The doctor, a preppy kid with D. Sweeney on his name tag, someone who didn’t seem old enough to drive, looked at her oddly. Evelyn found it encouraging that Angel combed her hair with her fingers as well as she could, never too sick to notice a decent-looking male.
“Angel has acute appendicitis,” he said to no one’s surprise or relief. “It’s going to have to come out, I’m afraid.”
Evelyn watched fear seep through her daughter’s features until it robbed her skin of color, but all Angel said was “Okay,” with a grimness that made Evelyn realize how much her daughter resembled her—stoic, keeping her emotions hidden where no one could taunt her with them. Characteristics Evelyn had always been proud of, though now she doubted herself. Had she set an example of strength for her daughter? Or repression?
“I’m going to do the surgery, and Dr. Cho will be the anesthesiologist.”
“Dr. Carry is her regular doctor,” Evelyn fussed as the situation slipped completely out of her control, and finally realized it had been all along.
“Yes, we’ll inform her pediatrician,” the young doctor said kindly, and went on. “The charge nurse tells me this is all okay through her insurance. We should be all set.”
Angel said nothing.
“Wh-wh-when will you be scheduling this for?” Evelyn’s words tumbled out and made no sense to her, though the doctor seemed to understand.
“Now.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear, Mrs. James. Angel’s appendix has to come out right now. I know we’d prefer to wait until at least tomorrow morning, but even that would be a great risk. No, we’ll start as soon as she’s through pre-op. Don’t worry,” he said, suddenly bursting into a cheerful, have-no-fear bedside manner. “I’ve done this at least forty times and I’ve never had a problem. Angel, when did you last eat?”
“Lunchtime,” Angel whispered. “I ate a little bit of a hamburger. But I didn’t want anything after that. I had a glass of milk at home, but only a few sips.”
Dr. Sweeney made a note. “The nurse will take you to pre-op, and he’ll show you where to wait, Mrs. James.”
“They’re going to cut me open, huh?” Angel said after the doctor left, turning over this plan in her mind and deciding how to feel about it.
“People have had their appendixes out for the past hundred years, honey,” Evelyn told the girl with confidence she didn’t feel. Never let kids see you scared, something she had learned from her mother. The debate about emotional expression aside, she knew that if she took it in stride, Angel would, too. “It’s a simple operation. Nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not worried.”
“I’m sure the doctors know exactly what they’re doing.” Despite the fact that I’ve never laid eyes on this medical staff before, I’m going to pretend that I have complete confidence in them. “You’ll be just fine.”
“What choice do I have?”
“Well,” Evelyn said, “you really don’t. It has to come out. If it bursts, you’ll be much sicker.”
“I know.”
“There’s really nothing anyone can do about it.”
“I know.”
“It’s best that the doctors take it out.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Don’t worry, Angel. You’ll be fine.”
“I know.”
Please, God, don’t let anything happen to my daughter.
The privacy curtain flew back with a theatrical flair and a young man in cow-print scrubs stepped into their space. “Hi!” he said. “I’m Nurse Neal. Which one of us is having our appendix out today?”
Evelyn frowned.
Angel giggled.
He consulted his clipboard with mock seriousness, then beamed at the girl in the bed. “And you must be . . . Angel.” He drew out the vowels with exaggerated interest, prompting another giggle. He pulled a sphygmomanometer off the wall. “That’s quite a id. A movie star’s name. Are you a movie star?”
“No,” Angel whispered. Her grin slipped into a grimace of pain, but quickly went back to a grin, and she willingly offered her arm to the blood pressure cuff.
Evelyn smiled for Angel’s sake and took her daughter’s other hand. “You’re the nurse that’s going to take her to pre-op?”
“That’s me,” he said, pumping. “Jimmy Neal. Nurse Neal. Pre-op’s on the third floor east, then she’ll go to operating room four. Just go to the third floor west nurses’ station and ask for the surgical waiting room. It’s a really nice room and they have free coffee, in case your nerves aren’t jangled enough.”
