Union Jacked

by Diane Vallere

  The waiting room was free of hostile cops, which made the check-in process go more smoothly. I took the elevator to the third floor. Geri Loncar stood outside her dad's room. She wore a white hoodie with black yoga pants, neon-orange sneakers, and a baby on her hip. The baby's tiny hand was tangled in Geri's ponytail.

  When I reached Ginger, she threw her free arm around me and squished me in a one-armed hug. My arms were pressed tightly against my sides, and I was unable to reciprocate even if I wanted. The baby reached out and fisted a lock of my hair, and when Ginger released me from her hug, I kept my head cocked to the side to accommodate the baby.

  Ginger reached up and untangled the baby hand from my hair. I stepped back and smiled. “I can’t believe you’re here,” Ginger said. (The baby said “ya ya ya.”)

  “How is he?”

  Ginger shook her head, and her ponytail swung from side to side. “He’s unresponsive. The doctors say he’s going to wake up, but he hasn’t. I spent all night researching ways to trigger a wake-up, but nothing worked.”

  “Did you try telling him stories about your childhood? Wake-up.com says that works.”

  “I admitted to smoking in his police car and blaming it on his partner. Nothing.”

  “Shock-awake.org says telling a parent about how you lost your virginity could do it.”

  “I want him to wake up, not have a heart attack.”

  “Did you sing to him?” I asked. She looked at me blankly. “Comawakeupcall.com has a list of songs that triggered responses in test subjects.” I tried to remember the list. “They’re partial to Heavy Metal bands.”

  “Dad does love Spinal Tap,” she said. “It’s his favorite movie. You should do something with that for the party.”

  “The party,” I said slowly. We stood there in the hallway outside Loncar’s room, and the energy shifted from a brainstorming session to a vacuum. “There’s not going to be a party. The financial backers who bought Tradava pulled out of the deal. The store is moving forward with bankruptcy filings, returning the unopened merchandise, and canceling everything on order. The HR department is handing out unemployment papers. It’s over. I’m so sorry.”

  Ginger nodded as if she understood, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. Her dad was lying in a coma in a hospital bed five feet away from us, but she, like me, appeared to focus on diversion to function. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think he wanted the party to begin with.”

  “What did you have planned?”

  “Tea and biscuits,” I said without enthusiasm.

  “That’s not really his thing.”

  “I know. The party I wanted to plan had Twiglets and a miniature Stonehenge and an all-girl punk rock cover band called The Ex-Pistols.”

  Her eyes lit up. She shifted her baby from one hip to the other. “You should tell him about that. Right now. Pretend that’s the party he’s going to miss if he doesn’t wake up.”

  “Here?” She nodded. “Now?”

  She nodded again. “Go inside and talk to him. I have to find out what happened to the guard Captain Valderama promised us.”

  It was then that I noticed the plastic chair in the hallway. Captain Valderama wouldn’t have assigned a guard unless he thought the threat against Loncar might still be realized. The empty chair indicated he might be right.

  17

  I Lost It

  Geri went to the nurses’ station, and I entered Loncar’s room. Machines beeped at regular intervals, and a screen displayed the detective’s vital signs. A saline bag hung from a metal rack next to the bed and the window at the far side of the room. I looked at the dry erase board like the ones I’d mounted in my kitchen that listed the doctor on call, the cork board filled with colorful notices about the proper way to lift a box, and the extra blanket that remained folded on the chair next to the side of the bed. I looked at everything in the room except Detective Loncar because I was afraid I’d lose it when I did.

  In addition to the bed, there were two chairs and a pull-out sofa. Hospital sheets were folded and resting on the end cushion, topped with the world’s tiniest pillow. I set my handbag down. I moved a chair from the wall to the side of the bed and sat down and looked at Loncar’s face.

  I lost it.

