by Harry Kraus
She hadn’t even called Claire about the opening. Claire had enough on her mind as it was. She could just find out about her father’s move when she came home from the clinic. And so Della had called Margo, her oldest daughter, instead, asking if Kyle, Margo’s husband, could bring by his pickup for Wally’s hospital bed. Pleasant View was okay with Wally using the same bed he used at his own home as long as it met their specifications. Della knew it was okay, and insisted that his bed be taken with him on the first day. She wanted everything to be as familiar as it could be for Wally. Change wasn’t easy for a Huntington’s patient, so she planned to do anything she could to ease the transition.
She took a deep breath and opened the front door. Two men were unloading a stretcher from the back of the van.
“Morning, Mrs. McCall,” a young man called out.
She recognized him as Blake Henderson. She bent down and set the catch on the screen door to hold it open, then retreated back down the hall to Wally’s room. Wally knew this day was coming. She’d told him about it after his last battle with the intestinal flu, again on the weekend when they took him for an X ray, and that morning after the Pleasant View administrator called. She wasn’t sure if he understood. His reaction was a silent stare, a “Wall Response,” as she called it. When he didn’t like something, he’d just clam up, sometimes not speaking for days. She wondered how long the silence would last when he understood he was outside his own home. She looked at him and sighed, trying not to cry, but unable to keep her breath from coming in with erratic jerks as the sobs refused her will.
She steadied her voice. He needed her to be calm. “The men from the ambulance service are here, Wall. You’ll remember Blake. He’s the talkative young man who took you for your chest X ray at Claire’s clinic just the other day.
“I’m not leaving you,” she spoke softly. “We’ve been through tough times. This is just another phase. I’m still your wife.” She lowered the bed railing and took his right hand, cupping it in both of hers. She needed to speak the words, hoping he’d understand, but all the while knowing that the one heart she was reassuring was her own. “I love you, Wally. I just can’t care for you the way you need me to now. I’ll still be over to visit.” She heard the men in the hall, the rumble of the stretcher wheels on the floor. She glanced over her shoulder to see them trying to manipulate the stretcher in the door.
Blake spoke to his older associate. “It won’t make the turn into his room. I tried it on Saturday. Just leave it in the hall and we’ll have to carry him to it.” Della turned her attention to her husband. She dropped his hand and gripped his forehead instead. She timed the lowering of her head perfectly. She paused as his arms moved right and his head danced left, then quickly lowered her face to his and planted a kiss on his lips. Wally responded with a suction that pulled her lower lip into his mouth and stretched it to the point of pain as she made a hasty retreat and tore her lips away. “Wow!” she gasped.
Wally grinned. “Della.”
It was the first on-the-lips kiss they’d shared in months. And it was the first time in as many months that she’d heard him say her name.
She backed away, unembarrassed by her display of affection in front of the ambulance crew. “I’ll see you later today in your new room,” she promised. “Kyle will help me bring over your bed.”
Wally grunted.
Blake cradled Wally like a child, easily hoisting him into his arms with one arm behind Wally’s shoulders and another behind his knees. Della winced at the sight. Her husband had lost so much weight that his body offered little challenge to a strapping young EMT like Blake.
They strapped Wally down to the gurney and began the journey to the van, pausing once on the front sidewalk to cinch the straps an inch tighter against Wally’s roving arms and legs.
Della stood on the front steps and waved feebly at the van, imagining Wally’s confusion or agitation at his predicament. She lowered herself to sit on the steps as the van pulled onto the highway.
Except for Wally’s time in the Navy, Della had shared the same residence with him for the better part of four decades. A chapter was closing on their relationship. Her eyes welled with tears. This time there was no holding back the sobs.
Della pressed her face into her hands and wept.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Claire plodded across the small parking lot behind the clinic with one goal in mind. Make a short visit to Lena Chisholm and then head home to crash early. Lena should be up for a visit from a familiar face. Besides, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to do some serious hand-holding, since she felt responsible for missing the diagnosis of Lena’s ectopic pregnancy.
She started the Bug and shifted into reverse when she heard the screech of tire rubber. She stepped on the brakes and looked in the rearview mirror to see a large red pickup stopped inches from her bumper, blocking her exit.
Her heart quickened. Billy Ray Chisholm! Should she run for the office? She unbuckled her seat belt and reached for the door handle. This was crazy. He’d catch her halfway to the back door, and she couldn’t very well drive forward over the concrete parking bumper.
She frantically reached for the locks, then looked back to see Billy Ray climbing out of his truck. He walked slowly toward her car and leaned close to the window.
“We need to talk,” he said. “Open your window.”
Claire left the car running. “I can hear you just fine.” She glanced at the empty parking lot. So much for being the last one out of the office.
That practice would have to change.
“I need some information.”
“Is this about Lena? You know I can’t talk to you about her.”
“This isn’t about me trying to find her, if that’s what you’re talkin’ about. I could just go up to that hospital in Brighton if I wanted to find her now.”
