See Also Deception (10 page)

“Hank's here then?” I said.

Olga nodded. Her glasses had a chain on the shafts just like Calla's always had. A pang of recognition flickered in the pit of my stomach.

“Came in with that Knudsen boy. Doc Huddleston just came in, too. Must've got the call that Hank was dire.”

Dire?
“He was fine when I left home.” I glanced at a set of double doors marked NO ADMITTANCE that I'd passed through more than once and knew that Hank was in one of three emergency bays. “Which one's he in?”

“Oh, I can't let you just wander back there, Marjorie. I have to call first and get permission. New rules. The sisters don't want just anyone walking in and out. There's awful things goin' on from time to time back there. You don't know what you might see, and it would be a sin for them to inflict any undue suffering on you. You have to sign in, too.” Olga produced a clipboard with a log on it. “Print your name and then sign it. I'll call back and let them know you're here.”

I took the clipboard but made no effort to pick up the pen that was on the front lip of Olga's neatly organized desk. “If I don't get an answer in one minute flat, I'm walking through those doors regardless of permission. I'm not afraid of a nun.”

“Like to see you try, Marjorie. Those doors are locked. No one gets in or out without me pressing this newfangled buzzer to open the door.” Olga pointed underneath the desk like a child with a new toy.

I shook my head, exhaled, and stared at the ceiling. “Can you call back?” I said through gritted teeth.

“Of course I can.” She picked up the phone, stuck her gnarled index finger in the rotary hole marked three, and dialed it quickly.

It was one of those moments where seconds felt like hours. I was trapped, kept from Hank with no way that I could see to reach him without making a full-blown scene—which I was on the very edge of anyway. All things considered, the events of the day had left my emotions dry and out of check. I preferred to think of myself as weathered, able to withstand the most difficult of circumstances without losing my head, but the requirement of patience and tact, at the moment, was the least of my concerns.

“Mrs. Trumaine is here,” Olga said into the black plastic mouthpiece of the telephone. She waited a second, and then said, “Of course,” and put the receiver back in its cradle.

She looked at me, feigned a smile, and punched the buzzer. It echoed throughout the empty waiting room. “You can go back, Marjorie.”

“It's about damn time,” I said, spinning on my heels and marching away without offering so much as a thank you.

I was certain my reputation and lack of social skills was going to get spread across Dickinson, but to be honest I didn't care. I didn't care at all what that old biddy thought of me at that very moment.

CHAPTER 16

Hank had been easy to find. There were no other patients in the emergency room, and Jaeger and Betty Walsh stood sentinel outside the last bay. The hospital bed was enclosed with a thick blue curtain, and there was no one else to be seen. The lights were dim, and distant sounds of monitors beeped. An air conditioner or rooftop machine of some other kind groaned through the vents. It was like I had just stepped back in time. Nothing in the emergency room had changed since the last time I'd been there—except the presence of Jaeger Knudsen and Betty Walsh.

The full force of the antiseptic hospital aroma that I had come to expect hit my nose. It seemed thicker with ammonia than I remembered, and my eyes started to water almost immediately. I was sure the reaction was from the smell; I'd done everything I could to hold myself together.

This is a mistake. I'll just pack Hank up and take him home where he belongs
.

Jaeger looked up as I rushed down the corridor toward him. I'm sure I looked like I was on a mission. The idea of rescue was fully planted in my mind and heart, even though the reality around me suggested just the opposite. Hospitals were temples of change, of mortality. You never left as the same person you were when you entered it, patient or visitor.

Jaeger's face was pale and grim. He looked like all of the summer sun had been drained from him and left outside the hospital door. I made it to him in record time.

“Doc Huddleston's in with him now,” Jaeger said, averting his eyes from mine as quickly as he could. He glanced at the slit in the curtain.

Words bubbled at the tip of my tongue, and I could feel the hateful acid that had brewed and was ready to pour out of my mouth as I took note of Betty Walsh. She didn't look as grim as Jaeger. As a matter of fact, she didn't look grim at all; she stood tall, with her shoulders straight and a satisfied turn on her bright red, recently refreshed lips. She looked entirely pleased with herself. Which only infuriated me more. Sexy red was not the color I had hoped to see.

