Making Angels Laugh Read online

  “I met Kathy at Jack’s Chrismation and then at your wedding, Em, and again when your daughter was baptized,” Rita replied. “But that was many years ago.”

  “Twenty-seven years ago on the Chrismation and wedding, twenty-five on my daughter’s baptism,” Em said, her voice tight, guarded, almost bittersweet.

  “Marian wasn’t at your wedding,” Rita offered.

  “We have only been married for…” Jim thought for a moment, “it will be eight years in October… I never thought we’d see you at any of these reunions.”

  Rita shook her head and sighed. “I’m here. I hope it wasn’t a mistake… Peter and Greg are here.”

  Everyone sat.

  “We saw them come through,” Jim acknowledged. “If things go as usual, they’ll stay in the bar most of the night.”

  “Do you already have a room? If not, we have a guest room empty at our house,” Kevin offered.

  “That’s kind of you. But I’m staying with the Fishers. They supplement their pensions by taking in paying guests,” Rita replied. “I don’t think they really get many guests. And I want to help them as much as I can.”

  “They get more guests than I thought they’d get when I heard that they were opening their house up to paying guests,” Kathy replied. “We’re not exactly in the high demand territory for that sort of thing.”

  “So, Rita, I read the article about your clinic that was in the New York Times. It sounds like a unique place,” Jim said.

  “Yes, it is. It’s a residential program, sort of a medical spa catering to women who are recovering from cardiac events where the focus is on changing habits and improving the overall health of our patients. We cater to our patients every need and send them home happy and relaxed, with better, healthier, habits and with their medications balanced, any needed procedures done and healed, and with their overall health improved. Although we also take outpatients.”

  “Yes, I recall reading that,” Jim replied. He looked around the table, “I sent the link for the article to all of you.”

  “I remember. You have an interesting approach to cardiac rehab,” Kevin said.

  “It keeps me out of trouble.”

  “So did your position of head of cardiology,” Em offered. “But you gave up training doctors and opened your clinic after your husband died.”

  “I needed a change. It has been a good move. I stay busy and I’m making a difference in the lives of people,” Rita said. “I’m happy with my life, basically.”

  “That’s what matters,” Jim said, approval in his voice.

  She smiled. “Now, tell me what you have been up to since the last time we met.”

  Kevin took Kathy’s hand. He said, “We moved home and took over the practice that my dad and Jack’s dad ran, when they retired. We treat everything from domestic pets to farm animals, more farm animals than domestic pets, these days. But you know how the practice always was. We are living in my family’s house, just down the street from the Fishers. And the practice is still housed in the Vet Clinic building Dad and Uncle John built during our freshman year of high school.”

  Kathy asked, “How are your children, Rita?”

  “Grown men with wives and careers. And yours?”

  “Married, working, and seem to be happy with their lives. We don’t see the grandkids as often as we’d like to,” Kathy said.

  Rita nodded, “I know that feeling. I have five grand-children. Soon to be seven, with twins due any day now. So, tell me Jim, what are you doing with yourself, these days?”

  Marian, Jim’s wife, said, “Jim and I are both partners at,” she named a high profile nationwide criminal defense law firm, headquartered in Chicago.

  “I know the firm, all too well...” She sighed as she saw the sharp interest in Jim’s eyes. “Your Alexander Douglass defended Mark Jameson, the man who murdered my husband,” Rita explained, her voice quiet and pained.

  Silence fell at the table.

  Rita sighed and shook her head as she saw both sympathy and regret in Jim and Marian’s eyes.

  “Margarita Aleksandrova,” Jim began, his voice soft.

  She shook her head. “No. I understand that everyone is entitled to the best legal counsel they can afford. It’s not your problem that Jameson’s family had money and wanted to protect their youth sociopath from the consequences of his actions by hiring one of your firms named partners. Unfortunately, there was no denying that Jameson killed four people, including a police officer and a doctor, my husband. The temporary insanity defense didn’t work with the jury, even though your Mister Douglass pulled every trick in the book and then some… I don’t hold this against you. It’s just the way the system works. I would hope that if I ever needed defense counsel, that you’d take the case.”

