by David Bell
She smiled, her face warm. “Hello,” she said. “I just need to check Valerie’s chart. You can continue with your visit.”
“Oh, okay.” But I didn’t want to keep pressing Valerie with a nurse in the room. In fact, the nurse’s appearance served to break whatever ridiculous spell I’d been under, badgering a dying woman about her recollections of people who had visited her in hospice. “We weren’t talking about anything important.”
The nurse studied some information on a stapled packet of papers she’d removed from a drawer, looked up and smiled at me again, then put the papers away.
“Any company is good,” she said, looking at me like she was ready to go. She placed her hand on Valerie’s arm and gave it a gentle squeeze, then turned away from the bed.
“Excuse me,” I said, causing the nurse to pause. I looked back at Valerie, who appeared to be sleeping. Her head remained still, and she was no longer muttering. I walked to the foot of the bed where the nurse had stopped and spoke to her in a low voice. “Has Valerie had a lot of visitors?”
“She’s had some. Not an excessive amount. Like I said, any visitor who brings comfort is a good visitor.”
“Of course. She mentioned her daughter, Morgan. Has Morgan been here to see her?”
The nurse smiled like she knew some secret information. “We all know one thing about Valerie. She has a lot of children. Apparently she took more than one in through the foster care system. She was very dedicated to them.” She considered me through eyes that remained warm. “Maybe you’re one of them? One of her children?”
“No, I’m not. Just a family friend. A friend of her daughter Morgan. That’s why I was wondering if she’d been here. Valerie said her name.”
The nurse tipped her head toward the door, indicating that I should follow her, so I did. We didn’t leave the room, but we stood as far from Valerie’s bed as we could get.
“You know about Morgan, right?” she asked. “The police have been here asking about her.”
I nodded. “Yes, I know that.”
“I haven’t seen her.” Some of the warmth went out of her eyes. “And we’d call the police if we did.”
“Right. Of course.”
“You haven’t seen her, have you?” the nurse asked.
“No. Not lately.”
“It sounds like that’s for the best,” she said.
“Maybe,” I said, glancing over at Valerie’s sleeping form. “She mentioned a couple of other names too. Shelly and Bud? Do you know who they are? I guess what I’m wondering . . . Is she . . . coherent when she says things?”
“Someone in her condition can be in and out of lucidity,” the nurse said. “And it can change from moment to moment. People think a hospice patient is on the brink of dying any moment, and that’s not true. We have some patients for months, even up to a year. Sometimes they rally and look like they’re getting better. And their condition can change quickly. Very quickly.”
“I guess I don’t have much experience with this,” I said. “Do you know who Shelly and Bud are?”
The nurse’s brow furrowed. “Shelly? She told me about Shelly.” She snapped her fingers. “That’s Valerie’s sister. Oh, you see? She told me Shelly passed away several years ago. That happens sometimes with someone in this condition. They may see people who aren’t there. Despite all of our medical advances, dying remains something of a mystery.”
“Yeah,” I said, my inarticulate response unable to bring any greater clarity to the situation. “Thanks.”
“If you want to help Valerie,” the nurse said, “and if you’re a friend of Morgan’s, then maybe the best thing to do would be to sit with her. Just visit . . . so she’s not alone.”
I looked across the room again. Valerie looked small beneath the covers, dwarfed by the surroundings. What the nurse said made sense. And I had nowhere to be. . . .
When the nurse left, I went back to the chair by the side of Valerie’s bed and sat down. Valerie turned toward me, her eyes still closed, and muttered something I didn’t understand. And I gave up trying to make sense of it.
If I ended up alone someday, dying in a hospice facility, would it matter to me if I knew the person who sat with me and gave me water? Was there such a thing as the wrong kind of comfort?
I decided there wasn’t. And if Morgan couldn’t be there, then I would step in.
I stayed the rest of the afternoon.
70
Kimberly arrived at River Glen just before ten in the morning. The day had gradually grown overcast as she’d driven down the interstate, and by the time she reached the outskirts of Nashville, light rain was pelting the windshield of her sedan. She parked near the front and hustled inside without an umbrella. She’d called the day before and arranged the visit after talking to Mattingly, and then she’d let Nashville PD know she’d be poking around in the city. On the phone, the administrator of River Glen had suggested she arrive in the morning if she wanted a better chance of finding Valerie Woodward coherent.
The receptionist seemed nervous once Kimberly introduced herself. The more innocent and law-abiding the citizen, the more unnerved they were by the presence of a cop. And when one showed up at work . . . Kimberly knew her appearance gave everyone the heebie-jeebies. She asked for the administrator, Brooke Boyle, explaining they’d talked the day before.
“She’s in a meeting right now,” the receptionist said. She wore a name tag that read TAMMY and seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “But you can wait.”
Kimberly looked over the items on top of the desk. A calendar, a jar of pens, a massive phone with more than a dozen buttons, and a blue three-ring binder. She tapped the binder with her index finger.
“What’s this?” she asked, although she knew.
“That?” Tammy asked, as though she’d never seen it before. “That’s where visitors sign in.”