Claire imagined Billy Ray plotting to get even with his wife. She shook her head. “I can’t tell you where she lives. You know that.”
Billy Ray leaned both hands against the metal lip above the driver’s seat window and begin rocking the little Volkswagen side to side, not violently, but just enough to send a chilling signal of his power. “I’m not asking you that.” He seemed to hesitate and looked away. “I need to know about a medical condition.”
She watched as he steeled his gaze toward his left and clenched his jaw. What did she see there. Fear?
“Stop rocking my car.” My cell phone! I can call the police! She slipped her hand into her purse, closing it around her phone. When she pulled it out, the car stopped rocking.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to call the police.”
He threw up his hands, his eyes wide. “Hey, we’re just having a conversation here. I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re blocking me in.”
“I’ll move if you’ll talk to me.”
“Move your vehicle and maybe we’ll talk.”
Billy Ray huffed and stepped back, his eyes now on the ground.
“Okay.”
He walked around, jumped in his truck, and slowly backed it into the space beside her. She wondered if she could outrun him. Maybe she could race into the streets beeping her horn and attract some attention. She looked toward the street. There wasn’t a car in sight.
In a moment, Billy Ray was back at her window. His expression had softened, and for a moment he laid aside the bravado image. “Are you afraid of me?”
Claire wasn’t sure how to answer. “Should I be?”
“No.”
“You threatened me when I saw you at the hospital in Brighton.”
He spit on the blacktop. “I’d been drinking.” He paused. “I’m different when I drink. Look, Doc, I’m sorry about the things I said. I’m not planning to sue you.”
She wasn’t about to grace him with a “thank you.” “Is this the information you wanted? To find out if I was afraid of you?”
He shook his head. “Have you ever hear
d of someone doing something really bad when they were drinking?”
“Of course. People do stupid things all the time when they drink alcohol.” She wanted to leave. “This isn’t exactly breaking news.”
He leaned toward her window to hear. “But what I mean to ask is can they do stuff they don’t know about and have no memory of it afterwards?”
“Alcoholics have blackouts.”
“But could they do bad things . . . things they wouldn’t normally do and not remember it?”
It felt creepy talking with Billy Ray this way. He was practically shouting to get her to hear. She slipped her hand into her purse again and closed her fingers around a small tube of pepper spray. She used to carry it when she jogged in Boston. Then she dared to lower the window a few inches.
In response, Billy Ray lifted his head away from the car.
“I don’t know, Billy. Why are you asking me these things?”
He shrugged. “You’re the only doc I know. And Deputy Jensen has been snooping around my workplace, asking me questions again.” He shuffled his feet. “From what I can gather from the questions he’s askin’, you’d think he was trying to pin a crime on me.”
“What kind of crime?”
“Don’t play games with me, Doc. You know all about the rapes.”
“Do you?” Her boldness surprised her. Maybe she could trap him into revealing something he oughtn’t know.
“Only what I glean from the deputy.”
Right. You think you can suck me into your little delusion that you cannot commit crimes you have no memory of? “I’ve got a novel idea for you, Mr. Chisholm. Why don’t you stop drinking if you’re worried about your behavior?”
He nodded slowly. Was it agreement or just what Billy Ray did when he was thinking? “I’ve stopped, Doc. I’m going to do it this time.”
Right! “Get some help.”
He twisted his lips around as if he was considering the idea. “I’ve got another idea. Something else I think a doc could help me out with, something that will prove I’m innocent and point at the guilty party.”
Claire waited without responding.
“Lena says I raped her, huh?”
“You were drunk. You saw what you did.”
“Lena also claims she hasn’t been fooling around on me. And the deputy seems to think that Lena was treated the same way as these other girls.”
Claire nodded slowly. I think I gave the deputy that lead. “So?”
“So get the doctors to examine the baby that was in her. It will prove it wasn’t mine.”
The baby. Claire loosened her grip on the pepper spray. She was surprised that Billy had come up with this. “So the baby’s father is . . . ?” She waited for him to complete the sentence.
“The rapist,” he said.
Claire shook her head. She’d missed a step somewhere.
“Last night I started thinkin’ that maybe I’d misjudged Lena, thinkin’ she was running around on me. Maybe she told the truth. Maybe she was raped.”
“Lena says she was raped by you.”
“I caught the guy hiding in a tree in my yard. Old Jeb ran him up a tree . . . that man you were with at the hospital.”
“What?” Claire’s heart quickened. She knew she’d entertained secret doubts about John Cerelli, but it sounded outrageous coming from Billy Ray Chisholm. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”
He shook his head and shrugged. “Have the doctors check out the baby. Then you’ll find out I’m telling the truth.”
Claire took a deep breath. This was crazy.
Or was it?
She looked at Billy Ray, who held up his hand in a gesture of “right this way.” He seemed to be done talking and was allowing her to leave. Was he just playing with her head? Or was he manipulating her into believing a lie to cover for his crimes?
