A Dark Horse

by Cooper, Blayne

  Adele cursed. Talking to the paramedics had caused her to lose count of the chest compressions. “Blunt force trauma to the head. Most of the blood on her is mine.”

  “Police?” The paramedic looked around as he crouched down at Natalie’s head.

  “NOPD will be behind you.” If they ever show up, she thought bitterly.

  An Ambu bag quickly took over for Adele’s mouth while the second paramedic pressed a stethoscope to Natalie’s still chest.

  “How long?” The man at Natalie’s head squeezed the Ambu bag in a steady rhythm.

  Gasping for breath and sweating from exertion, Adele moved aside so the men had room to work. She stared at Natalie’s pale, bloody face in shock.

  “Ma’am, how long?”

  “No pulse.” The second paramedic was already reaching for the defibrillator.

  Adele’s head snapped up sideways and she shook the sweat out of her eyes. “She was only down for one or two minutes before I called it in and started CPR.” She glanced at her watch. To her astonishment, it hadn’t taken the paramedics a million years to arrive, only ten minutes or so. A remarkably good response time. But she was well aware that in situations like this every second mattered.

  “Ma’am? Your wrist? It’s bleeding bad—”

  “It’s fine.” Adele clutched it against her stomach, feeling the blood pulse sluggishly between her fingers. “Just take care of her.”

  “But—”

  “Just do it!”

  Scissors cut through the top of Natalie’s dress and bra like butter and paddles were pressed against her chest. “Clear!”

  Tears spilled down Adele’s cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and began a series of prayers she hadn’t said since childhood as hundreds of volts of electricity sought to do what she could not—bring Natalie back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Detective?” A salt-and-pepper-haired nurse with a sharp chin and penetrating black eyes spoke softly. “We need to get that stitched up and find you a new shirt. You’re scaring the other people in the waiting room.”

  Adele shifted in the hard plastic chair in the emergency waiting room of Tulane University Hospital. Crushed by the weight of the day, she looked down at her blood-soaked shirt and found it impossible to care.

  What she did care about were the people. Even though it was well past midnight, the waiting room was packed with visitors and a few non-serious patients in various stages of waiting, anxiety and grief. It was noisy and smelled of cloying sweat and harsh cleaning supplies. A nearby toddler, whose sleep schedule had undoubtedly been thrown off by some family tragedy, hadn’t stopped wailing for the past twenty minutes.

  Everyone and everything was too close and she felt nauseous.

  “It’s Adele, and I appreciate your offer. Again. But I’m not the scariest looking person in this waiting room tonight. You can try to bully me all you want, but I’m not leaving this spot until I get an update on Natalie.”

  The paramedics had been able to restart Natalie’s heart on the floor of the inn at about the same time police had poured into the room, whispering about Hurricane Lejeune who did more damage to the NOPD than Katrina. Then everything was chaos.

  After refusing to take no for an answer, and a big dose of pleading, the paramedics allowed Adele in the back of the ambulance for the longest ride of her life. Natalie had coded while en route, and there was nothing more Adele could do than sit back and watch in horror as it took three attempts with the defibrillator to shock Natalie’s heart back to life.

  The police, thankfully two young officers she’d never met, had already come and gone from the hospital. Their questioning had been exceptionally quick and easy. Adele hadn’t seen or heard anything at the inn other than Natalie’s heartbreaking screams, so she had almost nothing to say. She’d provided a list of valuables, and directed the cops to Georgia for more detailed information. For now, it appeared the NOPD was treating this as a routine break-in that had been interrupted and turned violent.

  That was nearly an hour ago. Despite repeated requests, Adele hadn’t heard a single word on Natalie’s condition. It was taking too long. Dread brewed hot and thick in her belly, and when her mind’s eye flashed to a scene of Natalie on the floor with the lamp cord wrapped around her neck, Adele stood on unsteady legs and lurched to the nearest trash can where she heaved up her stomach contents. Sour wine and her dinner burned her throat and sinuses and splashed against the bottom of the metal can.

