by Mary Daheim
about it.”
“I can’t,” Judith responded in a weary voice. “I’m
already fussing too much about Joe. Who do you suppose wanted to see him? If it had been Woody, he or
Sondra would have told me.”
But Renie couldn’t even guess. Instead, she called
home, hoping that one of her children would answer.
Luckily, Tony Jones picked up the phone.
“You mean it?” Renie said, brightening at her son’s
words on the other end of the line. “Oh.” Her face fell.
“Then hide that Uzbekistani cookbook from your father. You can’t live on millet until I get back in the
kitchen. Tell me,” she inquired of her son, “what’s he
doing with those damned Chihuahuas?”
Judith ignored Renie’s anxious probing on the
phone and dialed zero and asked to be connected to the
ICU. Whatever Bill Jones was doing with a couple of
dogs wasn’t nearly as urgent as Joe fighting for his life.
It took some time for Judith to be connected to the intensive care unit. Meanwhile, she imagined that the problem reaching a nurse was because Joe had taken a sudden
turn for the worse. She’d seen it happen with Bob Randall, with people shouting, running, and rushing equipment down the hall. She could visualize the same frantic
movements being performed on Joe’s behalf.
Finally, a tired-voiced female answered. Judith felt
momentarily strangled by anxiety, but she managed to
give her name and ask how Mr. Flynn was doing.
SUTURE SELF
245
“Flynn . . . Flynn . . . Joseph Flynn,” the nurse said
in a voice that dragged. “He’s listed in critical condition.”
Judith flinched. “No change from earlier this
evening?”
“That’s correct.”
“Officially, you mean,” Judith said. “But can’t you
tell whether he’s a little bit better or . . . not?”
“There’s been no change,” the nurse replied and
yawned in Judith’s ear.
Judith and Renie hung up at the same time, then
stared at each other.
“Well?” Renie inquired.
Judith’s features sagged with disappointment. “No
change.”
“I told you they’d let you know as soon as anything
happened,” Renie said. “Take it as a good sign.
Wouldn’t you think that if Joe wasn’t going to pull
through, he would have gotten worse by now? It’s almost ten o’clock.”
Judith flopped back on the pillows. “Maybe.”
Renie waited a few moments before speaking again.
“Tony says Bill has the Chihuahuas in his workroom in
the basement. He sits down there watching them. Then
the dogs watch Bill. And he watches them watch him.”
“Maybe it’s better than watching what’s on TV,” Judith said without much interest.
“Bill doesn’t usually conduct those kinds of experiments,” Renie fretted as Avery, the night nurse, came
in for the relentless vital signs routine.
“Maybe,” Judith suggested after submitting herself
to the procedures, “he did that kind of thing while he
was still teaching at the university. You just never knew
about it.”
246
Mary Daheim
“Dubious,” Renie replied before the thermometer
was stuck in her mouth.
Judith bided her time, drumming her fingernails on
the bedclothes. After the nurse left, she turned to
Renie.
“I can’t stand it,” Judith announced. “I’m getting out
of here.”
Renie sighed. “I should have known. That’s why
you didn’t take your Valium a while ago.”
“Yes.” Judith signaled for Renie to be quiet. A full
five minutes passed as she listened for the voices to die
down and the patter of feet to fade. “They’re settling in
for the night. Help me get into the wheelchair.”
“No.” Renie glared at Judith. “You’ll do yourself
some harm. Besides, we’ll get caught.”
“We won’t,” Judith asserted, laboriously starting to
get out of bed. “Come on, give me a hand.”
“That’s all I’ve got,” Renie shot back. But, seeing
that Judith was determined, she got out of bed. “I
really don’t want to do this, coz. Where are we going?
As if I couldn’t guess.”
“You can,” Judith replied. “The ICU, of course.”
“Of course.” Renie shoved the wheelchair next to
the bed, then used her good arm to help Judith stand.
“Didn’t you tell Woody you thought we were in danger? Isn’t this trip a trifle risky?”
“It’s also necessary,” Judith declared.
Renie sighed again as she helped her cousin prepare
to sit down in the wheelchair. “Are you okay?”
Judith waited to make sure she didn’t feel dizzy.
“I’m fine.” She let Renie help ease her into place and
put a blanket across her lap. “Let’s roll.”
Just down the hall, an older nun sat at the nurses’
station. She looked up and eyed the cousins curiously.
SUTURE SELF
247
“Excuse me,” she said with a faint lisp, “where are you
going this time of night?”
“The chapel,” Judith replied. “My husband is in the
ICU. Perhaps you’ve heard. He was stabbed earlier
today. I want to pray for him.”
“I see,” the nun replied with a benevolent smile.
“You know where the chapel is? The second floor.”
“Thank you,” Judith replied as Renie leaned into the
wheelchair to aid her cousin’s progress.
