Remote Consequences (3 page)

"This is no joke. You need to get over there now. Call the coroner and a forensics team. Didn't you hear me? There…is…a…dead…body…in…the…freezer. Do you need me to write down the address for you?"

His face colored beet red, and he emitted another cough. This one a little wheezy.

In the distance, I could see Ty rise from his chair and head our way.

Officer Chubby continued to stare at me as he tried to calm his sudden bout of asthma.

"Well? What are you gonna do about it?" I prompted.

Ty eyed me under heavy lids as he approached. I swallowed back nerves and turned my attention to him.

"Uh…" Cough. "…Detective Dempsey…" Cough. "…Ms. Murrin here…" Cough. "…claims she found a dead body…" Cough. "…in Mayor Mills' attic." Cough. Officer Chubby finally got the words out in between hacks.

Ty's eyes studied my face. "A mere few weeks back in town, and you're already stirring up trouble?"

I had the sudden urge to storm out of the office and never look back. But I reached in my pocket instead. Unfortunately, my supply of Tic Tacs was long gone.

"I was at work. Doing my job. Now, you need to do yours."

The words came out clearly, and I stood a little taller as I said them. Despite my attire and the way he studied my disheveled state, I refused to appear anything other than confident and knowledgeable. If there was one thing I was sure of, it was what a dead body looked like.

"Okay, Mandy. We'll check it out. But maybe you need to spend a little more time focusing on
your
job."

His words made no sense to me.

"What are you talking about?"

"It's your responsibility to take care of your sister, isn't it? I know for a fact you weren't doing that this morning."

My spine tingled. "If you're referring to her disappearing act. Aunt Patty told me that it has happened in the past. I'm working on it. Don't give me a hard time about it, Ty."

What was with him? Still holding grudges.

"No. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the scene she caused at Ingram's right before she darted out in front of traffic on Main Street."

His words struck me with a shocking blow. My face numbed, and the confidence I'd tried so hard to exude faded.

"Paget? What happened? Is she hurt?" The panic in my voice was clear even to my own ears, as all thoughts of freezers, dead bodies, lost scholarships, and pervy cops faded in comparison to my sister's wellbeing. I watched his face and saw a twitch of discomfort. "Ty? What happened?" My pulse was racing. My throat began to squeeze.

Ty hooked his thumbs in the belt loops on his khaki pants and did a little backward sway on his dress shoes.

I reached out to balance myself on the edge of the counter, waiting for him to continue and yet almost not wanting to hear what he had to say.

"Let's not forget the running off after the accident before the ambulance could arrive."

My voice came rushing back with a certain volume that shocked even my own ears. "Where is she? She's missing?"

"You might want to check the hospital," Chubby Face interrupted.

We both looked down at the cop sitting between us.

"You hear from Adam Owens, sergeant?"

"Yes, sir. I was just on my way to tell you when she walked in."

"Adam Owens?" I tried to place the name, but my mind was blank with fear.

"Did he find her?" Ty asked.

I reached out to balance myself on the edge of the counter. Paget was missing? What was going on in this town? What was going on with my life?

The rotund cop nodded vigorously—as if eager to please his superior with his newfound information. He patted his own chest to ward off more coughing.

"He took her to Millbrook Memorial. She was admitted for head trauma."

Ty and I made brief eye contact. I thought I caught a hint of remorse in his expression as he opened his mouth to speak. But before I could hear another word from him, I turned and ran. All I could hear were the words that reverberated between my ears.

Paget.

Head trauma.

See not what you see and hear not what you hear. –Irish Proverb

Millbrook Memorial was a five-mile trip from the police station, but it seemed as if every other driver on the road was out for a leisurely drive. I swerved in and out of traffic, a sense of dread squeezing my ribcage into a knotted mass of cartilage.

Ignoring the red and white warning signs, I whipped the van into the ambulance bay and cut the engine. I swung my legs out of the van and slammed the door behind me.

"Hey! You can't park that here," the hospital security guard yelled at me from his kiosk perch at the entry.