  The nurse glowered at Adele, who was so wrapped up in her own misery that she’d forgotten the older woman was even there. She limped back to her seat and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “The ER doctor will find you to give an update on your friend while we attend to your wrist. You won’t miss anything.”

  “My cousin, not friend,” Adele insisted for the umpteenth time. She didn’t want to be kept away because she wasn’t family. She would have said sister, but after years of hospital visits while working for the NOPD, she knew she was recognized by too many of the hospital staff to pull it off.

  “And my cut isn’t that bad.” In truth, Adele was feeling woozy from blood loss and anxiety. It was only mind-numbing terror for Natalie and a healthy dose of stubbornness that kept her upright at the moment.

  “Then why are you bleeding all over my floor?”

  Adele glanced down to the small puddle at the base of her chair and the sluggish dripping that was making it grow a tiny bit larger with each passing minute. “Oh.”

  An enormous male nurse with a Fu Manchu mustache appeared at her side with a wheelchair. “Best get in before the mess gets any bigger or you pass out.”

  “Hmm…” the female nurse looked Adele over with a critical eye. “She’s a little shocky.”

  “I can hear you talking about me,” Adele groused, but decided that she couldn’t sit out here with all these people for another second anyway. With a sigh and slightly trembling hands, she tried to push herself to her feet, and then promptly keeled over.

  The next time Adele opened her eyes she was lying on an examination table and felt the sharp prick of a needle at the damaged skin near her wrist. Momentarily disoriented, the entire evening rushed back to her in an avalanche of emotion.

  “Natalie!” She tried to sit up, but Nurse Fu Manchu held her down with enormous, but gentle hands. With the second prick of the needle an IV was inserted into her free hand. “Hey!”

  “Relax, sister, you fainted into my arms,” he said calmly, sufficiently distracting Adele long enough for the young doctor by her bedside to pick up a pair of tweezers from his instrument tray and remove a surprisingly large sliver of wood from the flesh near the base of her thumb. Nurse Fu Manchu winked. “I felt a little bit like Prince Charming.”

  Adele gave him a small smile, profoundly grateful for his reassuring grin when she felt on the verge of falling apart.

  The doctor, a resident most likely, who looked like he hadn’t slept or shaved in an entire month, began examining her wrist. “No tendon or nerve damage,” he murmured, then began stitching. “For a cut this deep, you were extremely lucky.”

  Adele didn’t feel lucky. She felt alone. Desperately alone. What if Natalie felt the same all while she was sitting here doing nothing? “What’s taking so long? Why won’t anyone tell me anything?”

  The doctor looked more than a little insulted. “I want the stitches to be small to reduce scarring. That takes time. But I’d be happy to explain your wound aftercare.”

  Was he kidding? She wanted to burst into tears, but instead she bit her tongue and tried to imagine that every passing second didn’t feel like eons.

  “Okay. All finished with the stitches.” The doctor secured the gauze bandage firmly in place. Then his meticulous gaze found the bloodstains on the collar of her blouse. “Now let’s look at the back of your head and you can tell me about anyplace else you were injured.”

  Finally, when he was finished, he snapped off his gloves and tossed them into a n
earby trash can. “Do you need something for pain?”

  Adele’s shoulder and hip had grown impossibly stiff and were throbbing in time with her heartbeat. She’d pushed her bad leg beyond all endurance, and even with her cane, she doubted she’d be able to stand in the morning. “No. Can you check on Natalie Abbott, please? We came in at the same time.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  Sixteen stitches near her wrist and three in the back of her head, one diagnosis of a mild concussion, and an IV bag full of replacement fluids later, and her doctor and Nurse Fu Manchu left the room, only to be replaced by a second doctor.

  This older man wore dorky glasses and had a grim countenance. He was otherwise so nondescript looking, that Adele found herself forgetting his face while she was still looking at it.

  “Ms. Lejeune…” He glanced down at the chart in his hands, and then regarded Adele over the thick black frames of his Buddy Holly glasses. “Ms. Abbott’s family?”

  Adele’s heart nearly stopped. “Y—yes.”

