All I'll Ever Need

by Harry Kraus

  Claire shook her head. Why would this woman claim that Claire had euthanized her father? Jimmy had indicated in last night’s phone call that Ami was close to her father, and even wondered if the death may have loosened her grip on reality once more, but this accusation did not seem to be the fruit of a person out of touch with reality. This felt more like a calculated attack.

  Claire picked up the phone and dialed the number for Dr. James Dogget at the Virgina State Board of Medicine. In a moment, she heard his voice.

  “Dr. Dogget? This is Claire McCall. I called to check on your investigation. Did you have a chance to talk with Nancy Childress?”

  She pulled the phone back from her ear as he cleared his throat. “I did.”

  Claire smiled with relief. “Good. I’m sure we can lay the matter to rest.”

  She listened to the silence on the other end. Then a sigh, as the investigator’s breath blew into the phone. “You are anxious to put this behind you. I can understand that. But I’ve made no solid conclusions about this matter.”

  “Didn’t Ms. Childress inform you that she didn’t even give any of the morphine I prescribed? Richard Childress died because of his metastatic cancer, not because of me.”

  “Dr. McCall, if you had given a lethal injection to your ailing husband, even under the instructions of a physician, what would you say if you were questioned about it?”

  Claire gasped. “You’re saying you don’t believe her?”

  “I’m only saying that her response didn’t surprise me. Either she is telling the truth or . . .” His voice halted.

  “Or what?”

  “Or she is doing what comes natural when you are an accessory to a crime — covering up.”

  “This is preposterous! You have no proof of this.”

  “I have the testimony of Ami Grandle.”

  “You spoke to her?”

  “I did. And her account is very convincing. She tells of her mother calling her to get instructions on how to give the injection.”

  “But she didn’t even give it!”

  “Again, Nancy’s word only.”

  “I’ll get the medicine back. I can get the unused vials of morphine from Nancy Childress to show you.”

  “I tried that. But she couldn’t find them. She claims they’re missing. And she just doesn’t know where they could have gotten to.” His voice carried a lilt of sarcasm.

  “Then exhume his body. Have a forensic pathologist examine his body for evidence of narcotics.”

  “I don’t have the authority to do that. I’m afraid since we’ve been unable to put an end to this investigation, I’ll just have to turn the matter over to the police.”

  “This is crazy. I didn’t do anything!”

  “That’s not my call. It’s out of my hands.”

  Claire hung her head. “Wait. It’s just Ami’s word against her mother’s, right?”

  “Yes.” He paused. “Look, Dr. McCall, if things are as you say, you should have nothing to worry about. I’m in a bind here too. If I ignore this, Ami could take the board to task by taking it to the police herself. If they end up uncovering something sinister, it will look like the board isn’t doing its job.”

  “This Ami isn’t a stable person. She’s had a number of psychotic breaks when she was completely out of touch with reality.”

  “You know this?”

  “It’s in her medical record.”

  “Then I’m sure the police and the district attorney will take that into account when they do their investigation.”

  She huffed. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I’m sorry, really I am. It’s out of my hands. Really.”

  Claire shook her head. She felt like slamming down the phone. Instead, she took a deep breath. “Thank you,” she said, before placing down the receiver. For nothing!

  That afternoon, before five o’clock closing, Claire looked up to see Detective Randy Jensen just as he lifted his hand to knock on the door frame to her office. Her stomach tightened. I’ve been expecting you. Investigating a murder, maybe?

  “Dr. McCall? Sorry to bother you at work.”

  “Hi, Randy.” She nodded at a chair across from her desk. “Have a seat.”

  He sat and cleared his throat.

  “Anything new on the Tyler Crutchfield mystery?”

  “Maybe.” He frowned, furrowing his brow.

  “What is it?”

  “Someone mowed the grass at your sister’s place.”

  “Did you look at it?”

  He nodded and leaned forward. “It looks just like the pattern you described from your old office mower.”