I ignored him and ran inside in search of the information desk. I found it a few feet in front of me. A gray-haired volunteer sat behind it reading an issue of
Redbook
. Surrounded by a semi-circle desk with a half-dozen floral arrangements on it, the woman looked up at me with kindness. "Hello, dear."

I wasn't in the mood for a meet-and-greet. I had to find Paget. Make sure she was okay.

"I need the emergency room. I thought this was the entrance."

Why wouldn't the ambulance bay not enter directly into the emergency department? I wished I had my hospital credentials from UAB Hospital with me. Being able to flash that med student identification was something I would pay money for right about now.

"I'm sorry, dear. We don't have an emergency room here. We do have the Acute Care Clinic. It is right around…" She pointed down a wood-paneled hallway, and I took off in that direction, the woman's words fading behind me. I'd find it myself. I couldn't play polite and wait for a long, drawn-out explanation from the elderly volunteer today. My patience was beyond gone at this point. I needed to know if Paget was safe.

I heard Paget before I saw her. Her voice, edged with concern but slightly slurred, vibrated against my eardrums before I reached the end of the hall.

"But why did he have to go? So cute."

I turned the corner and found my sister on a hospital bed. Head bandaged. Intravenous fluids dripped into one pale arm while a blood-pressure cuff was secured on the other. My heart knocked against the back of my breast like the
thwop
,
thwop
,
thwop
of helicopter blades.

Paget looked so innocent, so fragile, so little in that huge bed. An image of her as a tiny girl came to mind. A red snow cone spilled down the front of her white Sunday dress. Daddy laughing. Momma fussing. Me embarrassed. Always embarrassed by my sister.

I swished the dry-erase board of my mind as Paget looked up and grinned widely at me.

I should be the one embarrassed. I had not been a good big sister, but I needed to find a way to be better. Needed to make up for all the times I wasn't here for her.

"How're you feeling? What happened?"

Paget stopped smiling and looked down at her hands. "I was hungry." That was her response.

I took a deep breath. Reaching for her chart in the clear bin on the wall, I flipped it open and read the physician's notes.

Minor head laceration to the medial scalp. No stitches required. Monitor overnight for possible concussion. Treat with anti-anxiety meds as needed.

She must have been very agitated when they'd brought her in. They'd given her a fairly large dose of meds to calm her down, but it didn't sound like a serious injury. Ty Dempsey and his cop cronies had nearly scared the life out of me. Would he ever stop trying to make me take the blame for everything? Even after all these years.

"You should wait for the doctor. You're not supposed to touch that."

A bleached-blonde nurse stepped into view. Her face was pinched with an I'm-over-worked-and-underpaid sneer as she snatched the chart from my hand and replaced it in the drop box.

"Sorry. I'm a third-year medical student from…"

The nurse pierced me with a look that stopped my explanation. It was obvious that the woman couldn't care less that I had
almost
been a full-fledged doctor. All that really mattered was that I
wasn't
a doctor here and I
was
a patient's family who shouldn't be acting like an almost-doctor at any rate.

"Sorry," I repeated.

"Oh, Darlene. Don't give her such a hard time. She's always been a nosy little thing."

I swirled around to see the freckled face of Dr. David Cavello. I stepped forward and right into the bear hug of his embrace.

"We missed you at the funeral," I told him.

He squeezed me tightly and then stepped back to examine me with his knowing eyes. Eyebrows crinkled.  A mix of love, loss, and intelligence poured out of him and into my still-smarting heart. "I couldn't." His chin quivered slightly as he spoke.

And as strange as it seemed, I understood. I'd loved Aunt Patty, too, and had almost opted not to hold a funeral at all. It was expensive and sad. I hated funerals. But it was a big deal in a small town. Everyone out in their Sunday best. It was a rite of passage that all locals expected, and I didn't want to let Aunt Patty down. In the end, I'd honored her wishes.

Dr. C. had been a part-time father figure to us growing up. I knew it wasn't a coincidence I'd chosen medicine after having him in my life all these years.

