Stone Cribs: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “Bleeding?” He put an emphasis on the word. His manner reminded me of the emergency-room doctor’s—a complete mistrust of all the information I was giving him, as if I wouldn’t know the difference between a seeping wound and arterial spurts.

  “Hemorrhaging,” I said. “You know. You saw the apartment.”

  I was guessing on that last part, but I figured if Marvella had spoken to the neighbors, she had gone home before coming here.

  He nodded. His expression was even more serious now. He had seen the apartment. He had seen the blood, and probably the empty ice bag. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to determine how much of the mess on the floor was blood and how much of it was water.

  I added, “Her skin color was poor and she was barely conscious. She couldn’t stand, and she couldn’t answer direct questions.”

  He let out a long breath. Then he shook his head. My answer seemed to defeat him.

  “I would probably have had to bring her here myself,” he said, but I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or to Marvella. “They’ll do whatever is necessary to save her life.”

  She clutched his arm again. “I want you to watch them. I want you to make sure she’s going to be all right.”

  He put a hand over hers. “Marvella, if I go in there, they’re going to think she’s my patient. They’re going to think I did that to her.”

  “No, they won’t. I’ll tell them that you came at my request. I’ll tell them—”

  “I’ve got enough trouble already,” he said, slipping his arm out of her grasp. “I can’t invite more. Much as I want to help, I can’t.”

  “But we have to make sure she’s going to be all right.” Marvella’s voice shook and I realized, with some surprise, that she was close to tears.

  “It’s in God’s hands now,” he said, and squeezed her arm.

  She pulled away and turned her back on him, her lower lip trembling. I had seen Marvella angry, but I had never seen her like this.

  He looked at me, his eyes filled with compassion.

  “You did the right thing,” he said, and hurried out the door. He scurried down the hall, disappearing so quickly that it seemed like he had never been there.

  Marvella bowed her head. I stood beside her for a moment, feeling helpless, then I put my hand on her shoulder. She was shaking.

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  She turned to me, tears in her eyes, and shook her head.

  “Why don’t we start with the easy questions,” I said. “Who was that who just left?”

  She swallowed. “Dr. Jetten. He’s an old friend of the family.”

  “What was he doing here?” I kept my voice low, so that she would hear the comfort in it, and not shy away from my questions.

  She shook her head.

  “Marvella, I’m not going to do anything. I just want to know.”

  A tear ran down her cheek and hung on her chin, waiting to drip on her long, lovely neck. I resisted the urge to wipe the tear away.

  Marvella didn’t even seem to know it was there.

  “When Val got worse,” she said, “I went to find him. I didn’t want to leave her alone, but I knew he wouldn’t come with me unless I went to him personally. He has rules, you know?”

  “Rules about what?” I asked.

  “Bill—”

  “Marvella.” I kept my hand on her shoulder. She was still shaking. “You can tell me.”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  Rather than trying to drag the information out question by question, I decided to ask the most important one first. “Dr. Jetten give Val an abortion?”

  “No!” Marvella sounded shocked.

  “So she just miscarried?”

  “Shh.” Marvella whirled, looked at the glass wall, then scanned the room, as if she were making certain no one else was listening.

  She wouldn’t have been this worried if it were a simple miscarriage, would she?

  “The only reason I’m asking,” I said, “is that the emergency-room doctor thought Val had had an abortion. He was trying to find out who performed it.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Marvella’s legs wobbled, and she grabbed me to steady herself. “He made her tell him, didn’t he? Just so that he would help her. He did that. Bastard.”

  “No,” I said. “Laura stopped him.”

  Marvella looked at me in surprise. “Laura Hathaway, your pretty little china doll?”

  “She knew what was going on, Marvella. I didn’t. If your friend makes it out of this all right, it’ll be because of Laura.”

  “She’s family.” Marvella’s voice shook again. She wasn’t talking about Laura. “Val’s more than a friend. She’s my sort-of cousin.”

  Now I remembered Valentina. The night I had met her had been so different from this night that I hadn’t even put the two together. Marvella had introduced me to Val on the night of the Nefertiti ball in December, calling her a sort-of cousin even then.

  It had been a giddy introduction. The women were wearing thin, white, Egyptian-style gowns, with gold bands under the breasts, around the waists, and over the hips. The gown had looked spectacular on Marvella, and just as stunning on her sister, but it had made delicate little Valentina look like a child playing dress-up.

  I had flirted with her, telling her that she looked lovely.

  She had gazed up at me with those unusual eyes. They were filled with suppressed laughter, most of it directed at herself.

  I look silly, she had said, but thank you.

  A woman with no illusions, a woman who knew herself. How had she traveled from that night to this one?

  “I hadn’t realized that’s who she was,” I said.

  “She looks awful, I know. After all she’s been through, you’d expect it.” Marvella sank onto the nearest couch. The newspaper slipped out of her hand onto the floor. “She didn’t tell any of us. That’s the worst part. If she had just talked to me, I’d’ve sent her to Dr. Jetten. He hasn’t lost a patient yet. But she went to some butcher. God knows what he did. She wouldn’t tell me. But she was already so sick when she showed up this morning.”

