Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

sitting on the counter and look at the labels. The rack is from 5 East and West, and there are twenty-four tubes in the various slots. I find a red-top tube from Room 521. It is Mr. Gwadowski’s blood.
    I pick up the tube and study it as I slowly turn it under the light. It has not clotted, and the fluid within looks dark and brackish, as though the needle that punctured Mr. Gwadowski’s vein has instead hit a stagnant well. I uncap the tube and sniff its contents. I smell the urea of old age, the gamey sweetness of infection. I smell a body that has already begun to decay, even as the brain continues to deny the shell is dying around it.
    In this way, I make Mr. Gwadowski’s acquaintance.
    It will not be a long friendship.
     
    Angela Robbins was a conscientious nurse, and she was irritated that Herman Gwadowski’s ten o’clock dose of antibiotics had not yet arrived. She went to the 5 West ward clerk and said, “I’m still waiting for Gwadowski’s IV meds. Can you call Pharmacy again?”
    “Did you check the Pharmacy cart? It came up at nine.”
    “There was nothing on it for Gwadowski. He needs his IV dose of Zosyn right now.”
    “Oh. I just remembered.” The clerk rose and crossed to an in box on the other countertop. “An aide from Four West brought it up a little while ago.”
    “Four West?”
    “The bag was sent to the wrong floor.” The clerk checked the label. “Gwadowski, Five-twenty-one-A.”
    “Right,” said Angela, taking the small IV bag. On the way back to the room, she read the label, confirming the patient’s name, the ordering physician, and the dose of Zosyn that had been added to the bag of saline. It all appeared correct. Eighteen years ago, when Angela had started work as a newly minted nurse, an R.N. could simply walk into the ward’s supply room, pick up a bag of IV fluid, and add to it the necessary medications. A few mistakes made by harried nurses, a few highly publicized lawsuits, had changed all that. Now even a simple IV bag of saline with added potassium had to come through the hospital pharmacy. It was another layer of administration, another cog in what was already the complicated machinery of health care, and Angela resented it. It had caused an hour’s delay in this IV bag’s arrival.
    She switched Mr. Gwadowski’s IV tubing to the new bag and hung the bag on the pole. Through it all, Mr. Gwadowski lay unmoving. He’d been comatose for two weeks, and already he exuded the smell of death. Angela had been a nurse long enough to recognize that scent, like sour sweat, that was the prelude to the final passing. Whenever she detected it, she would murmur to the other nurses: “This one’s not going to make it.” That’s what she thought now, as she turned up the IV flow rate and checked the patient’s vital signs.
This one is not going to make it.
Still, she went about her tasks with the same care she gave to every patient.
    It was time for the sponge bath. She brought a basin of warm water to the bedside, soaked a washcloth, and started by wiping Mr. Gwadowski’s face. He lay with mouth gaping open, the tongue dry and furrowed. If only they could let him go. If only they could release him from this hell. But the son would not even allow a change in the code status, and so the old man lived on, if you could call this living, his heart continuing to beat in its decaying shell of a body.
    She peeled off the patient’s hospital gown and checked the central venous line skin site. The wound looked slightly red, which worried her. They had run out of IV sites on the arms. This was their only IV access now, and Angela was conscientious about keeping the wound clean and the bandage fresh. After the bed bath, she would change the dressing.
    She wiped down the torso, running her washcloth across the ridges of rib. She could tell he had never been a muscular man, and what was left now of his chest was merely parchment stretched across bone.
    She heard footsteps and was not happy to see Mr. Gwadowski’s son come into the room. With a single glance, he put her on the defensive—that’s the sort of man he was, always pointing out mistakes and flaws in others. He frequently did it to his sister. Once Angela heard them arguing and had to stop herself from coming to the sister’s defense. After all, it was not Angela’s place to tell this son what she thought of his bullying. But she need not be overly friendly to him, either. So she merely nodded and continued with