by Harry Kraus
Della looked up. “No.” She hesitated. “I can’t believe he would ever do that.”
Claire put her hands on her hips and sighed. “Mom, I told you about a patient who said he was in town to discuss a buyout. He says his company has been in communication with Leon for months.”
“That makes no sense, unless he’s finally just giving up. McCall Shoes is having a hard time keeping up with some of the competition. He’s already bought Elizabeth out to save her the misery of watching the ship sink on her watch.”
“That snake!”
“Claire! Without your uncle we wouldn’t have meat on the table.”
She flicked the top of a bran cereal box. “This isn’t meat. And that man wouldn’t do anything unless his own wallet is being padded.”
“Claire!” Her mother’s mouth dropped open.
“I don’t trust him.”
“You’ve had a hard day.”
“Grandma is out of McCall Shoes?”
“Yep. She sold all her stock to Leon.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why should you be upset? It was no secret. You’ve been so busy, it just didn’t come up, that’s all.”
“Grandma McCall has been Wally’s advocate from the beginning. Even when Grandpa was alive, she was the one who kept him from writing Wally out of the will. And it’s no secret that Leon was only too happy to learn that Wally wasn’t blood McCall.”
“But he’s changed. He’s been helping us out financially, and now that McCall Shoes hit rough waters, he’s coming through to assure Grandma will be okay in retirement.”
Claire shook her head. “Did you ever ask Uncle Leon about a potential buyout of the company? I thought he was on the verge of making a pile of money.”
“I talked to him, honey. He said it’s all very speculative at this stage. He is exploring every option to try to keep the company afloat.”
Claire didn’t feel like arguing. Della was right. Claire’s day had been rough. And Uncle Leon had been helping with the grocery bills. But the nagging feeling remained. Claire yawned and stretched her hands toward the ceiling. “I’m going to cash it in early.”
“I’ll check Wally at midnight if you’ll do it at four.”
Claire plodded down the hall. “Deal.”
She undressed and prepared for sleep, lying down on the old bed and thinking about the day. Della was nearing the end of her rope. Claire needed to make some inquiries about nursing-home care for Wally. It would be a sad day, but a necessary one if they were going to preserve their sanity.
Chapter Nineteen
People should carry Rolaids on the first day of any new job. Lena Chisholm didn’t exactly care for the heat of the kitchen, but she P liked the opportunity to see university students coming through the cafeteria line, and she enjoyed keeping the salad bar stocked, if for no other reason, it was cooler in the dining hall than in the kitchen. But she’d sliced the carrots she was supposed to shred, forgot to put out the cherry tomatoes, and dropped a gallon of blue-cheese dressing on the center of the kitchen tile.
She was busy for her entire eight-hour shift, a good thing for Lena, who had a tendency to think of William Raymond when her mind was idle.
But he was one of the reasons she’d taken the job in the first place. She could have sold her ring and had enough to live on for a month, maybe two if she found a cheap apartment and pinched every penny. But selling the ring seemed to be an emotional letdown, like she was giving up a dream. She knew it wasn’t really her engagement ring, but wearing it made it easier to pretend that her life wasn’t as dull and frightening as it really was.
She frowned at her new ID badge. If she’d known she would have her picture taken, she would have put on some lipstick. As it was, her lips were pale, and her cheeks needed more sun. She swiped the badge through the time clock and exited the back of the cafeteria. The air was damp, with the threat of a summer thunderstorm in the wind. She lifted her eyes toward the darkened western sky and shivered. It had been a rough day. She wanted to stroll in the evening sunshine and relax, not run back to the women’s shelter to escape the rain. The last thing she wanted was to spend another evening trapped with other women in crisis.
She patted the front pocket of her slacks before sliding out the ring she’d kept nestled there. She slid the ring onto her finger and tried a fantasy to lift her spirits. She imagined heading home to meet her husband after his day of med-school classes. The ring sparkled even with the clouded sky and just wearing it made it a little easier to believe her life was happy. Let it rain. She could snuggle with William Raymond in the lobby of the student center.
