* * *
Nikki Quinn woke at four o’clock, feeling groggy and out of sorts, a good reason why she didn’t take naps during the day. Somehow she knew that she would wake up feeling just as she did now. The only remedy, she decided, was a hot-and-cold shower to wake her up. She thought about the simple dinner she was going to make for the girls when they arrived: soft-shell tacos and two pitchers of margaritas. All frozen. She was glad now that she’d taken the tacos and the drink mix out of the freezer before she’d headed upstairs.
Nikki danced under the hot spray, then cold, back to hot, then back to cold, followed by lukewarm water. When she stepped out of the shower, she was feeling more like her old self. While she towel-dried and dressed, she knew she should check her cell phone, but this precious time all alone was to be treasured because these moments were impossibly rare. Messages could wait.
Dressed now in warm, dove-gray sweats and sneakers, Nikki headed for the stairs to make some coffee, then a quick few minutes watching CNN to see if anything had happened in the world that she should know about before the girls came.
The moment she clicked on the TV, she was aware of how silent the house was, with Jack and Cyrus gone. Way too silent, she thought. She did like a quiet room, but one with just a smidgen of background noise. She worked quickly then, one eye on the TV and the other on the coffee she was measuring into the pot. Satisfied that things were all in place, Nikki reached for the phone. She came close to swooning when she saw that she had seventeen voice mails. She asked herself if she really wanted to listen to seventeen messages, most of them probably meaningless. She decided to stall a little longer, at least until she had her first cup of coffee. Then, and only then, would she feel fortified enough to deal with whatever lurked within the unheard messages. She supposed she should at least turn on the phone. Which she did. It rang almost instantly. “I knew I shouldn’t have done that,” she muttered over and over before she clicked it on to hear Jack’s voice. She could barely hear, what with Cyrus barking and all the chatter going on in the background. What she could tell for sure was that Jack was very, very upset. Rarely, if ever, did he allow himself to lose control of his voice.
“Slow down. I can barely hear you. What’s wrong? What do you mean, where have I been? I left the office early, came home, and took a nap. There’s no law against it that I know of. The girls are coming over for dinner. What’s wrong, Jack?” Nikki listened, her face going chalk white. “Oh, good Lord! I’ll call the girls and tell them to meet me at the hospital. I’ll leave now. Where are you? I hear Cyrus.”
“At the airport. Reagan National. We just got back here. Ted should be at the hospital already. He left a good hour before we did. Dennis. . . the kid made it all happen.”
“I’ll probably get to the hospital just when you do. She’s going to make it, isn’t she, Jack?” Nikki blinked when she realized the call had ended.
What to do? Who should she call first? Myra and Annie, of course. Nikki moved by rote then; she put away the frozen food on the counter, searched for her keys and purse, and looked around for her jacket, all the while trying to reach the girls with no results. Even Myra and Annie weren’t picking up.
Never one to wait around when she could be moving, through the tears that made it difficult to see what she was writing, Nikki penned off a note to stick on the door. It was a shame that everyone would make the trip all the way out here from town, only to turn around and head right back, which meant tonight’s meeting to discuss Maggie wasn’t going to happen. Maybe, all things considered, that was a good thing, she decided as she slipped into her jacket. She could already feel the guilt settling on her shoulders. Sobbing by now, she stuck the note on the kitchen door with a slice of electrical tape to ensure it didn’t blow away, what with the way the October wind was gusting.
Nikki settled herself behind the wheel, wiped her eyes until it was safe to drive, and said a little prayer the way Myra had taught her and Barbara when they were younger, just a little prayer, asking God to watch over her and to let her reach her destination safe and sound.
Tears continued to roll down Nikki’s cheeks as she drove against the traffic, glad she wasn’t going in the opposite direction. She felt like she was flying blind. Jack hadn’t told her anything other than Maggie was in surgery and had been hit by a car. How, what, when? It had to be serious if she was being operated on. Any accident was serious. Broken bones? What? She knew she would find out soon enough. The main question was whether she would be able to handle whatever she found out.
