Down by the Riverside

by Jackie Lynn

  The patient took the spoonful. “Mmmm,” she responded, sounding more alert. “Just the same color as money.”

  I was glad to see she still had her sense of humor intact.

  I fed her a few more spoonfuls.

  “That’s just fine,” she said, holding her hand to her mouth. Then she pointed to the cup of ice. “Is there anything in there?” she asked.

  “Would you like some soda?” I asked.

  “Something clear,” she answered. “I feel a little unsettled.” She slid her tongue around her lips.

  I could tell she felt dry. I reached in my bag and handed her some Chap Stick. She took it and spread it across her lips and handed the tube back to me.

  “I’ll see what they have,” I replied and walked outside to the nurses’ station.

  An attendant showed me to the snack room and poured me a glass of Sprite to take to Ms. Lou Ellen. That’s when I met the nurse on duty, introduced myself, and got the full report about the surgery and the prognosis. Everything seemed to be fine for the older woman.

  The nurse, Maria, appeared glad to have me in the room with the patient since the unit was short-staffed that night and she was busy with a couple of people whose surgeries hadn’t gone nearly as well as Ms. Lou Ellen’s. I assured her that I would be there all night and that I would take good care of her, calling her if I needed assistance.

  Maria was young, and I could tell, quite overwhelmed. I walked back to the room, remembering those early days for me at the hospital, the way I got stuck with all the late shifts, all the most needy patients. I was thinking about my youth and was almost at Ms. Lou Ellen’s room when I glanced down the hall and noticed the ambulance attendant from earlier in the day, the woman, Becky Kunar.

  She pulled out the chart from the holder by the door of a room and was reading it. She was not in her EMT uniform, but rather was dressed in hospital scrubs, blue shirt with blue pants, netting over her hair and her shoes. She looked as if she might be working in the operating room.

  I thought that I might speak to her, tell her about how Ms. Lou Ellen was doing, thank her for getting her to the hospital in a timely and professional manner, so I waited for her to walk by. She went into the room and soon came back out wheeling a patient resting in the bed. She was talking to the older man she was transporting when she went past, and I could see that she didn’t recognize me. I decided not to interrupt her conversation with the patient.

  I walked into the room and Ms. Lou Ellen had pulled herself up a little in the bed. She had opened the drawer on the table and was going through some of her things that Lucas had brought her.

  “Is there a comb in here?” she asked.

  I smiled. “Well,” I answered, moving closer to her, “I don’t know.”

  I put down the drink and found a brush for the older woman. She took it and tried fixing her hair. She gave up after a few strokes. The IV line and the energy it took made it a more difficult task than she had anticipated.

  “Would you like some Sprite?” I asked.

  She nodded. I leaned down, placing the cup with the straw near her mouth. She took a couple of swallows and relaxed.

  “Darling,” she said as I placed the cup back on the table and took my seat beside her.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered.

  “Getting old is not for sissies.”

  I smiled. “No, ma’am, I guess it isn’t.” I reached over and returned the brush to the drawer. “But you aren’t getting old,” I said, trying to cheer her up.

  “Darling, I’m ancient,” she replied, “and my bones and joints are telling me so.” She winced as she tried to move over.

  I stood up, attempting to reposition her pillows.

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t listen to them.” I slid the sheet back and pulled a pillow underneath her knee. “Listen to something else.”

  “Honey, you listen to what speaks the loudest and right now, it’s a hip bone yelling at me.” I draped the sheet back around her, tucking her in.

  I sat down. I picked up her hand and stroked her long fingers.

  She closed her eyes. “What are you listening to?” she asked.

  The question caught me off-guard. “Ma’am?” I replied.

  She repeated herself. “What are you listening to, Rose Franklin?”

  “I don’t know, Ms. Lou Ellen,” I answered. “I’m not sure I know.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes. And as if she could read my troubled thoughts, see the coin I had stolen from Thomas, understand the stories that had confused me, the feelings that surprised me, she squeezed my hand.

  “You need to trust somebody, Rose Franklin.” She smiled. She took another sip of drink, slid back down in the bed, and nodded off again.

  “If only I knew who that should be,” I replied, but Ms. Lou Ellen was already fast asleep.

  I glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that it was getting late. An announcement was made that visiting hours were over and I settled in for a long night of caregiving.

  NINETEEN

  Ms. Lou Ellen drifted in and out of sleep as Maria came in a couple of times and checked the patient’s vital signs and the dressing. She said that Ms. Lou Ellen would need to get up again—for the second time since she had gotten to the room—sometime before breakfast.

  I assured her that I would help her with getting the patient out of the bed and over to the chair. For the rest of the night, we agreed to let her sleep. And with the way the older woman seemed to be snoozing, I didn’t think sleeping through the night was going to be a problem. She wasn’t showing any signs of pain or discomfort.

  Since she was sleeping so soundly, I decided to go to the coffee shop downstairs and get a little something to eat. Rhonda was right. It was midnight and the lunch I had devoured at Mrs. Franklin’s had finally worn off. I stopped by the nurses’ station and told Maria I was going downstairs and asked if she wanted anything. She kindly refused, saying that she had already taken her dinner break.

