Issie worked the three to eleven shift that day. Aunt Aggie had given her a key to her house, knowing she was working late. She wondered if Aunt Aggie would make Nick stay there again tonight. Would he lock himself away from her again, even after he’d held her at the funeral? She couldn’t stand the thought of his avoiding her as he had last night.
So she headed to Joe’s Place, knowing that some of the medics would have congregated there by now, and that she would be welcome among them.
She walked into the haze of smoke and noise, and vaguely wished she could get them to turn off the flat, nasal Zydeco music blaring on the speakers, and instead play something soft and slow, more compatible with her mood. She found her medic friends at their usual table in the corner. Karen Insminger was there, looking tired and pensive, and Bob Sigrest looked as if he’d already had too many as he dissolved into loud laughter at something Issie couldn’t see. Frenchy and Twila were trying to quiet him.
“What’s so funny?” Issie asked as she took a chair from the next table and turned it around.
“He’s drunk, that’s what’s so funny,” Twila said. “Maybe you can shut him up. He’s making a scene.”
“I was just telling them about the fat woman I treated today for low blood sugar, who had all these rolls on her hips.”
“Rolls of fat?” Issie asked.
“No. Dinner rolls.” He burst into laughter again, and dropping his head on the table, almost toppled it.
Issie didn’t feel much like laughing, so she gave him a slight grin and rolled her eyes. She looked at the others, who had apparently already heard the story.
“What’s wrong with you?” Bob asked. “Don’t you get it?”
“I get it,” she said.
“Then why aren’t you laughing?” he demanded. “Come on, she had dinner rolls in her pockets. Dinner rolls.”
“Yeah, Bob. I said I got it.”
“Well, you don’t have to get an attitude.”
“I don’t have an attitude,” she said. “I’m just not feeling like giggling myself silly, okay?”
Frenchy frowned at her. “You okay?”
She thought of telling them about her talk with Mike and Lois, and her fears about Jake, but decided against it. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just need a drink.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to go to the bar to get it. We haven’t seen a bar maid in over an hour. I think Bob hassled her so bad she quit.”
Bob spat out laughter again, and they all joined in.
Issie got up and headed for the bar. She slipped onto a stool, and looked around at the faces of those who were here. The usual clientele filled the place, sitting in their favorite places like their names were carved on the chairs.
She ordered her usual, then looked around, wondering how wise it was for her to be out alone at night. If Cruz and his gang were watching her, waiting for another opportunity to kill her, this was probably the first place they would look. Hadn’t her tires been slashed here?
Down the bar, in his usual place on the end, sat R.J. Albright, still wearing his police uniform. He always came here when he got off duty. She wondered if she should consider him protection. Maybe she should just go on to Aunt Aggie’s now.
But she didn’t want Nick to think she was anxious to see him. No, she thought. She had to stay here until she’d had a couple of drinks to chase her depression.
She could get R.J. to escort her out when she decided to leave, and ask him to follow her to Aunt Aggie’s. If he balked, she could offer to pay him something. Men usually didn’t mind protecting damsels if there was something in it for them.
The thought that she would have to go to such lengths for protection broadsided her, and when Joe brought her her drink, she downed it quickly.
Haunted by the thought that her brother had turned on her, she took inventory of the men in her life and found that there were none. Her mind drifted back to childhood, when her appendix had ruptured and her mother had barely gotten her to the hospital in time. She had been there for over a week, but her mother had not been able to stay with her at night because she’d had to work her shift at the bar. Her father had been called about her sudden illness, but he hadn’t shown up to see if she was all right.
He had sent her a card with a kitten on it and some Hallmark verse about getting well. She still kept that card in her top dresser drawer. She wasn’t sure why.
“Another one, Joe,” she said as he passed, and he refilled her drink.
She looked down at it, struggling to hold back tears that she had no intention of crying. She had dealt with the absence of her father, she told herself. She was beyond the lonely little girl who pretended that her daddy was away on important business of national security, pining away for his little girl and carrying her picture close to his heart.
