this isn’t one of our patients. We were expecting a
seventy-year-old patient of Dr. Fox. This isn’t her.”
“But we must know something about the patient. The reason for admission, at least.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” said Gary. “I don’t think she’s a patient at all.”
“You mean she may be a visitor or a family member? Someone like that?”
“Yes,” said Gary.
“Look for identification. A medical alert bracelet. Something.”
Gary searched the woman’s clothes for a wallet. Finding none, he scanned the floor, noted a slim
attaché case half under the bed. He picked it up, saw a logo on it:: FALCON PHARMACEUTICALS.
Opening the case, he found a business card that read, Colleen Creedon, Regional Sales Coordinator,
Falcon Pharmaceuticals.
He silently handed the card to Dr. Singh, who glanced at it as he said, “Shock again, please. And send
off labs. Chemistry, toxicology, blood gas. Everything.”
“Clear the bed!” yelled the resident, who sent another electric charge through the woman’s chest. “We
have a rhythm!” he yelled, pointing to the monitor.
“Check for a pulse,” Dr. Singh said, studying the monitor.
“I can’t feel a femoral pulse,” said the resident.
“Run in a liter of normal saline under pressure. Start levophed.” Singh was quiet and firm, his cool
demeanor belying the anxiety in his heart.
A few moments later the resident called out, “She’s back in V-fib!”
“Shock again,” said Singh.
The defibrillator howled, the current sparked across the chest, the torso arched and collapsed, but the
rhythm failed to convert. Three more shocks, an amp of magnesium sulfate, and injections of dextrose and
sodium bicarb made no difference. The chaotic rhythm on the monitor grew smaller, like a dying fire, until it
became a flat line. All eyes turned to Singh.
“How long has it been?” he asked, scanning a printout of lab results.
“Twenty-five minutes,” said one of the transplant residents, who had been with Kadish when they
discovered the patient. “She was already down when we found her, we don’t know for how long. Her pupils
are fixed and dilated.”
Dr. Singh looked to the ceiling, as though he were appealing for heavenly guidance. After a moment’s
reflection he looked back down at the lifeless figure receiving vigorous chest compressions and oxygen.
“You may stop,” he said. “Note the time, please. Thank you, everyone.”
The physicians, medical students, and respiratory therapist filed silently out of the room, leaving Gary
and Dr. Singh alone with the dead woman.
“I’ll clean her up,” said Gary. “Will you call the family?”
“Yes, right away. How long can you keep the body on the ward?”
“Well, they have patients stacked up in the ER and Recovery waiting for beds. The hospital policy is two
hours, but I’ll keep the room blocked all day if I have to.”
“Very good. I will let you know what the family says.” As he turned to leave the room, Singh stopped
and turned back. “You understand, we must leave all the lines in place. This is a case for the medical
examiner.”
“Even the endotracheal tube?”
“Yes. Everything.”
“I understand,” said Gary. “I’ll just remove the tape and cut it down to the lip.”
“That will be fine. Thank you.”
Dr. Singh quietly slipped out, leaving Gary with the untidy debris of dying.
CHAPTER THREE
Nadia, the portly nursing assistant, came into the dead woman’s room, carrying a basin of hot water,
linen, and a plastic shroud. Gary had already begun removing the mountain of debris from the bed and the
floor.
Drawing the curtain around the bed, they gently removed the clothes, which had been ripped open.
Nadia folded them neatly and placed them in a plastic personal belongings bag while Gary dipped a
washrag in the hot water, soaped it up, and began to bathe the body.
There were ugly, circular burn marks on the chest above the right breast and along the left flank where
the resident had delivered the first electric shock without applying conductive jelly to the paddles. Other
than that, the skin was clean and intact, with no signs of trauma or injury. The nails on her fingers and toes
were painted a dark red. She wore a slim gold watch and a diamond engagement ring on her left hand.
“You want I should remove the jewelry?” asked Nadia.
