by Beth Moore
Adella’s and Caryn’s faces moved apart and a new one came into view.
No one spoke for a few moments, and then she heard someone clear her throat. “Jillian?”
She tried to make a sound of response, and if her ears weren’t deceiving her, she thought maybe she’d been successful.
“It’s Olivia.”
Jillian stared at her for a moment, trying to reconcile the strange concoction of emotions crowding her chest. She shifted her eyes all the way to her left and rehearsed every name as she moved her gaze slowly to the right, one face at a time. David. Adella. That’s Mrs. Fontaine next. First name, Olivia. Caryn is beside her. Then Mrs. Winsee.
One or more of those people—if not all five at once—were in Jillian’s hospital room for the next four days. Her first forty-eight conscious hours were battered by relentless bouts of nausea. Strewn thoughts were sewn together piece by piece as she gradually made sense of the source of her agony.
She’d sustained a fierce concussion that had written its jagged signature in fifteen stitches on the back of her head. She overheard one nurse say that most people would never wake up from a blow like that, and if they did, they’d never know it. Jillian’s whole body was so sore that she felt like a slab of deep purple from head to toe. She’d also entered the ER perilously dehydrated.
Her memories of the events that had landed her in the critical care unit were hazy, like a porch light up the block on a foggy night. They’d caught Stella, but that was all she was told except that she was no longer in danger.
Jillian awakened once in the middle of the night to her elbow touching someone beside her on the bed. She lifted her head to turn it without putting pressure on her wound and saw Caryn sound asleep next to her, cradling a small plastic bowl. Of the five, only Caryn was small enough to fit beside her comfortably on the narrow mattress. She was apparently keeping the bowl in close proximity for Jillian’s next round of nausea. Even the sight of it made her queasy.
She heard a soft snore but it wasn’t coming from Caryn. She lifted her head again and looked across the small room at the green vinyl couch right beneath the window. David was folded up on it like an accordion. How he could sleep in that position was a mystery, but she was strangely comforted by it.
The first time Jillian was able to find her words and muster enough volume to be heard, Adella was kneeling beside her hospital bed, lips quivering uncontrollably as she spoke. “Jillian, forgive me. Please forgive me.” She dropped her head on the edge of the bed. “If I hadn’t looked at you the way I did that day, you wouldn’t have left, and none of this—”
“No . . . don’t,” Jillian said hoarsely. She reached for the glass of water on her bedside table and sipped through the straw. Mouth moistened, she spoke again, this time more clearly. “Wasn’t . . . your . . . fault.”
“Yes, it was.”
“No.” Jillian did something she’d never done before. She reached out and grasped Adella’s hand. “They would have kept coming for us.”
Jillian sat up as tall as she could without reawakening the searing pain at the crown of her head. Her memory had fully awakened to the scene in Stella’s apartment when she discovered Rafe’s belongings. She’d also remembered getting in the car with her. What she knew so far about the storage unit was based almost entirely on what she’d been told. She could say this much to Adella with absolute certainty: “Somebody was going to get hurt.” She drew a deep breath and, exhaling, added, “Sooner or later.”
“But this way, everybody got hurt.”
The doctor burst through the door, abbreviating their conversation. Jillian used every ounce of energy she could muster to answer his questions.
“How’s the dizziness?”
“Better, I think.”
“They’re getting you up some, right?”
“Yes. Starting to.”
“You’re not attempting to walk without assistance, are you?”
“No.”
“When was the last time you vomited?”
“Only once during the night. Improving.”
“Scale of one to ten, ten being the most intense, how would you rate your pain?”
“Six,” she said.
The doctor helped her sit up and lean forward so that he could examine her stitches. “Swelling’s going down but I’m not going to let you out of here until your temperature is normal for twenty-four hours.”
“How long do you estimate that might take?” Jillian was glad Adella posed the question. She wanted to know too, but was too spent to ask.