The fantasy reminded her of Brenda Hamilton, a close friend of Issie’s in the fourth grade. Brenda had almost drowned in Lake Pontchartrain as she and Issie played in a forbidden part of the lake, but it wasn’t the trauma of her near-death that ached anew now. It was the desperation of Brenda’s father as he’d tried to rescue her. He had fished her out of the water and done mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, breathing his own life into her to keep her alive until the paramedics had come.
She had gone to the hospital with them and waited in the hall as Brenda’s father paced back and forth, back and forth, weeping for his little girl one minute and working as her advocate with unconcerned nurses the next. She remembered him chewing out a doctor who seemed to have given up on her. And then he had gotten on the pay phone and called every drowning expert in the country until he’d found one with a treatment that gave him hope.
Issie had sat in a cold metal chair and watched as Brenda’s white knight fought her battles for her. Issie had never had a white knight, and from the depths of her soul, she had longed for one.
She threw back the alcohol now, and swiveled her stool to look for any white knights who might be looking for a damsel in distress. But it was just the same old faces. Bob had had enough, and Karen waved as she walked him out. One by one, she bade Twila and Frenchy goodbye, too.
She turned back to the bar and told herself that she was on her own. No white knights in her future, and certainly none in her past. The men she chose were only mirror images of the father who’d sent her a card without even a note when she’d been suffering in the hospital. They were not the knights, and she had to wield her own swords to protect herself from the pain they brought with them.
Her mind drifted to Brenda again. She had eventually come out of her coma, had gotten up and gone home. She had never quite been the same, but her father doted on her as if she was his special gift.
Issie had been so jealous of that love as a child, and had even wished that Brenda’s dad would look up one day and notice Issie sitting there, and love her like his own, and offer himself as her advocate and her protector. But when her appendix ruptured, he had not come, either.
Joe refilled her drink again, and again, and again, as she replayed the tapes in her mind. One of these days she would find some shining knight who would swagger into Joe’s Place and sweep her off her feet. He would be a man who came when she was hurt. A man who fought for her when she was threatened. A man who wept over the thought of losing her.
A picture of Nick Foster flashed through her mind, and she banished it quickly, telling herself that he wasn’t the one who could rewrite her ending. She was more attracted to the ones who were unavailable, the ones who couldn’t commit, the ones who were hard to get.
The ones like her own father.
Why was that? she asked herself. Did she really think the ending would ever change?
She finished off her fifth drink, and as Joe filled it again, she began to get tired…so very tired. She was tired of being alone, tired of fighting her own battles, tired of the reputation and the expectations and the disappointments.
She was tired of knowing that the white knight would never come.
> “Fill me up, Joe,” she slurred, banging her glass too hard in front of her. “I’ve been empty too long.”
Joe filled her glass, but she remained empty.
Chapter Thirty-Six
When Issie passed out cold at the bar, with her head down between her arms, Joe was surprised. “What she doin’?” he asked R.J. Albright. “She ain’t never done this before, passed out cold right here at the bar.”
“Did she drink more than usual?”
“Maybe,” he said, “but Issie can hold her liquor, sha.”
R.J., who spent as much time at Joe’s Place as Issie did, got up and waddled around the bar, tapped Issie on the shoulder. “Issie, wake up. Come on, darlin’, wake up.”
She didn’t budge.
“So who I’m gon’ call?” Joe asked.
R.J. shrugged. In a conspiratorial cop voice, he said, “Well, don’t say I told you, but when she wrecked last night, she called Nick Foster.”
“The preacher?”
“Yeah, and he come as fast as we did. Stayed with her the whole time.”
“Awright, I’ll try Nick.” Joe picked up the phone and called information for the preacher’s number. He got the number and it rang, then clicked as it forwarded the call.
He waited through eight rings before the old woman answered. “Hola?”
