Spring Fever (6 page)

He is mine. I am in charge. The show must go on.

Mason glanced from his ex-wife to his next. He cleared his throat. “Well … uh…”

As if to settle the matter, Sophie moaned, coughed, and barfed again.

Annajane struggled unsteadily to her feet, clutching Sophie to her. She had had enough.

“Fine. You two do what you need to do. But in the meantime, Mason, I think you’d better call 911.” She was making a deliberate effort to keep her voice calm. “Tell them we’ve got a five-year-old with abdominal pain and a high fever. Her belly seems rigid and tender to the touch. And tell them to please hurry.”

“Excuse me?” Celia said. “What medical school did you say you attended?”

“My mother was a nurse for thirty years, and I was a candy striper all through high school,” Annajane said calmly. “Anyway, it’s just a matter of common sense. Feel her tummy, if you don’t believe me.”

Mason was dialing and reaching for Celia’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he said pleadingly. “But you understand. Right?”

Celia took only a moment to reevaluate the situation, shift tactics, and choose the proper response. “Of course,” she cried. “Absolutely. Do you think it would be better to load her into my car and take her over to the hospital ourselves?”

“Just a minute,” Mason said, turning his attention back to the phone. “Right. This is Mason Bayless. I’m at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Passcoe. There’s something wrong with my little girl. What? No, I don’t know the address. It’s on Fairhaven, about a block from downtown. It’s the only Episcopal church in town, for God’s sake. Don’t you people have a computer or something?”

He listened impatiently. “Yes, that’s it. Okay. She’s five years old, and she just … suddenly collapsed. She’s in a lot of pain. It’s her stomach. She’s got a high fever, and she’s throwing up … No, she doesn’t have any allergies that I know of. No! She hasn’t gotten into poison. Who the hell do you think you’re dealing with here?”

Annajane took the phone from him. “Listen, you need to send an ambulance. Now. I’m no nurse, but I think maybe it’s her appendix. Fine. We’ll meet you out front of the church.”

The robing-room door opened and Pokey stepped in. “What’s the news?” she started, and then wrinkled her nose. “Oh no. Stomach bug?”

“Annajane thinks it might be her appendix,” Mason said gloomily. “They’re sending an ambulance.”

“What do you need me to do?” She was addressing her brother, ignoring his fiancée, not something Celia was used to.

“Pokey, could you please ask Father Jolly to announce that the ceremony has been postponed?” Celia said, reasserting her authority. “Ask everybody to go ahead on over to the country club for the reception. Just say we’re doing things backward. Reception, then ceremony. We’ve got all that food and champagne chilled down, and it’d be a shame to waste it. We’ll try to get over there after we get Sophie taken care of at the hospital. But she’s the first priority.”

“We’ll have to get all those cars cleared out of the driveway and the street outside, before an ambulance can get here,” Pokey said. “And Mama’s going to want to go to the hospital, too, I can tell you right now.”

“Fine,” Celia said impatiently. “You and Pete can take her, or Davis or somebody, but in the meantime, could you please get those cars moved?”

“Sure,” Pokey said, bristling at being ordered around. She looked over at Annajane, who was pacing around the small room, softly humming to the whimpering Sophie. “I’ll be right back after the announcement, and we’ll get you some kind of clean clothes. You can’t leave looking like that.”

“I don’t mind,” Annajane protested. “Just do whatever you need to do, Pokey. I’m going to ride in the ambulance with Sophie.” She glanced at Mason. “If that’s okay with you?”

“Now, wait a minute,” Celia snapped, not about to let Annajane usurp her authority. “Her father and I will ride in the ambulance. He’s going to have to sign authorization for her to be treated. And I’m her, uh, I’m his wife.”

Pokey turned to go. “Not yet, you’re not.” She said it under her breath, just loud enough for Celia to hear.

“Daddy,” Sophie whimpered, reaching out an arm for her father.

“Right here, sugar,” Mason said, stepping to Annajane’s side and squeezing the little girl’s hand. “We’re going to get you to see a doctor right this minute. And guess what? You’re gonna get to ride in an ambulance. What do you think about that?”

“Will it hurt?” Sophie asked, huge tears rolling down her pale cheeks.

“Not at all,” Celia said brightly. “It’ll be fun! I’ll get them to blast the siren so everybody knows you’re coming.”

