Tom shared with me how he always wanted to be in a helping profession and had thought of med school himself.
“But, too much time and money,” he said. “And I wanted to, you know, be able to get in there and do my job.” Tom mimed tossing a football for emphasis.
“No waiting in the dugout for Tom Stewart,” I said, buying into his sports metaphors.
“That’s baseball,” he said.
“I knew that.”
As we shared a laugh, Tom seemed to me a sweet, pathetic creature, and I wondered why Dana disliked him so intensely.
We rolled west along San Leandro streets toward the I-880 freeway and Tom’s home. Head for Jack London Square, he’d told me. I apologized to Tom for the fitful starts I made after traffic lights and stop signs. I hadn’t driven Elaine’s car in a long time.
“I’ll bet you’re a great driver,” I said, “having to maneuver an ambulance all day. I’d never be able to do that.” Too obvious? I wondered. But Tom’s proud expression said I was doing fine.
“You get used to it. The worst part is backing down a long driveway or something, but I’m pretty good in reverse, except one time, I hit a rock, and my partner in the back didn’t shut the door good, and all these rubber gloves fell out and onto the ground.”
Ah, the segue I’d been waiting for. “Say, what about those medical supplies?” I said, clicking my tongue. “They actually found them in Tanisha’s house? Rubber gloves and things?”
“Ha,” Tom said, “not rubber gloves, you better believe. Think needles. And meds. All kinds of meds, from nursing homes mostly. You’d be surprised at how often they use morphine in those facilities, for any kind of pain, for mechanical ventilation, for respiratory failure, for arthritis. You’ll even see Roofies. You know, the date-rape drug.”
I knew. “I’m surprised. Morphine is at least legal. But Rohypnol? Why would a nursing home have the date-rape drug?”
“They use it as a mild anesthetic, like maybe pre-op, or even a cure for insomnia.”
“So, someone”—I did not say “Tanisha”—“steals a nursing home drug and then sells it to someone else?”
“Yep. There’s been lots of other stuff missing for a few months now, here and there, and everyone was wondering. EMTs always get blamed, you know, and I guess this time they were right.”
“Why would she steal the meds? Is it that easy to sell them, do you think?”
I caught Tom’s face, raised eyebrows and crooked grin. “Hello? There’s certainly a market out there.”
“Really?” From a wide-eyed old lady “Where?”
Tom made a sputtering sound to go with his duh attitude. “You can go to any street corner in Oakland, for one thing.”
“That seems dangerous, and not very efficient. Walking around from one corner to the next selling … what? Roofies?”
“There’s also morphine, remember—a standard supply in a SNF.”
“A sniff?”
“S-N-F.” Tom spelled it out. “Skilled nursing facility. Plus you’ll have psychotherapeutics, hypnotics, lots of stuff.”
“Wouldn’t there be a more organized way to distribute all these meds?”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t say.”
I wondered.
Matt called my cell phone to tell me Dana had already been released from the hospital. She’d been given a shot of nutrients and told to take care of herself. The consensus was that we needed to take her home to Elaine’s and give her a decent meal. The Italian solution.
“How was it with Tom, by the way?” Matt asked, as if he’d feared for the young man who’d been in my clutches.
“Interesting,” I said, glancing over at Tom.
I’m still with him, said my tone, but one look at Tom, his head leaning on the side window, either nodding off or pretending to, told me I’d gotten all I was going to get from him for now.
As far as I knew, Elaine Cody had no Italian blood, but you couldn’t tell from the meal she’d prepared. Pasta with a clam sauce, a side dish of sauteed zucchini and mushrooms, and large amounts of focaccia, olive oil, and salad. Maybe it had been Matt Gennaro’s influence in the supermarket they’d stopped at on the way home. My contribution was a stop at a local ice cream parlor to pick up a quart of spumoni and a half pint of their chocolate sauce. It was hard to beat an Italian menu when it came to fattening someone up.
Dana was a good sport about eating a little of each course while we watched and pretended to count her calories.
“I’m fine, really. They gave me B-12 at the hospital. I think it was just … everything, you know. Seeing Tanisha, then Marne coming after me like that. And then the supplies.” Dana’s voice got higher with each item she ticked off. “No way in hell did Tanisha steal supplies. She was studying for the firefighters test.”