“Damn, we’re going to lose him.” The man taking vitals sent an urgent glance to his partner, who had a drip flowing and had started to administer oxygen. “Let’s get him on the stretcher and hit the road.”
As Jeanette watched in growing horror, the two men efficiently loaded up Charles. He made no motion. No sound.
A cold, dark feeling lodged in her heart. It felt like death. She recognized it from when Paul died.
“Charity, this is EMT Unit 55. We’re about to transport a white male, approximately 30 years of age…”
“Twenty-seven. He’s only twenty-seven.”
Jeanette choked back the hysteria threatening to escape. She had to hold it together. She couldn’t do Charles any good if she panicked.
She followed the two emergency personnel out to the ambulance.
“Correct that dispatch. Twenty-seven years of age. He’s unconscious and diaphoretic. We’re giving him oxygen, 4 liters. His pulse is 150 and thready. His BP is 60 over 40. I think we’re losing him. Any advice you could give would be appreciated, Charity.” The lead EMT spoke calmly.
Yet, Jeanette heard the underlying urgency in his voice, saw it in the fast, efficient movements of the two-man team. Something niggled at her. There was something she needed to make sure they knew.
Damn, how could she have forgotten?
“Tell them he mixed prescription allergy medicine with alcohol about thirty minutes ago.”
“Charity. Friend of patient says he took allergy medication with alcohol about thirty minutes ago.”
“How much meds and alcohol?”
“One 25 mg capsule of Claritin and one glass of white wine, maybe six ounces tops.”
The EMT repeated the information, then listened and shook his head. He looked at Jeanette. “Doc says that wouldn’t cause this kind of respiratory arrest.”
“You’re taking him to Charity?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The EMT who answered her climbed into the back with Charles. The other got into the driver’s seat. Then, with no further discussion, they were off.
“Thank you.”
They couldn’t have heard her. They were half way down the block before she’d even spouted the automatic courtesy.
Tears flowed over her face unchecked, commingling with the drizzling rain. She stood frozen to the spot and watched the empty street. Her last image of Charles was of the EMT starting CPR as the ambulance sped away.
Blessed Jesus, protect him. Mother of God, shelter him in your loving arms. Please God… please…
“Momma?”
Brigitte’s high-pitched cry roused Jeanette from her state of shock. She turned. Her daughter stood on the front step of the building and stared out into the street where the ambulance had been parked.
“Baby, did the paramedics wake you up?”
She ran to her daughter and gathered her close.
“Yes. Who’s sick?” Jeanette heard a hitch in her daughter’s breathing, felt her stiffen as if to prepare herself for the worse. “Not Uncle Scott?”
“No, baby. It’s Charles.”
Brigitte’s body relaxed. “What’s wrong with him? Did he get a tummy ache or something?”
“I don’t know, sugar. But we need to go to the hospital and see.” Jeanette reluctantly let her daughter go. “Scoot on upstairs and put on some clothes.”
“It’s a school night, Momma. What are we gonna do about that? It’s late — I checked.”
Jeanette followed her daughter up the stairs. “I’ll call Sister and leave a message. We’ll use one of your free days tomorrow.”
“Yeah!” Brigitte skipped up the stairs. “Can we go to the movie or something — uh, that is if Charles is okay, of course?”
“We’ll see.”
Jeanette avoided making any sort of definitive statement. The picture of the paramedic working on Charles’s still body replayed itself over and over in her brain.
“Just hurry. We need to be there for Charles. We’re all he has, baby.”
“That’s so sad, Momma.”
Jeanette knew that it was more than sad. It was tragic.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Charity Hospital Emergency Room, Wednesday, 1:15 a.m.
Scott saw Jeannie and Brigitte before they spied him.
He hurried to cut them off. He didn’t want them to get the news from the Emergency Room receptionist. He wished he could protect them from all things bad, but since he couldn’t, he could at least soften the blows life threw them.
