“What do you want to do with this guy next?” Charlie asked. “The Radiology Department will start to get busy soon. He can stay in the darkroom. It’s never used. In fact, most of us have forgotten about it. The young people—residents, techs, and nurses—don’t even realize it’s there. They wouldn’t know what it was for. But if you do that, neither of you can go in or out until it gets really quiet again.”
“My new job starts in a few hours,” Phoebe said. “I can’t stay here. I need that job, so I have to go. I guess I could leave him and come back tonight and get him. That’ll give me time to figure out what to do with him.”
Charlie nodded. “What’s the job?”
“Private duty nurse. That’s all I know. It’s at some place in the back of beyond just over the state line in North Carolina. A ritzy-sounding English lady called to hire me.”
“There are a lot of extremely wealthy people congregating over near Asheville these days. The world has discovered the Smokies. That’ll be a long commute for you, though, won’t it? I hope the job is something you’ll enjoy.”
“I like to work. And I like being a nurse. I don’t even mind the cranky patients who drive everybody else crazy.”
“Obviously, because you pick them up everywhere you go, like cockleburs,” Charlie laughed and hugged her from the side. She lay her head over on his broad shoulder and thanked God for friends.
They sat quietly for a few more minutes, then Charlie said, “We’d better get going if you’re gonna be on time for your new job.”
Phoebe stood up and folded their blanket. Charlie took in her appearance and said, “I’ll get you some clean scrubs and a lab coat. That way you won’t have to go home and change.
Phoebe smiled her thanks.
“Let’s go break the news to your patient.”
Chapter 15
When he heard the plan to leave him in the darkroom all day, Nick panicked. “Don’t leave me,” he said, with more sincere emotion than she’d seen from him thus far. He grabbed her wrist in a death grip.
“I’ve got to go to work,” Phoebe explained. “I’ll come back for you tonight. I promise.”
“Please,” he begged, “take me with you!”
“This is my first day in a new place and with a new patient. I have no idea what the setup will be there. If I took you, you’d have to stay in the truck for eight hours until my shift is over.”
“No problem.”
“I can try to bring you food and water and check on you during my breaks, but you’ll have to stay put. If anyone sees you, I could lose my job. And I need that job. Can I trust you to behave?”
“Yes,” Nick swore emphatically.
She didn’t believe him for a minute, but she felt sorry for him, so she agreed.
“If they were watching the entrances, they’re undoubtedly watching the exits and maybe even the garages,” Charlie said. “You can take my car. I’ll go get it for you.”
Phoebe loved cars more than almost anything and Charlie was offering her his Porsche Cayenne SUV. But she had a phobia about damaging other people’s property, so she reluctantly turned down the generous offer.
“At least let me go get your car and bring it around for you.”
Phoebe agreed to that and explained where she’d left Leon’s truck. Charlie brought the wheelchair and she bundled Nick up like a real patient, which he was. Then she filled his lap with pillaged supplies, including two more pairs of scrubs. Then she covered it all with a blanket.
As Charlie rolled him down the hall, Phoebe noticed the woozy longing backwards glance Nick gave the little darkroom. She knew they’d both miss their peaceful little hidey-hole.
Charlie pushed Nick toward the same loading dock where he’d taken Phoebe earlier and told then both to wait inside until be brought Leon’s truck around. He didn’t go straight to the garage, but instead wound through the hospital trying to see if he was picking up a tail. He made a few stops on the way, saw nothing suspicious, then went to the parking area.
First he brought his own car out and parked it in the alley. Then he went underground to where Phoebe had left Leon’s vehicle. He approached the little truck cautiously, looking for anyone who might be lurking in the area.
He didn’t see anyone, but just as he pulled out of the garage and drove up onto the road that would lead him to the back of the main building, they saw each other. A black SUV with blacked out windows sat parked in a No Parking zone with the engine running.
Charlie took out his cell phone and made a call to hospital security. He reported a suspicious vehicle and asked them to check it out immediately. He drove away slowly until he saw a police car with flashing lights pull up and block the SUV against the curb.
When Phoebe opened the door to Leon’s truck she saw that Charlie had put extra food in the passenger’s footwell. He must’ve pillaged the Doctor’s Lounge again.
“And there’s a cup of hot chocolate from Starbucks in the cup holder, with extra whipped cream,” he said. He knew Phoebe didn’t drink coffee or alcohol.
He handed her an envelope full of cash, winked, and said, “There’s an ATM in the lobby, next to the Starbucks.”