  “It didn’t happen today?”

  Marvella shook her head. “Yesterday, I think, although it might have been Friday. She wasn’t going to tell me anything.”

  “Why didn’t you bring her here?”

  Marvella’s eyes widened. “Oh, for God’s sake, Bill, how naïve are you? If she lives through this, they’ll probably press charges, especially if she won’t tell them who did this. Especially as close to death as she was.”

  I wasn’t as naïve as she thought I was. I wouldn’t have taken anyone to the hospital unless I thought the situation was an extreme emergency.

  Marvella was the one who had risked her friend’s life.

  “What did you think was going to happen?” I snapped. “Did you think your friendly doctor was going to save her in your apartment without any equipment?”

  Marvella stood again, the anger clearly giving her strength. She crossed the room and stood toe-to-toe with me. Not many women could look me in the eye, but Marvella could.

  “He could have brought her in to any hospital as one of his patients,” she said, her voice low and throbbing with anger. “He would have called it a miscarriage gone wrong, a pregnancy in trouble. No one would have thought anything of it. But you brought her in on her own, clearly in distress—”

  “Dying,” I said. “She was dying.”

  “And now everyone’ll know. Which is exactly what she didn’t want.” The tears were back in Marvella’s eyes. She turned her head so that I wouldn’t see them. “I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

  She started for the door. I grabbed her arm.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Right now, they don’t have her name. Laura and I didn’t know who she was, and we gave out no information. If you go charging in there, telling them who she is, then the authorities will have everything they need. But if
we wait, maybe we can finesse this.”

  Marvella stopped. She still faced the door, but she tilted her head, as if what I had said made sense to her. “Finesse?”

  “When she was fighting with the doctor, Laura said that they wouldn’t be able to tell if this was a miscarriage or an abortion without a thorough examination.”

  “I’m sure they did the examination, Bill.”

  “I’m sure they did,” I said. “But a miscarriage is just a spontaneous abortion, and maybe, with a little inventive discussion, we can get the doctor to write it up that way.”

  Marvella looked at me over her shoulder. “Yeah,” she said with deep sarcasm. “As if you and I could do that.”

  “We can’t,” I said, “but Laura might be able to. She got the doctor to stop interviewing your cousin, and she got him to treat her. She might be able to do more.”

  Marvella turned toward me, slipping out of my grasp. She crossed her arms, clearly not believing me. “Why would she want to help someone like Val?”

  “She already is,” I said.

  Marvella shook her head. “She’s not helping. She’s being a Good Samaritan. She hasn’t taken any real risks so far. No one’s going to think your rich white friend had anything to do with an abortion. But if she gets them to—what was your word? Finesse?—the medical reports, then she’s as liable as the rest of us.”

  Marvella’s mistrust of white people, and her dislike of Laura, was making it impossible for her to believe what I said.

  “She’ll help,” I repeated. “And it won’t cause any problems.”

  Marvella plucked at her coat. “You may put a lot of faith in that woman, but I don’t. I’m certainly not going to trust Val’s life to her.”

  “Marvella—”

  She held up a hand to silence me again, and gave me a rueful look. “I have to take care of this, Bill. I’m responsible for Val. And I want to make sure she’s all right.”

  Marvella pulled open the door.

  “Marvella, wait.”

  But she didn’t wait. She stepped into the hallway and strode away from me, arms swinging, heels clicking, looking like a warrior. I hurried out of the waiting room, but had trouble keeping up with her. Her long legs enabled her to move quickly down the hall.

  She turned down the corridor toward the emergency area, and had already reached the corridor where Valentina and Laura had disappeared when I caught up.

  Two nurses blocked Marvella’s way. They must have heard her coming.

  One of them was the brown-haired nurse who had confronted me. The other was a squarely built black woman who had both feet planted shoulder width apart.

  Yet, she seemed small compared to Marvella. Marvella could have pushed her aside with a single movement, but she didn’t. Instead she peered over both nurses, as if she could see what was going on down the hall.

  “I’m sorry,” the brown-haired nurse was saying as I approached. “No one is allowed down this hall, not even family.”

  “But that’s my cousin down there,” Marvella said, the strength gone from her voice. Her back was still rigid, though, and I could tell that this meek tone was a ploy.

  “If you go to the waiting room, miss, I’ll go check on her, and let you know how she is.”

  “Let me back there,” Marvella said. “You already let someone else go with her.”

  I caught up to her then, and took her arm.

  “She’s distraught,” I said to the nurses. “I’ll take her to the waiting room.”

  The brown-haired nurse who had spoken looked up at me. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Is this woman related the woman you brought in?” she asked.

  “Ye—,” Marvella started, but I interrupted.

  “We think so,” I said. “We’ll know more when she can see her.”

  “Not right now,” the brown-haired nurse said. “They’re prepping her for surgery.”

  “No!” Marvella launched herself forward. The black nurse grabbed her, keeping her from running down the hall.

  I barely managed to keep my grip on Marvella’s arm. I tried to pull her back, but she turned on me and pushed, shoving me backward. I grabbed her other arm.

