Page 99 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

“He was at the pageant. Where is he?”

“I imagine stuck in traffic somewhere in the Spaghetti Bowl.”

“Why isn’t he here? Why can’t I remember?”

“Trauma,” is the easy answer. Even if I were to give a more in-depth explanation, I doubt she’d hear me.

“We were fightin’ somethin’ fierce on account of his crazy jealousy. He didn’t like the way I flirted with judge seven, but he knows I don’t mean anythin’ by it. A girl’s got to flirt if she wants to win.”

She’s giving me a headache—and spirits don’t even get headaches.

She gasps. “He shot me! I remember. Topper shot me while I was doin’ my first pageant walk as Miss Texas Jewel. Why did he shoot me?” She looks at me like she’d have tears in her eyes if she could cry. “Why?”

I can guess. “That’s not for me to know. I am just the concierge.”

“Concierge?” She finally hears me. “In a hospital?”

It’s my second day on the job, but she doesn’t need to know that. “That’s correct.” Ingrid finally proved she is a changed woman after a chopper-obsessed Juanita, the concierge at Southwest General in San Antonio, took off in an ambulance responding to an accident involving a Ford Taurus and a Harley-Davidson on I-10. They found her with the Omni Sight, but she’d been gone for almost an hour while her patients ran amok, zapping nurses and fighting over the remote control.

Ingrid didn’t even raise her voice when she demoted Juanita to laundry duty, proving she conquered her anger issues. Raymundo got transferred to Southwest General because he hasn’t changed his womanizing ways. A concierge from West Texas VA is the new director of Southwest District Five, Area Thirty-One, and I can already tell that he is easily schmoozed. He doesn’t know it, but the UMC El Paso concierge double-majored in charm and ambition.

“You’ve arrived in the coma unit,” I say. “Follow me, Kermit.”

“Who’s Kermit?”

“You are. We have a Linda. To avoid confusion, you will take the name of your hometown.”

“It’s ugly.”

I walk toward the coma pipeline and she follows. “I don’t make the rules, and you have bigger concerns than your name, Kermit.”