The Madhatter's Guide To Chocolate

by Rhett DeVane

  Chapter Eight

  THE HOSPITAL

  The trip from the Chattahoochee I-10 interchange to the emergency entrance of Tallahassee Memorial Hospital took less than forty minutes. Carol ignored the posted speed limit and floored the accelerator. We both decided it was worth the risk of a ticket to push the envelope under the circumstances. We alternated between my hysteria over Jake and Carol’s calm voice coaxing me to have faith and breathe deep.

  “Carol, I’m so glad you could come with me. Rich was right. It wouldn’t have been a good idea for me to drive right now. How do you manage to stay so calm in a crisis?”

  Carol’s smile was lit by the soft glow of the dashboard lights. “I learned this deep-breathing trick in Lamaze class. As for the calm part, the twins have helped me to develop that ability. When you have kids, there’s nearly a crisis a day.”

  We pulled into the parking lot behind the emergency room at 1:00 AM. Even with the late hour, the emergency room was crowded with people. From the times I had ridden a shift with Chris—as part of the the Tallahassee Police Department’s citizens’ ride-along program—I knew this was the place for interesting folks to congregate from all parts of Leon and surrounding counties. On any given night, there could be a combination of simple ailments like cold or flu, domestic-violence victims, automobile accidents, and the aftermath of brawls brought on by too much alcohol and too little sense. Tonight was no exception. The harried personnel at the check-in desk barked names in succession.

  “I’ll go to the side door of the unit and see if my friend Mary’s on tonight.”

  Carol followed me through one set of double doors, then down the hallway to the threshold of a second set.

  “I need to see Mary Mathues! Is she on tonight?” I asked the first scrub-suited person I spotted.

  “Yeah, I just passed her. She expecting you?”

  “No, but it’s vitally important that I speak to her as soon as possible!”

  He nodded and headed down the main corridor. The interior of the emergency room looked to be as hectic as the waiting room. At several points, less critical patients reclined on sheet-draped gurneys lining the hall. Triage nurses dashed in and out of the rooms carrying charts and equipment.

  Mary appeared from a doorway, and waved. “Hey, what’s up?” she asked. “Kind of late for you to be out wandering around town.”

  “They just brought my friend, Jake Witherspoon, in by ambulance from Chattahoochee. Do you know anything about it? I was going to stop at the desk, but they looked swamped.”

  Mary tucked a chewed pencil behind one ear. “I did see someone bringing a guy in with police escort about a half hour ago. That’s probably him. Let me see what I can find out.”

  “Thanks! I have all of his insurance papers. I also have all the legal papers he drew up a couple of months back. I’m his medical surrogate.”

  “Well, that will certainly make it easier for you to be included in on everything if you’re not related.” She scuttled off in the direction of the main desk deep within the unit.

  Carol smiled. “You know everyone, Hattie. Police. Nurses. It sure helps to have friends like that.”

  “Mary used to be my next-door neighbor way back when I first moved to Tallahassee. We don’t see each other very often, but we know we can count on each other. I don’t know what I would’ve done without her over the years. She was incredible when Dad was in here with heart problems. I met a lot of the other nurses here, too.”

  Mary appeared at the double doors. “He’s still up in x-ray having a CAT scan. He was unconscious when they bought him in. He has a head injury, along with at least one broken bone, and several knife wounds to the legs and arms.” Mary’s petite features held genuine concern. “The head injury is the most life-threatening. They’ll check for intracranial bleeding. That’s about all I can tell you. Since you’re his medical surrogate, I’m sure the ER doctor will want to speak with you as soon as he has a report. It may be awhile before they know anything.” She rested a warm hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you go back to receiving and give Bonnie his insurance information? She’s in the office next to the front desk. The hospital will want a copy of the medical-surrogate form for his file, too. I’ll have the Doc come find you.”

  I hugged Mary. “Thanks tons. I don’t know where I’d be tonight without my buddies.”

  She scurried back to work, and Carol and I returned to the bedlam of the waiting room.

