Silent Pledge

by Hannah Alexander

  Mercy checked the telephone recorder and found no new messages. She was just leaning back in the chair to relax for a few moments when the front door opened and Lee Becker walked in with her daughter, Shannon.

  Fifteen-year-old Shannon’s face held barely more color than the eggshell walls of the clinic waiting room. Her eyes seemed sunken into their sockets. Her blond hair had been cut supershort. What shocked Mercy most was the fact that even though she retained a female chest line, her pink sweater hung down over her thin shoulders in folds, and her jeans bagged over hip bones that jutted out like flesh-covered pogo sticks. The child appeared to have tried to erase all evidence of her femininity.

  “Hi, Dr. Mercy.” Even Shannon’s voice sounded lifeless.

  Mercy got up and went around through the door to meet them in the middle of the room. “Shannon, what’s going on? What happened?” Three months ago this child had been on the verge of blossoming maturity.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m coming down with the flu or something. I don’t feel too great.”

  “As I said, she tried to pass out on me at home.” Lee’s high, clear voice was filled with worry.

  “And how long has this been going on?” Mercy asked as she and Lee walked with Shannon back to the first exam room. “How much weight have you lost?”

  Shannon blinked up at her and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve tried weighing her,” Lee said. “She won’t let me. I figure it’s one of those teenage things she’ll outgrow. I remember I was pretty self-conscious about my weight at her age.”

  Before they reached the room, Mercy directed her patient to the set of scales in the wide hallway that stretched between the exam rooms, office, X-ray room and lab. “Step up on there, young lady. You’re not getting out of it this time.”

  Shannon hesitated and groaned but did as she was told. Mercy operated the balance weights quickly. Before Shannon could step down, Mercy measured her height, as well. The numbers didn’t surprise her.

  “Not only have you lost thirty pounds, Shannon, but you’ve grown an inch. That would mean major additional caloric needs in your body, which you obviously have not been getting. Now, let’s get you onto a bed.” She gently took Shannon’s emaciated arm and guided her from the scales into a room. “All this weight loss can’t be from the flu.”

  Lee helped lay her daughter onto the exam bed and brushed motherly fingers across the short, stubby growth of Shannon’s blond hair. “You never really regained your appetite after what happened in October, did you, babe?”

  The fifteen-year-old lay back against the pillow with a sigh of relief. She ignored her mother’s question.

  Mercy reached for a thermometer. “Didn’t the counselor pick up on this?”

  “She never really asked me about it,” Shannon said.

  “She told us Shannon was doing very well, and she cut her visits down to an ‘as needed’ basis,” Lee explained. “I knew Shannon had wanted to lose some weight anyway, so I didn’t think very much about it until the past few days, when she started looking so pale.”

  Mercy placed the tip of the tympanic thermometer in the girl’s right ear and took a reading. Ninety-six. Her skin felt cool to the touch. “I’m going to pinch your arm, but not hard.” She pulled the flesh up and compressed it between her thumb and forefinger, then released the skin while Lee and Shannon watched. “Notice that your skin doesn’t immediately spring back into place but remains shaped to my fingers for a few seconds?” She pinched her own skin. “This is what your skin should do, Shannon. It lacks turgor, which means you’re very dehydrated. Have you had any diarrhea or vomiting lately with your flu symptoms?”

  “No, I’ve just been weak.”

  Mercy pulled out the blood pressure cuff. “Why didn’t you come to me when you realized you were losing too much?”

  Shannon blinked at Mercy with washed-out gray eyes. “Too much?”

  “You are too thin.” Mercy wanted to kick herself for not following up on that missed appointment. And how could Lee have ignored this for so long?

  “But, Dr. Mercy, you gave her a clean bill of health last month,” Lee said. “We thought she was doing okay.”

  Mercy looked back at Shannon and once more felt shock at her appearance. Three months ago she’d had plump cheeks and bright, lively eyes. Now there were shadows. “I didn’t see Shannon last month.” She placed the cuff of the automatic sphygmomanometer and pressed the button to read Shannon’s blood pressure. “We’ve got to get some weight back on her.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t see her?” Lee demanded.