She thought about Maggie then, going back years and years to when she was an adversary, trying to expose the Vigilantes. And a worthy one, at that. She knew in her gut there wasn’t a better investigative reporter walking the earth than Maggie Spritzer. But in the end, after weeks and months of trying to nail them, she’d given up and enlisted in the cause. It had been a red-letter day, to be sure. And along with Maggie came Abner Tookus, the friend, and now Isabelle’s husband, who had helped them all out more times than she cared to remember.
Dear, sweet Maggie, with her crazy metabolism that allowed her to eat twenty-four/seven and never gain an ounce. Maggie was always the first one to get in line to help whoever needed help. And the boys had accepted her as the only female in their otherwise all-male boys’ club. It was something that did not sit well with the girls, but they sucked it up. Maggie declared herself neutral, going so far as to call herself Miss Switzerland. The meeting tonight was to discuss forcing Maggie to make a choice, the boys or the girls. And now that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe, after today, it would never happen.
Right now, however, none of that even seemed important. She hoped the others felt the same way. It was obvious the boys did, because they were all rushing to the hospital to be at Miss Switzerland’s side.
Nikki forced her thoughts to go in another direction. Better to think about something more positive. Maybe not something, but someone. Someone like Selma Roland, aka Livinia Lambert. Now that she thought about it, she’d seen a message on her phone from Selma Roland. She hadn’t bothered to listen to any of the other messages the moment she talked to Jack. Once she found a parking spot at the hospital, she would check her messages, because she did not believe in phone usage of any kind while driving. She wished more people felt like she did in that regard.
Ten minutes later, Nikki parked her red Jeep Cherokee next to a low-slung Porsche sports car. She whipped out her phone and listened to her messages. None from the girls, but there were nine from Jack, more from several colleagues checking in, and one from Selma Roland that simply said when she got home, she had gone straight to where she had hidden the tapes, and they were gone. She went on to say that the last time she’d checked them was about a month ago.
“What that means, Ms. Quinn, is this. You have to make all deliberate speed in filing my divorce papers—as quickly as humanly possible. I have to assume Wilson knows what I’ve been doing, and I do not think that will bode well for me. I think I might have to disappear for a little while. I will be in touch.”
Nikki played the message twice more until she had it memorized, then she erased it, but she did store the number in her phone bank. She was out of the Cherokee a moment later, sprinting toward the main entrance of the hospital, where she saw Abner and Espinosa outside, puffing away on cigarettes.
She rushed up to them. They hugged and said they didn’t know anything. Maggie was in surgery. Ted and the others were waiting to speak to the surgeon. And, no, none of the other girls had arrived as yet.
“Maggie had Ted and Annie listed as the people to be called in an emergency. That’s why Ted was called. The hospital wasn’t able to reach Annie.”
“I didn’t know you smoked,” Nikki said, somewhat inanely under the circumstances.
“We don’t. Some guy shoved the pack in my hand as he was leaving. He said he didn’t smoke, either. Just something to . . . you know . . . to calm you down, I guess,” Espinosa said.
Nikki shrugged. “I guess that
makes some kind of sense. I wasn’t able to reach anyone, either.”
Abner’s head bobbed up and down. “I know, we tried all afternoon. It’s almost as if everyone took a day off from using their cell phones. Ted is a basket case,” Abner said.
“Give us a little more time, and we’ll all be basket cases, along with him, if we don’t hear something soon. By the way, where is Cyrus?”
“Harry took him over to the BOLO Building. He should be back any minute. Harry, not Cyrus. Why?” Espinosa asked.
“Just wondered where he was. They don’t allow dogs in hospitals. Sometimes, Jack gets just a little crazy where Cyrus is concerned. He thinks that Cyrus is almost human and wants everyone else to think so, too, and to bend the rules. I’m just not in the mood for another battle like that. Give me one of those cigarettes!”
Abner dutifully handed over the crumpled package of cigarettes and held out a lighter to light her up. He laughed as Nikki coughed and sputtered, but she kept on puffing. “These darn things will kill you!” she gasped as she choked on the smoke.
“What you say is true, and that’s why we don’t smoke. This is a onetime event, just to get us over the hump. Here comes Harry!”