  “It’s Tyler Crutchfield. It’s a threat.”

  He shrugged.

  “Can’t you see the pattern? It’s just like at my house.”

  “It makes no sense. Tyler Crutchfield should be miles away.”

  “Unless he wants to do exactly what you think he wouldn’t do.”

  “Fair enough.” He hesitated. “I — ”

  She watched him for a moment. “What?”

  “I didn’t just come to talk about Tyler Crutchfield.”

  Claire sighed.

  “It’s about Richard Childress.”

  “I know. The investigator from the state board told me he’d be turning information over to the police.”

  “So can I ask you a few questions?”

  “What have they given you?”

  Randy recited the report faxed to him by Dr. Dogget.

  “This is really crazy, Randy. I wasn’t anywhere close to Richard when he passed away. And as you see, Nancy’s testimony lines right up with mine.”

  He nodded. “Okay, Dr. McCall, this is awkward for me. I’ll talk to Nancy Childress and her daughter. If things are what they appear on the surface, you shouldn’t have to worry. No magistrate would issue a warrant to arrest you based on this,” he said, shaking the paper in his hand.

  Claire fought back pessimism. Since when had anything gone the way it should when it had anything to do with her life? “Fair enough,” she said, standing.

  The officer held out his hand. “Bye.”

  Claire gathered her things and headed home, determined not to let this accusation, as serious as it sounded, undermine her love for medicine or the people of Stoney Creek. Medicine, after all, had been the calling that provided some sense of stability in her crazy life. As she faced the understanding of her father’s abuse, the threat of the onset of Huntington’s disease, and the strain of knowing Tyler Crutchfield was loose, her work stood as a refuge to divert her racing mind onto clinical tangibles. Strep throat can be cured by Amoxocillin. Helicobacter Pylori bacteria cause stomach ulcers which can be eradicated by antibiotics. These were the comforting facts that helped anchor Claire into believing in predictable patterns. Life may throw curveballs, but medical science provided research-backed, cause-and-effect outcomes.

  But now, as she steered her VW toward home, she couldn’t bear to think that the medical life she loved might be threatened by such a distorted accusation. There was one person she could turn to in the presence of yet another crisis. And she needed to see him tonight. She would drive to Brighton to spend the weekend with John at his parents’ place. Tony and Christine expected her tomorrow morning, but she needed a dose of John Cerelli stat. She needed his ear, his compassion, and his faith in a loving Lord.

  She threw clothes into an overnight bag, carried a dress on a hanger, and scribbled a note to her mother. Then she pointed her VW toward Brighton. And relief. And her lover’s arms.

  Della sat in a rocking chair at the edge of Wally’s bed. She looked at him through the railings, a little slice of his body visible in each section. This bed is a prison, she thought. Wally’s illness has incarcerated him in a bed of suffering.

  She listened as his legs whistled across the sheets, now shiny from wear. “Thirsty,” he slurred.

  She pushed a straw in his mouth and gave him a drink of cool lemonade.

  She se
t the tall plastic container on the bedside table and drifted to another time, another bed that they shared. In the early years of their marriage, Wally couldn’t spend enough time with her between the sheets. Now his illness had robbed them of any physical union or the pleasure it afforded. Aching for the days when Wally held her, she took his hand in hers and cradled it against her chest.

  “I know you’re still in there, Wally McCall. I know you’re still the man I fell in love with,” she whispered.

  Wally looked at her, but his head jerked away, his voluntary control long lost to HD. His hand pulled from her grasp, leaving her standing by his bed, her hands empty.

  This isn’t the life you wanted. Wally McCall was a man who enjoyed fresh air. How long has it been since you even saw the sunshine?

  Is this prison?

  Do you want escape?

  Della sat by his bed, imitating normal life, talking as if he would answer. As if he would care. “I think Claire has picked out a wedding dress.”

  She listened, imagining a response.

