Dances Naked (29 page)

Billy inhaled sharply. “Uh, no; don’t bother,” he said. “I’ll just take a drive out there on my way home. There won’t be any overtime involved: I’ll give this one to the city,” he said with a fabricated smile. “See you tonight,” he
added
, giving her a salute in farewell.

Billy walked out of the building, his phony smile still locked in place. “Just a few more yards to the truck,” he said softly through clenched teeth and taut lips. He opened the door of ‘The Beast,’ his red ’64 Dodge pickup truck, buckled up, powered up
,
and backed out of his parking spot, nearly bumping into a slow moving pedestrian.

“Watch where you’re going, asshole!” screamed the bleached blond, middle-aged barfly, punctuating her remark with a middle-fingered gesture and glare.

“Sorry,” he said
,
then double-checked to make sure he wasn’t endangering any other inmate’s friends or relatives on their way to the jail for visiting hours.

As soon as he was out of the parking lot and onto the highway and its blessed anonymity, he let his face relax. Could it be that his father had come back? The site that Dyane had referred to was where he had picked up this same truck after his brother, James, and best friend in the whole world, Leah, went back in time to the 18
th
century. It was also where Leah’s mother had disappeared a few weeks before that, her destination that same, 232 years in the past, time period.

Billy shook his head. It was too much to hope for. It was his business philosophy to keep an open mind when approaching the scene of a crime. Or an incident, he reminded himself. Hopefully
,
the old man Cry Wolf Cindy had reportedly seen was really only passed out
,
not dead.

Billy slowed down as he approached The Trees, watching his route carefully to be sure he didn’t run into or over someone. He left the road and took the often used
,
but unpaved
,
shortcut to the Robbins’ place.

And there he was.

Billy stopped the truck, took two quick, sharp breaths
,
then pushed open his door and immediately puked on the ground. He turned his head, wiped his mouth on his sleeve
,
and held onto the side of the truck, hugging the flanks of the steel behemoth for both physical and emotional support. First
,
his stomach had failed him
,
and now his knees had forgotten how to keep his thighs and shins in alignment. He clutched the top of the truck’s bed, pulled himself up straight
,
and turned back to look at the person on the ground again. Yes, he was breathing, or at least moving his hand toward his head. Dead men don’t move.

Billy didn’t remember running to his father’s side. He was just there as soon as he saw that he was alive.

“Dad?” he asked hopefully.

Marty forced open one eye and whispered, “Billy?” then shut his eye again and smiled. “Water, please,” he mouthed then let his relieved smile take over his face. He was home.

Billy sprinted back to the truck and brought his plastic water bottle with him. He held up his father’s head,
and dribbled
a few drops at a time into his mouth. “Just a little bit to start with, okay?”

Marty sniffed then nodded that he understood. He felt like he
was crying. Emotionally he was—
the tight throat, urge to sniff
,
and chest heaves were all there
,
but his body was so dried up that it couldn’t produce a tear. He was home and his son, the son he never knew he had, was taking care of him.

“Dad, I’m going to take you to the hospital. Now, I’m not a doctor
,
but I have had quite a bit of first aid training
,
and it looks to me like you’re severely dehydrated. I don’t want to wait for an ambulance
,
so you just let me carry you, okay?”

Marty answered by tightly squeezing his eyes, sending up a silent prayer that he would make it to the hospital. His heart’s thump, thump, thudding was now thump, thud, thudding; his ticker wasn’t beating right.

Billy assessed the situation before acting. Where should he put him? Should he be seated in the front so he could keep an eye on him or should he lay the frail man in the bed of the truck where there would be less stress on his body? The hospital was nearly a half hour away. No, twenty minutes, maybe less: he had the magnetic mount siren behind the seat. He could make a path through traffic and still beat the time of any ambulance dispatched to retrieve him. But
,
he didn’t have an IV bag of Ringer’s lactate solution or an EMT standing by to administer it. Marty was in rough shape. He needed to get to the hospital ASAP and a prone position would probably be easier on his severely dehydrated body.

Billy opened out the tailgate of the truck and threw in his jacket. He’d arrange it as a pillow later. “Here, have a little bitty bit more water before you get in the back.” He dribbled a few more drops into the parted cracked lips. “Okay, how’s your stomach? You’re not going to puke, are you?”

Marty’s eyes were still shut. It hurt to open them and he knew why. They were totally dried out. There wasn’t any lubricating moisture
left
between his desiccated orbs and the papery sheaths that served as eyelids. He shook his head in answer to Billy’s question. He was going to will that bit of moisture to stay inside him. Besides, the water he had already drunk never made it to his stomach. It had been absorbed by the lining of his mouth, his tongue, and his parched gullet. He couldn’t open his eyes to get another look at his son, but he could smile at him. Hopefully, they would have time to talk and gaze at each other later. He could only pray that he would pull through, so he did.

Billy gently pulled Marty up into a seated position
,
wrapped the old man’s arm around his neck, grasping him around his bony back with one arm
,
the other under the knees. “On three,” he said
,
and then lifted him from his squatted position to a wide stance, grunting just a little on his way up. His father was definitely lean but still a tall man and not scrawny. He steadied himself and his load then asked, “Ready to go?”

Marty replied with a gentle squeeze of his arm around Billy’s shoulder. The excited son loaded with his feeble father shuffled to the
truck
. “I’m going to set you in. Hold on,” he commanded as he shifted his
father’s weight, lifting him on
to the tailgate. “Now don’t go falling out,” he ordered as he let go so he could jump in and settle him into the bed.

