Invincible

by Diana Palmer

  While she was whispering to him, the door opened and a woman with jet-black hair and black eyes came into the room. She was wearing a white jacket and had a stethoscope around her neck. She glanced at Carlie and smiled gently.

  “No change, huh?” she asked softly.

  Carlie swallowed. Her eyes were bloodshot. She shook her head.

  The newcomer took something out of her pocket and removed Carlie’s hand, just for a few seconds, long enough to press a small braided circle with a cross inside into Carson’s palm.

  “What is it?” Carlie asked in a whisper. “It looks like a prayer wheel...and those are Lakota colors...”

  “You know that?” the visitor asked, and the smile grew bigger. “It is a prayer wheel. Those are our colors,” she added. “Red and yellow, black and white, the colors of the four directions.”

  “It may be just what he needs,” Carlie replied, folding his hand back inside both of hers, with the prayer circle inside it. “Are you a wicasa wakan?” she added, her eyes wide with curiosity as she referenced a holy person in the tribe who could heal the sick.

  “A wasichu, and you know that?” she laughed, using the Lakota word that referred to anyone outside the tribe. She grinned from ear to ear. “No. I’m not. But my grandfather is. He still lives on the rez in Wapiti Ridge Sioux Reservation. It’s where I’m from. Somebody called the rez to find a relative who knew him, so my cousin answered their questions and then he called me. We’ve got family all over,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes. “Even in South Texas.”

  Carlie smiled. “Nice to know. It’s like where I live, in Comanche Wells. I know everybody, and everybody knows my family for generations.”

  She nodded. “It’s that way back home, too.” She looked at Carson. “Cousin Bob Tail is praying for him. Now he is a wicasa wakan,” she added.

  “I believe in prayer,” Carlie replied, looking back at Carson. “I think God comes in all colors and races and belief systems.”

  The visitor laid a hand on her shoulder and leaned down. “Cousin Bob Tail says he’s going to wake up soon.” She stood up and chuckled. “Don’t you tell a soul I said that. They’ll take back my medical degree!”

  “You’re a doctor,” Carlie guessed, smiling.

  “Neurologist,” she said. “And I believe in modern medicine. I just think no technology is so perfect that it won’t be helped by a few prayers.” She winked, glanced at Carson again, smiled, and went out.

  “You hear that?” she asked Carson. “Now you have to get better so people won’t think Cousin Bob Tail is a fraud.”

  * * *

  EVEN SHE, WITH no medical training, could tell that Carson was getting worse. She got up and bent over him, brushing back the unruly long black hair that had escaped the neat ponytail he usually wore it in.

  She leaned close to brush her mouth over his. She stopped. Frowned. There was a fleeting wisp of memory. Garlic. He smelled of garlic. She knew he hated it because he’d once told Rourke he couldn’t abide it in Italian dishes and Rourke had told her, just in passing conversation.

  Another flash of memory. Wyoming. Merissa Kirk. She’d been poisoned with the pesticide malathion disguised in capsules by Richard Martin, who’d substituted it in her migraine headache capsules. A cohort of Martin’s, a woman, had tried again to poison Merissa when she was in the hospital. The woman, on Martin’s orders, had put malathion in a beef dish that Merissa had for supper. It had smelled of overpowering garlic! Cash Grier had told her all about it. She let go of Carson’s hand and rushed out the door. The doctor, the Lakota neurologist, was standing at the desk.

  “Please, may I speak with you?” she asked hurriedly.

  “Yes...”

  Carlie pulled her into Carson’s cubicle. While she was walking, she was relaying the memories that had gone through her head. “Smell his breath,” she asked softly.

  Dr. Beaulieu caught her breath. “Poison?” She was thinking out loud. “It would account for the deterioration better than the slight head injury...”

  “The woman who did it, she answered the phone when I called Carson. She said I’d get to watch him die slowly, over days!”

