Dead Last

by Amanda Lamb

  One thing I didn’t think of was how cold I might be after the race. Once you sweat and then cool off, it’s hard to shake the chill. Even with leggings on, my exposed skin was covered with goosebumps. I wrapped my arms around my body to stay warm. The Uber driver’s air condition wasn’t helping any. I glanced at my phone to see what her name was.

  “Kia, do you mind turning the air down a bit?”

  “Sure.” She chuckled. “But my name isn’t Kia. It’s Robin.”

  “Says right here, Kia Soul,” I said, holding up my phone screen over the seat for her to see.

  “Honey, that’s the car I’m driving. A Kia Soul.” She laughed, and I joined her, embarrassed and tickled by my mistake, happy for the distraction.

  “It would be a pretty good name, you have to admit,” I said after catching my breath.

  “I might use it.” She winked at me in her rearview mirror.

  The moment of levity almost made me forget the seriousness of my mission—finding out if the woman who fell in front of me was still alive. The fall came rushing back to me, like I was replaying a piece of news footage, over and over, on my laptop. Only this time I couldn’t slow it down or rewind it to study the intricacies of the moment. I could clearly picture Suzanne going down, her body parts hitting the pavement in a frightening series of split-second blows divided only by the symphony music in my head.

  As a regular runner, I was no stranger to falls. One summer I slid on a sandy patch on a cement boardwalk at the beach and fell hard, first onto the pavement, and then into the coarse seagrass in the dunes. Like Suzanne, I bloodied my shoulders, elbows and knees. For the rest of the summer I wore large pieces of gauze secured by white medical tape to protect my wounds from the sun. I wasn’t seriously injured, but my pride ached a little, especially when people asked me how I had gotten hurt. I wanted so much to have a better story.

  So it was possible that Suzanne had simply lost her footing. It happens all the time with runners, especially if they’re tired.

  I thanked Robin and jumped out of her Kia Soul, chuckling when I said her correct name. She had dropped me at the curb in front of the emergency room doors. I looked down and realized I still had my bib number pinned to my shirt. I started to unpin it, and then decided it didn’t matter. Nobody in an emergency room was going to pay any attention to me or what I was wearing. In my experience, most people in emergency rooms were focused on their own personal crises. I was always myopic when I took Adam to the hospital for emergency transfusions of platelets.

  There was the time when the scrubs-clad, Puka-shell-wearing, Starbuck’s-coffee-drinking, gelled-hair male nurse asked me flippantly what Adam’s concerns were. At the time, Adam was leaning awkwardly to the side in the wheelchair, with a knit cap covering his bald head and a red fleece blanket wrapped around him from his mid-torso down to his ankles. I was always worried about him being cold and his temperature was one of the few things I could control.

  “His concerns?” I said as I sensed my face morphing into an open display of anger. “He’s dying. He has a brain tumor. And without a transfusion, it’s doubtful he’ll make it through the night. Do those qualify as concerns?”

  Without looking up, the nurse typed something into his computer and told us to take a seat. I ignored his request, and stood there right in front of his desk, staring at him. All I wanted was for Adam to be able to lie down while he waited for the transfusion, instead of sitting on his painful bed sores in the wheelchair. The staredown worked. We got into an exam room in just twelve minutes. Of course, he didn’t get the transfusion for six more hours, but at least he was comfortable while he waited.

  So on this day, as I exited the Uber and went through the revolving door into the emergency room and the rush of cold air inside hit me, I was right back in that moment with Adam. I even peered across the room at the front desk, looking for Mr. Puka Shell. This time I was met by an affable, middle-aged nurse. She stood up and guided me with her hand on my shoulder behind the desk and through the double doors.

  “We’re so glad you’re here. She’s been waiting for you. She told us to bring you right back when you got here.” The nurse pushed me through the door marked Staff Only, into the treatment area.