“Don’t hold me to this, but at this rate, you’ll probably take her home in forty-eight hours or so. It’s stabilizing at a low grade.”
Home, Jillian thought. And where will that be, exactly?
“Dr. Sutherland, Jillian’s mother lives in San Francisco and wants her on the first plane home the second she’s ready to travel. Can you give me some ballpark estimate to pass along to her?”
Jillian shot her gaze toward Adella. She didn’t know they’d heard from her mom. She scooted back up on her elbows. “When did you talk to her?”
“You talked to her too, Jillian. Just a little. We put the phone up to your ear soon after you regained your wits. You responded to her with a couple of words.”
“I don’t remember.” Jillian turned on her side toward Adella to avoid returning the back of her head to the pillow.
“Is it any wonder, after all you’ve been through?” Adella asked. “She’s called several times. She’s very concerned.”
The doctor glanced at the time and reentered the conversation. “Let’s concentrate on getting her pain and her temperature completely under control and getting her out of here. Then, based on her progress, we’ll revisit a flight plan. Jillian, I’m only overseeing the medical concerns. There are other considerations that I won’t be able to control for much longer. Needless to say, the police are pushing hard to question you.”
Needless to say? The police? Her stomach flipped. Maybe it was needless to say to everybody else in earshot, but it was news to Jillian. “Why?” The rational side of her mind knew she was victim and not perpetrator in the nightmare with Stella, but her less rational side still feared getting caught and exposed as the real loser.
“They want to conduct an interview, as I understand it, to ascertain whether additional criminal charges should be filed. As you probably know, the judge denied bail, so the woman is not going anywhere anytime soon. I’ve kept them at bay, insisting on sufficient time for you to work through the fog of thought and speech common in your type of head injury. You are one of the lucky ones, Miss Slater. You’re doing well. But therein lies the problem. You may have to deal with them soon.”
Dr. Sutherland patted her on the foot and smiled. “Of course, they’ll have to deal with your grandmother first. I don’t envy them that. So far, from what I hear, the score is three to zip.” The doctor finished tapping a note into Jillian’s computer file. He glanced back her way and spoke at a hurried pace. “I’m going to change your pain medication and see if we can get you more comfortable. Is there anything else you need from me?”
Jillian shook her head and winced as her bandage brushed against the pillow.
Struggling to process all the information and to stay alert on the new pain medication, she grew quiet over the next little while. She sensed herself slipping into that familiar hole, but for the first time she didn’t want to. With her eyes still closed, she whispered, “Talk to me, Adella.”
“Who, me?”
She smiled. “No, the other Adella. You see one anywhere?”
That was all the invitation a woman with Adella’s caliber of verbal skills needed. She stayed several more hours and small-talked nonstop about everything under the sun. Jillian knew she wasn’t herself when she didn’t mind listening to it. Emmett sure would have come up to see her if he could have, she told her, but Olivia equipped that guard at the door with a very short list and in no uncertain terms did she mean fo
r him to abide by it. Adella explained that this was one of those rare occasions when she had a mind to do what the woman wanted. After all, she’d gone all tae kwon do on one nurse who’d tried to kick the five of them out the night Jillian was admitted. She’d also threatened to skin Clementine with a potato peeler if she got under her feet again. Who knew what else the woman was capable of doing? Adella grinned when she said it and nobody grinned as well as Adella.
Then she started into, “What you need, young lady, is a manicure. It looks like you’ve been scratching a gator’s back. You been running some of those swamp tours on the side? Is that where you’ve been going all this time? And there I was, thinking you were making big-nits.” She marched to the end of Jillian’s bed and uncovered her feet. “Oh, lawdy, look at those toes! Naked as the day you were born. I haven’t had polish off my toes in twenty years except for a color change. That does it,” Adella said. “We’re going to Nail Estelle on the way home.”
“Adella?”
“What, honey?”
“Do I have any clothes to go home in?”
