Sacred Trust

by Hannah Alexander

  “As I said…” Claudia shrugged.

  “I thought recalcitrant patients were your specialty.”

  “That and grouchy doctors. I’m thinking of changing my specialty.”

  “Too bad. The emergency department is filled with both. We’d miss you around here.”

  “Can’t say the feeling’s mutual, except for you, Dr. Bower. You’re never grouchy. I guess you haven’t been at it long enough.”

  “You just haven’t been around at the right time.”

  “Oh, I’m not denying you have a temper, but grouchy and angry are different. Dr. George is a grouch. Listen, is that a siren?”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “Has it been two minutes?”

  “Nope, but they haven’t unloaded her yet.”

  In barely over two minutes the emergency department doors opened to admit Buck and Connie pushing a gurney. On it lay an overweight young woman with long, unkempt blond hair and a tight grimace on her face.

  She opened her eyes momentarily when Lukas greeted the attendants, and her face contorted as tears dripped down her cheeks.

  “I don’t want to be here,” she moaned, then glared at Buck. “I told you to take me home!”

  Claudia stepped forward and nudged Buck away from the gurney. “Nonsense, honey. You look like a sensible girl to me. I’m sure you realize how silly it would be to come all this way, pay that whopping ambulance bill and go back home in pain. Connie, let’s put her in five. It’s got stirrups, just in case.”

  Buck stood watching them move off, then shook his head and ambled up to the desk. “Whew! It’s a good thing Claudia’s here tonight, Dr. Bower. She can handle Tia Calvin. Shoot, Claudia could sweet-talk Cowboy’s pet lion and not get chased out of the pen like I did. How humiliating. I’m beginning to think I’m no good with animals or people.”

  Lukas raised a brow. “Interesting patient?”

  “If you call a whiny neurotic interesting. That female is nuts. One minute she’s grabbing my arm and begging me to help her. The next minute she’s shouting at me for taking her blood pressure. By the way, don’t ask her if she’s pregnant. Connie did and got screamed at. You can sure tell we’ll have a full moon tonight.”

  “You say Tia asked to be taken home?”

  “Twice, but she was hurting so badly we were able to change her mind.”

  Rita joined them at the central desk and sat down in front of the computer terminal. “Kind of makes you glad your regular job is just fighting fires, huh, Buck?”

  “You got that right. These moonlighting shifts are opening my eyes to some whole new experiences. First Leonardo, now Tia. Maybe I don’t need this much experience.”

  “Oh, come on, Buck,” Rita teased, “you didn’t have to help Beverly feed the lion.”

  “No, and I learned a valuable lesson. I escaped the lion, but I didn’t escape my wife when she found out about it.”

  “Does our patient tonight deny pregnancy?” Lukas asked.

  “She not only denies pregnancy, she denies ever even kissing a man and was outraged that Connie would accuse her of it.”

  Connie came out of the exam room with the gurney. “Okay, Dr. Bower, she’s all yours. Come on, Buck, let’s get out of here. You could’ve helped us transfer her to the bed, you know. She’s not exactly a lightweight.”

  “I already told them once!” came a shriek from room five. “Why do people keep accusing me—”

  “Now, now, settle down, Tia!” Claudia managed to outshout the patient. “Nobody’s accusing you of doing anything, but we have to ask. You wouldn’t want us endangering any little babies just to be polite.” Her voice was soothing and firm all at once.

  “I just don’t understand why nobody believes me,” Tia complained and once again started to cry.

  Buck grinned at Lukas and waved. “Good luck, Doc. Tonight’s gonna be wild.”

  The dog started barking before Tedi got across the field. She stopped midstride and stared toward the barn, which blocked the house from view. She remembered the dog. He was big and brown with black markings, like a German shepherd. He’d been tied up the day her class visited. The dog’s nice grandparent-type owners had explained that he was their watchdog, and they didn’t always keep him tied up, even though they were supposed to.

  Now what was she going to do?

  Tedi glanced toward the other side of the field, which was farther from the house and the barking dog, and closer to the barn.

