by John Saul
Randy said nothing.
“Well?” Margie pressed, her voice taking on a shrill note.
Randy’s eyes met hers. “We were just lookin’ at the stars,” he said. “Nobody brought no keg of beer.”
Margie glared angrily at him. “You sassin’ me? ’Cause if you are, I’m gonna have to have a talk with your pa. Now you tell me what you was doin’!”
Randy’s face remained impassive. “We got a keg of beer, and we got drunk.”
“Who?” Margie asked, suddenly suspicious. What was Randy up to this time? she wondered. “Who was with you?”
Obediently, Randy recited the list of names. When he was finished, Margie nodded knowingly. “Well, I might have known that half-breed Arnold kid would be there. He bring the beer?”
Randy shook his head. “I did,” he said, his voice almost toneless.
Margie’s mouth dropped open in surprise. What was going on? She’d have sworn that no matter how much she browbeat him, he’d never have admitted to having gotten the beer himself. Then she thought she understood.
“You’re lyin’ again, aren’t you?” she prodded.
Randy shook his head, and once more Margie looked at him, trying to puzzle out what might have happened to him. Then she remembered the flu shots they’d given at school the other day. Vaguely, she remembered reading somewhere that sometimes the shots caused the disease instead of preventing it. She laid her wrist against Randy’s forehead.
It seemed a little hot to her, but that could just have been the hangover.
“You sure you’re not sick?”
“I’m okay, I guess,” Randy said, his voice still listless. Then he fell silent, staring off into space.
Margie cocked her head. “Randy? Is something wrong?”
Randy slowly turned to gaze blankly at his mother. “No,” he said in the same dull monotone as before. “I’m fine.”
Margie frowned thoughtfully How many times had Randy claimed he felt lousy just so she’d let him stay in bed? And now, even looking like death warmed over, and owning up that he’d been out drinking till God knows when, he claimed he was fine. “Maybe you better go wash your face,” she said. “It might make you feel better.”
Immediately Randy got out of the bed and padded out of his room. A moment later Margie heard the sound of water running in the bathroom down the hall She plumped up Randy’s pillow, then headed toward the kitchen. “You come into the kitchen as soon as you’re through in there, hear?” she called as she passed the bathroom door, expecting no reply and already sure that as soon as he finished in the bathroom, Randy would go back to bed.
“Okay,” Randy replied.
Margie stopped in her tracks and gazed perplexedly at the closed door to the bathroom.
A few minutes later Randy appeared in the kitchen. He slid onto his chair, then sat still, as if waiting for his mother to serve him. “What’s the matter?” Margie carped at him. “Can’t you get your own orange juice?” She started toward the refrigerator, knowing Randy would never bestir himself—something he’d learned from his father. By the time she got there, Randy already had the door open and the pitcher of orange juice in his hand.
Margie regarded the boy in puzzlement, then slid a bowl of cereal in front of him as he sat back down at the table. To her surprise, Randy made no move to drink the juice or start eating the cereal. “Well?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to drink it?”
Randy stared at the glass for a moment, then picked it up and began to drink. Only when the glass was empty did he put it back on the table.
Margie frowned. “Do you want another?” she asked.
Randy shrugged. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“Well, you don’t seem fine to me,” Margie groused, her lips pursing.
Her frown deepened as she studied Randy’s eyes. There seemed to be something odd about them—they had a dazed look, as if there were something Randy didn’t quite understand. “I think maybe you’d better go back to bed,” Margie said at last.
Silently, Randy rose to his feet and disappeared back down the hall toward his room.
For a moment Margie considered calling Dr. Banning, but then changed her mind. Hangovers could do funny things to people. Probably all Randy needed was another few hours in bed.
After all, there wasn’t really anything wrong with him, except for that funny look in his eyes. He just seemed totally listless; not at all like his regular self.
Well, for today, at least, she wouldn’t worry about it. She’d just keep an eye on Randy, she decided, and if he wasn’t better by tomorrow, she’d take him to see the doctor.