  “You know I would,” Jim said.

  “That’s all that’s important,” Rita replied, opening her purse, taking a one-hundred-dollar bill from her wallet and handing the money to Jim. “Take this as a retainer. Bill me annually for whatever your retainer fee is, which I’m sure is exorbitant and worth every penny. I’ll feel more comfortable knowing that you have my back.”

  “Are you planning to need defense counsel anytime soon?” Kevin teased. “Planning to murder someone?”

  “I have no such plans. But, it never hurts to keep good counsel on retainer,” Rita replied.

  “Never hurts,” Jim agreed. “Not if you can afford the retainer.”

  “Precisely. It’s an insurance policy. Like insurance, you hope you never have to file a claim. And personally, I’ve seen enough of the criminal court system that if I never step foot in a courthouse again, it will be entirely too soon.”

  “I’ll consider myself retained, then,” Jim said, taking the money and putting it in his pocket.

  “So, tell me, Marian,” Rita said, obviously trying to get the reunion catchup talk back on track, “how you met Jim.”

  Jim’s eyes twinkled with mischief, “Actually, we met in jail.”

  Rita chuckled. “I’ll bet. That sounds like a story.”

  Marian sighed and shook her head. “We met in an interrogation room at a jail, twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight, years ago. He was defending. I was the assistant State’s Attorney assigned the case. In the end, the prosecution’s case was too weak to convince the jury. I knew the case was weak, and tried to get the defense to a plea bargain. But he wouldn’t go for it.”

  Rita chuckled, “Of course he wouldn’t. You said the case was weak. Jim’s never been a fool.”

  “That,” Marian answered with a similar chuckle, “is debatable.”

  Jim laughed. “No. It’s a kindness from an old friend. Everyone’s foolish from time to time. Even my dear wife. After all, she married me.”

  “You met almost twenty-eight years ago and you’ve been married for only eight years?” Rita asked. “That’s a long courtship.”

  “Not really. She was married when I met her. And she hated me on first sight,” Jim said.

  “Oh, I did not hate you. You were just my adversary in the case. As for the time, yes. I was married to a police detective. My first husband, William, was killed in the line of duty ten years ago,” Marian said, her voice holding old sorrow. Then she smiled, “Jim and I went out for our first date eight and a half years ago. It didn’t take very long for him to convince me to marry him.”

  “Sometimes, it doesn’t take long to know that something is right,” Rita said.

  “Your husband, Rita, how did you meet him?” Marian asked.

  “There’s a story,” Em said with a chuckle. “You’ll get a kick out of this. I remember the first time you and Andrei had us out in Colorado for a long ski weekend. The way he told the story of the day you two met had me laughing as we sat around the fire that evening with our wine after the kids went to sleep.”

  Rita sighed as the memory of that particular day, the day she met her husband, filled her mind.

  Chapter Seven

  It was two o’clock on a
Thursday morning in February. A fierce ice and snow storm was raging outside. The wind howled with a ferocity that made her shiver, even inside the warmth of the hospital. The weather man had called this storm a blizzard. The storm, or rather series of storms one after the other, had virtually shut down large sections of the East Coast. The police and emergency management people were ordering people not to travel except in dire emergencies. All public transportation had been shut down; none of the busses, trains, or subways were operating. Power was out in much of the city. The hospital generators had kicked in at the first sign of trouble and continued to furnish needed electricity to run the lights and equipment.

  It was, of course, one of those nights when the staff were run off their feet in the ER: multiple severe cases of frostbite and hypothermia; severe burns and smoke inhalation cases stemming from house fires as people had taken truly terrible risks to stay warm; fights because people had hunkered down in bars and restaurants when the “no travel” order had gone out and tempers, aided by alcohol, had frayed to the breaking point; cardiac events and broken bones, often with complicating hypothermia or frostbite, as people had tried in vain to clear paths in the storm; and quite a few street people with various mental and physical conditions had simply taken refuge in the ER waiting room in an effort to shelter from the storm and were being seen as time and triage allowed.