  “I’m Doctor Garner. I apologize for taking so long with an update. We’ve been very busy.”

  Adele pushed her next words through a throat that was closing fast. “How—how is she?” Say anything but dead. Anything…

  “She’s stable.”

  Adele blew out a loud shaky breath and roughly scrubbed her face with one hand, silently thanking gods from religions that hadn’t even been invented yet.

  “Ms. Lejeune, you look extremely pale.” The doctor frowned. “I’d like to check your blood pressure. And—”

  “Where’s Natalie right now? She was attacked tonight and can’t be left alone.” Adele began to panic and started to unhook her IV, but the doctor stopped her by covering her hand with his own.

  “Whoa! Hang on.”

  “You don’t understand!” she growled and wrenched his hand away. “It’s not safe for her to be alone. I—”

  “We’re moving her to the Intensive Care Unit in just a few minutes. Trust me, she’s not alone.” He took out a penlight from his breast pocket and shined it into Adele’s eyes.

  Annoyed, she jerked her head away.

  He sighed. “Our ICU ward is secure. Only family members and medical staff are allowed inside. Visitors have to be cleared and then buzzed in.”

  Feeling only slightly better, Adele nodded quickly. She should have remembered that from the last time she was here. Then again, her time in the ICU as a patient was nothing but a jumbled blur.

  The doctor pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. “I understand that Ms. Abbott was the victim of an assault tonight. She presents just about every textbook sign of strangulation. This isn’t my first rodeo, Ms. Lejeune. Her clothing has been bagged for the police and we’ve collected as much physical evidence as is possible at this time. Her chart has been tagged to notify.”

  He didn’t bother explaining further, but Adele knew that meant the police would be contacted when Natalie’s doctors believed she was even remotely fit enough to talk to them.

  “I don’t know what exactly happened tonight other than Ms. Abbott was strangled and badly beaten.” He paused and the skin around his eyes briefly tightened. “But we haven’t done a rape kit yet.”

  Adele blinked slowly, the words not quite registering.

  “We need consent for that.”

  “Rape kit?” The earth tilted on its side. “I d-don’t. But-but she hasn’t…wasn’t…” Hot tears leapt into Adele’s eyes so quickly she couldn’t blink them back. She understood with revolting clarity that while Natalie wasn’t in the room long with her attacker, it only took a few seconds to be violated. Jesus.

  “Ms. Lejeune?”

  “Shit!” Adele hissed, her blood turning to ice. “I never even con-considered…” Rage flared inside her once more, its embers being stoked to life by images of what might have happened behind that heavy door that made Adele ill.

  Fire and ice.

  “We don’t have to do it now,” Dr. Garner said kindly. “And maybe not at all, depending on what she says. So long as the evidence is preserved, when she wakes—”

  “She’s still unconscious?”

  “She was awake earlier, but was so agitated we couldn’t adequately test her neurological function. We had to restrain her.”

  Adele’s eyes flashed dangerously. She opened her mouth to speak, but the doctor beat her to the punch.

  “It’s only temporary, I assure you. I’ve given her some nonnarcotic medication to help calm her down and for the pain. When I left her she had just fallen asleep.”

  He quickly referred to the chart in his hand again, flipping through the pages too quickly to really be reading. “The good news is she doesn’t have any rib fractures or breaks. Those commonly occur during CPR. There also doesn’t appear to be any lasting damage to her esophagus or jaw. We’ll know more about the larynx when she wakes. She was negative for facial fractures. She’s badly bruised and swollen, has sustained numerous lacerations to her face, arms and hands, but none of them so severe as to require stitches.”

  As the tears pooled in Adele’s eyes, he softened his voice. “Those things will all heal.” He smiled sadly. “She put up a hell of a fight.”

  “And the bad news? You said good news, that means there’s bad.”

  The creases in his forehead deepened and he drew in a deep breath.

  Adele’s vision swam.

  “Ms. Abbott has a grade three concussion and a skull fracture of the parietal bone. The bones are just barely displaced, which normally means they’d heal without surgical intervention. Despite that, her intracranial pressure is a bit higher than normal, and holding steady. If it doesn’t drop on its own by morning, we’ll likely put her into a medically induced coma. That will help with sensitivity to swelling and pressure. If that doesn’t work, we’ll be forced to operate.”

