Sticks & Scones (8 page)

H
ow long had it been since Tom had been shot? Seconds. Hours. No, not hours. Minutes. Fractions of minutes. Tom floated in and out of consciousness, his face drained of color, his body slumped against the boulder. He looked like a dying bear. There was no further sound from the radio. I pressed against Tom’s wound and begged for him to live.

Then something changed. At first I was not sure if the piercing noise was sirens or ringing in my ears. And perhaps the distant
wop wop wop
was the drumbeat of my heart, and not the helicopter I desperately wanted it to be.

Please
, I prayed again.

Then: Men shouted. The sirens screamed closer. Not far away, a helicopter landed with a blast of air that hurt my ears and made my eyes water. The helo engine cut off and more men yelled. Overhead, I thought I could hear another copter.

“Here!” I yelled, without moving from Tom’s side. “We’re over here!”

After what seemed like a century, a policeman in full SWAT gear leaped through the rock barrier ten yards from us. He was big, muscular, and limber, with dark skin and dark hair. Crouching expertly, he spoke into a radio as he scrambled across the distance to us.

A second later, he was crawling around Tom and me. He told me not to move my hands as he bent in to get a look at the wound. He felt for Tom’s pulse, murmured into his own radio, then turned his full attention back to Tom.

“Schulz! Schulz! Can you hear me?” The SWAT guy’s radio crackled. “Schulz!” he cried again.
“Are you in there?”

“Of course,” Tom said unexpectedly, and I almost laughed with relief.

The SWAT cop nodded to me. “Are you hurt?” he asked. I shook my head. “Can you talk?” I nodded. “Good. How many shots?”

“Three.” My voice sounded weird. “One went into his shoulder. Another hit his car. The last one struck one of my van doors.”

“Could you tell where the shots came from?”

“From across two-oh-three, it seemed. At the time, I thought someone was up on the hill in Cottonwood Park. In the trees.”

“How far up the hill?” the cop demanded.

I didn’t know. “Maybe a hundred feet, maybe fifty.” Tom’s eyes had closed again, and I leaned in close to him, murmuring his name.

The SWAT guy talked into his radio, then tried again to communicate with Tom until his radio crackled back. The cops must not have found the shooter, because the officer jumped up, waved over the boulder, and hollered for the medics.

Moments later, two medics—both young men with shaved scalps—clambered over the boulders. They instructed me to ease off the compression and move out of the way. I obeyed. One assessed Tom’s wound while the other checked his vital signs. The second medic told the SWAT guy to get the police copter out of the meadow. They were bringing in Flight-for-Life. This meant the medics were skipping the ambulance. Again I wished I didn’t know so much. They were skipping the ambulance because of the severity of Tom’s wound. Time had become critical and an ambulance would take too long….

I felt dizzy and keeled backward. My body was shutting down, drained of its initial surge of adrenaline. One medic ordered me to lie on the ground. He told the SWAT officer to check me for shock.

Without realizing how I got there, I was suddenly lying on an uneven sheet of ice. A rock stuck into my left shoulder blade. My whole body turned very cold, very fast.
I have to call the Hydes
, I thought, as the blue sky whirled over my head.
There’ll be no luncheon today.
The SWAT deputy was talking to me, telling me to keep my eyes open, to keep looking at him. He asked if my collar was tight. I didn’t care about my damn collar. I couldn’t see Tom. The deputy informed me that the situation on the other side of the rocks had stabilized. The shooter had fled. Captain Lambert of the Furman County Sheriff’s Department had radioed to say I could follow the medical helo down to the hospital. If I wanted to. If I was well enough.

I said I was fine. I tried to sit up but my head swam and I sank back, helpless and frustrated. I wanted to be with my husband, my voice croaked. And could someone please call the Hydes, Eliot and Sukie, who owned the the castle on the hill above the chapel, and tell them what was happening? The SWAT man nodded and told me the police chopper was leaving now, so Flight-for-Life could
land. When the medical helo left, the police chopper would come back to take me to the hospital. Did I understand? I nodded. Captain Lambert would meet me in Denver. A trauma team at the hospital was already getting prepared for Tom.