  “You must be…I’m not…it’s just…” I was thinking Suzanne must have told them she had a friend racing with her, and the hospital staff assumed it was me because of the number pinned to my shirt. I shut up and decided this was most likely the only way I would get back there to see her considering I wasn’t family, and if her friend hadn’t arrived Yet she needed someone with her. At least, that’s what I told myself in order to silence my inner voice that knew I was breaking all sorts of medical privacy rules by allowing the ruse to continue.

  “She took a bad fall, and she’s pretty bruised up,” the nurse said. “Still waiting on results on the concussion and toxicology. Checking to see if she has any medication in her system that could have contributed to her accident,” the nurse rattled on. “Do you know if she was taking any prescription medication? Her race bib, where people generally include that information, must have come off when they were working on her, because it wasn’t on her when she came in. She hasn’t been able to help us with much. She’s loopy from the pain meds we gave her.”

  The nurse was speaking so fast, I was pretty sure there had been a pot of coffee that she had just drained in the break room. I couldn’t shoehorn one word into her monologue.

  I suddenly realized that Suzanne must have identified the person she was waiting for as a relative, someone who would be allowed to have her medical information. Otherwise, the nurse would never be telling me all this. I dared not interrupt her for fear of blowing my cover.

  The nurse was a perky, blond woman in scrubs, with a friendly but tired round face that didn’t match the intensity of her chatter. She pulled back a white curtain to let me pass into the treatment area, and then drew it closed behind me. Suzanne was hooked up to several machines with wires and tubes dangling from a medal stand next to the bed. Her hands and forehead were wrapped in blood-soaked gauze bandages. Her long dark hair was stiff and matted on the pillow beneath her. As soon as I slid into the green recliner next to the bed, her eyes shot open and she looked directly at me, parting her swollen lips slightly.

  Here it is, I thought. The jig is up. Here is the moment she tells the nurse I am not the person she was waiting for, she rings her call bell, and I promptly get evicted from the treatment area. And maybe even worse than that, they call hospital security and tell them I’m a journalist who lied about my identity to get into a patient’s room.

  “Sis, I’m so glad you’re finally here,” she said just above a whisper, with a weak smile. She looked in the direction of the perky-but-tired nurse who now appeared to be deep into writing down some information from one of the bedside machines, on a chart attached to a clipboard.

  I sat stunned, trying to process what was happening. My first assumption was that she was delusional from the fall and the drugs and really thought I was her sister. My second guess was that somehow this woman knew exactly who I was and wanted to make sure I was allowed into her room. But how could she have possibly known I would come?

  We sat in silence for a few seconds. I took a deep breath and decided I would give this bizarre scenario a few minutes to play out. I told myself I could leave at any moment. I didn’t owe this woman anything. I just came to make sure she was going to be okay. I was not here to complicate my life.

  A minute later, perky-but-tired nurse opened the curtain so she could step out, and then pulled it closed behind her, leaving us alone. I sat there staring at this strange injured woman, wondering how I had fallen into another rabbit hole.

  O

  I was still and quiet for a moment as I tried to gather my thoughts and assess the situation. Maybe Suzanne had a head injury and was confused about who I was? If that was the case, it might be medically unadvisable for me to say anything to upset her. So I waited for her to spea
k again, my back rigid in the chair as I shivered when I remembered how cold I was.

  “You can call me Suzanne, but you probably already know my name, because you’re here,” she said with a sluggishness in her voice, like she was struggling to speak through her swollen lips. The painkillers were also probably contributing to her slurred, labored speech.

  She parted her lips and tried to give me a toothy grin. It made her look a little bit crazy. She winced in pain, but at the same time tried to hold her lips rigid like she was posing for a photograph. Was it a wicked smile? I didn’t know this woman, but this definitely wasn’t the tender, my-sister-is-here smile she had given me when the nurse was in the room with us.

  “I knew you would come,” she said, without slurring this time, turning her head slowly on the pillow to look directly at me. I looked around the room for a moment, wondering if the voice had come from somewhere else, because it was so clear this time.

