by David Perry
Inside, halfway to the restroom, she said, “I need my purse. Gotta have my purse.”
“I saw a sign for a hospital. Riverside Shore Memorial. I should take you there.”
“No,” Penney demanded like an insolent child. Get my purse!”
Jason let her lean on a counter by the soda fountain as he returned to the car and retrieved the purse. When he returned, he placed her arm around his neck and walked her to the ladies room.
At the restroom door, Penney said, “I can take it from here. I’m feeling a little better.”
Jason scanned her face. Some color had returned.
“Are you sure? What medication are you on?” he asked, searching her eyes.
“None of your goddamned business,” she smiled. “Sorry. I get cranky sometimes. Can you put some gas in the car? I’m running low. I’ll pay when I come out.”
She closed the door in his face.
Back at the pump, Jason stuffed the nozzle into the tank, watching the numbers roll by. The Malibu had been running on fumes. Jason looked around, contemplating his next move. The Penney woman had her phone with her in the bathroom and he had no money to pay for the gas.
“Michael, please give me a chance,” Chrissie pleaded.
She had reasoned with him for a long time. But he’d simply said he didn’t want to hear it. She’d sat silent for about ten minutes. Finally, she decided to give it another go. He was, after all, a captive audience.
She spoke softly. “Michael, your father and I knew each other many years ago. A long time before you were born … a long time before he and your mother were married. We dated for about a year … and we were in love.
“He worked for my father, Thomas. Everything was going well. Then something happened …”
Chrissie hesitated. Her voice cracked. She didn’t want to burden Michael with the minutiae of why Jason had left or the threat of the lawsuit and the tearful break-up on the bench overlooking the James River.
“We couldn’t be together anymore. Your father decided to end our relationship after a year. I never saw him again, not until about two years ago. He was divorced from your mother. He came to my father’s funeral. That’s how we reconnected.”
She heard Michael shuffling and his chains rattling. “Why did he break up with you?”
At least he’s asking questions.
“Your father had to make a difficult choice. If he stayed on working in my father’s pharmacy, The Colonial …”
“Your father owned The Colonial?”
“He did. When he died, it became mine.”
“So my dad works for you now?”
Technically, that was true. “We run it together. Your father is a good pharmacist. Many years ago, your father broke up with me because there was a mistake made. People blamed your father. They said if he didn’t leave, The Colonial would be sued. It would have put my father out of business. It would have ruined our family.
“So your dad decided to leave The Colonial so my father and me could have a good life. He sacrificed a lot. That’s the kind of man he is. He cares about other people more than himself. I’m sure wherever he is right now, he’s worried sick and is doing whatever he can to find us.”
Sheryl Penney sat on the filthy toilet, bracing her head in her hands, summoning strength. She glanced at the door and saw that she’d forgotten to lock it. But she was too unsteady to stand up again. As a Type I diabetic, she’d always been hypersensitive to changes in her blood sugar. Normally, she was very good about taking her insulin. But the wedge of apple pie loaded with two scoops of vanilla ice cream was wreaking havoc with her sugar levels.
She had not injected herself with five units of Humalog after eating. The phone call from her stupid-ass sister had gone on for thirty minutes, depleting her battery and distracting her from the insulin shot. Her sister, Heather, was in a panic because she’d missed her period and didn’t want to be pregnant … again. Penney had done nothing but respond with “ums” and “uh-huhs,” while Heather got it out of her system.
The symptoms had started with the mounting thirst. Her mouth, dry and parched, felt like a desert. Her bladder was full. She always had to pee when her blood sugar rose. She’d barely made it to the bathroom, sat down, and relieved herself. That’s when the spinning set it.
She retrieved the travel case containing her testing supplies from her purse. Her damned, cheap-ass insurance company had been dragging its feet for a year about paying for an insulin pump. They never hesitated to take her premiums though.
Penney held out her hand and watched it oscillate. She fumbled with her One Touch glucometer and managed to shake out a test strip. Her tremor was so violent, though, that she spilled the rest onto the grimy floor. With difficulty, she slid the strip into the slot of the machine without pushing it all the way in.
Next, she removed the lancets—the small needles used to puncture the skin of her fingers—so she could massage a drop of blood. Again, a small army of capped lancets fell to the floor. She palmed one and jammed it into the lancing device. Placing it against the side of her index finger, she pressed the activation lever. The familiar click was followed by the annoying stinging sensation.
After squeezing a crimson droplet from her finger, Penney pushed the test strip all the way into the machine, activating it. The readout counted down five seconds. She placed the droplet at the edge of the strip and the blood wicked into the strip as the machine quaked in her hand.
Three seconds later, the machine registered its reading: 458.
Oh God! She thought. You idiot!
Penney removed another leather case from her purse and creaked it open. She removed an insulin-loaded Humalog Kwikpen, twisted on one of the pen needles, and dialed in eight units of insulin.
She rose up and lifted the shirt over her belly. At that point, the dizziness swelled. Penney felt herself sway as if pushed by a strong wind. She began to fall. The last thing she saw was the ever-increasing size of the filthy squares of the tile floor coming up to meet her.
