The Man in Room 314
As Pete Resnick watched his mother slowly waste away, his pain was nearly as great as hers. Sadly, there was nothing he, an eight-year-old boy, could do to alleviate her agony. He could only stand by, helpless, and watch her suffer. Over the long months of his mother's illness, her glorious golden blond curls fell victim to the chemotherapy treatments, and the once beautiful Etta Resnick was reduced to a pale wraith, an unflattering caricature of the woman she once was.
Bereft at his loss, young Pete swore upon her death that he would dedicate his life to helping the sick and comforting the dying. Since he had neither the grades nor the financial wherewithal to go to medical school, he decided instead to become a nurse. At first, he found watching terminally ill patients die almost as great an ordeal as witnessing his own mother pass away. Eventually, though, he came to terms with death. His mission became one of making the dying patients' final days as comfortable as possible. After all, he wasn't God; he could not wave his hand and restore good health to the sick, youth to the aged or a longer life to the terminally ill.
He had been working at an eastern Pennsylvania hospital for more than three years when he was forced to confront one of the greatest dilemmas a healthcare worker must face. Ida May Sayres was a fifty-nine-year-old teacher, mother of two and grandmother of three. She and her husband had been happily married for over thirty years, and they were looking forward to retiring and moving to a log cabin in Maine. Then cancer came knocking on Ida May's door, and all her plans and dreams for the future went out the window.
After undergoing surgery, she was then subjected to months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. She tried experimental drugs and natural medicines and even went so far as to consult a faith healer—all to no avail. The cancer continued to spread throughout her body. When she was brought to the hospital, Pete failed to recognize her, for what was left of her once radiant red hair had turned pure white and her sallow skin hung loosely over her skeletal frame.
"Mrs. Sayres, it's good to see you again," he said with forced cheerfulness. "I don't think you remember me, but I was in your eighth-grade history class."
Ida May turned her sad green eyes toward the sound of his voice.
"Could you please give me something for the pain?" she whispered.
Pete looked at her chart.
"It says here you had a shot less than an hour ago. I'm afraid you're going to have to wait a little while for another one."
"I'm in agony. Please help me," she pleaded.
Pete tried to take Ida May's mind off her discomfort by asking her questions about her family, but the dying woman persisted and became increasingly upset. Eventually, he gave in and administered a painkiller much earlier than was scheduled.
That night when he went home, he ate a frozen pizza and tried to lose himself in a British murder mystery on PBS, but his mind kept going back to poor Mrs. Sayres. Long before the killer was unmasked by the fictional detective, Pete turned off the TV and poured himself a glass of whiskey.
"I just don't get it, Barnaby," he said to his Cocker Spaniel. "If a pet owner has a seriously ill animal put to sleep, it's considered the humane thing to do. Why is it then when we want to help a dying patient end his life it's considered criminal?"
After downing his drink, he poured himself another tall glass of whiskey and then another.
"Poor Mrs. Sayres," he sobbed. "She's going to die. The doctors know it, her family knows it and even she knows it. Yet they all sit back and watch her suffer—just like my mom did."
Ida May Sayres passed away quietly in her sleep two days later. Since it was assumed the cancer had killed her, no autopsy was performed, and thus no one ever suspected that Pete Resnick had performed his first act of euthanasia.
* * *
The years went by, and Pete continued to give comfort and solace to his patients and, in extreme cases, to take the matter of life and death into his own hands. Since helping Mrs. Sayres shuffle off the mortal coil, Pete was responsible for the deaths of seventeen patients, all of whom were beyond hope of being cured and needlessly forced to endure excruciating pain.
Surprisingly, Pete's conscience did not bother him. He was, as he saw it, performing a necessary service. For years doctors had quietly assisted in patients' suicides. Life support systems had been turned off, needed medications withheld and, in some cases, even lethal doses of medicine administered. In a world where science could keep the human body alive for years after brain activity ceased, it was becoming more and more common for patients to have living wills that prohibited the use of life-sustaining equipment. It seemed that, as a rule, although man wanted to live, he did not want to be simply kept alive. Lawyers and doctors had a phrase for it: quality of life. Pete, however, thought of it in terms of an older, simpler name: mercy.
