Chapter 47
O
ur arrival at the ER is organized chaos. The staff on duty knew we were coming, thanks to the EMTs’ radio report. But because the town is so small, the time span from when they heard we were coming to our actual arrival is only a couple of minutes, giving them little time to prepare.
I hop out of the ambulance and then back out of the way as the EMTs unload Hurley and wheel him into the ER. I follow close on their heels, checking out the staff on duty as we head for the trauma room. I’m relieved to see Dr. Cannady since I know she has an extensive trauma background and is an excellent doc. The nurses on duty are top-notch, too, an older, seasoned crew that has seen far worse and had their patients live to tell about it.
I stand in the doorway to the trauma room watching them dance their chaotic ballet, fighting an urge to jump in and help. My heart is telling me to get in there but my mind knows it would be best to stay on the sidelines. Even though the activity in the room looks frenzied and hectic, everyone in the room has their assigned tasks and knows what to do. Given the level of emotion I’m feeling, I’m not sure I’d be capable of thinking straight and would just be in the way. But I feel helpless standing here doing nothing.
Hurley is quickly stripped down to his skivvies and I can’t help but admire the brief glimpse I get of his physique. Within minutes the crew has blood drawn, a second IV line going, a heart monitor in place, and a set of vital signs. Hurley’s blood pressure is still frighteningly low and his heart is beating much too fast. Dr. Cannady orders the IV fluids opened wide and a stat portable chest X-ray.
Hurley is responding some, mumbling and moving, but I’m not close enough to tell if his words are making any sense or not.
I hear a mechanical sound closing in behind me and step aside to let the radiology tech into the room with the portable X-ray machine. Right behind her, much to my surprise, is David. Then it hits me; the staff would have paged the surgeon on call the minute they knew they had a stab wound victim on the way. He sees me, frowns, and stops.
“Mattie? What are you doing here?” He peers past me into the trauma room. “Who is that in there?” He looks concerned but also confused, no doubt because his first thoughts are that it’s my mother or sister in there, but one quick look makes it obvious the patient is a man.
“It’s Steve Hurley,” I tell him.
“That cop? What happened to him? Did he get shot?”
I shake my head. “Jackie Nash went nuts and stabbed him. She tried to stab me, too.”
I see curiosity flit across his face and know he wants more of an explanation but he stays focused. “Are you okay?” he asks, eyeing me from head to toe.
“I’m fine,” I say, glancing into the trauma room. “But Hurley is in bad shape.” I look back at my husband, the man I once loved, the man I was married to for seven years, the man who just a few nights ago pleaded for another chance, and realize he may hold Hurley’s life in his hands. “Please help him, David.” The words barely get out before my throat closes with emotion. Tears sting behind my eyes; I make a brief but futile attempt to keep them at bay, then swipe irritably at them as they course down my cheeks.
David stares at me a moment, then sighs. “You have a thing for this guy, don’t you?”
I don’t answer; I just stare back at him, my eyes pleading. I’m afraid to say too much, afraid to admit too much. I hear the clicks of the portable X-ray machine and Dr. Cannady’s voice follows.
“Dr. Winston? We could use your help in here.”
With that, David disappears into the room. The flurry of activity continues and moments later the X-ray tech returns with film in hand. David puts it up on a wall-mounted light box and studies it for a few seconds. From where I’m standing I can see the X-ray clearly and note with relief that both of Hurley’s lungs appear to be well aerated and expanded.
David confirms this. “The lungs look okay. I think the bleeding is our biggest problem. Let’s get him upstairs so I can open him up.”
As the nurses are making the final preparations for sending Hurley to the OR, David comes back out of the room and pulls me off to the side. “I can’t say I’m happy about you moving on to someone else already but I know it’s my own fault. And despite my feelings, you know I’ll do my best.”
I do. Despite his personal failings in the husband department, David is a dedicated and talented surgeon. Even if it’s a bit awkward, I’m glad David is here because I know Hurley will be in good hands. “Thank you, David.”
