When Secrets Die

by Lynn S. Hightower

  “It took me a long time to come out of it. A long time.” She closed her eyes, and we observed a moment of silence. “But then, slowly, very slowly, I started to get back into things. I knew I would never be the same again, that there would always be a … a shadow. You should have known me then. Before the tragedy. I was such a happy person. Always laughing, always kind of singing, and doing creative things. But after my son died, and I came out of those dark, dark days—it’s something I can’t really describe to someone like you.”

  I literally bit my tongue.

  “I realized, then, that I have a purpose. I started working at the clinic. Volunteering at first, but then Ted said to tell the accountants to put me on the payroll for heaven’s sake, I was doing more work than anybody there. I started up with the gift baskets. I don’t know if you’re aware, but Ted … Dr. Tundridge, I mean, has a charity clinic for people without health insurance.”

  “People like me,” Emma said.

  Amaryllis gave her a quick look.

  “Just kidding,” Emma said. “But I always get the gift baskets.”

  Amaryllis shook a finger at her. “That’s because you’re one of my friends, you know that.”

  Emma nodded and looked over at me. “They give them out every couple of months. Amaryllis decorates the baskets, and puts in all kinds of stuff, like homemade jams and jellies and my personal favorite, homemade peanut butter. Cookies sometimes, and those bourbon balls she makes … to die for. I’m surprised you got Dr. Tundridge to go for it.”

  “It was a project I took to his wife, actually, Syd. She’s great, Emma, have you ever met her?”

  “No, I’ve never seen her.”

  Amaryllis looked back over at me, one hand on her knee. “Syd and I have become very close, working on the baskets like we do. She’s got four children to look after, and so she usually leaves most of the details to me, but she likes being in on the planning and everything. Sometimes I think she feels a little left out of things, you know, because she’s a stay-at-home mom. So doing the baskets is a way for her to be involved, and it’s a special thing for our patients, and it’s something she can talk about at the staff meetings and parties. Sometimes she calls me just to keep up on what’s going on at the clinic, because Ted, you know, when he gets home … I guess he just doesn’t want to talk about work. Ted always tells me he likes to leave the office at the office, although he stays on call, which is unusual these days. So many doctors now just leave a message to call nine-one-one.”

  “You like working for him?”

  She pressed her hands against her thighs and glanced over at Emma, who was watching her. “To tell you the truth, I’m having my doubts, after finding out what happened between him and Emma. I’ll be the first person to tell you what a good mother she is. Believe me, I’ve been a pediatric nurse, and I know the difference. I have known of cases … I can understand where Ted is coming from, but he is so wrong about Emma. I’m hoping we can work something out here, which is why I’m willing to do anything I can, even if it costs me my job. Especially after finding out about what was going on down in the path lab, down in the basement.”

  “What do you know about that?” I asked.

  “Well, I mean, we all knew about the lab, but most of the time it’s locked up, only Dr.… only Ted goes down there. It’s mainly for storage, I thought. I had no idea he kept things that were sort of against people’s will. It’s really pretty horrifying. If that happened to my son. Like it did to Emma. I think I’d have just died on the spot. Emma, I don’t know where you get your strength.”

  Emma stayed quiet. She wasn’t smiling.

  “What else do you do at the clinic? Besides the gift baskets?”

  “I work in reception. I take the patients into their rooms, and put the charts in the slot—you know, we have this system, little colored arrows beside the door to let the doctor and the nursing staff know what’s up. Like green means the patient is ready for the doctor, yellow means the nursing staff goes in. I keep the toy area stocked and organized, and file charts, stock and order supplies.”

  “You don’t miss the nursing end of the business?”

  “No.”

  But the question dampened her down, and I thought it was at least the second lie she had told me, the first being that she had worked a double shift yesterday.

  Wally leaped to her feet and barked, and the front door opened. The sound of a school bus lumbering by penetrated the living room. Emma Marsden’s teenage daughter walked in, saw the three of us, and gave a panicky look to her mother.

