Sing It to Her Bones

by Marcia Talley

  I took the clipboard, mouthed a thank-you, and eased myself into the chair that had been well warmed by the mother-to-be.

  Numbers! So many numbers. And boxes to check (both sides). Sometimes I could almost forget that I’d had cancer until something like this cropped up as a grim reminder. I hurriedly filled out the medical questionnaire and turned to more interesting matters, true facts that can only be gleaned by reading old issues of People and Time. I didn’t know that Loretta Young had had a daughter out of wedlock with Clark Gable! Amazing! Doctor’s offices can be such educational experiences, like standing in long checkout lines at the grocery, catching up with the tabloids. I was in the middle of an article about Fergie, Duchess of York, when the phone rang. Nobody picked up. It rang and rang and rang, insistent and shrill. I couldn’t stand it. I crossed to the counter, reached out, snatched the receiver off the hook, and said, “Doctor’s office.” Someone wanted to cancel an appointment. I wrote the information down on a slip of paper torn off a prescription pad, then returned to my magazine.

  The blond kid was eventually dragged away from his artwork by a father with nerves of steel and the patience of Job, and the room gradually emptied until it was just me and the old fellow sitting next to me. By now his chin had dropped to his chest, and he was snoring loudly.

  Dr. Chase appeared and waved a man dressed in overalls, like a farmer, out the door. “Sir?” I jiggled the old guy’s arm. “Sir. I believe you’re next.”

  He awoke with a snort. “Hunh?” When he finally remembered where he was, he stood, patted both breast pockets of his tweed jacket and produced a brown plastic prescription vial. “Just need a refill.” He thrust the empty container in the doctor’s direction. “For this.”

  Dr. Chase smiled. “I am sorry you had to wait so long, Mr. Finch, particularly when it wasn’t necessary. It says here on the label ‘two refills.’ Just take this bottle directly to the pharmacy next time. No need to wait here.”

  “Oh.” Finch turned the bottle in his hands and stared at the label, looking forlorn. “Lucy would have known that.”

  “I’m sure she would have. I’ll call the pharmacy for you, shall I? Then it’ll be ready when you get there.” Dr. Chase escorted Finch to the door with one arm encircling his shoulders. When the old man was safely away, Dr. Chase flipped a sign on the door from Open to Closed, pushed it shut, and leaned back against it with a sigh. “Whew! What a madhouse! My nurse is down with the flu, and my office manager was called out of town early yesterday on a family emergency. Phone’s been ringing off the hook.”

  “Yes, I know. I took a call for you. A Mrs. Allen apologizes profusely and says she won’t be able to keep her appointment at ten tomorrow.” I handed him the scrap of paper along with the clipboard and the questionnaire I had filled out.

  He studied the note first, then tucked it into the pocket of his lab coat. “Well, thank heaven for small favors.” He scanned my questionnaire. “Oh, right. You’re Paul Ives’s wife.” He appraised me over the top of his glasses, and I hoped he’d been too busy to watch the local news this week.

  I shifted my weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other and waited to be embarrassed, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, his eyes moved rapidly down the page. I could tell by the raised eyebrow when he got to the mastectomy part.

  “You’ve had a rough week, haven’t you?” he said at last. “First finding the body. Now, what’s this about falling off a boat?”

  “Well, I didn’t fall off … not exactly. I just sort of hung off. Pulled the muscles here.” I touched my left side. “It’s awfully painful.” I rotated my shoulder.

  “Can you raise your arm?” He demonstrated by extending his arms to his sides like a football referee calling off sides.

  I held my arms out from my body at a ninety-degree angle. “That’s as far as I can stretch without screaming.”

  Dr. Chase grinned. “If you can do that, I shouldn’t worry. There’s probably nothing that a day or two of taking it easy won’t cure. Wait here just a minute.”

  He disappeared down the hall and through a swinging door. He appeared again a few minutes later with a handful of colorful packets. “Here are a few painkillers. Should be enough to get you through the next couple of days.”

  I cupped my hands as a few dozen packets cascaded into them. “Cute,” I said.