“Jeannie!” he called.
She stopped, then whirled around. Her face, pale with worry, brightened when she found him in the crowd. She bent over and whispered to Brigitte, who looked where her mother pointed. Brigitte’s serious little face lit up like a sparkler on the fourth of July.
“Uncle Scott!” She waved, then broke from her mother’s grip to run to him, her arms out-stretched.
Scott bent and caught the little girl up in his arms and gave her a bear hug, rubbing his cheek on her dusky curls. This was what life was all about. It was worth protecting with every bit of his being — be it from bad news or evil.
“Scott?”
Jeannie’s voice vibrated with worry.
“I’m sorry…”
He knew he need go no further in his explanation. Her eyes reflected her acceptance — her prescience — of Charles’s death.
“Oh, Scott.” The tears she must have held back since Charles fell ill streamed down her cheeks unheeded. “How? Why? He was so young.”
“I don’t know — yet.”
Scott still held Brigitte with one arm. He extended the other to her. She came to him and took the comfort he offered.
“I’m sure there’ll be an autopsy. We’ll know more after that.”
“It looked like a stroke.” Her voice faltered. “I didn’t do anything. I should’ve done something — CPR — anything.”
Scott led his girls away from the hustle and bustle of the late night ER-zoo. Lifting his arm from Brigitte’s shoulder only long enough to push the door open to the doctor’s on-call lounge, he waved them inside.
After he’d settled them on the ratty old couch, he shoved a pile of two-year-old Soap Opera Digests to the floor and sat on the coffee table in front of them.
“You couldn’t have saved him. The paramedics said he was too far gone when they arrived. Plummeting blood pressure, thready, rapid respirations. He died in the ambulance. Even with all the modern equipment and an excellent response time, Charles was gonna be dead.”
“It doesn’t make sense.” Jeannie looked down at Brigitte; the little girl had fallen asleep as soon as she’d gotten comfortable, snuggled against her mother’s side.
Lowering her voice, she continued, “What do you think happened? He was never sick. In fact, he bragged that his grandfathers on both sides were in their late eighties and still played golf. His father was a marathoner. Why did he just die — all of a sudden?”
“Don’t know, darlin’, but we’ll know more tomorrow.” He looked up as the lounge door opened. It was the ER doctor in charge. “You need me?”
“No. It’s organized chaos tonight.” He smiled at Jeannie. “Believe it or not, ma’am, we have that room well under control. Looks like all the trauma cases have gone somewhere else tonight. Mostly, we’re seeing earaches and bad stomachs. Your friend was the only excitement tonight, and I’m sorry there was nothing we could do for him.”
“Thank you. Scott explained.”
“I hate to bother you, but Scott said you called 911, and we need to finish up some paperwork on that. Would you mind?” The doctor held out a clipboard with some papers attached.
“I’ll do what I can.” Jeannie reached for the paperwork.
“If it’s all right, Bob, I’ll help her.”
“Sure, Scott. You were due a break anyway. We’ll scream if we need you.” Bob nodded to Jeannie and left the room.
She looked up from the documents. “I’m not sur
e whom to list as his next of kin. He wasn’t on speaking terms with his father. His mother lives in California with her third husband. He has a brother, Andrew, in Atlanta. Do you think I should list him? I remember Charles said we’d go visit…” Jeannie sniffed back a sob. “…go visit him some day and take in a Braves game. So they must be on speaking terms, right?”
“Cher, why don’t you put down his law firm as a contact person for advising next of kin. I’m sure he had paperwork in his personnel file. They’ll have the emergency information.”
“That’s a good idea.” Jeannie bestowed a watery smile on him. “I should’ve thought of it.”
“Why should you?” He stroked her cheek with his finger, letting it trail lightly down to the hair of the small child lying against her mother’s shoulder. “You’ve had a shock. That’s why I stayed to help. Let me get you something with sugar and caffeine. You looked wiped out.”