David takes off to get himself ready for surgery. I hear the nurses in the trauma room releasing the brakes on the stretcher and getting all the attached equipment ready for transfer. I turn to head back into the room to get one last look at Hurley, hoping to say some final words of encouragement even if I’m unsure he’ll hear them. But before I reach the door, someone else rushes into the room. I blink hard, barely believing what I’m seeing. Alison Miller dashes to Hurley’s bedside, grabs his hand, and leans over the railing to look at him.
“Oh, Stevie,” she cries. “Are you okay?” She looks over at Dr. Cannady. “Is he okay?”
“He has some internal bleeding. We’re taking him to the OR.”
“Can I go with him?” Alison pleads.
Cannady defers to the nurses, one of whom nods and says, “You can come with us as far as the doors to the surgical suite but then you’ll have to go to the waiting room.”
Alison nods. “Thank you,” she says. Then she raises Hurley’s hand to her mouth and kisses it. “He has to be okay,” she says. “We’re supposed to have dinner tonight.”
What the hell?
I’m not sure what surprises me most: the inanity of Alison’s thought processes or the knowledge that she and Hurley had a dinner date planned. But then, what did I expect? Hurley clearly overheard me telling Alison that I had no romantic designs on him, that he was merely a toy to help me pass the time.
As the nurses whisk Hurley’s stretcher out of the room and toward the elevator, I briefly consider trying to muscle Alison out of the way, or at the very least taking a spot on the other side of the stretcher and going with them. But then I catch a glimpse of Hurley’s face and see that he’s awake. He’s looking up at Alison’s face as if she is the angel of mercy herself, and then he smiles and says something to her.
My heart sinks. I realize what a huge mess I’ve made of things—romantically, personally, and professionally—and wish I could go back and undo some of what I’ve done. But I can’t. My first thought is to head home and share my sorrows with Ben and Jerry and my fuzzy companions, but I don’t want to leave the hospital until I know Hurley is okay. Nor do I want to share waiting room space with Alison. So I do the next best thing instead and head for the hospital cafeteria.
One Reuben sandwich and piece of peach pie later, Izzy walks into the cafeteria.
“Figured I’d find you here,” he says. “I heard what happened when I was upstairs visiting Mom.”
Typical. News always has traveled fast in this place.
“It was awful,” I tell him. And then the whole story bursts out of me. “I went to take your pictures and I found this receipt Nelson had for a nanny cam and figured out that he had one mounted in the ceiling in his counseling room so I tried to take some pictures of it but then Jackie appeared out of nowhere and started waving this huge knife at me with this crazy look in her eyes and I didn’t know what to do.” I pause for a second to suck in a ragged breath and then continue. “Then Jackie tells me how she and Nelson have been dating and how Shannon found out about Nelson’s little side activities with his patients and was going to report him, so Jackie killed her. She killed Carla, too,” I add, telling him how I figured out Carla’s death wasn’t a suicide. “That car accident Jackie was in years ago scarred a lot more than her skin,” I conclude. “She’s crazy, Izzy, totally and completely crazy. I don’t know how I never picked up on it before. And today she wanted to kill me. I tried to keep her calm by talking but then I ran out of things to say and she was coming at me so I tried distracting her by looking behind her as if someone was there, thinking maybe I could make a run for it. Except all of a sudden Hurley really
was
there and then Jackie just stabbed him.” I lose it then, and start to sob. “She just stabbed him and now he might die and it’s all my fault.”
Izzy frowns and puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Mattie. You didn’t stab him, Jackie did.”
I dismiss his objection with an impatient wave of my hand and try to get myself under control, using my napkin to blow my nose. “You know what I mean, Izzy.”
“The nurses upstairs said Hurley was in surgery,” Izzy says, and I nod. “They said David was operating on him,” he adds, and I nod again. “Interesting situation,” he concludes.
“David won’t let his personal feelings get in the way. And he’s an excellent surgeon. Hurley is in good hands.”
Izzy nods thoughtfully, then says, “I can have Arnie help me with the autopsy today so take the rest of the day off. After all you’ve been through you’ll be pretty useless in the office anyway.”
