The Midnight Hour

by Karen Robards

  “You don’t know?” Uttered by Mr. Obnoxious, the words were sharp with disbelief.

  “I’m not an expert on diabetes. It’s hard to tell.” Grace glanced from her daughter to the men in the front seat. Except for the occasional streetlight, it was dark inside the car. She sensed rather than saw the cops exchange speaking looks. “A lot depends on if she took her insulin on time, and when she last ate. I don’t know how much of this—the way she is right now—can be attributed to alcohol, and how much to the disease. I don’t think she’s going into a coma, but I can’t be sure. She might be, and I don’t want to take that chance.”

  “No, ma’am,” Dominick said fervently, and stepped on the gas.

  Grace dropped her daughter’s unresponsive hand and tried to brace her as well as she could, to keep her from being flung about as the car sped through a blur of dark, twisting streets toward the hospital.

  Chapter

  4

  OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL was a complex of towering, fifties-modern buildings that sprawled over at least a couple of city blocks at one end of the vast college campus. At night it was easy to spot, glowing like an electric torch against the inky-blue sky, its brilliance reflected in the dark waters of the nearby Olentangy River. A chunky white-and-orange ambulance, having discharged its human cargo, rolled silently away from the emergency room entrance as they pulled in. Scrubs-clad orderlies moving at a near-run bundled a white-covered shape on a gurney through the sliding doors and out of sight. The red EMERGENCY sign beckoned newcomers toward the well-lit interior.

  “I’ll let you out here, then park,” Dominick said, stopping the car under the carport that sheltered the wide steel-and-glass doors. A sign affixed to the roof warned, AMBULANCES ONLY. Ignoring it, Grace unfastened her seat belt, then turned to do the same for her daughter.

  “Jessica?” She smoothed back the few strands of hair that had fallen over her daughter’s face. “Jess, we’re here.”

  Jessica’s condition was unchanged. She was limp, but breathing regularly. Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelash did she acknowledge her mother’s voice or touch. Fear began to build anew in Grace, but she forced it back.

  They were at the hospital now. Medical assistance was at hand. Giving way to panic would only hurt her child. But she—almost—couldn’t help it.

  “Jess!” Gently, she shook her daughter’s shoulder. Jessica didn’t stir. “Jess!”

  Mr. Obnoxious got out of the car and opened the rear passenger-side door. The interior light came on. For an instant, as he leaned inside, his gaze met Grace’s. He was frowning. His eyes, she saw, were a clear golden brown.

  “Let’s go.” Without waiting for either emergency room workers to appear or Grace’s expressed or implied approval, he scooped Jessica out of the seat and into his arms. She lay with her head lolling back and her arms and legs dangling, totally boneless, as he bore her away toward the emergency room entrance.

  “Wait!” Taken by surprise by the suddenness of his action, Grace scrambled out the opposite side of the car, and was left to hurry behind as the cop carried Jessica across the pavement. The sight of her daughter lying so limply in a stranger’s arms made Grace feel sick. It reinforced what she knew but tried not to think about: Jessica was chronically ill. She was afflicted with this damnable disease, with all its implications for her long-term health, for life.

  As she acknowledged that, the despair Grace had felt upon first learning the cause of her daughter’s troubling symptoms threatened to return in full force.

  What made the situation almost unbearable was the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing she could do to change things.

  But despair was of no use to her, or Jessica, she thought, and she resolutely refused to wallow in it. She chose, instead, to hope.

  Diabetes was a serious disease, but it could be controlled. The problem was, Jessica was very young. She refused to accept the reality of her condition, or the restrictions it imposed on her. She refused to take care of herself and resented her mother for trying to make sure she did.

  For a diabetic to get drunk was akin to a person with a food allergy deliberately gorging on the forbidden substance. The consequence was foregone: sudden illness, maybe a coma, even possible death.

  It was reprehensible for a fifteen-year-old to drink alcohol, and deserving of dire punishment. But that punishment should not include death.

  What had Jessica been thinking?

