by Mary Daheim
“. . . that you’re on TV?” Blanche said in her strident
voice. “Don’t be a fool, Peter. You’re not irreplaceable.”
“Garnett?” Judith mouthed at Heather.
The nurse gave a brief, single nod. The sound of a
struggle followed next, then what sounded like something breaking. Renie let go of Heather and hurried as
fast as she could to the door. She was nearly there
when Blanche Van Boeck stumbled backwards into the
cousins’ room, almost colliding with Renie.
“You’ll regret this, Peter,” she shouted as she caught
herself on Judith’s visitor’s chair and her turban fell off
onto the commode. Blanche whirled on Renie. “You
clumsy idiot, you almost killed me!”
“Gee,” Renie said, eyes wide, “I must be a real failure by Good Cheer standards. Usually, you come to
this place, you end up dead.”
“How dare you!” Blanche slammed the door behind
her, narrowly missing Dr. Garnett, who was standing
on the threshold. “See here, you little twerp, you have
no right to cast aspersions on this fine institution.
Nurse, put this creature back to bed.”
Heather placed a tentative hand on Renie’s left arm.
“Mrs. Jones, would you . . . ?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Renie snapped, shaking off
Heather’s hand. “Listen, Mrs. Big Shot, are you trying
to tell me that I can’t criticize a hospital where perfectly healthy people die within twenty-four hours
after surgery? Or some poor guy gets run down before
my very eyes?”
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“You saw that?” Blanche was taken aback. “Well,
he’s still alive, isn’t he?” She snatched the turban from
the commode and jammed it back on her platinum hair.
“Addison Kirby may still be alive,” Renie shot back,
“but his wife, Joan, isn’t.”
“That was tragic,” Blanche allowed, regaining her
composure. “Drugs are a terrible curse.” She spun
around toward the door. “As for Mr. Kirby, it’s too bad
his wife died instead of him. Nobody likes snoopy reporters. Or snoopy patients, either.” With a hand on the
doorknob, she threw one last warning glance at Renie
and Judith. “I suggest you two keep your so-called suspicions to yourselves.”
Blanche stormed out of the room as Renie glanced
at Judith. “Was that a threat?” Renie asked.
Judith winced. “Yes. All things considered, maybe
we should take Blanche seriously.”
“I would,” Heather said quietly.
The statement carried more weight than a loaded
gun.
SEVEN
TEN MINUTES LATER, Dr. Garnett surprised the
cousins with a professional visit. “Dr. Ming and Dr.
Alfonso are in surgery this afternoon. They asked
me to look in on you two.”
Peter Garnett wasn’t a true double for Ronald
Colman, but he did have the film actor’s distinguished air, along with silver hair, a neat mustache,
and a debonair manner.
“I think,” Judith said in her pleasantest voice, “we
could get more rest if it wasn’t so noisy around here.
It’s been a very hectic day.”
Dr. Garnett was checking Judith’s dressing.
“Yes . . . that looks just fine. Can you stand up?”
“Not very well,” Judith said.
“Let’s try,” Dr. Garnett said, smiling with encouragement. “Here, sit up and swing around to the edge
of the bed, then take hold of me.”
Painfully, Judith obeyed. The doctor eased her
slowly into a sitting position. “Now just take some
breaths,” he said, still smiling. “Good. Here we go.
Easy does it.”
Awkwardly, agonizingly, and unsteadily, Judith
found herself rising from the bed. At last, with Dr.
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Mary Daheim
Garnett’s firm grasp to support her, she managed to get
on her feet. Briefly.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, swaying a bit before sitting
down again. “I did it!”
“Of course.” The doctor patted her arm. “You’re
very weak, you’ve lost a great deal of blood. Tomorrow
we’ll see if you can take a few steps.”
“About that noise,” Renie said as Dr. Garnett moved
to her bedside, “what was that last to-do about with
the KLIP-TV people?”
Dr. Garnett’s smile evaporated. “Didn’t I see you out
in the hall earlier?”
“Probably,” Renie said. “I’m the designated observer. What gives with the TV crew?”
The doctor frowned. “Such nonsense. A hospital
ward is no place for the media. It should have been
handled in the lobby. Unfortunately, Mrs. Van Boeck
decided to act coy, so our patients and staff ended up
in the middle of a disruptive situation.”
“Isn’t it strange,” Judith queried, “for Mrs. Van
Boeck to be speaking on the hospital’s behalf?”
“Perhaps,” Dr. Garnett responded as he studied
Renie’s incision. “However, I must admit that she was
instrumental in getting the local hospitals to merge
their specialty fields. Still, since her husband’s in
charge here at Good Cheer, it would have been better
to let him do the interview.”
“Oink, oink. Blanche Van Boeck is a publicity
hog,” Renie declared.
Dr. Garnett didn’t respond to the comment. Instead,
he reaffixed Renie’s bandage and smiled rather grimly.