  There was a long moment of silence. Shannon still had a hint of that stubborn flash in her eyes, but gone was the healthy blush of a young teenager who was easily embarrassed.

  Mercy turned from Shannon to Lee. The stubborn flash and firm chin were obviously a family trait. Lee was an attractive woman whose blond Nordic beauty had reflected well in her daughter. She and her husband and five children had been Mercy’s patients since Shannon was five years old. That was when Mercy first went into practice with Dad.

  “Shannon’s appointment was canceled, Lee,” Mercy said. “I remember when Josie told me about it, because I asked her specifically to reschedule an appointment. When she called, she was told that you would reschedule later. No one ever did.”

  Mercy checked the blood pressure cuff while tense silence echoed between mother and daughter.

  “So that’s why you didn’t want to come in today,” Lee said. “Why would you cancel your appointment?”

  “I didn’t think I needed to come in, Mom, okay?” There was the normal teenage impatience in Shannon’s voice and a little defensiveness.

  Her blood pressure was on the low side, but the heart rate was normal. This didn’t satisfy Mercy. Even though signs of starvation included a slow heart rate, dehydration would reverse the process and mask an underlying problem. Mercy jotted down the numbers, then warmed the bell of her stethoscope in her hand. “I’ll want to run more tests, of course. It’s going to mean a needle stick, Shannon.”

  A brief nod was Shannon’s only reaction.

  Lee gave a frustrated sigh and sank down on the chair behind her. “Shannon, what am I going to do with you?”

  Shannon pressed her lips together and closed her eyes.

  “The first thing we’re going to do is get this girl into the hospital,” Mercy said as she checked Shannon’s breathing and heartbeat. “I’ll call over there right now and—”

  “No!” Shannon stiffened and sat up, eyes wide open now. “Why can’t you run the tests here? You can do the needle stick yourself, can’t you?”

  Mercy halted her assessment and straightened, unable to miss the sudden panic that careened from Shannon’s face. “There are tests I want to run that I can’t run here, Shan—”

  “But couldn’t you take my blood here?” Shannon reached for Mercy’s arm and grasped it hard. “Couldn’t Mom just take the sample to the lab? Mom, could you do that?”

  Lee’s chair squeaked as she pushed out of it and crossed to her daughter’s side. “Baby, calm down. Dr. Mercy wouldn’t—”

  “No! No, Mom, don’t take me to that hospital!” Shannon’s voice rose and reverberated out into the hallway. “I can’t go over there!” She leaned into her mother’s embrace and burst into sobs. “I can’t go back to that place…I can’t.”

  Mercy leaned across the exam bed and laid a hand on the girl’s bony shoulder as her gaze caught and held Lee’s. Knowledge and memory passed between them. Shannon still suffered the deep effects of her experience in October, and Knolls Community Hospital featured a starring role in the traumatizing follow-up. Tears filled Lee’s eyes and spilled over. From Mercy’s vantage point she saw the sudden, racking sobs that overwhelmed Shannon. But there were no tears.

  “I think it’s time we found you a new counselor, honey,” Mercy said.

  “I don’t want a new counselor. I don’t want to talk about this over and
over and over again. Why won’t everyone just let me forget about what happened?”

  “Because you’re not forgetting the incident.” Mercy gently disengaged the girl from her mother’s embrace and helped her lie back on the bed. Shannon grasped Mercy’s arm with both hands. There were still no tears. That meant at least ten percent dehydration. She had to have fluids.

  “Look at me, Shannon.” Mercy waited until the gray-eyed gaze reluctantly focused on her. “You’re starving yourself, and if you continue this, you’ll start having some major physical problems. I have a hunch we may be looking at anorexia nervosa, and it’s pretty obvious when it started. The first thing I want to do is get a urine sample. Then I want to put you on a monitor to see if there is already damage to your heart. We’ll also take a blood test to see how the chemicals in your body are balancing. Meanwhile, I want to start you on IV fluids. We can do all this more quickly in the hospital, and time is important.”