  “Poison,” the doctor agreed, black eyes narrowed. “That could explain it.”

  * * *

  SHE WENT OUT. They came and took Carson out of the cubicle and wheeled him quickly back to the emergency surgical suite.

  “It will be all right,” Dr. Beaulieu assured her as she went by. “We’re running a blood screen for poison right now, and I have a phone call in to the doctor whose name you gave me in Wyoming.” She pressed Carlie’s arm with her hand. “I think you may have saved his life.”

  “Cousin Bob Tail will be happy,” Carlie said with just a hint of a smile.

  “Oh, yes.”

  It seemed to take forever. Carlie sat in the waiting room this time, as close to the door as she could get, her legs pressed tightly together, her hands clenched in her lap, praying. She didn’t have the presence of mind to call anyone. She was too involved in the moment.

  She remembered Carson being so hostile to her in the beginning, antagonizing her with every breath, flaunting Lanette in front of her, insulting her. Then he’d frightened her, and with incredible skill, he’d treated her, taken her to the emergency room and then to have lunch by a flowing stream in the woods.

  Afterward, in his arms, she’d felt things she’d never known in her young life. They’d fed the birds together and he’d told her the Brulé legend of the crow and how it became black. At the end, he’d told her it would never work out for the two of them and he was going to have to leave.

  Now, there was the danger. She knew he wasn’t tame. He would never be tame. He wouldn’t marry her and settle down in Comanche Wells, Texas, and have children with her. He was like her father. Jake Blair had overcome his own past to change and transform himself into a man of God, into a minister. But Carson was different.

  She looked at her hands, tightly clenched in her lap. Ringless. They’d be that way forever. She was never going to get married. She would have married Carson, if he’d asked. But nobody else. She’d be an old maid and fuss in her garden. She smiled sadly. Maybe one day Carson would marry someone and bring his children to visit her. Maybe they could at least remain friends. She hoped so.

  The door to the surgical suite opened and Dr. Beaulieu came out. She sat beside Carlie and held her cold hands.

  “We were in time,” she said. “They’ve just finished washing out his stomach. They’re giving him drugs to neutralize the effects of the poison. Your quick thinking saved his life.”

  Tears, hot and wet, rolled down Carlie’s pale face. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t me, honey,” she laughed. “I just relayed the message to the right people. I only do head injuries, although I’ve put in my time in emergency rooms.” She smiled sadly. “Back home, there are so many sick people with no money, no way to afford decent health care. I tried to go back and work there, but I was just overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people. I decided I needed more training, so I specialized and came here to do my residency. This is where my life is now. But one day, I’ll go back to the rez and open a free clinic.” She smiled, showing white teeth. “That’s my dream.”

  “You’re a nice person.”

  “You really love that man, don’t you?” she asked with a piercing gaze.

  Carlie smiled sadly. “It doesn’t help much. He’s a wolf. He isn’t tameable.”

  “You know, that’s what I said about my husband.” She chuckled. “But he was. I have three kids.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “I am, truly.” She cocked her head. “You know, Carson’s great-great-grandfather rode with Crazy Horse. His family dates back far beyond the Little Big Horn.”

  The knowledge was surprising. D
elightful. “Like mine in Comanche Wells,” Carlie said softly.

  “Yes. You both come from villages where families grow together. We aren’t so very different, you know.”

  “He doesn’t...love me,” Carlie replied sadly. “If he did, I’d follow him around the world on my knees through broken glass.”

  “How do you know he doesn’t?”

  “He was leaving when this happened. He said it would never work out.”

  “I see.” The other woman’s face was sad. “I am truly sorry.”

  “I’m happy that he’ll live,” Carlie replied. “Even if he marries someone else and has ten kids and grows old, I’ll still be happy.”

  Dr. Beaulieu nodded slowly. “And that is how love should be. To wish only the best for those we love, even if they choose someone else.”

  “When can I see him?”