A
trauma team.
I was having trouble breathing. The SWAT deputy had not mentioned the body in the creek. When
officer needs assistance, shots fired
comes in, I knew, everything else gets dropped. My mind repeated the words.
A trauma team. Getting ready. For Tom.

I couldn’t hear the SWAT guy anymore.

I registered the deafening racket and harsh wind of one helo taking off and another landing. A uniformed man and woman—both flight nurses, I realized—threaded through the boulder wall. They stabilized Tom’s head, tersely asked the SWAT deputy for a report, then bandaged Tom up and belted him into a stretcher. I craned to watch. My dear Tom, big in body and spirit, charismatic with his men, loving to Arch and me, was always on the move, without being hurried. Now he was unconscious, his face gray, his body drenched in blood. Working in sync, the two nurses expertly heaved the stretcher bearing Tom over the boulders. The SWAT man didn’t stop me as I struggled to my feet. When I swayed and nearly fell, he gripped my elbow and walked me through the rocks.

The sheer number of cops assembled was astonishing. At least fifty police officers, their uniforms and cars emblazoned with the insignia of the Furman County and nearby Jefferson County sheriff’s departments, as well as Littleton, Lakewood, and Morrison police departments, were crowded onto the road, talking into their radios, taking notes, investigating the scene, keeping tabs on more officers combing the trees. I wished that Tom could have seen it.

My mind backtracked to Tom’s words about
her. Don’t
think about it
, I warned myself. He’d been shot. He was out of his head.

Still, as the medical helo whipped into the air, my brain again supplied Tom’s shaky, apologetic tone.
I don’t love her.
What could he have been thinking? That he was going to die, and that I would find something incriminating from before we’d met? Like what? Love notes? Hotel bills? Or was his concern more recent? Had he compromised himself with a hooker in Atlantic City? Had she threatened to give me a ring?

Stop.
Stop, stop, stop.

I watched the medical helo recede into the sky.

Less than ten minutes later, the sheriff’s department chopper took off with me in it. Below us, on the other side of the creek, police officers continued to swarm through the trees of Cottonwood Park. The corpse was still in the water; crime-scene techs were videotaping and combing the site. Half a mile east of the scene, where Fox Creek flowed down into the Cottonwood, cops had stopped traffic. On the south side of the road, on the hill far above Cottonwood Creek, rose the castle. Its moat glittered in the morning sun like a medieval vision. Had the police notified the Hydes of what had happened? Or were they still expecting me to be there to cater the lunch?

The helo swept eastward. The castle estate adjoined an enormous cattle ranch, and the noise of the copter drove dozens of steer below us into a brisk trot. To the south stretched acres and acres of pine trees.

I glanced back at Cottonwood Creek, where Andy Balachek’s receding body was a bright spot in the dark water. In the county park, a cluster of uniformed officers had stopped at a dirt road that cut through the expanse of trees. They were studying something on the road. Shells from the bullets fired at us? Footprints in the snow? Tracks from a vehicle?

I turned and stared at Highway 203, now receding from sight. Had someone shot out our window, then somehow followed me to the castle? Had that same person murdered Andy Balachek and dumped his body in the creek, where I would be almost certain to discover it? Had that person then waited across the road, to try to shoot me? Or had Tom been his target all along?

I turned back, determined to focus on Tom. In the cockpit, the pilots’ mouths worked as they spoke into headsets. Out the window, the endless spread of forest fell away beneath us. I closed my eyes and prayed for Tom.

But thoughts intruded. Either my mind was struggling to make sense out of all that had happened, or my soul was trying to generate hope. What had Tom told me about gunshot wounds?
It depends on the weapon.
If someone shot a high-powered rifle at your shoulder, good-bye shoulder. If it was a low-powered rifle, something might be salvaged if a bone hadn’t been hit, or if a major blood vessel hadn’t been opened up. If a bullet tore open the subclavian vein, you could bleed to death before you reached a hospital. Would they give blood in the medical helo? I didn’t think a Flight-for-Life IV could contain anything besides glucose.

The helo pilot, who looked too young to be shaving, much less flying a helicopter, murmured into his radio, then swerved the aircraft to the right. Unless I was extremely disoriented, we were heading south-by-southeast. This was not the direction to the base for Flight-for-Life: Saint Anthony’s Hospital in Denver.