Frank Arnold was sitting up in bed, glowering angrily when Judith and Jed, followed by Brown Eagle, spotted him through the open door to his room. Judith was about to ask him what was wrong, when they entered the room and she saw Otto Kruger standing at the foot of Frank’s bed.
“Will you tell him to get out of here?” Frank growled, jerking his thumb at Kruger.
“Now, come on, Frank,” Otto said. “I didn’t come here to get you upset. I just wanted to find out how you are.”
“And I told you,” Frank grated, his jaw clenching so that his words shot through his teeth like tiny darts. “I’m going to hire a lawyer, and I’m going to sue. What happened yesterday was no accident. Bill Watkins knew that pipe turned into a chute, and you knew it too. I know what happened, Kruger. They want me to shut up, and they’re willing to kill me to do it. So I’m going to sue them. The whole bunch—UniChem, Borrego Oil, Kendall, Watkins, and you. Then we can all find out what’s going on. Who knows?” he added. “Maybe we’ll even find out what happened to Max!”
Kruger’s face flushed angrily. “God damn it, Frank! Will you shut up and listen to reason for once in your life? You think I want to be here? I’m here because Kendall sent me. He says you should have had some kind of safety line if you were going to be in that pipe. UniChem’s already agreed to take responsibility for the accident! You’re getting all your expenses taken care of, and you’ll get a big settlement as well.” His eyes hardened and his voice took on a note of scorn. “If it was up to me, you wouldn’t get a thing. But it’s gonna be our word against yours, Frank. It was just an accident, pure and simple. So why the hell do you have to keep raving about some plot? You’re starting to sound paranoid, for Chrissake!”
“Paranoid?” Frank repeated, heaving himself up into an upright position. “You listen to me, Kruger—” he began, but Judith cut him off.
“Stop it, both of you,” she demanded. Her eyes fixed on Frank warningly, and she held his gaze for a moment. At last, reluctantly, he let his body relax.
Judith turned to Otto Kruger. “I think you’d better leave,” she said coldly. “I don’t know what this is all about, but I won’t let you upset Frank.”
“I’m only trying to reason with him—” Kruger began, but Judith shook her head.
“By telling him he’s crazy?” she asked. “Please, just leave. All right?”
Kruger seemed about to argue, then turned and strode toward the door Frank’s voice stopped him just as he was stepping into the hallway.
“You can tell Kendall to get ready,” he said. “I’m not kidding about this, Kruger. I am going to sue.”
Kruger nodded. “I’ll tell him,” he said, his voice etched with sarcasm. “It’s not going to make him feel particularly generous toward you, which I’d think you’d be worrying about right now, but I’ll tell him.” Then he was gone.
Deprived of his adversary, Frank was silent for a moment, then smiled weakly. “I guess I lost my temper, huh?” he said. “Seems like that’s happening a lot lately.”
Judith leaned over and kissed him. “Well, the way Kruger was talking, he had it coming. Frankly, I doubt the man even knows what a paranoid is!”
Frank slid his arms around her and gave her a squeeze, then nodded to Brown Eagle. “I guess you were right yesterday,” he observed ruefully. “Thank you for coming.” H
is eyes fixed on Jed. “You behaving yourself?”
Instantly, Jed thought of the shattered windshield on his father’s truck, but then nodded. “Everything’s fine,” he said. “Nothing’s going on that I can’t handle.”
Frank frowned slightly. There was something in Jed’s eyes that told him the boy wasn’t quite telling the truth. He was tempted to press the issue, but then changed his mind. If Jed thought he could deal with whatever was going on, he supposed the boy was old enough to try. He sighed heavily, then let himself sink back onto the pillow. “It seems I might have more of a problem than we thought yesterday,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “I guess maybe you’d all better sit down.” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Dr. Banning said he’d be here at eight-thirty.”
Judith felt her knees weaken. “Did something happen last night?” she asked, sinking into the chair next to the bed. “If something happened, how come nobody called me? Or Jed?”