Nikki crushed out her cigarette and hugged Harry. “How is Cyrus?”
Harry laughed. “I think it’s safe to say he was one ticked-off dog when I left him. I gave him a whole bunch of treats, and, believe it or not, he refused them. You know how he loves being where the action is, and he knows he’s not being a part of it. He’ll probably wreck the place, but Jack said to take him, so I did. He snarled at me when I was leaving. Me! That dog loves and adores me.”
“Did love and adore you. That’s one dog you do not want to get on the bad side of. I’m just saying,” Espinosa said as he scampered away, far out of Harry’s reach. “C’mon, let’s go up to the waiting room. There might be some news by now. It’s almost six o’clock.”
Maggie Spritzer’s friends stopped short at the doorway to the waiting room. They blinked and gasped at a wild-looking Ted Robinson, who looked like he’d just come through a hurricane. He was pacing up and down, muttering and mumbling under his breath. When he saw the group, he bellowed, “Nothing yet! It’s been almost four hours! No one will tell me anything.”
A nurse in a crackly, starched, white uniform appeared out of nowhere. She was an older woman with a disposition as crackly as the outdated uniform she was wearing. She homed in on Ted and went nose to nose with him. “Young man, we do not bellow, nor do we shout or caterwaul in this hospital. This is a place of sickness and healing. I want you to sit down now, and the doctor will be out shortly to give you a status report. Do not make me come out here again, young man.”
The small crowd in the doorway moved quickly to get out of the way as the nurse snapped, crackled, and popped her way out to the nurses’ station. From there on in, all conversation, what little there was of it, was made in whisper mode.
By seven o’clock, all of Maggie’s friends, having gone out to the farm and seen the ominous note, were gathered in the small waiting room, having hushed conversations. It was Isabelle, sitting and holding hands with Abner, who spotted the weary-looking doctor, standing in the open doorway, dressed in green scrubs, face mask hanging askew around his neck, his stethoscope half in and half out of his pocket. She held up her hand and pointed to the doorway. All conversation ceased as the room became totally silent.
“I’m looking for Ms. de Silva and Mr. Robinson.” Both Annie and Ted stepped forward, neither saying a word.
The doctor’s brisk words belied the tired look in his eyes. “Ms. Spritzer is doing well. I had to remove her spleen. She had some internal bleeding, but we managed to stop it. Her pelvis is fractured. She has four fractured ribs. She also has a badly dislocated shoulder and two broken fingers on her right hand. She suffered a concussion, and we will be monitoring her minute by minute for the next twenty-four hours. She was awake and lucid in the recovery room. We have her on an IV morphine drip, and she is in a world of pain at the moment. That, of course, will subside as she moves forward with her recovery. She’s sleeping right now, and I expect her to sleep through the night. What that means to all of you is that you are to go home and return tomorrow. There is nothing you can do for Ms. Spritzer at the moment. Nurse Handley informed the patient that all of you are out here, so she knows you’re here. I feel safe in saying that right now she does not really care. She did, however, ask me to have someone look after her cat. I promised to pass on that particular request. She also . . . um . . . said she wants no visitors. She was as adamant as she could be, considering the condition she’s in. She said absolutely no visitors until she says so. We always try to do what the patient wants. That’s why I’m telling you to go home.”
“I’ll do that! I want to do that! Of course I will,” Ted said in a voice that was somewhere between a sob and a curse, no one could tell which.
“Does that mean we can’t go in to see her before we leave, Doctor?” Annie asked quietly.
“That’s exactly what it means. You can, however, take a look at her through the glass. To a certain extent, I’m breaking a rule. Tomorrow, when you return, you will not be able to do even that. But, as I said, she’s sleeping. Right now, that is the very best thing for her. There’s nothing else I can tell you, so if you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to where you can see her.”
Dr. Amos Latuda was like the Pied Piper of Hamelin as he led all of Maggie’s friends down the hall to where a half-glass wall allowed visitors to see into a patient’s room. “You have five minutes, folks, no more. The blind will be closed the moment you leave. Just so you know.”