  That looked good, except the beehives gleamed white in the evening sun on that side of the field.

  Tedi wasn’t crazy about bees. She also wasn’t crazy about getting attacked by a mean dog.

  He kept barking.

  She crossed the field, keeping a close watch on the white hives as she drew closer to them. Dogs were bigger than bees, but there were a lot more bees.

  When she drew close enough to see some of the little buzzing workers, she stopped again. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  For a moment, the dog fell silent.

  Tedi carefully crept past the hives. Nothing happened until she was several yards from the hives; then she heard a buzz close by. She froze, then jerked around. It was coming from her backpack. She unfastened the pack and threw it off. Great, she’d left the back unzipped a little. The bee buzzed for a moment, then fell silent, and once more the dog barked. Tedi grabbed her pack and ran, bee and all.

  The barn door had a latch on the outside, so if she could just figure out how to work it…

  The dog barked again, this time louder and closer.

  Tedi ran the last few steps to the door, grabbed the latch, and fumbled with it. The dog came closer.

  The latch snapped up loudly. Tedi pulled the door open, rushed inside, closed the door and held her breath.

  The dog stopped barking for a moment, and Tedi thought she could hear him sniffing outside the large, wide doors across the barn from where she had entered.

  Someone whistled from near the house. “Sampson! Dinner. Here, boy!”

  The dog didn’t bark again.

  “But I can’t pee!” Tia Calvin burst into tears again for at least the fifth time since arriving less than an hour ago.

  Lukas couldn’t tell if she was really in as much pain as she claimed, or if she was just so upset she couldn’t stand to be touched. He laid a cautious hand on her arm, which he would not have done without Claudia in the room. “Tia, we’re here to help you.” He interjected the same gentleness into his voice that he had earlier with little Timmy Bradley. “We’re going to try to find out what is hurting you so we can stop the pain. Are you willing to trust Claudia so she can get the urine sample for us?”

  Tia nodded, obviously struggling to stifle her tears.

  “Good for you,” Lukas said. “I’ll leave so you can have some privacy.” He nodded to Claudia and returned to the central desk to wait.

  Tonight promised to be another one of those nights when a steady stream of patients trickled in one by one.

  “Ouch! That hurts!” The emergency department was so quiet that Tia’s voice reached easily past the privacy curtain.

  “It won’t take long,” came Claudia’s reassurance. “We’ll run a test on this, then—”

  “But it’s hurting bad! It’s cramping! I can’t take it!”

  At the desk, Rita looked at Lukas and rolled her eyes as they listened to Claudia’s calming voice assuring Tia that it was almost over.

  “Ow! No!”

  “Oh, my…Tia! I thought you said you couldn’t be—” The curtain flew back and Claudia rushed out.

  “Dr. Bower, I need you to come in here and tell me if I really see a baby crowning!”

  Lukas stifled his irritation. One would think that after all these years, Claudia would know what a—“A baby!” Lukas wheeled around and rushed into the exam room. He peered beneath the sheet Claudia had spread over Tia.

  “Yep, it’s a baby crowning,” he said.

  “But I told you I’m n
ot pregnant!” Tia wailed.

  “You won’t be for long, honey.” Claudia patted the young woman’s arm. “Just hold on.”

  “Claudia, set up for an emergency delivery,” Lukas said. “Get me fetal heart tones, a precip tray, and make sure the baby warmer is ready to go.”

  “Yes, Doctor, except we don’t have a precip tray. They used it already today, and it’s still being sterilized in central supply.”

  He pivoted toward the central desk. “Rita, contact the ob-gyn on call ASAP. We’re having a baby.” He shook his head as the secretary picked up the phone. “I hate full moons,” he muttered.

  Tedi Zimmerman awoke disoriented in uncomfortable darkness on a bed that was too hard and blankets that scratched at the exposed skin of her neck.

  Something tickled her chin. She reached up to swipe at it, and it jabbed her right palm, hard and deep.

  “Ouch!” She jerked her hand back.

