by Amanda Lamb
When I reached ten thousand followers on Twitter, I got the following email from one of my supervisors: Congratulations on reaching this fantastic milestone! I read it twice to make sure he was talking about Twitter.
I pictured myself taking a quick video with my phone or doing a Facebook Live, panning from the cherubic baby to the heroic bird, and posting it with a cute caption like You won’t believe this story. He’s more than just a pet. He’s a lifesaver. It was guaranteed to get me a couple of thousand interactions online from dedicated fans. I was in. I pushed myself up to a standing position so I could stretch.
“Just give me the address and tell Buster I will meet him there.”
“Yes, the mom and the baby and Puffin are available at eleven o’clock, which is perfect because Buster needs to work with Virginia at the state legislature after your shoot.”
“He’s not going to like that, pulling double duty.” I lunged with one leg and stretched the other calf. She already knew this about Buster Patton, my regular photographer, how he hated to be pulled in multiple directions in one day.
“I know, but we’re short today, and Dex told me there were no other options.” She was referring to our surly assignment manager. Dex Hunt was surly mainly because he had to figure out how to staff a newsroom to fill more than ten hours of news programming a day from 4:30 a.m. through 11:30 p.m., with about half the number of people he needed.
Dex was a retired Army captain. Sometimes his assignments felt like military orders with no room for interpretation or negotiation. In this case I decided it was Buster’s battle to fight, not mine.
I got the parrot-woman’s address from Janie and mapped it on my phone. It was only about twenty minutes away, which meant I had plenty of time to get ready. The twins had already left for school via carpool. The rare mornings when I didn’t have to rush to school and then rush to an assignment felt like a gift. Just having five extra minutes to drink my first cup of coffee without it becoming lukewarm while I raced around the house looking for book bags, jackets, and shoes, made a major difference in my demeanor. I cherished my time with my kids, but since Adam died, the mundane tasks of everyday life, without his help and support, sometimes seemed insurmountable.
As I backed out of my driveway, a steaming travel mug of coffee wafting its delicious scent from my cupholder, my phone rang. I looked down at the screen on my armrest, which showed the number was an unidentified caller, which meant the person was not one of the twenty thousand or so contacts already programmed into my phone. Usually I would let these unknown calls go to voicemail, but for some reason I hit the answer button.
“Maddie Arnette,” I said, in my professional, no-nonsense voice, which I reserved for business calls. It was a mixture of “How can I help you?” combined with a healthy dose of “I don’t have a lot of time. Get to the point, please.”
“Oh, thank God I got you, Maddie. It’s Suzanne Parker. Suzanne from the race. I have to see you. He’s crazy, seriously. You have to help me.” Her voice pleaded just above a whisper. I quickly scanned my brain, trying to remember if I had told her my name at the hospital. I guess I did. But how did she have my cell number? I didn’t remember giving it to her.
“Slow down, okay? What’s going on? Where are you? Are you still in the hospital?”
“Yes,” Suzanne said, in a raspy whisper, “but I’m in the stairwell.”
“In the stairwell? What in the world are you doing there?” I swerved to avoid a moped that was traveling at about half the posted speed limit. I was so distracted that I decided to pull over into a drugstore parking lot while we talked. Puffin would have to wait.
“I was lying in bed, you know, just dozing, when I looked up and saw him wandering around outside my room. He had flowers. Can you believe that? Brought me goddamn flowers after he’d tried to kill me. Was so scared. Started shaking, couldn’t stop. Somehow, don’t know how, I pretended to be asleep. Closed my eyes, made my breathing very slow. He tiptoed into the room. Thought for sure he was going to strangle me. I kept one eye open a crack so I could see where he was the whole time. I was ready to scream if he touched me. And just when I thought something bad was going to happen, he stopped about a foot from my bed and left the flowers on the table next to me. Must have gotten spooked by a nurse or something and rushed out of the room. Didn’t see him go, but I heard him bump into the table and knock it into the wall. When I heard the door close, I snuck out into the hallway, made sure he was gone, and ducked into the stairwell to call you. I was so afraid he might come back.”
I was having a hard time hearing Suzanne. It sounded like she was cupping her hands around the phone. I knew I should just tell her that I was busy, that I was on my way to an assignment, and that she should call hospital security if she was truly afraid. But before I could stop myself, I was offering to help. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to take the risk of not believing her the way my mother’s friends had not believed her when she told them about my father. My mother’s story was always the thing that turned me from a journalist into a bleeding heart in situations like this. I couldn’t let Suzanne’s story end the same way as my mother’s story did.
“Do you want me to call someone, hospital security, the police?” I whispered, for no apparent reason since I was sitting alone in my car.
“No! No police. He’s really connected. If I report him without proof that’s he done something wrong, he’ll just make my life more miserable.”
“Well, you can’t stay in the stairwell all day. He’s probably gone by now. Why don’t you stay on the phone with me and walk back out into the hallway and see if it’s clear. If he’s there, let me know. A doctor is not going to be stupid enough to do something to you in a hospital where there are witnesses.”
“Ok,” Suzanne replied, in a shaky voice.
