The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder (30 page)

It had taken years of therapy to stop the guilt. Her decision to survive, and then thrive, had been a conscious one. She didn’t want to be damaged, squeezed, and trapped in the wreckage of her childhood. She had decided she was too tough for that, and she acted the part. She had decided, with the therapist’s help, to engage in the world. And that was impossible without some capacity to trust her relationships with other people. That was part of her decision to go into Critical Care nursing. The patients there needed everything. Their dependency dwarfed her own, and she rewarded that trust with care. That’s what nursing was about: a good paycheck, yeah, but also a relationship which healed both parties. Or so she had thought. If the Pyxis was right, Amy had failed her side of the bargain. She hadn’t kept her patients safe. Now she didn’t feel safe, either.

46

T
im and Danny had started in the predawn darkness of November 24, still smelling of their shave and shower, the front seat of the Crown Vic outfitted with Styrofoam Dunkin’ Donuts to-gos and a clean stack of newspapers. They drove north out of Jersey, into the back roads and farms and vegetable stands of what Tim called “deep bumblefuck” New York, getting deeper with every turn into the mountains. The plan was to close the deal in person—away from the hospital, and before the girl changed her mind. At the time, they hadn’t realized that Amy was a long-distance commuter, hours away.

Danny told Tim about the girl, a fourteen-year nurse, midthirties, kids, blonde and pretty and tough. She was known on the unit as a friend of Charlie’s, maybe his best friend. Giving Amy the details of the investigation had been a gamble, she might pass them on to her pal Charlie. Danny still wasn’t sure exactly why he took it. Partly it was his gut, telling him that there was something wrong with the pattern of canceled orders he’d seen on that Pyxis page, telling him to trust this girl when they could trust nobody else. Mary Lund leaving the room had given him a chance to test it.

“Why’d Lund leave the room?”

“No idea,” Danny said. “Maybe she needed to use the bathroom. Anyway, she’s gone, I slide this nurse the Pyxis printouts and she’s like—
bam!
Right away. It knocked her over.”

“She say why?”

“Yeah, well—first she was just like—stunned,” Danny said. “Then she’s just like, ‘Oh-My-God, Holy Fuck,’ like that, over and over. Sorta slowed down talking, like a witness, you know?”

“Wow,” Tim said. “So she thinks Cullen’s dirty.”

“I think she’s trying to figure it,” Danny said. “She kinda disappeared, I mean—it was like the information was too much, it blew her circuits.”

“She say anything else about the Pyxis, what she saw?”

“Mostly it was the ‘holy shit,’ ” Danny said. “She also said something, said, ‘Charlie and I, we wrapped a lotta bodies together.’ ”

Danny explained how he thought maybe she was going to cry. He didn’t know when Lund was going to walk back in, and he didn’t want to tip her off, so they changed the subject.

“This nurse had talked to Charlie after he was fired, called him. Somebody had seen his picture, he said, probably somebody from Saint Luke’s. Said they must have called Somerset.”

“What picture are we talking about?”

“Thing they sent out in the mail,” Danny said. He dug under the newspapers to his folder. “Check it out. Our guy on the hospital recruiting pamphlet.”

Tim glanced from the road. It was a recruitment flyer, something the hospital gave to potential nursing employees, Charlie Cullen smiling like a school portrait. “You’re shitting me,” Tim said.

“Look like a killer to you?” Danny said.

“Yeah, well,” Tim said. “Who does?”

T
he detectives arrived at the Loughren address a little after 10 a.m., finding a white Colonial in the woods, the girl standing cross-armed in the window. She watched the two men emerging stiffly from what she assumed was an unmarked police car, the black detective and now a white detective, both big guys with suits and mustaches like matching salt-and-pepper-shaker homicide cops, carrying a box of donuts and a tray of takeout coffee to her front door.

Amy brought them into her living room. The men settled in, a little too big around the coffee table. Amy tucked her feet under her on the couch as Tim took the lead, laying out the Somerset Medical case, in detail now, and not using the official language to do it. Danny glanced at his partner; he’d given her some inside information to bait the hook, but the plan was to take it slow from there. Now Tim was just telling Amy everything. Tim gave Danny a shrug: what the hell. He’d started it. They had to trust somebody if they were going to make this case.

T
he Pyxis sheet Danny had shown Amy at the hospital was only one of a stack. The detectives watched the girl picking through the pages, getting agitated. It wasn’t any one specific drug order, she said. It was all the orders combined.

“First of all, if you printed out all my Pyxis orders, they’d be, like, a tenth of this,” Amy said. “Less, probably. Nobody orders like this.”

“So what does that tell you?”

“Nothing specifically,” Amy said. “But it’s weird.” Charlie had been making a separate request for each drug he ordered. “It would be like ordering a dozen eggs, one egg at a time,” she said. And many of the entries were only seconds apart—even when Cullen had been ordering the same drug, for the same patient. Amy could think of no logical reason to do that.

“How about the dig?” Danny said. “We’re interested in that.”

Amy flipped through the stack from the beginning, starting with Charlie’s drug pulls from early in the year. “See that?” she said, running a fingernail down the columns. “And that, and that?”

The detectives leaned in. “That’s the dig, yeah,” Danny said. He’d flagged that before. “Is it unusual?”

“Uh,
yeah
,” Amy said. “Charlie was ordering dig like—I don’t know, ten times a month.”

“Is that a lot?”

“That’s maybe more than I’ve ordered the whole time I’ve worked at Somerset.”

“Okay,” Tim said. “Wow.”