  “They’re samples. Pharmaceutical companies inundate me with the stuff. Thought I’d save you a few bucks.”

  I crammed the tablets into my purse. “Thanks, Doctor. What do I owe you?”

  “Not a thing. You answered the phone. Remember?”

  I shrugged. “No problem. It was self-defense. Ringing phones make me crazy.”

  Dr. Chase began pulling down the window shades, preparing to close the office for the day. I didn’t want to leave until I had asked him about Katie, but in spite of all the time I’d just spent sitting in his waiting room thinking, I still hadn’t come up with a subtle way to phrase it.

  “Connie tells me you inherited this practice from your father,” I blathered.

  “That’s right.” He flipped a switch on the wall, and the Muzak went quiet in the middle of an orchestral version of “My Way.” “Dad and I began working together in the early nineties.”

  “When did your father pass away?”

  “Almost three years ago. He just seemed to give up after Mom died. You know, some days it’s hard for me to believe that they’re both gone.”

  Dr. Chase continued turning out lights while I tried to think how I could ask my questions without betraying Angie’s confidence. “Was the body I found—was Katie Dunbar ever a patient of your father’s?”

  Dr. Chase looked thoughtful. “Could have been, I guess. Almost everyone in town was at one time or another. I don’t exactly know. I was still in medical school when she disappeared.”

  “I was just wondering if there might have been anything in Katie’s medical file that could have shed some light on her death.”

  “I doubt it. But even if there were, it’s probably long gone. I had my father’s inactive files shredded last year.”

  “Shredded? Don’t you have to keep medical files forever, or have them microfilmed, or something?”

  “We’re only required to keep inactive files for seven years, thank God, otherwise …” He gestured toward the back of the office. “Here, let me show you something.”

  Dr. Chase passed ahead of me through a swinging door that led into a dark hall. Within a few feet the hallway widened into a rectangular room that might originally have been an elegant dining room. Now, however, the room was filled with row upon row of lateral file cabinets, four drawers high and crammed with folders, enough, I thought, for every man, woman, and child in Chesapeake County, maybe even the state of Maryland.

  Dr. Chase pointed to the desk, where a stack of charts teetered precariously in a standard wooden in box. Other files were fanned out over the desktop. “That’s just the patients I’ve seen since yesterday.” He tapped my questionnaire. “Don’t know when I’ll get your chart made up and filed if my office manager doesn’t return soon. I’m still waiting to hear back from the temporary agency. The woman they sent yesterday was a disaster.”

  I had a brainstorm. “How much were you paying for the temp?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sorry. I suppose that sounded a bit nosy, but I didn’t intend it to be. I’m in between jobs at the moment. I’d be happy to fill in, but just until Nora gets back.”

  “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “Don’t think I’m volunteering to do it for free! Just pay me whatever you were paying the temp agency.”

  Dr. Chase stared at me, disbelief written all over his face.

  “Don’t worry,” I added. “I’m experienced. Ask Connie. Until recently I managed a large office in Washington, D.C.”

  He brightened perceptibly. “That’s not what was worrying me. How about your injury?”

  “Will I h
ave to lift heavy boxes?”

  “No.”

  “How about three-hundred-pound patients?”

  “Hardly!”

  “So, just as long as I’m lifting nothing heavier than a file or a telephone, and I don’t run out of these”—I patted my purse—“I should be all right.”

  “Can’t deny that I need the help.” He waved his arm in the general direction of the reception area. “I don’t even know how to forward the darn phones to the answering service.”

  “I can do that, too.”

  Dr. Chase removed his lab coat and hung it on a nearby coat-tree. Looking vastly relieved, he pulled a linen sports jacket off a hanger and shrugged into it. “Then we have a deal. Tomorrow at seven-thirty? Your first assignment is to call the temp agency and tell them thanks but no thanks. And the phones?”

  But I had lifted the receiver and was already punching buttons. “My pleasure.”