Unfortunately, when Pete Resnick put Ida May Sayres out of her misery and took his first step in playing God, he did not stop there. He was surprised to see how easy it was to kill with impunity when one wore the uniform of a healer. While lawyers and patients kept a close eye on doctors—no doubt hoping to find themselves on the winning side of a lucrative malpractice suit—few people ever checked up on the nurses, those nondescript persons who walked in and out of patients' rooms emptying bedpans, changing sheets, checking vital signs and administering medications. No one feared them, and few suspected them when a patient died.
Inevitably, one fateful day Pete graduated from mercifully ending the lives of terminal patients to murdering those whom he believed deserved to die. That was the day Marlon Hartley was brought into the hospital with a bad case of appendicitis.
"Hartley," Pete commented when he saw the name on the patient directory at the nurses' station. "That name sounds familiar."
"It should," a fellow nurse replied. "His wife has been here often enough."
"Oh? Cancer patient?"
"No, spousal abuse. That creep in there," she said nodding her head toward Mr. Hartley's room, "likes to knock his wife around from time to time. She's been in here with contusions, broken bones, fractures—you name it."
"Is she still with him?"
"I guess so. The police tried several times to get her to press charges, but she wouldn't."
"Why not?"
"Who knows? Maybe she's just a glutton for punishment."
Pete picked up the patient's chart and headed into Room 307.
"Hello, Mr. Hartley," he said, smiling amiably.
As a nurse it was his duty to treat all patients with compassion and courtesy, even those he did not particularly like. While Pete was taking the patient's temperature, he got a good look at the man. At six foot four inches and about three hundred pounds, Hartley resembled a construction worker or perhaps a truck driver.
"I'm not feeling so hot," Hartley whined. "Could I get something for the pain?"
"The doctor will be in to see you shortly. I'm sure he can prescribe something to make you comfortable."
As Pete was strapping the blood pressure cuff on the patient's upper arm, the man's wife walked into the room. Mira Hartley was petite, about five feet two inches, and she could not have weighed much more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. She reminded Pete of a little girl—a very beautiful little girl—with copper-colored hair, dimples and captivating green eyes.
"Did you bring me my paper?" the patient barked at her.
"The newsstand didn't have the Daily News, so I bought you the Morning Call."
"You damned fool!" her husband yelled. "You know I never read the Morning Call. Christ, I should have known you couldn't handle even the simplest task without screwing it up. I ask you, how hard is it to buy a newspaper?"
"I tried, but the newsstand was sold out of the Daily News."
The patient's face became livid with anger.
"Are you answering me back? You're lucky I'm in this hospital bed or else I'd ...."
Pete could stand it no longer.
"Please, Mr. Hartley. I'm trying to take your blood pressure. You mustn't get upset. It will throw the readings off."
"Sorry," the man said sheepishly.
I know your type, Pete thought with disgust. You don't hesitate to bully and beat a woman, yet you won't say "boo" to another man.
When Marlon Hartley closed his eyes and lay back on the pillow, Pete stole a glance at the wife. He saw the telltale signs of abuse on her face and arms. He also saw—to no great surprise—a long, jagged scar on each of her wrists, a souvenir of a failed suicide attempt.
Mira Hartley unexpectedly lifted her face toward him, and Pete was surprised to see a familiar look in her eyes, one he had seen on hundreds of cancer patients: the knowledge that death was inevitable. The poor woman knew that, eventually, that pathetic excuse for a man she married was going to kill her. Her eyes told Pete that she not only knew this to be true but also that she had accepted her fate. Perhaps part of her was even looking forward to it—anything to get out of the nightmare she was trapped in.