I could hear the whoosh of a door, and then a cacophony of hospital background noise—people talking, buzzers and alarms going off, metal carts rolling by on the linoleum floor.
“I don’t see him,” Suzanne said, in a normal voice that startled me because it was so much louder than the muffled whisper she had been using. “I think he’s gone.”
“Good. Go back to your room and get some rest. You need to focus on recuperating so you can go home.”
“That’s the last place I want to go,” Suzanne said, above the rustle of what sounded like her sheets as she was apparently climbing back into bed. Good girl, I thought to myself.
“What I want is for you to believe me,” Suzanne whined, sounding more like a little girl than a grown woman. “Can’t you come back to the hospital so I can tell you the whole story.”
“Suzanne, I’m at work. Besides, I’m sure you have a lot of friends and relatives who know you much better than I do. They would be the best sounding board for what you’re dealing with.”
“I do. But I need someone neutral to help me sort this thing out. Everyone loves Tanner. His patients love him, even my friends and family love him. So I can’t talk to them about it. They’re biased. He’s a great actor. He’s got everyone fooled. He pretends to be this great guy. But he has a dark side to him.…” It got so quiet I wondered if she had gone back into the stairwell.
“Talk about what?” I heard a strange male voice, in the background.
“Nothing,” I heard Suzanne say. “Nothing at all, Tanner.” I couldn’t help but wonder how much of our conversation he had heard and what the repercussions might be for her. But it was too late to ask. The line went dead.
O
I threw the car in reverse so hard it felt like it jumped off the ground. I tried to calm myself down, to tell myself that Suzanne’s phone probably died, that she was fine, and that Tanner couldn’t do anything to her in a public place like a hospital. He wouldn’t be that stupid.
I hit Buster’s number on the touch screen in my car and waited several rings for him to pick up.
“Buster, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to interview this parrot lady without me
. I’ll meet you back at the office later to log the tape and write the story.”
“You know Dex doesn’t like it when we do it that way. He wants to see you talking to the woman on camera. He wants long two-shots of you guys walking together and talking about the baby-saving-parrot,” Buster said, with more than a dash of sarcasm.
“I know. I promise this is the last time. Something came up. Something important,” I sped east on the highway, toward the hospital.
“Something always comes up,” he said in his most critical voice, but then softened.
He had given me my fair share of passes since Adam died, but I was concerned my credit in the good karma bank was about to dry up.
“Okay, but you owe me. These people can be so hokey. I’m not good with hokey.” He gave a grunt and a laugh that made me feel that I had at least one fire under control.
As I got closer to Chester Hospital, I told myself that I had to be calm. I had to make Tanner think Suzanne and I were old friends and I was just coming to check in on her. I couldn’t let him suspect that she had told me anything about what was going on between them.
I parked in the hospital garage and headed across the breezeway toward the patients’ rooms. I wondered what kind of doctor Tanner was. I knew some doctors could be arrogant, afflicted with the God complex, but arrogance alone didn’t make someone an attempted murderer. And bringing flowers to the bedside of the woman you just tried to kill seemed like a major contradiction.
As I approached Suzanne’s room, I noticed the door was ajar just a crack. I started to push it open, and then decided against it. I didn’t want this man to think I was in a hurry to get into the room, so I knocked first.
“Suzanne, hey there, it’s Maddie. Can I come in?”
“Maddie?”
“Yes, I won’t stay long. Just wanted to check in on you.”
I pushed the door open a little wider only to see her lying quietly in her bed. The gauze on her wounds looked fresh, and her skin was regaining some color. She was curled up on her side, facing the door in a fetal position, with the covers bunched up in between her balled, bandaged hands. Her eyes were closed, but her lids flapped like butterfly wings at the sound of me coming into the room. Looking at her in this state, I couldn’t imagine her having been out of bed just fifteen minutes prior when we were on the phone together. I wondered if she was acting so fragile because Tanner was still in the hospital, and she didn’t want him to know she was getting better.
“Maddie, you came.” She uncurled of one of her balled hands and reaching out in my direction. “You really came.” A weak smile spread across her face. It looked as if it might be painful for her jaw. She winced.
“Yes, I had to make sure you were okay. Are you okay? Is he gone?” I whispered for fear he might still be within earshot. I was starting to wonder if Tanner had ever really been there, or if Suzanne had told me that just to get me to the hospital.
“He left. I told him I was too tired to visit with him. He told me he’d be back tomorrow, that they would probably release me then, and he would take me home.” She squeezed my hand as tight as she could through the bandages and looked at me with wide, frightened eyes. “I won’t go with him. I won’t.”
“Suzanne, do you have anyone you can stay with? A friend or relative? I’m sure they will believe you if you tell them what’s going on.”
“There’s no one, no one I can trust.” Her voice filled with tears.
There was a knock at the door and a young nurse came in and explained that she needed to take Suzanne’s vital signs. She was petite and in pink scrubs, with her brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She checked Suzanne’s pulse and temperature and then readjusted her bandages, occasionally glancing at her clipboard, which lay on the end of the bed. I sat silently in the chair next to the bed, feeling awkward about having this nurse perform intimate duties while I was in the room with a woman I barely knew.
