Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof (19 page)

27

A
s I got in the driver’s seat, Pete scurried to the passenger side. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I go to the hospital all the time and do clowning skits for the kids. They all know me there. We won’t have any problem.”

“Uh-huh.”

St. Petersburg is about an hour from Sarasota via I-75 north, then over to I-275 and the Skyway Bridge. Before we got to the I-75 on-ramp, Pete said, “Do you mind if I get something to eat? I was too worried to eat before.”

I swung into a drive-through lane at McDonald’s and waited while he studied the menu.

He said, “I’ll have a Quarter Pounder with cheese and fries. And a large Coke. And a pie thing. Apple.”

Happiness always perks up my appetite too. I decided to get one of the apple pie things.

I only ate when we were stopped at traffic lights, but the apple pie was gone by the time we hit the interstate. Pete was almost as fast with his burger and fries. After we had done our boa constrictor acts, we rode along in thoughtful silence.

On that stretch of highway, more than half the vehicles were trucks—semis, panels, pickups, or big trucks with hoists and cranes or some other special equipment. Southwest Florida has been under constant construction ever since the new kind of retirees came—no longer in mobile homes but with wads of money from the dot-com boom or hefty executive payouts from bankrupt companies. New highways have been laid, new buildings erected, old buildings remodeled, all work done by men who drive trucks.

As we met them, passed them, and were passed by them, my mind went off on a little naughty thought trip about those truck drivers. It’s what minds do when they’re not strictly disciplined. Especially female minds. I mean, let’s face it, construction workers, pool men, landscapers, all those outdoor guys have incredibly firm butts that you don’t see on other men. They also have pelvises that move when they walk. Men who sit at desks all day have flat butts and walk just by bending their knees—their hips don’t move at all. It makes a woman imagine the difference in their respective lovemaking abilities, and the truck drivers come off best.

I mused on those high-minded thoughts all the way to the exit to I-275. Then, as we headed toward the Skyway Bridge, my mind drifted to the memory of Ethan Crane’s butt, which was fantastic. Better than Guidry’s, to tell the truth, and Ethan sat at a desk all day.

While my mind was wandering down that guilty little avenue, Pete’s had different priorities. To get my attention, he made a big to-do of wadding up his pie sleeve and stowing it neatly in the McDonald’s bag with his used napkins and empty Coke cup.

He said, “That detective came back again. He asked if I was sure it was Tuesday morning I saw that lady crossing the street, and not the day before. I’ve already told him it probably wasn’t Laura after all, and now he wants to know when I saw some completely other lady. Dumb shit must think I’m too old to know what day it is.”

“That’s odd.”

“Nah, lots of people think you lose your marbles once you pass about ten years older than they are. If they’re sixty, they think seventy is old. If they’re seventy, they think eighty is old. Personally, I know people in their thirties that are older than me.”

“It’s odd that Guidry questioned you about when you saw some other woman crossing the street.”

We rode along for a while and I said, “You’re positive it wasn’t Laura?”

“I wasn’t up close, if that’s what you mean. I thought it was her, but I guess it wasn’t.”

“Did she see you?”

“She didn’t wave if she did. It was so early, she probably didn’t think anybody else was out.”

The first time I’d met Laura, she’d gone running after nine o’clock. I’d got the impression that she always ran around that time, but I could have been wrong. Lots of runners get up as early as I do and get their exercising done before the sun is up.

After we passed through the tollbooths on the way to St. Petersburg, Pete’s brow furrowed and his eyebrows began to climb even higher, and I knew the reality of what we were doing had hit him the same way it did me. We both knew there was no absolute guarantee that Hal had been able to get all the necessary permissions for Mazie to go to Jeffrey’s hospital room. Jeffrey was a child. He had just had brain surgery. Mazie was a dog. Some people would think her presence in his room so soon after surgery could be a health risk.

Besides that apprehension, I had other reasons to be tense, reasons that increased the closer we got to the golden girders of the Skyway Bridge. It’s silly, I know, but I don’t like leaving solid ground. I especially don’t like the gigantic roller-coaster feel of the Skyway. By the time we got there and the Bronco’s nose began to point toward the sky, I gripped the wheel with both hands. Call it phobia, call it my need to control, but if that sucker collapsed, cars would drop like boulders.