“You’re coming along, Mrs. Jones. You lost a lot of
blood, too. You shouldn’t be on your feet so much. I
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101
understand you’ll start physical therapy Friday morning, before you’re discharged.”
“Oh?” Renie looked surprised. “I didn’t know when
they planned to release me.”
Gently, Dr. Garnett flexed the fingers on Renie’s
right hand. “That’s what Dr. Ming told me. This is
Tuesday, you’ve only got two more full days to go.”
“What about me?” Judith asked from her place on
the pillows where she’d finally stopped quivering from
exertion.
“You’re another matter, Mrs. Flynn,” Dr. Garnett
said, his smile more genuine. “Saturday at the earliest,
Monday if we think you need some extra time.”
“Oh, dear.” Judith made a face, then tried to smile.
“Of course our house has a lot of stairs, so maybe it’s
just as well.”
The doctor patted Judith’s feet where they poked up
under the covers. “We don’t want to rush things. Besides, it’s starting to snow.”
Both Judith and Renie looked out the window. Big,
fluffy flakes were sifting past in the gathering twilight.
“You girls behave yourselves,” Dr. Garnett said, moving toward the door. “By the way, what did Mrs. Van
Boeck say when she was in your room a while ago?”
Judith grimaced. “She was rather rude.”
“She was a jerk,” Renie put in. “She threatened us.”
“Really?” Dr. Garnett’s expression was ambiguous.
“That’s terrible. Mrs. Van Boeck has no right to intimidate patients. I must speak to
Dr. Van Boeck and Sister Jacqueline about her behavior. You’re certain it was
a threat?”
Judith nodded. “She also said that it was too bad that
Joan Fremont died instead of her husband, Addison
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Mary Daheim
Kirby. Mrs. Van Boeck remarked that nobody liked
snoopy reporters, especially her, I guess.”
“Yes.” Dr. Garnett seemed to be trying not to look
pleased at the cousins’ revelations. “I believe that Mr.
Kirby has been covering city government for many
years. He has been quite critical of Blanche Van Boeck
in some of his articles.”
“Maybe,” Renie said, “that’s where I got a poor impression of her.”
“Perhaps,” Dr. Garnett said in a noncommittal tone.
“Is she dangerous?” Judith asked, feeling rather
foolish for asking such a melodramatic question.
But Dr. Garnett seemed to take Judith seriously.
“Let’s put it this way—Blanche Van Boeck is a very
determined, ambitious woman. She has little patience
with anyone who stands in her way.”
The doctor’s assessment didn’t bring any comfort to
the cousins.
Renie was on the phone with her mother. Somehow
Aunt Deb, perhaps threatened by her grandchildren to
have the telephone surgically removed from her ear,
hadn’t yet called her only daughter.
“Yes, Mom,” Renie was saying after the first ten
minutes, “I promise not to let the doctors take advantage of me when I’m in this helpless condition . . . No,
I don’t have the window open . . . Yes, I realize it’s
snowing . . . Of course it’s warm in here . . . No, I’m
not going to wear three pairs of bed socks. One’s
enough . . . Really? I’d no idea Mrs. Parker’s brotherin-law got frostbite . . . After he was admitted to Norway General? That is unusual . . .”
Judith tried to turn a deaf ear, but the conversation
painfully reminded her of not having talked to
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103
Gertrude since she was admitted. Not that her
mother would mind; she hated the telephone as
much as her sister-in-law adored it. Still, Judith felt
guilty for not having called. In her heart of hearts,
she missed the old girl, and assumed that the feeling
was mutual.
She was about to dial the number in the toolshed
when the phone rang under her hand. To her surprise,
the caller was Effie McMonigle.
“I don’t much like paying these daytime long distance rates,” Judith’s mother-in-law declared in a
cranky voice, “but I have to go out tonight to the Elks
Club with Myron.”
Myron was Effie’s long-time companion, a weatherbeaten old wrangler with a wooden leg. His tall tales of
life in the saddle smacked of romance to Effie, but Judith had always wondered if the closest he’d ever gotten to a horse was taking his grandkids for a ride on the
merry-go-round at the county fair.
“It’s very sweet of you to call,” Judith said. “How’s
Myron doing?”
“As best he can,” Effie replied. “Which isn’t all that
good. Say, I got to thinking, how come you never had
an autopsy performed on Dan? He was pretty darned
young to pop off like that. I’ve always wondered.”
“You have?” Judith made a face at Renie, but her
cousin was absorbed in trying to explain to Aunt Deb
why it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to visit at the
hospital. “Well, you know,” Judith said in a strained
voice, “Dan was quite a bit overweight and he hadn’t
been well for a long time.”
“He looked fine to me the last I saw of him about six
months before he died,” Effie asserted. “ ’Course he
couldn’t work, he was too delicate.”
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Mary Daheim
Delicate. Judith held her head. “Actually, Dan
was—”
“So how come?” Effie barked.
