A Matter of Mercy (29 page)

Chapter 27

She was on a train, or no, a plane. Only a dim light somewhere in front of her eyes, but that sound, a dull roar of engines reverberating in her head. Then distant, but again, louder, her name. Not a voice she knew. She thought of opening her eyes but it was as if she didn’t remember how.
Concentrate. Open your eyes.
Was the voice saying that or was that her own voice?
Open your eyes.
“Open your eyes. Caroline, can you open your eyes for me?”

She opened her eyes and winced, blinded.

“Good, good. Sorry, I’ll swing that light out of your eyes. Try again now. Do you know where you are?”

“No,” she croaked, a hoarse whisper, although she could see that the man talking to her wore a stethoscope and she was probably in a hospital. Her breaths were narrow wary slits like her eyes.

“Sir, can you step up here?” he said, stepping aside. Billy appeared, one cheek scraped and swollen. “Hey girl. At least you kept your jewelry.” He took her hand in his, which was moist and icy. “Remember what happened? Parking lot of The Oyster, you were—” As he spoke, Billy switched an ice pack from one hand to the other.

As Caroline shifted slightly to look at him, a new pain stabbed her. That, and seeing Billy brought her back to herself. She didn’t need to hear what he was saying. “Baby. Is the baby all right?” she gasped.

“Honey, I’m just fine,” Billy said, grinning. “But you’re not my type.” Behind him, the doctor or nurse was came forward. “Here’s the guy with the answers. I’ll get out of the way.”

“I’m Doctor Rockwell. We have you on a fetal monitor—you can see it right there—and the baby’s heartbeat looks fine.” He was middle-aged, with a southern accent, strange in this neck of the woods. Groomed formally, atypical for locals, the doctor wore a white shirt and blue print tie. “I think you’ve got some broken ribs, and a bruised kidney. We need your OB involved, obviously, so if you’ll give us a name, we’ll give him a call. We’re admitting you for tests, and as soon as you’re ready, naturally, the police want to know if there’s anything additional you might remember, about the assault. How are you feeling?”

“Hurt. OB, Dr. Silva. You sure baby’s fine?” Tears were in her eyes, running into her hair. Lifting her arm to wipe them was out of the question. She rotated her head and tried to smear them against the pillowcase. “Rid. Elsie. Noelle.” It seemed no one knew what she was talking about or no one heard her. “Billy?”

He didn’t hear her. He’d been banished to the nether regions beyond the curtain while they fussed with machines near her. She could hear the swoosh and muffled thump of swinging doors. The overhead light was still too bright, though the examination lamp had, as promised, been pushed aside. Caroline closed her eyes.

“Caroline, were you raped?” It was a nurse asking her, one with an aura of hair so red it was its own source of light, like a sunset.

“No,” she whispered, opening her eyes half way. Her head ached.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

The nurse smiled. Good, big wide-set hazel eyes beneath high cheekbones, crooked teeth. “That’s one good thing, at least,” she said. “Would you like me to wash your face?”

“Please.” Caroline was still crying, it seemed, but maybe her eyes were just watery from the light. She could hear an argument going on somewhere.

Then a voice that rose above the others, then over two other voices saying no to the first voice that she was trying to hear, like trying to catch the words to a distant song. “She’s my … won’t go that way, buddy … going in … I brought … a nurse,” as the first voice got louder. Rid. And he’d brought Elsie.

* * * * 

In the morning, she opened her eyes as gray light gave shape to objects in the room they’d finally given her. The amorphous lump in the corner stirred and became angular. With effort she raised her head to look. A face. A whisper.

“CiCi? You okay?”

“Who?”

“Don’t be scared. It’s me. Just Rid.” He pushed a blanket off him and struggled out of the chair. His legs wouldn’t cooperate and he staggered. “Shit. Got stiff sleeping like that, but you can hear it’s me, right?” He’d taken his voice out of the whisper. The room was intended for two people but the other bed was empty.

“They can … hear you … down on the flats,” Caroline said, gasping as she tried to raise herself.

