I woke with a sickening headache, stretched on my back, both hands at my sides. I tried raising my head, but it stayed firmly fixed on the ground. My skin shuddered with sudden fear. Was I dead? Paralyzed? No, I could wiggle my toes, and I could flex my hands.
Slowly, memory came seeping back—for a nanosecond there had been a dull scuffling sound behind me, somebody coming up fast on the pavement, perhaps from behind the guardhouse. Before I’d had time to turn my head, something had hit me. Hard.
Willing my arms to move, I raised my hands and squinted at them. No blood, no mangled fingers. I pulled my knees up and extended my feet toward the sky. I was okay. Nothing was broken. I felt the back of my head and winced. I had a tennis-ball-sized lump, but it wasn’t wet and I didn’t feel any crusty dried blood. Okay, all I had was a concussion. Not my favorite way to end a day, but it wasn’t life-threatening.
I managed to push myself up and sat swaying drunkenly for a few minutes while the surrounding landscape
seesawed crazily. The air had a strange acrid smell and seemed oddly thick, as if I could cup it in my hand. I sat for a moment marveling at how it moved in pale gray swirls, ribboning around tree trunks and creeping along the ground.
Then my civilized cortex pulled itself together and shouted down to my old primitive brain,
Fool, that’s smoke!
With an audible groan, I fumbled my cell phone open. When the 911 dispatcher answered, I said, “There’s a fire at a house on Midnight Pass Road. I imagine it’s arson. There may be people inside.”
I was almost surprised the dispatcher didn’t recognize my voice and say, “Oh, hi, Dixie! Gee, it’s been a couple of months since we’ve heard from you!”
Instead, he took the house number, told me to stay put, and promised somebody would be there shortly. As I stumbled to the Bronco, I could hear the fire engine’s siren coming from the station at the corner of Midnight Pass and Beach Drive. My brother would be on that truck, and the knowledge that he would soon be risking his life to battle a fire set by an arsonist didn’t do a thing for my headache.
Before the firefighters arrived, I pulled the Bronco out of the way behind the woman’s sedan. Then I laid my cheek on the steering wheel and stayed very still because moving caused waves of nausea and chills. I raised my head when the fire truck careened into the driveway, but it sped by so fast that I couldn’t tell which yellow-suited man was my brother. The truck swung around the areca palm hedge and stopped in front of the row of garages.
Within seconds, a fire marshal’s vehicle and an unmarked county car swung into the driveway and came to a stop behind me. Officers piled out of the cars and ran toward the invisible house.
A fat column of black smoke was rising behind the hedge now, making my eyes and throat burn. I felt the back of my head again. There was definitely a large lump back there, but it wasn’t oozing blood or brain fluid. Turning my head very carefully to keep the shapes of things within their boundaries, I scanned the area around me. The sedan was still there, but where was the woman? Maybe she’d been hit by the same person who’d conked me on the head and was lying dead or unconscious somewhere. The officers from the Fire Department didn’t know about the woman. Boy, would they be surprised when I told them.
A sense of importance gave me a little boost of energy that helped push me out of the car. I would go find the fire marshal and tell him about the woman, which would sort of cancel out my failure to report the dead security guard. When I told him, I would not look at the firemen who were risking their lives to put out the fire, because that was my brother in there and I could not bear to think of what might happen to him. I would simply tell the officers about the woman so they could initiate a search for her. Then I would go home and take a shower. Maybe one of the officers would give me a ride home. Maybe I could even catch a quick nap after my shower and get rid of my headache.
My knees didn’t want to hold themselves straight and my spiky boot heels caused my ankles to wobble, but I managed to shame my legs into walking down the
driveway toward the privacy hedge. At the end of the hedge, I leaned against an areca palm frond because I felt very, very tired. Then I felt myself falling and couldn’t do a thing about it.
Next thing I knew, I was on my back again, and Guidry was on his knees beside me.
“Dixie? Dixie? Wake up, Dixie. Come on, baby, wake up.”
A little voice in my head said
Baby
?
I guess that’s why I threw up. Hearing a man I lusted after call me
Baby
just naturally brought out my innate ability to show him my grossest side.
He handled it with his usual finesse, which made me feel even klutzier. With a clean white hanky that only Guidry would have, he mopped my face and helped me to his car. I pulled away and pointed toward my Bronco, but he shook his head.
“I’ll have somebody drive your car home. I’m taking you to Sarasota Memorial.”
Ignoring my protests, he stuffed me in the passenger seat and slammed the door. I could still smell the heavy odor of smoke, but I could see firefighters putting away their equipment, so the fire must be out. Guidry got in the driver’s side and carefully backed down the driveway. I hadn’t seen Michael, but all the way to the hospital, I fought back the tears I’d felt when I knew Michael was there suited up to face a fire. I didn’t need a shrink to tell me it had brought back the pain I’d felt after our firefighting father had died.
At the ER, a roomful of people coddling various sprains and cuts and bruises watched as Guidry pulled rank and got me immediately into an examining room.
An intern who looked about twelve years old examined me and pronounced me concussed, which I could have told him without the examination.
He said, “Any idea how long you were out?”
“Just a minute or two.” I had no idea at all.
“Any amnesia?”
“No.”
He recommended that I stay overnight in the hospital. When I refused, he didn’t seem surprised.
He said, “Look, a concussion’s not something to fool around with. It’s especially important not to have another one anytime soon. I’m not kidding. A second impact syndrome can cause enough pressure in the brain to kill you.”
“I don’t plan on having another one.”
“Nobody does, but once you’ve had one, you’re four times more susceptible to another. Just be extra careful until this has had time to heal. Wait at least a month before you go skiing or bungee jumping or anything like that.”