Once we left the Skyway behind and my breath was even, I began watching for the exit that would take us to I-175. Pete watched too, his eyebrows waggling like writhing caterpillars. We found I-175, and after a while took the Sixth Street South exit. The closer we got to the hospital, the higher and twitchier Pete’s eyebrows got.

He contained himself until we were turning into the hospital parking lot.

He said, “You didn’t really get permission, did you?”

I looked at him the way a mouse coming out of its hole would look at a watching cat.

“Hal promised to clear it with the doctor and the hospital.”

Pete said, “I’m like that too. I always operate on the theory that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

I said, “I could go in first and talk to the charge nurse.”

“I’m afraid they’ll say no, Dixie.”

“I didn’t mean I’d ask if we could bring Mazie in. I’ll just talk. You know, as in distract-her-attention-from-the-man-going-down-the-hall-with-a-dog.”

“Okay, that’s good.”

I wasn’t sure if it was good or not. But right or wrong, that seemed to be what we were doing.

Pete directed me to a side lot near an unmarked entrance. “This is the wing where Jeffrey’s room is. He’s on the fifth floor. There’s an elevator near the side door that’s not as busy as the main one. I’ve seen people taking therapy dogs up that elevator. I don’t think anybody will stop Mazie.”

Okay, that sounded good. At least for a moment. Therapy dogs and service dogs go into hospitals all the time, and Mazie was a service dog. But therapy dogs go in with therapists who have been vetted and authorized by the hospital, and service dogs go in as authorized companions of a person visiting a patient. Mazie was a service dog, but she was a companion to Jeffrey, not Pete. The bald truth was that Mazie was going in the hospital simply as a four-legged visitor to see a patient. If the hospital rules didn’t allow dogs to visit patients, we were sunk.

I said, “Give me time to go around to the front entrance before you go in.”

I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea, but it seemed necessary at the time. It must have sounded good to Pete too, because he looked at his watch the way bank robbers coordinate time before they make a big heist.

I parked and nipped around the lot to the front entrance where streams of somber-looking people were leaving and arriving. Inside the lobby, I realized I hadn’t asked Hal or Pete for Jeffrey’s room number. Feeling as if somebody at the other end of a surveillance camera was probably watching me and calling security, I stopped at a welcome desk.

A grandmotherly volunteer checked Jeffrey’s name on her computer. “He’s in the Neurology Center on the fifth floor. Room five-sixteen.”

I followed arrows to a hall to the Neurology Center, then joined a gaggle of people waiting for an elevator. My palms were sweaty. As the elevator descended, red numbers above the door told us what floor it was on—now
seven
, now
six
, now
five
—moving, moving, moving. We stared up at the numbers as if our lives depended on knowing when it would get to
one
. When the number
two
flashed, we all tensed like cattle about to stampede.

Inside the elevator, I tried not to think about why the other people were there. Children shouldn’t get sick. Childhood should be a golden time of laughter and play, it should not include pain and weakness.

At the fifth floor, I left the elevator and walked briskly down a long hall toward a nurse’s station. The sound of crying babies and toddlers floated on the air, and several nurses wearing bunny-printed smocks hurried past me, their rubber-soled shoes not making a sound. From one of the rooms, a woman in a dark leather recliner lifted a hand to wave at me as I passed. A hospital crib was hidden behind a drawn curtain, and I got the feeling the woman had been keeping lonely vigil for a long time.

More bunny-printed smocks were at the nurse’s station, every person serious and intent. It looked as if five or six corridors met at the station, and from their vantage point, they could see down every one to the elevator at the end. More than likely, some of their computer monitors showed every person who got off those elevators. They were people who saved kids’ lives, good people who shouldn’t be tricked.

A man with calm eyes and a metal patient record tucked under his arm watched me approach the stand. I figured he could see right through my skin into my brain.

I said, “Look, here’s the thing. I’m here to see Jeffrey Richards, and my friend is coming up the elevator in a minute with Jeffrey’s seizure-assistance dog. Her name is Mazie, and she hasn’t left Jeffrey’s side since they’ve been together. Jeffrey had surgery three days ago, and he and Mazie miss each other desperately. So we brought Mazie to see him.” For emphasis, I said, “She’s his best friend!”

