NOTE: My 'Cordyverse' stories to date are, Exodus 20:12, Cordelia Chase:
Working Mom, Crime Scene Investigations, Soccer Mom, and Scenes From
a
Cop Bar.
*****
The Best of Intentions
Don Bentley
"Mom!"
Cordelia Chase-Gunn whimpered softly into her pillow. She had
heard the
phone ring downstairs but had hoped against hope that it was for her
son
or one of his legion of friends over for a sleep over and group outing
later in had become a very rare Saturday off.
"Who?"
"Aunt Faith."
She rolled over across her bed and pulled her phone off of the
nightstand by its cord. With a soft curse at the bright morning
sun
pouring through her window and blinding her, she spoke into the phone.
"Forchrissakefaith-"
"Cordy, shut up and listen to me."
The emotion in her friend's voice brought her the rest of the way to
full consciousness with a snap. You don't hear fear in Faith's
voice
that often.
"What?"
"Are the kids up yet?"
"Yeah, sounds like they're all up. Why?"
"Winter will be there any minute. She's gonna wait with them until
Tara
and Leah can show. I need you here. At the hospital.
It's Anya."
"Anya?"
"We think she may have taken an overdose."
*****
"Lieutenant! Down in trauma four," the admissions clerk was waiting
at
the doors for her when she got to the hospital.
Cordelia didn't slow her pace as she passed the woman, and bulled her
way through the familiar obstacle course of beds, curtains, and carts
that, along with an ever changing array of damaged and pained humanity
made up the emergency room.
Give a cop more than a couple of months in one place and they're an
expert on the local ERs. Which one has the best snacks in the
doctor's
lounge, the personalities of the staff, and survival percentages, that
sort of thing.
They especially get to know the patients. They'll quickly, and
more or
less permanently, divide the patients they meet into three groups.
First, the genuinely needy, these were those people seeking either
physical or emotional attention as a result of life's general
inequities, and more dramatic misfortunes. These were the victims.
Then there were the perps. These ones were often brought in cuffed
to
the gurney and suffering the divine wrath of a vengeful God.
That
vengeance could have been delivered at the hands of a poorly chosen
victim, such as the armed convenience store clerk, or another lowlife,
or best of all, a fellow cop. Lastly, there was the vast majority.
The
little gray people, the forgettable ones, who were just moving along
through a life they'd just as soon not have had to live.
Call them cynical, but cops assume that most people they meet in the
ER
are part of the second or third group. It's their default setting
really.
Unless you're a cop like Lieutenant C. Chase-Gunn, Special Unit,
Sunnydale Police Department, because then, most of the ones you meet
are
dead, and as often as not, they're the lucky ones. Really.
*****
Faith was leaning against the wall outside the trauma room, her body
language screaming for a cigarette.
"How is she?"
A shrug. "I'm not family."
Without a further word Cordelia pushed her way through the shuttered
door, her gold detective's shield in hand.
It is a tenet of professional faith on the part of medical personnel
that a person in pain or in need should be accorded the highest respect
while undergoing treatment or care. It just doesn't always look
that
way to the rest of us.
The perimeter of the cramped room was a maelstrom as each part of the
team carried out their duties with deliberate haste and with a subdued
cacophony of barked orders and clipped reports. Pulse, respiration,
blood pressure, pulse-ox; a life was being reduced to a series of arcane
numbers. The attending physician, Cordelia knew him to be a good
doctor, examined some instrument readouts for a moment before turning
back into the eye of the storm.
Anya Harris's naked body was lying unconscious on the table, her dignity
and privacy cut away with her clothing. In the glare of the overhead
spots she was a pale, almost luminescent figure, lying still beneath
the
darting hands of total strangers, as they palpated, stroked, tapped,
and
probed, leaving the instruments of their art in their wake. Wires
taped
to her chest to measure heart activity. A tube down her throat
to aid
breathing. Another had been slid into a nostril and down to pump
out
the contents of her stomach, and to introduce the charcoal mixture
that
would absorb whatever poisons remained. Numerous IV's and a catheter
rounded off the indignities.
The team registered, then ignored Cordelia as 'one of us.' She
had a
job to do, sure, but hers couldn't start until they had finished theirs,
one way, or the other. Finally, the doctor called for one last
round of
reports before stepping back and issuing his final instructions.
"Call x-ray for a c-spine and chest. Full CBC and chem 7.
And rush the
toxicology report on the samples. Tell 'em to work over lunch
for
once."
Cordelia stepped forward into the growing calm, asserting herself as
the
medical crisis receded. "Doc?"
"Hey, Elltee," the doctor was older, late fifties, grey hair, and short
though not at all as unattractive as that short description sounded.
In
fact, he was quite handsome in a dignified elderly gentleman sort of
way. He touched the shoulder of the charge nurse. "Mair,
call Pysch
for a consult when she comes round. Sorry, Cordelia, this one
of your
cases?"
"SHE is a friend of mine. How's she doing?
"I'm sorry," he really was. "She'll be fine. Vitals are
good, strong
and getting better. I don't think she took too many pills, and
there
was nothing else to complicate things, like booze, for instance.
So no
long term side effects, no brain or liver damage. That sort of
thing."
"What she take?"
He took a plastic bag from a tray. Inside was a pill bottle, a
fair
number of multicoloured pills rattled around inside.
"Sleeping pills. Need the fancy name?"
"No."
"Prescription. In her name, though a couple of years old.
Issued by a
doctor in St. Louis. Got a call in to his office now. For
what it's
worth. I think it was a mistake. These things," he held
up the bag.