“Don’t do that! Wait, I’ll help you,” he said, making his way sloppily to her bed and finding the controls for her.

“I have to go to the bathroom. Did Elsie pull strings to get me a room by myself?” It was easier to talk in a more upright position.

“Yeah, told ’em you were dyin’, hospice and all,” Rid said, straight-faced, taking her hand. When she didn’t laugh, but searched his face for more, he immediately said, “CiCi, I know Brenda down in admitting. She’s married t’ Bogsie, he’s got a grant past mine, down toward Blackfish Creek. I told her you’re carrying our baby, and hey, no sweat.”

“Thank you. And thank you for bringing Elsie last night. You didn’t have to stay.”

“Why’d you move out? What happened? And what the hell happened in that parking lot? Billy said it was the guy in fatigues.”

Caroline’s eyes narrowed and she pulled back deeper into the pillows even though it hurt her ribs and back. She coughed, which hurt more. “You
know
him? He’s your friend? I thought you said—”

“Hold on, I
don’t
know him,
no,
” he interrupted, gesturing impatiently. “Weird guy, real squashed-like moonface, y’know?” he said spreading his hand over his face as if to flatten it. “I can’t prove it, but I was sure he had a pistol in his pocket. Dressed all military and acting like he was on some top secret mission. He came around when I was at the bar a couple months ago and started saying this crazy stuff about how he was gonna take care of
my
problem and all I had to do was check up on some chick that lives in P-town and make sure
she
was all right. I just thought the guy was a whack job. But now this—if he’s the guy that did this to you—”

“A stranger comes up to you? Offers to take care of your problem?” Her voice was suspicious, sarcastic.

“Yeah.” Rid’s hands and shoulders went up as if he was carrying a tray. “I know it sounds crazy. It
is
crazy. I’d never laid eyes on him before or since.”

“What problem?”

“I assumed he meant the lawsuit, that it had to do with Pissario. Then Tomas and Mario thought it might have to do with you, too, because he said something about how I wouldn’t have to make any payments. They thought he might mean support payments, like child support. That’s what gave them the idea you were in on the lawsuit, see?”

“And you couldn’t have asked me?” Her voice was flinty as a drill.

“Not back then. Now I could.”

“And what about this ‘chick’ you were supposed to see was all right?”

“I have no idea what that’s about. I went to the address once. It’s some Terry DeSomething, lives on Bradford Street in P-town. I didn’t know what I was supposed to look at. I left, figured with my record I’d end up arrested for stalking. Guy said I’m supposed to make sure she gets any help she needs, like I owe him a favor.”

Caroline blinked several times, remembering the clicks on her telephone line, then lay her head back and kept her eyes closed.

“Hey, you okay? Breathe, will you?”

She released a long exhalation. Rid was right; she had been holding her breath. She turned her face toward the window away from his. Daylight was advancing deeper into the room and colors were beginning to emerge from the shadows, though they still had an overlay of pale charcoal. Still, she could see the door to the room and it made her think of an escape route now, just the way the falling-down dune fence in front of her parents’ house had when her mother was dying. It was all her fault. Everything that had happened since her mother died, all the injustice that had flown wild in her world was now folding its wings and lighting on her shoulder, back home where it had fledged.

* * * * 

He might as well have been a barnacle, he stuck that close to her. “I’ve heard about how you’re not supposed to leave someone alone in the hospital,” he said. “They make mistakes, you know. Amputate the wrong leg, give the wrong medication. You’ve got to have somebody watch out for you.”

“I’m not having an amputation,” Caroline answered, stifling a smile. The early afternoon light was in her eyes and even as she squinted, Rid was adjusting the blinds. He handed her a plastic cup of water, bent the straw toward her. “Drink,” he commanded. “Remember what the doctor said.”

They’d talked much of the morning, after Caroline picked her way through breakfast. At first, she’d just been silent with her own realization of what must have happened. Her assailant had been sent by Terry. Rid’s connection was innocent and unknown to him. Shame had covered and smothered her like a stifling blanket, and all she wanted was for him to leave. He, however, was having none of it.

