Marygrace cocked her head at me. “She asked me if I thought I could call you guys, and try to persuade you to come watch Baby again. I said I didn’t know, but I really didn’t think you would do it for free again. So, guess what?” Without waiting for us to answer, Marygrace continued, “She said money was no object! Come on, man! That bitch never gave a shit about her mom until it looked like maybe the whole family had suddenly become an endangered species. She said tell you she wants you guys to find out who’s doing this and get them locked up.”
Marygrace allowed herself a small triumphant smirk. “See, you put good out into the universe and look how it comes back to you! Now you’ll be working for money, lots of money! And Baby’s gonna have somebody looking out for her full-time! Now that’s how I like to see a plan come together!”
Baby’s eyes were open and she was watching me through the window, frowning and then smiling as she appeared to recognize me. She raised her hand and waved, beckoning me into the small room where she lay.
“Can I go in?” I asked Marygrace.
“Sure, but they won’t let you stay long. They’re monitoring her. It was a small heart attack but they want to take precautions before they release her. I’m hoping we can take her home this afternoon.”
“To Brenda’s?” I asked, alarm suddenly overtaking my joy at seeing Baby awake and apparently able to remember me.
“No,” Marygrace scoffed. “To Brookhaven Manor.”
This option didn’t sit any better with me. Baby’s room had been invaded at least three times, with each episode worse than the one before. I was beginning to think we needed to come up with a safer location for my friend, Baby. Someplace safe. Someplace where we could have access to good medical care as well as security for Baby.
Jake nudged me and nodded toward Baby. “I don’t think she understands why you’re not in there,” he muttered.
I nodded. When Marygrace’s cell phone rang, I used the momentary distraction to clue Jake in privately on my thinking.
“Got any ideas for a location?” he asked.
“Yep. How about calling Aunt Lucy and asking her if she thinks we could use her basement lab for a hospital room. Ask her if she knows any tight-lipped, private duty nurses.”
I left him punching in the home number on his cell and went in to see Baby. She looked pitifully small and weak as she lay on the narrow gurney that had become her emergency room bed.
“Hey, friend,” she whispered when I took her cold, frail hand in mine.
“Hey, friend,” I answered, and bent to kiss her cheek. “Someone told me you weren’t feeling too well.”
Baby nodded and fingered the crucifix around her neck in the familiar gesture I now knew signaled inner distress.
“I think someone tried to kill me,” she said, her voice barely audible over the beeping and ticking of the nearby monitors.
“What do you mean, Baby?”
“My neck hurts. See?” She pulled the necklace aside and gestured to a spot just below the hollow of her throat. An angry red burn in the shape of a cross was clearly visible against Baby’s pale pink skin.
“What happened?”
“I just don’t know. I was asleep. I was dreaming about Bitsy. She was flying around my room like a little bird and then, all of a sudden, someone opened the window and she flew right out the window! I kept calling and calling for her, but they wouldn’t help me! That’s when they tried to kill me!”
The monitor started to beep louder and faster. A nurse quickly entered the room, glared at me and said, “Are you family?”
I answered, “No,” Baby said, “Yes,” and the nurse gave up. “You’ll have to leave now. She can’t have any more visitors for another half an hour.”
I let go of Baby’s hand, smiled at her reassuringly and said, “I’ll be back, sweetie. Don’t worry.”
Once I was outside, I went immediately to Marygrace. “What in the hell happened to her neck?”
Marygrace rolled her eyes. “That idiot night nurse forgot to take off her jewelry before she zapped her and Baby got burned. But hey, at least she’s alive!”
“But why did she…”
“Oh, come on, Stella!” Marygrace interrupted. “You know how hard it is to get good help in a nursing home on third shift? You think corporate wants to pay what it costs to hire and keep good nurses, when they might make a buck to slide in their slimy pockets? Yeah? Well, no. They ain’t paying what it takes to hire someone who’ll remember to take off jewelry before they defibrillate somebody. All I can do is be thankful she at least responded to the code.”
