Claire realized then why Daphne looked so familiar. Other than eye color, they could have been mistaken for sisters.
“Thank you,” Claire said, and steeled herself to go inside.
“They said he asked for you on the way here,” Daphne said. “Otherwise, it would be me.”
With that, she turned and walked back down the hallway, wiping her eyes as she went.
Claire parted the curtain and went inside the cubicle. Laurie was on a hospital bed, covered from his feet to the waist with a sheet. His clothes were heaped in bloody tatters on the floor; it looked as if they had been cut off his body. Broken glass sparkled on the floor around his bed. His hands and arms were swaddled in bandages; a gash on his forehead was held together with a butterfly bandage; there was dried blood on his face and neck; an oxygen mask was affixed over his mouth and nose.
His chest, dotted with round rubber stickers holding electrodes connected to wires, was crisscrossed with shallow cuts. The wires adhered to his chest were attached to rolling monitors on one side of the bed. One IV was inserted in his arm, connected to a bag of dark red blood hung up on the IV pole; another attached a port in his neck to a large bag of clear liquid and a smaller bag of yellow liquid.
A nurse was recording his vital signs, and she glanced at Claire’s sticker.
“You the wife?”
Claire nodded, her eyes fixed on Laurie.
“He’s stable but barely,” the nurse said. “They lost him on the way here but were able to revive him. He has an advance directive on file at the state registry that calls for no resuscitation, but in the heat of the moment, emergency personnel are focused on saving people, not checking to see if they have a living will.
“He has chemical burns on his arms and hands. Whatever chemical he inhaled after the explosion may have permanently damaged his lungs and possibly his eyes. He was in so much pain that they’ve put him on a Roxanal drip; that’s morphine. His pulse is too thready and his pressure’s too low to do surgery, so we’re making him comfortable and giving him fluids and blood. We’ll move him to ICU as soon as there’s a bed available; if he stabilizes, then they’ll reassess.”
“Can I stay?”
“Sure, sweetie,” the nurse said. “Someone will be in to clean him up. Press the red button on the remote if you need anything. He’s wired for sound in here so if anything happens we’ll know it.”
Claire sat down. Her eyes went from Laurie’s face to the heart monitor. Even with all the noise in the ER, she felt she could hear her own heart beating as well.
A man wearing green scrubs came in and said, “Hey there, campers,” in way too loud and chipper of a voice.
“Hello,” Claire said.
“I’m gonna get him cleaned up and put a gown on him,” he said. “I hear he’s headed to ICU soon.”
Claire asked if she could help.
The man said “sure” and shrugged his shoulders.
He hummed under his breath, and for some reason, this irritated Claire to no end. He picked up Laurie’s pants and shirt. They were stiff with blood and smelled like copper pennies. He threw them in a lined bin marked, “Biohazard.” As he worked on Laurie, he was a little too brisk for Claire’s liking, and not nearly as gentle as Claire wanted him to be, but she bit her tongue.
Claire took the pan of warm water and sponge he prepared, and gently washed Laurie’s face as well as she could around the oxygen mask. There was blood in his hair, and in every crease on his face.
“What happened to him?” the man asked.
“A car blew up,” Claire said. “He’s a policeman.”
“Well, we won’t hold that against him,” the man said.
Claire gave him a look that conveyed her opinion of that remark.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll just keep my mouth shut now.”
Claire bathed his upper body. The man then swabbed his cuts with an orange-red liquid and applied antibiotic ointment to them. Claire noted the puckered shoulder wound where years ago he had been shot saving his fellow officer.
Once he was bathed, with a hospital gown on, and covered in a sheet and several warm blankets, the man quietly took his leave, turning the lights down as he left.
Claire pulled her chair up next to the bed. Using the remote, she lowered the bed until her face was level with Laurie’s.
“I’m going to be here when you wake up,” she said. “I won’t leave you.”
Nurses came and went, and each one said he would be moved to ICU soon, but he was still in the ER four hours later. Claire was finally overcome with fatigue, and could hardly keep her eyes open. She put her head down on her arms on the bed for a minute to rest her eyes. She lost track of time. She could hear the ER noise and the beeps of the monitors, so she wasn’t quite asleep, but she still couldn’t seem to wake up.
She heard someone in the room and looked up.
Laurie was standing at the foot of his bed.
“What happened to this guy?” he asked, gesturing to the bed.
“The car blew up,” she told him. “It’s all my fault.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“But I wanted you to find the car,” she said.
“It was my job to find the car,” he said. “If it hadn’t been me it might have been Donald or Goofy.”
“Everyone’s here; your best friend, your ex-wife …”
“I know,” he said.
“You need to get back in bed,” she said. “You need to rest so you can get out of here.”
“I am out of here,” he said. “Don’t you hear that? They’re playing our song.”
Claire could hear Claire de Lune being played on a piano, faintly, as if from far away. A door opened, one that Claire hadn’t noticed before, over in the corner on the other side of the bed. The bright light that streamed in was blinding after sitting in the darkness for so long. There seemed to be a crowd of people in the hallway beyond it.
