Vultures at Twilight (33 page)

‘OK,' the medic said, and she peeled back the coat where her partner had cut it off around my shoulder and gave me a shot. I looked at the two medics, neither one more than thirty, both so earnest and focused. He'd put his shears back into his bright red kit and was now approaching with a pair of bolt cutters.

‘This may hurt,' the woman said, her kind brown eyes focused on mine.

‘It's OK,' I said, feeling the first warm glow of morphine. ‘I'm alive.'

‘Yes,' she said, a small smile breaking at the corners of her mouth as she gently gripped my elbows. ‘You most certainly are.'

I heard the snap of metal, and my hands fell apart. The pain was horrific as the woman gently eased my arms from around my back to my lap, which she cushioned with gauze trauma pads. I did not want to look, imagining the very worst.

The medic stared down, her head nodded as though appraising the ripeness of a piece of fruit at the market. ‘Jim, while you've got the cutters, do the wrists too.' She looked up. ‘You'll feel better with them off. How's the pain?'

‘Better,' I replied, feeling increasingly floaty.

‘I've seen worse,' she said. ‘I don't even know if you'll even need grafts.'

Comforted by her words, and the morphine, I hazarded a look. ‘Boiled lobsters,' I said through the mask, but all the fingers were where they should be, albeit bright red with angry fluid-filled blisters.

By now her partner had stripped off my coat, which lay in sad pieces on the ground. They eased me back on to the stretcher, my hands swaddled in loose gauze. ‘One, two, three,' she said, and I was up and into the back.

I don't remember much of the emergency room at Brattlebury Hospital. Just tremendous relief at seeing Ada in the curtained-off space next to mine. They cut away the rest of my clothes and ran tests, including a painful blood-gas measurement, where the technician jabbed into my damaged wrist taking blood from the artery. We both wore blue plastic oxygen masks and got hooked to cardiac monitors. It seemed that every fifteen minutes a nurse was showing me a pain scale with faces ranging from happy to very very sad, and I had to select one to indicate on a scale of ten how much pain I was in. It was definitely a tossup, yes, the pain was excruciating, but every time the morphine drip got pressed, I lost clarity. The worst was when the burn specialist came, and it wasn't so much the pain as my fear of what his conclusions would be. He was about my age, and had much of Bradley's quiet bedside manner. After he'd thoroughly examined my fingers, hands and wrists he spoke. ‘The reason it hurts so much is a good thing. You have first and second degree burns. The skin is going to fall off, and we'll need to give you an ointment to protect against infection and they are going to hurt . . . a lot. But I don't see any full thickness burning. You are very lucky, Mrs Campbell.'

If I wasn't stoned out of my gourd, and hooked to multiple IVs and a cardiac monitor, I would have hugged him. ‘They're going to be OK?' I asked, feeling tears track down my cheeks, and sounding like some bad soap-opera actress.

‘You're going to be fine.' And he grabbed the clipboard off its hook by the end of my bed, scribbled a few lines and went to find my nurse.

I drifted into a half-dreaming state, which was frequently interrupted by requests for me to point at one of the ten faces on the pain scale. More blood was taken, and at some point I was wheeled in and out of an x-ray suite. Finally, after a few hours of being poked and sedated, the ER physician determined we both needed to be admitted. Ada for observation, and me to insure I didn't go into shock from my wounds or have a repeat cardiac event.

With my daughters and a visibly shaken Aaron milling in the waiting room and popping back every few minutes to check in on me and Ada, I wasn't about to argue. At least they put us in the same room, our beds separated by three feet and a fall-leaf patterned plastic curtain.

In addition to my burns, we both had smoke inhalation and I had a throbbing bump on my forehead from the car accident. Ada had a racking cough that shook her frame each time she tried to clear her lungs.

Almost as soon as they'd settled us in our room my daughters appeared in the doorway with Aaron. ‘United we stand,' Ada whispered as she fiddled with the controls of her hospital bed, raising the back as high as it would go.

I smiled dreamily at my children and whispered back, ‘Divided we fall.' There was so much I needed to tell her.

‘How are you feeling?' Barbara asked, planting a kiss on my cheek, and then looking at my two bandaged hands that looked like jumbo gauze-wrapped marshmallows.

‘Tired,' I offered. ‘I'll be better when this is all over and I'm home.'

‘I bet.' Chris sat next to me on the bed.

There was a stretch of uncomfortable silence as the three of us sat.

‘You guys are like heroes,' Aaron said.