I smile at him. “I should probably be offended by that comment but I suspect you’re right. And I would like to hang here until I know Hurley is okay. So I think I’ll take you up on the offer. Thanks.”
“No problem. If you don’t mind, I’m going to hang until Hurley’s out of surgery, too.”
“Thanks, I’d like that.”
“Want to head up to the surgical waiting room?”
“Not really. Alison’s up there.”
“So?”
I fill him in on what happened the other day when Hurley overheard me talking to Alison, and the scene that took place in the ER a little while ago. “I’ve totally destroyed my chances with Hurley,” I conclude. “Alison clearly has her clutches in him at this point, and while I’m glad he has someone, I don’t think I can stand to watch the two of them mooning over one another.”
Izzy looks at me with a sad expression and shakes his head. “You are so clueless sometimes,” he says.
“Tell me about it. If I’d known Hurley was standing there I never would have said those things about him.”
“That’s not what I mean. Come on.” He stands, pushes his chair in under the table, and takes my tray of dirty dishes.
“Where are we going?”
“Upstairs.”
I follow him to the elevator and from there to the third floor surgical waiting room. I expect to see Alison sitting there waiting, but there’s no sign of her. One of the OR nurses, a young gal named Kate, appears.
“Mattie! Glad I found you. David wanted to let you know that Detective Hurley is doing very well. He’s in recovery. The knife nicked an artery in his shoulder but we were able to suture it up and stabilize him. You can come in and see him if you want.”
She’s extending me a special privilege since I know that family members and visitors aren’t typically allowed in the recovery area. I’m grateful but also wondering if the courtesy was extended to anyone else. “Is Alison Miller in there?” I ask.
Kate laughs. “Not hardly. She left right after we came up from the ER because Detective Hurley kept asking for you the whole way. He kept saying he wanted Mattie, and needed Mattie, and where the hell was Mattie, anyway. Alison was pretty ticked and lit out of here in a snit.”
“He said all that?” I say, stunned.
“See,” Izzy says. “I told you you were clueless.”
I remember the stab of sadness and jealousy I felt when I saw Hurley looking up at Alison earlier as they were leaving the ER. I had no idea he was asking for me. “Wow,” I say, still digesting it all.
“Yeah, wow,” Kate agrees. “You are one lucky lady. And may I add that you have superb taste in men. That detective is one heck of a hottie. So come on.” She turns toward the recovery area and motions for me to follow behind her. “It’s not nice to keep a hottie waiting.”
Chapter 48
I
t’s been just over a week since Jackie Nash revealed that she’s a few fries shy of a Happy Meal, and everything is right with the world. Well, almost everything. Jackie is locked away inside a mental institution up north and though it’s now known for sure that she killed Shannon Tolliver and Carla Andrusson, it’s unlikely she will ever stand trial. After the incident in Nelson’s office, she withdrew into a babbling, incoherent puddle of scarred human flesh. Word has it she is catatonic and the few slim threads of reason that remained in her brain have finally snapped.
The blood DNA evidence we sent to Madison came back and proved a match for Jackie. When a cut was discovered on the bottom of her right foot—most likely incurred when she stepped on a piece of the broken glass we found in Shannon’s kitchen—it became clear that she was at the scene at the time of the murder. During a search of Jackie’s house, the cops found the blood-covered shoes she was wearing with a neat little hole sliced through the bottom of the right one. It also became clear to me why I thought something about Jackie was different whenever I saw her. The scarring from the fire left her with contractions that made her favor her left leg, but the cut on her foot, which was beginning to show signs of infection, had her favoring the other leg, too, giving her an awkward limp, different from her usual.
Erik Tolliver is now free and totally exonerated. I heard through the hospital grapevine that he resigned from his position there and has plans to move to Arizona where his mother lives. Carla’s and Shannon’s funerals were held within the last few days, both to stunning turnouts. Carla’s death has left me with residual feelings of guilt I may never work through. The funerals were somber, sad affairs, but they also left me with a sense of closure and new beginnings.