  Andrei Zornov had been the trauma surgeon on call that night.

  Rita had been moonlighting in the ER, filling in as most of the regular staff couldn’t get into work due to the miserable weather, and she couldn’t get home in this storm. Of course, moonlighting in the ER wasn’t a new thing for her, even during good weather. She often filled in overnights, when she had time off in her fellowship duties, as the ER was nearly chronically short staffed. Those long hours didn’t give her much rest. But she didn’t need a lot of rest. And the extra money from the ER shift helped.

  The paramedics radioed that they were coming in with a case requiring a trauma surgery team. She looked at the board listing the specialists on call and phoned the extension of the trauma surgeon on call.

  “Zornov,” he answered on the second ring, sounding as though the phone ringing had awakened him from a sound sleep.

  “Doctor, sorry to awaken you. This is Doctor Melnikova in the ER. You are on call tonight?”

  She could practically hear him snap to alertness. “Yes. I am. What’s the case?”

  She gave him the case notes in brief as given to her by the paramedics.

  “I’m in the hospital. I shall be with you in three minutes.”

  Before she had hung up, she heard a man shout “Leave me the hell alone!”

  “Stop that, Sir!” a nurse advised in a sharp voice.

  The first voice shouted, “I said, don’t touch me!”

  That was followed by the sounds of a fight; a blow connecting hard, the sound of a person in sudden pain, a woman screaming for help, the clatter of metal objects, and the unmistakable thud of a person hitting the floor.

  “Oh, just what we don’t need,” Rita had muttered under her breath as she stood and prepared herself to deal with whatever this was. Curtains on one of the treatment cubicles parted as a bleeding man stepped out, holding a young red haired nurse, Amy Craig, in front of him, with a scalpel pressed to her throat.

  The terror in the young woman’s green eyes made Rita resolute. She was not going to let Amy be hurt.

  The Attending, Doctor John Richards, hit the “panic” button, alerting security.

  “Let the nurse go!” Rita demanded.

  “She’s coming with me. I’m leaving here.”

  Rita said, keeping her voice calm, “You can certainly leave, sir. No one is holding you. Amy stays here, unharmed! Release her. No one is going to stop you from leaving if you release her unharmed.”

  “He knocked out Doctor Petersen,” Amy said.

  Cliff Petersen was a first year resident who needed to learn tact, as his “bedside manner” was decidedly harsh. But he had, probably, not deserved being attacked.

  “It’s okay, Amy. We’ll see to Petersen as soon as we can.” Rita advised, keeping her voice level and confident. “Sir, let her go. You are free to leave. I wish you would let us finish stitching up your head before you leave. The needle’s still there. That wound isn’t going to heal right if it’s not closed.”

  He looked confused. “I have to get out of here. You have to let me go.”

  “You are free to leave, but not with a nurse as hostage. We need our nurses so that we may care for other people. I can’t let you take her with you.”

  Amy began to cry. “Please let me go,” she begged. “Please…”

  “Shut up, Bitch!” the hostage taking patient, who was still bleeding from that partially stitched gash in his head, ordered as he placed the sharp blade even closer to Amy’s porcelain skin. “One more word out of you and you’re dead!”

  Rita assessed the situation. Amy’s fear was real, and grounded in reality. Letting him take Amy from the unit could well be Amy’s death warrant. This guy was clearly deranged. “Let her go, sir!”

  “I’ll let her go when I’m out of here,” the hostage taker said. “And not before. Let me go.”

  “You’ll let her go, now,” Rita replied, her voice firm.

  “You’ll kill me if I don’t have a hostage…”

  Definitely unbalanced, Rita remembered thinking.

  “No one wants to harm you. We’re here to help.”