He pressed a finger to one ear. “Who’s this?”
“Aggie Gaston,” she said. “Who d’you want, sha?”
“Aunt Aggie, ya got Nick Foster there?”
“Who’s this?” she demanded.
“Joe, over to Joe’s Place. He there, or ain’t he? It’s an emergency.”
“Yeah, he’s here, awright. Just you wait.” He heard her put the phone down and shuffle off.
Nick Foster was sound asleep when Aunt Aggie woke him up knocking on his door. He groped in the darkness and only found a lamp, then felt his way to the switch and turned it on. It was one A.M.
He must have been in a dead sleep. His sleeplessness of the night before was catching up with him. “Yeah, Aunt Aggie,” he said, getting to the door. “What is it?”
“Phone for you,” the old woman said, clutching the collar of her robe to her throat. “Joe over to Joe’s Place.”
Issie, he thought. Something had happened. He hurried out and grabbed up the phone. “Hello?”
“Nick, it’s Joe. I got Issie here passed out on my bar, sha. I need somebody to come get her.”
“Passed out?” Nick asked. “What do you mean, passed out?”
“I mean she’s out cold.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like her,” Nick said. “Does it? Does she usually pass out like that? How much did she drink?”
“She been puttin’ it away tonight too fast for me to keep up.”
Nick looked at Aunt Aggie and waved that everything was all right. The old woman padded back up the stairs. “Well, okay, I’ll be right there,” he said.
He hung up and stood there for a moment trying to get his thoughts in order. He looked up and saw Aunt Aggie staring down at him over the banister. “Issie in trouble?” she asked.
He nodded. “Sounds like it. I have to go get her, but she’ll be all right.”
As he got dressed, he wondered why Joe would have called him. How had he known that he was staying here with Issie? If he knew, Cruz might know too.
He drove as fast as he could drive without breaking the law, and was in the parking lot of Joe’s Place just moments after the phone call had come. He felt ridiculous walking through the door of the notorious bar that his church had picketed when it had gotten its license years ago. He knew that every person in the room would feel either self-conscious or amused that the preacher was there. He didn’t even want to look around and see how many of his church members were in here boozing it up.
Awkwardly, he stepped inside and saw Issie there with her head flat down on the counter. Dreading the confrontation, he limped over to her and touched her hair. “Issie, wake up. Come on, Issie.”
She didn’t budge.
He shook her. “Has anybody tried to wake her up?” he asked Joe.
“R.J. tried,” Joe said. “She didn’t want to come around.”
He pulled her hair back and felt her neck for a pulse. It was slow, but still beat against his fingertip.
He put her arm around his neck and tried to raise her up, but her legs were limp and her head hung heavily in front of her. He pulled Issie back from the bar and tried to lift her head. Her eyes half opened and she looked up at him, then tried to lay her head back down.
“Come on, Issie,” Nick whispered. “People are staring.”
He managed to get her to her feet and pulled her arm around his neck. Her legs didn’t offer much support at all, but he managed to get her out to the car. He propped her up against the back door, then holding her there, fished in his pocket for his keys, unlocked the passenger door, and slid her in. She immediately wilted over onto his seat.
He lifted her shoulders up and got in. Her head fell against the door. He started the car.
“Issie, wake up,” he said. “Come on. Wake up. I’m taking you home.” But she was out cold.
He thought of bypassing Aunt Aggie’s and taking her to her apartment, since he didn’t want to start any gossip when the old woman saw her condition. But then he realized she wouldn’t be safe there, and he couldn’t stay there all night watching her. Deciding Aunt Aggie’s was his best hope, he drove back to the old house.
When he got to Aunt Aggie’s garage, he tried to rouse Issie again. When his efforts failed, he carried her up the steps. What had gotten into her?
He’d heard a lot of things about Issie, things about her promiscuity, things about her binge drinking, things about her reckless behavior, but he had never heard of her passing out in public before.