  “Look.” I shifted uncomfortably in the green leather chair, trying to pull it away from the bed to put some distance between us. “I think there’s some kind of misunderstanding. I’m not—”

  “Not my sister. Of course you’re not. You didn’t really think I thought you were? I just said that so they would let you back here.” She closed her eyes as if our conversation was requiring too much energy. Then she chuckled a little like someone losing her mind.

  “I was running the race. I was right behind you when you fell, and I just stayed with you until help arrived.”

  “I know, and thank you, thank you so much. So scared.” She opened her eyes wide and stared at a spot on the ceiling. “You don’t even know. I didn’t totally realize what was going on, then suddenly I did. Everything went gray, fuzzy, started to fall, couldn’t stop myself. Legs felt like jelly.” She waved her bandaged hand to a hidden melody, above the blanket like a conductor in front of an invisible orchestra.

  A red oxygen monitor was clipped to her middle finger and protruded through a hole cut through the thick layer of white tape on her bandaged hand.

  “So how did you know I would come?”

  “Because of what I told you,” she said matter-of-factly turning away from the ceiling to look at me again, this time with her deep brown expressionless eyes. I couldn’t read them, they were so dark.

  “I haven’t told anyone else my suspicions. Only you. You were the first one, the only one. Before, I was afraid to say it out loud. But now it’s out. When I said it to you it was like a huge weight lifted off me to know that someone else knows. I know it sounds crazy, a woman you don’t know telling you this unbelievable thing, this horror story. It even sounds crazy to me now as I talk about it. But maybe I am a little crazy after everything he’s put me through.”

  Everything this woman was telling me seemed sincere. But it still was not making sense. What did she expect me to do about it?

  “I was so dizzy. I run all the time, and I’ve never felt like that before. Think he definitely put something in my water, maybe not enough of something to kill me, but enough to mess me up, make me collapse, to hurt me in little ways,” she said, breathlessly, and then started hacking like she might be coughing up a lung.

  “Do you want me to call the nurse?” I got to my feet, my gaze darting at the monitors around the bed, not knowing what I was looking at or for. I must have blocked all the medical knowledge I’d gained during Adam’s many stays at the hospital. I couldn’t remember what was what, yet the sounds—the beeps, the whooshing of the machines, were all too familiar.

  “No, I’m fine,” she said, between gritted teeth, and clearing her throat. “Just water, please.”

  I started to hand her the Styrofoam cup filled with ice water on the bedside table. A straw was suspended by a thick chunk of shaved ice in the middle of the cup. As I waited for her to take it from me, I realized the bandages wrapped clumsily around her hands wouldn’t allow her to grasp anything, so I lifted the straw gingerly to her red swollen lips and let her take a few sips. When she stopped drinking, I pulled the cup away and set it back down on the table. It seemed like an intimate gesture to share with someone I didn’t know. Many times I had helped Adam take sips of water in a hospital bed, but she was a stranger.

  “Thank you. Whatever he gave me dried my mouth out. Like cotton. Awful.”

  “Your husband?” I asked, confused, not sure if she was talking about what the doctor gave her in the emergency room, or the poison she allegedly got from her husband.

  “Yes, he put something in my water bottles. I know it. Well, suspect it. I found them filled on the counter early this morning, with a note that said, Run hard. Not his style. He’s not thoughtful like that. Not sure why I didn’t pour them out right away. Should have known. He’s a doctor. He would know just how to do something like this.”

  Suzanne closed her eyes as if what she’d just told me sapped her last bit of energy. Within seconds, her breathing took on the regular cadence of a person in a deep sleep. I turned to see the nurse peeking from behind the curtain.

  “She may be out for a good long while. She was hysterical when she got here. Like I told you, we gave her something for the pain and something to make her less anxious. It might make her sleepy.” The nurse busied herself with the various machines again. “She’ll be getting a room as soon as a bed becomes available. She’ll need to stay here at least tonight to make sure she has no serious injuries. Plus, there may be some stiches needed, and I’m afraid she’s got broken ribs. Unfortunately, not much you can do about that. Just got to wait and let them heal. She’s very lucky, considering the spill she took. That’s why I don’t run. It’s too dangerous.” She chuckled and a winked, smoothing down her scrubs over her curvy figure.