  The hospital smell, a combination of alcohol and other disinfectants and sickness, hit Grace as soon as she walked through the double doors that slid open with a gentle swoosh to admit them. She had smelled it too often of late, and now it sickened her. Crossing her arms over her chest, she attempted to ward off the cold. It was entirely possible, she thought, that she would never be warm again.

  There were only a few people seated in the maroon-and-gray plastic chairs that lined the walls of the emergency room: a man holding a bloody washcloth to his head, a woman clutching a sleeping baby wrapped in a blue-and-white quilt, a nicely dressed elderly couple reading magazines side by side, another woman trying to contain an energetic toddler. The little boy’s laughter as he climbed over a row of chairs while the woman tried vainly to catch him was, to Grace, an off note, an anomaly in this place of fear and suffering. Off to one side, a man in a janitor’s uniform sloshed a mop over the gray terrazzo floor. Near where he worked, the empty escalator hummed almost silently on its never-ending journey to an unseen upper floor. Piped-in easy-listening music jarred Grace’s nerves.

  The woman behind the admitting desk watched their approach. She had chin-length dark hair in the grip of a lousy perm, a plump, unlined face, and she wore a pink lab coat with a gray plastic nameplate pinned to one shoulder. Liz Barnes, receptionist, it read. A large clock affixed to the gray-painted wall above her head blinked the time: 3:25 A.M.

  The receptionist looked as if she meant to greet them, but the cop carrying Jessica forestalled her.

  “I’m a police officer. We have a diabetic emergency here.” His words were crisp, cold, authoritative.

  “Oh. Just a minute.” With a frowning glance at Jessica, who lay as if dead in his arms, the woman lifted the receiver from the telephone on her desk, pressed a button, and spoke in a quick, low voice into the mouthpiece.

  “Someone will be right with you.” Her words were addressed to the cop as she put the receiver down.

  She had barely finished speaking when the gray double doors to the left of the desk swung open. A nurse came out, clearly identified as Mary Morris, R.N. by the name tag on her white lab coat. Short straight gray hair, no makeup, a little hippy in her white uniform pants and smock, was Grace’s quick first impression as she joined them.

  “She’s diabetic?” Placing her fingers on the pulse point beneath Jessica’s left ear, Ms. Morris addressed the question to the cop. “Type I?”

  “Yes,” Grace answered, moving in closer. Her heart was pumping fast, in classic fight or flight response, she supposed. It was all she could do to keep her voice even. She put one hand protectively on Jessica’s shoulder. “She’s been drinking, but I don’t know how much. I think her blood sugar’s way too high, and . . .”

  “Did you test it?” Ms. Morris moved a stethoscope over Jessica’s chest as she spoke.

  Grace took a deep breath and shook her head. “I brought her right in.”

  Ms. Morris nodded, lifting the stethoscope from Jessica’s chest and disengaging it from her own ears. She looked from Grace to the cop and back. “You the parents?”

  “I’m her mother.”

  The cop shook his head. “I’m a Franklin County police officer.”

  “Bring her on back.” Ms. Morris turned and headed back through the double doors, gesturing to the cop to follow, which he did. Grace was right behind him.

  “Ma’am, excuse me, ma’am, if you’ll just step over here for a second to give us the information we need . . .” The receptionist called after her and smil
ed apologetically as Grace glanced back. The woman had to be kidding—but of course she wasn’t. Arrangements had to be made so the hospital would be paid. “It’ll just take a couple of minutes.”

  Taking a firm grip on her composure, Grace returned to the admitting desk as Jessica was borne into the treatment area through the gray double doors, which swung shut again, closing Grace out.

  “It’ll just take a moment,” the receptionist murmured again, soothingly, as Grace stared at those doors with pain-filled eyes. “I need your insurance card.”

  Glancing at the computer screen to which the receptionist turned, it occurred to Grace that she didn’t have her insurance card, or indeed, anything else, with her. Rubbing her hands over her face, she fought back an urge to scream. It was important, for Jessica and for herself, that she remain calm and in control.

  “I don’t have my purse with me. Or my insurance card,” she confessed. She could barely stand still, so anxious was she to rejoin Jessica. “We should be in the computer. We’ve been here before.”