The elevator was empty. “Blasphemy,” Renie muttered. “What next?”
“I really would like to go to the chapel,” Judith said.
“Luckily, it’s on the same floor as the ICU.”
“That makes sense,” Renie said as the elevator
stopped on two. “Gosh,” she remarked, giving Judith a
shove into the hallway, “it’s dark around here. Which
way, I wonder?”
Metal light fixtures with three bulbs hung from the
ceiling at twenty-foot intervals. The somber dark green
walls were relieved only by the tan linoleum floor. A
wooden sign with flaking gold letters and arrows directed the visitor to the operating rooms, the intensive
care unit, the isolation unit, the waiting room, and the
chapel.
“To the left,” Judith said, steering herself. “Everything but the ORs are that way.”
Heavy glass-and-steel double doors bore a sign that
read “No Admittance—Staff Only.” Perplexed, Judith
paused. “Now what?” she asked.
“There’s some kind of buzzer system on the wall to
punch in what must be a code,” Renie replied. “As you
may have guessed, we don’t know what it is.”
“Drat.” Judith gripped the arms of the wheelchair
and peered through the glass. She could see nothing
248
Mary Daheim
except for a short hallway and another set of doors
about ten yards away. “Double drat.”
Behind them, they heard the elevator doors open and
close, followed by a beeping sound. “Robbie!” Renie
exclaimed. “He’s headed
this way.”
The robot cruised down the hall, swerving to avoid
the cousins. The double doors swung open at his approach. Hurriedly, Renie pushed Judith inside. Instead
of going straight ahead, Robbie swung to the right
where a single wood-frame door said “Keep Out.”
Again, Robbie was given access and disappeared as
the door swung shut behind him.
“What’s that, I wonder?” Judith murmured.
“How should I know?” Renie replied. “Hey, this
second set of double doors doesn’t have a code system.
Shall we?”
The cousins passed through, using the wheelchair for
leverage to open the heavy doors. Almost immediately
they came upon a nurses’ station that looked out through
glass at the patients in the ICU.
“Oh!” Judith gasped. “Joe must be in there. Where
is he?”
A middle-aged nurse with a jutting jaw stared at the
cousins. “What are you doing here?” she demanded,
whipping off her glasses.
“Where’s Joe Flynn?” Judith asked, refusing to be
put off by the nurse’s fierce countenance.
“You don’t belong in this area,” the nurse retorted.
“This is off-limits to anyone but medical staff. Please
leave at once.”
“Where’s Joe Flynn?” Judith persisted as Renie tried
to angle the wheelchair so that they could see into the
dimly lighted ward that lay behind the glass windows.
Some half-dozen patients lay in small cubicles with
SUTURE SELF
249
elaborate lighted monitors that looked as if they belonged in the cockpit of a jumbo jet.
“If you don’t get out,” the nurse growled, “I’m calling Security.”
“Look,” Renie said in the voice she reserved for
dealing with dimwitted CEOs and obstinate public relations directors, “this is Mrs. Flynn, and the least you
can do is point her husband out to her.”
“That does it!” the nurse cried, and reached under
the desk. A soft but persistent alarm sounded, making
Judith jump.
“Come on, you old crone,” Renie railed at the nurse.
“Give this poor woman a break! She’s just had hip surgery and her husband may be at death’s—”
Torchy Magee appeared as if from nowhere, huffing
and puffing through the near set of double doors. “What’s
up?” he wheezed, practically falling against the desk.
“Get these two out of here,” the nurse ordered.
“They’ve broken into the ICU without permission.”
If Torchy had still had his eyebrows, he probably
would have raised them. Instead, he merely stared at
the cousins. “I know you two. Aren’t you from the
third floor?”
“Y-e-s,” Judith said, as something moving in the
shadows of the ICU caught her eye. Probably a busy
nurse, prompting Judith to worry that Joe was in there,
requiring immediate medical attention.
Torchy shook his head. “Now, now, you should
know better than to come into an area like this. It’s
staff only. Didn’t you see the sign?”
“Yes,” Judith began, “but—”
“In fact,” Torchy said, scratching his bald head,
“how did you get in here?” He gave the nurse a questioning look.
250
Mary Daheim
“I didn’t let them in,” the nurse snapped. “They must
have tripped the code somehow and opened the outer
doors.”
“Is that what happened?” Torchy asked, looking
stumped.
“Something like that,” Renie answered. “Look, as
long as we’re here, couldn’t Hatchet-Face at least point
out to Mrs. Flynn where her husband is in the ICU?”
The nurse fingered her glasses, scowled at Torchy,
then looked down at her charts. “If I do, will you leave
right away?”
“Yes,” Judith promised. “Just point him out and tell
me how he’s doing.”
The nurse turned to her computer screen. “What was
the name again?”