“Sorry. You can tell me what to do some other time. I ain’t sayin’ I’ll pay attention, but you can try.”

“Lizzie will never speak to you again,” she whispered, trying for a light touch.

“Nice try. I called Tomas. Last night, when that shirt-and-tie doc who sounds like a Confederate general had me banned to the waiting room.”

“Just give me some time.”

“Not until you explain why you up and left when everything was going good. What did I do?”

“Nothing. It’s my fault, Rid. My fault.”

“That’s not good enough.”

And so it went, round and round, until there was nothing to do but pay what she owed and tell the truth. Who Terry was to her, and how she’d lied her way into the library day after day. How she’d found the paper in Rid’s glove compartment and thought they were conspiring against her. The ridiculous irony of that, when she was the guilty one all along.

“You’re guilty of not talking to me, that’s for sure,” he said. “But you’re not guilty of mugging yourself. Okay. So now there’s pretty good evidence that he came from this Terry person. You’ve got to file charges against both of them. I’ll call Jerry, have him get a detective back here today.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know, just like you didn’t. Maybe she didn’t send him. I can’t do that to her, Rid. I have to know for sure, first.” She paused, shifted, winced. Rid got up to help her move.

“Want this pillow underneath your neck more?”

“Can you lift me a little higher in the bed? Thanks.” Her eyes were watering and she held eye contact as she took his hand. “I’m so sorry. All I can tell you is how sorry I am.”

“Hey, it’s all right. Just so we get the guy that’s been doin’ all this. Jeez, he goes around like he’s some commando. He’s gotta pay, CiCi. They both do.”

“Rid, it’s my fault. I have to do this my way. I can’t do the same thing to her I did to you. Please don’t call the police back here. They already
took
a report. I can’t make any accusations. Not now, not yet. Let me talk to her first.”

He stood, pulling his cell phone from his pocket. “This is wrong, CiCi. We can’t risk losing him. If the guy was a local, one of us would recognize him. Jesus, how can you not get it, the longer you wait, the farther away he gets?”

“The doctor said I’m probably being released this afternoon. As long as the baby’s all right. Hey, Dr. Silva says I’m going to be a terrific mother because I did such a great job of protecting the baby.” She allowed herself a self-satisfied smile. “My kidneys are working all right, one is bruised the ER doc said, and you know they don’t really
do
anything for broken ribs. Noelle and Elsie will be here soon to get me to Noelle’s.”

“That guy already has too much of a start. We have to get the police on him. What he did could have been attempted murder. We don’t know. And I don’t like it, you going to Noelle’s. Walt can’t keep you as safe as I can.”

“Walt may be old but he’s fierce when he needs to be. He’s a Vietnam vet, y’know. Navy. Listen, please respect this. I
have
to give Terry a chance. I
owe
her.”

Rid waited to answer. His eyes were unreadable. He’d placed himself so as to help block the light from her eyes, but he was backlit and it made his features less distinguishable. What stood out was the heart shape of his face, and his hair, more dusky than in summer. “All right,” he said, putting the cell phone in his pocket, and she had to take him at his word.

“Come home with me, and we’ll do it the minute the library opens tomorrow.”

“Noelle is taking care of me for my mother. Rid, I’m trying to right wrongs. I shut her out when my mother was dying. Let me make amends. It’s just one night.”

“But we can go tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Together?”

“Yes, together.”

* * * * 

But Dr. Silva didn’t get back until twilight to check the baby again and okay Caroline’s release. Rid waited down the hall in a little sitting area with Noelle and Walt, wondering what they must think of him. He rehearsed a good ten different starts in his mind, wanting to explain something to them, but reticence took over. He only said hello again, having met them the night before, calling Walt
sir
and Noelle
ma’am
, as his mother had taught him, and updated them on what the doctor had said about CiCi in the morning, noting that they, too, called her by that nickname. Of course they would.