Rehab Run

by Barbra Leslie

  I was laughing so hard that one of the nurses joked that maybe I didn’t need any more pain meds, but a few choice words from Laurence meant that I was soon watching the nice morphine going down the nice tube into my arm.

  Before the surgery, I didn’t ask about Dickie or Mary, and Laurence didn’t volunteer anything. I could sort of handle having a rusty pipe sticking out of my leg, but I wasn’t strong enough to hear any bad news.

  When they wheeled me down the hall for the surgery to remove the bit of rusty ladder sticking into my leg, I was lying on my side and Laurence was with me, telling me everybody could see my butt. I was laughing so hard I was crying.

  Not a bad way to go into surgery.

  * * *

  “By the way, you did have a tetanus shot when you were here last time,” Laurence was saying to me. They were the first words I heard when I was brought back to a room after the operation, after spending a bit of time in recovery when I came to. “You kept mentioning that you had tetanus when you were all doped up before the surgery. So it was a pretty good thing you nearly drowned before, ’cause I am here to tell you, that pipe was rusty. I’m having it nicely framed in a shadow box for you.”

  “They didn’t cut my leg off,” I said. I looked down.

  “No, we’ve all decided that there’s been too much cutting of things off around here lately. All further amputations have been postponed.” Laurence looked exhausted. He shook his head. “Bad joke. Sorry.”

  “When was the last time you slept or ate anything?”

  “If you count burnt coffee and six apple Danish as eating, then about ten minutes ago,” he said. “I think I’m crashing from the sugar rush.” He wasn’t talking about my leg.

  “What was the damage, Laurence?” I said. “Just tell me. Please. They didn’t have to amputate it, so I can handle anything else. I just need to know.” I also needed water. I looked around for the side of the bed, but moving my head made me nauseous.

  “I’ll field that one,” someone said. A doctor with a round face and a nice smile was there. She poured me some water and helped me drink it. “How do you feel?”

  “Better,” I said. “I don’t have a pipe rammed through my leg, and I’m not sitting at the bottom of a hole. Things are looking up.” She told me that I was lucky. The pole had missed my femoral artery and my sciatic nerve, and it had only “scraped” the femur. They had cleaned out the wound and packed it, and would leave it open for a few days to make sure there was no infection. Then they’d sew me back up. I was going to recover. While I might need some physical therapy and help walking for a while, the word “recover” was the one I was most interested in.

  “The fever?” I said. “I had a bad fever when I was down there, and my throat was killing me. Even before I went down, my throat was hurting.”

  “She’s hung up on tetanus,” Laurence informed the doctor.

  “You probably would be too, if you’d been impaled on a metal ladder in a hole in the ground,” the doctor shot back, and I grabbed her hand. She squeezed it. She was motherly. She reminded me of my sister-in-law Marie, but with fewer frills. “You’re fine for tetanus. Your infection from your last visit with us seems to have returned a bit.” She was looking at the chart at the end of my bed now, having extricated herself from my hand with a kindly pat. “You were given a scrip for antibiotics?”

  “I didn’t get much chance to take them,” I said. “This all happened pretty fast.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You’ve really been through it, Danielle.”

  “Call me Danny,” I said. My eyes were heavy. I was so tired, and, really, I didn’t feel at all well.

  “Get some rest,” she said. “We’re confident you’re going to be fine. The next day or two might be the worst, but I think you’re probably a tough young woman.” I tried to smile, and I wanted to assure her that whatever happened in the next two days, it would definitely not be worse than the time I spent in that bunker. “I want you to sleep, and I want your brother to sleep, too.” She was looking at Laurence intently. She grabbed a thermometer thing from the wall and, without asking him, stuck it in his ear. It beeped a couple of times.

  “You’re running a bit of a fever yourself,” she said. “I assume you’re not leaving her side, so I’ll get a bed or a cot brought in here, whatever we can manage.”

  “Thank you,” Laurence said, adding no wisecracks whatsoever.

  And then I slept.

  * * *

  When I woke up, the curtains were wide open to a sunny day.