  “I guess it’s true what Aunt Piddie says about this place,” I said as we picked a path through the clumps of ailing people. “If you have to come here, you should fall out on the floor. You get more attention that way.”

  I found Bonnie tucked in a small office, clicking madly away on a computer keyboard, introduced myself, and completed the paperwork for Jake’s file.

  Then we waited. And waited. And waited. The crowd ebbed and flowed around us in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of human pain and folly. By the time the ER physician called my name, Carol and I had both consumed so much coffee we had to pace to maintain a semblance of sanity.

  “Hattie Davis?” the young baby-faced doctor called from the entrance door.

  “I’ll wait for you out here, Hattie. I need to call Rich,” Carol said.

  The doctor held the door open for us to pass. “Are you his next of kin?”

  I hesitated. “Yes, well—I’m the only family he has. He’s…he’s my best friend, and I’m his legal medical surrogate.”

  “Here, let’s sit down away from all the commotion.” He motioned to a small file room off the main corridor. “I thought you might prefer more privacy than what’s available out there.”

  He cleared his throat and referred to the chart. “Your friend has taken a heck of a beating. He has suffered a head injury. He has a compound fracture of the right femur—the long bone of the thigh—that will require extensive reconstructive surgery. He received multiple cuts, possibly from a knife, across the legs and torso. There was evidence of rectal hemorrhaging upon initial examination. There is a possibility that he was sodomized, probably with the same sharp object.”

  “Good Lord.” I closed my eyes to hold back the impending barrage of tears. “Be upfront with me. Is Jake going to die?”

  “The outcome of a severe blow to the head is hard to predict. The neurologist will be able to answer your questions once he has completed an evaluation. If there is no evidence of bleeding inside the brain, he will have a reasonable chance of full recovery. As soon as the surgical team has clearance, they will take him in for repairs to the rectal lining and initial correction for the compound fracture of the femur.”

  His smiled slightly and reached over to hold my hand. “Would you like for me to find Mary Mathues for you?”

  “Yes,” I said shakily. “I’ll be in the waiting room.”

  At almost 5 AM when Rich Burns walked into the surgical waiting room on the first floor. “Lordy, Hattie. You look ’bout like the southbound part of a northbound mule!”

  I stood and gave him a warm hug. “I could say the same about you, but you’re the best thing I’ve seen since your wife left here. ’Cept she’s prettier than you.”

  He flopped onto an upholstered chair. “Whew! What a night! I don’t think I’ve had one to compare in the twenty years I’ve been in law enforcement! What’s the word on Jake?”

  “He’s still in surgery. They’re setting a compound fracture of his right leg and repairing some cuts.”

  He reached down and loosened the bulky gun belt. “You talked to his doc yet?”

  I shrugged. “Only the ER physician. Jake has a head injury and the neurologist is supposed to talk to me at some point, but you know a hospital operates on its own time schedule. I guess they’ll fill me in after he’s in recovery. I figure they probably wouldn’t be doing the other work if his CAT scan came back showing a problem. I really wanted to tag Mary again to answer some questions, but I haven’t seen her in a couple of hours since I first talked to the ER
doctor.”

  He settled back into the chair. The leather holster squeaked in protest. “I brought your truck over with me. I got one of the Gadsden County boys to follow me over. They’re going to be trading out with Leon County and Tallahassee Police Department to keep a watch over Jake. Until they find the perpetrator, he could conceivably still be at risk. They’ll also need to be here when he comes around, so they can contact the investigators to hear what, if anything, he can recall about the attack.” He leaned over to gain access to a pocket and handed over my keys. “I’ll hitch a ride back home with the Decatur County, Georgia officer who spent the night over here last night. I’ll buy him breakfast. That’ll pay him back for the side trip through the country.”

  “I really appreciate all you and Carol have done for Jake and me.” I kissed him on the cheek.

  “Hope you kissed her like that too, Hattie. She’s a jealous woman.” His dimples flared at the corners of his mouth. Two black teenagers with angry dark eyes plopped down in the row opposite ours. When they noticed Rich’s uniform, they stood and relocated to the far side of the room.