“They’re waiting for me,” Laurie said.
There was a new, loud, insistent noise.
“Time to go,” he said.
“Wait,” Claire said.
“It’ll be all right,” he said. “You’ll see.”
Claire awoke with a sucking feeling in her stomach, as if she had just gone over the tallest drop on a roller coaster. A nurse rushed in, quickly followed by another.
Claire realized the loud noise was the alarm on Laurie’s heart monitor. The display showed a long flat line, unrelieved by peaks and valleys.
“No,” Claire breathed. “Laurie.”
When Claire got back to the waiting room, there were still many people there from before, and most were crying. Kay reached her first, and pulled her into a warm hug.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Sonny was there with Kay, and he patted Claire’s arm. When Kay let go, he put an arm around each of them.
“It’s all my fault,” Kay said.
“No,” Claire said. “It just happened.”
Chief Shepherd from Pendleton came up to Claire and shook her hand.
“I haven’t seen you since you were a little bitty thing,” he said. “How’s your dad doing?”
“About the same,” Claire said.
“I’ve been meaning to get up there and see him,” he said. “You think that’d be all right?”
“He’d love it,” Claire said. “Most of his old friends avoid him now.”
“Well, there’s two kinds of people in this world,” he told her, “people like me, and people who wish they were like me. I’ll be up to see him this next week. If he feels up to it, I’ll take him out in the boat and we’ll see what’s biting.”
“Thanks,” Claire said.
“It’s a damned shame about Laurie,” he said to Kay. “I wish I’d done more to help him.”
“We all do,” Kay said.
Daphne and Bobby were picking up their things, preparing to leave as Claire went up to them. Their eyes were red
rimmed and faces puffy from crying. Claire opened her mouth to speak but then couldn’t think of anything to say.
Daphne reached out, squeezed Claire’s hand, and said, “You take care.”
They walked away, and it was then that Claire saw Ed, standing at the back of the room, his back against the wall, with a cup of coffee in his hand. As soon as he saw her notice him, he put down the cup and came forward.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Claire had held it together pretty well up until that point, but his kind eyes and compassionate expression undid her. She walked into his embrace and bawled.
Sonny followed Kay home, and it seemed perfectly natural to assume that he would stay the night. For a while, they sat out on the porch in the darkness, swaying to and fro on the glider, holding hands, and saying nothing. Meanwhile, fireflies glowed on and off, frogs peeped, and crickets trilled.
Holding Sonny’s hand, Kay silently prayed for Laurie’s safe journey to the other side, and that Claire would be comforted, her faith strengthened by adversity. She thanked God for Sonny, asked that He might overlook their current sleepover arrangement, and would forgive her for being so very human. She prayed for Knox and Diedre, and that Matthew would find a way to forgive her. She remembered Sal then, and said a prayer for him and Antonia. She asked that God guide her to do the right thing, and to forgive her when she did not. She thanked God for all her many blessings. And finally, she prayed for Grace to be protected on her journey home.
It was midnight when a car drew up to the curb. Kay squinted in the glare of the headlights to see whose it was. Someone got out of the back seat and tossed a duffel bag on the ground. It wasn’t until the front car window rolled down and Janet called out, “Got her home safe; see you tomorrow,” that Kay realized that her last prayer had been answered.
CHAPTER 11
Claire woke up to a knock on her bedroom door.
“Claire Bear,” her father said. “You’re going to be late for school.”
She had a fierce headache. She could feel how swollen her eyes were. It was not going to be pretty.
“Liam’s out delivering the papers,” her father said.
Claire closed her eyes and tried to draw the strength she needed to deal with her father’s dementia, but the well was almost dry. Her little brother, Liam, had died from leukemia as a child, more than twenty years ago.
Oh, and Laurie was dead.
Laurie was dead.
It hit her in the chest like an anvil.
What she would give for some of that memory loss.
“Claire Rebecca,” her father said, in his stern voice.
“I’m getting up,” she called out, and then did so.
It was 6:00 a.m.
When she opened the door, Mackie Pea and Junior the kitten came barreling down the hallway to greet her. She could hear her father shaving in the bathroom, so she walked her swollen eyes, aching head, and broken heart to the kitchen, let the animals go outside, and started the coffee.
She couldn’t bear to think about what had happened the day before, so she focused on the small things she could accomplish without thinking too much: the next step in her day, the next item on her list.
She prepared a tall glass of ice water, and took a package of frozen peas out of the freezer. She let the dog and cat back in and fed them. She took a long deep drink of the icy water and it felt good going down. She wondered if it was possible to become dehydrated from crying.
When Ed arrived, she was sitting at the kitchen table, her head tilted back, holding the bag of peas across her eyes.
He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.
“Good morning,” he said. “Will you feel like going for a run later today?”
“A walk,” she said. “A long walk, but tonight.”
He sat down across the table from her. She removed the bag of peas and looked at him, but to his credit, he did not wince at what he saw. He smiled kindly instead.
“I hear the Fitzpatrick Family Circus is coming back to town today,” he said.