  “You told me not to get involved,” I said between erratic breaths. “You told me to stay out of it and that you knew who did this, but nobody is acting like there’s an open investigation. Nobody’s treating this like you would treat it. They’re shooting darts and drinking apple juice and pretending everything is normal while you’re lying here not doing anything. You have to wake up. You have to! Ribbon needs you. I need you. I’m pregnant! I think. And I don’t know what to do!”

  There was the tiniest chance that even if Loncar chose that moment to wake up, he wouldn’t know what to do about that last part either. Perhaps when I finished here, I should make a side trip to Dr. Emma and inquire about a checklist.

  But Loncar didn’t choose that moment to wake up. He didn’t wake while I told him about his party (I even threw in some references to Geri Halliwell to test him).

  He didn’t wake while I told him about Tradava and the memory of him tracking me down in the middle of the lingerie department on my first day.

  He didn’t wake when I told him John Jones had told me the story of how he saved the day by looking out for his friend and see? We’re not all that different.

  I was halfway through an inspired version of The Smiths’ eighties classic retitled, “Detective in a Coma,” when a young woman entered the room. She wore a black puffer vest over a white turtleneck and bright-blue scrubs and neon-yellow running sneakers. A backpack was strapped to her torso with a flat crossbody strap. Plastic animals hung from a silver loop on the back of the bag, and as she moved, they made little clicking noises against each other. She wore her hair in a low ponytail that hung down to her shoulder blades. The sum of the parts made her look like a Pokémon superhero.

  “Knock, knock,” she said.

  “Oh. Hi. Sorry. I was just singing.”

  She nodded. “You’ve been Googling. We get a lot of that.” She went to the machines and recorded a few readings onto an iPad and then checked the levels of the fluids dripping into Loncar’s arm. “Never heard anybody go with The Smiths before,” she added. There was neither judgment nor approval in her voice. To her, I was just another desperate visitor to the coma ward. “Is he your dad?”

  “No, he’s my detective.”

  “You have your own detective? Oh, you mean you’re on the police force. Are you his boss?”

  I glanced at Loncar’s face. If something we said was going to cause a reaction, that might have done it.

  Nothing.

  “I’m a local resident. I’ve—we’ve—collaborated in the past.” I snuck another peek at his face.

  Still nothing.

  “That’s cool. Is that why you’re here? You two were working on a case when he was shot?” She detached a plastic fluid pouch from the dangling stand and replaced it with a new one, and then moved the tube from the old one to the new as well. I watched it, mesmerized, as the fluid dripped into the tube.

  “What is that?” I said, distracted from the conversation.

  “Painkiller. He’s not able to tell us what his pain level is, but with a gunshot wound, there’s a good chance he’s suffering. This is pretty mild. We don’t want to risk overmedication, but if he were to wake up suddenly, we also don’t want his awareness of his pain to send him back into a coma.”

  “Can that happen?”

  “At this point, anything can happen. His vitals are stable, but it would be a whole lot better if he woke up. That’s where we’re at now. We want to see progress.”

  “What can I do?” I asked.

  “You can talk to him. Tell him about the case. If he hears you, he might know something that can help you, and the desire to share that information might be what he needs.” She typed a few more things into her iPad, reached over her shou
lders, and in an impressive display of flexibility slipped the tablet into a pocket on her backpack.

  “Do you do yoga?”

  She smiled. “Talk to him. Tell him what’s on your mind. Give him a reason to wake up and tell you the one thing his subconscious feels like it has to say.” She got to the doorway and turned back. “Maybe lay off songs about comas.”

  After she left, I considered her idea. Telling Loncar my deepest, darkest fears about my personal life hadn’t created much of a reaction. And while he did know more about me than you’d expect from your normal nosy resident/homicide detective relationship, it seemed nothing I’d shared had made a difference.

  I stood up and closed the door, and then took the seat by his side of the bed again. “You know this isn’t fair, right?” I said. “All this time you keep telling me to stay out of your investigations and let you do your job. But this time, you can’t do your job, and nobody else is doing it either. I mean, yes, Madden came out to the crime scene and took a bunch of statements, but I tried to talk to him about the investigation, and I don’t think he’s doing all that much to find the shooter. He’s more interested in getting permission to date my friend Cat.” I watched Loncar’s face for a response.