And speaking of new beginnings, Bjorn Adamson and Irene Keller are the latest hot item in town. Rumor has it they plan to wed in a few days, a date that seems a bit rushed to me, but I suppose their respective ages has something to do with that. Bjorn’s new catheter bags seem to be working well and now that Irene is in the picture, I feel confident that I will no longer have to worry about urine duties.
William-not-Bill and my mother have been on two dinner dates already, and judging from the fact that they were both reportedly banned from the Peking House restaurant after returning their plates five times each because they weren’t clean enough, I’m guessing it’s a match made in heaven. I won’t be at all surprised to learn that William-not-Bill is going to become my next stepfather sometime in the near future.
Rubbish and Hoover have settled in nicely together and so far the lost-and-found ad I placed in the local paper a few days ago hasn’t garnered any responses. I’m hoping that continues to be the case because the little furball has wormed his way into my heart. It’s a bit frightening how fast he’s growing however, gaining weight with more ease than I do, and that’s without the benefits of ice cream.
David and I seem to have reached a détente in our relationship. He’s still not happy about our breakup and doesn’t want to talk divorce yet, preferring to “wait it out and see what happens.” But his denial doesn’t bother me as much as it once did because I think the reality of my growing feelings for Hurley is starting to sink in. Plus David’s making an effort to be fair with our money situation. He handed over the check for my car and while I briefly considered using it to buy some wheels that were a little less conspicuous, the hearse is kind of growing on me and Hoover loves riding in the back of it. There are enough peculiar smells in there to keep any dog happy for a long, long time.
Despite all the good that’s come out of the events of the past couple weeks, several downers remain. The nanny cam in Luke Nelson’s office, and some password-protected files on his computer made it clear just how twisted the man is. Investigators found nearly two dozen videos of him drugging and sexually assaulting seven of his female patients. The resulting emotional backlash has been horrifying for the victims, a situation compounded by the fact that Luke Nelson has apparently disappeared from the face of the earth. Despite a nationwide APB and the involvement of the FBI since there is reason to suspect he engaged in similar activities when he was in Florida, there hasn’t been a single sighting or report of him being seen anywhere. Though I suspect he’s far away from Sorenson by now, the knowledge that he’s still out there somewhere has me looking over my shoulder more often than I like.
I’m pretty easy to find right about now. Two days ago, a picture of my half-naked body standing beside the Heinriches’ Caddy and Bitsy Conklin’s rotting corpse appeared on the front page of a national tabloid. At first I blamed Alison, figuring she’d sold the pictures out of revenge. But then I remembered how Hurley made her turn over the memory card to me, which I had stuffed in the pocket of his jacket I figured out why the dry cleaning lady was so willing to give me a half-price deal. The dry cleaning store has been closed all week and the owners have disappeared. I don’t know how much money they got for the pictures on that card, but it must have been enough for them to relocate.
Despite the front-page picture, the story inside the tabloid barely mentioned me and didn’t include my name. Fortunately, the saga of the battling Heinrich-Conklin offspring and the startling revelations about Bitsy and Gerald’s new wills were deemed more newsworthy than the underwear-clad deputy coroner standing next to the bodies. Of course, that hasn’t stopped all the locals from commenting on it. The phone in the ME’s office has been ringing off the hook since the paper appeared, and rumor has it Lucien was seen buying up an entire news rack of the paper the day it hit the stands.
One of the few good things to come out of all the events of the past couple of weeks is that Hurley recovered from his injuries. He was discharged from the hospital two days after his surgery and though he’s still a little wan from the blood loss and limited on what he can do with his left arm thanks to some muscle damage there, he’s back on the job and looking as hot as ever. Even better is the fact that Alison hasn’t been sniffing around him of late. And the cherry on this sundae is my dinner date with Hurley tonight, payment on our wager regarding Erik Tolliver’s guilt or innocence.
I’m very excited about it but also nervous as hell. Though I spent a lot of time visiting Hurley while he was in the hospital, so did a ton of other people. I was never alone with him and all of the conversations that took place were centered on the case. We never touched on anything personal and I’m still not sure if he heard my whispered words to him in the ambulance. The closest we have come so far to any sort of personal revelation was when I first appeared at his bedside in the recovery room. He looked up at me, smiled, and said, “It’s about time you showed up.” I told him I’d been there all along, just on the sidelines, and then his nurse gave him a shot of morphine through his IV and he was out until he was taken to his room.