“Here, use this as a pillow
,
and then…” Billy said as he wadded up his windbreaker under the old man’s head. He pulled a red bandana out of his front pocket and shook it out, “I’ll put together a fluid delivery system.”

Billy jumped out of the truck and ran back to retrieve the water bottle. He looked around quickly to see if there was anything he had missed; his detective nature was still functional and on high alert. “Yup,” he said as he picked up the small silver coin in the dirt and stuck it in his pocket, “we don’t want to leave you here.”

Billy jumped into the back of the
pickup
. “I don’t want you drinking
,
but I think this will work to keep your mouth moist. Here, I wet my bandana and then stuck one end in the water bottle. Don’t let the bottle fall over,” Billy said as he stuffed it among the creases of the jacket, “but go ahead and take a pull every once in a while. Can you handle that?”

Marty nodded, his eyes still closed and the smile of serenity still pasted on his tanned, leathery face. He couldn’t talk but did sigh deeply, letting his son know he was ready to hit the road to the hospital.

“Gotcha,” Billy said joyfully as he realized he could understand the tacit communication. “I’m not going to spare the rubber
,
but I won’t be taking any fast corners either
,
so you won’t be rolling around back here. I’ll see you at the hospital, Dad.” He smiled at the designation then bent down and kissed his father on the forehead, hoping he hadn’t lingered too long with the buss he thought he would never be able to give.

Billy called for support from his cell phone as soon as he hit the main highway. Two squad cars with sirens and lights joined his blue light,
horn honking, fast-paced
procession to the hospital. His escorts made sure he made it through the construction zone without delay. The truck drivers didn’t like that they had to wait
,
but then again, they only had a road to pave and not a man on the verge of death
who
needed medical attention.

The hospital’s emergency room nurses, a gurney
,
and IV delivery system were ready and waiting behind the double doors before the truck was in sight. The truck pulled to a stop and two hefty interns were right there to lift Marty onto the gurney. They paused after letting the tailgate down. They could see that Billy wanted to be the one to move him to the end of the truck. “We’re here, Dad,” he said, gently pulling the red handkerchief away from the frail man’s mouth. “These guys and gals will put you back together again in no time. And
,
I made a quick call to Mom. She’ll be here soon.”

Marty’s eyes popped open. Evidently
,
he had enough fluid in him to allow his eyelids to work again. “Yes, Bibb’s on her way,” Billy said gently. “I’ll bring
her in as soon as she gets here. Thanks for coming home.”

Ж

Billy followed behind the nurses and intern a little too closely. “Billy, now you know we know what we’re doing here. Why don’t you wait out in the lobby
? W
e’ll let you know what’s going on,” the
big, dark-skinned male intern suggested strongly.

“Not this time, Nate; he’s my father
,
and you’ll need more muscle power than you have to pull me away,” Billy said with a judicious mix of mirth and determination. He knew Nate had been a wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers, was twice his size
,
and probably three times as strong as he was
,
but he’d waited too long to be with his father to be sent out to wait in some holding pattern.

“Okay, I’ll make an exception this time, you bein’ a cop and all. But
,
if you start to get squeamish, I’d appreciate it if you found a place away from us to lose your cookies.”

“No worries,” Billy said as he smacked the big button on the
wall
to get inside the emergency room’s doublewide doors. “You won’t even know I’m here.”

The first order of business was to start an IV. The overhead lights were as bright as the sunny morning outside
,
but that didn’t help the big man get the cannula inserted. “shit,” Nate mumbled.

“What’s wrong?” Billy whispered loudly. “Is he okay? Do you need a hand? Can I help?”

Nate exhaled loudly in frustration. “Yes, you can. You can go out into the lobby and drink abo
ut three quarts of water. Your d
ad is so dehydrated
that
I’m having a hell of a time finding a vein. I’ll get a smaller gauge
,
but you
really need to be out of here—
you’re getting on my nerves.”

“Come on, Billy,” Nurse Mandy said as she put her hand on Billy’s elbow. “It probably
won’t
rehydrate your father when you drink for him but, hey, it’s worth a try. Besides, I think he’ll be able to relax more if you aren’t so close. You have a tremendous amount of negative energy bouncing all over the place. Re
member what Leah always said, ‘N
egative energy keeps away the healing
,
’ or something like that.”

“Okay, I’ll go. Hey, Dad,” Billy called back, “I’m going to drink a gallon of water for you. Don’t let him hurt you or I’ll kick his butt!”

Marty managed to open one eye. He looked up and saw the size of the doctor-type person. He looked like an armored truck on steroids. “You’d better do like he said,” he whispered to Nate then chortled softly. “And
, don’t worry about hurting me;
just get it done.”

Nate grabbed a smaller gauged cannula and got the line started. “Sorry for the extra pokes there, sir. This solution will have you feeling better in no time.
Now, while we’re waiting, I
want
you
to
have some sips of this,” Nate offered him the straw
and
the orange flavored medical grade sports drink, “and then I’m going to give you a bit of a sponge bath. Unless you’d rather have Nurse Mandy do that for you.”

Marty shook his head minimally; he still had a monster headache from the dehydration. He swallowed and realized he had some spit in his mouth now and could probably speak in a normal voice. “Ahem, Lord, thank you for
the
saliva
,
and good hospital help
,
and, well, everything. No, if you don’t want to do it, go ahea
d and send my son in here. We
have a lot of catching up to do and I’m sure he can talk and scrub at the same time.”