He looked over my shoulder and smiled. “Would that man be your friend?”

I turned to see Pete and Mazie coming toward us. Pete seemed to be pretending to be blind. Even Mazie seemed in on the act, walking in front of him as if she were leading.

“That’s Pete Madeira and Mazie. Pete’s a clown.”

“Come on, I’ll take you to Jeffrey’s room.”

I motioned to Pete, whose strained face broke into a smile when he realized we seemed to have permission. We followed the man down the hall to a closed door. With a light tap, the man pushed the door open, and we all filed in.

Standing beside Jeffrey’s bedside, Gillis looked frazzled and exhausted, but ten years younger than she had four days ago. Knowing Jeffrey had come through the surgery and was back to consciousness must have been a tonic for her. When she saw us, she blinked in momentary surprise, then gave a choked sob. Hal wasn’t there. He must not have told Gillis that we were coming.

With his head swathed in thick bandages and his tiny body in a miniature hospital gown, Jeffrey looked like a pale alien child. The top sheet on his bed had been folded down, so his little bare legs stuck out from his hospital gown. I had a quick flash memory of Christy’s lifeless body and jerked my mind away.

Hal had told me that Jeffrey slept a lot, and he was asleep now, but frowning and fretful.

Mazie broke free of Pete’s hold and in one bound was on the bed beside Jeffrey. Gillis put out a protective hand, but she needn’t have worried. Mazie stepped with exquisite care to look down into Jeffrey’s slack face. Then, turning cautiously, she stretched out on the bed close to Jeffrey’s legs.

Jeffrey smiled, and as one person we all exhaled the breaths we’d been holding. Jeffrey’s eyes were still closed, but he no longer frowned or whimpered. The man with the patient record under his arm stepped forward and touched fingers to one of Jeffrey’s wrists. He had a kind face.

To Mazie, he said, “Good job, Mazie.”

Gillis said, “Dixie and Pete, this is Dr. Travis, Jeffrey’s surgeon. But I guess you know that since you got permission from him to bring Mazie in.”

Pete and I avoided each other’s eyes.

Dr. Travis grinned. “Hal talked to me. Maybe it would be better if you wait in the visitors’ lounge and let Mazie and Jeffrey be alone for a while.”

By
alone
, he meant with Gillis, who could not have been dislodged from Jeffrey’s side with a crowbar. Pete and I trailed out into the hall and found the visitors’ lounge, where we each took one of the leather recliners lined up along the wall and stared straight ahead. Pete’s eyes were blood-rimmed, and my own felt as if the inside of my lids had been scraped with emery boards.

Guilt was once again wrapping its slimy body around my neck. I had been so preoccupied with Laura’s murder that I’d failed to pay attention to my job. Even if nobody else had thought of it, I should have known to bring Mazie to see Jeffrey the minute he’d been put in a floor bed. I was a pet sitter, not a detective, and I should have put all my energy into making sure Mazie’s needs were being met instead of running around asking questions that were Guidry’s job.

Pete said, “Ever since I met that kid, I’ve been afraid something would go wrong with his surgery. I wish I hadn’t done that. All that fear probably made Mazie afraid.”

I guess guilt always tries to come along for the ride with everybody.

I said, “Mazie would have been worried and stressed no matter what you were thinking.”

I remembered Pete telling me once that his own daughter had died. I didn’t know how old she’d been, but the loss of a child at any age is devastating, and I felt a new kinship to him. Every parent who’s ever lost a child has a link of sadness that nobody else can ever understand.

The room was quiet, the only sounds a distant
ping
of elevator doors and the hushed voice of a woman speaking on the hospital’s PA system.

I leaned my head against the recliner and closed my eyes. The next thing I knew, Hal Richards was kneeling beside me and saying my name.

Like Gillis, he looked haggard with fatigue, but younger. “Thank you for bringing Mazie. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you came. Gillis and I are taking turns sleeping, and I was at the hotel. It was a brilliant idea to bring Mazie, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”

Pete said, “Mazie needed to see her boy. She didn’t know what had happened to him.”