  Suddenly, she realized she wasn’t home in bed. She caught her breath and sat up from the bale of hay where she’d fallen asleep.

  It was dark, and she hadn’t brought a flashlight. Her hand hurt so badly it brought tears to her eyes.

  Something buzzed beside her on the square hay bale. It buzzed fitfully and didn’t fly around. A bee?

  The bee in her pack!

  A whimper escaped from Tedi’s throat, even though she tried to be quiet. If the bees heard her, would they come and sting her again?

  But only that one bee buzzed, and it didn’t buzz long. Tedi remembered learning that a bee died after one sting.

  Warm tears stung Tedi’s eyes. Her hand really throbbed, and she couldn’t even see if there was a stinger there because it was so dark. Really dark. The only light she saw came through a couple of cracks beside the far barn door, looking like gray mist, hardly there. She couldn’t even see the streaks of light when she looked straight at them.

  The pain in her hand got worse, making her forget, for a moment, that she was stuck out here in the scary barn in the dark with beehives outside and a watchdog, with a dad back home who was probably going to kill her if she lived through this.

  Tears fell down her cheeks and a sob shook her.

  “Mom.” Her voice cracked. “Where are you now? I wish you’d just come and get me.” Why couldn’t she live with Mom? This would never have happened if she lived with Mom.

  And why did Grandma have to be gone right now?

  Grandma.

  When it was dark and Tedi felt afraid, Grandma always said to pray. Just the thought of Grandma made Tedi’s face crumple with more tears.

  “Jesus,” Tedi called between sobs, “help me. I’m scared, and Dad’s drunk again, and it’s dark and my hand hurts really, really badly.” For emphasis, she flexed the fingers of her right hand—or tried to. They felt stiff.

  She gasped. She couldn’t move her hand. Her whole arm felt stiff. She tried to clasp both hands together, but she discovered that her right hand was so swollen that her fingers wouldn’t mesh together. Even her arm felt swollen all the way up to her shoulder.

  A sound reached her from the far side of the barn, where the meager light filtered through. She held her breath and listened.

  Something snuffled from outside the door. Then it scratched. Then it whined. The dog.

  Tedi stared hard through the darkness, searching for some kind of light near the door she had entered earlier. It wasn’t far, she knew, because she hadn’t come very far into the barn before finding the bale of hay. Could she reach the door without tripping over something?

  The dog scratched again from outside, then uttered a short bark.

  The sound startled Tedi. Her heart thudded hard, the force of its pressure pounding in her ears, and it kept pounding so loudly that she couldn’t hear the dog. The throbbing hurt her hand, but not as badly as it did just a moment earlier. In fact, she couldn’t feel her arm very well now.

  She stood from the bale of hay and absently reached up with her left hand to brush tears from her cheeks. Her face felt weird. If felt stiff and almost numb. Her lips were big and thick.

  She gasped.

  At the sound, the dog barked. Tedi couldn’t get her breath very well. She gasped again. Her throat felt tight. What was wrong with her?

  The bee sting. Last fall, the beekeeper had told them about allergies to bee stings. Some people died when they went into shock from a bad allergic reaction.

  She was having an allergic reaction just like what the man had described. Was she going to die here in this barn all alone? “Jesus, please help me,” she whispered through a tight throat.

  She crept closer to the door, arms out in front of her, feeling her way, hoping the dog stayed on the other side of the building. She had to get out of here, had to get to help. If she hollered, would the beekeepers hear her and get to her before the dog ate her?

  “Hello?” she said, testing her voice. She was hoarse.

  The dog barked.

  “Hello? Can someone help me?” she croaked, then, “Help! Please, someone, help me!”

  But her voice wouldn’t carry. Only the dog kept barking and digging at the door.

  It got harder to breathe.

  Tedi tripped on some hay, caught herself, and kept reaching out, searching for the barn wall. Her left hand touched rough wood. She felt for anything that resembled a door as the wheezes of her own breathing sounded more loudly in her ears.

  She found a metal latch with her left hand, but now even that hand didn’t work so well. She couldn’t get the door open. She leaned into it.