  “Then I think that’s what we’ll have to do,” Lee said firmly.

  Shannon closed her eyes again and slowly shook her head. “Please, Dr. Mercy, if we stay here I promise I’ll be good. You can stick me with all kinds of needles, and I’ll drink anything you want me to drink, but please don’t send me over there.” Her eyes came open to show her desperation, and her hands tightened on Mercy’s arm. “Please.”

  Mercy held her silent gaze. Treating her as an out-patient could be done. All the equipment was here. They could set Shannon up, run the tests, hook her up to the monitor, and watch her closely…. They even had IV fluids, and a sports drink in their fridge in the break room. Shannon would need to learn to face her bad memories, and she still might have to be admitted, but maybe not right now.

  “Lee, can you hang out here for a few hours?” Mercy asked.

  Some lines of tension relaxed from Lee’s face. “As long as you need.”

  “Okay, Shannon, we’ll try it.”

  Shannon slumped back against her pillow, and she released Mercy’s arm at last. Her face once more convulsed with tearless crying. “Thank you.”

  Lukas glanced at his watch and smiled to himself. In three hours his shift would be over, and he’d be on his way to Knolls. He felt like a man about to be released from prison. Meanwhile, there were no patients, and he had a hankering to study a set of patient files—namely, those of Marla Moore.

  The medical examiner had completed the autopsy and found positive evidence of a pulmonary embolism, exactly as Lukas had suspected. There were no illegal drugs involved. Lukas studied the sheets of records and findings. He felt a heavy sadness over the loss of this young life. What had brought her here to Herald, alone, with no family to take care of her? What kind of anguish had she felt as she struggled out of the apartment in search of help, knowing her baby was lying helpless inside?

  And what had happened to that helpless baby during the hours of his disappearance and his reappearance days later? He had obviously been the latest of several victims, but why had he been returned—and practically to the site of the abduction? Was someone, perhaps, seeking to incriminate Catcher and his gang, or did one of them really have something to do with taking him?

  Just as Lukas reached the last page of Marla’s records, a shadow fell over his shoulder. He turned to find Tex pulling out the chair at the desk and plopping down onto it, this time the right way. She was wearing a dress. Again.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “You’re supposed to be off.”

  “I am.” She leaned forward. She’d fixed her hair again, although she wore no makeup today. “What do you think of him?”

  “Who?” Lukas asked.

  “You know who, silly.” She looked around, then lowered her voice. “Hershel.”

  “I can’t believe you drove all the way over here to get my opinion.” And she’d be sorry if he told her what he really thought.

  A smile of pure joy radiated from her face. “I’m on my way out of town anyway, so I thought I’d stop by.” She hesitated and glanced around the E.R. again. All was silent and empty except for Carmen, who sat at her desk talking on the phone. “I’m going to meet him tonight when he gets off work. Do you think I’m crazy?”

  Blind might be a better word. Naive. Gullible. “I don’t think my assessment of your mental condition has anything to do with our present conversation.”

  Tex grinned and socked him in the arm. Hard. Then she grew serious. “I’m surprised my big-mouthed cousin didn’t fill you in on my past, but since she didn’t, all I’m going to tell you is I haven’t always been the best judge of character. Don’t tell anyone about him, okay?”

  Great. “Okay, I won’t tell, but…uh…Tex, maybe you should move kind of slowly with this one.” He felt like an older brother warning his little sister about the perils of dating. Only this sister wasn’t so little. He wasn’t as concerned about her physical safety as he was about her feelings. Should he say more?

  “Thanks, Dr. Bower.” She stood up and pushed the chair back. “We’ll just have time for dinner—he has a meeting at seven.”

  Good, then he wouldn’t have time to do very much damage. “Tex, you really did just come in to ask my opinion about Hershel?”