“I'll deal with you in a minute,” I said to Betty, as I turned to push my way through the curtains.

Betty Walsh started to say something and that stopped me dead in my tracks. “Don't,” I ordered, pointing my index finger at her at the same time. “Just don't.” And without waiting for a smug response, or something that I would consider to be throwing gas on a growing fire, I nearly jumped through the blue curtains. The truth was, I was saying “don't” as much to myself as I was to Betty Walsh.

I nearly tackled Doc Huddleston with my entrance into the room, if it could have been called that. He was standing at the foot of the hospital bed, writing on a chart, and he had to use all of his balancing skills not to drop the clipboard and pen onto the sparkling clean white floor. The overhead light nearly blinded me and was such a shock to my retinas that I feared joining Hank in his blindness. Fortunately, my vision returned almost immediately.

Doc was a tall man, a few inches over six feet, of Danish descent, with hair as white and thick as a cotton ball, and a beard that looked like it belonged on a nineteenth-century president's stern face. The beard was long and wavy, always meticulously combed, and stopped mid-chest; I knew no other man that wore such a beard. If he'd had a belly and puffy cheeks, Doc would have made a great Santa, but neither was the case. He was thin as a rail, and I had never seen him be jolly.

“Marjorie,” Doc said, regaining his composure. There was no annoyance in his voice. Just surprise. “I've been expecting you.”

The collision with Doc had been as much of a surprise to me as it was to him. It was like running headlong into the side of an Angus bull. It took me a second to recover. When I did, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Hank was encased in a clear plastic tent. It looked like a see-through coffin, and I didn't like that idea at all. The image of him was blurry, like I was looking at him through tearful eyes—which I wasn't. Yet.

A plastic dome-shaped hood sealed the outside environment away from Hank. Oxygen-rich air was being pumped into the tent, forcing the regular atmosphere to the top, into the dome. A noisy pump, regular as a ticking clock, sat at the side of the bed, along with three tall green canisters of oxygen. NO SMOKING signs were posted everywhere—which explained why there was no cigarette dangling from the corner of Doc's lip. He was rarely without a Tareyton, even in the hospital. There were no ashtrays anywhere to be seen, either. A series of tubes ran out of the tent, all leading to a set of controls that looked more suited to a spaceship than a hospital room. My mind wondered for a second, curious about the buildup of carbon dioxide inside the tent—where it went—but that question would have to wait.

“Is this necessary?” I said to Doc. “He was fine when I left the house. I mean, I heard a rattle this morning, but it was distant, and I just heard it once. I wasn't sure . . .”

Doc Huddleston looked at me curiously. He was not the most easygoing man I had ever met, but there was no sign that he had taken offense at my questioning him. He had dealt with me enough to know that I was born without the capability of holding my tongue or hiding my attitude.

“Of course it is necessary, Marjorie; otherwise I would have driven Hank home myself. It's a precaution that I hope wards off any further deterioration in Hank's condition. Those kids did the right thing by calling me. You just relax a bit now. He's fine. Exactly where he needs to be.” Doc went silent and looked over at Hank. His tone and eyes finished saying, “I know what's best for Hank, trust me.” But I wasn't convinced. I didn't trust anybody when it came to Hank's care. Not even myself.

I followed Doc's gaze and walked to the side of the bed and looked in at Hank, who was wide awake and staring back at me like a goldfish in a giant aquarium. He looked so small, distant, withered, but there was no mistaking his eyes and the fact that he wasn't afraid or worried about himself, but he was concerned about me. You stay married long enough, you know that look.

“Are you all right, Marjorie?” Doc asked. It was a concerned, low-key tone, one that had nothing to do with Hank. I'd known Doc Huddleston all of my married life and before, so we had a past to refer to. He knew me like a book.

I looked away from Hank and shrugged. “I wasn't home. I was at the library,” I said.

“You're upset about Calla Eltmore.” It wasn't a question.