A thunderclap startled Lena into reality. She squinted at the darkening horizon and fought the sudden urge to cry. Her fantasies couldn’t even offer adequate respite from the mess her life had become. She was a pregnant, married teenager separated from an alcoholic, abusive husband, trapped in a town she didn’t know, with a menial job and no car. Her own father had abused her. Her sister had warned her and walked away. Her mother had remarried and moved on. She was alone with only a diamond to give her any hope of a future life. She looked down at the ring. Billy Ray had promised her a ring once. And she was just glassy-eyed enough to believe he really would get her one. She cut across a parking lot and crossed the grassy commons area on a diagonal, picking up her pace just as large raindrops began to fall from the sky. The leaves on the maple trees bordering the sidewalk sang a noisy chorus with the wind.
Rain pelted the back of her hand which she raised to shield her face. She lowered her head, fixed on the sidewalk in front of her, and rushed toward the portico of the student center. Just when she reached the announcement area, a man imposed himself directly in her path. She froze as she recognized the work boots stained from the metal shop. She lifted her eyes and gasped.
“Hi, Lena.”
She tried to step backwards as Billy Ray clamped his fingers around her arm. Her jaw dropped without sound.
“I’ve been lookin’ for you.” With his breath came the familiar stench of his addiction, the lubricant which removed whatever inhibition a real man has to prevent him from striking a woman.
“Billy Ray, I had to leave. I was afraid.”
“After all I gave to you,” he began.
She trembled as she felt his grip tighten.
“You turn around and treat me like this.” His eyes were on the ring. “Where’d you get that?” His face was red with rage, his eyes steel.
Lena glanced right and left, searching the empty sidewalks, but the rain which fell steadily now had driven sensible humans inside for cover. She curled her hand into a fist, anticipating his next move.
He slid his left hand to her wrist and yanked her fingers toward his face for a better look.
“Billy Ray! I found it! It’s not from another man!”
He raised his right hand to strike. “You lyin’—”
Her shrill scream interrupted his sentence and apparently his intention.
His face was twisted in a scowl as he looked around and lowered his hand. Even Billy Ray didn’t want to hit a woman in public.
Her eyes followed his to a group of students who had just exited the library across the commons. They were tiny from this distance, standing on the broad covered porch. She let out a second cry, a high piercing note familiar to parents of ten-year-old girls at noisy pajama parties.
He glanced toward the library again as she twisted her rainslicked arm from his grip. She backed up a step and filled her lungs for another scream.
With his hushed voice pleading, he hissed, “Lena, don’t!”
She caught a glimpse of something she’d seen in Billy a few times before. Once in the fleeting moment after she’d driven a glass shard into his arm, and another just after she’d shoved his shotgun under his chin. She recognized it now with a flash of clarity. His upper lip was pulled taut, an attempt to keep it from quivering. “You coward,” she said, her voice thick with disgust.
> She backed another step, matching his forward movement. His hands were out, palms up, a surrender posture she would never trust again. He took another step, and she did the same, the duo locked in an untouching dance on the brick sidewalk.
“You’re bringin’ shame on yourself, Lena. Shame on me. And shame on you.”
“Me? You’re the jerk.”
He shook his head and halted his forward progression. “What’d you tell the cops, Lena?”
“Nothing.”
He cursed.
“I haven’t told them anything.”
He shook his head. “Randy came ’round this morning at work. I know you’ve been talking to him.”
She held up her hands and took another step away. “I haven’t, Billy. I swear.” Her back touched the outdoor announcement board, which sat in the middle of the brick-paved area in front of the student center. Trapped, she contemplated screaming again.
“I’m not stupid, Lena. You’ve been playin’ a game behind my back for a long time, haven’t you? You think you can run around on me, then squeal to the cops that I’ve been hurting you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking a—”
“Shut up!” His index finger was in her face, as he stepped closer. She needed to do something fast to evade his grasp a second time.