  Five times in the fifteen months since Jessica’s diabetes had been diagnosed, to be precise. Six if you counted the visit that brought on the diagnosis, which had been prompted by Jessica’s collapse on a bright May day at field hockey practice.

  “Name?”

  Grace gave the required information as quickly as possible—sure enough, Jessica’s name and the required insurance information were in the computer—and signed the necessary forms. Then with the receptionist’s blessing she hurried into the treatment area to be reunited with her daughter.

  Chapter

  5

  EXCEPT FOR A PAIR OF WOMEN in white uniforms at the nurse’s station and a man in a white lab coat who was walking rapidly away from her, no one was visible in the treatment area. A sea of closed white curtains faced Grace whichever way she looked.

  “May I help you?” One of the women—she assumed they were nurses, but was too far away to read their name tags for certain identification—looked at Grace inquiringly.

  “I’m looking for my daughter. Jessica Hart. She was just brought in. A man was carrying her.”

  “Diabetic?”

  Grace nodded.

  “Treatment Room B.” She pointed along the white-curtained corridor. “They just finished checking her.”

  Like the other cubicles, Treatment Room B was partitioned off from the corridor by an almost floor-length white curtain suspended from a metal rod. All Grace could see from the hallway were about three inches of a pair of men’s feet clad in black leather basketball shoes topped with the slightly frayed hems of a pair of jeans, and the wheels and steel legs of a hospital bed.

  Grace pulled the curtain aside just enough to allow her to enter. A quick glance found Jessica lying on a white-sheeted mattress, eyes closed. A Band-Aid held a cotton ball to the inside of her right elbow; the sleeve of her blue sweater had been pushed up above the Band-Aid. Her head and upper torso were supported in a semiupright position by the raised head of the bed. A small flat pillow was beneath her head. A gray blanket covered her to her armpits; her arms were pale sticks atop the blanket. Someone had removed the cop’s jacket, which had stayed wrapped around her as he had carried her in, and taken off her shoes. The items lay bundled together on a nearby chair.

  By the bright light of the overhead fixtures, Jessica looked even more ill than she had in the car. The flush in her cheeks was a bright, hectic red. Her lips were so dry they looked painful.

  “A nurse just left. She took your daughter’s blood pressure, temperature, and a blood sample. She said someone would be back with the results in a little bit.” The cop was standing to the right of the bed, his hands thrust into the front pockets of his faded jeans, his feet in the black basketball shoes planted slightly apart. He wore a green plaid flannel shirt, tucked in. She guessed his age at somewhere around forty years old; the harsh light revealed Unes around his eyes and mouth, and there were gray threads in his black hair.

  Until he spoke, Grace had barely noticed him. Her attention had been all for Jessica. She met his gaze and saw that he looked disapproving still.

  “Thank you.” Grace spared him no more than a glance as she walked over to the bed and put a hand on her daughter’s forehead. The fruity scent of Jess’s breath was detectable even above the antiseptic odor of the hospital and the unmistakable smell of booze. Jessica’s body temperature, gauged through her hand, told her nothing, though it seemed normal enough. She was no medical expert, and she felt her daughter’s forehead more for something to do than in any real expectation of learning anything from it. Her hand moved from Jessica’s forehead to curl around her cold, unresponsive fingers where they lay atop the fuzzy blanket. There was nothing she could do for her daughter now, she knew, except wait for the doctor’s verdict. As always, in the face of Jessica’s illness, she was helpless.

  “Did she say—could the nurse tell if this is something to do with the diabetes, or? . . .” She hated to ask him, but there was no one else.

  “She didn’t say.” His reply was terse to the point of outright unfriendliness.

  “Oh. Thanks.” Grace’s knees felt suddenly weak. Stress was getting to her, she thought. Glancing around, she found a gray plastic chair near at hand, scooted it with one foot even closer to the bed, and sank down in it, her hand never leaving Jessica’s.

  “Did you call her father?”

  “No.” Her reply fell just this side of being outright curt. This guy’s criticism, both overt and implied, was starting to get to her.

  “Shouldn’t you?”