  I found my way down to the twenty-four-hour coffee shop and ordered a burger and fries. Then I sat down to wait for my order to be prepared. I picked up a newspaper and began reading the day’s headlines.

  “Well, hello there.” A voice came from just beside me.

  I looked over, and there was Deputy Fisk, still as polished and ordered as I remembered him from the previous day and earlier that morning.

  “Hey,” I said, sounding like we were old friends. His appearance surprised me, but I wasn’t displeased to see him or alarmed at his presence.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, placing the paper on the table.

  “Bar brawl,” he reported, pointing with his chin toward the emergency department that was just around the corner.

  “I had to bring a guy in for some stitches before I can take him to jail.” He was still on duty.

  I smiled. “You eating?” I asked.

  “I thought I might get a bite,” he answered.

  I slid the paper over, making room on the table for our dinners. “Well, here, join me,” I said.

  The man behind the grill called out my order and I excused myself, got up from my seat, went over, and picked it up. I returned and set my tray down and got some extra napkins. By the time I was at the table Fisk had ordered and was sitting across from me. He was drinking a soda.

  “What about you?” he asked. “These are late hours for a tourist.”

  “I’m here with Rhonda Boyd’s mother.” I took the wrap off of my hamburger.

  “Oh, that’s right,” he replied. “She fell this morning.”

  I took a bite and felt a bit of surprise that he would have known about the accident.

  He could tell what I was thinking.

  “Small town,” he said. “One channel on the scanner for all emergencies,” he explained.

  He had heard the call for the ambulance.

  The cook yelled out his order and he got up from his seat to retrieve it. He returned and was eating the sa
me meal I was. I smiled.

  “Healthy living,” I commented.

  He laughed. “I’ll work it off tomorrow,” he said.

  We ate a few bites without speaking.

  “I’m sorry about Sheriff Montgomery today,” he said, wiping off some ketchup that was smeared in the corner of his mouth.

  “That’s okay,” I replied, eating a French fry. “My dad was a big lawman. I’m used to that kind of interview.”

  He smiled. “Where was your dad working?” he asked.

  “Back home,” I answered, “North Carolina,” I added.

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said, taking another bite, “Rocky Mount.”

  I nodded, feeling a little disconcerted that he knew my hometown.

  His radio went off, but he reached down and turned down the volume.

  “I was the one who had to check you out,” he said, seeing my surprise.

  I nodded, feeling a bit vulnerable. I finished my burger.

  “We’ll wrap up this case next week,” he said. “It’ll be ruled as an accidental drowning.”

  I wiped my mouth and took a couple of swallows from my drink. “What makes you think that?” I asked.

  “They’ll find no evidence of self-inflicted harm and nobody wants his mother to have to suffer with the grief of thinking her son killed himself. It just isn’t important whether he committed suicide or not. And there won’t be enough evidence to prove it one way or another.”

  I nodded, thinking that it was a nice way of going with the story, but then I thought about all the things I had been learning. “Well, maybe not suicide, but what about homicide?” I asked.

  He ate his last bite of burger and leaned slightly across the table. “What do you mean?” he asked, appearing very interested in what I had just said. “What makes you ask a question like that?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  He sat waiting for my reply. And I remembered what Ms. Lou Ellen said and decided to trust somebody. And in that second of recollection, I decided to trust him, Deputy J. Fisk.

  “Do you know the story of the slave’s gold?” I asked, pouring out the rest of my French fries on a napkin.

  He shook his head.

  “Did you know that Mr. Lawrence Franklin was real interested in the land around the campground, that he thought he had discovered a burial ground for slaves and other folks near there?”

  He shook his head again. He sat very still, interested. He stopped chewing.

  I wiped off my hands and reached in my pocket and took out Tom’s coin. I placed it on the table between us.

  “I found this at Tom Sawyer’s trailer,” I said hesitantly.

  “He’s the one who told me the story about a slave trying to buy his family with gold coins. He said people were thinking that it was buried somewhere in West Memphis.”

  Deputy Fisk picked up the coin and examined it.

  “Tom was also helping Lawrence look for the burial ground and Mrs. Franklin, Lawrence’s mother, said that he had found it.”

  I took a deep breath as the deputy waited for the rest of my story. He glanced up at me and then again at the coin that he was still holding in his left hand.

  “At first I thought it was Sheriff Montgomery who knew about the gold and that it was somewhere near Shady Grove. I heard about his interest in buying the land, but Lucas wouldn’t sell it. So, I thought that maybe he was the one who knew the gold was somewhere near the campground and when Lawrence was snooping around, had him killed or something.”

  The deputy smiled and I assumed that he thought I was being a little dramatic. I figured it was sounding like a script for a television show. I paused. I certainly hoped that I was right to be telling all this to the young deputy.

  “But now I think it may be Tom,” I finally acknowledged.

  “I think he knew where the gold was and that Lawrence knew, too, or that together they found the burial site near Shady Grove and also found the gold. I don’t know.” I took another swallow from my drink.