  My leg hurt. A lot. But otherwise, I felt good. No fever. No headache or sore throat. And no drug cravings. And Laurence was sprawled out in a hospital bed that had been pushed against the window, snoring.

  Count your blessings, Dr. Singh had told me. I had so many to count, at that moment, I nearly didn’t know where to start. I wanted to call Dr. Singh. I would ask the nice doctor if she could get Dr. Singh’s phone number for me.

  A nurse came in and took my vitals, and I wouldn’t let her speak above a whisper. I wanted Laurence to sleep as long as he could. She told me I was doing well. She asked about my pain level, and I told her I could manage it for now. She told me it was better to suppress pain than to manage it if it got to full throttle, and she told me she was going to give me some pain meds. I asked for some food; I realized I was ravenously hungry. Not for anything with meat – I was definitely going the vegetarian route, at least for a while – but I was fantasizing about a cold glass of milk. Milk and scrambled eggs and toast and water and juice and a really crisp apple.

  I wanted to ask her about everyone. Dave, and Ned, and Dickie and Mary. I was ready to hear now, or at least I would be when I ate something. Instead, I asked her if anyone had been to visit me.

  “I just came on shift,” she said. She was a short, efficient-looking brunette who looked like she knew her job. She was probably a few years older than I was, and while she was friendly enough to me, I had a feeling that on the job she wouldn’t be someone you’d want to cross. I liked that in a nurse. Hell, I liked that in anyone.

  “It’s early,” she said. “We don’t allow visits until after 10 a.m. Docs are still doing rounds. I’ll see what we can scrape up for breakfast. We decided not to wake you two.” I thanked her, and a couple of minutes later, a younger woman in different scrubs brought me a cup of tea with two packets of honey, and told me breakfast would be along in a minute. I decided I could get used to this, and then I realized that I also needed the pain meds and was glad the nurse was getting some.

  After eating scrambled eggs and jello – no milk, no toast, no apple, not so soon after surgery, they said – and having another lovely dose of pain management, I drifted away again.

  I didn’t have any answers yet, but that was okay. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  * * *

  The next time I opened my eyes, Dave was sitting next to my bed, reading a battered copy of Today’s Parent magazine.

  “Something I should know?” I said. He startled and dropped the magazine into his lap. “Any little Daves running around?” I didn’t even know his last name. And even if he told me, I didn’t know whether I would believe him. And yet I’d trusted him with my life and, more importantly, with my family’s safety. Bizarre.

  “I had no idea breastfeeding could be so complicated,” he said. “Painful, even.”

  “Me either.” I smiled at him. He really did have an Al Pacino–Michael Corleone thing going on.

  “Somebody break your jaw?” I said.

  He shook his head. “No, but Jonas has informed me of the Godfather thing, if that’s what you’re thinking. He sends his love, by the way.” He lowered his voice. “Best if he and Bert and Lydia don’t come down here just now.”

  “I get it.” I could imagine the media and police were camped out somewhere nearby. There was no TV in this room, for which I was grateful. I sat up a bit and winced.

  “Is it bad? Should I get a nurse?”

  “No, stay t
here,” I said. “Where’s Laurence?”

  “Gone to the house to have a shower and get changed. I said I’d stay until he gets back.” He leaned forward. “I suppose you want to know what happened.”

  “You mean, why I got imprisoned in a hole in the ground for – wait a minute – how long was I down there, anyway?” It was starting to fade a bit. My sense of time felt distorted.

  “About ten hours,” he said.

  “That’s all?”

  “I’m sure it felt like more.” He cleared his throat and helped himself to my water. “First of all, Dickie and Mary are both alive.”

  “Oh, Jesus, thank you.” Somehow, I felt sure that the fact that no one had said anything meant no one wanted to tell me they were dead.

  “Mary was arrested. She’s facing a lot of charges. I don’t know what they are yet.” I opened my mouth to speak, and he held up his hand. “Danny, I don’t know how much time we’re going to have privately, so let me just tell you what I know quickly, okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Dickie Doyle lost one finger and three toes. And as I’m sure you saw, part of his scalp.”