“It might hurt a little bit,” Annajane said, shooting Celia a look. “But we’ll be right there with you, the whole time. We need to get the doctors at the hospital to see what’s wrong with your tummy. I think they’ll give you something to make you sleep, and then they’ll take a look and figure things out.”

“Okay,” Sophie said wearily. “Only, don’t let me go, Annajane. Okay?” Her eyelids fluttered, and she dozed off, her forehead nestled against Annajane’s ruined dress.

“I won’t, baby,” Annajane whispered. “I promise.”

Mason reached over and gently removed the little girl’s glasses, which had slid off the end of her nose, tucking them into the pocket of his tux jacket.

The door flew open again, and Sallie Bayless bustled in with Davis in her wake. “Pokey says there’s some talk that it might be her appendix? And an ambulance is on the way? I just called Max Kaufman. He was on the third tee at the golf club when I reached him,” she told her son. “He’s going to meet you at the emergency room.”

“Max Kaufman?” Celia asked.

“Chief of surgery at the hospital,” Sallie said. “A very old family friend. He should have been sitting right out front in one of those pews, but Max is a hopeless philistine. Says he never goes to weddings or funerals. But he’s a wonderful doctor, isn’t he, Mason? He’ll take very good care of the child.”

“Mason and Annajane are going to the hospital, and I’ll follow in my car. Maybe you could ride with me,” Celia said.

Sallie shook her head. “Celia, dear, I think it would be better if you and I went on over to the club to greet our guests. Mason has his cell, and I have mine, and he can keep us posted.”

“I don’t know,” Celia said, her brow furrowed prettily. “I think I need to be with Sophie…”

“Look, y’all, we don’t all need to go to the hospital,” Davis spoke up. “Mama, I’ll take you and Celia over to the club for the reception. If there’s nothin’ seriously wrong with Sophie, Pokey can bring Mason back over there once Doc Kaufman gets it figured out. Hell, maybe it’s nothing. It’d be a shame to cancel the party if it’s only a bellyache.”

He glanced toward the doorway, where Celia’s sultry maid of honor leaned against the doorjamb, looking bored.

“Good idea,” Mason nodded in agreement. He grasped Celia’s arm and gently steered her toward the door.

“Well,” Celia said hesitantly, “If you really think you can do without me…”

Mason walked her to the door. His hand rested lightly on the small of her back, and he brushed a kiss on Celia’s forehead. “I knew you’d understand. Look, I’ll call you the minute we know something. Maybe it’s not really anything serious. In which case, I’ll be at the club in an hour or so. Okay?”

Celia responded by wrapping her arms tightly around Mason’s neck, molding herself to him, and kissing him deeply and passionately.

Sallie Bayless looked away politely. Finally, she cleared her throat. “Celia, dear, I think we’d better go. Your great-aunt is out there, and she’s beside herself with worry…”

In the distance, they heard the approaching keen of a siren.

Mason peeled himself off the front of his bride’s low-cut gown. “Better go,” he said.

“Call me,” Celia repeated, reluctantly allowing herself to be towed away.

*   *   *

When they were alone again, Mason went back to the settee, where Annajane was still holding Sophie in her arms.

“Let me take her,” he whispered, holding out his arms.

“You’ll ruin your tux,” Annajane protested, but Mason was already sliding his arms under the child’s limp torso. He straightened up and cradled Sophie against his chest.

“You really think it’s her appendix?” he asked.

Annajane shrugged. “My cousin Nadine had appendicitis one summer when we were up at the cabin. Thank God Mama was there, because my aunt really thought Nadine was just constipated. Mama insisted they go to the emergency room, and, sure enough, that’s what it was.”

Mason blanched. “Maybe we should take her to Raleigh. Max Kaufman is a good enough country doc, from what I know, but Passcoe Memorial is just a little old podunk hospital with, what, fifty beds? Maybe she should see a pediatric specialist…”

The siren was getting closer now.

“Mason, Passcoe Memorial is a fine facility,” Annajane said. “It’s small, but they have a state-of-the-art surgical wing, thanks to your father’s Rotary Club, and Mama always said Dr. Kaufman was the best surgeon, the best diagnostician, she’d ever seen. If it really is her appendix, there’s probably no time to take Sophie to Raleigh. If it’s something else, something more serious, Dr. Kaufman can refer us to a specialist, but in the meantime, let’s just take one thing at a time, please?”

Pokey rushed into the room, pink-faced and breathless.