“Is the GPS still working?”
“Yes.”
“They have not answered the phone. Is it dead?”
“No, Madame.”
“Where are they now?”
Hussein leaned in over Oliver’s right shoulder.
“They are here,” Oliver replied, pointing to the small icon on the map.
She seems to have calmed down, he thought.
“What happened to the sound?”
“The pharmacist manipulated the mirror and accidentally hit the lens. Then the power failed. Battery, peut-être?”
“No,” Hussein replied. “They found the camera and microphone?”
Hussein had blasted Oliver when he informed her about the failure of the camera and microphone, casting ominous threats toward everyone within earshot. He waited for another outburst now regarding the sound. But none came, only a question.
“We’re not sure.”
“Have they stopped or has the truck made any unusual moves?”
“Non, Madame! They’re on schedule.”
“Bien! Perhaps it was just a glitch.”
“They are about to approach the drop point. They should find the old house in about fifteen minutes.”
“Hey mon. Your woman needs some help,” said the clerk, waving his arms as he charged from the building. He was a tall, lanky black man with dreadlocks hanging down the front and back of his polo shirt.
“She done collapsed. The door was unlocked and someone found her on the floor.”
Jason had finished filling the tank and raced inside. He pushed through a gaggle of curious onlookers. A woman knelt over the Penney woman with two fingers pressed against her neck. The woman looked up as Jason neared.
“She’s alive, but unconscious.”
Jason saw the testing meter and supplies scattered across the dirty floor. “She’s a diabetic.” Turning to the onlookers, he issued a command. “Call 911!”
The trio of onlo
okers, two men and a second woman, stood transfixed.
Jason pointed at the eldest. “You! Call now!”
He circled the female pulse-checker and picked up the glucose meter with the bloodied test strip still in the slot. He turned it on and the last blood sugar reading displayed on the screen.
“I’m a pharmacist. She needs insulin,” he said grabbing the insulin pen.
She was probably on a sliding scale based on her blood sugar levels. He needed to give her a sufficient amount that her sugar levels dropped. But he didn’t want to give her so much that it bottomed out and she became hypoglycemic.
The pen had already been dialed in for eight units of a fast-acting insulin called Humalog. There was no box or label containing dosing instructions from her pharmacy. Diabetics were often quite adept at injecting themselves with the correct amount of insulin without referring to the prescription label each time.
That’s it, he told himself. She gets eight units.
He lifted her blouse, exposing her abdomen. He swabbed her skin with an alcohol pad from her purse. Gently pinching the skin together, he pushed the short, ultra-thin needle in and pressed the plunger.
Jason checked the pulse in her wrist and checked her breathing by placing his ear close to her mouth.
“Ambulance is on the way,” a voice called out.
Jason rummaged around in Penney’s purse. He found the car keys and the cell phone. “We have another family emergency to tend to. What hospital will she be taken to?”
“Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital,” someone said. “Just down the road here!”
“I must leave. Tell my sister,” he said, pointing to the woman, “that I’ll be back as soon as I can. When the paramedics arrive, tell them I gave her eight units of insulin.” He pointed at the most competent-looking person in the small group. It was the woman who’d called 911. “You, do you know how test a patient’s blood sugar?”
“No.”
“I’m going to give you a crash course.”
After explaining the procedure, Jason placed the cell phone in his pocket and ran out the door. Thirty seconds later, he was in Penney’s Malibu and speeding off without paying for the gas.
“It still doesn’t explain why he thinks he wasted his years?”
“He doesn’t think he wasted his years with you or your mother.”
“Then why did he say it?”
“Because he was in pain in the hospital. We had just gone through a lot. He was frustrated and just glad to be alive.”
“What happened? Why was he in the hospital?”
Jason had told Chrissie the story he and Jenny had given Michael about Jason’s hospitalization. It was the only thing she knew to say.
“He was in a car accident.”
“I’m not stupid! Don’t lie to me. He was not in an accident.”
“Well, what do you think happened, Michael?” Chrissie asked with a defiant tone.
Charlie snapped shut the cell phone and smiled at Pierre.
“Was that Oliver?”
“Yup,” Charlie triumphed.
“And he’s not coming by?” Pierre asked, already knowing the answer.
“Nope. We have another four hours before he checks in on us again.”
Charlie stood and hitched up his pants, licking his lips as he did.
“It’s time, Pierre.” Charlie slapped his compatriot on the back of the head. “Remember, keep the boy outside until you see me return.”
Following the written instructions, Peter hung a left onto a desolate road called Turkey Run Road.
It’s a holler, he thought.
Peter had commanded a young marine in the Middle East named Earvin Johnson. His fellow marines, including Peter, called him Magic, after the famous Los Angeles Laker basketball star. Unfortunately, this Magic had never held a basketball in his hands and couldn’t hit the ocean if he was standing on the beach.