“We’ll put them in a specimen bag. I’ll lock them in the narcotic cabinet until the family arrives,” he said.
When the front of the body was clean, Gary pulled it onto the side. The sheet beneath her was stained
red from blood where the intravenous catheter was hurriedly jabbed into the groin. As Nadia cleaned the
buttocks and posterior thighs, she noted a whitish discharge in the perineal area.
“Looks like she had the woman’s troubles,” said Nadia, pointing at the discharge.
“It won’t matter now,” said Gary. “She’s past worrying about vaginal infections.”
They placed the shroud beneath the patient, removed the soiled sheets, and rolled the body onto its
back. They dressed her in a hospital gown. Nadia held the feet off the bed while Gary wrapped the ankles
with a roll of gauze. The feet were already cold.
“You want me to tie the hands?” she asked.
“Let’s wait to see if the family is coming,” said Gary.
He folded the hands over the chest. Although the mouth was open, Gary didn’t want to tie the jaw
closed with gauze if the family was going to see her. Instead, he pressed gently on the chin with a rolled-up
sheet, forcing the mouth closed.
They pulled a crisp white sheet up to her chin, made it trim and straight, and raised the head of the bed
a few degrees. Nadia arranged her long red hair neatly on the pillow. Gary saw that the eyes were partly
open, as if the corpse were stealing a peak at the world of the living. He squeezed a dab of petroleum jelly
into the eyes and pushed the lids closed, sealing them shut.
Nadia crossed herself before carrying away the basin of dirty water and the soiled linen. Gary picked up
the trash bag, turned the lights off, and half-closed the window shade, leaving the room dimly lit. He looked
back once more at the dead woman, feeling an intense wave of sorrow. And fear.
He thought, we are in so much trouble.
At the nursing station, Dr. Singh told Gary that he had reached the mother in Cherry Hill, New Jersey,
and that she was coming over as soon as she had notified another relative.
“Please page me when they arrive,” said the doctor. “I will speak to them. I do not know what I will tell
them, but . . . ” He walked slowly off the unit.
Lenny and Moose, who had been drinking juice in the little kitchen across from the nursing station,
joined Gary.
“Tuttle, what the hell happened?” asked Lenny.
“I don’t understand it. The woman who coded wasn’t a patient, she was a drug rep.”
“What was a drug rep doing up here?” asked Moose. “There ain’t no doctors’ offices.”
“I have no idea,” said Gary, “but I do know one thing: we are all going to catch hell for this.”
“How so?” asked Lenny.
“Are you blind? We falsified hospital records. We consulted Dr. Kadish. We used Mrs. Burgess’s
access code. And the woman in the room is dead!”
“Gary’s right,” said Celeste. “There’s gonna be an investigation. Heads could roll.”
Lenny rubbed his chin, felt the stubble that grew within an hour of shaving. He needed an out. As a veteran
union steward, he’d fudged and finessed many a negotiation with a supervisor or an appeal board, but he
had never faced a situation like this.
“Okay, here’s what we’ll do. Celeste, you didn’t know the admission was canceled, so you’re covered.
Gary doesn’t know anything about the pharmacy request or the consults. I’ll try to find out how the woman
ended up in the room.”
“What if she didn’t die from natural causes?” said Celeste. “Then the shit’ll really hit the fan.”
“It’s a medical examiner’s case,” said Gary. “There will be an inquest. Depositions. We all may be called
to testify.”
“Let’s not panic,” said Lenny. “Let’s find out as much as we can about her and go from there.” He
looked into the anxious faces of his coworkers. “The main thing is, nobody talks, everyone walks. Agreed?”
The others silently nodded their heads.
As the group broke up, Lenny felt a heavy weight bear down on him. He asked himself why couldn’t he
keep his crazy ideas in his head where they belonged. His friends were going to suffer, all because of his
sick sense of humor.
Not only that, the bosses were bound to realize that faking the admission was his idea. They would be
sure to make him their number one target.