“Joe Flynn,” Judith said with emphasis.
There was a long pause. The nurse scrolled the
screen up and then down. She slowly shuffled through
the charts on her desk. “Sorry,” she said with an expression of supreme satisfaction, “you must be mistaken. There’s no Joe Flynn here.”
SIXTEEN
JUDITH WILLED HERSELF not to faint twice in one day,
but she definitely felt light-headed. She couldn’t
find her voice. The words formed in her brain but
wouldn’t come out.
“You’re crazy,” Renie yelled at the nurse, banging
her left fist on the desk. “Joe Flynn had surgery this
afternoon and was moved to the intensive care unit.
Dr. Garnett operated on him. Look again.”
“Look for yourself,” the nurse smirked, turning the
computer monitor so that Renie could view the
screen. “Do you see any Flynn?”
“No,” Renie gulped after carefully eyeballing the
patient list, which included a Kyota, a Fairbanks, a
Diaz, a Gustafson, a Littlejohn, and a McNamara—
but no Flynn. “When did you come on duty?” she
demanded with a lowering stare.
“Tonight.” The nurse still seemed smug. “Ten
o’clock.”
“You mean you just got here?” Renie asked.
“That’s right,” the nurse replied. “About fifteen
minutes before you two showed up.” She leaned
past Renie to look at Torchy Magee. “Can you get
these pests out of here? I’ve got patients to monitor.”
“I’ll see these ladies home,” Torchy said with a
252
Mary Daheim
chuckle. “Come on, let’s head back to the old corral.”
He grasped the wheelchair firmly and steered Judith
through the double doors.
She regained her speech only when they got to the
elevator. “Mr. Magee,” she said, sounding weak, “can
you check this whole thing out for me? I swear to you,
my husband was in ICU until . . . until whenever he
was moved.”
“I’ll try,” Torchy replied as the elevator doors
opened, “but I’m the only one on duty tonight. My
backup couldn’t get here in this snow.”
“Please.” Judith sounded pitiful. Then, summoning
up all her courage, she asked the question that had
been uppermost on her mind: “If something happened—that is, if my husband didn’t make it—
wouldn’t they tell me right away?”
“Oh, sure,” Torchy replied breezily, hitting the button for the third floor. “Say,” he said, looking around
the car, “where’s the other one?”
Judith gave a start. For the first time, she realized
that Renie wasn’t with them. “I don’t know. Wasn’t she
right behind us?”
“If she was, she didn’t get in the elevator,” Torchy
said as the car began its ascent. “I hope she’s not still
down in the ICU, giving Bertha heat. Bertha’s pretty
tough.”
“So’s my cousin,” Judith said. But her worries rose
right along with the elevator.
&nbs
p; “I’ll check on Mrs. Jones after I get you to your
room,” Torchy said as they exited into the hall. “Maybe
she didn’t make it into the car before the door closed.
She’ll probably show up in a few minutes.”
When Judith and Torchy passed the third-floor
nurses’ station, the nun at the desk looked up. “Your
SUTURE SELF
253
mind must be at rest after going to the chapel,” she said
with a smile. “Prayerful moments with our Lord before
bedtime are much better than any sedatives.”
Judith uttered a response that was supposed to come
out as “My, yes,” but sounded more like “Mess.”
Which, Judith thought dismally, was more appropriate
to her situation.
“Please,” she begged after the security guard had
gotten her back into bed, “can you find out what happened to my husband?”
“I’ll give it a try,” Torchy said. “What about your
cousin?”
“She’ll be all right,” Judith said, though not with
complete conviction. “For now, I’m more worried
about Joe.”
Torchy nodded half-heartedly. “Okay, I’m off.”
It was impossible for Judith to get comfortable. She
called the main desk and asked for Sister Jacqueline,
but the nun was unavailable. Then she dialed Woody’s
number at home.
Woody sounded half asleep when he answered. Judith briefly apologized before explaining that Joe had
gone missing.
“How can he be missing?” Woody asked, sounding
confused.
“Maybe that’s the wrong word,” Judith said as she
heard Sondra’s sleepy mumbling in the background.
“But I don’t know where he is. Which makes him
missing as far as I’m concerned.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Woody said. “Frankly, I
think it’s just a mix-up. Try to calm down. It isn’t good
for you to get yourself so upset after surgery.”
Judith had confidence in Woody, but realized that
the most he could do at the moment was try to send a
254
Mary Daheim
couple of patrol officers to the hospital. They might
get the runaround, too. She cudgeled her brain to
think who else she might contact for help. Feeling
impotent and distraught, Judith considered taking the
Valium to settle her nerves. But it might fuddle her
brain, so she set aside the yellow pill in its tiny
pleated cup. It was almost eleven o’clock; she considered turning on the late-night news. She might see