The funny thing about the cold, it can burn you just as terribly as an open flame. The wind on a winters day sweeping off Lake Michigan was like that, capable of turning skin red like it had been held too close to a hot stove. Mindy Dawson was all too aware of that little fact of life. She walked to work each day from her apartment, braving the conditions in a coat that was barely adequate for what was being asked of it. The chilly air would knife through the fabric, making her body shake and her breath form clouds of vapor.
"I swear...next paycheck...I'm buying a fucking parka," groaned Mindy.
Her eyes, half-closed by the stinging effects of the nasty weather, flashed with relief when she spotted her destination through the shifting snow that hung in the air.
The sliding doors opened automatically with her approach granting her entrance to the antiseptic white halls of Parker Memorial Hospital. Once inside, she sighed as the far warmer interior of the building gave her respite from the deep cold that had settled into her bones.
For the past eight years, Mindy had been a nurse at Parker Memorial assigned primarily to the Intensive Care Ward. It was the kind of job that suited her shy, withdrawn personality. One where her patients were often unconscious or too oblivious as to what was happening to them to offer much in the way of conversation. Any relatives equally too distracted to worry about a nurse that hovered in the shadows.
The door to the room where she stored her meager belongings while at work opened on smooth, well-oiled hinges. At this hour, the room was empty, her only companion's rows of gray steel lockers. Mindy halted near one that had her name in black ink on a piece of tape. She shucked out of her coat, placing it on a hook inside, laying her purse on a shelf. A magnetic mirror about the size of a paperback novel was attached to the inside of the locker door, and she stopped to check her face smirking at the woman who looked back at her.
"You look like shit, Mindy. Thank God your patients can't see you."
It was an unflattering appraisal and not entirely fair, but Mindy often found it hard to be impartial where her looks were concerned. If she had been privy to the hallway conversations of her coworkers, she would have known that quite a few folks around the hospital envied her pretty green eyes, nearly flawless creamy white skin, and dark-brunette hair. It would probably have embarrassed her, even more, to know that her curvy, well-endowed body had often been the subject of discussion among the single men and woman who prowled those same halls.
Shutting the door with a metallic clang, Mindy stopped to adjust her scrubs that had twisted under her coat as she walked before venturing out.
The elevator rose quietly, depositing her on the eighth floor where the Intensive Care wing was located. As usual, it was almost eerily silent with just the hum of medical machinery, and the occasional sound of low voices locked in an exchange of medical jargon as one nurse stopped to consult another.
"Look what the cat dragged in," said Barbara Nusom, one of Mindy's colleagues, who smiled at her approach.
"Hi, Barbara. Everything okay?"
"Same as usual. We got one new patient, gunshot wound in room 6A, but Kelly and Simone are on that one."
Mindy nodded, picking up a chart from the cart by the desk.
"I'm going to do the rounds..."
"You might want to double-check the I.V. in 2B. I think he needs a new one," offered Barbara.
Mindy tried not to show a reaction, but she wondered if Barbara had noticed how much extra time she tended to spend in 2B.
"Thanks...I'll have a look."
Barbara returned to filling out paperwork while Mindy tucked the clipboard under her arm and headed down the corridor.
The rooms were mostly ubiquitous in both layout and décor. Only 2B differed in that regard. After checking on the rest of the patients on that side of the building, which included two with cancer and a burn victim from a car fire, Mindy arrived outside the closed door that separated 2B from the rest of the ward. In intensive care, the doors were usually kept open to facilitate entry in case of an emergency.
What need of privacy did a patient so close to death have anyway?
This door was shut though at the insistence of the patient's mother, and Cecilia Harcourt generally got whatever she wanted.
Mindy stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind her. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low lights. The room appeared on the surface to be like all the others, but one quickly started to notice the differences. The usual hospital furnishings had been replaced with fancier, much more expensive ones, and the few shelves in the room contained both medical equipment and an assortment of family photos in elegant looking gold frames. She stopped to examine one, though by now, she had seen them enough times to have memorized their contents.