  He lowered the scalpel from Amy’s throat, but did not release her even though he held the blade down at his side.

  Amy took advantage of the moment. She elbowed him in the ribs, and stepped sharply on his instep at the same moment. She broke free from him and ran.

  The panic on his face was striking. He still had the surgical knife.

  Rita walked towards him, holding her hands up in front of her. “Okay, now. I told you that you are free to leave. Just drop the scalpel and go. It would be better if you’d let me finish stitching up your head before you left, though.”

  He held out the knife as if the tool were a weapon and lunged at her. Rita turned sidewise, facing him, deflected his arm, grabbed his hand, and raked her fingernails down his palm, taking possession of the sharp instrument, which she threw some distance away. While the knife still clattered along the floor, she put a twist on his arm, stepped around him, twisted the arm behind his back, forced him to his knees, and then to his face on the floor. Then she sat on him, placing herself firmly straddling his hips, staying balanced in spite of his efforts to get free, and twisting his other arm behind him to get him under control as he fought against her. Almost without realizing that she was praying, she repeatedly recited the “Jesus” prayer, “Gospodi Iisuse Khriste, Syne Bozhii, Pomilui mya greshniya” “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

  At the end of one repetition of the prayer, she heard the rich voice she recognized as being that of Andrei Zornov, the trauma surgeon, say, “Amen” then ask in English, “Doctor, how may I assist you?”

  She looked up momentarily from the still struggling patient turned hostage taker who was rapidly, viciously, and loudly, cursing her while trying to buck her off his back. But she wasn’t going to let the assailant do anything except be subdued.

  Rita had seen Andrei Zornov before, at Church and around the hospital, but they’d never spoken to one another. He was in his mid-thirties, the head of his service, a physician established and respected to the point of being held in awe. He was quite formidable in appearance, being a tall and muscular man with a full, although neatly trimmed, beard, and a head of gorgeous dark hair that he wore pulled neatly back in a ponytail. He had a reputation of not suffering fools gladly. He was considered fierce and often short tempered. Yet, he was a brilliant and highly gifted surgeon who saved lives that would have been lost without his intervention. People made allowances for this kind of talent for saving lives. “Doctor Zornov, your patient should be h
ere momentarily. You need to go to him when he arrives.”

  “Seems you could use a hand, now, Doctor.”

  “What I could use is a syringe with a strong sedative for our friend here,” Rita said.

  One of the nurses called out, “Filling it now, Doctor Melnikova.” Then the nurse told her what drug and in what dose.

  The man she was sitting on increased his panicked efforts to free himself, but to no avail.

  “That will do,” Rita replied. “Thanks.”

  Andrei spoke to her in Russian, “I am Andrei Ivanovich Zornov. May I know your name, Doctor?”

  “Margarita Aleksandrova Melnikova,” Rita replied, still struggling with the patient who was trying, unsuccessfully, to buck her off his back.

  The syringe was handed to Andrei. “Shall I, Doctor?” he asked in English.

  By this time security was on the scene. The off duty police officer who was working security tonight held down the patient’s feet.

  She replied in Russian. “Please. I cannot give you one of his arms, for obvious reasons. So find a vein,” Rita said and was surprised by the dry chuckle that came from him in reply. The Great Zornov, as the staff was prone to describe him, was not known to have a pronounced sense of humor.

  Andrei administered the injection of the sedative by cutting a slit in the man’s trousers at the back of the knee and using a vein in the patient’s right leg to administer the drug. “Are you sure you don’t need further assistance, Doctor?” he asked in English as the paramedics brought in his case.

  She answered him in English. “You have a patient. Go to him. He needs you more than I do at this moment. This situation is under control. Thank you, Doctor Zornov. I appreciate your assistance, more than I can say.” Rita didn’t like the strain she heard in her voice. But she understood it, fully.

  The man on the ground continued shouting curses and trying, in vain, to free himself.

  “We will have to talk later,” Andrei told her in Russian.

  “Da,” Yes, she dismissed as he went to his patient.