leg. She could hear the fire now, roaring as it picked up speed from the fuel of pressed wood and pasteboard in its path. She tried to push herself out the window headfirst, but her breasts and shoulders held her fast. She could not afford to become stuck in the metal window frame, where she would burn like a pig on a spit. Not the window, then. How else to get out?
She eased open the bedroom door, hot to her touch. The back door, blocked by the bookcase, was only three feet away. The flames had not yet reached it. She had perhaps a minute to clear the exit and get out. She eased her way out of the bedroom, coughing as a wave of smoke reached her nostrils. She leaned into the bathroom, grabbed a wet washcloth, and pressed it against her face. Then she began to push at the bookcase, but it would not slide away from the door. Empty it, then. She tore at the records first, pulling them to the floor, and kicking them out of her path. Another push. Still too heavy. The books, then.
She longed for the cold she had felt before. Now the heat was a palpable thing, a wave pulsing toward her, and the spreading flames sent sparks at her from the living-room ceiling. Tammy screamed at the flick of cinders, and flung the books on the floor. The fire had climbed the wall and set alight the ceiling.
She rocked the bookcase. It was light enough to move now. Sobbing with pain and terror, she shoved the empty shelving aside, and fumbled at the lock on the metal knob. It gave. She was free. She dared not turn around to see how 277
close the flames had come. She was free now. One push would send her tumbling onto wet grass, and she would run and find Morgan and not look back. Suddenly, none of the possessions mattered.
She fell against the door, twisting the knob and sobbing with relief at her deliverance. It was like the final push when Morgan was born—one last great exertion at the end of rending pain, and then she would be free. The metal door swung outward. In an instant she felt the cold gust of night air, and she stretched her arms out toward the soothing chill. But as the cold wind reached her, it also reached the fire above her, suffusing it with oxygen. The flash of burgeoning flames engulfed the tiny corridor, and most of Tammy Robsart's body as she dived for the frosted grass.
She felt nothing in the first instant. It was only after she tumbled to the ground that she saw the flames and thought idly, as if everything were happening in slow motion, that the fires were still close, and she wondered if the grass were alight. Several more leisurely seconds seemed to pass before her eyes cleared, and she saw that it was her own bathrobe, her body that blazed in the cold darkness. She felt rather than heard herself scream, and then she began to roll and run away from the bonfire that had been her home. Had Morgan run far enough? She had to find him. Idly, she wondered when she would begin to hurt.
Spencer Arrowood was asleep when the call came. The night was cold, and he had burrowed down under his electric blanket, wishing that it wouldn't get light for two more days. He was that tired. He had spent a long day helping Joe LeDonne on a wild-goose chase. At the deputy's insistence, they had sent inquiries to the TBI, the FBI, and to the Nashville police department, checking for priors on Wake County's new citizen Justin Warren.
"You want to call Interpol, too, while we're at it?" asked Spencer, amused by LeDonne's intensity.
"I wouldn't mind," said LeDonne.
"It's not against the law to play soldier, Joe. Hell, it's not even against the law to screw a dog in Tennessee anymore." The repeal of the state's bestiality law was a running joke in Tennessee law enforcement.
The deputy shrugged. "Let's put in a request for Warren's service record while we're at it, okay?"
"It'll take a week or so, you know. We have to fax them on letterhead, and then wait until they feel like sending the information."
"Some things never change," said LeDonne.
After that, Spencer had night patrol around the county, checking out the Mockingbird for underage drinkers, and stopping a domestic war between a drunk and his enraged wife. By eleven o'clock, Spencer felt like he'd been dragged two miles down a gravel road. He was ready to go home and sleep for a week—or at least eight hours, which was equally rare. The call that pulled him out of bed at 1:00 a.m. was 279
from Millie Fortnum of the Wake County Rescue Squad. She called on his home number, meaning that it was urgent. Fire in the trailer park, she'd said. Meet you there.