  “Hi, sweetie,” Emma said, rising and giving her daughter a hug. The girl endured it but did not return it.

  “Everything okay?” the child said softly. She looked young and very beautiful in that child-woman way of teenage girls, who could be any age between thirteen and twenty-three.

  “Everything’s fine,” Emma said. “This is my daughter, Blaine. Blaine, this is Lena Padget.”

  The girl smiled at me and walked across the room to shake my hand firmly. “Oh, right. Mom told me about you. We really appreciate everything you’re doing for us.”

  She had a lot of presence, this little girl, and I felt approved of.

  “And you know Amaryllis.”

  Blaine’s back went stiff, but she forced a smile and nodded at Amaryllis.

  “Oh, Blaine, come and give me a hug.” Amaryllis opened her arms, and the girl leaned over and endured the embrace. Amaryllis smiled at me over Blaine’s shoulder. “Blaine and I are old friends. Makes up for not having a daughter of my own.”

  “Thank you,” Blaine said. She glanced at her mother. “Umm … when you get a chance, I need to talk to you.”

  “In a little bit,” Emma said.

  Blaine nodded. “Can I get you all something to drink or anything?”

  “We’ve got coffee, but thank you, Blaine,” Emma said, and she was smiling at her daughter.

  Blaine nodded, let the backpack slide halfway down her shoulders, and disappeared down the hall, Wally right behind her. She talked to the dog softly in a high-pitched animal voice until the door of her room closed and she shut us all away.

  I stood up. Offered Amaryllis Burton a hand to shake, which she hesitated over but finally took. Her fingers were damp, and her hands were very, very soft, like a person who has just applied lotion.

  “You’ve been a lot of help,” I said, which was true.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It fascinated me that a woman as savvy as Emma Marsden didn’t get how much Amaryllis Burton hated her. It was a jealousy thing. At least that was part of it.

  The Amaryllis angle made perfect sense to me, as I am comfortable thinking the worst of everyone. The women met when Emma lost a child. And lost the father of the child as her romantic partner. And was left with a shaky income, a house unfashionable, and a teenage daughter. A woman like Amaryllis could identify with this sort of thing. She’d lost her own child, and could rehash all her old tragedy with Emma, who would no doubt provide a sympathetic audience and a fresh ear. And she herself could do the same for Emma, and they could be woe-begone together. And Amaryllis, who did have a husband, and a job she seemed to enjoy, a job that gave her contact with other mothers in similar situations, could sigh over her tragedy from time to time and also feel superior to Emma.

  Except, of course, that Emma got better. And Emma, completely unaware that her house was considered only so-so by the Amaryllis-type women of the world, was perfectly happy with her home, was even proud of it, even loved it. Emma got tired of being sad all the time. She cut her hours back at her job and wiped out the overhead, meaning she kept more money in the long run and worked less. Emma Marsden was the kind of woman who was hard to keep down. She had so much joie de vivre that it spilled over onto the rest of us, a quality that was likely attractive and repellent to a woman like Amaryllis Burton.

  It is my job to hold uncharitable viewpoints, and I am good at it. Jealousy between women is a dangerous thing.r />
  Of all the people on the staff at the Tundridge Children’s Clinic, I was most interested in Amaryllis Burton. I was going to spend some time with her, on my computer. I’d have to use the one at home, because Rick was not speaking to me at the moment. He was furious that I had not let him come to the clinic. It was best to let him sulk.

  By the time Joel got home from work that night, I had, completely wrecked the living room.

  My computer, which usually sits in the spare bedroom upstairs, was in the middle of the floor in front of the fireplace. The phone line was draped across the floor, and hooked up so I could surf the Net, although without a high-speed hookup it was more like snail the Net. After using the computers in Rick’s office, I hated the slow-drip agony of the one I had at home. Eventually I had brought the printer downstairs too, along with an open ream of paper and the coffee cup full of pens. I had made about twelve trips up and down the stairs in the last six hours, and now most of the stuff I used in the spare bedroom was littered on the living room floor.