Damn. I was beginning to really realize how lucky the residents of Brookhaven Manor were to have a bulldog like Marygrace on their side and how scary it was to live in a nursing home run by corporate interests and greed.
Jake had wandered off to stand at the far end of the hallway while he talked on his cell, but now he returned and gave me a quick wink to acknowledge success with Aunt Lucy.
Now we had a new dilemma. If we took Baby and placed her in a secure location, who would we need to tell? I eyed Marygrace. She would need to know that we had Baby, but no more than that. I pictured Slovenian spies torturing Marygrace and felt sorry for the Slovenians, but still, it didn’t pay to take a risk like that or to put Marygrace in such a dangerous position. No, she couldn’t know where we were taking Baby.
Then I thought about Brenda Blankenship and wondered how we’d get around the issue of family consent.
“Marygrace, how often will we need to check in with Brenda?” I asked. “For that matter, how often will she come see Baby?”
Marygrace frowned at me, already suspicious. “What are you up to?”
I explained that Jake and I wanted to take Baby to a secure location. I reassured her that well-paid, registered nurses would look after her patient, but that the location would need to remain secret and that we would need her help.
Marygrace didn’t hesitate.
“I’ll run interference with Brenda,” she said. “I’ll get her to sign a waver giving you and Jake permission to do whatever is necessary to ensure Baby’s safety, and that should clear me and the two of you to do what you need to do. In fact,” she said, hitching her purse up onto her shoulder, “I’ll go take care of that right now. The doctor told me they’re going to set Baby free in another two hours. Will you be ready by then?”
I looked at Jake and when he nodded, gave Marygrace a thumbs-up.
Two hours later a privately contracted ambulance driven by two of our old high school buddies, now EMTs, pulled up to the back bay of the emergency room. Eddie Roman and James Zybelski, “Paint Bucket” and “Weasel,” still answering to their junior high school nicknames, asked no questions and could be relied upon to “forget” ever taking delivery of Baby Blankenship. Weasel would forget because he’d spent years and years smoking pot. Forgetfulness was a convenient side effect of chronic marijuana use. Bucket’s forgetfulness was more a product of his loyalty to our childhood and the bond we’d all shared as neighborhood kids growing up during tough times.
Of course, as an added precaution, the two men weren’t told their patient’s name, and they didn’t even ask. They were too busy carrying on a debate that had raged between them since I’d returned to town, been knocked out in an explosion and awakened to find them vigorously discussing the possibility that I’d gotten breast implants while living in Florida.
“So, like, Stella, how you been?” Bucket asked, staring directly at my chest.
“Up here, Buck,” I said, tilting the short, red-haired man’s chin with my index finger. “I haven’t trained them to answer yet.”
“Told ya!” Weasel cried.
Paint Bucket gave his partner a scornful look. “Real or fake, they aren’t trainable, Weasel.”
“Boys, let’s get on with it, shall we?”
With resigned sighs, the two EMTs took charge of Baby, and while they had been utter idiots with me, they became superheroes with their patient
. They moved her gently, effortlessly and with an endearing charm that soon had the little woman beaming. They became her grandsons and they ate it up, all the way across town to Aunt Lucy’s house.
Once inside, Paint Bucket and Weasel were grievously offended when they learned their mission was over and their services no longer needed. Aunt Lucy finally took over, stridently ordering them from the house with a crabby Fang nipping at their heels as they fled.
Jake, Spike, Nina and I then took Baby’s gurney and transported our fragile patient down the steps, past Uncle Benny’s workshop, into the laundry room and through the hidden panel that opened into Aunt Lucy’s concealed laboratory.
Baby watched the entire process with undisguised delight, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at each new room, as if we were unwrapping Christmas presents instead of descending into the basement. When we reached Aunt Lucy’s gleaming lab with its sparkling stainless steel counters and equipment, Baby stopped smiling and gasped in apparent horror.
“Am I dead?” she asked. “I don’t feel dead but this is the morgue, isn’t it?”