When Pete went home that night, he devised a plan to rid the world of Marlon Hartley. He did not interpret his actions as murdering the man as much as saving the life of the woman. The death of a chronic wife abuser, he reasoned, would be no great loss to the world.
Two days later, when her husband died from complications resulting from his appendectomy, the widow did not cry out against the hospital or its doctors, she did not demand to know what had gone wrong and she did not contact a lawyer to discuss a possible lawsuit. Mira Hartley was quite happy to be the beneficiary of Marlon's modest life insurance policy and, more importantly, to be free of her abusive husband.
Eighteen months after sending Marlon Hartley to the hereafter, Pete Resnick, a real-life Dexter Morgan, decided to eliminate a man with a history of child molestation and nine months later a woman who had been acquitted of drowning her two children. Two years after that, he killed a young hoodlum who had been shot by police after beating an eighty-year-old woman to death with a baseball bat in an attempted robbery. If the police suspected foul play in the young patient's sudden turn for the worse, they gave no indication of it.
If our positions were reversed, Pete thought, the police would probably do the same thing.
The only regret he felt was that the punk had a painless death. It was a shame the heartless bastard could not have been made to suffer as his poor, elderly victim surely had.
Then one day, thirteen months after he had given the bat-wielding hoodlum a one-way ticket to hell, Pete reported for duty and saw a uniformed policeman posted outside the door of Room 314.
"What's going on?" he asked the lab technician who had just left the room with several small vials of blood.
"There was a big drug bust in Allentown last night. Police broke into a crack house, and a real shoot-out ensued—just like in the movies. That guy in Room 314 is one of the drug dealers. The cops are going to be here around the clock until he comes to and they have a chance to question him."
Throughout the day, more details concerning the man in Room 314 were circulated. In addition to the eight men and two women who worked at the crack house, five policemen were killed. Another seven people—including the man in Room 314—were critically injured.
"Five cops killed," Pete whispered under his breath. "I wonder how many other innocent lives were lost because of that scumbag."
During his nursing career, Pete had seen quite a few people overdose, some of whom were not yet old enough to drive. Even though the eastern Pennsylvania community was a considerable distance from the bustling, crime-ridden Philadelphia area, its drug problem was reaching epidemic proportions, all because of men like the one in Room 314.
And yet doctors are valiantly trying to save his life. For what? So that he can hire a high-priced lawyer and beat the rap? Or maybe he'll squeal on his equally worthless associates and be put into the witness protection program.
That evening Pete gave serious thought to the problem of the man in Room 314. There was no doubt in his mind that the drug dealer deserved to die, but how could he carry out his judgment right under the watchful eyes of the police? In the intervening years since he had murdered Marlon Hartley, Pete saw himself as a combination of Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. Of course, he did not hunt or stalk his victims like Paul Kersey or tote a .44 magnum like Dirty Harry Callahan, but these movie heroes and the avenging male nurse differed only in their methods. Their motives were very similar: to make the world a better and safer place for honest, decent, law-abiding Americans.
When Pete went on duty three days later, the third-floor corridors were crowded with people, many of them policemen. A uniformed officer demanded to see his identification before letting him report to the nurses' station.
"What's up now?" he asked the head nurse on duty.
"The man in Room 314 was found dead this morning."
"I'm not surprised given the fact that he took a shotgun blast to the stomach."
"His condition had stabilized after surgery. The police suspect he was murdered."
"That's ridiculous!" Pete scoffed. "He's been under police surveillance the whole time he's been here."
The head nurse cast a furtive glance over her shoulder to see if anyone might be eavesdropping.
"They think someone on the inside got to him."
"You mean one of our doctors?"
"Or a tech. Might even be a nurse."
Pete was interested but not worried. After all, he had simply been giving the patient a harmless placebo in place of the medicine needed to keep him alive.
"That's why we're all being asked to take a lie detector test," the head nurse continued.
Now Pete was alarmed, and his palms began to sweat.