Kimberly didn’t ask permission. She picked it up, flipped it open, and started paging through.
“I’m not . . .” Tammy’s voice rose higher. “Can you . . .”
“You didn’t ask me to sign in,” Kimberly said without looking up. “Should I?”
“Well, since you’re a . . . I mean, we don’t ask the police to sign in,” Tammy said.
“Do the police come here a lot?”
“No, they don’t.”
“I see,” Kimberly said. She studied the pages more closely. The log went back only a few days. Lined sheets of white paper where visitors wrote their name, the name of the patient being visited, and the time in and out. If she’d come across the name “Morgan Reynolds,” she would have fallen over. If Morgan Reynolds had taken the chance of slipping in and visiting her foster mother, she wouldn’t have used her real name. She knew the police were looking for her, and she had to have guessed they’d told the River Glen staff to be on the lookout. Kimberly flipped a page and scanned through the day before. That was when she saw a name that made her eyes lock on the page. She read it twice. “Well, hello.”
“Is something wrong?” Tammy asked.
“Were you working yesterday? Around twelve fifteen?”
“Yesterday? Yesterday. Yes, I was.”
“Did you see this man?” Kimberly spun the book around and tapped a name with her index finger. “Joshua Fields? Did you see him?”
Tammy stared at the book, her eyes widening. “Oh, yes. Him. He came in yesterday.”
“You talked to him?”
“Briefly.”
“What about?”
Tammy took a big breath, her shoulders rising and falling. “Not much. He told the nurse he was a friend of the family. That was about it.”
“Was he alone?” Kimberly asked.
“Yes, he was.”
“Did anyone drop him off or wait for him?”
“I don’t know. I only saw him in here.”
“Did you see him in Mrs. Woodward’s room?” Kimberly asked.
“I don’t go down there. I usually just stay in reception.”
“So you don’t know what they talked about?” Kimberly asked.
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. That’s about it.”
“Did any other nurses or doctors talk to him?”
Tammy started to speak and then stopped. She looked around and then back at Kimberly. “Maybe you should talk to Brooke about this.”
“I will.” Kimberly closed the book but didn’t put it down. She held it against her body like a precious object. Joshua Fields. Joshua Fields had come to River Glen to see Valerie Woodward. He might not have said much to Tammy, but Kimberly intended to talk to him about his little excursion to Nashville. She’d definitely do that. “And where is Brooke? Is she done with her meeting?”
“You know what?” Tammy said, picking up the phone on her desk. “I’ll just remind her that you’re here.”
71
Brooke showed up not long after that.
She breezed through the lobby, carrying a small stack of manila folders under one arm and holding a cell phone in the other hand. But she kept her eyes on Tammy as she approached, acting as if Kimberly wasn’t standing there with the visitor log in her hands. Brooke sounded out of breath and slightly irritated when she spoke to Tammy.
“You’re going to have to tell Byron I’m running late,” she said. “I was supposed to meet with him twenty minutes ago, but I have to speak to the detective first.”
Tammy nodded and picked up the phone on her desk again. She punched numbers like her life depended on it.
Brooke turned to face Kimberly. “I’m sorry, Detective. It’s been a crazy morning.”
She didn’t sound sorry, but Kimberly smiled anyway. “I’ll try not to take too much of your time.”
Brooke led her to a small office, where she sat at a desk littered with papers, leaving Kimberly to take an empty chair adjacent to the desk. Brooke checked her phone, tapped on the keypad a few times, and then set it aside. She glanced at her computer screen, while Kimberly waited patiently until Brooke finally turned to her and said, “Now, what can I help you with, Detective?”
“I was looking over the visitor log. . . .” Kimberly held it in her lap.
Brooke saw it and her face blanched with disapproval. “Do you have a warrant to look at that?”
“It was sitting out on the desk,” Kimberly said. “Anyone who comes in can page through it.”
Brooke didn’t appear mollified, but she remained silent.
So Kimberly went on. “I see that a man named Joshua Fields visited Mrs. Woodward yesterday. Did you talk to him?”
“I didn’t. I don’t spend a great deal of time in the patients’ rooms.” She brushed a stray hair off her forehead. “He did speak to one of the nurses, who reported the conversation to me.”
“What did he say?”
“Just that he was a family friend.” She cleared her throat. “And he asked about this Morgan Reynolds woman you’re looking for. He wanted to know if she’d been by, and the nurse told him no. Then she encouraged him to stay and visit.”
“Did he?”
Brooke nodded, some of her disapproval fading. “He did. The nurse told me he sat by Valerie’s bedside for several hours. It was in the afternoon, so Valerie was in and out.”
“And that’s all he did? Sat by her bed?”
“He gave her water when she was thirsty. He bought himself a candy bar out of the vending machine. That’s what the nurse on duty told me.”
Kimberly tapped her fingers against the binder. Joshua Fields never failed to surprise. Not only did he track down Valerie Woodward in hospice, but he sat with her like she was his own relative. Did he just want to feel closer to Morgan?
“And there’s been no sign of Morgan Reynolds?” Kimberly asked. “She’s not in the log book, but I assume she wouldn’t sign in under her real name.”
