My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Hostile hormones
Lily Ah Sun and Nina Ramones each realized at very nearly the same moment that she wasn't the only woman screaming Quinn's name and running to where he lay on the concrete of the ER parking lot.
Looking up at Lily and Nina, seeing them look one another up and down, something in Quinn Ah Sun's mind said that this had the makings of a very complicated relationship, to phrase it optimistically. But it was a passing thought, here and gone, because one of the body's great defense mechanisms is that physical injury takes precedence. First heal the body being. The emotional stuff can wait until after the bleeding stops.
So as EMS techs Vic Lipman and Yvonne Morales helped him onto a gurney and hustled him back to the ER, all Quinn saw was his cousin Lily, who until a few hours ago had been his new love interest, and Nina, the nurse who had been his new love interest for nearly 90 minutes now, having a conversation. Getting to know one another.
"I'm Lily, Quinn's cousin." Not extending her hand.
"I'm Nina." Returning the un-gesture. "I've heard about you." Word had swept the floor when another nurse walked in and caught Lily half in bed with her cousin, kissing him.
"Oh?" Had Quinn talked about them?
"I'm a nurse here." As if that explained everything.
Lily eyed Nina's creamy little silk blouse with a swooping neckline, the tight black jeans, the platform sandals. "I see they've changed the uniform code since I was here last."
When inspired, Lily could do catty with the best.
Nina smelled competition in the air. Like fermented estrogen.
"I'm," she said, pausing for effect, "off-duty. In fact, Quinn asked me to be his private-duty nurse when he's released." Letting the possible implications of that slap Lily's heart around for a while.
"Excuse me if I'm not surprised," Lily said, less ice in her words than she wished to muster. "He's a total slut."
She turned to go, nearly ran into the sharp-dressed guy who'd kicked the Samoan cabbie -- who was fighting with Quinn -- in the head and knocked him out and cuffed him.
"Ladies, I'm afraid I have questions for both of you." He flipped open his wallet, flashed an HPD badge. "Detective Sherlock Gomes."
"Together?" Lily said, glancing sideways at Quinn's private nurse.
Two guys from the ER hustled out, lifted the cabbie, who was just coming back from Never-Never Land, onto a gurney.
"No. Separately." One, Gomes wanted to hear their stories uninfluenced by the other's words. Two, he wanted to separate them before they started clawing at each other. Hostile hormones were in the air.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com