The kid actually thought I might leap off a bridge from a bungee. Made me feel about two hundred years old. I signed some papers, acknowledging that I was leaving against medical advice and absolving the hospital of any blame if I died during the night, and wobbled out to where Guidry waited.
The pubescent intern followed me. He said, “Somebody should stay with her tonight. Don’t give her any anti-inflammatory drugs for her headache. They’ll stop the pain in the short run, but in the long run they’ll keep soft tissue from healing and create chronic pain. If her pain persists, bring her back for an MRI. Sometimes
a concussion represses vasopressin, so if she experiences frequent urination in the next few weeks, she should see her doctor. It would be best if she didn’t sleep for several hours tonight. If she falls asleep, wake her every thirty minutes and check her pupils. If they contract any more than they already are, bring her back.”
Guidry nodded and shook the kid’s hand, the way men do when they’re signaling each other that their superior male wisdom is ensuring a woman’s safety. For once, I didn’t mind. I just wanted to go home and take a nap.
With one hand on my arm, Guidry steered me out to his car in the cop’s reserved place outside the emergency room doors. I sank into the seat and leaned my aching head back on the headrest and didn’t look up until the car stopped beside my carport. Without saying a word, Guidry swiveled out of the car and trotted around to my door. Tender as a mother, he helped me out and stayed so close behind me as we headed for the stairs to my apartment that I could feel his breath on my neck. When we got to my shuttered French doors, I stopped and groaned.
“The remote’s in my purse. In the Bronco.”
The metal storm shutters started rising anyway, folding into neat little accordion pleats and disappearing into the soffit over the door.
Guidry said, “I got your purse.”
If I’d had all my faculties, I would have given him my grandmother’s lecture about how you never, ever, under any circumstances, stick your paws into a woman’s purse without her permission. But since my faculties
seemed to be taking a sabbatical, I was just glad he could get us inside my apartment.
Guidry reached around me and unlocked the French doors, using the keys from my purse—the purse I hadn’t given him permission to open. Then, with one arm around my fuzzy pink shoulders, he ushered me into my living room and steered me toward my grandmother’s sofa with the green flower-printed slipcovers.
I said, “I want to take a shower.”
“Not unless I’m in there with you.”
I tried for indignant, but the most I could muster was a weak pout.
“My mouth is nasty.”
“Okay, we’ll go brush your teeth.”
We?
“Guidry, you aren’t going to the bathroom with me.”
“Honey, you can pee without me, but only with the door unlocked. I know you. You’ll push the limits and end up getting hurt.”
I considered that while I tottered into the bedroom and kicked off my high-heeled boots.
I said, “I’m already hurt.”
“Because you pushed the damn limits. What were you doing at the Kurtz house, anyway?”
Oh, God, I hadn’t told anybody what had happened. In fact, I’d completely forgotten it. The thing about having amnesia is that you don’t remember what you’ve forgotten.
Carefully, I turned around to face him. “Guidry, the woman was there. The woman with the dog.”
His eyes narrowed. “The woman with the dog.”
“Yes! Her car was there, but she was gone. That’s her car parked in front of my Bronco. I was going around her car when somebody hit me.”
“After you called nine-one-one about the fire?”
“No, before. Somebody hit me and knocked me out. I smelled smoke when I came to, and then I called nine-one-one.”
“Dixie, you’re confused. Somebody hit you after the firefighters arrived, not before. The chief thinks the arsonist must have been lurking on the grounds and attacked you because he thought you had spotted him. Did you?”
I shook my head and groaned at the pain the movement caused.
“No, no, I was hit before the firefighters came. When I came to, there was smoke in the air. I called nine-one-one, and then I moved my Bronco so the fire trucks could get past. I was on my way to tell the fire marshal about the woman when I fainted. She may be under the bushes, unconscious.”
“You say her car is still there?”
I nodded and groaned again. God, I had to stop moving my head. “It’s a Ford sedan. It’s the same one she was driving the first time I met her.”
Guidry had pulled out his cell phone and was punching in numbers with his thumb. I left him and started down the hall toward the bathroom.
As I stepped into the bathroom, I heard him behind me speaking to a deputy.
“Check out the plates on the Ford sedan in front of the Bronco. And start a search of the grounds around the house. You’re looking for a woman. Maybe hurt.”
I pushed the door, but Guidry’s foot slid into the opening so it wouldn’t close.
“That’s far enough for modesty. I’ll wait out here, but if I hear any thudding sounds, I’m coming in.”
“Come on, Guidry, I have pet hair and grass and vomit and God knows what on me! Just a quick shower, okay?”
There was a pause on the other side of the door. “I’ll make a deal. You get undressed and cover up with a towel. I’ll turn on the water and help you in the shower. I’ll give you two minutes, and then you turn off the water and I’ll hand you a robe and help you step out.”
I opened my mouth to yell
No!
Then I remembered the squishy feel of the areca palm frond just before I fainted, and the somber warnings of the adolescent emergency room doctor.
“It’ll take me awhile to get undressed. I’m moving slow.”
“I noticed.”
Peeling off tight leather pants is tricky under the best of circumstances. When it makes you woozy to lean over, it’s a bitch to get them down to your ankles. By the time I’d stripped to my panties, I didn’t have the strength to take the sweater off too.
Gingerly, I leaned over the sink to brush my teeth and splash my face. Leaning made my head feel like it might explode any minute. When I straightened up, the room began to spin, and I had to clutch the edge of the sink until it came to rest. Taking a shower suddenly seemed like climbing Mount Everest.
When I opened the door in my underpants and pink fuzzy sweater, Guidry took one look at me and scooped
me into his arms like a daddy picking up a tired two-year-old.