  We left the office together a few minutes later, the pain in my arm all but forgotten. Tomorrow, I thought, there’d be no need to bother the good doctor. I would help Dr. Chase with his overdue filing and look for Katie’s file, if it still existed, myself.

  chapter

  11

  Connie stood behind her workbench and scowled at me. “You’re out of your tree, Hannah! You’re in no shape to go back to work. You should be resting.”

  I nibbled on an Oreo. “If the doctor thinks I’m okay, who am I to argue?”

  “I think his need for a temporary receptionist is clouding his medical judgment.” Connie agitated her paintbrush in a mason jar of turpentine, then wiped it on a rag she had tucked into the waistband of her jeans.

  “It’s only a few days, Connie,” I said, polishing off the cookie and helping myself to another from a cellophane package that lay open on the counter. I thought I’d use the money to pay down my VISA, which was out of control. Paul worries that I treat my credit card limit like a goal. I’d been trying to watch my spending recently, but the way I felt about my husband just then, it would serve him right if I decided to indulge in a little retail therapy and max out all my credit cards.

  I watched Connie paint a brown-gold streak on a gourd that was going to be a rooster and decided not to tell her what I had learned from Angie about Katie’s pregnancy. At least not until I had discovered whether it was true or not. In her present mood I knew Connie would accuse me of meddling, and I didn’t want her snitching to Dennis. Not just yet anyway.

  We had tuna casserole for dinner, made just the way I like it with cream of mushroom soup and green pimento olives, followed by rum raisin Häagen Dazs eaten right out of the carton, with two spoons. Between decadent mouthfuls I tried to call Paul but kept getting the blasted answering machine. Hoping he’d be better about returning my call, I left Dr. Chase’s office telephone number as well.

  The next morning I wiggled stiffly into my little black dress. Connie appeared at breakfast in a more tolerant mood, so I was able to borrow a green blazer and a Monet “water lilies” scarf from her closet. “Take care of that scarf,” she warned.

  “Is it special?” I wondered if it had been a gift from Dennis, but Connie wasn’t saying.

  “Just take care of it, that’s all.”

  Dr. Chase was already at the office when I pulled into the driveway and parked my Toyota next to his blue Crown Victoria. In the darkened reception area I could see he had left the shade raising and light turning on to me. That done, I stuck my head into the medical records room. “I’m here.”

  The doctor was bent over at the waist, flush-faced, elbow deep in a lateral file. “Thank goodness!” He straightened and poked at his glasses where they had slid halfway down his nose. He showed me where to hang my jacket and find the coffee, then gave me the twenty-five-cent tour of the office, ending up in the file room where we had started, in front of a large desk set into an alcove that used to be a fireplace. Over the mantel were mounted lighted panels where the doctor could read X rays. Farther along the wall stood a Xerox machine.

  I ran my fingertips along a row of folders, each one distinguished by a set of multicolored tabs. “What do these colors mean?”

  “We assign a color to each letter of the alphabet. Each medical chart gets marked with the colors representing the first three letters of the patient’s last name. Makes them easier to file.”

  I must have appeared more competent than I felt because the doctor abandoned me almost at once with the appointment book and a suggestion that I pull the charts for today’s patients.

  Holy cow! Searching for Katie’s chart was going to be easy. I consulted the appointment book and made a small production of pulling charts for an Abbott and a Morris before inching my way in the direction of the lateral files where I knew the D’s began: Danville, Dickson, Donner. I thumbed past chart after chart until I arrived in the vicinity of the green, yellow, and orange tabs that told me I’d reached DUN territory. I found what I was looking for between Dubonnet and Duncan. Frieda and Carl had charts, and there was one for Elizabeth Marie. I looked inside. There appeared to have been no entries in the record since 1988, when Liz left for college. As I shoved the charts back into place, I puzzled over this; if the inactive files had been shredded as Dr. Chase had told me, why had Katie’s file gone missing while Liz’s was still there?

  Dr. Chase’s first appointment was not until eight o’clock, but already the waiting room had begun to fill up and three people had autographed the sign-in sheet. He asked me to stay near the reception desk unless he called for me, so I busied myself answering the phone and making appointments for equally packed days in the future. When the phone wasn’t ringing off the hook, I filed patient charts away.