“Now, just take it easy,” Frank said. “I had some kind of little seizure last night, that’s all. It’s probably nothing, but they’ve been giving me a lot of tests, and—”
“If it’s nothing, why were they giving you tests?” Jed broke in. “If something happened, they should have called me. I would have come.”
Frank eyed his son sardonically. “Were you home?” he asked.
Jed looked guilty. “I was out for a while,” he admitted. “But I was back by eleven.”
“And just where were you till eleven?” Frank demanded, unable to set aside his disciplinarian’s role, even though confined to the hospital. Jed was spared having to face his father’s probing stare by the appearance of Bob Banning. In his hand was a thick sheaf of papers, the results of the tests he’d administered to Frank during the long night. Frank fell silent as Banning began telling them what he thought had occurred.
Paul Kendall’s eyes turned cold as he listened to Otto Kruger’s report of his conversation with Frank Arnold. When Kruger was done, Kendall thanked him tersely, then sat for a moment, his fingers drumming on the top of his desk. He weighed his options carefully, but even as he conducted the mental exercise, he knew he was only wasting time; he’d made up his mind what he was going to do even as Kruger had been making his report.
Finally he picked up the phone.
As far as he was concerned, the problem of Frank Arnold was now solved.
“Unfortunately,” Bob Banning finished, “we don’t have a CAT scanner up here, and until we can get Frank down to Santa Fe or Las Cruces, we won’t know for sure. But he definitely underwent a brain seizure of some kind last night, at about midnight. It might have been a minor cerebral hemorrhage, but if it was, I think we’d have seen something on the X rays. And given the state of his reflexes, I’m more inclined to think it was something involving his nervous system. We discovered a slight fracture in his skull, just a hairline, really, but any blow to the head can cause all kinds of reactions, some of them immediate, some of them delayed.”
Judith, her face ashen, stared at Banning. She’d tried to follow him as he reviewed the test results, but she’d been only half listening, her mind occupied instead with an image of Frank writhing in agony on the floor, bashing his head against the wall. “I—I’m sorry,” she said finally, her voice barely audible. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Are you saying he had a stroke?”
Banning hesitated, then nodded. “I’m saying it’s certainly a possibility.”
Judith felt her blood run cold. First Reba Tucker, then Max Moreland, now Frank. “I see,” she breathed. Then: “Is it going to happen again?”
Banning spread his hands helplessly. “It’s hard to say,” he said. “Until we know more, I wouldn’t want to try to predict anything. But it seems to me …” His voice trailed off as Frank’s body appeared to stiffen. “Frank?” he said. “You okay?”
“I—I smell something,” Frank whispered. Then, as a sour taste began to fill his mouth, he felt a twinge of panic. “It’s happening again, Dr. Ban—”
His voice faltered, and suddenly his eyes opened wide as his whole body went rigid.
“Frank!” Judith cried out. She rose to her feet, staring in horror at the figure on the bed. “My God! What’s happening to him?”
She instinctively reached out to touch Frank, but as another convulsion seized him, he bellowed in agony and his right arm swung up, his hand smashing against Judith’s cheek, sending her reeling against the wall.
As Brown Eagle moved quickly to Judith, and Jed stared at his father in shock, Banning jammed his finger against the signal button, but the instruments wired to Frank’s body had already sounded an alarm at the nurses’ station, and the door flew open. Two orderlies and a nurse came into the room, surrounding the bed.
Frank was thrashing wildly now, his face scarlet. His spine arched grotesquely and his left leg began twitching spasmodically.
“Get restraints,” Banning barked. Instantly, one of the orderlies darted from the room. Frank’s voice, his words unintelligible now, rose to an anguished scream, then was suddenly cut off as his body went limp.
“Hold him!” Banning snapped. The nurse and one of the orderlies grasped Frank by the upper arms, and then the second orderly reappeared. Working quickly, he strapped Frank’s big body to the bed, attaching the last of the wide nylon straps just as another seizure gripped Frank.
His eyes popped open and his tongue protruded from his mouth. His throat began strangling, cutting off his anguished screams, and he struggled wildly against the bonds that held him to the bed.