“How come what?” Judith responded with a little
jump.
“No autopsy.” There was an ominous pause. “I used
to be a nurse, remember? Autopsies are routine in such
cases.”
The truth was that Judith had been asked if she
would like to have an autopsy performed on Dan. She
had refused. What was the point? Dan was over four
hundred pounds and lived on a diet of Ding-Dongs and
grape juice laced with vodka, so it hadn’t surprised her
in the least when he had expired.
“I wanted to spare him that,” Judith said, though her
thoughts were more complicated: I wanted to spare me
that. I just wanted it all to be over. Nineteen years is a
long time to be miserable.
“Hunh,” Effie snorted. “It’s been on my mind.”
“It shouldn’t be,” Judith said, trying not to sound annoyed. “It’s been a long time. What good would it have
done?”
“I was thinking about Mac and the one on the way,”
Effie said, suddenly subdued. “What if Dan had some
hereditary disease? Shouldn’t Mike and Krissy know
about it?”
“Kristin,” Judith corrected. Effie had a point, except
in Dan’s case, it didn’t apply to Mike or little Mac.
“It’s too late now.”
“Too bad,” Effie said. “These pediatricians today
can nip things in the bud.”
“I don’t think Dan had anything he could pass on,” Judith said, sounding weary. “Really, it’s pointless to fret
over something that happened more than ten years ago.”
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105
“Easy for you to say,” Effie shot back. “All I have to
do is sit here and think.”
“I thought you were going to the Elks Club with
Myron,” Judith said as Renie finally plunked the phone
down in its cradle and rubbed her ear.
“Once a month, big thrill,” Effie said with a sharp
laugh. “I’m not like you, out running around all over
the place and doing as I please.”
“Effie, I’m in the hospital.”
“What?” There was a pause. “Oh—so you are. Well,
you know what I mean. Think about what I said, in
case Dan had something hereditary. It’ll help kill time.
Thinking helps me keep occupied. I’d better hang up.
This phone bill is going to put me in the poorhouse.”
“Lord help me.” Judith sighed, gazing at Renie, who
was lying back on the pillows looking exhausted.
“You, too?”
“At least I love my mother,” Renie said in a wan
voice, “but having seen you break out into a cold sweat
indicated you were talking to Effie McMonigle.”
“That’s right,” Judith said. “She wonders why I
didn’t have an autopsy done on Dan.”
“Before he died? It might have been a smart idea.
Maybe you could have figured out what made him
tick.”
“Sheesh.” Judith rubbed her neck, trying to undo the
kinks that had accumulated. “To think I was putting off
calling Mother.”
The door, which had been left ajar, was slowly
pushed open. Jim Randall, dusted with s
now and carrying a slightly incongruous spring bouquet, stepped
into the room and stopped abruptly.
“Oh! Sorry.” He pushed his thick glasses up higher
on his nose. “Wrong room.” He left.
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Mary Daheim
“What was that all about?” Renie asked.
“I don’t know,” Judith replied, sitting up a bit.
But Jim reappeared a moment later, looking flustered. “There’s someone in there,” he said, gesturing at
the room that had been occupied by his late brother.
“How can that be?”
“It’s Mr. Kirby,” Judith said. “The hospital is very
crowded. I guess they had to use your . . . the empty
room.”
“Oh.” Jim looked in every direction, cradling the
bouquet against his chest. Then, in a jerky motion, he
thrust the flowers in Judith’s direction. “Would you
like these? I don’t know what to do with them. I was
going to put them on Bob’s bed. You know, in remembrance.”
“Ah . . .” Judith stared at the yellow tulips, the red
carnations, the purple freesia, and the baby’s breath.
“They’re very pretty. Wouldn’t Mrs. Randall—
Margie—like them?”
“Margie?” Jim’s eyes looked enormous behind the
thick lenses. “Yes, maybe that’s a good idea. Where is
she?” He peered around the room, as if the cousins
might be hiding his sister-in-law in some darkened corner.
“We heard she’d collapsed,” Judith replied. “They
must have taken her home by now. The children, that
is. They were here earlier.”
Jim’s face suddenly became almost stern. “How
early?”
“Well . . . It was an hour or so after your brother . . .
passed away,” Judith said. “Noon, maybe? I really
don’t remember.”
Jim’s expression grew troubled. “Were they here before Bob was taken?”
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107
“Taken where?” Renie broke in. “We heard he killed
himself.”
“Oh!” Jim recoiled in horror at Renie’s blunt speech.
“That’s not true! He wouldn’t! He couldn’t! Oh!”
“Hospital gossip,” Judith said soothingly. “Please,
Mr. Randall, don’t get upset.”
“How can I not be upset?” Jim Randall was close to
tears. “Bob was my twin. We were just like brothers. I
mean, we were brothers, but even closer . . . Gosh, he
saved my life when we were kids. I fell into a lake, I
couldn’t swim, but Bob was an excellent swimmer, and