  “I know you probably can’t talk a lot about it, Rich, but do you have any leads yet?”

  “Florida Department of Law Enforcement, FDLE, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, GBI, are crawling all over the two crime scenes. Since this involved a kidnapping and hate-crime, the FBI is also sending some people in. It’s complicated because the perpetrator took Jake over the state line.” He paused and used a cloth handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow. “I’m glad we’ll have all the resources of the combined agencies. This is a lot more than a small local police department could, or should, handle alone. Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office and Decatur County, Georgia, Sheriff’s office are also helping with the case.” His eyes were droopy and bloodshot.

  “You just get off?”

  “I had one of the other officers cover the last couple of hours of my shift. I wanted to come on over and get your truck to you. I figured you’d need it to get around once you left the hospital. Carol’s gonna call Margie and John to look after your animals. They’ve always had a key to the farmhouse from when your mama lived up there on the Hill by herself after your daddy died. Carol will go tell Joe, Evelyn, and Piddie the news, too. It wouldn’t do for them to hear it on television.”

  He stretched and yawned. “I spent some time up by the lake at the crime scene before I left to come over here. Last night, with the road closed, Turkey Point overlook was deserted. Otherwise, most nights, Decatur County Sheriff’s officers have to run kids off from the area where Jake was found. It was damn lucky that Ashley Wood and her boyfriend decided to walk up there for some privacy. She told our officer that Jake did the flowers for her sister’s wedding in December of last year. That’s why she recognized him right off.”

  I smiled. “Maybe not so lucky for little Ashley when her mama and daddy get through grounding her for slipping off to smooch at Turkey Point.”

  “We’ve all done it, haven’t we?” Rich winked. “After the scene they witnessed, I reckon it’ll be a good long while before those kids want to slip off anywhere!”

  “How long would it have taken to identify him if the kids didn’t know who he was?”

  “One of our boys was on duty with the ambulance team at the fireworks and heard the alert on Jake over his radio. Without him, or the kids knowing Jake, it would’ve taken a bit longer. The Georgia officer who was one of the first on scene found a Dragonfly Florist billing invoice in the pocket of a shirt he found hanging on a shrub. Even without the invoice address, the alert was out with Jake’s description, and it wouldn’t have been much longer before his identity was confirmed. It just expedited things having the kids there to identify him so quickly.”

  “I suppose it’s also a good thing, too, that it was a warm July night,” I said.

  “Yep, it would have been worse for him if the weather’d been damp and cold.”

  I sighed. “I’m stretching for things to feel thankful for, but all I can feel right now is anger mixed with a good serving of helplessness.” I combed my fingers wearily through my knotted hair.

  “There’ll be a lot of that to go around before this is all over with, I suppose,” he said, nodding. “Well, let me go con myself a ride to the country.” He stood and pinched me playfully on the cheek. “That little truck drives pretty smooth. Engine cuts out a little around ninety, though.”

  “I don’t know how Carol puts up with you,” I said.

  “It’s the boyish charm.” He flashed an impish grin. “One of us’ll be in contact with you. As soon as the media gets a’hold of this, our little town is gonna be a crazy place to be.” He shook his head. “I have a funny feeling it’s only just begun.”

  Nurse Marion’s Old-fashioned Fudge

  Ingredients: 2 cups white sugar, ½ cup corn syrup, ½ cup milk or cream, 1 tsp butter, 1 tsp vanilla, 2 Tbsp cocoa.

  Mix the first four ingredients, stirring occasionally. Simmer until soft. Remove from heat and beat in vanilla and cocoa with a wooden spoon until mixture is stiff. Add nuts or cherries if desired. Spread on waxed paper to cool.

  Cut into squares, wrap up in pretty napkins and give away as party favors or treats to guests.

  Chapter Nine

  THE FIRST DAY

  At the insistence of the neurologist, I went to the townhouse for a few hours of rest. Jake was out of surgery, stable, and settled into a bed in the neurological intensive care unit. I didn’t think I could sleep, but I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  I jerked awake at noon, quickly showered, changed into a clean pair of jeans and a shirt, grabbed a crossword puzzle book, and headed back to the hospital.