“Can’t you do something for him?” Judith moaned, her face smeared with tears as she stared helplessly at Frank. “My God, he’s going to die!”
Banning spoke quickly to the nurse, and she disappeared from the room. A moment later she returned and handed the doctor a hypodermic.
But instead of plunging it into Frank’s arm, he waited, watching.
“My God,” Judith screamed. “Can’t you see what’s happening to him? For God’s sake, do something!”
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the seizure was over. Banning hesitated a moment, then handed the needle, unused, back to the nurse.
Ignoring Judith’s sobs, he bent over Frank, checking his pulse and respiration, peering into his eyes.
“He’s unconscious,” he said. He looked at Brown Eagle, who was standing between Jed and Judith, his arms encircling them both. “You’d better take them out to the waiting room,” he said, his voice gentle. “We have a lot of work to do.”
Brown Eagle and Judith moved toward the door, but Jed remained where he was. His eyes met the doctor’s. “Is he dying?” he asked, his voice eerily calm.
Banning hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “But I’m afraid I can’t tell you right now that he’s not.” He saw Jed struggling with his emotions. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll do the best we can.”
Tears welled in Jed’s eyes, then spilled over. But he said nothing, silently leaving the room to join Judith and his grandfather in the waiting room.
Chapter 19
The three of them sat quietly in the waiting room, each occupied with their own thoughts.
For Judith, the vision of Frank, his strong body contorted by the horrible spasms, was etched sharply in her mind. But slowly the image changed, and she saw him lying back against the pillows, drained, his eyes closed, all his vitality suddenly gone.
It wasn’t fair, losing Frank now, just when she’d found him. She shivered as she remembered the feel of his arms around her body, the touch of his lips on hers. Now she might never experience that again.
No!
She shoved the thought out of her mind. People recovered from strokes—it happened every day. And Frank was strong and healthy. He’d be all right.
For a moment, just a moment, she almost believed her own thoughts. But then she remembered Reba Tucker, and Max Moreland.
And the shots.
Her mind went back to the previous
day. They’d given Frank a shot.
No. Not “they.”
Greg Moreland had given Frank a shot, just as he’d arranged to give every teenager at the high school shots.
She gasped, then covered her mouth as both Jed and Brown Eagle turned to look at her
Greg? she repeated to herself.
Was it possible?
Of course not—she’d known Greg Moreland for years.
Except, of course, she hadn’t. She’d known him once, ten years ago, when he’d been a medical student. But it had been a full decade since she’d seen him. And yet her mind still rejected her own thoughts. Greg was a doctor—a doctor who truly cared about his patients. He’d even spent a lot of his own money to build a private rehabilitation center.…
A rehabilitation center where Reba Tucker still lay, helpless after her own stroke.
But Max?
Surely Greg wouldn’t have done something to his own uncle. No. It was simply not possible.
And yet the thought wouldn’t let go of her.
She picked up a magazine and began to leaf through it, determined to put the terrible thoughts out of her mind. But her imaginings kept reaching out to her, twisting themselves around her mind like the tendrils of a plant, squeezing at her until she thought she’d scream. And then, when she thought she could stand it no longer, the doors from the back wing opened and Bob Banning stepped through.
For a moment, until she saw the look on his face, Judith felt a surge of hope.
Banning motioned them to stay where they were, coming to perch uneasily on the edge of a chair, his hands clasped together, his eyes grave.
“What’s happening?” she heard Jed ask. “What’s going on with dad?”
Banning shook his head, and Judith instinctively reached out to take Jed’s hand. But Jed, his wary eyes never leaving the doctor’s face, barely seemed to notice her gesture.
“I’m afraid the news isn’t very good,” Banning said. “He’s awake again, but he’s very groggy, and he’s having a hard time speaking. I’ve checked his reflexes, and they don’t look good. He’s lost most of his control over his left arm, and he can’t move his left leg at all. This time I’m sure of what happened. He definitely had a stroke, and it looks like a bad one.”