by Blythe Baker
“Okay,” I muttered nervously.
“We’d like for you to stay with us tonight for observation. You were hit pretty hard on the head. We want to make sure you don’t have a concussion.”
“I think I can go home,” I suggested.
But the doctor wasn’t interested in my self-diagnosis. “They’re having pepper steak as one of the dinner options,” he whispered. “Believe me, you’ll want to stay. It’s delicious. And I’ll make sure you get an extra chocolate pudding for dessert.”
I chuckled miserably but nodded okay. There was no use fighting the rules.
The stitches on my head were the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. Not only were there four of them, instead of the three the doctor had said, but now there was a bald patch on the back of my head about one inch by one inch.
“We tried to keep it as small as possible,” the nurse assured me as she held two mirrors so I could get a look.
Of course, I had to touch the spot. The thin, black thread that was keeping the skin together pricked my finger like little barbs. Dried blood had crusted around the sutures. The skin on my bald head was as ghostly white as the underside of a bullfrog. Plus, it hurt.
I sank back onto the pillows. I was in a small private room and was promised that I could go home first thing in the morning after the doctor gave the okay.
“Just relax. Watch a little television. Tomorrow will be here before you know it.” The nurse smiled. It was obvious she had been doing this for a while. The way she filled out her forms, checked my monitors, and felt for my pulse was a flow of movements so routine to her that it was almost graceful.
Once she had left, I just looked around the room and sighed. This was going to be a long twenty-four hours. I would have given my left arm for one of Mamma Jackie’s paperback romance novels to read.
“I’m not sick,” I muttered to myself. “I don’t have a concussion. I just want to go home.”
Just as I was about to turn the television on, the door to my room opened up.
Behind a huge bouquet of red roses was Michael.
“Aren’t you going to get in trouble for not going back to work?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? I’ve got to question the most beautiful patient in the entire hospital. I am at work and right now I love my job.”
A smile spread across my face like a wave.
“Thank you for being here,” I said.
“No problem.” He set the bouquet by the window, then pulled one of the chairs closer to my bed. “How do you feel?”
“Like a loser. I’m not sick, Michael. I don’t have a concussion. Can’t you tell them they can give this bed to a real patient?”
“They just want to be sure. They’ll take a couple snapshots of your head and that will be the end of it. Tomorrow you’ll be back home with Mamma Jackie and her bird. Won’t that be nice?”
I laughed but stopped quickly when it made my head ring.
“Look what they did.” I leaned forward and pointed to the bald spot on my head.
“Nice. Maybe you’ll start a trend,” he joked.
“Thanks. I knew I could rely on you for support.” I clicked my tongue, trying not to laugh anymore.
“So, now we get down to business. Do you remember anything at all about the minutes just prior to what happened?”
“My gosh.” I put my hand to my forehead. “Those poor seniors. They’re going to be traumatized.”
“They’ll be okay.” Michael patted my hand, then let his hand linger there for a few seconds. It was nice.
“I heard one woman yelling about her hip. Her hip, Michael. That’s serious.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You got clunked on the head.”
I couldn’t argue with that but I still felt responsible for those old people’s injuries. Worst of all, I had nothing to show for the whole business.
“I’m sorry, Michael. The jerk got me from behind. I don’t know where he could have come from. I was backed up against some shelves of flowers.”
“Can you tell me what you saw? It doesn’t matter if it makes no sense now. It might mean something later.”
I repeated what I had done, from when I had left my house right up to when I had been attacked. I hadn’t seen anyone suspicious. I hadn’t heard anything strange or smelled anything other than the flowers.
“I got nothin’.” I sighed.
Michael was writing everything in his notepad. The expression on his face was one of obvious disappointment.
“Well, I’ll have to go to the station and get a report written up. You know how much I love to do the paperwork.” He stood and pushed the chair back to where it was against the wall.
“Would you call Mamma Jackie and let her know where I am? It’s not that she’ll worry. She’ll just have to make her own dinner and peach juleps tonight. Plus, she thinks I’m carrying on with half the men in town so I don’t need to feed her imagination any more. Oh, and I bought her a scarf too. I don’t even know if I still have it. It was perfect for her. Iridescent snake skin. It was practical and a perfect match to her personality.”
“Is that what was in the bag you had?” he asked. “I grabbed that and your purse when the EMTs arrived. I gave it to the nurse and it should be…Yup.” He opened a skinny closet door that revealed my clothes hanging on a little hook. My purse and the bag were down at the bottom.
“At least no one stole my wallet.” I put my hand out for Michael to give me my things. “I better check before I realize I’ve spoken too soon.”
“I don’t think there would have been any time. There were other purses flying. As well as shoes and canes and walkers…”
“Very funny. I hope you know laughing makes my head hurt and…”
“I’m so sorry. I don’t want your head to hurt. Maddie. What’s the matter? Is your wallet gone?”
I shook my head. There was an envelope in my purse that I knew I hadn’t put there. The only things I usually kept in my purse were necessities. Keys. Wallet. Phone. Chapstick. So when I saw the envelope crumpled and smashed at the bottom, I knew immediately what it was.