“A Pepsi would be great. I’ll just fill in the details with comments on what happened and in what order.” Jeannie balanced the clipboard on the couch arm, so she could write with her right hand and still hold Brigitte with her left.
Scott fed the soft drink machine in the lounge. “Make sure you list any allergies he might have had and what he ate tonight.”
“He ate the same stuff we did. I don’t know anything about any specific allergies, other than the usual stuff that floats around in our air to which every self-respecting citizen of New Orleans is allergic.”
“Maybe it’ll be in his personnel file. Or they can ask his brother.” Scott carried a couple of cans of pop and two bags of chips to the coffee table. “We’ll run a check through the Medical Information Bureau and see if he had any hospital admits in the last year or so. Then we can pull any files done on him, get his history from them.”
Jeannie cast a suspicious eye on the junk food. “Is this how you take care of yourself at work? Eating junk food?” She glared at the machines humming away on the far side of the room. “Don’t they have any fresh, healthy food?”
“Nope. Just junk food. Chips, please note they are baked, not deep-fat-fried, are the healthiest things in the machine. I usually have the little devil’s food cake thingies with the cream in the middle, but they’re out tonight.”
A delicate snort and a scrunching of her cute little nose indicated what she thought of his late-night eating habits.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to start packing you a healthy snack for break. Your brain can’t work right on junk food. Plus, your immune system needs healthy food to fight off all the germs floating around the hospital. You should know that.”
“Ahh, knowing and doing are two separate things, darlin’.” Scott munched a chip and offered her one.
“Well, now that I know, I’ll be doing something about it.” She took the chip and sniffed at it, then ate it. “Tastes like cardboard. The cake does sound better. I’ll make some low-fat cookies for the guys.”
“They’ll appreciate it. I’ll have to beat them off you with a stick.”
Scott cast a concerned eye over Jeannie. She was way too calm considering all that had happened. He knew this was her way of coping — finding something else to occupy her. So, she turned to her nurturing instincts. It was a way he wanted to encourage, because it meant she was taking care of him.
The next step would be loving him. He could wait — he’d waited this long.
He pointed at the clipboard. “Finish up what you can, and I’ll have someone drive you home.”
“No. I’ll be fine. I drove. We’ll be fine.” Jeannie smiled down at Little Bits, still asleep at her mother’s side.
“No. One of the security guards can follow you home. It’s not that far. You should know as well as anyone that New Orleans is a rough town at night, especially in the Quarter.”
Scott refused to budge on this issue. Charles’s death, in Jeannie’s home, at this point in time, was too coincidental. Until the autopsy showed some freakish, but natural, ischemic attack, Scott wasn’t allowing Jeannie to go anywhere without someone watching her. He’d be calling in a bunch of favors, but she was worth protecting with all the resources he had available.
“Okay. Whatever you say.”
The mulish look on Jeannie’s face indicated she was humoring him and that he wouldn’t have it so easy the next time he tried to run roughshod over her. He was lucky she was too tired and grief-stricken to fight for independence tonight.
———
Wednesday, 9:00 a.m.
Jeanette lay awake.
Brigitte played in the other room.
She’d kept her daughter home because of the disturbing night they’d spent and out of respect for Charles. Sister understood and said she’d send Brigitte’s work home with the neighbor’s son from across the courtyard. With only two more weeks of school remaining, Brigitte couldn’t afford to lag behind.
The phone rang, startling Jeanette out of her lethargy.
“Hello?” She held her breath, fearing it might be Rutherford.
“Jeannie? You okay?” It was Scott! “You sound sort of far away, lost-like.”
“I’m fine. Have you heard anything?”
“That’s why I’m calling.”
Scott exhaled. The breath came across the digitally clear line. He sounded… what? Disgusted? Angry? Both?
“They aren’t doing an autopsy.”
“What? Why not?” Jeanette strained to remember her course in legal medicine which all technicians were required to take to get licensed. She was sure unexplained deaths of healthy, young people were always autopsied by the coroner.