  Nothing.

  I stood up and walked to the window. “Your daughter requested an officer be stationed outside your room, but when I got here, the chair was vacant. What if you were right and the shooter was after you? What if somebody used the whole strike situation to make you a target and hoped they could get lost in the shuffle?”

  I picked up a plastic cup of now-melted ice that the previous nurse had left on the TV tray, and I stared into the water. I could say anything I wanted, but the truth was I couldn’t figure this out. There were too many unknown variables and not enough leads.

  There were no trees to shake, no doors to knock, no rocks to flip. Not by me, a former fashion buyer turned advertising executive turned buyer of special assortments turned party planner turned eleven-days-late new wife of a shoe-slash-sneaker designer. I needed help. I needed Loncar’s help.

  “I need your help,” I said out loud. “Give me something. Anything. I can’t do this alone.” Nothing.

  And then . . . was that . . . did his eyelids move?

  Did his eyelids just open?

  They did! And he blinked! His mouth opened, and his lips moved. And then he spoke.

  “I thought I told you to leave this alone.”

  18

  Set-up

  I grabbed Loncar’s hand. It was cold and lifeless and dry. His arm flinched, but he didn’t pull away. “I need to get the doctor. Are you in pain? She said you might wake up in pain. Do you know who you are? Do you know who I am? I’m Samantha. Kidd. We’re—friends. Yes, that’s why I’m here. I’m a close friend of yours. Someone you like to talk to about your cases.” Should I bring up the informant thing? No. Not the right time. “Do. You. Remember. Me?” I asked slowly.

  He lay still in the bed but his eyes shifted from the ceiling to mine, and I wouldn’t swear on it, but it seemed that he did know who I was and that I maybe should have been less liberal with the friend thing. “I need to tell the staff you’re awake.” I let go of his hand, but he grabbed my wrist before I got out of reach and held it firmly enough that I couldn’t get away.

  “The strike was a set-up,” he said in a barely audible voice. He closed his eyes, and that was it.

  “No! You can’t go back into a coma! Help!” I cried out. I pressed all the buttons on the cord that lay next to his bed. A green light lit on the wall behind him, and seconds later the door opened, and a team of medical staff came in.

  I was escorted out.

  It’s one thing to recognize your power and take control, but it’s an entirely different level of frustration when you find yourself in a situation you can’t change. (Get PoPT! is surprisingly mute on that.) Loncar was the one person I needed to talk to and I couldn’t. I used every ounce of positive thinking that I could conjure to believe he would wake up. And he had—just not long enough for me to tell him what I knew and find out what I should do.

  I was looking at this whole thing all wrong. It was selfish for me to think Loncar would wake up and give me direction. He never told me what to do in the past, so why would he start now? And if I’d learned anything from Get PoPT!, it was that we need to never give up on what it is we want to accomplish. We need to believe, then achieve.

  Actually, that wasn’t half bad. Maybe when this was all over, I’d reach out to the Get PoPT! team and see if they wanted to use it.

  Focus, Samantha.

  I went to the waiting room and spotted a cluster of cops by the vending machines. I stayed on the elevator and rode back up, this time to the fourth floor, and retraced my steps from the other night to the safe space of Dr. Emma’s office.

  In the brightly lit hallway, I noticed things I hadn’t the last time I was here. Unlike the linoleum floor of Loncar’s part of the hospital, this floor was freshly carpeted. A deep claret shade with small gray and white ziggles through it gave off a playful vibe. Doors along the hallway were painted red. Brushed chrome doorknobs, nameplates, and chair rail coordinated the design effect. ICU was sterile, but up here, I felt like I’d entered a medical building for an upscale clientele.