“Oh, honey, no!” I said, trying to reassure her. “This is where Aunt Lucy makes her—” I stopped, searching for a reassuring image “—soup,” I finished lamely. “Her chicken soup.”
Aunt Lucy snorted and walked up to stand beside Baby. “Belinda, do you remember me? Lucia Manetta. I married Benito Valocchi. I went to school with your sister, Cynthia.”
Baby studied Aunt Lucy for a long moment, her brow crinkling into a frown as she appeared to concentrate.
“Lucy Manetta?”
Aunt Lucy smiled and nodded. “Yes, that’s me!”
“Damn!” Baby said, seemingly amazed by this revelation. “You got old!”
Aunt Lucy stiffened. “Well, you’re no spring chicken yourself, you know!” she said.
Baby cackled. “What are you talking about, Lucia! You’re just jealous because I’m younger and Cynthia’s dating your old boyfriend, Arnie!”
There was a moment of silence as Aunt Lucy and the rest of us shifted gears, realizing that Baby thought she was still in high school and decades younger than Aunt Lucy!
Across the laboratory, behind a curtain of starched white bed sheets, I heard a snort of suppressed laughter. Aunt Lucy called out something in Italian to the hidden figure and was answered by a familiar voice. A moment later the sheets were flung back and Baby Blankenship’s private duty nurse stood glaring out at us.
“Well,” she demanded. “Are you all going to stand there like a gaggle of gossipy girls trying to figure out who’s the fairest in the land or are you going to bring my patient over here and let me keep her alive for a few decades longer?”
Sylvia Talluchi was wearing a crisp, white nurse’s uniform, complete with cap, which had to have last seen daylight in the 1940s. Her hair, which had been worn in a tight braid and coiled into a bun on top of her head for as long as I could remember, was now down in neatly coifed, shoulder-length, ink-black waves. Her wrinkled skin was rouged and powdered. Her lips were painted bright red and she wore ancient cat’s eye glasses to complete the bizarre costume.
“I remember you!” Baby cried. “Mrs. Talluchi, the school nurse!”
Sylvia Talluchi grinned and shook the glass thermometer in her hand with gleeful abandon.
“Bottoms up!” she crowed.
Chapter 10
“Tell me she wasn’t the school nurse when you guys were in high school,” I demanded, spinning to face Aunt Lucy.
Aunt Lucy shrugged. “It was wartime. She was just out of nursing school. What can I say?”
“That bag of bones couldn’t possibly be sane enough to take care of Baby,” Jake hissed in my ear.
Aunt Lucy had walked away but stopped midway across the room, spun on her heel and glared at Jake.
“For your information, sir, that ‘bag of bones’ as you so rudely described my best friend, was not only a decorated war nurse in the Korean controversy, but was also the only surgical nurse Carlos Santoria would allow in the operating room to assist him when he developed the very first procedure for the splicing of pig valves into human aortas! If you can find a more capable nurse, younger or older, I’d like to meet her!”
Jake actually looked ashamed. “I’m sorry, Aunt Lucy,” he said.
She was still frowning. “Do you think because we are old we cease to have value? Are you young people so bigoted that you dismiss us because of the color of our hair or the lines and wrinkles on our faces? You act as if we are invisible!” she cried, addressing her remarks to all of us.
I was aware that old Sylvia Talluchi had stopped moving around behind the curtain and was probably listening to Aunt Lucy’s every word. The reality of the situation was not so much that we dismissed Sylvia because of her age. No. We were leery of Mrs. Talluchi because in my considered and very much nonprofessional opinion, Sylvia Talluchi was certifiably insane.
The woman was forever calling Aunt Lucy to alert her to some new threat to the neighborhood and half of them were imagined or involved alien invaders. What good would she be with Baby Blankenship? For pity’s sake, the woman was wearing a 1940s uniform. What did she know about nursing a cardiac patient in the twenty-first century?