"Nasty. They give you no room for error and almost no time to
change
your mind. If she'd taken all of them, or even just some more...."
he
shrugged.
"What?" she needed to know just how close she had come to having to
tell
a young girl that her mother was dead.
"She'd have been dead on scene."
"Thanks Doc, I gotta go."
"Cordelia. You know what you're going to be looking for, right?"
"Yeah. I do."
*****
"No note, Boss. We 'unted 'igh and low. Except for the mess
the
paramedics left, everything was normal. She 'ad some clothes
laid out
all neat an' tidy at the foot of 'er bed. 'Ell, I found 'er grocery
list in the kitchen an' today was circled on the calendar. Marked
down
as 'BBQ'," Detective Sergeant Walthorpe needed a cigarette some fierce.
Hospitals brought it out bad even though he had quit years ago.
Cordelia and Faith were listening as he and his partner, Kerry McGarry,
made their report on their search of the Harris house.
"Kerry?"
"No phone calls after 8:43 last night, and that was to-"
"Me. She wanted to know if AJ had remembered her swim suit."
"'Ad she?"
"What?"
"'Ad AJ remembered 'er swimsuit?"
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"'Ad she?"
"Yes. No. I mean, she had a swimsuit, but it was a two piece
one that
Anya wouldn't let her wear outside. AJ had smuggled it out with
her to
wear to the park this aft'."
"Wasn't she afraid you'd tell Anya?" asked Faith.
"Overheard her talking to Sarah and Janel. Didn't know I was there,
and, and-WHAT THE FUCK DOES A FUCKING SWIMSUIT HAVE TO DO WITH ANY
OF
THIS SHIT?" her outburst attracted the attention of everyone in
earshot. Including Willow Rosenberg who was coming through the
doors, a
carry-on bag over one shoulder. She started to push her way towards
them.
"Finished?" asked Walthorpe in a level voice.
"Fuck you."
With a glance he chased Kerry and Faith away down the hall, and waited
until they had intercepted Willow, before leaning in close to his
superior officer.
"Finished?"
Choosing to read her silence in the affirmative. He placed his
hands on
her shoulders and pushed her down in to a chair before kneeling before
her.
"She phoned you, and asked about her daughter's swimsuit, then what
did
she say?"
"Said she'd be a bit late to the barbecue. Had to do something.
Run an
errand or see someone."
"Which?"
"I don't remember. Look, the doctor said it was an accident.
You found
nothing at the house. Who cares what she told me on the goddamned
phone."
"Want my take, Boss?"
"No."
"Okay, 'ere it is. Usually, there's no such thing as an accidental
suicide attempt. You're either tryin' to top yourself, either
for real
or to make a point, or you're..."
"I know the pysch-"
"SHUT YOUR FUCKING HOLE AND LISTEN TO ME FOR A MOMENT, WILL YOU!" he
took a couple calming breaths. "I don't think Anya was consciously
trying to kill herself, I just don't think she was trying all that
hard
not to."
*****
"She asked about the swimsuit. I asked if she was going to join
us at
the water park with the kids, or later at the bar for the barbecue.
She
said she would probably see us at the bar."
"Probably?" Willow leaned forward in her seat. They were
in the
doctor's lounge. The ER staff let them use it as a professional
courtesy, and to keep them from shouting obscenities at each other
in
the hallway. "Did she say probably, or will, or what?"
"She said probab- I think.... I don't know.... Fuck, Willow,
I don't
remember her exact words. We were just talking and I was trying
to see
what the kids were up to. I wasn't paying any attention."
"Easy, Boss. She'd see us at the bar. Did you get the idea
that she'd
be there before us, or after?" Someone had left a pack of cigarettes
on
the table and Walthorpe was playing with it, occasionally taking a
whiff
of the tobacco, and wondering why he ever gave it up. Faith leaned
across the table and took one from the pack with a faint shrug.
"No, nothing. I have no idea what she was doing, or when she'd
meet
us."
"Nothing on the answering machine, calendar, her day timer." Willow
recited the items as she rose to pace the floor some more and stretch
her muscles, cramped from a long flight.
"No, nothing on the machine," Kerry motioned with her video camera,
the
one she used to record searches conducted under warrant, by force of
habit she used it earlier when Walthorpe and she had entered Anya's
home. "And here, I'll show you, the calendar and daytimer are-"
Cordelia tuned the others out as she left her chair and in turn began
pacing herself. Her two detectives had run through it a half
dozen
times by now as they waited for the word that Anya had regained
consciousness. They entered the house in through the attached
garage.
Headed straight upstairs to Anya's room. Found it in disarray
(have to
go clean everything up before AJ goes back to get her stuff, she
thought) medical debris, the bedclothes tossed aside, Anya's outfit
for
today laid out. Funny, she never was a big clothes horse, not
like-
"Cordelia."
The pain in Willow's voice chilled them all to the bone. The colour
had
drained from her face as she stared at the tiny video screen.
She
looked over at Cordelia, her face a mask of grief, and passed her the
camera with a trembling hand.
Like Willow, she needed only a glance. She had been there too,
after
all. Cordelia passed the camera to Walthorpe, meeting his eyes
with a
single thought.
You were wrong. We were both wrong.
"What? Boss, what is it?" he peered at the camera in confusion
as Faith
and Kerry looked over his shoulder trying to see... what? The
bedroom?
The bed? The clothes? What?
"White satin dress, with pearl-"
"-inlaid bodice, matching gloves-" Willow took up the description.
"-and lace veil," two voices barely audible in the silent room.
A wedding dress.
End