  I used the ladies’ room and then entered Dr. Emma’s office. During business hours, the waiting room was busy with visibly pregnant women and toddlers (and expertly painted walls, I might add. Dr. Emma had settled on a soft shade of powder blue. If OBGYN didn’t work out for her, she might consider a sideline in decorating). I went to the window and waited for the receptionist to finish her phone call.

  “Hi. I’m Samantha Kidd. I don’t have an appointment, but I was wondering if I could see the doctor.”

  The woman glanced at my tummy and then back at my face. “Is this an emergency?”

  “No, but there have been some changes since the last time I saw her, and I thought it best to keep her filled in. This is all new to me, and—”

  “Of course. I understand completely. Kidd, you said? Samantha? The doctor is behind schedule. Have a seat. I’ll see if I can fit you in.”

  I sat as far away from the kids as I could and pulled out my phone. It was five thirty. Nick’s flight was due to land any minute. I switched on the ringer and stared at the screen. My phone rang. The receptionist shook her head and pointed to the door. I stood and ran out and answered and dropped the phone on the hallway carpet in the process.

  “Nick! I’m here! Hold on. They kicked me out of the doctor’s office.” I picked up the phone and pressed it against my head. “Hi,” I said. “I’m here. And you’re here. You’re here? In Philadelphia? Not China?”

  “Kidd, why are you back at the doctor’s office? Has something happened?”

  I’d waited too long to confide in Nick, and now there was too much to tell him over the phone. I took a couple of breaths for good measure but kept the Lamaze breathing out of it. The door to the doctor’s office opened, and a woman with two kids exited. I peeked inside and saw empty chairs.

  And while I listened to Nick’s voice, I knew that I was going to be okay. “Hurry home. I missed you. I’ll tell you everything when we’re together.”

  We said goodbye. I reentered the doctor’s office. It was approaching six, and I doubted they were going to extend their hours just for me. I waited at the front desk while the receptionist finished with a phone call. Her handbag, a black suede bucket bulging with personal items, sat on the desk on top of a blue scarf with sequins sewn into the crochet.

  “Hi,” I said. “I know you’re going home soon, so maybe it would be better for me to see Dr. Emma another time?”

  “Emma?” repeated the receptionist. “Who’s Emma?”

  This time I felt my face contort into confusion to match hers. “Emma. The doctor who works in this office. I talked to her the other night.”

  “We don’t keep night hours.”

  The receptionist slid the
glass partition closed and made a phone call. The glass muffled her voice, but I could still understand her. “This is Riley from Dr. Oplinger’s office. There’s a patient in our waiting room who said she was here last night. Yes, that’s right. Yes, I’ll tell her.” She hung up and slid the glass open. “Have a seat, Ms. Kidd. Someone will be with you in a moment.”

  “But you said Dr. Emma didn’t work here,” I said.

  “I said we don’t keep night hours,” she said. “Which means you’re lying. And I’m sure building security would be interested in finding out why.”

  19

  Name Dropping

  I was starting to think the Ribbon hospital was cursed. “Excuse me one moment,” I said. I pulled out my phone and called Nick back. “Nick? Remember the other night when I called you from the doctor’s office? That really happened, right?”

  “It was morning for me, but yes. Why?”

  “I’m in the very same office, and they’re telling me there’s no Dr. Emma. You spoke to her too, remember? What did she tell you?”

  “Kidd, let me talk to the receptionist.”

  I held out my phone. “My husband would like to talk to you.”

  Riley took the phone. “Hello? Oh, hello, Mr. Taylor.” Her cheeks flushed, and she snuck a look back at me. “I didn’t realize. No—oh. Yes. Oh, okay, that does make sense. But then—oh. Okay. Yes, that makes sense too. Okay. Thank you.” She handed the phone back to me. “I didn’t realize you were married to Nick Taylor,” she said in awe.

  “Does that matter?”

  “Nick Taylor the shoe designer, right? Footwear News’s most eligible bachelor?”