  Her brain. Fuck. “And in the meantime?”

  “We monitor her closely and watch for complications.” Asking for consent by his ultra-slow movements, he laid a comforting hand on Adele’s shoulder.

  She bit back a painful groan. Her shoulder was on fire.

  “Her body needs to heal, and if we can get the intracranial pressure down, chances are she’ll be just fine.”

  If? Chances are? Adele couldn’t stand even the thought that there was anything less than a one hundred percent chance that Natalie would be fine. She still had trouble believing this was happening at all. Adele gulped back the acrid bile that had risen in her throat. “Can I see her? Please.”

  The doctor seemed to consider the situation for a moment, then nodded. “ICU will need a few minutes to get her settled. In the meantime, I’ll check with your doctor, and then I’ll have a nurse take you up.” He looked over Adele carefully and added, “In a wheelchair.”

  Adele merely nodded, unwilling to do a single thing that might hurt her chances of getting into Natalie’s room. As the doctor excused himself, her head spun with thoughts of everything she needed to do. Most of all, she needed to plant herself at Natalie’s bedside, and grasp her soft hand and pepper it with kisses. Adele needed to see for herself that Natalie was alive and fighting to get better. And if for some reason she couldn’t fight for herself, then Adele would find a way to fight for her.

  Tiredly, Adele closed her eyes, and her face went hard. And, oh yeah, she really needed her gun.

  * * *

  One of the ICU nurses stole quietly into Natalie’s darkened room. There was the constant flow of nurses and the humming and beeping of machines, but the ICU felt controlled and peaceful, the opposite of the emergency room.

  Adele, who had pulled her chair as close to Natalie’s bed as possible, immediately lifted her head from the mattress to watch the nurse as she worked. She refused to let go of Natalie’s hand.

  It was still a few hours to sunrise, but it felt like the night would never end.

  The young nurse spoke without looking up from her task. “Your sister just arrived.
She’s waiting for you outside ICU.”

  Upper lip between her teeth, Adele glanced between Natalie, who was calmly sleeping, and the door.

  “Go,” the nurse urged kindly, her voice barely above a whisper. “I need to change her IV fluids, record her stats, and wake her for her next neuro check. This would be a good time for you to go talk to your sister and maybe get a cup of coffee, if you’re not going to try to sleep.”

  Adele smiled politely and allowed the nurse to try to convince her, but knew she wouldn’t leave the area.

  “You could even get cleaned up a bit. We’ll be drawing more blood soon and then taking Natalie down for another CT scan. We’ll buzz both you and your sister back in when you’re ready.”

  Still uncertain, Adele nodded. She knew Amelia would be frantic to see her and she was desperate for her own phone. “You’ll come get me if anything—”

  “Of course.”

  Adele liked this nurse. She was professional, concise and took extra care to speak to Natalie as she worked.

  Adele rose with a moan she couldn’t have held in if she’d tried, and dropped a tender, ghost of a kiss on Natalie’s swollen cheek. She tried not to let her gaze linger on her friend’s spectacular black eye. The longer she sat in Natalie’s room, the more guilt crept in. If she’d only…

  “Your sister?” the nurse reminded her as she wrote down Natalie’s vitals.

  Adele nodded and squinted at the harsh fluorescent light as she exited Natalie’s room and entered the ICU ward at a snail’s pace to meet a very worried-looking Amelia in the deserted hallway.

  “Oh, my God!” Amelia’s eyes widened as Adele limped closer. “Jesus, you’re covered in blood! You didn’t say you were hurt!” Panicky, she dropped the duffel bag she’d brought that had Adele’s cane sticking out the top, and ran her hands lightly down her sister’s arms, assessing her more intently than even her doctor had.

  “I’m just bruised, and I cut myself breaking in the stupid door,” Adele muttered unhappily. “It looks worse than it is. Natalie’s the one…” Her words trailed off to nothing.