‘I suppose,' Ada said. ‘Aaron, hand me those slipper things?' She carefully moved her legs to the side of the bed. As she got up a wave of coughing overtook her. She struggled to get control of her breath, her face turned bright red.

‘You OK?' Aaron asked, standing beside her.

She nodded and placed a hand on her chest as tears squeezed from her eyes. ‘I'm fine.' She took a careful breath. ‘It's just going to take a while to clear the smoke, that's all.' She looked distracted.

‘You sure you're OK?' I asked.

‘I can't stop thinking about the fire,' she said, her eyes – like jewels – on mine. ‘It keeps popping into my head.'

‘Me too. It's strange . . . I'm thinking about something entirely different and suddenly I'm smelling smoke and having that awful feeling, like we're going to die.'

‘That's normal,' Chris offered. ‘You've both been through a trauma. It must have been awful. I can't imagine what I would have done. This whole thing is so scary.'

As she spoke, a heavyset man and a thin woman with a tightly curled mouse-brown permanent appeared in the door. While I'd never been introduced, I knew them: Ada's daughter, Susan, and son-in-law, Jack.

‘Mother,' the woman said, going to Ada.

‘Hello, dear,' Ada said, giving her a warm hug and kiss. ‘Lil, I don't think you ever met my daughter, Susan . . . and that's her husband Jack.'

I smiled at Susan. ‘Hi.' I looked into her face for traces of Ada's features; perhaps something around the mouth was the same. But she had a tentative expression, like she was waiting for something to taste bad. The man in the doorway, dressed in a navy suit, barely acknowledged my presence and didn't even look at his son.

With the arrival of his parents, Aaron grew sullen. His mother and he exchanged glances. Finally Susan spoke to him. ‘How is school going?' she asked.

‘Fine.' He looked at his hands.

‘It's better than fine,' Ada said. ‘He's going to make honor roll.'

‘That's our Aaron,' Susan responded with a forced enthusiasm.

I stared at her husband, still in the doorway, his features obscured by shadows. ‘Don't you want to sit?' I asked, curious for a closer look. ‘There's an extra chair.'

‘No thank you,' he replied curtly. ‘We weren't planning to stay . . . Susan.'

‘Right,' said Ada's daughter, standing at the sound of her husband's impatience. ‘We really can't stay.'

‘Of course,' said Ada. ‘It's nice that you came at all.'

Susan looked at her mother; it was clear that she wanted to say more.

‘Susan. Now!' her husband persisted.

‘Coming.' She stopped a few feet from the door, turned and looked at her son and then at Ada. ‘I'll come tomorrow.'

‘That would be lovely,' Ada answered.

‘Honey. Don't make us late . . . again.'

‘Coming.' And with a twitch of her lips, which might have been a smile, she trailed after her husband.

I watched as Chris and Barbara threw each other glances.

‘For the love of God –' Ada cut the silence – ‘just say it.' And then she stopped, catching the sad expression on Aaron's face. ‘I'm sorry, sweetie.'

‘It's not your fault,' he brooded. ‘I used to wish that she would leave him, but she never will.' He gritted his teeth as tears moistened his eyes. ‘I hate it when he does that, and that was nothing. She just stands there and apologizes.'

‘I know,' Ada tried to comfort him. ‘But everyone makes their choices and it just kills you when someone you love makes the wrong ones.'

‘You don't like him either,' Aaron stated.

‘I don't. I never have.'

‘Did you ever wish that they'd split up?'

She started to speak, and then she looked around the room. ‘Oh, who am I kidding? Yes.'

‘So it's not just me. You see it too.'

‘Of course I do.'

‘I don't want to go back there,' he stated. ‘I know this sounds bad, with you in the hospital right now. But I can't go back there. It's like everything I do is wrong, and it becomes a big deal. At least with you and Lil, it's not like it's the end of the world or anything if I mess up.'

‘We'll talk to your mother,' Ada said. ‘You can stay with me as long as you'd like.'

‘But if you move back to New York . . .'

‘He's right,' I interjected. ‘Oh who am
I
kidding?'
What is it about near-death experiences?
‘Ada –' and it was all I could do to keep from pulling out my IV and going to her – ‘if you go to New York, I'm coming with you.' She stared back, something caught in my chest; I felt myself falling into the sapphire blue of her eyes. I could see her struggle. I'd crossed a line;
no going back, Lil
. I didn't care what my daughters were thinking; only Ada mattered.

