by Ann Simas
His face grew red as he snarled, “I wanted to kill that sonofabitch right then and there, put us all out of our misery. He’s nothing but a worthless piece of shit who gives all cops a bad name and I’m fucking sick of him getting away with it!”
“Okay,” Luca said, his own anger warring with the itchy itch inside him, both threatening momentary detonation, “so you’re not IA. You talked to them yet?”
“No. I wanted to talk to you first. The vic is your sister. You got a level head on you, both of you. I need some guidance here.”
Trey and Luca exchanged another look. “No question, we gotta take this to IA,” Trey said.
“No question,” Luca agreed. “The thing is, I think we have another problem here. This woman, Sunshine Fyfe, isn’t looking like our hit-and-run driver.”
“Oh, shit,” Trey said.
“Oh, Jesus,” Crawford said.
Luca nodded. “Exactly right.”
Chapter 5
. . .
Sunny woke up thinking she was dead. For one thing, she couldn’t see. For another, she was freezing-ass cold.
It took her a moment to realize that there was some kind of cloth over her eyes, then she remembered waking up screaming in the middle of the night, in pain. The nurse had informed her she was already at her limit on pain meds, but suggested something that might help ease her discomfort. She’d brought Sunny a chilled cloth, which she placed on her forehead and over her eyes, and that had done the trick. At least until just now.
As to freezing, someone must have kicked up the room’s air conditioner, because it was freaking summer outside. Never mind that sick and injured people might like to stay warm. She tossed the still-damp cloth aside and struggled to reach the sheet and the lightweight blanket that had pooled at her feet. She screamed from the pain searing her side and fell back without retrieving the covers.
Dear God, what had she done to deserve the treatment she got at the hands of Cop One?
She started fumbling for the call button and that was when she realized both her hands were free. Black and blue around the wrists, the left worse than the right, but free.
After what felt like an eternity, she got both the sheet and the blanket pulled up to her chin.
Sunny’s disposition usually lived up to her name, but honestly, if she ever got the chance to pay back Cop One, it would be a helluva lot more than a good, swift, well-deserved booted kick in his family jewels. She might even consider retribution against Cop Two, for waiting so long to step in and stop the bully who had beat the crap out of her.
On the back of that memory came another. She hadn’t been allowed to phone her parents and let them know about the false arrest, or where she was, or….
Sunny turned her head this way and that, searching for both the call button and the remote to raise the bed and could locate neither.
She used the safety rail to pull herself up into a sitting position, wincing at the constant pain in her side. She was reminded of other aches and pains, as well, and felt the pull of the assorted medical devices that had been attached to her.
The pain, the discomfort didn’t matter. She needed the phone! Where was the goddamned phone?
She didn’t see one anywhere in the room, but she finally located the remote where it dangled from the bottom of the side rail. She raised the head of the bed and sank back with relief, easing, but not erasing, the horrific pain in her side.
And then she remembered Detective Pure Male informing her that prisoners didn’t have phone rights. Sunny thought that was BS. In all those reality-crime TV shows her mom watched, everybody got one phone call. If that wasn’t true, they couldn’t include it in the teleplays, could they?
She considered all the various attachments on her body and began to peel them away methodically.
Phone. She had to get to a phone.
One after another, the machines in the room began to beep and squeal. She threw her legs over the edge of the bed, gasping at the pain in her side. Before she knew it, two nurses swarmed through the door, followed by a man she recognized as a doctor.
Memories flashed through her brain haphazardly. Phone. She needed a phone!
Sunny collapsed against the mattress and felt her chest tighten. She began to struggle for breath. “Rescue inhaler,” one of the nurses said, pointing to the table tray that had been pushed aside.
“Get a damned nebulizer,” the doctor ordered. “It should have already been in the room!”
Sunny grasped the rescue inhaler, squeezed down the activator, and sucked in the mist, holding her breath for what seemed like forever. The doctor loomed over her. “Take another one, then we’ll put you on the neb.”
She did as instructed, relieved when her breaths came a little easier. Except in the spring, when pollen was running high, she rarely needed a bronchodilator, and for those times, she relied on her nebulizer. Taking her daily dose of Advair had pretty much ensured smoother sailing for her, lung-wise. She also had an EpiPen, in case of anaphylaxis.
Once they had her set up on the nebulizer, the doctor picked up her chart and started asking questions. “Are you generally a stress-related asthmatic?”
She nodded.
“What about exercise-induced?”
She nodded again.
More questions: Allergies? Cold weather? You have an inhaler? You use a nebulizer? Are you on a corticosteroid? Advair?
Yes to all.
“Do you see a pulmonary specialist regularly?”
Sunny ripped the neb mouthpiece out of her mouth. “I have pollen allergies and asthma. Advair’s been a godsend for me. I haven’t had an asthma attack since” —she broke off, remembering exactly when the last asthma attack had occurred— “March twelfth, just over two years ago.”
Madani looked up from her chart. “How is it you remember the exact date?”
She hesitated for only an instant. “It’s the day the Navy came knocking at my door to tell me my husband was dead.”
The doctor had a face that could not disguise his emotions. When he extended his condolences and offered his thanks for her husband’s sacrifice on behalf of his country, Sunny believed him.