She screamed again only to have it cut short as he clamped his left hand over her mouth, shoving her head against the glass covering the bulletin board. She could taste blood as her lips pushed into her front teeth. His body penned her in, as his right hand searched and found her left fingers. She closed her fist to prevent him from pulling off the ring.
“Rachel cheated on me.” His eyes, glassed over by alcohol, locked in on hers.
She felt tears spill onto her cheeks as he pinched her fingers together against her diamond ring. She couldn’t scream. She could barely breathe as her silent crying filled her nose with snot. She desperately wanted to blow her nose so she could inhale with freedom.
Billy Ray continued, “And now you.” He yanked the ring from her rain-slicked fingers.
She quickened her breathing, hungry for more air than she could get through her nose. She watched with fear as he lifted the ring for a better look, shifting his body weight off of her for a second, but still keeping his left hand pushed against her mouth. “Money? Is that what your new boyfriend has that I don’t?”
She needed more air. Now. Instinctively, she exhaled with all her might, spraying tear-thinned mucus over Billy Ray’s hand and arm. He recoiled, giving her the fraction of a second she needed. She brought her right knee up between his legs, impacting him with a fury driven by her pain, her need for air, and her rage at his taking her ring.
He groaned and leaned over, dropping the diamond on the patio. Lena scrambled after the ring as it bounced and rolled toward the edge of the brick pavement and the grass beyond. She slipped on the wet sidewalk, sprawling onto her chest and abdomen beside a concrete bench. But she never lost her focus on the shiny little ring. Her hand closed around it as Billy Ray stumbled forward and grasped at her ankle.
She screamed as she pulled her foot away from him, leaving her shoe in his hand. She rolled, stood up, screamed again, and sprinted through the rain, waving her arms at the group that still stood on the portico in front of the library.
She looked back only once to realize that Billy Ray hadn’t given chase. When she neared the students, their horrified silent looks greeted and disturbed her. She pointed toward the student center. “A man tried to attack me,” she gasped.
She followed their gaze to the empty walkways in front of the student center. Billy Ray had vanished.
Hadn’t they seen him?
A man wearing a backwards baseball cap and a black T-shirt lifted a cell phone to his ring-studded ear. “I’ll call campus police.”
“No,” she responded, suddenly self-conscious. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand only to see a blood stain on her hand. “It was my husband.” She pointed to the library door. “I’ll call from inside.”
She jogged toward the door in search of a place to hide.
She didn’t stop to rest until she was in the basement women’s rest room, locked in the third stall. She sat down on the commode and released her emotions in a flood of tears. It was there she unfolded her hand to look at her ring. He hadn’t won. She still had the ring. He may have found her. But she could move on.
She stood and shoved the ring deep in her pocket before preparing to answer a distressing call from her bladder. She sat back down and let herself relax, allowing the panic she’d felt only moments before to melt into relief. She wondered if there was a back door to the library, if Billy Ray would be waiting for her when she left, and if she could outlast him by waiting until the library closed at eleven. She took a deep breath. None of that really mattered right now. She was safe for the moment, and her diamond was nestled in her pocket. It was then she dropped her eyes to focus on the underwear she’d slipped to her knees only moments before. And for the second time in a minute, her emotions swung on a pendulum. One moment she felt relief, and now, at the sight of the bright stain on her panties, anxiety gripped her heart again.
She was bleeding!
The next morning Wally’s color was back to his normal sunless pale and he drank most of a thickened nutritional shake without choking. Claire helped give him a quick sponge bath and headed for the clinic, promising her mom that she’d try to get home early and reminding her that John intended to come by in the afternoon to help.
She arrived in time to sip coffee from a mug emblazoned with the words “A chance to cut . . . a chance to cure” while signing off on office notes and incoming labs and X rays she’d ordered. By seven-fifty, a small light appeared on the wall by her desk, indicating Lucy had her first patient in room A.