He'd loved Patty, but they'd never married. I'd never asked why, and it had never mattered to us. But I had noticed his absence at the funeral. Deciding that now wasn't the best time to push the issue, I motioned to Paget.

My sister had become distracted by the reflection of the nurse's watch on the wall. It had caught a beam of sunlight coming through the window as she checked Paget's blood pressure. Paget was following the light around on the ceiling as if it were the North Star.

"Our girl is going to be just fine," Dr. C. reassured me, and then he motioned for me to walk with him down the hall.

With Paget occupied for the moment, I chose to follow him.

"What happened, exactly?" I asked once we'd cleared the room.

He made his way to a door marked
Doctor's Lounge
and opened it, motioning for me to enter.

"Am I even allowed in here?" I scrunched my nose at him.

He winked at me in return—those same bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows dipping down at the top of his nose in a caterpillar maneuver. I giggled. It felt good to laugh, if only for a moment.

"I don't know all the details, Mandy. But I do know that she somehow ended up on Main Street and walked in front of a car."

My hand went to my mouth. "She was hit? But her chart says—"

He shook his head. Leaning over to pour a cup of steaming coffee in a Styrofoam cup, he continued, "No. She was shoved out of the way in the nick of time. The head lac is from when she hit the pavement."

I caught my breath between gritted teeth. "The driver?" I ground out.

He turned and handed me the coffee, along with two sugar packets and a red plastic stirrer. "He's okay. A little shaken up. But no damage."

My heart rate tried to return to normal. I hadn't realized how accelerated it had been for the last twenty minutes or so since I'd run from the police station.

"I don't know what she was doing there. I had her with a sitter. I had to work."

I sat down on the art deco velvet-covered sofa and sipped the coffee. Despite the heat outside and the flush in my cheeks from the adrenaline overdose, I was chilled inside.

"It's not your fault, Mandy. You don't know how many times she's done things like this in the last year. It was getting harder and harder for Patty to deal with."

I looked up at him as his voice caught on the name
Patty
.

"She didn't tell me. Why didn't she tell me?"

Dr. C. joined me on the sofa with his own cup of coffee. He stirred it absently. "You know she was one tough cookie. She liked to handle things her own way. Even when she got sick—she refused any help with Paget until…well, until she finally called you."

I knew my aunt had been one of the strongest women I'd ever known, but I didn't know how much she'd struggled to keep up with Paget in the end.

He shook his head, set his coffee down on the table, and reached over to pat my knee.

"Not to worry about that now. You can go check on Paget and then get back to your work. I'm going to keep her here overnight. Just to watch for signs of a concussion. I'll keep her under close watch. You can get a good night's sleep."

I was disappointed with myself yet again when I felt a twinge of relief at the idea of sleeping through the night and not being worried about the police showing up at the door with my sister—little girl lost—again.

"Everyone in this town will think I'm totally incompetent—if they didn't already."

Dr. C. reached over and touched my chin with his index finger.

"Chin up, Panda. No one thinks that. You're doing the best you can."

"Am I?"

I had all but forgotten the pet name he'd given me all those years ago. Panda. I sighed. I was convinced the answer to my own question was "no," but knew that he wouldn't tell me that in a million years.

"I think I need help."

He looked at me, eyebrows raised. "I may know some nurses who are looking for a little extra work. Can you afford nursing care?"

I shook my head. "No, I mean, what about a place for her to stay…where she can be safe?" The words came out of my mouth, but it was as if I'd spoken them involuntarily. As if my very subconscious had snuck them into the conversation when I wasn't looking.

Immediately, I wanted to withdraw them. But the look on his face was non-judgmental. I loved him for that. He never judged.

"I'll do a little research for you, but I think you can do this, Mandy. I know you can do this. Won't you give it more time?"

I nodded. Set my coffee down and stood, wiping my hands along the front of my grimy coveralls.

"I need to check on her and go. I need to get back to work and…other stuff…"

I remembered the dead body in the freezer and opened my mouth to tell him all about it, but decided to refrain for now.