by Cat Connor
“Do you think they took Demerol? It’s the only empty drug bottle in here and her diary says they had everything they needed. Plus—”
“Dilated pupils,” he said. Kurt reached into the black bag next to him and looked for something.
My legs buckled, I sank to my knees next to my pale daughter. The front door sucked in an ambulance siren and let it scream up the hallway. Dad stood up and went to meet the paramedics.
“Stay with me, Carla,” Kurt whispered as he administered Narcan. “If she took anything in the opioid family this will reverse the effects.”
Magic.
“What about Joey, did you give him some?”
He shook his head. “He’s convulsing, barely breathing, and hypoxic. I don’t know how long he’s been down. It only works while the patient is still breathing.”
“He’s breathing.”
“He’s hypoxic.”
Maybe I was looking blankly at him.
Kurt rephrased his answer, “Conway, not enough oxygen to his brain.”
Two paramedics hurried in and joined Kurt. One took Joey, the other Carla. Kurt spoke to them about the possibility of a Demerol overdose. I’d seen him administer the Narcan and I knew how fast it worked, but Carla wasn’t waking up. Was I wrong? Was it not Demerol?
“She should be better … why isn’t she awake?”
Kurt shook his head. “She took something else, she must’ve.”
A paramedic talked about Benzodiazepine.
“Valium?” I said, watching everyone working to keep the kids alive. A paramedic was bagging Joey, trying to force life-preserving oxygen into his blood stream. IV lines, bags of fluid, paramedics, Kurt. Organized chaos.
“Yes, anything in that family. Lorazepam, Xanax, anything like that …” he replied. “They’re common sedatives or anti-anxiety medication … a lot of people have them.”
“Medicine cabinet in my bathroom. Maybe there is something there,” I said.
“Go look,” Kurt replied. “Also, could be Roofies – they’re not hard to get on the street.”
A paramedic went down the stairs. As I ran to my room I heard him come back in with a gurney.
I opened my medicine cabinet and searched through the contents. Demerol, Tylenol, Advil, Triazolam. I shook the Demerol bottle and checked the label. It was current. I hadn’t taken any. I pulled off the top and tipped the little white pills into my hand. A quick count revealed ten pills missing. I did the same for the Triazolam. The bottle was dated the day after we’d returned from New Zealand and labeled for jetlag and insomnia. The prescription was for thirty tablets. I’d taken two, but there were just four left.
I took the bottles downstairs.
Gurneys carrying the kids were wheeled to the door. Kurt was with Carla. Dad was with Joey. Joey was in a bad way. I knew there wasn’t enough room in the ambulance for all of us. I gave the pill bottles to Kurt and told him how many I thought were unaccounted for.
“Triazolam, that’s a benzodiazepine?”
“Yes. And you found an empty Demerol bottle plus these?”
I nodded. “I noted the date on the bottle. It was one I’d lost about four months ago.”
I lost it. It was a full prescription. Thirty 100-milligram tablets.
Four months ago.
Ah, crap, she’d planned this longer than just the last three days or she’d come across it. I lost it when we moved to the new house. I assumed the bottle was thrown out by accident. I broke my rule, never assume.
“Go with her,” I said to Kurt. “I’ll follow.”
He didn’t argue. They disappeared out the door. Dad helped load the gurneys then jumped down from the back of the ambulance.
“You want to drive?” he asked as the ambulance pulled away. I nodded. I can’t be a passenger with my kid’s life hanging in the balance.
Passive versus active.
I was driving a federal car, following an ambulance. The siren from the ambulance broke through the clear spaces within my siren. Blue and red flashing lights pulsed from my grill, the corner of my windscreen and from the back window.
Red and white from the ambulance.
Mac’s voice was trying to break through the noise. I was trying to block him. I didn’t want to hear him tell me it was my fault. I didn’t want him to tell me Carla was with him.
My phone rang and rang. I ignored it. Dad’s phone rang. From the corner of my eye I saw him switch it off. There was nothing to tell anyone, and no sense saying anything.
We didn’t know.
“She rang me this morning and was asking about erasing memories.” I flexed my fingers and adjusted my grip on the steering wheel.
“Wanting to forget something is not the same as taking your life,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out when they did it.”
“While listening to Leonard Cohen would be my guess.”
“Jesus …”
I shouldn’t have said anything. My eyes flicked to his drawn face and breath caught in my throat as I tried to speak.
There were no words.
Thirty-Three
Holding Out for a Hero
I parked behind two Fairfax police cars just in front of the ambulance bay. I walked into the ambulance bay, my stomach twisted into knots of pure terror. The gurneys were already out. I couldn’t tell who was who anymore. Kurt was standing on the edge of a gurney performing chest compressions; a paramedic was using an Ambu bag.
All I could hear was Queen, ‘Another one bites the dust’. For a second it felt like a sick joke on the part of my brain then I realized the song and Kurt were keeping perfect time. A distant foggy memory told me I’d heard it before while someone was doing CPR.
It was Kurt. He was humming the song. That’s how he got the timing right.
People in scrubs rushed from the emergency room door.
I stopped.
Both gurneys disappeared beyond the glass doors.