  Grace met his weighing gaze straight on. “Look, her father’s in New Mexico. We’re divorced. I have custody. He’s remarried with a whole new family and, believe me, calling him in the middle of the night over something like this is completely unnecessary. Okay?”

  “It’s fine with me.” His expression, his stance, his words, his tone were, every one of them, downright judgmental. “Doesn’t seem to be working out too well for your daughter, though.”

  Grace’s eyes snapped at him. She felt her temper stretch almost to the breaking point—it had been a hard day, after all—but she let go of the anger before it could control her. If the guy was an obnoxious jerk, that was his problem, not hers.

  Jessica moved then, her legs shifting and her fingers stirring in Grace’s hold. That brought her attention back to where it belonged: on her daughter.

  Just looking at her scared Grace to death. Jess was so thin—too thin. It was a rare thing for Jessica to be still, and Grace supposed that it was her daughter’s constant motion that had kept her from realizing just how fragile-looking the child had become.

  Surely she had not been this frail fifteen months ago.

  “Mom?” Jessica’s eyes opened. The normally clear blue of her irises looked cloudy and blurred. Her pupils were tiny in the bright light.

  “I’m here, Jess.” Grace’s hand tightened around Jessica’s even as she leaned closer to her. Awareness slowly grew in her daughter’s eyes as their gazes met. Her pupils enlarged to normal size.

  “Mom, I feel so sick.” It was a slurred whisper.

  “Shh, baby. You’re going to be okay. We’re at the hospital. Everything’s all right. Jess, did you take your insulin?”

  “I think so. I . . . don’t really remember.” Jessica’s mouth twisted and her nose wrinkled in a way that Grace knew from long experience meant trouble. Wildly Grace looked around and managed to produce a small, plastic-lined trash can from almost underneath her feet just as Jessica leaned over the edge of the bed to vomit.

  “Can I help?” The cop took a step closer, watching with obvious revulsion.

  “No.”

  Minutes later, her stomach emptied, Jessica rolled back against the pillow. The terrible smell emanating from the trash can made Grace’s stomach threaten to rebel as well. She ignored the incipient nausea, tying the nearly full plastic bag closed. Standing, she carried the trash can to the hallway, where she handed it
to a passing orderly. She washed her hands at the sink, wet a paper towel, and returned to her seat by Jessica, wiping her daughter’s face and mouth with tender care.

  “Is it the diabetes?” Fear and loathing combined in Jessica’s question as Grace smoothed the paper towel over her forehead. Jessica hated her disease.

  “At a guess, I’d say so. That, and the amount of alcohol you consumed.” Speaking calmly, Grace wadded the paper towel up, and in the absence of a trash can, reached around to discard it on the nearby counter.

  “Mom . . .” Jessica looked at her imploringly. Recognizing a He when one was getting ready to be told to her, Grace shook her head at her daughter.

  “You were drinking. You can’t drink alcoholic beverages, Jess, you know that.” Grace leaned closer, her hand once again finding and curling around her daughter’s. Her voice was low, meant for Jessica’s ears only, but urgent. Her eyes were intent. “To begin with, you’re only fifteen. Drinking at your age is against the law. Even if you were old enough, which you certainly are not, you can’t. You’re not ever going to be able to drink alcohol to excess, just like you can’t eat a dozen chocolate doughnuts or three boxes of Girl Scout cookies at a sitting. You know that. You have to eat on schedule, and watch what you eat, and take your insulin. You can’t just go wild, Jessica, with alcohol or doughnuts or anything, because you’ll make yourself sick. You . . .”

  “Oh, God, Mom, don’t fuss. You always fuss.” Jessica’s eyes closed again, and her voice was weary. She tried to tug her hand from Grace’s.

  Grace broke off in midsentence, then clamped her lips together. Hurt swelled inside her. Her eyes closed as her fingers clung tenaciously to Jessica’s. What could she say that would get through to her? If only Jessica would listen! She had to be made to understand. . ..

  But this was not the time, or the place, for the discussion she and Jessica needed to have.

  When she felt better, they would talk. And more than talk. Guidelines had to be laid down. Consequences had to be imposed.