  “They’ll take him out to a room very soon,” she said, smiling. “We had him in ICU because he wasn’t improving. But while they still had the tube down his throat he woke up and began cursing the technician.” She chuckled. “I think they’ll be very happy to release him to the poor nurses on the ward.”

  Carlie grinned. “He’s conscious?”

  “Oh, yes.” She stood up. “Now will you relax?”

  “I’ll try.” She stood up, too. “Pilamaya ye,” she said softly in Lakota. The feminine form of thank you.

  Dr. Beaulieu’s eyes widened . “You speak Lakota?”

  “Only a few words. Those are my best ones, and I imagine my accent is atrocious.”

  “I’ve been here for two years and not one person has ever spoken even one word of Lakota to me,” the other woman said with pursed lips. “However few, I appreciate the effort it took to learn them.” She nodded toward the emergency suite. “Does he know you speak them?”

  Carlie hesitated and then shook her head. “I was afraid he’d think I was, well, doing it just to impress him. I learned it when I was still in school. I loved reading about Crazy Horse. Of course, his mother was Miniconjou Lakota and his father was part Miniconjou, but he was raised Oglala Lakota...”

  Dr. Beaulieu put her hand on Carlie’s shoulder. “Okay, now you have to marry him,” she said firmly. “Even on the rez, there are some people who don’t know all that about Crazy Horse.” And she laughed.

  * * *

  CARSON WAS MOVED into a room. Carlie had phoned her father and her boss to tell them Carson was out of danger.

  She was allowed in when they got him settled in the bed and hooked up to a saline drip. He was sitting up, glaring, like a wolf in a trap.

  “You look better,” she said, hesitating in the doorway.

  “Better,” he scoffed. He was hoarse, from the tube. “If you agree that having your stomach pumped with a tube down your throat is better!”

  “At least you’re alive,” she pointed out.

  He glared at her. “What are you doing here?”

  She froze in place. Flushed. She wasn’t certain what to say. “I phoned you for Rourke and Lanette answered...”

  “Lanette.” He blinked. “We were having coffee. I was about to tell her that I’d never tasted worse coffee when she came up behind me and hit me in the head. A gun went off.” He shifted uncomfortably. “She shot me!” He glanced at Carlie. “Where is she?”

  “They have a BOLO for her,” she replied, using the abbreviation for a “Be on the lookout.” “She hasn’t surfaced yet. Fred Baldwin, who kidnapped me, is in custody in Jacobsville, along with the watch that Richard Martin stole from the assistant prosecutor he killed. He’s turned state’s evidence against Matthew Helm. They should be at his door pretty soon.”

  Carson was staring at her. “That doesn’t answer the question. Why are you here?”

  “Nobody else could be spared,” she lied. “My father came by earlier. The others will be along soon, I’m sure.”

  His black eyes narrowed. He didn’t speak. He didn’t offer her a chair or ask her to sit down.

  “There’s a neurosurgeon here. A Dr. Beaulieu. She’s Lakota. She said your cousin Bob Tail was praying for you, and that he said you’d live.”

  “Cousin Bob Tail usually can’t even predict the weather,” he scoffed.

  “Well, he was right this time,” she said, feeling uncomfortable. She twisted her small purse in her hands.

  “Was there anything else?” he asked, his eyes unblinking and steady on her face.

  She shook her head.

  “Then I imagine visiting hours are over and you should go home before it gets dark.”

  “It’s already dark,” she murmured.

  “All the more reason.”

  She nodded.

  “They’ll have someone watching you,” he said.

  “I guess.”

  “Don’t go down any back roads and keep your phone with you.”

  “It’s in my purse.”

  “Put it in your coat pocket so that you can get to it in a hurry if you have to,” he continued curtly.

  She grimaced, but she took it out and slid it into her coat pocket.

  “Good night,” he said.

  She managed a faint smile. “Good night. I’m glad you’re okay.”