  I swallowed drily. Dave poured me some water. From what I had seen through my fever, I thought Dickie had lost his whole foot. Three toes was, in context, good news, I supposed.

  “It wasn’t really a scalping. Apparently –”

  I held my hand up. “Can I hear about that part another time?” I felt a bit sick. I’m not usually so squeamish, but I didn’t want to think about it.

  “Sorry. Anyway, he’s going to be okay. Physically, anyway. Mentally, he goes between lucid and off in la-la land, apparently.” That fit with what I remembered from him being in the hole. “But he says it was Pamela who initially took him. Though sometimes he says it was Rose, so…”

  “I can see how he thought that,” I said. “I mean, if he was having issues with reality. You saw her in that nightgown, running through the trees.”

  Dave nodded, and winced a bit. “He said it was Pamela and Des Murphy who did the, uh, damage to him. He was in Mary’s basement for a day or two. He did say Mary tried to help him.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. “How did Mary get involved in this?”

  “Through her husband, I suppose,” Dave said. He paused. “Can you imagine having Pamela for a mother-in-law?”

  “Oy,” I said. My brain was spinning.

  “Mary has first-aid training. She saw to his wounds as best she could, I’m sure, but she didn’t have proper equipment or anything.”

  I swallowed. “Did he get anything for the pain?” I tried to imagine going through what Dickie had gone through. Having skin peeled off, toes cut off, a finger. Not to mention the scalping. And enduring the horrendous pain that would come after, without anything to take away the pain.

  No wonder he had looked like a monster, crawling at me in the hole. He must have gone somewhere very deep in his head to escape that level of torture.

  Dave shrugged. “No idea, Danny. I’m sure more will come out at trial.”

  “Tell me what happened when I was in the hole. Tell me about Des.”

  Dave shook his head and looked at his feet. He couldn’t look at me. “I wasn’t being careful. I thought the threat had passed. Pamela and Geoffrey were dead.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I didn’t. I should have.

  Des tasered him, Dave said. He was surprised I hadn’t heard it, the sound of the taser. “He punched me a few times, knocked me out when I was on the ground.” When he came to, he was handcuffed to the woodstove at Dickie’s cabin, his legs duct-taped together.

  “So he, what, carried you to Dickie’s?” Dave was slight, but dead weight is dead weight.

  Dave shrugged. “Probably a fireman’s lift,” he said. “Des is pretty big, and it’s not that far.”

  In the cabin, Des was pacing, he said, and he helped himself to a beer from Dickie’s fridge.

  “It was him,” I said. Dave looked at me. “That first night when Laurence and I went to Dickie’s cabin and he had been taken. It must have been Des who had been cooking the steak and drinking the beer.”

  “Or Pamela,” Dave said. He told me that Des kept saying that he should burn the cabin down, with Dave in it. He was frantic, talking to himself, mostly too low for Dave to hear. “I kept waiting for sirens. Ned would have gotten out of the area pretty quick, and called 911. And even if he had gone back to the safe house to get the others, I knew at least one of them would probably go to Dickie’s to find me.”

  “And you don’t know how long you were unconscious,” I said. He shook his head. “So what happened to Ned? Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. Furious, but fine.” As soon as Ned had pulled onto the road, Des had pulled him over with flashing lights, but no siren. He had taken a decommissioned police vehicle, Dave told me, so he couldn’t be traced.

  “Smart,” I said.

  “He is,” Dave said. “He’s a torturing, murderous hillbilly, but he’s not stupid.”

  I grinned at Dave, and he smiled back for a second. It looked like it hurt.

  “He tasered Ned in the car and stuck him in the trunk, and drove it off the road somewhere. He knows those woods; he knew where there was space to pull into the bush and leave a vehicle. Left Ned in there to suffocate, or die of thirst.”

  “He couldn’t risk anybody calling for help and finding us in the hole,” I said. I wrapped my arms around myself. For a while, I’d been sure that I would never get out of there, that in a day or two our bodies would have been found buried alive. “So how did you get away? And Ned?”

  At that moment my hospital door opened a bit. A hand with flowers pushed through, and someone said, “Knock, knock.”