  Jake looked worse than when I’d seen him fresh out of recovery in the wee hours of the morning. His bruises had darkened to shades of angry deep red and purple, and his eyes appeared sunken into his swollen, pale face.

  “He’s breathing on his own,” Mimi Sullivan, the neurological intensive-care unit nurse commented. “If he remains stable, he may get to move out onto the floor by tomorrow.”

  “Even if he’s still unconscious?”

  “Yes.” She checked his monitor. It amazed me how technology had improved patient care. Jake’s heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, and blood oxygenation were displayed on the screen.

  I touched Jake’s hand. “I feel so helpless.”

  “Talk to him. About anything—everything. We don’t know how much he can hear, but often people who come out from a coma report hearing the voice of a loved one while they were unconscious.” She made a few notes in Jake’s chart. “Keep your visits short—ten minutes once an hour. And, only two visitors at a time while he’s here in the unit.”

  “Mimi, how long do you think he’ll be this way?”

  She flipped the chart closed and rested it on her hip. “Depends. As the swelling in his brain decreases, he’ll be more likely to wake up. With severe trauma to the body, it’s partly the shock as well. I’ve always felt like the patient will wake up when the body’s healed enough to deal with outside input.” She nodded toward the bed. “You talk to him, Hattie. You’re the best medicine.” Mimi possessed the calm demeanor of a seasoned caregiver. Her neatly pressed uniform, clean white shoes, efficient movements, and even- toned voice garnered trust.

  “Thanks, Mimi. I’ve always said if you want to understand something, don’t ask the doctor, ask the nurse.”

  “It’s ’cause we speak plain English!” she called over her shoulder as she turned to complete the rest of her rounds.

  For a moment, I studied his bruised face. The turmoil of conflicting emotions threatened to choke any words. The soft whir of the machinery, interrupted by the occasional whoosh of a respirator, broke the stillness of the ten-bed unit. I pulled a small bedside chair to Jake’s side, held his hand, cleared my throat, and began to speak quietly.

  “Jake, do you remember what Chattahoochee was like when we were kids? I can see
it just like it was yesterday. Picken’s Drugstore on the corner. It had a long white glitter-sparkly counter with thick padded seats on polished chrome bases. Black and white tile on the floor. And, the trim on the walls was bright red. There was a long mirror that ran the length of the bar with lines of clean glasses.” I sighed. “Those incredible fountain floats, made with whole milk and real ice cream. They were heaven on earth for twenty-five cents. Bobby used to take us with him while Mom was grocery shopping. When we were older, we’d go by ourselves, just you and me. Do you remember?

  “And, the theatre? We went every Saturday afternoon for the matinee.” I giggled. “You hated the horror flicks. I loved them. Beware of the Blob – that was a doozy, for sure. Scared you half to death! We didn’t get to see all of it, though. The usher came and told us to go on home, that there was trouble brewing with the black kids. They closed it down after that.

  “Oh, and the Western Auto store! You wanted the red wagon in the display window, only your mother refused to buy it. God, she was stingy. No offense, Jake. Remember when we used to take the bikes and ride down Thrill Hill when we weren’t supposed to? And, the time what’s-her-name fell off half way down and was picking gravel out of her knees for weeks?”

  With the intermittent beep of a monitor, I traipsed down memory lane in ten-minute increments until my voice grew hoarse.

  I concentrated on the crossword puzzle on my lap. Sixteen down: three-letter word for law officer. Cop!

  Weird stuff happens. Kathy walked into the neuro waiting room right at that moment, still wearing her navy Tallahassee Police Department uniform. “Hey, I just got off and thought I’d swing by and check on things. How’s Jake?”

  I filled her in on his status. “I can’t stop thinking about the Fourth. What if he’d been lying there in the shop bleeding to death, and I just left him? I don’t know what came over me! When I saw all the broken glass, the word faggot painted on the wall, and the smeared blood where I’d stepped, I turned and ran out as fast as I could!”