Adella paused for a moment and stared at the fluorescent light over Jillian’s bed. “You will when it’s time to check out of here. I promise you that. Sound good?”
Jillian nodded. “What about my pajamas?”
Adella wrinkled her nose like she smelled something awful. “Those big old things? It’s time you had some new ones. I’ll get some at the Walmart on my way home and put them through the washer with some Downy so they’ll be good and soft.”
“I don’t want new ones.”
Adella went a little quiet after that, but she kept patting Jillian’s hand, so that was fine by her.
David came on duty next, and he scooted a chair as close as he could to Jillian’s bed and they watched a movie on his laptop. Well, he watched the movie. She dozed off and on, secure in occasional bursts of his laughter. “Think they’ve got any popcorn in this place?” Jillian asked at one point.
“You finally hungry?” David asked, jumping to his feet. “I’ll be right back.” A catnap later, he returned to the room with his arms full and a frown on his face. “Well, I failed, but not from lack of trying. I was told by Nurse Ratched that you need popcorn like you need—may I be blunt?”
“Yes,” Jillian said, grinning.
“Like you need another hole in the head. Since she had that much right, I thought I better go with her on the popcorn. However, I have not come back empty-handed.”
“I can see that.”
“Three puddings: vanilla, chocolate, and . . . wait for it.”
She cut her eyes his direction and he held up the third container. “Butterscotch for the win!”
“I’ll have that one.”
“I thought you might. And for dessert I got you Boston cream pie.”
“I’ll have the chocolate pudding for dessert. You have the pie.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
And that’s just what they did.
CHAPTER 48
JILLIAN AWAKENED to an empty hospital room for the first time. She looked at the clock. It was ten past seven, but was it morning or evening? Morning, she decided. This time of year, it would be dark if it were evening.
She rolled over so she could see if anyone was in the bathroom. The door was ajar and the light was off. Loneliness dropped on her like it had been chewing its cuticles to the quick, chafing to be welcomed home.
A nurse with a familiar face walked into the room to check Jillian’s vitals. “How’s our girl this morning?”
“Okay, I think.”
“According to your chart, your temperature stayed down during the night. How about we get you up and to the shower?”
The task seemed insurmountable, but Jillian had to admit that a shower and a crisp, clean gown would feel really good. She pushed the button to raise the head of her bed and then slipped her feet over the side and slowly to the floor.
“I’m going to hold on to one arm, but very lightly this time,” the nurse said. “I want to see how well you can walk on your own. Let’s give it a try. You’ll have to bring your friend with you.” She nodded toward the IV stand.
When Jillian made it around the bed, the nurse cheered for her. “Look at you go! You’re going to be blowing out of here before you know it! We need to get you out in the hall today so you can get some distance on your feet. Where’s that posse of yours? You finally run ’em off?”
Jillian’s heart sank. “I don’t know. I guess I must have.”
“Good for you. I don’t know how you’ve gotten a moment’s peace.”
Jillian didn’t know how to tell her that having them there was her only moment’s peace. While she waited by the sink, the nurse turned the shower on and gauged the temperature. She put a loose shower cap on Jillian’s head to keep her stitches dry.
“When can I wash my hair?” Jillian was just becoming alert enough to care.
“Not yet, but ask the doctor when he comes in today.” The nurse stood right outside the shower curtain until Jillian was finished, and then she helped her dry off her feet and get dressed. After she got back into bed, the nurse took her blood pressure once more and checked the tape on her IV.
“I’m gonna go grab you a fresh bag of fluids. I’ll be right back. Feel like trying to eat some solids this morning for breakfast? Scrambled eggs, maybe?”
Jillian grimaced. “Toast?”
“Toast it is.” And out she went.
Jillian had barely gotten her pillow situated and her sheet and blanket smoothed out when the door flew open again. “Wow, that was fast.”