“And this was in the ICU,” Amy said. “Dig is really not that common a drug there.”

“Amy,” Danny said. “We want to ask something from you. We’re trusting you with this. Nobody else, none of the other nurses, know anything about this. The hospital doesn’t know this.”

“We’re not currently sharing our information, um,
freely
with the hospital,” Tim said.

“We don’t want them taking a defensive posture to the information, legally,” Danny said.

“What Danny’s saying is, Somerset’s been covering their asses from day one,” Tim said. Danny glared at him. Tim ignored it.

“They didn’t tell us we could get this Pyxis. They didn’t tell us about—well, let’s just say, we’re not totally sure we’re on the same side of this thing.”

“They didn’t tell you about Pyxis?” Amy said. “But you—”

“We knew about it. We just had, uh, a problem getting the records for a while.”

“How about Cerner?”

Tim looked over at Danny. “I’m not sure what—who’s Cerner?”

Amy couldn’t believe it. They didn’t have the Cerner data? Neither Tim nor Danny had heard of it. Lund had never mentioned it; nobody at the hospital had. Amy had to wonder,
What the heck have they been investigating with?

Amy explained that if you wanted to learn about patients, Cerner was the tool. It was a computer system that kept patient records, the way Pyxis did with drug orders. Pull the Cerner data and they’d have a running time-line record of every patient’s progress on the CCU and a time-stamped record of every time Charlie had ever looked at a chart. They didn’t know that?

“See, that right there,” Danny said, writing it down. “That’s why we’re trusting you. But if we’re going to be able to do this, you’re going to need to keep the relationship, um, separate from the hospital.”

“Don’t tell them shit,” Tim said, “would be the idea.”

“Okay,” Amy said. “I won’t say anything.”

“Good,” Danny said. “I know we’re putting you in a difficult situation—”

“I won’t say anything, really,” Amy said. “Swear.”

“Look, Amy, here’s—let me say this,” Tim said. “We wouldn’t be taking a risk showing you all this, if we didn’t think it’s important.”

“It’s clear to us—and I think it’s clear to you, too—that Charles Cullen was doing something wrong at the hospital,” Danny added.

“We think he killed a patient. Maybe more than one. And we think he may have been killing patients for a long time.”

“Oh God,” Amy said.

“And, see Amy, here’s the thing. If we don’t stop him, he’s going to kill patients again, somewhere else.”

“My God,” Amy said. “I screwed up! I told him I’d help him get a job—I’m his reference…”

“It’s okay,” Tim said. “That means you’ve got a reason to talk to him. Because, here’s the thing.”

“We need your help,” Danny said.

“You can help us stop Cullen. We want you to work with us.”

“Keep up with Charlie, see how he’s doing.”

“Be our eyes and ears.”

“Wait—what?” Amy said. She pushed back from the table. “You tell me he’s killing people, but you want me to stay friends with the guy?”

“I know, I know, I know,” Tim said. “But, yeah.”

“Not friends,” Danny said. “You don’t have to be friends. Just—keep in touch.”

“Like, undercover.”

“You can’t tell anybody at work, Amy.”

“Not even your friends.”

“Nobody.”

“Yeah, I…” Amy wasn’t saying no, but she started shaking her head that way.

“I know, it’s a lot to process.”

“Yeah, no,” Amy said. “I’ll—need to think about it—”

“Think about it.”

“I will, I—”
Rrring!
The telephone shocked her. Amy reflexively put a hand over her heart in protection.

“Please,” Tim said, “if you want to get that, or—”

“Yeah, hold on, hold on,” Amy said. “It might be my daughter, from school.” She leaned to check the caller ID. “Oh, God.” She triggered Talk on the cordless, glanced hard at the detectives, waving them closer. Tim and Danny leaned in.

“Hi Mar-ryy,” Amy said, sounding singsong casual. It was Mary Lund.
¹
Tim looked at Danny. They were busted.

Amy held the receiver away from her ear so they all could hear. Mary Lund said hello, and that she was just following up after the police interview last night. Mary wanted to know: how did Amy think it went?

“Fine,” Amy said. “It was fine.”

“Fine,” Mary repeated. She sounded too quick, nervous. Amy popped
her eyes at the detective, shaking her head in slow motion and silently mouthing
Whatthefuck
…

“Well, I’m sure you’re glad it’s over,” Mary said. “If the police ask for anything else, or if you plan on making any kind of statement, maybe you’d better just go ahead and make sure that you have the hospital attorney with you. For your own protection.”

“Um, really?” Amy said. “I don’t think that’s necessary, Mary. Is it? I mean, I’m not the target of their investigation or anything.”

“Amy, that’s not a good idea,” Mary said. “If the police try to contact you again, you should tell them to speak directly with one of our attorneys. We have a—”

“I appreciate your call, Mary, but really, I feel fine. This really isn’t about me, they said I’m not a suspect.”

“Amy,” Mary said, “I strongly suggest that you have a Somerset Medical Center lawyer with you if you speak to the police again. Their investigation has… stepped up a notch.”

Amy finished the call and dropped the phone. What the hell was going on? It was like someone had changed the channel in the middle of her life and switched to some detective story.

“See, that’s what we’re talking about,” Danny said.

“They’re covering their asses,” Tim said. “We’re trying to catch a killer.”

Amy reached over for a cigarette and threw herself back into the groaning wicker. How weird was that? It was too much to process, but at least Lund’s call had made one thing clear:
²
the hospital was concerned for themselves. Amy would have to look after herself. Right now, having two big homicide cops in her living room made her feel like the safest girl on earth.