  Ned came in, one arm in a sling, the other holding an obscenely large bouquet.

  “I was just getting to that part,” Dave said, grinning, indicating Ned.

  “Good,” Ned said. “I haven’t missed the entire storytelling session.” He came over and kissed my forehead. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Cleary.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Listen, fuckwad, that hole was more than fifteen feet deep,” I said. I ignored the flowers.

  “Oh, no way, that had to be thirty feet,” he agreed. “Cripes, you gave us a scare when that ladder gave out.” He plonked himself and the flowers at the end of my bed. Dave was looking at the floor, trying to hide his stupid crooked grin.

  “Wait,” I said slowly. “Were you guys trying to get me in that hole?” Maybe they thought I’d be safer down there or something. My mind was going overtime all of a sudden.

  I wanted my brother.

  “What? No.” Dave looked at me.

  “I just knew you wouldn’t get going on that goddamn ladder if I told you how deep it was,” Ned said. He pulled an apple out of his pocket and took a big bite of it, then seemed to realize he might be being rude. “Want some?” He held it out to me. I shook my head. He shrugged and took another bite. “I knew it was rickety, but not that rickety. You must be heavier than you look.” I stared at him, then at Dave, until they both started laughing. Ned kept on chuckling, that helpless tears-from-the-eyes laughter.

  I wasn’t laughing. I was too busy trying to stop myself from leaning over and punching him.

  “So sorry, Danny,” Ned said. “I’m still punchy. I’m not as young as I once was.”

  “You can say that again,” Dave said. “Remind me to fire you one of these days.”

  “As if. Imagine how bored you’d be.” Ned looked at me. “Seriously, I am so sorry this happened to you. If I had any idea that ladder was that close to giving out, I wouldn’t have sent you down there. I’m just not that good with the whole ‘damsel in distress’ thing.”

  “I’m sorry? Who the fuck do you think you’re calling a damsel in distress?” My leg hurt. I was fine before, but seeing Ned made me remember falling into the hole, and I found myself so angry that I was almost near tears.

&n
bsp; “Not you, Mary. Mary!” Ned put his good hand in the air. “Mary was the damsel in distress. I just… I should have just picked her up and carried her, but she was cringing when I tried to touch her at all, and backing away from me.”

  “You should have just carried her up,” Dave said. “That error in judgment could have cost Danny her life.” He was serious now. His words were even and quiet, but he was definitely serious. “As it is, it cost her a lot of pain, and now a lot of recovery.” Dave was pale. The bruise on his jaw stood out like a big purple rose.

  “It’s okay,” I said. My anger was gone as quickly as it had come on. If I had made a mistake like that, it would make me feel like hell, even if I tried to pretend it didn’t. “Besides, if I hadn’t fallen down there, if you had just gone down and carried Mary out, you might not have seen Dickie at all. He was way off in the back corner somewhere. He didn’t make himself, uh, seen, right away.” I tried to forget how he looked, blood all over his face from his head, crawling toward me in the dark. “I had a fever, and when Dickie came crawling out of the depths of the hole toward me, I thought he was an animal. I thought I was going to end up like Sarah.” I paused to collect myself. I had tears in my eyes, and I didn’t want them to fall. I continued. “Luckily for me, he wasn’t some bloody monster who’d come to eat me alive. He was too busy trying not to die from thirst and blood infection.”

  We were all silent for a minute.

  “Well, Jonas says that hole was probably either an old hiding place for slaves, like we talked about, or it could have just been somebody’s root cellar at one time. Anybody living closer to the lake wouldn’t have been able to dig a proper one close to the water line.” Ned was serious now. He looked chastened. He had gone down into the hole; he would have an idea of how horrible it would be to be trapped down there.

  “So,” I said. I tried to sit up a bit, and the pain from my leg made me feel nauseous for a second. I closed my eyes. “Who rescued you from the Jeep, oh great adventurer?”

  “I rescued myself, chiquita,” Ned said. “Well, no. To be honest, the good people of the local fire service rescued me.” I looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Murphy, the fucking idiot, didn’t think to take my cell off me when he put me in the trunk. I called 911. Easy peasy.”