She put the nebulizer mouthpiece back in her mouth and finished the breathing treatment. As soon as the nurse removed it from the bed tray, Sunny grabbed the doctor’s hand and said, “I have to use the phone, Dr. Madani. I have people who will be worried sick about me. Please, can you help me?”
Madani went to the door and flipped over the DO NOT DISTURB sign before he closed it. He returned to the bed and handed Sunny his smartphone. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but the police instructed the nursing staff to remove the room phone.”
“Bless you,” Sunny said, quickly dialing her parents’ number. “Mom, it’s me!” she got out before she started sobbing. God, she hadn’t cried this much since…since never!
In between gulps and tears, she told her mother what had happened, minimizing the “roughed up by a cop” part. She could go into that later, after her mother knew for sure her youngest daughter was really alive and well. “Mom, I need a lawyer—the cops are convinced I hit this girl on a bike and they think that because there’s supposedly a witness who said I did.”
She drug in a long breath, then said, “Can you and dad come to the hospital? I’m in ICU at Immaculate Heart. How are the kids? I know, they must be freaking out. Do you think Mrs. Willsey will watch them for a few hours?”
Once she’d disconnected, Sunny handed the phone back to the doctor. “Thank you so much.”
He handed her the box of tissues. “What you said just now, it’s all true?”
Sunny blew her nose gingerly, wondering if it was broken. So far, no one had really shared anything with her about her injuries. Apparently, that was the price you paid when the medical community thought you were a lowlife criminal. “No good deed goes unpunished,” she said, surprised by the bitterness she heard in her voice. “It’s all true. The only reason I didn’t stick around was b
ecause my mom had a big event to attend that she had organized and she was watching my kids for me. My flight was late getting back, then I ran into a traffic jam taking my usual shortcut…and then there was that poor bicyclist.”
And why didn’t the vision show me the real end result?
“The young woman who was hit has come out of her coma. She’s going to be okay,” the doctor said.
“Thank goodness for that!” Sunny dropped her bruised and battered face into her trembling hands. “God, everything is so screwed up.”
A nurse entered, looking for Madani. As she held the door open, a young woman in a wheelchair rolled by slowly. She peered in, as patients often do when roaming the halls of the hospital, and cried out, “Sunny? Sunny, is that you?”
Shocked, Sunny looked toward the doorway.
At that exact moment, a masculine voice, frantic, called out, “Della!”
“Ohmygod!” Della cried, backing up, wheeling in, ignoring the man shouting her name. “What’s happened to you?”
Detective Pure Male suddenly filled the doorway. “Della, get out of there!”
“No! This is Sunny, Luca. She’s the one who stopped to help me!”
Sunny’s gaze leapt from the young woman in the wheel chair to the man in the doorway and she suddenly understood why his eyes had looked so familiar. He had to be related to Della. Her frantic eyes sought out the doctor, when she realized she was having yet another asthma attack.
“Everybody out!” Madani shouted. “Nurse, get the neb set up again. Sunny” —he moved quickly toward the bed— “keep calm. You know the routine. Try to take slow, deep breaths.” He stood to block her view of the door and the activity coming in and out. “That’s it. Slow, deep. Think of something pleasing, like your kids. Slow. Deep.”
Sunny latched on to doctor’s voice as if it were her lifeline.
Breathe slow. Breathe deep. Think of Maisie and Carson. They need you.
. . .
Della felt her chair rolling backward, but she didn’t have her hands on the push rings.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Luca demanded, pushing her back into her room. “You shouldn’t even be out of bed.”
“Shows how much you know,” Della shot back. “The doctor came around and said if I felt like getting in the chair for a spin in the halls, I could.” She slapped her palms against the arms of her chair. “Go back and find out what’s wrong with Sunny! She looks like someone beat the shit out of her!”
“Get back in the bed, Della.”
“I will not! Don’t start telling me what to do again, Luca. I thought we already had this straight between us.”
Her brother turned her wheelchair around and pulled over the chair he’d tried to sleep in the night before. He sat down facing her. “I know what happened to her,” he began, his tone obviously reluctant.
Della stiffened. Despite the big lump on the back of her head, she wasn’t brain dead and she had a bad feeling about where this little talk was going. Luca was a cop. Sunny was a good Samaritan. An insidious thought curled through her brain….
“The guy at the car lot wrote down her vehicle license when she drove off, said he’d seen her hit you.”
“Tell me you did not arrest her!” Della shouted. She couldn’t remember when she’d ever been angrier, and certainly not at her big brother.
“I personally did not arrest her,” Luca said. “Patrol picked her up a mile or so from the site.”
Della shifted in the wheelchair, wishing she could get up and pace off the fury building like a cyclone inside her. “She must have told them she was innocent when they stopped her, that she’d helped me.”
Luca stared at her in silence.
“Ohmygod! What did they do, tie her up and beat her when she tried to explain things?”
“Not exactly.”
Della wished for the first time in her life that she could get a hold of her brother’s gun and use it on whoever had done those horrible things to Sunny. “She must be in bad shape to be in the ICU. Who did it? Who did that to her?”