  “She asked Margo to be her matron of honor.”

  Della sniffed. “John won’t tell her where they are going for their honeymoon.” She paused, wiping her eyes. “Do you remember our honeymoon? We were supposed to spend our first night in Williamsburg, but we stopped in Brighton because we couldn’t wait . . .”

  Wally’s forehead glistened with sweat. His eyes were wide, fixed on his wife, stationary as his head twisted from side to side. Instead of joy, the memory seemed to torture him, an oasis unobtainable to a desert traveler. His mouth curled into a frown.

  She leaned forward, anticipating a response. “What is it? Do you remember?”

  He grunted rhythmically, as if wanting to respond, but lacking the energy to spit out the words.

  She reached out to touch his hand. “I know you remember, honey.”

  His hand jerked away. It was an involuntary response, part of the cruel dance of HD. She knew that in her head. But the rejection stung, nonetheless.

  “D – d – d.”

  She stood again and wiped the moisture from his brow. “I’m listening, Wally. Talk to me.”

  “Die.” The word fell out in a tumble, but to her experienced ear, understood.

  She shook her head. “God will take you home when it is his time.”

  He began to mumble, softly at first, then growing and accelerating as the turmoil within bubbled to the surface. Mud clung to his words, weighing them down. As he struggled to clarify his thoughts, Della extracted meaning through the muddle. “Claire can help me. Ask Claire to help.”

  She did not know how to respond. He’d talked of dying for weeks. It was an escape she longed for him to have, but one that she stood powerless to provide. She turned away, speaking to the wall, unwilling to view his suffering as she denied him again. “I know it’s hard. I’ve talked to your doctor in Brighton. He has changed your medicines to help you feel better. God will take you home when it is time.” Her voice cracked. She looked back at her husband. He didn’t want her platitudes.

  Wally closed his eyes, squeezing out a tear. Della reached to wipe it away, knowing Wally couldn’t try. A rebellious finger without control could be a weapon to poke a tender eye.

  She tried to steer his darkened mood toward the light. She pointed to a time when life bulged with the wonderful baggage of normalcy. “Remember when the twins were born? You were so proud.” She sniffed. “They always did everything at the same time. Diapers. So many diapers. And they cried to eat together. And Clay wouldn’t take a bottle, so you would feed Claire, and I would feed Clay. And then we’d change the diapers and start all over again.”

  Wally coughed, choking on a bit of spit or mucus he no longer had the coordination to swallow. Della winced as she listened to the wetness that rattled around her husband’s hollow chest.

  She chatted on, desperately trying to paint a picture of a time when life had color and meaning. After a few minutes, her palate was dry and her memories seemed a blank canvas. She held his hand for a moment, gripping his tightly so she could trail it along its pathway from side to side. A silent sadness settled over them, a blanket she couldn’t throw back.

  Her thoughts carried her to tougher times. His violent temper when he was drinking, and the caustic arguments with Clay as a teenager. She remembered when his personality began to change and the onset of Huntington’s disease. Wally slammed doors and drawers and cabinets, all because his coordination had begun to fail him. He stumbled and balanced himself against the hallway walls, knocking the pictures of the family askew.

  She looked at the hand she held, his fingers whitening from her tight grip as she dared to entertain Claire’s accusations. Is it possible, Wally? Were you ever so drunk that you would have touched your own daughter?

  She couldn’t let herself accept it. She and Wally had come so far in restoration of their marriage. Yet somewhere at the edges of her mind, a nagging doubt surfaced. What if Claire is right? The idea repulsed her. She closed her eyes, praying that it wasn’t so.

  “Good-bye, Wally. I should get home.”

  “D – d – die,” he said.