  “I just know that it’s very strange that Tom knew about Lawrence and the burial ground and then also had this gold coin.” I looked around, hoping no one was listening to the conversation. I noticed that the cook at the grill was watching us.

  “It’s all crazy, I know,” I said.

  The deputy still had not responded. I could tell that he was thinking about what to say, what to do. “Can I keep this?” he asked, referring to the coin.

  I thought about it. “I suppose. I stole it this afternoon. My guess is that Tom will realize it sometime soon.”

  He nodded and unbuttoned his front pocket and dropped the coin in it. I heard the radio dispatcher on his radio calling his name. He lifted his eyebrows. “I guess those stitches are done. I better go.”

  He took his tray over to the trash can and dumped his trash. He hadn’t eaten everything on his plate. Then he walked over to the table and stood right beside me. He laid his hand on my shoulder. “Captain Burns would be proud of you.” And he turned and walked out of the room.

  As soon as he said my father’s name, I felt the air fly out of my lungs.

  How did he know his name? I wondered, then thinking that he must have discovered it when he did the background check on me. Still, something troubled me about the way he had acted, and I wanted to talk to him a little more, find out what he intended to do with my suspicions.

  I jumped up, threw my trash away, and followed him to the emergency department. When I rounded the corner into the waiting area he was nowhere to be found.

  I glanced around the large lobby. There were a few people sitting on chairs and the sofa, a woman sitting in the registration area. I didn’t spot the deputy, so I decided to head back upstairs. As I turned to walk to the elevator I ran smack into Dr. Lehman, the medical examiner I had spoken to earlier that day.

  “Hey, watch out!”

  But it was too late. I had already plowed right into him, causing him to spill the cup of coffee he was holding. I could tell it was hot and now burning his chest.

  “Oh, heavens,” I exclaimed. “I’m so sorry.” I tried wiping his jacket off with my hand. I was only making things worse.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  He seemed agitated by my attempts to clean him up. He pulled away. He shook the coffee off his hands and could see that some of the papers he was holding were now also stained. He made a huffing noise.

  “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  “Yeah, well, next time just be careful.” He wiped some more.

  I looked over to where I had just eaten my dinner and I ran over to the grill and grabbed some napkins. I came back and handed them to him. The coroner held his papers up and I took them from him as he tried to clean himself off. Then he finally glanced up at my face and recognized who I was.

  “It’s you,” he said, taking back his folder and handing me the wet napkins.

  “Yep,” I said with a hint of embarrassment.

  “The Franklin family member,” he said, naming me.

  I nodded. He looked down at his coat again and shook his head.

  “Well, I guess I didn’t need that coffee anyway.” He lifted his face.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said again. I balled-up the soggy napkins in my hand.

  “It’s fine.” He blew out another breath. “What are you still doing here?” he asked.

  “I’m staying with a friend,” I answered. “A patient,” I explained.

  He wiped his papers against his pants leg. “Oh,” he said.

  “By the way,” he added, surprising me that he would still hold a conversation. “I checked out the autopsy in Nashville.” He stood up straight and smoothed down the front of his stained jacket.

  I was listening.

  “They never did it,” he said, peering at me with a raised eyebrow. “They said they never had a record for the arrival of a Lawrence Franklin.”

  I was speechless. I took a few steps away from t
he doctor, giving him a little more room, waiting to hear more.

  “The paramedics ended up finally taking the body to Little Rock, but my friend who works there said the corpse didn’t get to the morgue until late that night. That it was almost ten hours after the reported time of finding the body.” He glanced at his watch.

  “Anyway, it’s going to be ruled as an accidental drowning. Mr. Lawrence had a history of heart disease in his family and there was evidence of the left anterior descending artery being partially blocked.”

  He straightened his jacket. “Since there was no one present at the time of death, no information available about what he was doing on the morning he disappeared, and because of the similarities between drowning and heart failure, they’re just closing the books on it, naming it an accident.”

  I couldn’t believe it.

  “What about the white sand you saw in his airways?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No presence of any of that when he finally got to the university hospital. His airways were cleaned out.” He shrugged.

  “Anyway, the weight of his lungs was slightly increased. There was evidence of diatoms native to the Mississippi River, contusions and abrasions that could have occurred postmortem, and no stones or vegetation found in the victim’s hands. They’re sticking with the closed coronary artery and accidental drowning.”

  I was relieved for Ms. Eulene because I knew now that she would be able to have her son’s funeral at the church instead of at the campground, that she’d be able to acquire any insurance he had put aside for her, and that there would be an end to any more talk and speculation about her son committing suicide. But I also felt disappointment. We would never really be able to understand how Mr. Franklin had died.

  “How did his airways get cleaned out?” I asked.

  The coroner shook his head.

  “Little Rock just assumed I did it on the initial assessment. They aren’t making a big deal about it.”

  He watched me closely. “And I’m not either,” he added, and I understood that he could be held liable for not performing and documenting a complete examination when the body first arrived on his shift.

  I nodded. I had no reason to get him into trouble. He had been very gracious and kind toward me. But I did wonder what happened to the body during those hours it was supposed to go to Nashville and then got sent to Little Rock.