“No sign of her besides that thing a couple of days ago.”
Kimberly tightened her grip on the binder. “What thing?”
Some of Brooke’s exasperation returned. “The Nashville cops didn’t tell you?”
“Apparently not.”
“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” Brooke said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“No, I’m glad you did. What happened?”
Brooke looked like she wished she’d never opened her mouth. She brushed her hair back again, let her eyes take a quick glance at the computer, then turned back to Kimberly.
“One of our desk clerks, someone who works in the evening, was coming in for her shift. She’d seen the notices about Ms. Reynolds, the ones we posted for the staff here and the ones on the news. We’ve all seen them. Anyway, she saw a woman in the parking lot, sitting in a car, who looked like her. She wasn’t sure, so to err on the side of caution, she called the police. They came, they looked around.”
“But the woman was gone?”
“Yes. And then the clerk, the one who saw her, backpedaled a little, said maybe she was wrong, maybe she overreacted.” Brooke shrugged. “That was it. I just assumed they told you.”
Kimberly would’ve assumed the same thing. But she knew she couldn’t count on everything going the way she wanted it to go. “And there was nothing else? No other sightings or disturbances or anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, thanks for telling me.” She decided to try a different tactic with Brooke. She got out her metaphorical butter knife and began spreading it on thick. She figured that would work with a stressed-out and edgy administrator. “I know how much you have on your plate here and how difficult the work must be. Emotionally. Spiritually. I know it can’t help to have the police adding to your stress. I can only imagine.”
Brooke nodded, almost smiled. “Well, we understand how important it is. But you’re right—things here are usually stressful. And emotional.”
“Of course.”
“Even as an administrator, I feel it.”
“I’m sure you do.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Brooke’s phone beeped once, but she ignored it.
Kimberly said, “So, how is Mrs. Woodward? What’s her condition?”
Brooke looked like she didn’t know what to say. “She’s in hospice care. Her condition is only moving in one direction.”
“Sure. But are we talking . . . sooner? Or later?”
“That’s privileged information,” Brooke said. “I can’t discuss a patient’s medical condition. Not without authorization from the family.”
“Sure, I understand.”
Brooke took a deep breath and said in a low voice, “I guess . . . if by ‘later’ you mean a month or so, then I would say sooner. Her condition has improved slightly since she’s been here. When her daughter brought her in, she’d had a fall. Bruised her arm. She was very tired and weak. I wouldn’t have thought she’d last more than a day or so. But she’s stabilized a little in here. She’s been getting good rest.”
Kimberly nodded. “Is she coherent? Able to talk or respond?”
“Sometimes. That’s why I said to come earlier in the day. Patients tend to be more alert after a good night’s sleep.”
“Thanks for helping me with that. I’ll get out of your way, then.” She handed the blue binder over to Brooke, who took it with a smile. “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to go down and poke my head in the door of her room. Just to see how she’s doing.”
“That’s fine. If you have any questions, there should be a nurse nearby.”
Kimberly stood up, and so did Brooke. They shook hands. “Oh, and if anything like that happens again, someone thinking Morgan Reynolds is around, would you mind letting me know too? Even if it seems like a false alarm?”
“I will. For sure.”
“Thanks.”
Kimberly started down the hall to Valerie’s room, wondering what she’d find.
72
Kimberly stepped inside the room, expecting the worst. She’d last been in a hospice facility when her uncle Jim was dying eight years earlier, and she’d vowed then never to go back. She’d seen her uncle wasting away, his body reduced to almost nothing, the smell of illness thick in the room. She couldn’t bear to see the look of aching, searing pain on her uncle’s face and so she left, prompting her dad to ask her later how she dealt with the things she had to see as a cop.
It’s all easier than that, she told him. I don’t know the people I see at work.
But once she was inside, she saw that Valerie Woodward looked . . . okay. Her eyes were open, her hair clean. She was propped up in bed, supported by several pillows, and the TV in the corner played a game show with the volume low. The faint sound of applause reached Kimberly as if the televised audience was thrilled to see her enter.
“Hello, Mrs. Woodward.” The woman showed no reaction. “I’m Kimberly Givens. I’m with the Laurel Falls Police Department.”
She thought Valerie nodded slightly, but she couldn’t be sure, so she walked across the room, moving closer to the bed. Valerie’s eyes didn’t track her. Maybe she wasn’t in as good a shape as she’d first appeared.
“Can you hear me, Mrs. Woodward?”
Valerie, her eyes slightly glassy, finally turned her head toward Kimberly. “Yes.” Her voice came out as a hoarse whisper.
“Do you know why I’m here?” Kimberly asked.
“Last rites?”
It took Kimberly a moment to process that the woman was making a joke. Kimberly let out a little laugh, hoping it meant she might get some valuable information out of the woman. “No, that’s not my department.”
Valerie looked away, her eyes wandering to the TV, where a contestant in a floral shirt spun a giant wheel. Big dreams. Big money. Sometimes a big game-show payout sounded better than working for a living, trying to sort through the broken pieces of people’s lives.