The gang moved as they lined up to stop and take a quick look at their friend. The doctor, who had seen scenes like this play out too many times to remember, was still choked up at the tears, the tiny gasps of pain as the visitors touched the glass, blew kisses the patient couldn’t see, then stumbled away, blinded by their tears.
Once all the visitors had headed out to the elevator, Dr. Latuda moved off. He checked Maggie’s chart one last time before he closed the blind on the window, and only then did he make his way to the break room to strip down and head home. Hopefully to sleep, but he knew that was wishful thinking on his part. He was on call twenty-four/seven, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
In the lobby, Ted Robinson dug his heels in and said he was not leaving, that he would sit in the lobby all night. “Don’t you all get it? That’s Maggie up there. Someone needs to be here in case . . . Look, someone just needs to be here, and that someone is me. I’m not leaving.”
“Yes, Ted, you are,” Annie said quietly. “You promised to go to Maggie’s and take care of her cat, and that is exactly what you are going to do. Maggie is in good hands. There is not one thing you can do for her that isn’t being done by her doctors and nurses. This is not negotiable. In the morning, we will swing by and pick you up and bring you here. Are we clear on this, Ted?”
Ted knew when he was beaten. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Harry approaching, which hastened his positive reply, since Harry never took prisoners. He was just being a horse’s patoot, and he knew it. He had said he would take care of Hero, and that’s what he would do. “Okay,” he agreed.
Annie looked around. “What’s the plan here?”
“We’re all heading to Philadelphia. We have a seven o’clock breakfast meeting in the morning. We talked about this on the way here earlier. We’re going to take the nine o’clock train, which means we have to leave now. Espinosa, if you are agreeable, stay with Ted and give me a call in the morning. When I explain about Maggie, I don’t think there will be a problem. If . . . if you need us, call, and we’ll head back,” Jack said.
“I called a taxi for Ted and a taxi-van to take us to the station,” Dennis said. “They should be arriving any minute now.” He moved to the entrance door to underline his point.
Kathryn, always the most verbal of the group, took that moment to articulate h
er own point. “Sounds pretty cold and callous to me, if you want my opinion.”
Jack clenched his teeth so hard he was sure he cracked one of his back molars. “I didn’t ask for your opinion, Kathryn. I listened to what the surgeon said. He told us to leave. Maggie is in the best hands possible. In addition to that, he said Maggie did not want visitors. I repeat, she does not want visitors. What part of that aren’t you getting, Kathryn? It’s two hours from D.C. to Philly by Amtrak. It takes almost that long to get into D.C. from the farm during rush hour. If we have a charter plane on standby, we can be here in an hour. You do what you have to do, Kathryn, and we’ll do what we have to do. Maggie wouldn’t expect us to do anything different than what we’re doing now. So stuff it, Kathryn.” He then turned to his wife, and said, “Honey, walk outside with me, okay?”
Nikki sighed. She hated drama, and she hated guilt, two emotions that were consuming her at that very moment.
Outside, a large white van pulled up to the entrance, followed by a white cab. “Looks like our ride is here. Listen, Nik, the meeting in the morning is crucial. We came here prepared to let it fall by the wayside because Maggie is more important than any mission and dollar amount. Maggie is going to be okay. I know it in my gut. The doctor would have told us otherwise. He wouldn’t have sent us out of there if he thought there was going to be a crisis of some sort. So we’re leaving with a clear conscience. Ted, of course . . . is different. He’s in love with Maggie. It would be wrong to make him leave with us. I don’t like what I’m seeing on your face, Nik. All of you. We, the guys, talked about it earlier. Something is going on with you women where Maggie is concerned. I’m no seer, nor am I clairvoyant, but I have a feeling your little dinner party tonight had something to do with Maggie. Ted is the one who noticed how guilty you all looked, how stricken you were that Maggie was in the operating room.
“She wasn’t invited to the dinner party, was she? A yes or no will be good, Nik. But before you answer me, I’m asking you to remember what happened with Abner a while back. Don’t make the same mistake the guys and I made. Now you can answer me.”
Crash And Burn Page 5
