Cooper 2 Some Kind of Magic ABOUT three thirty a.m., in Hillcrest Hospital, which, true to its name, had been built on a bluff overlooking the rest of their coastal town, Ray stopped outside the door to their victim"s room and rubbed his nose. He hated hospitals, the attempt at sterility in the smells, the subtle layers of disinfectant and urine and sickness, the constant noises that meant no one got any rest. Not that he was here for rest, or that he would have slept well even if he had been. He turned away from the nurse, though she was still talking, and glanced down at his partner, wanting a moment of exhausted sympathy and not getting it because her focus was already back on the case. Penn seemed unperturbed, but then, she wouldn"t care about any lectures from stern, unpleasant nurses or notice the smells or the distant noises. There wasn"t much that could rattle her, not that he"d seen in the five years they"d worked together. She calmly took a sip of saltwater and then sealed the bottle and stuck it in her oversized purse.