  By nine I had booked the doctor solid for the next three weeks. Five people sat in the waiting room, and he had patients in both examining rooms. Eventually Dr. Chase took a bathroom break. I used the opportunity to revisit the Dunbar files, pawing meticulously through Katie’s parents’ charts, riffling through each page just to make sure her chart wasn’t misfiled. No luck.

  At eleven, two miracles occurred: Emeline Potter didn’t show up for her vitamin B12 shot, and Scott Waldron broke his arm playing softball. At first I didn’t see the potential of these two seemingly unrelated events because I was busy hustling the whimpering ten-year-old and his father into an examining room. As I helped the little guy onto the examining table, my heart ached for him. He sat on the end of the table, back rigid, legs dangling, bravely holding his injured arm to his chest and trying desperately not to cry, but the pain must have been terrible. Tears streaked his dirt-stained face, and his lower lip trembled.

  I soaked a disposable cloth in warm water, wrung it out, and gently wiped Scott’s cheeks clean while Dr. Chase bent over the boy. He carefully cut the child’s uniform away from his damaged arm and examined the injury. Without looking at me, he said, “Hannah, grab that tray over there, will you, please?” I stood by as the doctor worked, nodding and listening to Scott’s father natter on, wishing I could stuff the roll of gauze from the tray I held down the big windbag’s throat.

  “That was some home run, wasn’t it Scotty?” He turned to me. “You should have seen the little bugger! Hit it clean over the fence.” His son, tears still glistening on his pale eyelashes, managed a weak smile.

  “How did he break the arm, Mr. Waldron?”

  “Sliding into home, Mrs. Ives. Collided with the catcher right over home plate. Damn, the kid’s good!” Scott squirmed in embarrassment.

  Mr. Waldron had launched into a play-by-play description of the ninth incredible inning and Scotty’s starring role therein when I thought I heard the phone at the reception desk ring. I looked at Dr. Chase for guidance. “Go ahead, Hannah. We can manage fine here. I’ll need to take a few X rays anyway.” I thrust the tray into the hands of the startled father in mid two-out-and-two-on-with-Boogie-at-the plate and hurried to answer the telephone.

  A pharmaceutical salesman was spending time stuck in traffic by checking in wit
h his customers via cell phone. I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, then stared, unbelieving, at an empty waiting room. I’d already searched the file room and all the cabinets in the reception area for Katie’s chart; perhaps it was time to check out the second floor. Bill had suggested that Dr. Chase used the upstairs for storage. I knew one way to find out.

  With a furtive glance over my shoulder, I eased through the swinging doors and into the entrance hall. To my right, a single flight of stairs led straight up to the second floor. Paneled in walnut, it stood in dark contrast with the unrelieved off-white of the first-floor suite. I stood with my hand on the banister, squinting up at a door barely visible in the dim light. I took the carpeted stairs two at a time and tried the door. It was locked. Damn! On the off chance that it might work, I pulled the front door key out of my pocket and slipped it into the lock. It fitted easily but wouldn’t turn. Double damn!

  I sat down on the top step to consider my options, feeling a bit like Bluebeard’s last wife. I knew the doctor kept the narcotics in a locked cabinet in his combination kitchen/laboratory, so what could be on the other side of this door that was worth so much protection? I pushed on the door in frustration, then studied the lock.

  Back in college I used to be good at picking locks. I’m not as proud of that as I am of my degree in French, but I have to admit that it’s a skill that has come in a lot handier than being able to recite the whole of Las de l’Amer Repos. At Oberlin, I’d used hairpins, but hairpins weren’t something I had sitting around in the bottom of my purse these days. I hurried downstairs to my desk and rummaged through its drawers. Maybe I could use paper clips. I pawed through an assortment of items in the pencil tray until I located what I needed. Nora Wishart’s metal nail file would also come in handy. I tucked it into my pocket.

  Amazingly, the waiting room was still empty. If people came in while I was upstairs, I knew they’d just sign in, sit and wait, but what would I do about the phones?