  I smiled at her joke and nodded, trying to be polite. I was still too confused about who I was supposed to be and what I had just learned to even come up with an appropriate response. I moved away from the bed and offered the nurse a half-hearted wave as I ducked out of the room, into the hallway. It was a mistake to come here. The last thing I wanted to do was get mixed up in someone’s marital strife.

  At the same time, I felt sorry for Suzanne. She seemed desperate, but what she was telling me also seemed insane—that she had been poisoned but was able to run eleven miles before collapsing. And even if her husband really was trying to kill her, she needed help from the police, not from a local television reporter who did stories on pot-bellied pigs.

  I looked for the closest exit sign and bolted toward it. It was part anxiety and part cold that made me run so fast. But even as I was escaping the gray halls of the hospital where I had spent so many unhappy moments with Adam, I had a feeling I was not done with this place or with Suzanne.

  2

  Business as Usual

  I asked for this, I reminded myself as I listened to the voicemail from my assignment editor telling me what my story was going to be that day.

  “Maddie, this is an amazing story. You are going to absolutely love this one,” Janie gushed. “Call me back.”

  Janie Paige thought everything was amazing when she pitched stories for my animal beat. While I appreciated her passion, I also knew that behind her enthusiasm was yet another pet tale that was probably going to be not-so-amazing. I would just have to create some magic and make chicken salad out of whatever was thrown at me. I kept telling myself that at least I wasn’t on my way to a crime scene where someone had cut up a body with a chain saw, put it in a cooler, and dumped it in alligator-infested waters after first trying to burn it with lighter fluid, in a metal trashcan. That was one of my cases the previous year.

  “Okay, so what’s this amazing story?” I asked Janie, trying to match her excitement, born in equal parts from her youth and her exhaustingly positive personality. I had her on speaker phone while I did planks in my den. My arms and legs trembled as I rounded the two-minute corner.

  Janie said in a rush of words without breaths. “So a woman leaves the room for a minute while her baby is in the high-chair e
ating breakfast. The family’s parrot, Puffin, is in a cage nearby chattering away, because they talk a lot, right? They mimic what people say,” I nodded my head even though she couldn’t see me through the phone. I glanced at my sports watch as it counted down my three-minute plank. My whole body was shaking now, but I refused to quit.

  “So kid picks up a grape, it goes down the wrong pipe, gets stuck in her throat. She’s choking. Bird starts screaming, ‘Mama, the baby. 911. Mama, the baby. 911!’ Woman comes running back into the room, does the Heimlich thingy-ma-bob on the kid, out pops the grape. The parrot saved the kid’s life. Isn’t that amazing?”

  I collapse on the white fluffy rug beneath me, face-planting in the soft curly shag. I picture my interview with the tearful mother bouncing her chubby, adorable baby on her knee while Puffin preens over her shoulder in the background, playing the reluctant hero. I want to stay here, buried in my rug, and hang up the phone. But I know I can’t do that. I force myself out of my prone position, into child’s pose and turn my head to the side so I can respond to Janie without being muffled by the carpet.

  “Wow, Janie. That is something. How do you find these stories?” My voice was part incredulous, part sarcastic. Janie didn’t seem to notice.

  “I know, right? I get so many emails about these animal stories, it blows my mind. I wade through them until I find a home run like this one. I mean, we can’t do dogs finding kids trapped in sink holes every single day. Got to branch out. This one is the bomb.”

  I couldn’t disagree with her on either front. Our viewers did seem to love a good animal-hero story. Whenever I previewed my stories on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, I got hundreds, sometimes thousands of likes, comments, and shares. When I used to cover crime, I was lucky to get a couple dozen interactions on a post about a murder investigation or a trial. Because social media engagement was quickly becoming an important part of how my company measured the value of its on-air talent, the more interesting my stories were to the social media audience, the more positive feedback I got from my managers.