“What’s going on?” I yelled over the whir of the helicopter blades.

“Saint Anthony’s is overloaded,” the pilot hollered back. “They’re on Divert. The medical helo is going to Southwest Hospital, so that’s where we’re heading. Southwest has a new trauma center that can handle this.”

I bit my lip painfully, anxious to get Tom
somewhere.
I knew Southwest Hospital, across from Westside Mall in the southeast corner of Furman County. It was where Marla had been taken when she’d had her heart attack; afterwards, she’d donated money for a new coronary care wing. Southwest also belonged to the same chain of Denver hospitals in which John Richard had once worked.

I veered away from
that
thought as we swooped over one of the residential areas in the foothills, where houses sat higgledy-piggledy along a winding dirt road. Swing sets shuddered in the cold wind coming off the higher elevations. Week-old, wind-carved snowmen newly dusted with white indicated the presence of happy families.

In the not-so-happy family department, where was John Richard at this moment? I wished I knew. Could he possibly have shot Tom? Would he have? Yes, oh yes, no matter what Arch said about his father not being good with a gun. My head ached as I remembered an incident from when we were still married. The tale had come from a nurse at Cityside Hospital, one of the places where John Richard had done deliveries. Her voice trembling, she’d called me to confess she’d repeatedly rejected John Richard’s advances. When she’d protested to Doctor that she was married, she told me, the Jerk had calmly replied,
How about if that troublesome husband of yours was out of the way?
I didn’t know why the nurse had phoned
me
with this message. What did she think I was going to do? My advice had been that she put as many miles as she could between herself and Dr. Korman. Not long after, another nurse told me that the object of John Richard’s affections had quit her job and moved to a hospital out of state.

I couldn’t see the medical helo, but I knew it was in front of us. More knowledge I’d gleaned in Med Wives 101 came up like a fresh computer screen. The human body is mostly water. Even a bullet that only goes
through soft tissue causes massive damage, beginning with the shock wave to the system known as the hydraulic effect.

Were the medics treating Tom for shock? Of course. Had I done enough to compress the wound? My teeth chattered. I grabbed a silver space blanket one of the pilots had put on the seat beside me. I was so cold. How to avoid shock?
Stop feeling and
start
thinking.

But I couldn’t. It was too painful. I saw Tom’s body jerk back. Watched him bleed. Heard him say,
I don’t love her.
I’d endured years of infidelity from the Jerk. But this was different.

Incredibly, I still had my cell phone. I drew it out and stared at it. Could I use it in the helo? Should I call Elk Park Prep? Should Arch be told? I looked down. We had left the mountains and were swooping over the Hogback, an ancient, jagged geological formation that rose between the mountains and plains. The Hogback had fascinated generations of elementary-school science students. But the rocks still screwed up any cellular communication you tried to make while crossing them. Plus, making a cell call was undoubtedly not allowed in the helo, as it wouldn’t be in the hospital. So: Once I knew Tom was being taken care of, I’d find a pay phone, call Marla, call the Hydes, call the church.
All crises in due time
, my mind numbly supplied.

The helo was just starting over the flatlands that stretched toward Denver. We
whump-whumped
over a development, row after row of gray-and-beige tract houses. Ahead, Westside Mall loomed. Beyond it, Southwest Hospital and its crammed parking lot shimmered in the sun.

The police helicopter hovered near the mall. From our vantage point, the hospital landing pad was in full view. It looked as if an emergency nurse and orderly were meeting the medical helo. I swallowed and watched the
flight nurses unload Tom
hot
, that is, with the helo blades still going. Then I saw Tom, still on the backboard, being transferred onto a gurney and wheeled away.

First the trauma team, then a hot unload. You only unloaded hot when you thought you were going to lose somebody.

What felt like an eternity but probably was not more than twenty minutes later, after the police chopper had landed and the hospital security officer had escorted me to a bathroom to clean Tom’s blood off my hands and arms, I arrived in the ER waiting room. I was told the ER doctor would come out to talk to me as soon as possible. A few moments later, Tom’s new captain, Isaac Lambert, loomed next to me. Awkwardly, I got to my feet.