“Okay, the cars are moved, and the ambulance is pulling around front,” she said. She put one hand to Sophie’s cheek. “Oh wow, she really does have a fever,” she said. “How long has she been asleep?”

“Just a few minutes,” Mason said.

“Where’s the bride?” Pokey asked, looking around the room. “Checking her makeup?”

“Not funny,” Mason snapped. “Mama persuaded her to go on over to the country club. Maybe you should join them.”

“Not a chance,” Pokey said. “Pete’s taking the boys over there, but I’m going to the hospital.”

6

Geographically, the distance from the church to the hospital, which was located on the bypass just outside the Passcoe city limits, was only seventeen miles.

To Annajane and Mason, the ride seemed to take a lifetime. Jammed into the back of the ambulance, perched on either side, with Sophie’s tiny form on a gurney between them, they could only watch helplessly as she writhed in pain.

“She’s hurting! Can’t you give her something?” Mason growled at the emergency medical technician riding in the passenger seat.

“Sorry, Mr. Bayless, but with kids this young, we just make sure their pulse and breathing are stable,” the EMT said. “We’ll be at the hospital in fifteen minutes, and they’ll probably give her something then.”

“Daddy,” Sophie whimpered. “Annajane. It hurts.”

She was awake again, and she looked terrified. Annajane squeezed the child’s hot, clammy hand and brushed back a strand of hair from her forehead.

“We’re taking a ride to the hospital, sweetpea,” Annajane said. “Can you tell how fast we’re going? This old ambulance goes even faster than your daddy’s fun car.”

Mason laughed despite himself. The “fun car” was what Sophie called his restored candy-apple red 1972 Chevelle convertible. It had been Glenn Bayless’s favorite big boy toy, handed down to Mason as a twenty-first-birthday gift.

The convertible was currently garaged in a truck bay at the bottling plant, brought out only occasionally, for Sunday drives to the coast, or as a special treat for Sophie, because there wasn’t room for it in the two-car garage at the house, what with his own Yukon and Celia’s Saab. And also because Celia had taken an instant disliking to—and distrust of—what she called his “middle-aged crazy car,” or, worse, “your pimp-mobile.”

“Why can’t you buy a nice Porsche, like your brother’s?” Celia had asked. “Or something with say, air-conditioning? Or satellite radio?”

The Chevelle’s air probably hadn’t worked all that well when it was new, and as for a radio, Mason preferred its tape deck, on which he listened to his stash of ’80s hair bands.

He’d had some times in that Chevelle, for sure. In his youth, he’d ripped up and down the East Coast in it, ridden the length of the Outer Banks, the one summer of his youth when he hadn’t worked at Quixie, his summer of rebellion, when he’d gotten a job working at a convenience store at Nags Head. He’d even driven to California and back, following the old Route 66, the summer he’d graduated from Penn.

Sophie’s tear-swollen eyes widened. “Can you make the top of the amb’lance go down so I can see out?”

“I can’t do that, sugar,” Mason said soothingly, “but just as soon as we get your tummy better, I’m gonna take you all the way to the beach in the fun car. Just you and me.”

“And Annajane,” Sophie added. “Annajane loves the fun car, too.”

Mason exchanged a look with his ex. Her cheeks colored and she looked away. He wondered if she remembered.

*   *   *

He’d been driving the Chevelle the second time he remembered an important encounter with Annajane Hudgens. She was what? Maybe nineteen? Which would have made him twenty-three.

It was summertime, and he’d somehow allowed himself to be roped into driving the convertible in the Passcoe Fourth of July parade, chauffeuring a local beauty queen, Tamelah Dorman, who’d actually been crowned Miss Passcoe, although it should have been Miss Spray-Tan, because she was surely the most artificially overbronzed girl he’d ever encountered.

Anyway, he and Tamelah were having a pretty good time that day. She, perched on the back of the Chevelle, decked out in a short, low-cut spangly firecracker-red dress that definitely showed off her best assets, and he in shorts and a white Quixie Soda polo shirt. He’d filled a flask full of crushed ice, Captain Morgan rum, and Quixie, and he and good old Tamelah had emptied and refilled it before they got a quarter of the way down the Main Street parade route that morning.

The Fourth of July parade was always a major deal in Passcoe, and that year, the hundredth anniversary of the town’s incorporation, made it an even bigger deal than usual. Thousands of people lined Main Street, seated on lawn chairs, standing in the shade of storefronts, or crouched on the curbs.