I considered telling Aunt Lucy this, but was too tenderhearted to do so while within earshot of Sylvia Talluchi. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and decided to keep one of us with Baby and Sylvia until a more suitable replacement could be found. Then I remembered Paint Bucket and Weasel. They were potheads, but they were also quite good at their jobs. Perhaps between the three of them, Baby Blankenship could receive reasonably good medical care and the rest of us would be freed up to get to the bottom of the entire Bitsy and Baby Blankenship case.
I caught Jake’s eye, noticing as I did the pale color of his face beneath the unshaven stubble of dark hair. He looked every bit as tired as I felt and I longed to take him back upstairs but knew that was not going to happen until Baby was secured and some questions had been answered. With a weary nod, Jake pulled out his cell phone and walked with me out of the lab and upstairs to Aunt Lucy’s kitchen.
“I need to call Shelia,” he said. “I need to see if she’s got a bead on what’s really going on with the Bitsy/David investigation.”
I nodded and pulled out my own cell phone. “I’m going to call Paint Bucket and offer him a side job for a few days. I’ll tell Sylvia they’re her assistants because surely she knows one person can’t take a twenty-four-hour shift. Maybe that’ll fly. I’ll give Paint Bucket the real scoop and pray he and Weasel can survive three days with Sylvia Talluchi.”
Jake didn’t look optimistic, but then, what other option did we have? I made the call, swore the boys to secrecy, and only gave them enough information to allow them to take off from their full-time jobs for three days, pack bags for a short trip and drive to my house. From the expressions on their faces when I opened the door to them a short half hour later, you would’ve thought I’d granted their fondest wish in the world.
“Stella, I am so totally honored to finally be working with you,” Weasel said, before the front door was even closed behind him. He was still addressing his remarks to my chest, but I overlooked it.
“Thanks, Weasel,” I said. “Now, I do hope you both know you won’t ever be able to reveal the nature of this mission nor the identity of your patient.” I looked from one to the other, trying not to laugh as Paint Bucket slowly raised his left hand in what appeared to be the Boy Scout pledge gesture.
“On our honor,” he intoned stiffly.
“Lives are at stake,” I said.
“Lead us not into any trespassers,” Weasel said. “’Cause I will kick their asses!”
“All right, boys. I am about to take you to a secret location and introduce you to your team leader.” I looked at the bags they held. “You did bring medical equipment, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am!” they answered in unison.
“Good. Now, this mission is delicate. Your team leader,
while a very venerable and esteemed colleague, is prone to certain lapses in…well…judgment. She will require careful handling and a delicacy that might at times be hard to finesse.”
Paint Bucket looked at Weasel who in turn furrowed his brow, indicating that neither man understood anything I was trying to say. So I rephrased my remarks.
“Okay. Your team leader is a crazy old bat that you two have to get along with. It’s a political thing, but basically, if you don’t figure out a way to make her look good, even if she is nuts, I’ll lose my ass. Are we clear?”
“Copasetic,” Paint Bucket said, grinning.
“Ten-four,” Weasel added.
“All right, then there’s only one more thing.” I whipped two bandannas out from my back jeans pocket and looked at my new employees. “I’ve gotta blindfold you.”
“Whoa! That is so awesome!” Weasel exclaimed. “Aw, man!” he cried, turning to Paint Bucket. “This is the real thing, huh?”
Paint Bucket rolled his eyes at me. “What can I say, Stel? We grew up together.”
“I know,” I said. “What is friendship without loyalty?”
Paint Bucket shrugged. “I was thinking more along the lines of I could do time if he was ever to turn on me and dime my ass out.”
I nodded, looking over at Weasel who was now tying his own blindfold in place and stumbling around Aunt Lucy’s kitchen in a happy frenzy of barely contained joy and excitement.
“It’s like getting a new puppy every damn day,” Paint Bucket said. “You can’t housetrain ’em and they’re just too damned cute to take to the pound. You just gotta do the best you can with what you got to work with.”
What Stella Wants Page 15