Dad kept walking. I saw him follow a gurney. The doors closed and all I could see was my reflection. There was no way my feet were walking through those doors. Not yet. Staring at the closed doors, willing everything from the last hour to be a nightmare, and wishing I could wake up, were all I had left. Another ambulance arrived, full noise. Busy Thursday night at the Inova Fairfax emergency room. I shrank into the shadows of the bay, away from prying eyes and away from those saving lives.
From the shadows next to me, a dark figure stepped into a lesser shadow allowing me to see his eyes.
“If you’re going to say I told you so, you’re too fucking late,” I said.
His hazel eyes shone. “Did you hand Carla the pills and tell her to take them?”
“No.” Then I thought about what happened. If they took what I thought they’d taken, that’s a lot of pills to swallow. “How did they take the pills, we’re talking a handful each or maybe more?”
“Took them with juice,” Mac replied, running his hand through his hair and pushing it off his face, it fell back over his forehead. There was no bullet hole in his forehead.
“They were drinking something. I saw their drink bottles with them in the bedroom. Crushing that many pills into juice … it would be disgusting. They probably swallowed them a few at a time.”
God, I remembered the night at dinner when I suggested they were sneaking vodka. I wondered if that was the dry run. Maybe they’d crushed a few tablets to see what it was like. What would she have done if I’d taken the offered sip of her juice? Let me, or come clean? Maybe it was her way of trying to get me to stop them. I failed. I missed the point.
The warm spice of his cologne wafted over me. I remembered how the heat from his skin used to draw me in and how it felt when his fingers entwined mine.
“This is not your fault and there is a plus side – at least everyone has an idea what they took,” he whispered. “That’s half the battle won, right there.”
“I should’ve trusted my instincts. I failed them.”
“Go to C
arla,” he said. Mac leaned close and kissed me, I felt butterfly wings on my face.
“How does this end?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
He stepped back, turned around, pulled up his hoodie, and walked into the darkening night beyond the ambulance bay. I watched him fade into a shadow.
Moments later I saw Sam and Lee coming toward me.
I waited until they were level. “Did anyone pass you?”
Sam shook his head. “No.”
“Why?” Lee said.
I smiled and shook my head. “No reason.”
“Ellie, who did you see?” Lee’s voice was low and steady.
“No one.”
“How are the kids?” Sam said.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Joey’s parents?”
“Packing to leave town. I stressed how serious this is but they didn’t seem concerned,” Lee snarled. “For Joey’s sake I hope they pick now to care.”
“You should be in there,” Sam said, his voice was soft, gentle, encouraging. At that moment I hated him just a little bit.
I shook my head. “You two go, I’ll be along soon. I need to make a call.”
Sam threw an arm around my shoulders and hugged me fast. “She needs you,” he whispered. “I’ll tell her you’re coming.”
“See you inside in a few,” Lee said. They walked away to the automatic doors and the unknown.
Time to make the call. I dialed and waited. The waiting required pacing. As I neared the point of giving up I heard a click, a pause, and then his voice.
“Ellie?” he said, his speech filled with a smile.
“Yeah …” My ability to speak was failing me. I tried again but the real words stuck in my throat and all I managed was, “It’s me.”
“What’s wrong?”
I failed.
“Something …” I faltered. It was harder than I thought, and I thought it would be hard. “Something happened …”
“Honey, where are you?”
Great, I’d transferred my fear into his panic. “Fairfax Hospital.”
“Are you okay?” His voice showed great restraint.
“It’s not me.” If it was me, someone else would be making the hard call. “It’s Carla … she overdosed.” My words sounded hollow as they trailed down the phone.
“I’m on my way.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I was already on my way. Did Carla tell you I was in town?”
“No,” I replied. “No, she didn’t.” She told me nothing except she wanted to erase her memories. I bit my tongue to stop me adding my thoughts on what she did do. She just swallowed a bunch of pills with her juice and tried to die.
“I spoke to her earlier, mid-afternoon … Surprise.”
I could tell he was moving by the noises from the phone.
“Where are you?”
“Crossing Key Street Bridge. I was heading over to see you.”
“Go east on George Washington Memorial Parkway, then take the I-66 East, US-50 exit toward Rosslyn.”
“Okay, how long will it take me?”
“Twenty minutes from Key Bridge to me.” I knew he would have GPS in a rental. “Put Inova Fairfax Hospital, gray entrance, into your GPS. I’ll be in emergency. You’ll see us or ask for me if you don’t.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
“What are you driving? Gimme the tag number.”
He rattled off his license tag and car make and model.
“You drove down, that’s your car,” I replied.
“Yeah.”
“Were you at a fundraiser here a few weeks ago? For autism?” Because now is the very best possible time to be thinking about the case we just finished the paperwork for.
“How’d you know about that?” There was a hint of surprise or maybe suspicion in his voice.
I got the feeling I wasn’t supposed to know about it. “I didn’t know it was a secret.”
“It’s not …”
“But you didn’t tell me you were in town.”
Atta girl! Start something now.
“You were out of town at the time,” he replied.