Hoover and Rubbish are sitting on my bed watching curiously as I go through my usual attempts to find something suitable to wear. I try on a blue dress with a tight, low-cut bodice that gives me Grand Canyon cleavage. I add a V-shaped necklace that looks like a dire ctional sign to the river bottom, and finish it off with a pair of navy blue pumps.
“What do you think of this one?” I ask the furballs, promenading for them both. Rubbish yawns, contorts himself into an impossible position, and starts to lick his butt. Hoover cocks his head to the side and whines.
“Yeah, you’re right. Too slutty,” I say, peeling the dress off. Next I try a pair of beige slacks and a black, slightly see-through blouse that shows off some of my new lingerie.
“Better?” I ask the judges, posing again. Hoover just stares at me and sighs; Rubbish hocks up a hair ball.
Ditching that outfit, I next opt for something simpler; black slacks, a long, cream-colored blouse with a mandarin collar, and a low-heeled pump. Hoover, who has just lived up to his name by scarfing up the hairball Rubbish deposited on my comforter, licks his lips and barks his approval. And just in time. A second later I hear a knock on my door.
My heart is racing as I head out to the living room. Hoover follows on my heels, curious and wary since this is the first time anyone has come to the house since he’s been here. I tell him to sit, which he does dutifully, and then I open the door.
There on my doorstop stands Hurley in all his long-legged, dark-haired, magnificently healed glory. He’s wearing black slacks and a black sport coat with an azure-colored shirt that makes his eyes look like the color of the sky on a bright fall day.
He eyes me from head to toe and says, “You look great.”
“Thanks. So do you.”
He grins boyishly and says, “I figured the colors black and blue were appropriate, given the way I’ve spent the past week.”
His words tweak my lingering guilt over what happened and I start to mutter an apology but Hoover, having exhausted his ability to remain patient, makes his presence known by running over to smell Hurley’s feet.
“Who is this?” Hurley says, squatting down and giving Hoover a scratch behind both ears.
“Hoover.” Hurley eyes me skeptically and I shrug. “Trust me. If you spent any time around him at all, you’d understand. I found him last week hanging out by the garbage Dumpster at the grocery store, starving and frightened.”
“It’s about time you came to your senses and got a real pet.”
“Well, he isn’t technically mine yet. He might belong to someone else. I ran an ad in the lost-and-found section the other day.”
Hurley is stroking Hoover along his back and the dog’s tail is wagging so hard he’s thumping out a rhythm on the doorjamb. Can’t say I blame him. I’d wag my tail, too, if Hurley was stroking me.
“You have to keep him,” Hurley says, giving Hoover a final pat on the head and then standing back up.
“I hope to.” I summon Hoover back inside, grab my purse and coat, and shut my front door. “Ready?” I ask Hurley. He nods and takes my coat, holding it for me so I can slip it on. Then he walks over and opens his car’s passenger door for me. I settle inside and fasten my seat belt. Hoover made for a handy distraction at the door, but now my nervousness has returned full force. I’m running dozens of conversational scenarios through my mind, wondering how the evening will play out, curious as to how our relationship might progress by night’s end.
Hurley climbs in on his side and starts the engine. Before he slips the car into gear, he turns and looks at me with a curious smile.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” he says, and my heart does a flip-flop as I think,
Here it comes.
“That day that Jackie stabbed me, were you riding in the ambulance with me?”
“I was,” I say, swallowing hard. Had he heard what I said? And if so, is he happy about it? Worried? Scared? “Why do you ask?”
And with that I hear my cell phone ring. A split second later, so does Hurley’s. He pulls his from his jacket pocket while I take mine out of my purse, and we both look at the displays.
“Damn,” Hurley mutters.
“Crap,” I mumble at the same time. And then we each answer our respective calls.
Once again, the dead are putting my love life on hold.