“Mom’s favorite stuff.”
“Your blood pressure is perfect, Angel.” Again he exaggerated the name, and it began to grate on Evelyn’s nerves even though she knew he was being kind. “Miss Movie Star. My aunt was an actress. The pinnacle of her success was a Garfield aluminum siding commercial. Her shoeprints are in cement outside the Hanna, but that’s only because she was bal—um, dating the manager.” Under Evelyn’s icy stare he changed the subject. “Time to go. You can walk with us, Mom. Please remember to take all your personal belongings with you when you leave and keep hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times.”
They made a slow-moving procession to the elevators and Evelyn watched as the overhead lights reflected from Angel’s upturned eyes. Her daughter seemed elaborately unconcerned, but then that was Angel’s favorite affectation. She had to be nervous but probably wasn’t afraid. It would never occur to someone her age that she might die; youth believes itself immortal. She wouldn’t think, as Evelyn did, of how important an empty stomach could be to the administration of a general anesthetic, maybe that half a hamburger would come up into the oxygen mask while Angel was in recovery and no one would be watching her and she could choke on her own vomit. She could have an allergic reaction to the anesthetic, the antibiotic, or any one of half a dozen other substances that would now be introduced into her body. Perhaps the appendix had already burst—no, it would have stopped hurting if it had—
Nurse Neal interrupted her thoughts. “How’s Mom doing?”
Evelyn bit back a retort. “Mom’s been better. How long has Dr. Sweeney been at this hospital?”
“Want to run a criminal history on him, Mom?” Angel asked.
“Criminal history?” Nurse Neal’s cheer faltered for a moment as he concentrated on angling the rolling bed into a double-long elevator. “Are you a cop?”
“No. I’d just like to know something about him. I only met the man an hour ago.”
“He’s terrific. He does tons of surgeries, never had any surprises. The nurses love him.” He stabbed the lighted button labeled 3. “He’s been here about a year and a half.”
“Great.”
“Don’t worry, Mom,” the nurse said in a voice too loud for the confined space. “Angel will be just fine.”
“Easy for you to say.” Evelyn stopped herself from adding, She’s not your daughter, but her glare said it all. Nurse Neal cut the banter and Evelyn kicked herself. She found her daughter’s hand again and squeezed. For the first time since she had turned twelve, Angel squeezed back. Evelyn’s eyes grew damp. The elevator doors opened.
“What about Dad?” Angel asked.
Shit!
“I’m sorry, honey,” Evelyn said in anguish. “I should have called him right away.”
“It’s no big deal.”
Believe me, I’d rather give him a miss. “No, he has to know. I don’t know if he’ll be able to get here in time, but I’ll call right away.”
“He doesn’t have to come.”
He does if he’s any kind of father. It was Terrie that didn’t have to come, but she would show up with a bouquet of flowers, a basket of snacks, balloons, and a teddy bear. Please, God, let her be out of town or something.
“Here’s pre-op,” Nurse Neal told them, as if it were the entrance to Disney World.
Evelyn jumped. “So soon?”
“Bye, Mom,” Angel said, w
ithdrawing her hand.
Don’t say good-bye! It’s not good-bye! “I’ll be right out here, honey,” Evelyn called, embarrassing them both as panic overtook her voice. The gurney slipped through the doors and the nurse turned to give Evelyn one last too-bright smile that he must have meant to be comforting.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Angel’s voice floated back to her. “People have been having these out for a hundred years!”
Why doesn’t that make me feel better?
The doors swung shut and her daughter was gone, among strangers.
Chapter 10
AT LEAST TERRIE DIDN’T answer the phone. Rick, predictably, saw no point in sitting in a hospital waiting room. “I’ll come by and see her when she’s home.”
“It’s up to you,” Evelyn said, walking a fine line between not wanting him there for her own sake and at the same time wanting him there for Angel’s. “I just thought you might want to be here when she wakes up.”