"Why go through all that trouble over a low-life crack dealer?"
"Well, it turns out he wasn't a bad guy at all."
"What?"
A chill crept down Pete's spine.
"The murdered man wasn't a drug dealer; he was an undercover cop with a wife and four kids. His police buddies on the force are taking his death personally. They're out for blood."
Pete said nothing; he merely stared, unseeing, at an architectural rendering of the proposed expansion of the hospital, which was hanging on the wall.
"They've got the lie detector equipment set up in the solarium at the end of the hall. Carla's in there now. When she comes back, I'll send you down."
"I'd like to go to the men's room first. I had two cups of coffee before I came to work, and I don't know how long this test will take."
The head nurse laughed.
"You'd better go now, then. Carla will probably be back any minute."
Pete left the nurse's station but never made it to the third-floor men's room. Instead, he ducked into the medical supply closet.
His options were limited. If he submitted to a lie detector test, he was sure to fail. If he refused to take one, such refusal in itself would be tantamount to an admission of guilt. Maybe he should run, but that, too, would be a sure sign of his culpability.
"They'll find me, anyway—eventually. Besides, I wouldn't know where to go."
Pete had only one course of action left. He took a set of keys out of his pocket and locked the door to the supply room. Then he unlocked the medicine cabinet.
"I killed an innocent man," he said, his guilt weighing down on him. "A police officer. A husband and a father. A good man. I'm no better than the evil men and women I've done away with."
He reached into the medicine cabinet, took out a hypodermic needle and removed it from its sterile wrapping. Then he slapped his lower arm with his hand until the veins rose to the surface of the skin.
"Pete?"
He heard the head nurse call his name. Carla must have come back. They would be looking for him soon.
His hand shook for a moment as he inserted the needle into his vein.
Pete Resnick had only one dream during his life: to be a healer, to help cure the sick and give comfort to the dying. This driving force had at some point taken a peculiar turn, and he confused the role of a healer with that of a killer.
"Pete?"
The head nurse was jiggling the handle of the locked door to the medical supply room.
"Physician ...," Pete muttered.
"Pete? Are you in there?"
"... heal thyself."
The head nurse put her key in the lock and opened the door.
Pete pushed the plunger on the empty hypodermic needle and sent a lethal air bubble through his veins and directly to his heart.
* * *
The head nurse checked Pete's pulse—there was none. She closed the door of the medical supply room and signaled to one of the uniformed police officers.
"He's in there," she said. "He's dead."
Then she walked down the hall and opened the door to Room 314.
"You were right, Detective Volman. It was Pete Resnick, but you won't have to arrest him. He killed himself."
The man in Room 314 had been an undercover cop, it was true. But he had not been shot in a gun battle with drug dealers. That story had been a lie and his injuries faked—all part of a carefully laid trap to catch a killer.
"It's hard to believe," the head nurse said with tears in her eyes. "I've worked with Pete all these years, and I never suspected anything. He was so gentle and caring; he's the last person I'd expect to hurt anyone."
"There were too many deaths on this floor," the homicide detective told her. "Far more than would occur under normal circumstances. I knew someone on the staff had to have had a hand in them. He was clever, though. I'll give him that. He gave us a good run for our money."
Now that the trap had been sprung, the man in Room 314 was free to leave. As he walked past the third-floor nurse's station, he could see Pete's body being taken away on a gurney.
"Congratulations, Detective Volman," the hospital administrator said, giving the undercover cop a pat on the back. "You must be very relieved that this is all over now."
"I did my job," the detective replied. "That's all. I get paid to catch the bad guys."
He did not add that all too often the criminals he caught were set back out on the streets to rob, rape, abuse or murder again. As the detective left the hospital, he wondered briefly if he had, in fact, served and protected the citizens of the eastern Pennsylvania community by ending the avenging nurse's career. Maybe the world needed people like Pete Resnick.
Salem wasn't a very good nurse. He insisted on using litter boxes in place of bedpans.