She smiled, and held my gaze. ‘We'll talk . . . later.' She glanced at my daughters, who seemed unnerved by my strange declaration, and were probably writing it off to the stress and the drugs. ‘But I have to look after my mother.'

‘I know.' I felt such horrible frustration, desperately wanting to let everyone know that I loved Ada Strauss. ‘And if you go, I'm coming.' But as I glanced from my bed to hers, and then made a quick survey of the worried looks on Barbara and Chris, I realized:
not the time or place, Lil.
I gritted my teeth and stopped the words that were screaming in my head:
I love you, Ada Strauss.

A knock at the door. Mattie Perez popped her head in. ‘OK to come in?' She was carrying a pair of African violets, one purple and one magenta.

‘How lovely,' Ada said, giving me a quick and reassuring wink.

‘So, you want some news?' Mattie asked. ‘Or would you rather wait?'

‘Are you insane?' Ada said. ‘What?'

‘I thought you'd like to know, your friend Evie's painting was recovered.'

Ada sighed. ‘Thank goodness, I think I've had enough crime . . . No offense. So where was it?'

‘Tolliver found it. One of the workmen had . . . misplaced it.'

‘Oh,' Ada responded. ‘Misplaced?'

‘Hank assures me there'll be an investigation. But frankly, not my job.'

‘So where do you go now?' I asked, realizing that the detective's time in Grenville was coming to an end, and something about that was sad.

‘Back to Hartford. I'm sure they'll have something new for me. Plus I have a mountain of paperwork to get through on this.'

‘You'll be missed,' Ada said. ‘Don't you want a career in calm and lovely Grenville?'

‘Too much crime,' she joked.

‘You have a point,' I agreed. ‘I suppose we need to give some sort of report.'

‘When you're feeling better.'

‘I feel fine now.' I looked at Barbara. ‘OK, I admit not one hundred percent. I just want to go home as soon as possible.'

‘Hey,' Barbara said defensively, ‘have I said a single word about that?'

‘True, you've been good.'

‘So what did happen?' Aaron blurted. ‘Why did he do it? It was the dentist, right?'

I looked around the room. They all wanted to know what happened in that cellar, Aaron was just young enough to come right out and ask for it.

I looked at Mattie. ‘Is it OK?'

‘Go ahead. We'll still need to do it formally, but I'm itching to know.'

‘Let's see . . . Parts of it are fuzzy. I remember driving in the rain and somewhere on the way to Shiloh he rammed me; I think I tried to get away . . .' Images tumbled as I pictured his eyes coming at me through the windshield, knowing we were going to crash and that I couldn't stop it. I remembered wondering if the airbag would work, and the sharp snap as it inflated. It blinded me and I had just wanted it out of my way. I could feel the car skidding. I thought I'd end up off the road sinking into the swamp.

‘There was so much rain that I couldn't tell what he was doing and then I saw the gun. It's strange,' I went on, feeling giddy from the drugs. ‘I knew he was going to kill me. At first I couldn't even feel afraid, just numb. He dragged me out; he must have carried me. I was pretty dazed.' I felt an itch in one of my fingers, and when I tried to move it, the scratch blossomed into sharp pain. I held my breath, and thought about pressing the pain pump, but in a couple of moments it eased. ‘I was dripping blood. I feel so strange.'

Ada was watching me intently. ‘Lil, you don't have to do this now. Maybe just rest.'

And I was caught in the warmth of her gaze. ‘Did I tell you that I love you?' I couldn't stop myself.

‘You did.' She didn't miss a beat. ‘And you're the bravest person I know, Lil. I love you too. And when we get out of here, we've got some figuring out to do. But right now, maybe some rest?'

‘No, I need to tell you what happened, and if going through this is what gave me the strength to tell you how I feel, then it lets me find something good, something wonderful inside so much ugliness and horror. Calvin was no monster, and yet, somehow he had become one. Like he'd figured a way to shut off the parts of him that were human and caring, as if there were two very different people living inside of him. When he handcuffed me and put me in the van I asked him what he planned to do. I've known – knew – Calvin most of my life. His mother and my mother had sat on committees together. I knew him when he was a little boy, I can even remember helping him dress up as a pirate one Halloween and then taking him around trick or treating. And later, he was our dentist. Even as he forced me into his van, he was polite . . . which is so strange, because he was clear that he was going to kill me. I remembered wondering about the other murders, and how the bodies had been found, that there seemed to be a purpose to it. Like Mildred's jewelry being sprinkled all over.'