Pride Falls

Chapter 3

As Pride and Rachel started walking toward the trauma section, an alarm went off.

"Code Blue, room T4, Code Blue..."

Rachel suddenly quickened her step. "Shit! I was afraid of that..." she said.

Pride followed her lead. "Our man?" he asked.

"Yep!"

They joined a stream of people going to the room. Rachel touched Pride's shoulder and indicated her head toward a tall bulky man in a white coat at the end of the hall conspicuously going away from the scene.

"Hollister?" Pride asked.

She nodded and went into the patient's room.

Pride went in the direction of the errant white coat and called. "Dr. Hollister!"

The man turned the far corner without responding.

When Pride got there, the hall was empty. Then, he heard the stairway door click closed.

He ran to the stairs and listened for footsteps. He started to go up, then paused and ran down to the lower level. He emerged at another hallway and gave it a quick glance up and down. He spied a man in a white coat going into a room to the left at the end of the hall and he took off.

The room turned out to be the cafeteria, filled with hospital staff. Not knowing what Hollister looked like, Pride decided to regroup. Going back out into the hall, he looked up and saw a sign indicating STAFF PARKING with an straight arrow.

He tore down toward the other end of the hall and entered the parking garage.

He started up the ramp when he heard a car backing up behind him. He turned to see the bumper of a dark blue Lexus just a few inches from his knees, making him slip backwards and fall hard on his butt. As It sped away down the ramp, he couldn't get the license number.

Rachel came in to see the code starting. Chief resident Charlie Grimes had taken charge.

"I can document, Charlie." she said.

She took a clipboard with the Code Blue forms attached. The docs called out orders for drugs and dosages noting the patient's response, which unfortunately was not positive. They continued compressions. After a few minutes, they tried the defibrillator, but to no avail. After about 15 minutes with no results, they stopped and Grimes pronounced time of death.

Rachel shook her head. She had seen this happen countless times, but it was never easy, especially when the patient was young and the cause violent. As part of her role as documenting nurse, she had to fill in the details. It appeared no one had witnessed the actual event. She showed her notes to the doctor.

"What about them," she said indicating the NOPD officers.

"They just arrived when Ginny came in. She saw he wasn't breathing, and called the code," he said.

Rachel paused and asked him quietly. "Did you see Hollister in here?"

He frowned and shook his head. "Why would he be here?"

"The patient was shot at his office," she said.

"Well, if he was here, I'd like to know what happened," he said. "This doesn't make any sense-the bullet went through, bleeding was controlled, he had a strong heart."

"Do you suspect nefarious intervention?" Rachel and the resident turned to Pride's voice as he entered the room. He looked slightly disheveled.

"Could be," Grimes replied, "We'll have to do an autopsy."

"Well, the victim was a sailor, so NCIS will be taking over from here," Pride flashed his badge. "Our lab will find out what happened."

"Let me get his things together," Rachel said.

Pride nodded and stepped out to get on the phone. As Rachel gathered up the patient's clothes, a folded piece of paper fell out. She picked it up and was just about to open it when another nurse popped her head in.

"Hey, Rach, can you give me a hand with 15?"

"Sure." Rachel absentmindedly stuffed the paper in her pock