He microwaved a plastic mug of coffee to wake him up as he drove. The trailer park: principal trouble spot of Wake County. That rural ghetto of aluminum racked up more than its share of domestic brawls, disorderly drunks, and petty thieves. He could put a name to almost every mobile home in the barren park. As he drove through the dark streets of Hamelin, Spencer idly wondered who tonight's victim was. Had Horton Wheeler got drunk again and fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in his mouth? Or did one of the old ladies overload the wiring in her tinderbox home?
He could see the red shine of a county fire engine as soon as he drove into the park. Near it, most of the population of the park was standing in a semicircle, staring at the smoldering remnants of somebody's home. His headlights illuminated old men in robes and striped pajama legs and a plump gaggle of women wearing bright head scarfs to cover nests of pink curlers. They opened a path for him, and he eased the cruiser through, and parked near the fire truck. The volunteers were still hosing down the fire, but not in an effort to salvage anything. There wasn't enough left of the mobile home to tell what it had been. Now the firemen's concern was to keep the wind from spreading the fire to the homes nearby.
In the glow of the embers Spencer could make 280
out Faro Weaver, chief of the volunteer brigade. He looked around for the rescue-squad van, but it was gone. That was a good sign, he thought. If Millie Fortnum was in a hurry, somebody must have survived the fire.
"Whose home was this?" Spencer called out as he got out of his car.
There was a moment's hesitation, not because they didn't know, but because this group of citizens did not consider the law to be on their side most of the time. Not that they had anything against Spencer Arrowood personally; it's just that his badge usually spelled trouble for people in these parts. Sheriff's Department uniforms meant somebody getting hauled off to jail during a family argument or a too loud, too drunk party. The sight of a man in that brown uniform standing outside your house meant that the finance company had sent people to repossess your belongings and the man with the gun was there to see that they got away with it. Whenever they showed up in your neighborhood, it meant bad news, and tonight was no different, except that the bad news had arrived first, in the form of a fire.
Finally somebody called out, "Robsarts' place. He's overseas, though. It was just Tammy and her young'un."
Spencer nodded, trying to remember if he knew them. He didn't think so—another good sign. They weren't trouble-makers. "Did they make it out okay?"
A heavyset woman in jeans and a duffel coat stepped out of the crowd. "The little boy did. 281
He's asleep at my place with my kid. Tammy got him out quick as she could. She wasn't so lucky, though. Fire got her pretty bad."
Spencer thanked her. "Could you show me where you live? I'll take the boy to the hospital if she asks to see him."
"Number twenty-seven. Double-wide, third on the right. Name's Etheridge." The woman looked suddenly embarrassed and shuffled off in the direction she'd pointed. "Reckon I'll head on back," she called out. People began to follow her, drifting away from the fire, and murmuring among themselves.
Spencer went over to talk to Faro Weaver. He had a report to fill out, and a trip to the hospital ahead of him. He knew it wasn't arson, though. The mood of the crowd told him that. It was just the usual run of bad luck that dogged the poor: Try to keep warm and your ramshackle house ignites around you. In neighborhoods like this it was too commonplace to be called a tragedy.
She could feel the heat from the examining-table light, and instinctively she tried to squirm away. "Stay still," said a man in green, shadowed by the brightness. "Can y
ou hear me, ma'am? Are you in any pain?"
Tammy Robsart blinked up at him, trying to concentrate on his question. There was pain like a dull roar, but she couldn't figure out what exactly hurt. Something had been pressed across the lower part of her face. She took a gulp of pure oxygen, and nodded her head slightly, still 282
trying to take in her surroundings. Beside the man in green, there was a bottle on a rack with a tube leading down toward her. She tried to sit up.
She felt gentle hands pushing her back down. She licked her cracked lips, and tried to speak. "The fire . . ." Her voice came out in a whisper. The interval between the opening of the door and the sirens—the ambulance was only a blur in her mind. Her throat felt like leather.
The man leaned closer now, and she could see that he was wearing a mask. Above it, white hair curled around his wrinkled forehead, and his blue eyes seemed as bright as the light.
"Can you say your name for me?"
"Tammy," she whispered. "Tammy . . . Robsart."
"That's fine. Mrs. Robsart, are you able to understand me? We need to talk."