“She’ll be fine.”
“I know.” It’s only your daughter and it’s only major surgery, but hey, I wouldn’t want you to miss an episode of The Sopranos.
“I’ll give her a call later.”
“She’ll probably be here until tomorrow sometime, if not longer.”
“Maybe we’ll come by tomorrow, then, if she’s still there. What hospital are you at?”
“Riverside.”
Relieved and again feeling guilty because of it, Evelyn tried to page through an outdated issue of Glamour. She gave up and paced the waiting room, carefully avoiding eye contact with the other inmates. They all had the same forced calm, the same lurking worries; she didn’t want to talk about hers and didn’t want to hear theirs. She called her mother instead. She was the only person Evelyn wanted and needed for moral support and whom she had left at home to save her the stress of a hospital wait.
As always, she thought about work, finding it easier to imagine the bloodied corpses of strangers than any ER-inspired medical nightmares involving her daughter. They had two dead girls pulled from the river—one unknown and one very well known. Where could their paths have crossed?
At eleven, someone shook her awake from an uneasy dream in which Angel appeared in the lobby of the ME’s office in Dickensian garb, brandishing a bloody scalpel and telling her, “What were you worried about? People have been having their appendix out for a hundred years,” and Evelyn looked up through bleary eyes at Nurse Neal.
“All over, Mom.” He showed an indecent amount of energy for that time of night. “She got the star treatment. The nasty appendix is out and all is well in the state of Angel.”
Relief flooded through her. “Thank you,” she said before following him down a too-bright hallway, but added under her breath, “And don’t call me Mom.”
Angel seemed impossibly pale, almost translucent, but her eyes flickered open intermittently and she managed a debilitated smile in response to her name.
“It’s all over, honey. You’re just fine.”
“I told her that already,” Neal said.
Evelyn shot him a venomous look and he had the sense to leave.
She spent the rest of the night in an orange vinyl chair next to Angel’s bed. She woke with a deformed neck and could take comfort only in her daughter’s peaceful face and the knowledge that any guilt trip she could lay on Rick for not showing up would be an amateur effort compared to what Terrie would do. How could you let your daughter lie there all alone? She needed her daddy!
For the first time, Evelyn gave Terrie some careful thought. Maybe she had a really lousy father and she needed Rick to be seen as the perfect one. Maybe she had a perfect family and wanted to live up to it. Maybe she needed an ideal relationship with her husband’s child because she had no intention of having any of her own. Maybe, and more likely, she was one of those young, childless, never-before-married women who think they have all the answers to both situations, who had observed all her friends and knew exactly what they were doing wrong.
Maybe anything, Evelyn sighed.
Her pager went off in mid-doze, making her glad to have a cardiac care unit close by. When her heart stopped pounding, she called the number.
“I’m sorry, Tony,” she said. “I didn’t notice the time or I would have called.” She explained about Angel.
“When are you coming to work?”
“Probably tomorrow.”
“Probably? We need you here today. They’re doing the autopsy on Destiny Pierson. The place is full of cops and the press is all over the place and—”
“My daughter had her appendix out,” Evelyn explained patiently, knowing that Tony truly had no clue what Angel’s appendix had to do with her mother’s job. “I have to stay with her.”
“You said she was okay. Can’t you come in for part of the day? We need you here.”
“So does she. I’m sorry, Tony, but this can’t be helped.”
“This is the biggest murder to hit this city since—”
Patience evaporated. “I don’t give a shit,” she said, and hung up.
“Such language, Mom,” Angel murmured.
“Tony would drive a saint to swear. And in case you haven’t noticed, I ain’t no saint. How do you feel?”
“Fine,” Angel sighed. “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Are you going to start dating again?”
“What? Where did that come from?”
“I had a dream about you.” Angel’s voice sounded so low and sleepy that Evelyn had trouble catching the words. “You can, you know.”
“Thanks for your permission.” Evelyn laughed. “But no thank you.”