I pulled it from the bag with my thumb and forefinger.
“What’s that?” Michael asked.
“I think it’s from my attacker.” I shrugged.
Michael walked to the wall where the nurses had a box of latex gloves. After snatching two of them out of the box like tissue paper, he pulled the gloves onto his hands, took the envelope from me, and studied it.
Inside his pocket, on a jingly ring of keys, was a Swiss Army knife. Michael pulled out the little blade and carefully slit the envelope open.
I watched his face as he read what it said.
“Your face just shifted from light to shadow,” I said.
It was true. I watched as his calm and fascinated expression turned to something quite different. The word serious came to mind but it fell short of the anger his eyes were conveying.
“Maddie, let me take this.”
“Why? What does it say?”
“This could be what we need to catch the person and…”
“Michael, please.” I held out my hand. “What does it say?”
“It’s a threat,” Michael admitted. “It says if you don’t get out of town this person is going to kill you.”
The ringing in my head intensified. I knew it was because my pulse was racing. The blood was circulating in my body faster than usual and it was causing my injury to throb. I took a few deep breaths.
“Can I see it?”
With a frown on his face, Michael held the letter up. It was written in those same block letters in black ink.
“Yup. It’s like the others all right.” I bit my lip. Strangely, I didn’t fall apart or freak out. I just wanted to catch this person. “I’m tired of this, Michael. I’m tired of someone trying to scare me. But what can I do, while I’m laid up here?”
“You can rest. Save your strength. So when you get released tomorrow we can come up with a
plan to make sure you are safe.”
I nodded my head. A plan was definitely what I needed. But I knew what Michael’s plan was going to consist of. Sitting around and waiting for the police to get a lucky break.
“Can you promise me that you’ll do that?” Michael continued. “That you’ll rest tonight and follow the doctor’s orders? Yes?”
I nodded my head and gave him a weak smile.
Just then my nurse came in.
“You ready to have your picture taken?” she asked cheerfully. “I think your visitor will have to come back later.”
“Sure. Why not?” I looked at Michael. “They’re going to x-ray my brain.”
“Maybe you’ll wake up with a superpower,” Michael joked. He did have a way of making me smile.
“That would be awesome. Keep your fingers crossed.”
Michael left with the letter. My nurse put my belongings back in the closet, except for Mamma Jackie’s scarf. I had placed it on the table next to my bed.
“Isn’t that pretty?” the nurse said as she admired it.
“I bought it for my ex-mother-in-law. She lives with me.” I saw the confused look on the nurse’s face. “It’s a long story. The old lady loves animal prints.”
It was funny how the thought of some maniac threatening me made me grind my teeth, ready to jump out of bed and go searching for him. But the thought of giving a tacky scarf to Mamma Jackie brought tears to my eyes. I wished she were here with me. She was someone I knew, someone I could trust.
With a couple deep breaths and swallows, I let the nurse load me into a wheelchair to take me to the x-ray department.
The x-raying took two hours. When I was finally back in my room I felt like I’d been up for three days in a row. No one was as surprised as me when I fell asleep. I woke up to find a cheerful fellow in white pants and a white shirt bringing me a tray of food.
“It’s pepper steak. On the doctor’s orders, you also get two puddings.” He smiled, showing off a huge gap between his front teeth.
“Wow. I was sure the doctor was going to forget. He said this pepper steak is really tasty,” I told the orderly.
“It’s delicious. I swear we have patients that intentionally get sick to come in on the days we serve this pepper steak. The pudding is good too.” He winked. I noticed he had pleasant freckles across the bridge of his nose and he wore a gold band around his left ring finger.
“Enjoy,” he said as he rolled the tray in front of me.
“Thanks.”
As soon as he was gone, I scooped up a huge spoonful and took a taste. My tummy had been rumbling ever since he entered the room because I could smell the food. And boy, was he right. The steak was delicious.
With each bite, I felt stronger and more focused. I concentrated on what had happened today and tried to remember something, anything that might have been a signal or a tip off.
“It doesn’t matter,” I finally said to myself, as I opened up my second pudding. Slowly and deliberately, I finished the last of my meal and thought of how I was going to deal with the shadowy person who liked to threaten people.
I fell asleep and dreamed about the tea garden.
It was an unfamiliar noise that woke me up. I was shocked but didn’t dare move as I watched who came into my room.
19
“I’m not leaving, candy-striper. So go plant yourself behind that desk, read your tabloids, and leave us alone.”
I didn’t hear the nurse’s response to my ex-mother-in-law’s rude order.
Mamma Jackie shut the door behind her and came over to my bed. Hospitals never let you sleep in complete darkness like you would at home. There were half a dozen lights on the monitors I was hooked up to, casting the whole room in a kind of twilight.
I wasn’t sure what to think about my unexpected visitor. All the woman usually did was gripe and complain. But here she was.