She drove away, her head swimming. She checked the rearview mirror to see Billy Ray leaning over the hood of his truck, his face in his hands. Was this the posture of frustration? Or guilt? Or an act until she was out of sight?
She accelerated to the town limit of Stoney Creek, glancing at her mirrors frequently, paranoid of Billy Ray’s red truck.
By the time she passed Fisher’s Retreat, her heart, but not her VW bug, had slowed to an allowable speed.
An hour later, Claire exited the elevator at Brighton University Hospital and took a slow, deep breath. She stood still until a wave of nausea passed. She’d noticed a vague cramping in her stomach soon after leaving her office. She thought she was just upset by Billy Ray Chisholm. Later, she thought the winding mountain road might be responsible. Now, as she scanned the hallway for the nearest public rest room, she was beginning to wonder whether she’d finally caught the flu that had been streaming through her office in the people of Stoney Creek. She found the bathroom she needed and splashed water on her face, then looked up and sighed. She was pale and suddenly aware of her exhaustion. She whispered a prayer, a generic request. “Help me, God. Help.”
A minute later and feeling a little better, she pushed open the door to Lena’s hospital room, knocking as the door moved. “Lena? It’s Claire McCall.”
Lena looked over from behind her tray table, which held an assortment of clear liquids and a stack of unopened dimestore romances. A vase of pink roses sat on the bedside table. Inwardly, Claire recoiled at the thought of Lena spending hours reading the soap opera equivalents. Above her head a TV blared country music videos. “Hi,” Lena said, reaching for the volume control.
“Hi,” Claire responded, sitting in a chair beside the bed. She looked at the empty bed beside her. “Lucky you. No roommate tonight.”
Lena nodded.
“How do you feel?”
“Sore. And tired. This stuff makes me sleepy,” she said, pointing to the patient-controlled analgesia device on her IV pole.
Claire squinted at the IV bag to read the label. “Morphine. No wonder you’re sleepy.”
“I wondered if you would come by.”
Claire stayed quiet.
“Deputy Jensen was here.” Lena paused. “I think Billy Ray’s in big trouble.” She knotted the sheet to her chest. “The nurses say he came to see me.”
Claire nodded.
“Ms. Rivera convinced security to make him leave before I got out of surgery.”
“I know.”
“He sent flowers.” She looked at the vase of roses.
“He’s a dangerous man.”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
“Don’t do this, Lena. Think about how he treated you.” Claire took a deep breath and exhaled her frustration slowly. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.
“I know he treated me bad. But mostly when he was drinking.”
“Not only when he was drinking. What about the day we picked you up? He wasn’t drinking that day. He could have killed you.”
“I’m tired of the shelter.” Lena continued to roll the sheet around her hands, knotting it over her patient gown. “I’m going to lose my new job because I’m missing work.”
“Are you thinking of going back to him?”
Lena stared at the tray of clear liquids in front of her without reply. Red jello, chicken bouillon, cranberry juice, and coffee provided the sum total of the tasty fare.
“Please don’t do this, Lena. He may be more dangerous than you realize. What if Deputy Jensen is right? What if Billy Ray has started taking out his rage on other women?”
Lena shook her head. “Billy Ray has some other ideas.”
Claire sighed. “How has he gotten to you? He sent you a letter?”
Lena’s non-response was answer enough.
Claire hadn’t anticipated this. She sat without talking for a minute, watching as Lena’s eyes drifted back to the music video where she stared at colorful images of love lost and found. Clair saw a man and woman in conflict, a woman in a seductive nightgown looking longingly from a rain-streaked window, a man in a western
bar, a woman with a guitar singing of the power of love, the man in a pickup truck on a lonely road, the view of the house with a light in the window . . . and then reunion, the couple falling into each other’s arms, the man’s hat falling to the floor as he lowered the woman onto a bed.
Claire closed her eyes to pray. How could she compete with the empty tripe that provided Lena a constant diet of false messages?
Perhaps she could convince Lena to make a short-term commitment that would buy her some time to get some sense in her head. “Lena, I know the shelter isn’t a perfect solution. It’s going to be hard making it on your own. But just promise me you’ll stay for a little longer. At least until you’ve had a chance to recover from your surgery and put this in a little perspective. Maybe you should set some requirements for Billy Ray. Give him the idea that you’ll only come home if he can fulfill certain requirements. Tell him he needs to be in AA and get into counseling for his anger. He can write to you by sending letters to me at my office, which I’ll forward to you. If he agrees to those things, tell him you’ll need to meet with a counselor together for a while before you move back. But please, don’t talk to him on the phone. And by all means, don’t go back to him yet.”
Lena wrinkled her nose. “I’ll need some cash.”
“Give a budget of your needs to Cathy Rivera. Since you’re not able to work, donors will help cover your needs.”
Lena nodded. “You must think I’m crazy or something.”
“Not at all,” Claire said, reaching forward with her palm open to receive Lena’s hand. “I think you’re normal. Lots of women in your position feel exactly the same way. But you’re tough. You’ve proven that. Don’t sell yourself short, young lady.”