Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) by Elizabeth Zelvin Page A

this century, but she’s a master of the blow-by-blow account.
    “We had staff meeting today. Dr. Arnold brought Krispy Kremes again. Hey, has it ever occurred to you that if you cross potato chips—can’t eat just one—with M&Ms—melt in your mouth—you get Krispy Kremes?”
    Jimmy and I gazed at her with wonder.
    “Never,” I said.
    “She lives to digress,” Jimmy told me.
    “At least I take it one century at a time. And unlike some people, I never leave out the interesting parts. Now, be quiet and let me tell you. Two clients tested positive for hepatitis B, they’re making us watch the hand-washing video again, and another client died.”
    I knew the important part of this was the client’s death, but Barbara’s style was contagious.
    “Hand-washing video? You’ve got to be kidding.”
    “No, really, it’s part of universal precautions. The hospital takes it very seriously, especially in the age of HIV. We have to watch it every year. I think it’s part of the nursing curriculum, but Dr. Arnold makes us all go.”
    “A client died,” Jimmy prompted. He had a lot of practice getting her back on track.
    “Another old one, Daniel. He was Ingrid’s client—she’s the nurse from Nebraska who works in addictions because she has more alcoholic relatives than I have any kind of relatives—and Marian, the social work intern, was his counselor. She’s never lost a client before and she only has a few so she got very teary. Carlo and Sister Perseverance had known him forever, of course, but they stayed calm about it—they’ve seen a lot of clients come and go.”
    “They’re dropping like flies at your place, aren’t they?”
    “No more than down on the Bowery. And Nikolai and Daniel had both been beat up pretty badly by the disease. They actually put ‘acute and chronic alcoholism’ as the cause of death in Daniel’s chart.”
    “And this is a good thing?”
    “Not for poor Daniel, obviously, but it shows that hospitals and the medical profession are beginning to get it about alcoholism and addictions. They used to put anything but—seizure disorder, heart attack—because it was so stigmatizing, and that just fed the denial, which led to lack of funding, which led to not enough treatment and training for health professionals, most of whom—well, a lot, anyway—come from alcoholic and dysfunctional families themselves.”
    “They do?” I’d never thought of that.
    “Yeah. They’re the family heroes and caretakers—they rescue and control anyway, so why not get paid for it? And if they haven’t had treatment and aren’t in program, they’re going to ignore the signs and symptoms in the clients just the way they do in their own families. Carlo said he was a dirty old man.”
    She’d lost me.
    “Carlo is a dirty old man?”
    “No! He said Daniel was a dirty old man. Well, first he said he wasn’t exactly a nice old man—you know, trying to get Marian to stop crying. He called her honeybun—Carlo is hopelessly sexist, though I think he isn’t really, he just likes to push our buttons. We usually let him get away with it. There’s no point trying to get Carlo to pay attention to gender politics. He said Daniel was a great fanny patter. He called Sister Persistence cookie.”
    “Daniel called her cookie? That sounds pretty out of line for a client.”
    “No! Carlo did—when he asked her if she remembered. Only Carlo would dare call Sister Perseverance cookie. Marian said he never patted
her
fanny. She sounded put out about it. Students never get it that when clients make them the favorite, it’s a manipulation.”
    “Then what happened?” Barbara’s saga sure was a new slant on treatment for me.
    “Oh, Dr. Arnold made him stop teasing before Marian broke down and Sister Persistence murdered him. She reminded us that postponing the scheduled case presentations today would give us an unmanageable backlog in no time. So Ingrid and Carlo gave their presentations, and then we