  “Calm down,” I said, keeping my voice level. “This isn’t helping anyone.”

  Marvella flailed against me. She wanted to be free, and she was very strong. It took a lot of effort to hold her.

  “They can’t take her into surgery, Bill,” she said. “We’ve got to stop them.”

  “I don’t think they had a choice.” The black nurse was talking to me. “They couldn’t stop the bleeding.”

  I nodded and pulled Marvella away from them, dragging her toward the waiting room. She resisted, trying to yank herself out of my arms.

  “You don’t understand,” she hissed at me. “You can’t understand. They’ll destroy her.”

  It took all of my strength to get her down the corridor. Once we were out of the nurses’ hearing range, I stopped.

  “I do understand,” I lied. I wasn’t sure what Marvella was so afraid of, but at that moment, the worst thing she could do was throw herself into that operating room. “You’re the one who is not seeing things clearly. If Laura and I hadn’t found your cousin, she would have been dead within the hour. If the doctors have to operate on her to save her life, then that’s what they’re going to do. Anything is better than letting her die. Do you understand that?”

  Marvella’s entire body was rigid. Her lower lip trembled again, and she bit it. The trembling stopped.

  “She made me promise,” she said.

  “Promise what?” I asked, steering her down the corridor toward the waiting room.

  “That I wouldn’t bring her here. That I wouldn’t let anything bad happen.”

  I sighed. I’d made those kinds of promises too in my life, and I couldn’t keep them. I hadn’t even been able to keep them with Jimmy, whom I was trying to protect.

  I slipped my arm around Marvella’s back. It felt very different holding her than holding Laura. My arm naturally rested around Marvella’s waist. With Laura, I was more comfortable with my arm around her shoulder.

  The comparison caught me by surprise. I’d always found Marvella beautiful, but I was never attracted to her. I still wasn’t. But I felt oddly guilty for holding her close while Laura was nearby.

  “By the time we found her,” I said, forcing myself to concentrate on the problem instead of Laura, “Val was begging us for help. I don’t think she cared at that point what we did so long as we made the pain go away.”

  Marvella shuddered. “I hadn’t even thought about the pain. It must have been awful.”

  It probably had been. Valentina Wilson’s eyes had been glassy, and I knew from past experience that that kind of look didn’t come just from blood loss, but also from extreme agony.

  The waiting room was still empty, and some of the blue haze had cleared. The room was a mess, though, with the scattered magazines and the newspaper on the floor.

  I pulled open the waiting-room door and Marvella walked in without my help. She sank on one of the couches, and put her face in her hands.

  I sat beside her, rubbing my hand over her curved back.

  “You tried,” I said. “That’s the best we can do.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice muffled. “And obviously that wasn’t good enough.”

  FOUR

  WE SAT in the waiting room for another half an hour. Marvella rested her head on the back of the couch. She didn’t even unbutton her coat. She wrapped her arms around her waist and stared at the ceiling. No matter what I said, she wouldn’t respond. After a while, I grabbed one of the crossword magazines and searched for a page that looked challenging.

  I was still looking when Laura came in. I had never seen her so disheveled. Her blond hair hung in strands over her face and was tangled in the back where it had fallen out of its bun. Her makeup was smeared and that streak of blood on her cheek had dried black. The front of her blue pantsuit�
�so elegant at the start of the evening—was completely ruined. Blood crusted the legs and coated the sleeves. More streaks covered her torso. Her blue open-toed shoes had turned black with blood.

  I stood and extended a hand to her. Laura took it, and then used it to slip her arm around my back. She rested her head on my shoulder. She smelled of sweat and blood and Laura, and I found that very reassuring.

  Marvella looked over at her, and her mouth opened slightly as if she were shocked at what she saw. She probably still hadn’t believed me about Laura—at least, not until she saw her, covered in Valentina’s blood.

  I eased Laura onto the couch. She kept her head on my shoulder. Her body was heavy with exhaustion.

  Marvella leaned forward, her arms no longer wrapped around her waist. “How’s Val?”

  Laura sighed, then ran a hand through her hair. Her hands were clean, as if she had scrubbed them in the exam room.

  “Did they take her into surgery?” Marvella asked.

  It was my turn to hold up a hand. “Give her a minute.”

  Laura shook her head, which still rested on my shoulder. Then she sighed again and sat up. “I don’t need a minute. I’m just not sure how much I should explain.”

  Her tone wasn’t condescending, but I stiffened anyway. Marvella usually took everything Laura said as maliciously intended.

  “I’m probably better versed in female medical problems than you are,” Marvella snapped.

  A small, private smile crossed Laura’s face. It was a sad look. “All right then,” she said, and I was surprised at the mildness in her tone. After hearing Marvella’s challenge, I would have attacked back. Apparently Laura saw no point in it.

  Laura stood, her hands on her back as if it hurt her, and walked across the room to Marvella. Marvella watched her without changing position.

  Even though I had seen the two of them together before, I had always been trying to stop a fight. I hadn’t realized how much smaller Laura was. Her disheveled look made her seem younger, more vulnerable, than Marvella, although Marvella often hid behind her regal features.