In the picture, a young man with long, shoulder-length blond hair stood on a beach in swim trunks and a light jacket grinning at whoever was taking the shot. The sun was setting behind him, and he had the carefree look of someone who rarely worried about anything, or at least never let the world think he did. Mindy lifted the frame bringing it closer. The young man had the most piercing blue eyes she had ever seen, like chips of ice floating in a calm ocean. He was athletic looking, toned but not overly muscular with the kind of body that looked like it could run for miles and never tire.
She wondered for a moment whether that smile would have faltered if he had known that six-months later, he would be struck by a drunk driver and put into a coma.
The patient that occupied 2B no longer completely resembled the young man in the photo though they were the same. His hair was cut short now, shaved off during the surgery to save his life, and grown back since but kept tidy at his mothers request. He was losing some mass, but it was hard to exercise when you're unconscious. Still, for a man in a coma for almost a year, he looked remarkably healthy, and that handsome face hadn't changed. Only the eyes were hidden from the world.
Trevor Harcourt had come to them clinging to life, and the best doctors in the city had moved Heaven and Earth to save him. They had managed the feat, well, sort of, if by living one meant a life hooked up to machines that kept you breathing, your blood pumping, your waste being carried away. According to medical science, Trevor Harcourt was alive, his brain still functioning if only at a minimal level, but for how much longer no one could say.
Ordinarily, a patient like Trevor would have been taken off life support long ago and allowed to expire if his brain function couldn't keep things rolling on its own. Still, he was no ordinary patient, or at least he had no average mother.
Cecilia Harcourt was one of the richest women in the country, her cheating husband having the good grace to die from a heart attack during a particularly strenuous round of sex with a pair of Las Vegas hookers dropping the whole of Harcourt Industries right into her lap. She had carried the company into an even more prosperous period building on the legacy he had left behind. A legacy she had intended to pass on to her children, Trevor, her oldest, and Mitchell, his younger brother by four years. Then had come the accident and that grand plan had gone up in smoke.
Mindy had been there the day they brought Trevor in and had been assigned as his nurse. She had watched over him in the intervening months as the hopes for his recovery faded, and one by one experts recommended letting him go. There remained only one dissenting vote left, but it carried a great deal of weight, and that was Cecilia Harcourt's.
The I.V. did need changing, and she handled it quickly and efficiently while copying down his vitals on the chart under her arm. She stopped to adjust his blankets and noticed that his bangs had fallen over one eye, making him look vaguely like some blond-haired pirate. She brushed them back, briefly resting her hand against his cheek. It was such a shame, a man with so much to live for now stuck in a dying shell he had no way of escaping.
The door swung open again, startling Mindy, who jumped back.
"This whole thing is absurd, Mother. I'm telling you this guy is playing you for a fool."
"It's my money, Mitchell, and I will spend it as I please."
Mindy took a step away from the bed, trying to appear busy checking the settings on a piece of equipment.
The woman who entered the room bore a strong resemblance to her unconscious offspring, with blond hair streaked with gray and blue eyes that flashed with intelligence. Cecilia Harcourt had a stare that could melt lead, but that steely-eyed look faded upon seeing her son. She walked straight over to him, taking his lifeless hand in her own.
"I'm just saying that we've consulted with all the best experts in their field, and the conclusion is always the same. I love Trevor too, but we need to face reality. It's time to let him go."
The man who spoke these words hovered behind his mother like an obedient puppy. A full head shorter than his brother with darker hair and the pale skin of a man who spent little time outside, Mitchell Harcourt had always seemed a little off to Mindy. He indeed pretended sincere concern for his brother's welfare, but she had overheard more than one conversation between him and the family layer, Howard Voss, that gave her the distinct impression that he would just as soon see his sibling cut loose from this world.
"How is he today?"