  He didn’t answer her.

  She walked out, hesitated at the door. But she didn’t look back when she left. She didn’t want him to see the tears.

  * * *

  THEY’D GIVEN HIM something for pain. The gunshot wound, while nonfatal, was painful. So was his throat, where the tube had gone down. He was irritated that Carlie had come to see him out of some sort of obligation. Nobody else was available, she’d said. It was a chore. She hadn’t come because she was terrified that he was going to die, because she cared. She’d come because nobody else was available.

  Yet he was still concerned that she was driving home alone in the dark, when there had been attempts on her life. He’d wanted to phone Cash and ask him to watch out for her. Then he laughed inwardly at his own folly. Of course Cash would have her watched. He probably had somebody in the hospital the whole time, somebody who would keep her under surveillance even when she drove home.

  He fell asleep, only to wake much later, feeling as if he had concrete in his side where the bullet had hit.

  “Hurts, huh?”

  He looked up into a face he knew. “Sunflower,” he said, chuckling as he used the nickname he’d hung on her years ago. Dr. Beaulieu had been a childhood playmate. He knew her very well, knew her family for generations.

  She grinned. “You’re looking better.”

  “I feel as if a truck ran through my side,” he said, grimacing. “They pumped my stomach.”

  “Yes. Apparently the woman who shot you also hit you on the head to show us an obvious head injury. But she poisoned you first. The poison was killing you. If it hadn’t been for your friend from Comanche Wells, you’d be dead. We were treating the obvious injuries. None of us looked for poison because we didn’t expect to see it.” She hesitated. “We did blood work, but it was routine stuff.”

  “My friend?” He still felt foggy.

  “Yes. The dark-headed girl who speaks Lakota,” she replied. “She smelled garlic on your breath and recalled that you hated it and would never ingest it willingly. Then she remembered a poisoning case in Wyoming in a hospital there, a woman who was given malathion in a beef dish...”

  “Merissa Kirk,” Carson said heavily. “Yes.”

  “So we checked with the attending physician there for verification. I was involved only peripherally, of course, since my specialty is neurology. We thought you were unconscious because of the head wound.”

  “The coffee,” Carson recalled. “The coffee tasted funny.”

  She nodded. “She told the dark-haired girl that she would get t
o watch you die slowly. When she smelled your breath, she remembered what the woman told her.”

  “Lanette.” His face tautened. “I hope they hang her. If they’ll let me out, I’ll track her down, wherever she goes.”

  Dr. Beaulieu was smiling. “She said you were like a wolf, that you could never be tame. She said it didn’t matter, that she only wanted you to be happy, even if it was with some other woman.” She shook her head. “She thanked me in Lakota. It was a shock. Most wasicus can’t speak a word of our language.”

  “I know.”

  “She even knew that Crazy Horse’s mother was Miniconjou,” she said.

  “Where’s my cell phone?” he asked.

  She raised both eyebrows. “Cell phone?”

  “Yes. Wasn’t it brought in with me?” he asked.

  “Let me check.” She phoned the clerk at the emergency room where he was brought in. They checked the records. She thanked them and hung up. “There was no cell phone with you when you were admitted,” she said.

  He grimaced. All his private numbers were there, including Carlie’s, her father’s and Rourke’s. If Lanette had taken it...

  “Will you hand me the phone, please? And tell me how to get an outside line...”

  * * *

  CARLIE WAS NO sooner back home than her phone rang while she was opening the front door. She answered it.

  There was nobody there. Only silence.

  “Hello?” she persisted. “Look, tell me who you are or I’m calling the police.”

  There was a dial tone.

  It worried her. She went inside to talk to her father. But he wasn’t there. A note on the hall table said that he’d been called to a meeting of the finance committee at the church. He wouldn’t be long.

  Carlie hung up her old coat. She started upstairs when she remembered that she’d left her cell phone in her coat. She went to get it just as there was a knock on the door.