She pulled the chair from the wall so that it was closer to the bed, like Michael had done earlier. Then she took a seat, pulled one of her books out of her purse and angled it so she could read by the light of the monitors.
She held the novel in one hand. Stealing Johanna was the name of this particular tome. I wondered what they were stealing her from.
Then, without hesitation she took my hand. I squeezed it gently and felt her do the same. She leaned her elbow on the bed, cleared her throat and continued reading. I fell back asleep.
When I awoke, Mamma Jackie was gone.
Had I dreamed it? Maybe I was hoping Mamma Jackie would be nicer and the blow to my head brought that desire to life in a very vivid dream.
“Good morning,” my new nurse said. Despite the greeting, her expression wasn’t very friendly.
“Hi,” I replied.
“I’m sure you aren’t aware of this but any visitors who come to the hospital and are abusive to the staff are not allowed back.” She pinched her lips into a thin line.
At least now I knew Mamma Jackie’s visit hadn’t been a dream.
“Yes. I can see that being hospital policy,” I said apologetically.
“You might want to pass that along to your mother.”
“She’s not my mother but my ex-mother-in-law,” I explained. “She was here last night, right?”
“She just left this morning,” the nurse replied and continued on with a tirade about Mamma Jackie that I only partially heard.
Instead, I focused on the fact Mamma Jackie had stayed with me all night. She didn’t speak a word. Nothing. It was the kindest she’d ever been.
I pushed myself up in the bed and looked at the nurse.
“Excuse me. That’s my family you’re talking about,” I stated calmly. “She may not be a monument to good manners but she’s all I have and she was here for me.”
The nurse pinched her lips together again, proceeded to take my vitals and left the room.
The last person I had expected to defend was Mamma Jackie. But Mamma Jackie was the only person who saw me every day. She relied on me and, in a weird way, I relied on her too. I knew what she was like. I knew her bark was worse than her bite.
Just then, the door burst open and Drake stomped into the room like a bull in a china shop.
“You’re awake.” He looked at me intently. “They said your x-rays are fine. No concussion, just a goose egg. How did that happen?”
I rolled my eyes. “Good morning to you too, Drake. Why are you here?”
“My mom called and said you were in the hospital.”
I asked, “Do you know if the doctor is out there? They said I’d be able to go home once I saw him. I’ve got a lot to do and …”
“Oh, no you don’t. You don’t have anything to do but take it easy.” Drake was trying to be thoughtful. But when he did this, he came across more as annoying.
“Don’t start with me, Drake. You’re going to give me a headache.”
“You need to rest. I’ll call that employee of yours. Kelly Ward, is it? I’ll tell her the garden is closed for the rest of the week and that you’ll be—”
“Absolutely not,” I interrupted. “The garden is mine to run and it will maintain its usual hours of operation.”
He didn’t argue the point. “Well, you’re at least going to take it easy awhile. And I’m driving you back to your house. My mother insisted.”
“When do I get to leave?”
“The doctor said he’d be right in.”
“Did you tell him you’re a lawyer?” I asked.
“Of course. It’s important that people know, especially people in hospitals. You come in to get a couple stitches on your head and you leave missing an arm. It happens.”
It was the first time he’d cracked a smile since he entered my room.
“Great. They’re going to think I hired you. I’ll never get out of here. That doctor is either going to wait until you’re gone or say I’d better stay for another day just to be sure. Anyway, I appreciate your wanting to help but I’ll get myself home.”
“They won’t let you just hop a cab, Maddie. I told you, you have to take things easy.”
“Lying around in a hospital bed isn’t easy.” I smiled. “Just imagine if it were you here instead of me. You’d be ripping these tubes out left and right, telling everyone you’re going home no matter what.”
He laughed. “You do know me, Maddie. You really do.”
Just then, the door opened and the doctor with the freckles entered.
“Was I wrong about the pepper steak?” he asked.
I started to laugh. But deep down I just wanted to hear the words that everything was okay and I was free to go.
In typical fashion, Drake did a good bit of the talking. But I was proud of him. He kept his attitude in check and even gave the doctor a thank you and a hearty handshake. Coming from Drake, that was a big deal.
When I finally got home, Mamma Jackie was there, sitting on the couch and watching television with Moonshine on her shoulder.
“It’s about time you showed up,” she barked.
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m fine, Mamma, really. Don’t get up,” I said.
“I’ve got to get back to work,” Drake announced, after depositing me just inside the doorway.
I said, “Of course, Drake. Thank you for checking on me and for the lift. You’ve got a long drive back to Winchester and I’ll be fine now anyway. Mamma Jackie will wait on me hand and foot. Right, Mamma?”
She sniffed. “All this for a little bump on the head. You’d never survive childbirth. Not that you have any prospects.”
I decided to ignore that. I didn’t have the energy for exchanging insults today.
“I’ll call you later, Mom,” Drake said as he walked up to his mother, whispered something to her, then kissed her on top of the head.
When he had gone, I went upstairs and found that my ex-mother-in-law had laid out some flannel jammies, turned down my bed, and left a bottle of orange juice on the nightstand.