  She turned and left him alone. Abandoned. Out of her care. But his voice clung to her ears. She paused at the door and shook her head, wanting something, anything else to think about, but his message stuck, velcroed to her mind. Taking a deep cleansing breath, she blotted the corners of her eyes with her hand, then proceeded into the hall. She clipped through the hallway aware of the pungent odors of urine and antiseptic, willing herself not to breathe until she reached the double doors at the nursing home’s entrance and the freshness of life beyond.

  John sat working with his laptop open. He reworked a PowerPoint presentation while sitting in the backyard gazebo at his parents’ place in Brighton. Friday nights were supposed to be for relaxation and fun, but he needed to get the finishing touches of this project completed before Claire arrived.

  He looked up from the computer screen, his eyes unfocused. When Claire called from her car just a few minutes ago, her voice was etched with stress. He’d been wanting to talk to her about Ami, to ask her advice about how to handle her aggressive behavior, but then Claire unloaded yet another problem in her life and he’d backed away from burdening her with one more crisis.

  Something he’d understood from the beginning was that life with Claire McCall, while perhaps filled with hardships, was never dull. He’d seen Claire handle the tension of medical education, a malpractice suit, the traumatic death of her twin, and the knowledge that someday she would fall into the clutches of Huntington’s disease. All of these, she’d met with confidence, sometimes struggling under the load, but eventually overcoming with a childlike trust in God. But he’d detected something else as she’d unloaded yet another chapter of misery. As the suspicion of foul play in a patient’s death added to her current burden of dealing with her father’s sexual abuse and her fears of another attack by Tyler Crutchfield, he sensed Claire approaching her breaking point. Times beyond tough threatened to crumble the rock she’d become.

  He closed his eyes to pray, asking God for wisdom, for strength beyond human weakness, for the ability to see his hand of direction from beyond the veil. He prayed for knowledge to help, and for joy in spite of circumstance. Then, emboldened by a comforting peace, he prayed for God’s staying hand against enemies of darkness that may be responsible for this newest threat to her career.

  As he sat in the quiet, he felt her hands cover his eyes. In his absorption in his prayer, he had not heard her approach. He understood the guess-who game. He gripped her wrist, even as he inhaled her scent. She wore a familiar perfume, a light scent of honeysuckle. When he twisted his head to see her, she moved the opposite way. He pulled her hands from his eyes, pressing his lips against the back of her hands. Oh, how blessed he felt to hold the hands of the woman he loved.

  She responded by leaning forward, kissing his cheek, burying her face into his neck, caressing him, and ta
sting him. A sudden shock of realization struck. This was not Claire! He pulled away, turning to see Ami Grandle. “Ami!”

  Her eyes widened. “Who else?”

  He touched his cheek, her kiss still moist on his face. “What are you doing here?”

  She pushed out her lower lip and walked around to sit next to him on the wooden bench. “I needed to talk.”

  “But you can’t just come here and kiss me like that. We’re not —We’re not like that.”

  She touched his chin. “You’re blushing. You enjoyed it.”

  Heat stung his cheeks. Of course he liked it. She was beautiful. And he was enjoying it, but he thought he was enjoying Claire. “I — , I — ”

  “Why, you can’t even speak,” she teased, flashing a smile of perfect white teeth. She continued in a whisper. “You do that to me too.”

  “Ami,” he countered, finally finding his voice, “I thought you were someone else.” He looked away, fleeing her searching eyes. “My fiancée.”

  “Of course.” Sarcasm edged the statement.

  He scooted away. “Why did you come?”

  She looked down and folded her hands in the lap of her short dress. “I’m going car shopping. I thought you should come along.” She looked up at him. “You know car salesmen. They want to take advantage of pretty girls.”

  John shook his head. “Ami, you shouldn’t rely on me to do these things. Certainly you have a brother or — ”

  “I’m an only child. Richard, my stepdad, would have done it. But he’s — ” She put her hand to her mouth.

  “I know about your stepdad,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  She sniffed. “So will you help me? I know you know tons more than I do about cars. I know the car I want you to look at. Just go with me and tell me what you think.”