Her lips moved again, soundlessly, but her eyes were open and clear. She was conscious enough to be frightened. The man looked away, heaved an audible sigh, and then leaned down again. His voice was gentler now. "You're in the hospital, Tammy. I'm Dr. O'Neill. I need to tell you about your condition."
Suddenly, she felt searing cold all the way to her bones, racking her body with a great shiver. She shut her eyes tight. "It's so cold."
"There's nothing to keep you warm. I'm sorry." He turned to a nurse. "Get me a blood sample and check for smoke inhalation. Try the right femoral artery."
"Morgan?" said Tammy, ignoring the roar from her body.
"That's her little boy," said a woman's voice from outside the light. "She's asking about him."
Dr. O'Neill nodded. "He's fine. You got him out the window, didn't you? Well, he did what you told him. Ran to the neighbors for help. They called the fire department and the rescue squad who brought you here. He's quite a little hero. And you were pretty brave, too." His eyes glistened in the bright light. "And you have to keep on being brave for a little bit while we talk about what you want to do."
Tammy Robsart tried to raise her head to survey her body, but straps held her to the examining table. Her lungs felt tight, and her throat was dry. The rest of her sensations seemed to come in red waves that subsided into haze. "Do I need an operation?" she said. Her words came out in a rasping whisper that she barely recognized as her voice.
"You're very badly burned, Tammy. We have a medical term called the Rule of Nines, to determine the extent of burn damage a patient has sustained, and I'm afraid you scored very high on it."
Tammy tried to smile. "First test I ever done good on."
"It's like golf, I'm afraid. A high score is not good. You have scorched lungs, and heat damage, as well as severe burns on your legs, back, and lower torso, and on one arm. The flare-up 284
must have hit just as you were jumping out of that trailer of yours, when the cold air got in."
"Yeah. It just whooshed, and it was like the fire stayed with me. I couldn't get away from it." She waited for him to go on, but he was silent. Finally, she asked it. "Am I hurt bad?"
"Yes. I'm afraid you are. I'm sorry. The extent of your burns exceeds the . . . the usual margin for survival."
"Dr. O'Neill!" It was the woman's voice, from outside the light. "You shouldn't—"
"Hartnell! Save it for church. We're fresh out of miracles. She's got a right to know."
"I feel okay/' said Tammy. Dying ought to hurt a lot, and if you could stand the pain, and hold on through it, you didn't have to die. She was no stranger to pain. She was tough. Didn't she have Morgan by natural childbirth and not make a sound? She had chewed on ice during the contractions, and hung on to Dale's hand till it bruised.
"Lack of pain is not good, either, Tammy," Dr. O'Neill sounded far-off and weary. "It means the nerves have been destroyed, along with the rest of the tissue. The third-degree burns aren't hurting you, Tammy. It's the less serious ones that you're still able to feel. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but I had to be honest with you, so that you could make a decision. Here are your options: We can spend the next eight hours trying all sorts of burn treatments, which will make you uncomfortable, and which will not help you, but we could try. . . . Of course, it would leave that husband of yours 285
with a lot of debts. Or—" He swallowed hard. "We could put you in a private room, see that you don't feel too much pain, and let you spend that eight hours any way you choose. You can see your son, make provisions for him and for— Well, I guess the fire took care of most of your possessions. But you can have a telephone, and talk to whoever you want. Someone will stay with you in case you need anything, but no one will disturb you. You can spend the next hours any way you wish."
"And then what?" whispered Tammy. The cold was spiraling around her bones like a piece of silver wire.
"It's just about certain that either way ... in about eight hours, you will drift off to sleep, and you won't wake up."
"Dr. O'Neill!" It was the woman's voice again, harsher this time. "You can't expect a patient to make a decision like that. Shouldn't we airlift her to the burn center in Knoxville? They've made great progress lately in burn cases, and—"
He shook his head. "I called Knoxville. The air-rescue chopper can't come. One was put in the shop for routine maintenance, and the other one got engine trouble and had to be grounded for repairs. Without them, we couldn't get her to the burn center in time. We're two hours from Knoxville by road, and we couldn't do much for her in transit. We could only give her a lot of pain and waste her remaining time in a useless ambulance run." He turned his back to her, and his voice was low. "Besides, what kind 286
of life would it be? Her hands and feet are almost gone. And she's a Robsart. They don't have the money for the upkeep of a hopeless invalid. I'm not going to sentence that little girl to living hell. I say let her go."