“No explanation. The body was sent to the hospital morgue with papers issuing its release to a funeral home. The only good news is the next-of-kin hasn’t been reached yet to finalize the burial arrangements. So, I called Charles’s law office and used my credentials to get the brother’s number in Atlanta. Then I called him.”
“And?”
“And I asked him to authorize a private autopsy.”
“And did he say yes?”
“Yep. My buddy who is a pathology resident and I are gonna do it tonight after everyone else goes home. We’ll release the body tomorrow, early, before the hospital wakes up.”
“Scott? Are you doing anything illegal?”
“No. Andrew did have the power of attorney for Charles and is his Executor. He was happy to sign the autopsy consent. In fact, he would’ve called the New Orleans Parish Coroner to complain, but I talked him out of it.”
“Then why all the secrecy?”
“Let me ask you this. Why didn’t the Coroner do the legally required autopsy?”
Jeanette’s mind reached a horrifying conclusion, one which she was sure Scott had reached the night before. She hadn’t seen it, because she hadn’t wanted to. Charles must have been murdered and someone didn’t want the police to find out.
“Scott, be careful. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
“You won’t. Trust me.”
“I do.” With my life.
“Stay home. Little Bits there with you?”
“Yes, I kept her home.”
“Good. I’ve contacted an old Marine buddy of Paul’s and mine. He owns a security firm. He’s going to arrange bodyguards for when I’m unavailable.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t do it if I thought it wasn’t.”
Jeanette heard the tension, the worry in his voice. She decided not to argue with him. Truth be told, she would be glad to have someone here.
“Why aren’t you coming home? Are you still at work? You need to sleep and eat sometime.” Especially if he was going to work on his night off — performing an autopsy.
“I’m at the airport. Andrew is flying in. We’re going to his brother’s apartment and look for anything that might help us. Andrew works for the Center for Disease Control, Jeannie. He wants to know what killed his brother as much as we do. Try to think what else Charles had to eat — something we
didn’t. If you think of it, isolate it from the rest of your food. Better yet. Get food delivered until we figure this out.”
“You think he ate something here that caused his death?”
She trembled at the thought. Covering the phone with her hand, she shouted, “Brigitte! Don’t eat anything until Mommy says so. Uncle Scott is worried about something being bad.”
Turning back to the phone, she asked, “Scott? What could it be? Brigitte had cereal and milk this morning. Should I be worried?”
“No, darlin’. It has to be something else. You’ll think of it. Just calm down. Tony will help you. This is what he does for a living — provide security. Just let him walk you through last evening. Okay?”
“Okay. When will I see you?”
“I’ll be bringing Andrew over to your place before I go to do the autopsy.”
“Fine. Be careful.”
“I will. You too.”
Jeanette heard the dial tone before she could reply. All she could do now was wait — and figure out what in her house could’ve killed Charles.
Realization hit her in the face. If her emotions hadn’t been so befuddled with Charles’s death, she would have seen it sooner. If his cause of death was in her house, then it had been meant for her — not Charles. Scott understood this. He was doing all these things not just to find evidence to lead to Charles’s killer, but to protect her from being the next victim.
“Mommy. There’s a man at the door. He said he knew Daddy and that Uncle Scott sent him.” Brigitte’s excited voice reached shrill heights. “And he’s got a gun.”
Jeanette threw her covers off and pulled on a chenille robe as she ran from the room. Standing on the other side of the locked screen door was the biggest man she’d ever seen.
“Hi. Jeannie?” His white teeth showed brightly against his coal black skin. No Creole blood in this Louisiana boy. “I’m Tony Fortier.” He held his private investigator’s license up against the screen. “Scott tell you why I’m here?”
“Yes. Please come in.” Jeanette unlocked the screen door.
“Momma? Can I talk to him about Daddy? Please?” Brigitte looked wary.
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