Tracy McGinnis sat fully clothed on the exam table, her hands in her lap but her fingers never still. Her face was etched with worry beyond her years and she glanced frequently at her husband, who sat in a chair beside her with arms folded across his chest.
Claire listened as Tracy tearfully confessed her thoughts of harming her infant daughter. Every time she began meal preparations that involved sharp utensils, dark impulses to stab her precious little Heather crept in, filling Tracy with guilt. The idea repulsed her, horrified her, and eventually paralyzed her from picking up anything but a soup spoon to eat with. Anxiety overwhelmed her, and the thoughts of harming her daughter became stronger the more she tried to avoid it. It was only when she started refusing to go into the kitchen altogether that her desperate husband brought her in.
After taking additional history, Claire recognized the classic symptoms of obsessive compulsive disease and recommended referral to a psychiatrist. The couple, as expected, refused. Just coming to the local physician was threatening enough. A Stoney Creek native was not likely to consent to visiting a psychiatrist.
“Just tell her she has to go into the kitchen again. I’m a horrible cook myself, and I’m gonna starve,” her husband whined.
“I’d like to prescribe a medication. This condition is very common, more common than sugar,” she added, using the country vernacular for diabetes mellitus.
“She’s just got wrong ideas in her head, Doc.”
The patient put her head in her hands. “I’ve been praying hard. It’s an attack from the devil.”
Claire sighed. She didn’t have time to fight the small-town stigma that surrounded the treatment of mental illness. It didn’t matter if Claire knew it was from a chemical imbalance. She reassured her new patient, encouraged her to fight back against the illness and not to give in to its demands. “If you let it,” she explained, “it will start with your kitchen and not touching sharp utensils. If you don’t fight, it may try eventually to keep you from using any utensil to eat or allow you to touch your baby at all.”
“You think I’m crazy.” She twisted her fingers into a knot. “I just need more faith.”
“
You’re not crazy. You have a disease. It’s called OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. It is a real physical problem, a chemical imbalance. It’s very common.”
Claire wrote her patient a prescription for a medication to help with her fight and scheduled her for a follow-up visit in two weeks. Before she left the room, Claire asked for permission to pray for her patient, and concluded her visit by a request for God to hold Tracy in his arms of peace, and to help her separate her real love for her daughter from the unwanted obsessions of her disease which didn’t represent her true intentions.
Tracy’s eyes were red as she reached to hug Claire with choke-hold enthusiasm.
“Here,” Claire gasped, reaching for her pen. She handed Tracy a piece of paper on which she’d written Brain Lock. “Get this book. I think it will be a godsend.”
In room B, Ada Broome had diverticulitis. In room C, Todd Alty needed a high school football physical. As Claire emptied the rooms, Lucy filled them.
In room A, Blaire Shifflett had strep throat; in B, old Joel Thomason had a flare-up of shingles; in room C, thirteen-year-old Evan Jacobs refused to show Claire the splinter in his backside until his mother left the room. And back in A, Sam Harris needed his ankle wrapped for a bad sprain.
It was noon before Claire saw the note from Lucy on her desk. It was attached to Lena Chisholm’s chart. “Lena called. She’s spotting, with abdominal cramps. Counseled to go to E.R. in Brighton. Patient refused. She wants to see you.”
Claire lifted her rebellious blond bangs from her forehead. She’d cut her hair to be manageable during surgery, and was letting it grow out again since coming back to Stoney Creek. Now, it was in an unmanageable middle stage, too long, and too short. She wanted patients to trust her judgment, but she also wanted them to lean on others when it was outside her expertise. Lena needed an obstetrician. Maybe she could persuade her to see one of her old professors at the medical school in Brighton.
She dialed the number on the bottom of Lucy’s note and waited while Cathy Rivera brought Lena to the phone.