Traffic noises in the background reminded me he was driving. Rowan always used a Bluetooth headset when he drove so I knew it was okay to talk to him.
“Where was I?” I couldn’t think why I was out of town and hoped Rowan knew.
“San Francisco on a case.”
“Oh, that week. Yeah, I was.” Let the lunacy go, fool. “Anyway, the jeweler who owns the Heathcote diamonds was murdered. I’ve been working that case for the last week and a half.”
“I met him.”
Rowan being at that autism fundraiser bugged me because he hadn’t told me about it. Focusing on that was so much easier than thinking about what was going on beyond the doors in the emergency room.
“Watch for an escort, Rowan.”
I hung up before he could ask what I meant.
The emergency bay doors opened. Kurt appeared. I didn’t want to look at him. I made another call.
“Josh, its Ellie. I need a favor.”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Escort this car to Inova Fairfax emergency department.” I shared the tag number and car description. “He’s on his way now, taking the US-50 from Key Bridge.”
“I’ll have someone provide escort.”
“Thank you.”
“You okay?”
“Yes. Carla isn’t.” I hung up.
Kurt was by my elbow.
“Conway …”
I swallowed, pocketed my phone, and turned to face him.
“Yes.”
“You need to come in and be with her,” Kurt said.
I blinked hard and fought a lump in my throat. “Not yet …”
“Ellie, she needs you,” he replied. “Now.”
“Rowan is on his way,” I replied, looking toward Gallows Road, hoping to see a police car leading him in. “Rowan is coming.”
“It’s okay, he’ll find his way to us,” he said. “Come in.”
He hadn’t touched me, and for that I was grateful. The struggle to remain composed felt like a losing battle. Beyond Kurt the doors slid open again, a nurse hurried out waving her arms. Kurt spun on his heels and ran toward her. The walls of the ambulance bay moved and the sliding glass door loomed.
I was walking.
My feet took over and I was running.
I followed Kurt through the door; the nurse was talking to him as they hurried down a hallway and through another set of glass doors.
Right behind them.
The doors closed after me. I watched them shut. My reflection stared back at me. When I turned, Kurt was gone.
I walked on, peering into each room I passed but not wanting to see.
Doctors, nurses, equipment, patients, blood, crying, coughing, and the worst rooms where there was no noise but machines pinging and the soft hiss of a ventilator.
There was nothing comforting about the noises.
Struggle for life noises.
End of life noises.
They all sounded the same.
“Kurt!” I whispered into the illness and pain-filled sterility.
An arm waved through a gap in a curtain, inside one of the glass-fronted rooms.
“Here,” he replied. The curtain parted more. “In here.”
I stepped inside the curtained area. My daughter lay still, her eyes open but unblinking. A ventilator next to her forced air into her lungs via a tube in her mouth. A machine recorded her heartbeat and another brain activity. Tubing ran into both her arms. I noticed condensation on the bags of saline that hung from poles at the head of her bed.
“Carla …”
“Sit with her,” Kurt said, motioning to a nurse to move and get chair. A chair appeared. Kurt pressed me into it.
“Why doesn’t she blink?” I said, lifting her hand and holding it. It was like holding a rag doll’s hand. It just lay cool and hea
vy in mine. I watched her face for signs of the kid I knew. Her right eye twitched once, and then she blinked. Her eyes closed. “She feels cool. Can we get a blanket?” I said.
Kurt pulled a sheet up to her shoulders, lifting her arms clear and placing them on top of the thick white sheet. “It’s better for her to be cool right now,” he said.
“Okay.”
It wasn’t just Carla that felt cold. The room was cold and drafty. That was when I noticed fans blowing air over us. Guess he was serious about cold being better for her.
“She’s in a coma,” Kurt replied. “Talk to her, she might be able to hear you.”
Might?
So, I did. I told her about my day. Then a long involved story about The Heathcote Diamonds and how beautiful they were. She loved sparkly things.
Her hand lay in mine like a dead fish.
I told her about how Kurt got soaked earlier in the week when an awning ripped and how funny it was. The whole time I talked, Kurt watched the reaction on the machines.
“Tell her something you know would elicit a strong response,” he said.
From my pocket I took the tickets. “Wake up, baby. I got us front row tickets to Grange in New York next weekend. It’s a surprise. Even Rowan doesn’t know.”
Nothing. Not a glimmer, not anything. Maybe she didn’t hear me. I leaned close and pressed her fingers around the tickets. “We’re going to see Grange. You and me in New York for a whole weekend.” This time I watched the screen for brain activity. I asked her to squeeze my hand. I told her Rowan was on his way.
She lay there like a rag doll. An empty rag doll. The ticket’s I’d closed her fingers around lay on the white sheet. A question I wanted to ask kept sticking in my throat. It took a few attempts before it crackled forth.
“Can she breathe by herself?”
Kurt’s blue eyes rested upon Carla’s face.
“She was breathing by herself.”
“She was or she can?”
He gave the merest shake of his head. “Her heart is still beating. At this point, I don’t know if she can breathe without help.”
“Now what?”
“Intensive care.”
“For how long?”
“Until we know if she is going to recover.”
If.
I looked at the shell that was my kid. “How long?”