“Great,” she said. “I can hardly wait til Aunt Bonnie discovers I traded places with Melissa.”
“If you need to escape, give me a call,” he said.
“Thank you,” Claire said. “I’ll come by the office after I’m done at the bakery.”
“No one expects you to work today.”
“I want to work,” Claire said. “It will keep me from thinking too much.”
“I’m writing Laurie’s obituary,” Ed said. “I told Daphne I’d take care of it, and she’s going to email some information and a photo. I gathered so many stories from the folks in the E.R. waiting room last night I could fill a whole issue. Is there anything you’d like to add?”
“He told me he didn’t like being a policeman,” Claire said. “Turns out he was awfully good at it.”
“Everyone says he was a great guy,” Ed said. “I didn’t know him that well but whenever our paths crossed I enjoyed talking to him.”
“I wish I had known him better,” she said. “I wish I could have made a difference.”
“There was probably nothing you could’ve done,” Ed said. “You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”
This made Claire so angry. Who was Ed to tell her she couldn’t have saved Laurie? Before the accident, he was intending to go to rehab. He could have turned his life around. He was once this great guy all those people loved; why couldn’t he have found a way to be that man again? Why didn’t he want to? More selfishly, she thought, why wasn’t the possibility of being with her enough of a reason?
She wanted Ed to leave, and to quit coming around with his comments about things he couldn’t possibly know about. Immediately after this thought, Claire was ashamed of herself for taking out her anger on Ed.
It was Laurie she was mad at, of course it was.
“Anything else you want to add?” he asked.
“He played the piano. He liked to sing old songs.”
He didn’t have sex with her the night she got drunk, took off her clothes, and begged him to. How would that look in the obit?
‘Goes to show character,’ Claire thought.
“His ex-wife is quite a bit younger than he was,” Ed said. “Pretty lady.”
“I heard the first wife was the soul mate,” Claire said. “Did you ever meet her?”
Claire had stopped sticking pins in her imaginary Ed voodoo doll and was now sticking them in herself. She didn’t want to hear how wonderful the woman was, or how great their marriage was. Claire had shown up at the theater as the actors took their closing night bows; she didn’t want to hear how great the run had been.
“I ran into her at fundraisers, walks for various causes,” Ed said. “She was a nice woman.”
“Of course she was,” Claire said.
Laurie’s sainted dead wife would have been a better wife even for Ed. Claire begged herself to quit asking questions, but she stuck another pin in instead.
“What did she look like?”
“Tall and thin, with long dark hair,” Ed said. “She was pretty.”
“Of course she was,” Claire said.
If Daphne was meant to be a copy of the original, Claire guessed she was just the smudged, illegible faxed version of the copy.
“You can love more than one person in a lifetime, you know,” he said. “You can even love more than one person at the same time.”
‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ Claire was thinking.
It hurt too much, and she was too tired to start crying again.
Ed meant well, she knew he did. His expression was full of sympathy and compassion. He had proved his friendship by showing up at the hospital where Claire was grieving over the loss of his rival. He had gathered her up, shepherded her home, tucked her into bed, and stayed until she fell asleep.
“Thank you, for coming to Morgantown last night, and for bringing me home,” she said.
“That
’s what friends do,” he said. “We help pick up the pieces and put each other back together.”
“C’mon!” Ian said from the front room. “We’re late!”
“Will I see you later?” he asked.
“You will,” she said.
Kay woke up to Sonny snoring loudly next to her. He had taken up three fourths of the bed again and all of the top sheet and quilt. Kay slid out of bed and performed her morning tasks. By the time she’d put the kettle on, he was up, and soon she could hear him taking a shower. She checked on Grace, who was still sound asleep in her room.
Kay retrieved the newspaper off the front steps and sat with her tea on the front porch to read it. She immediately wished she’d waited. It seemed like every story inside was something she didn’t want to face this early in the morning.
Knox’s death had been tentatively deemed accidental, but the names of the three trustees on the secret account had been revealed, and Marigold’s name was there in black ink on the front page, as a new person of interest in the ongoing investigation.
The paper also reported that Marigold had formally withdrawn her candidacy for mayor. It said that opposing mayoral candidate, Kay Templeton, had not been available to respond to this bombshell announcement. Kay knew that many of the voicemails that were waiting on her cell phone were probably from someone at the Pendleton paper, asking her for a comment.
Laurie’s death warranted a big write-up. Multiple law officials eulogized him and praised his exemplary police record. County Sheriff’s Homicide Investigator Sarah Albright stated that he was instrumental in the investigation that resulted in the arrest of several members of an extensive network of drug manufacturers, and that he died in the line of duty.
“He will be missed,” she was quoted as saying.
Sal’s obituary covered half of a page, and detailed his long history in Rose Hill. Kay had just started reading it when Sonny came out on the porch and sat down next to her.
“How’s my girl?”
“We need a bigger bed,” she said, and handed him the page with his father’s obituary.
“What we need is a bigger house,” he said. “My apartment isn’t much bigger than this.”
Hollyhock Ridge Page 29