Magic was a good-natured, country hick from the Deep South, somewhere in Alabama. He’d used the word holler in a conversation that Peter overheard. Magic told his buddies that a holler is a long, curving country road cut through the forest with scant few houses. Hollers were great places to take a date and shoot squirrels, Magic had told them.
“A real night on the town. You really know how to show a gal a good time,” his fellow marines kidded him.
As Peter drove the first one hundred yards along the lonely road, he couldn’t help but remember Magic. Unfortunately, Magic was blown into five large chunks of flesh and blood three days later when he stepped on an IED.
I hope we have a better outcome, Magic, Peter thought.
The light intensified as the sun rose over the tree line. However, the large deciduous trees with limbs of freshly sprouted leaves draped over the roadway blocking the luminescence, creating a shadowy, speckled tunnel. A gradual left-hand turn curved another hundred yards away. He flipped on the truck’s headlights.
A white-tailed doe stood on the crest of the unmarked humped roadway. The cracked pavement sloped away. The young deer stared into the beam of the truck, transfixed despite the early morning hour. Its eyes glowed an aquamarine glimmer in the shadows. Peter depressed the accelerator with a slow, gentle push. The engine revved. The truck inched along. He mashed the horn. The whitetail jerked and bounded into the forest to Peter’s right.
He rotated the wheel, taking the gentle turn with care, not wanting to miss anything. The instructions said that the house he was looking for was abandoned and sported two holes in the aged roof. The headlights illuminated two houses forty yards apart on the right side of the road, set back behind a row of broken hedges. The first was a large white edifice with a single dormer protruding from a well-worn but intact roof coated with pine needles.
Peter guessed there was second dormer on the opposite side of the roof. He couldn’t see it, though, through the overgrowth of branches and vines.
The second building was smaller, in better condition, with dark mold stains dotting the siding. It was a nothing more than a small box with a door and a roof.
He slipped past these houses along a linear length of dark asphalt. A quarter mile deeper into the forest, the road meandered right. More trees, more shadows. As he brought the truck out of the turn, a flash, again from the right, glinted fifteen feet into the trees. A metallic strobe caught his eye.
Peter braked and peered beyond the tree line. He let his foot off the brake and let it roll forward. The vague, grayish, rectangular outline came into view. Square black holes dotted the rectangle. As he inched farther, Peter began to recognize the familiar shape of a single-wide mobile home with children’s toys scattered long the gravel driveway.
Peter cast his eyes left. If this was the place, the old, abandoned house should be visible. The forest beside the trailer seemed thicker here. The shadows several shades darker.
He had been praying since Jason left the truck that Hussein would not call. If the phone did ring, he was not going to answer it. He did not want to have to explain where Jason was. If she texted, he would stop and reply, pretending he was his brother. But, so far, the phone had remained silent.
Jason’s plan to find a phone and to get to Michael and Chrissie was fraught with holes.
Peter stopped the truck with a squeal of brakes and put it in park, but left the engine running. He exited and crossed through the wash of headlights, crossing the overgrown ditch beside the road. He climbed up the opposite bank and walked through a blanket of dead leaves, branches, and brambles. He’d gone ten feet into the forest when he spotted the cracked, bending outline of the dead house.
“I don’t know,” Michael replied again. “I don’t know what happened. Stop playing with me. Just tell me what happened.”
Michael had told her three times that he didn’t know what had happened to his father. Chrissie had asked the question in different ways. She wanted to take his focus off of the words his father had spoken in the hospital and put it on why Jason had been hospitalized. The
more he said “I don’t know,” the longer she paused between responses.
It was time to give him the news.
Anger still stung Michael, infecting his thoughts and emotions. His breaths were slow and hard as she spoke to him.
“Michael, your father had some very dangerous people trying to kill him and some others. Your father got involved and stopped them. He was injured in the process. So was I. We both almost died.”
“Really?” Michael could not contain his surprise at her statement.
“Really.”
He screwed up his lips into a tight circle. “Who were these people trying to kill?”
“It’s not my place to tell you that. Your father should. I’ll let him do it when we see him again. Okay?”
“Yeah … okay. Who were the dangerous people?”
“It’s complicated, Michael, Suffice it to say that your father was a hero. But we couldn’t tell anyone because it’s still a secret.”
“Dad is a hero?”
“Yup.”
They were silent for the next thirty seconds. In that time, Michael’s memory was jogged. Her words came back to him as he listened to her conversation with his father that night in the hospital room.
Thank you for saving my life. If you hadn’t been right behind that guy, I would be dead, she had said.
His father had saved her life. His father was a hero! He saved this woman’s life.
Bad things happen when good people do nothing!
Michael felt his pent-up frustration and anger drain from his body.
Chrissie interrupted Michael’s thoughts and decided to ask the boy for a request. “Michael, can you do me … no, can you do yourself and your father a favor?”
“I guess so.”
“I want you to stop being mad at your father about what you heard in the hospital. Can you do that? At least until you hear the whole story … from him. Can you do that?”
Chrissie heard Michael sigh heavily. “Yeah, I can do that.”