He got her to the front door and pulled her inside, flipped on the light and looked around, praying Aunt Aggie was sleeping soundly and wouldn’t come down to check on Issie. He lifted her in his arms and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom and laid her on the bed. She curled up in a fetal position.
Worried, he bent down beside the bed and put his face close to hers. “Issie, can you hear me?” She didn’t stir. “Issie, wake up.”
She wasn’t responding, so he took her pulse again, found that it was slow, weak. He went to the easy chair in the corner of the room and sat down, trying to think clearly. Should he take her to the hospital to get her checked, just in case?
After a few moments, he got up and went to the bed again. She had balled even tighter, and he realized she was cold. He looked in the closet and found a handmade quilt, then covered her with it.
What now? Should he go back down to the guest room, far away from where Issie slept, and trust that she would wake up in the morning with a horrible headache and little memory of what had happened tonight?
The thought of leaving her here like this seemed unacceptable to him, so he decided to lean back in the chair and try to relax. Maybe she would stir soon.
As he sat alone in the room, he looked around at the meager belongings she had brought here with her. Just some clothes, a bag of makeup, a toothbrush. Nothing that revealed anything about her.
That seemed to be the story of Issie’s life. Nothing personal. That string of one-night stands she’d been known to have was nothing personal. Her nightly visits to Joe’s Place were nothing personal. Even the passion she showed in her job was nothing personal. And the flirtations she showed him on rare occasions…Again, nothing personal.
He couldn’t explain it, didn’t know why it happened, but suddenly his heart ached for her, and he wanted very much for her to know something personal, something that could change her life, fill it up, give it purpose.
He decided to pray for her instead of sleeping or fleeing. One hour passed, then two as he laid this whole confusing mess on the altar of God.
Suddenly, she sat up and bolted off the bed, staggering toward the bathroom.
/> “Issie?” She disappeared, leaving the bathroom door open behind her. He stood there and waited, wondering if he would be needed…
Then he heard her retching into the toilet.
He went to the door, not knowing whether to offer her help or stand back and let her have this time alone.
“Issie, it’s me. Are you all right?”
“Come in,” she said weakly.
He looked behind the door and saw her sitting in the corner on the floor next to the toilet, her knees drawn up to her chest. Her face looked ashen, and dark circles underscored her eyes.
“I don’t feel so good,” she said.
He eased down the wall—careful not to hurt his legs—until he was on the floor across from her in the tiny bathroom.
“Joe called me,” he said. “Do you remember my coming to get you?”
She shook her head, then winced as if the movement caused her great pain. “I’m so embarrassed,” she whispered.
“Don’t be. It’s just me.”
“Jus’ you?” she slurred. “Jus’ the preacher.” She shook her head and slid her fingers up through the roots of her hair as if clutching her head together. “Head feels like it’s gonna explode.”
“I could get you some Tylenol.”
“No, I’ll jus’ throw up again.”
“That might be a good thing,” he said. “You probably need to get it out of your system.”
“No,” she said, reaching out for him. “Help me up.”
He reached for her hands. She was shaking as she took his. He tried to pull her to her feet, but her legs were too weak. Then she got that sick look on her face and dropped back to her knees. In seconds she was heaving over the toilet again.
He backed out of the room, trying to give her some privacy as she retched. He hadn’t bargained for this. This was too intimate for him, something he hadn’t expected. What would people say if they knew he was in the bathroom off of a bedroom in the middle of the night watching Issie heave into a toilet?
Then he chided himself for putting the approval of men before Issie. It made little difference what people thought. His church was burned to the ground. Soon they would have his resignation and his congregation would be scattered and it wouldn’t matter what people thought of him anymore. It was what God thought that mattered, and God had put him here with this woman for some reason he couldn’t fathom, and he had drawn him into this bathroom where she was sick. How could he walk away without helping her?
Trial by Fire Page 18