“How could I not be?”

“It is a sad situation, Marjorie. One I don't have any more comprehension of than anyone else.”

“It
was
suicide then?”

“It appears so. Why would you think it's not?”

I shrugged again. “It just doesn't seem like something Calla would do.”

“You knew her well?”

“Maybe not as well as I thought. We shared knowledge, not secrets.”

“These kinds of things are always a shock to the system,” Doc said. “You question yourself, how good of a friend you were and why you weren't a better one, why you didn't see it coming, weren't there to help. But the truth is, Marjorie, none of us know another human being's true pain unless they reach out for help. Calla didn't do that. The only knowledge we have now is that she is no longer in any kind of pain.”

“No, I guess she's not.” I turned my attention back to Hank, back to the oxygen tent. I wanted to reach inside and take his hand, crawl into bed with him, and forget about the hole in my heart that belonged to Calla Eltmore.

I knew Hank was uncomfortable, even though he wouldn't show it. But I couldn't touch him. I was barred from that, and just the thought of such a thing agitated me to no end.

“Can I lift this?” I wouldn't have asked, but underneath all of the NO SMOKING signs was another message conveying the severity of the situation. The oxygen was highly explosive. I'd read enough to know that it wasn't as unstable as nitroglycerin, but still, I hesitated. I didn't want to blow Hank up.

“No,” Doc said. “Not now. We'll change out the dome every three hours to clear the bad air; you can touch him and talk to him then. He'll be in his own room by then. Chances are the tent is temporary.”

“What am I supposed to do between now and then?”

“Wait. You have to wait in the waiting room, Marjorie. You can't stay in here with Hank. I'll let you know if you're needed . . . or the nurses will,” Doc said, then turned and exited the bay in a hurry. I'm sure there was a Tareyton in his mouth the second he was free of the explosion zone.

I watched the curtains settle, then turned my attention back to Hank.

“Go,” he mouthed. “I'll be fine.”

I sighed, lowered my head, and nodded that I would. I had no choice but to do as he ordered. This wasn't the time to put up a fight.

CHAPTER 17

“I'll look after Shep and the place while you're here,” Jaeger said. He stood in the same place I'd left him. There was no sign of Betty Walsh, and for the moment I was thankful for that.

I nodded and looked past Jaeger, into the waiting room I had been relegated to by Doc Huddleston. It was small, a little over twice the size of the mudroom in our house, packed with chairs that bore orange cushions made of hard plastic and miserable to sit on for any length of time. They squeaked like a mouse every time you shifted your weight. I knew that from my last stint waiting outside the emergency room. The only change in the room was that a television set had been added. It sat on an aluminum stand and was turned off at the moment. It was like a gray twenty-inch eye staring at me. I looked away from it, back to Jaeger.

“I don't plan on being here long,” I said. “No need to trouble yourself.” It was a typical defense, even though I didn't know if it was the truth or not. “Shep will be happy to see you,” I said, trying not to sound discouraging.

“Is there anything I can bring you?” Jaeger said.

“No, I had enough sense about me after reading your note to grab up the few things I'll need.” That was the truth. I had a bag packed just for such occasions, with all of my necessaries in it. It was in the truck, along with a stack of page proofs for the
Common Plants
book and a couple of unopened packets of index cards. I could do my work anywhere, though I would have to write the entries on the index cards instead of typing them. I didn't have the best cursive writing in the world, but I could print as well as anyone. I could read my own writing when it came to compiling the index, and it didn't really matter in the end if the cards were typed or handwritten. My editor would never see them. All I sent him was the freshly typed index. I had a closet full of shoeboxes with index cards in them. I couldn't bear the thought of throwing them out or burning them in the trash barrel, even though they were as useless as thistle.

“You can call to the house if you think of something,” Jaeger said. He turned and started to walk away after I offered a silent okay.

“Jaeger?” I said.

He stopped. “Yes?”

“Where's Betty?”

Jaeger looked down and kicked some imaginary dirt off the Linoleum floor. “She's waitin' out in the truck for me.”