“You’re almost done with this antibiotic. Not sure if the doctor ordered another bag. I’ll check.” The no-nonsense nurse picked up a bag from the IV pole and held it up to the light to look at the tiny puddle of gold liquid that remained in the bottom.
My eyes trailed from the bag down the plastic tube to Suzanne’s arm, where presumably a needle was stuck in a vein beneath several pieces of white tape that held it in place.
How had she gone into the stairwell if she was attached to this IV? Sure, you could walk down the hall rolling the tall metal IV stand, but it was unlikely in her condition that she could have done this, let alone opened a door and taken it into a stairwell. Again, I wondered if her cries for help were just aimed at getting me to come. After all, she was obviously lonely and scared.
Everything inside of me was screaming that I needed to leave again, to run away from this situation, but something else much more powerful was tugging at me to stay. If what she was telling me was true, she might end up dead. I couldn’t risk that. When I closed my eyes, I pictured my mother covered in blood from a gunshot wound. I was never sure if it was a true memory, or if it was a picture I made up, cobbled together from what others had told me and from various media accounts I had read online over the years.
“Suzanne, are you sure you’re telling me everything? Was Tanner really here?” I scanned the room for clues.
“Yes, he was here. He was sitting right where you are, just before you got here. He’s gone now,” she said, groggily, closing her eyes. She emphasized the word gone.
I wanted to believe her, but something other than the logistics of moving with the IV was bothering me about her story. I looked at the bedside table—no flowers. She’d specifically told me that Tanner had left her flowers next to her bed. I wasn’t going to make a big scene, but I was starting to feel like I had been played, and I needed to leave quickly before I said something to this woman that I might regret.
“Suzanne, I should be at work. I’ve really got to go back to the office.”
I stood up and practically ran to the door without looking back to see her reaction. I was so single-minded I didn’t see the nurse returning to the room with a large vase of flowers in her hands. I almost ran right into her, but instead moved to my right to let her pass with a whispered “excuse me.” As I stepped into the hallway, I could hear the nurse’s voice in the distance behind me.
“Miss Parker, I found a vase to put your pretty flowers in from your husband. I’ll put them on the windowsill right next to your cards so you can see them.”
O
Puffin’s owner, Penelope Bunch, said directly to the camera. “And then I heard a screech. Not his normal screech, but a high-pitched screech. Almost human-like. And that’s when I knew something was really wrong. Am I looking at the right place? I know you said to look at the chair to the right of the camera and pretend someone is interviewing me, but I keep looking into the camera. I can’t help it. Sorry, do we need to do that again?”
“No, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. So what happened next?” Buster’s disembodied voice came from somewhere off-camera.
I could tell by his lilt that he was annoyed with the woman and simply wanted her to get on with her story.
As I stared at my computer screen, headphones blocking out the newsroom noise, and logged the interview for the bird-saves-baby-from-choking story, all I could think about was Suzanne. What was really going on with her? I had googled her name and discovered she was a public relations executive who specialized in crisis management. She had a local office, but according to her website, her clients—some major corporations and high-profile people—were from all over the country.
She was heralded for rehabilitating the image of a bigtime CEO in California who got his secretary pregnant and then fired her after she refused to have an abortion. Suzanne framed it that the young woman had trapped him and was just after his money. She said he’d never asked the woman to have an abortion because he was Catholic and wouldn’t have done that. Suzanne said the secretary made up this allega
tion after he refused to give in to her blackmail demands.
Suzanne also represented a company that had discovered e coli at forty-five of its restaurants across the country, which ultimately led to all 675 of its franchisees dumping a week’s supply of meat. The company lost millions of dollars, but with Suzanne’s help, they saved their business from going under by being transparent about the problem and promising the highest possible standards of food safety going forward. She said it would be like an airport after a terrorist attack—the safest place in the world to eat.
I was sincerely impressed with her credentials and couldn’t imagine how her husband had turned this pit bull of a businesswoman into the scared patient who cowered in a stairwell at Chester Hospital. But I also knew that education and wealth didn’t insulate you from domestic violence.
I also checked her Facebook page, but her account was set to private. Only one stunning profile picture appeared on the screen. It was hard to believe it was the same woman. Her perfectly coiffed, long dark hair framed her heart-shaped face accented by rosebud-shaped red lips, long black lashes, and penetrating brown eyes. She was giving the camera a coy sideways glance.
When I googled Dr. Tanner Parker, I found nothing. The only thing I could imagine was that he may have a different last name than his wife, which wouldn’t be unusual for a professional couple. I tried searching doctors by first name only, but was rewarded with hundreds of random results that led me nowhere. I made a mental note to ask Suzanne what his last name was, and then I chastised myself. I had already decided not to go any deeper into Suzanne’s drama, but I couldn’t help myself. I wore the memory of my mother’s death like a heavy coat that sometimes suffocated my better judgment.
“How does it look?” a voice said, from behind me. I could see Buster looming at the corner of my desk, in my peripheral vision.