  “Hey,” Joel said, when he walked through the door.

  “Hey.” I was sitting cross-legged in front of the computer, using the telephone book as a mouse pad, and I lifted my face so Joel could kiss me.

  “Did you move your office down here?” he asked.

  “Just for the day. It’s so depressing up there, with all the boxes and junk.”

  “You look frustrated.”

  “My eyes are crossing. This Internet connection is so slow, it’s driving me nuts.”

  “Not using Rick’s office?”

  “He’s not speaking to me right now.”

  Joel raised a brown paper package. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

  “I’d love one. Are you cooking, or am I?”

  “Do you want to cook?”

  “Actually, I refuse. I’m working here.”

  “Then I guess I will.”

  He went upstairs, came back quickly in his sweatpants and sweatshirt, and went into the kitchen. He was gone awhile, then he returned to the living room and handed me a glass of red wine.

  I took the glass and arched my back. Too many hours without a chair.

  “Lena, why don’t you get a new computer, get cable access for the Internet, and make that room upstairs into a decent office?”

  “I will, Joel, just right now I can’t afford it.”

  He sat in his favorite chair and flipped the switch on the stereo. Somebody or other on classical guitar. Tolerable.

  “What is that look?” I asked him.

  “Just that if you had kept that insurance money from when your sister died, you’d be able to afford a really good office and a new computer. It seems like a waste.”

  “I think revenge is a very good way to spend your money. I’ve never had any regrets.”

  “Lena, if there were grudge Olympics, you’d bring home the gold every four years.”

  “I just bailed him out of jail and let nature take its course.”

  “You knew those people were after him.”

  “That’s right, I did. That’s why I bailed him out of jail. He killed my sister. I wanted retribution.”

  I tilted my head to one side. I could not tell what Joel was thinking. I can never tell what he is thinking. And he never tells me when I ask.

  “Are you saying I was wrong, Joel?”

  “It’s not up to me to judge you.”

  “Just sitting over there with tight lips and that look is judging.”

  He finally did meet my eyes. “I won’t say I wouldn’t have done the same in your place.”

  “The thing is, you wouldn’t.” I got up, found the half-smoked cigar I’d left in the ashtray, and lit it back up. “You’re not vengeful. I am. Vive la différence.”

  “It’s not a good thing, Lena.”

  “Vengeance? Let me tell you something, Joel. It is a good thing. Revenge is one of the most underrated pleasures in the world.” I puffed on the cigar, tapped ash into the ashtray.

  “If you don’t forgive him, Lena, you will carry this around for the rest of your life.”

  “I don’t ever want to forgive Jeff Hayes, and you know why?”

  “Because you want revenge.”

  “No. I got revenge. But if I forgive Jeff Hayes for what he did, it feels like I’m saying it was okay.”

  “Forgiving isn’t saying it’s okay.”

  “It is to me. I’m past anger and all the bitterness. I don’t think about it that much, and when I do, I sidestep it. If forgiveness is divine, I’m not divine. And it’s kind of arrogant, isn’t it? Who am I to judge and then forgive? Leave that to the divine being. The thing I do know is that if I forgive Jeff Hayes, it will crush me. It’ll kill the strong part of me that keeps my head above water and won’t let me drown.”

  “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “I forgive you.”

  He finally grinned. “What are you working on, impossible woman?”

  “Amaryllis Burton.”

  “Who?”

  “She is a supposed friend of my client, Emma Marsden, and also just so happens to be on the staff at the Tundridge Children’s Clinic. She is turning out to be a very interesting person.”

  “How so?”

  “She trained and worked for many years as an LPN, but she only does low-end reception work at the doctor’s office. She had a little boy who died when he was eight—and he was a patient of Dr. Tundridge, for whom she now works. It took me a while to track this down, but evidently, at the time of the child’s death, she lived in Sevierville, Tennessee.”