  Her grin deepened. “You think I’d drive all the way here to get your opinion when all I have to do is step over and knock on your wall at home? I had something faxed here because I don’t have a machine at home.”

  “Oh, really? Like, perhaps, application forms for a residency program?”

  Her grin held steady. “See you, Dr. Bower.”

  Mercy watched Lee and Shannon walk out of the clinic seven hours after they’d arrived. Shannon’s steps were quick and strong, and her cheeks glowed a healthy pink again. Mercy had warned them the improvement might not last. Shannon had an appointment here in the office tomorrow. Lee would see that the appointment was kept.

  The desk phone chirped for at least the twentieth time that afternoon. Mercy jotted a final note for Loretta, yawned and glared at the phone. How long had Thursdays been her day off? Didn’t anybody realize that this was not a twenty-four-hour-a-day office?

  And yet, what if this call was another emergency?

  Irritably she snatched up the phone. “Yes!”

  “I wanna know where my wife is.”

  Her breath caught, and she felt a sudden rush of outrage. Abner Bell. If he were standing in front of her right now, she would physically attack him. “You listen to me, you sick monster,” she spat. “It’s none of your business where Delphi is. You’re lucky you’re not behind bars right now, and you’d better not press your luck, or I’ll pull every string I can find to make sure that’s where you end up!”

  She stopped for breath, gritted her teeth and concentrated on inhaling evenly and silently, holding the receiver away from her mouth. So much for remaining calm and professional.

  “Oh.” His voice came in a low, growling tone of discovery. “You’ve got her.”

  Mercy felt the strength leave her. “I do not have her. Nobody ‘has’ her. She’s not an inanimate possession to be hauled around and knocked around. She’s a human being! Don’t you understand that concept, Abner?”

  There was a long, expectant, tense silence, and his heavy breathing echoed over the distance. Where was he calling from? She glanced toward the door and wished she’d locked it.

  “You know where she is.” His accusation grated across the line.

  Mercy slammed the phone down.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Even along the cold, dark, tree-shadowed street that led to Mercy’s house, Lukas felt the welcome blanket of Knolls surround his Jeep Thursday night. What he felt had nothing to do with the bright moonlight that outlined the widely spaced brick and wood houses. This good feeling had everything to do with memories.

  Lukas had helped Mercy and Tedi move into their new home last summer while Theodore was still in detox. The beautiful gray-bricked three-bedroom house was modern, yet a builder with foresight had left mature maples, oak
s and pines surrounding the house on the one-acre lot and had planted evergreen bushes around the perimeter of the front lawn. The place was such a drastic change from the house Mercy had rented for five years that she’d breezed through the move.

  Lukas pulled into the driveway and spotted the glowing front-porch light. She must have received his message on her recorder. Good. She was expecting him.

  The house looked great, with the natural wood trim newly stained and a storm door finally in place. They’d had to take the front door off its hinges to get her new sofa moved in. The movers—volunteers from the hospital—had accidentally broken a box of dishes and glasses and had knocked a deep gouge in the hallway wallpaper. And Mercy had laughed about the damage. She was so happy to gain custody of her daughter after five years of separation and pain, nothing so inconsequential could have marred her joy on that day.

  Lukas turned off his headlights and motor and got out of his Jeep. He never thought he’d thank God for tough-talking, beer-guzzling bikers in leather jackets, but tonight, on his three-hour drive down from Herald, he’d blessed them several times. And he reminded himself how much more he had to mature spiritually. He needed to remember that personality sometimes had little to do with the underlying character of a person. He also needed to remember that God loved all His children, and Lukas could please Him better by doing the same.

  He didn’t feel the first rush of shy hesitancy until he walked up the three brick steps in front of Mercy’s house and approached the door. He couldn’t prevent the grin that insisted on spreading across his face any more than he could prevent the way his heart pounded and his palms grew damp. Three weeks had passed since he’d seen her, and even then they’d had barely fifteen minutes to talk before she had to get back to work and he had to leave for his next temporary job.