“I mean it.” A flicker of indignation strengthened her whisper. “Melissa’s mom doesn’t want to date anyone because she thinks it will screw Melissa up, but Melissa says it’s making her crazy. The sexual frustration is getting to the woman.”
“Well, it’s not getting to me.” Evelyn held her daughter’s half-closed gaze. “For the first time in seventeen years my life is my own, and I like it that way, thank you very much. Don’t you worry about my love life.”
“Isn’t there anyone you can date?”
“Go to sleep.”
“Someone at work?”
“No—oh.”
The telltale hesitation had the same effect as a shot of adrenaline. “Who?” Angel demanded.
“Nobody.”
“Mom.”
At least the subject kept Angel amused. “There is this new Homicide detective—”
“Is he nice?”
Evelyn gave a burst of laughter loud enough to wake up the college student with the broken leg in the next bed.
“What’s so funny?” Angel demanded.
“Nothing, honey, really. It just kind of struck me. When I went out with boys, that’s all your grandmother would ask me: ‘Is he a nice boy?’ Well, first she would ask is he Catholic, and then she’d ask if he was a nice boy. But never anything like where did he live, what did his father do for a living, did he have a car—just ‘Is he a nice boy?’ ”
“Grandma’s got her priorities straight.”
“Yes, she does.”
“So date this cop.”
“He hasn’t asked me, dear, nor does he seem likely to. Besides, work relationships are problematic. And Tony would hassle me over it.”
“But you don’t give a shit about work,” Angel reminded her slyly, and slipped away again before she could protest.
The problem was, Evelyn did give a shit. If she didn’t get some results soon, Rupert would lean on Tony, and Tony held her job in his chubby, nervous palm. More than that, it was Darryl’s daughter on that cold slab, and she wanted to be there to see it through. A great deal of work remained. Destiny’s clothes had to be removed and dried in sterile surroundings; careful photographs needed to be taken of the body’s injuries; and like all obsessive workers Evelyn didn’t want to leave those tasks to her perfectly competent coworkers. She wouldn’t be happy unless she did them
herself. She had promised Darryl she’d do everything she could and she’d meant it, and now she’d miss the first day of the investigation.
But it was her daughter in this cold hospital bed, and that was that.
Evelyn stooped over a water fountain, watching Rick and Terrie approach. The woman had restricted herself to a modest bouquet, a stuffed bunny, and two candy bars, both of which slid out of her arms as she asked how Angel felt. Evelyn told them what the doctors had said.
“Take this in to her,” Terrie said, handing half of the loot to Rick to give the appearance of a doting father, though even a doting father would never have picked out the sickly sweet teddy bear he now clutched in one hand. “I’ll give you two a minute.”
A backache prevented Evelyn from feeling sorry for her ex-husband, who obviously had no idea what she expected him to do during this intimate father-daughter minute. But he dutifully disappeared and Terrie turned to Evelyn, who couldn’t help but compare Terrie’s fresh face to her own oily skin and lank bangs. But then, she consoled herself, Terrie hadn’t spent the night in an orange vinyl chair.
“This must have been awful for you,” Terrie said with an annoying amount of bubbliness.
“It wouldn’t have been as bad if I could find a cup of coffee around here that’s not seven hours old.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t come last night, but by the time I got home, Rick insisted visiting hours were over and the hospital wouldn’t let us in.”
Rick always had a logic behind his convenience, Evelyn mused. He loved his daughter greatly but within reason, whereas Evelyn felt the whole point of love was that it lacked reason. Evelyn merely nodded at Terrie, too worn out for biting repartee.
“I knew she had to be sick when she was with us, from her pale skin,” Terrie went on, tapping her heels on the industrial-gray tile floor. “Did she have a fever?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you check?”
“Why would I check?” Evelyn tried to keep the irritation out of her voice. She had the strong feeling that any antipathy toward Terrie would be revealed later to Angel, from Terrie’s point of view and with the good stepmother in the starring role.
Trace Evidence Page 6