  “Why bring her son to Lexington for treatment?”

  “Because of Dr. Tundridge. He specializes in pediatric liver disease. They ran an obituary in the Lexington paper when her little boy died, and they mentioned she was from Sevierville. So I checked out the archives of the Mountain Home Press—there was a fee, and I put it on your credit card, I hope that’s okay.”

  He nodded.

  “It covered the boy’s death there, too. It also mentioned that Amaryllis had two other children, previously, and both died of SIDS.”

  Joel narrowed his eyes. “Interesting.”

  “It also listed her as being a nurse at the county hospital up until a year before her son’s death.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “Just that it’s odd. That she no longer gets a job as a nurse, when that’s what she trained for, that’s what she’s got experience in. A nursing position would bring in a lot more money than the one she’s got.”

  “Maybe her license was suspended.”

  “May well be, Joel. I went through a list of all the nurses who had active licenses and couldn’t find her listed, in Kentucky or Tennessee. I called County Hospital, down in Tennessee, where she worked, and told them I was looking for references, and that she’d given me their name. First they swore up and down that she had never worked there. Then when I pushed them, they said she had been an employee, but one of the computers had crashed, and they’d lost some permanent employee records, and they could give me no references one way or the other.”

  Joel made a little noise.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Joel rubbed his forehead. “The medical profession is a thicket of people who watch each other’s backs. Sounds to me like she was fired, and they don’t want to say why. Which could be anything from stealing drugs, to insubordination, to killing off patients.”

  “Don’t you think she’d be in jail for that?”

  “Not necessarily. Medicine attracts a lot of dedicated, intelligent people, Lena. But it attracts other kinds, too. Angels of Death, in cop jargon. I can name three cases right off hand—Dr. Michael Swango. He liked to poison people—and not just patients, he went after his coworkers. They called him ‘Double-O Swango’ because so many of his patients died.”

  “I don’t get that.”

  “License to kill. Medical black thumb. He got a big kick out of informing the families when a child die
d. He liked accident scenes.”

  “How long did it take to catch up with him?”

  “He practiced medicine for twenty years.”

  “What?”

  “Everywhere he went, patients died and colleagues got sick. When things started closing in on him, he just left and took another position. Sometimes he lied, sometimes he faked his employment history, maybe changed his name. But a lot of the time he didn’t even have to bother. Once he left, the hospital administration was just relieved he’d gone. They didn’t want a lot of lawsuits, from him or their patients, so they closed the book and let someone else deal with him.”

  “Now Amaryllis Burton is looking even more creepy.”

  Joel tilted his head to one side. “No criminal charges on her record?”

  “None that I could find, but I don’t mind you checking into it.”

  “Chances are there won’t be charges. And you’d have to twist a lot of arms to get any official inkling of what was going on. You could talk to people who worked with her in the past—if they’re willing to talk. That’s your best bet.”

  “So you’re saying it’s a power thing?” I took a sip of wine.

  “It’s a mix. Some of them like to put patients in harm’s way and then stage a rescue. They love the attention and the excitement. The code with everybody running in and them playing hero.”

  “Not unlike Munchausen by proxy.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in it.”

  “I don’t. At least, not in Emma Marsden’s case. But Amaryllis—evidently she had a baby who died from SIDS. Something she did not mention.”

  “The motives are complex, Lena—each one of these cases is unique. There are the heroes, the mercy killers. There was an oral surgeon who was molesting his female patients when they were under anesthetic, and he accidentally overdosed them. There is a surprisingly big category of experimenters. They go into medicine because they are curious, and medicine is the only way to have access. A lot of their patients die for the good of science and mankind, and these guys often have government grants.

  “For some of them it’s literal bloodlust. Swango admitted that he’d come out of the ER with a big erection when he had to inform parents of the death of a child.”