“It’s being handled, Della. I can’t discuss it with you.”
“Bullshit! I get hit by an SUV and dozens of cars drive by with the people in them gawking at me and not one of them stops to help until Sunny, and for being kind-hearted, she gets roughed up by cops when they arrest her for hitting me? Tell me who the bastard was so I can kick him in the balls if I ever meet him!”
“I can’t name names, Della. Don’t push me on this.”
She studied him with fire in her eyes and a killer headache that felt like it expanded her skull with every pulse beat. She put her hands on the push rings of the wheelchair, awkwardly turning it around before she shot out the door.
“Della!”
“Screw you, Luca!”
“Hey!” cried a nurse seated at the desk between Della and Sunny’s rooms.
Frustrated when she reached the closed door of Sunny’s room, Della stuck out her uninjured leg and kicked it open as she put all her effort into wheeling forward.
“Della,” Luca hissed, “stop!”
“Leave me alone, Luca. Sunny is hurt. You’ve probably kept her family away from her. She needs someone there for her who cares about her!”
Luca stopped short, staring down at the youngest Amorosi.
Della glared back at him. “Go away, Luca, unless you want to haul your sorry ass in here to apologize to Sunny.”
Before Luca could respond, a uniformed cop, about the same height as her brother but heavier, with a paunch that hung over his belt, appeared behind him. “Detective, is the skank ready to be transported over to the jail yet?”
Della finagled her wheelchair around and rolled back out of the room. Luca reversed direction to avoid having his feet run over. She examined the officer’s name badge and made a mental note of it: E. BOYSON. “Are you the one who arrested this woman?” Della asked, gesturing over her shoulder.
“Damned straight!” he said, a cocky grin on his face. “You the one she hit?”
“No,” Della said, her voice shaky with anger, “I’m the one the skank stopped to help.”
Boyson looked confused for all of about five seconds. He took a step forward, his grin morphing into a mean sneer.
Luca didn’t hesitate. He stepped between them and put his hand on the patrol officer’s chest. “Take it out of the building, Boyson. The suspect has been cleared of any wrong-doing.”
Boyson’s searching gaze sought out the woman in the bed, but the door had swung closed.
Della thought his eyes almost blazed red with hatred and even though the look was not directed at her, her body shuddered with both repulsion and fear.
Another patrol officer came up behind Boyson. Her brother greeted him as Crawford.
“Back off, Boyson,” Crawford said.
“Mind your own business, pretty boy,” Boyson snarled.
Luca’s hands fisted at his sides. “This suspect is clear, Brant. Take your partner and get the hell out of here.”
Della ignored Luca’s stern warning glance in her direction and wheeled back toward Sunny’s room. She used her foot to open the door again, uncaring if her brother followed her or not, which, of course, he did.
“Della,” Sunny said, her voice raspy, “you’re welcome to stay, but if what the detective just said is true, I don’t want any cops within a hundred feet of me.” Her battered face angled toward Luca. “That includes you.”
“It’s true,” Della said, rolling closer, “but Sunny, you got hurt badly when you were arrested. Luca is not just a cop, he’s also my brother, and he needs to hear what happened to you.” She spared a glance for him, surprised when he remained silent. “He’s going to get that baboon off the force and off the street for what he put you through.”
Sunny looked at the doctor standing over her, then at Luca, and finally back at Della. “I’ll believe that when I see it, sweetie.”
Chapter 6
. . .
Luca didn’t think things could get more chaotic, but he was wrong.
While he was engaged in a staring contest with a black-and-blue and abraded face, his sister lambasted him about police brutality, and Dr. Madani seemed inclined to insert his two-bits worth, as well, concerning the stress of it all affecting his patient’s ability to breathe properly.
To compound the circus, the door flew open and in surged two older people who, judging by their frantic jabbering, were Sunshine Fyfe’s parents.
“Sunny, ohmygod, my beautiful girl, what have they done to you?” cried the distraught mother. She didn’t have to push anyone aside to get to her daughter, which was probably the norm for Bebe Carson when she entered a room unannounced. Her arrival anywhere no doubt resulted in a miniature parting of the Red Sea.
“Mom! Dad!” Sunny mumbled in return. Propped up in the bed, tears began to stream down her discolored, swollen cheeks in buckets.
Bebe bent over the bed, obviously trying to decide where and if she should hug her injured daughter without hurting her further. She settled for putting a gentle hand to Sunny’s forehead, lightly pushing her hair back. “Oh, Harry, just look at what they’ve done to our darling Sunny!”
Bebe’s tears dripped in profusion onto her daughter’s hospital gown, leaving mascara streaks running down her own cheeks. She glanced at the man on the opposite side of the bed. “Are you her doctor?”
Madani snapped his gaping mouth closed. “One of them,” he said. “I am Danush Madani, a pulmonary specialist. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Carson.”
He held his hand out across the bed. Bebe looked at it, then accepted it graciously. Offering him a slight smile, she said, “Off the screen, I’m Bebe Keene,” she said, “and this is my husband, Harry.” She patted Sunny’s head again while her husband and the doctor shook hands.
“How’s she doing?” Harry asked.