“Well, fast for you, maybe, but I could have gotten here quicker skateboarding on a box turtle. I have been sitting in traffic for a solid hour. I blew my horn every chance I got just to have something to do.”
Had Olivia not turned her back immediately to set a couple of bags on a counter, she would have caught Jillian looking like she’d seen a ghost. Jillian tried to think whether or not the two of them had been alone in that hospital room since she’d regained consciousness. She couldn’t quite remember, but if they had, Jillian knew she couldn’t have been very alert. The two of them alert and alone with one another held all the peaceful promise of two sticks of dynamite with tangled fuses rolling toward a campfire grill. They were Old Smokey and Spitfire and somebody always got a good barbecuing.
Jillian leaned as far left as she could without falling out of the bed to catch a glimpse of whatever Olivia was unloading. She watched her pull out a large plug-in kettle with one hand and a small thermos with the other and set them both on the counter. Then Olivia retrieved an object about the same size as the kettle but this one was wrapped in a kitchen towel tightly secured by a large rubber band. Olivia slipped off the rubber band and unveiled what might have, to date, been the loveliest sight Jillian had seen in all of New Orleans. It was Olivia Fontaine’s most valuable personal possession: her French press.
Either Jillian’s new pain medication was kicking in, she thought to herself, or she’d suddenly found a reason to live. She sat straight up on the hospital bed like she didn’t have fifteen stitches in her head. The next thing she saw Olivia lift from the large bag was a tall mason jar filled to its neck with gorgeously brown and perfectly ground coffee.
“You brought coffee?”
Her back still to Jillian, Olivia held up her left hand to indicate that she wasn’t finished yet. Jillian grinned and waited.
Next, Olivia reached into the smaller bag and carefully unwound gold tissue paper from two china cups and saucers. Then came a long-handled spoon. Jillian watched carefully as Olivia pulled a large bottle of water out of the big bag, poured most of it into the kettle, then plugged it in and flipped the switch. Two dessert plates of the same china pattern as the cups and saucers materialized. Last, Olivia reached all the way to the bottom of the large bag and removed a medium-size plastic container with a red lid. She pulled two croissants out of it and set one on each plate.
“Hmmm.” Olivia put both hands on her hips and glared at the occupants of the two plates. “They’ve lost a few flakes. I fear they may have taken a bit of a beating when I drove over a curb trying to get around an idiot waiting for a better shade of green at a traffic light. The bag fell over and they landed on the floor.”
“They look great to me,” Jillian responded awkwardly, sipping her water through a straw. She wasn’t exactly sure what to do with what was unfolding in front of her, but if Olivia was willing to act out of character, she was too. Those croissants looked good, and nothing sounded better than a decent cup of coffee. She studied Olivia’s strong hand as she shook the coarse coffee grounds from the mason jar into the floor of the French press and picked it up to see through the glass if it looked like the right amount.
“I ground the beans at Saint Sans. It’s a shame that was necessary, but the bag was already too heavy. I had to make the unfortunate choice between the grinder and the bottle of water. The mere thought of tap water from the bathroom sink of a hospital was . . . well,” Olivia said, “don’t make me go on. We might as well draw it from the bathtub. We’d probably swallow a tadpole.”
Jillian dropped her straw out of her mouth and set down her water. This was precisely why she’d always preferred to limit most of her water intake to coffee. It was reasonable to expect that the temperature killed most of the germs and surely a tadpole couldn’t survive it. No telling what that elixir was going to do to Jillian’s stomach, but she had every intention of taking the risk.
She obviously wasn’t the only one feeling awkward. Olivia had been in her room going on seven minutes and still hadn’t looked at her. Waiting for the water to boil and the kettle to turn itself off would have offered a person with average social skills the opportune moment to turn around and chat. Instead, Olivia stood over it with both her palms flat on the counter and the little finger on her left hand tapping like it was taking all day.
“What is it they say? Something about a watched pot?” Jillian asked, trying to poke some holes through the silence.