"You can't tell her there's no hope, Dr. O'Neill! Even if it's true. We have to make every effort—"
"We have. Short of the Knoxville burn center, we've done it, and it won't save her. She needs to know that."
"I'm twenty," she said. "I'm real strong."
"I know." He leaned close to her, and his voice was gentle. "I wish that would help, but your body can only do so much."
"I'm gonna die?"
"Yes. You need to tell us how you want to spend the time you have left."
"I want to see my boy. And the county sheriff. Spencer Arrowood. Will he come?"
"I'll call him myself," O'Neill promised. "Anybody else? Do you have family?"
"Just Dale. My husband. He's in the Gulf. Can we call over there and try to find him?"
"Yes. Give us his unit, and we'll put somebody to work on it while we're getting you settled in your room."
"Wait!" Tammy Robsart tried to reach for his hand. "Gotta ask you. Do I look horrible?"
O'Neill hesitated. "Your hair was burned some, but your face is all right, minus eyebrows and eyelashes. Is that what you were concerned about?"
She blinked up at him, crying but tearless. 287
"My little boy. I didn't want Morgan to remember me looking like a monster. I'm ready now. It won't hurt, will it?"
"Not as bad as it once would have. We've put a catheter in at the base of your spine, so that we can control the amount of painkiller you need. There's another needle in you replacing your fluids, or trying to. If it gets too bad, and you want to go to sleep, you just tell Hartnell here, and she'll see to it."
"I want to see my son first. Just give me that much time. I can hold on until then."
CHAPTER 13
you must wear your rue with a difference.
— Hamlet
Spencer Arrowood stood in the hallway of the hospital, wondering whether it was the disinfectant smell, the shade of green on the walls, or the nature of his bu
siness that made him feel like puking. A stubble of blond beard on his chin indicated the haste with which he'd been summoned. He had forgotten his badge. He had outlasted his fatigue, though. A cup of black coffee, provided by a passing nurse, had jolted him into full alert. He'd be up for the rest of the night, no matter what, but he wished he could be someplace other than here. Naomi Judd had worked as a nurse for years before she got her break in country music. He wondered how she had stood it. How did any of them?
He looked down at the wooden waiting bench where a small form in tiny jeans and a blue sweater was curled up, butt in the air, eyes closed. Spencer took oft his sheepskin jacket, and spread it over the sleeping boy, Morgan Robsart, until only the blond curls were visible.
Dr. Peter O'Neill emerged from intensive care, looking as if he'd been up for days. His white coat was rumpled, and the lines on his face were etched deeper than before. County Hospital was understaffed, of course. He worked many more hours than other physicians his age, but somebody had to tend to these people. He didn't see anybody else volunteering. The region had a lot of poor people without medical insurance; not exactly an inducement to young physicians, who preferred both the glamour and the income of big-city jobs. Not to mention the state-of-the-art equipment. It was tough to lose a patient that somebody else could have saved. O'Neill had that feeling on a regular basis. Like tonight.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and surveyed the two visitors with weary concern. "Is that the boy?" he said, nodding toward the sleeping toddler on the bench. "Maybe I ought to take a look at him."
"Morgan Robsart," said the sheriff. "I picked him up at the trailer park. He's fine, though. Mrs. Etheridge looked him over and said there's not even a red spot. The mother must have got him out of there first thing, before she worried about herself. How is she?"
Peter O'Neill sat down on the other end of the bench, pushing gently at the child's legs to give himself room. "She's not going to make it. We're doing everything we can, mind you. Replacing fluids, counteracting the pain—except that she wants to be awake to see her son, so we can't give her as much morphine as I'd be otherwise inclined to. She's a fighter, though."
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