  She couldn’t hear the dog now, but the pounding and ringing in her ears kept her from hearing much of anything.

  Suddenly the latch clicked open with the pressure from her thumb. The door opened outward, and Tedi fell out with it. She tripped over the threshold and landed hard on her stomach. Her breaths came harder and the ringing in her ears grew louder, but it didn’t drown out the dog’s barking—he was only a few feet away.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Theodore had a buzz, but it wasn’t a nice one. The feel of the wine burning his stomach and drifting through his veins fueled the growing anger he’d felt when Julie began to whine about his meeting tonight, and when she’d admitted she was pumping Tedi for financial info.

  And Tedi!

  He stalked into the family room where the television blared. She wasn’t there. Big surprise. She made a habit of leaving the TV on when Julie was here, as if allergic to the sound of her voice.

  He found the remote on the floor beside the sofa and hit the power button.

  “Tedi!” He was tired of his own kid giving him heat every time he turned around. “Tedi, come in here.” He grabbed up her history textbook and gathered some scattered notebook papers. Did they contain important history notes? Only if tic-tac-toe was history.

  “Tedi, I said come here!” He climbed the stairs two at a time and knocked hard. “Answer me!” No light shone from beneath the door, but it was only eight o’clock. She wouldn’t be asleep yet. She’d probably been eavesdropping and knew she was in trouble.

  He turned the handle and went in. At least she hadn’t tried to lock him out like last time.

  The moonlight cast shadows across the bed, outlining a ten-year-old–shaped lump beneath the comforter.

  “No bluffing. I don’t have time for this.” He strode across the room and pulled the bedclothes back. Tedi’s body took the puffy form of two fluffed pillows.

  Theo clenched his teeth. “Theadra Zimmerman, that’s enough! Get in this bedroom right…now.” He frowned. Her denim backpack was missing from the dresser, where she always tossed it. Her jacket was gone, too. She never put it in the closet, but threw it on the bed.

  Just in case, Theo checked the doorknob and closet. No jacket. No backpack.

  He stomped downstairs to the family room phone and punched the neighbor’s number. That was the only place Tedi ever went without having to ask permission. None of her other friends lived close.

>   On the fourth ring the answering machine picked up. They always answered when they were home. Theo hung up without leaving a message.

  Was he forgetting something? Did Tedi have something going on at school tonight? Had he been so angry with Julie that he hadn’t noticed his daughter when she left?

  He entered the kitchen and checked the calendar. Today’s date was not marked for anything special. Nothing was going on at school.

  So where was Tedi?

  The phone rang, and he snatched it up. “Yes.”

  “Where are you, Theo? Our guys have been here for fifteen minutes, and they’re hungry.” It was Gordon. “I’ve got reservations at the Golden Lion in thirty minutes.”

  Theo glanced at his watch again. “Can I meet you there?”

  “You’re not drinking again, are you, Theo? I told you to watch that. These guys are teetotalers, and I don’t want you barging in here with wino breath and blowing the deal.”

  “I’ll meet you at the Lion. Promise.”

  There was a pause. “You’d better,” Gordon warned. “This is your baby.”

  “Trust me. I’ll be right there.”

  A dog’s bark barely penetrated the dark fog in which Tedi floated. Something wet slapped her face, then something cold nudged her cheek hard.

  A bark shrilled two inches from her ear. She could still hear her own wheezing as she struggled to breathe. She opened her eyes to the dark face of a big dog, his shadow outlined by the glow of moonlight.

  He nudged her again with his wet nose; then he grabbed her shirt in his teeth and pulled so hard it tugged against her neck.

  She gagged.

  He released her and barked again, obviously frustrated because he couldn’t peel her before he ate her.

  Tedi couldn’t do anything to protect herself. She had to concentrate hard just to breathe.

  Voices reached her—human voices.

  “Honey, be careful,” said a woman. “I wish you’d’ve brought the rifle.” They drew nearer. “Never can tell what—”

  The dog barked again.

  “Help me,” Tedi croaked as loudly as she could.