“And here’s a disposable cell phone. They sell these in the gift shop now. What a world! It’s in my name, so nobody can use it to trace you, as far as I know. Then he told her about the SUV and the hospital security and said they needed to hurry. When Phoebe turned to Nick to see how he’d taken the news, he was asleep. She spoke to him and lightly slapped his face, but got only an incomprehensible slur in response. She looked at Charlie in panic.
He looked like a guilty, but proud, little boy.
“What did you give him?”
“Something strong. I don’t trust him, and I didn’t want him to jeopardize your job, or you life, so I put him down for awhile. And I gave you a few more, in case you need them later.” He pointed toward the pile of stuff in the floor of the truck.
“Well thanks, I think,” she said, “Now you’ll have to help me get him loaded.” She realized her accidental pun and looked up at Charlie to see if he’d noticed it. He had.
In his current condition, there was no way Nick could ride in the front, so Charlie helped Phoebe lay him out in the back of the pickup. They tucked a couple of blankets around him as best they could, then looked at each other, thinking the same thing. The wind would blow them off him when she reached highway speeds.
Just behind the cab there was a tangle of bungee cords and tie-downs resting in an untidy heap. They reached for them at the same time.
When they had the blankets bungeed around Nick and had him strapped and ratcheted snugly into the bed of the little truck, Charlie opened the door and held it for Phoebe. “Get in and go, and don’t look back. Don’t stop for anything.”
Then he outlined his plan for getting her away from the hospital minus her tail.
Phoebe started the truck and waited for Charlie to get into his Porsche. He followed her closely as she drove toward the tiny guardhouse and gates that everyone had to pass through before leaving the hospital grounds.
Phoebe waited in line in the Visitors’ lane, then paid her dollar, and the little red plank raised to let her pass. She waved at Charlie and took off for North Carolina.
When Charlie’s turn came, he spoke to the lady in the booth. He knew her well. They’d both worked at the hospital for decades. He asked her for a favor and she was only too happy to grant it. Things were pretty dull on the 11-7 shift and she looked forward to a chance for some excitement.
He told her he needed her to delay the SUV that would be coming behind him. He described the color and the blacked out windows. He asked her to put up the tire shredders if necessary to make sure the vehicle didn’t get out. She winked and said she’d take care of it.
She raised the gate for Charlie and he drove a short way down the exit road, pulled off to the side, and waited with his lights off.
The friendly guard did as he’d asked and after a couple of tense moments, the SUV ended up with shredded tires. It wouldn’t be going anywhere. But Charlie was patient and thorough, so he continued to wait, just to be sure.
Half a minute later, a second SUV came tearing around the corner from the garage and, seeing the hoopla going on around the tire shredder, the driver swerved toward the Employees’ exit lane, which was totally automated and therefore unattended. He crashed through the plank barrier and floored it.
Charlie moved around the curve of the exit road and pulled his car sideways across the narrowest section where it ran under an overpass before spiraling up onto the main road. He was totally blocking the only route to the main road. He threw his door open, leaped out, and scrambled up the steep grassy bank to make his way back to the hospital.
The second SUV came racing around the curve and the driver saw the obstruction too late. He slammed on the brakes, but still t-boned the Porsche so hard he knocked it over onto its side.
Charlie was smart. Nobody would be giving chase for a good long while. She’d be able to get away safely now. He glanced up at the stars again before going back inside, then he returned to his office and called his insurance agent.
Chapter 16
Blissfully unaware of Charlie’s automotive sacrifice, Phoebe sped away through the night. She looked in the rear view mirror every few minutes to make sure Nick was still back there and still sleeping soundly.
Dawn had broken by the time she made it to the crest of the Great Smoky Mountains. This was the boundary between Tennessee and North Carolina. The highest part of the Appalachian Trail ran along this same ridge on a trail that was so narrow a hiker’s left foot would be in one state and their right foot in another.
It had been such a shock when the call about the new job came, Phoebe had transcribed the directions without really taking them in. Since then she’d been busy. She hadn’t really had the opportunity to think much about where she was headed, or consider the route she’d be taking to get there.
The novelty hit her when she turned onto the six-mile long Road to Nowhere, as it was referred to by the locals. In the directions, Ms. Arabella Devlin-Forrest had referred to it by a state road number that Phoebe hadn’t recognized. Now she knew why. She’d never been there before. Why would she have been? The road was a famous dead end.
Now that she realized where she was, she recalled that the original plan for the road was that it would skirt the edge of Fontana Lake and give people on the North Carolina side of the mountain access to family graveyards that were inside the boundaries claimed by the National Park in the 1930’s.
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park differed from the other major national parks in two significant ways. First, it was the most popular park in the nation by a long shot. It got two to three times as many visitors as the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone or Yosemite. And second, it had been created on private property by ejecting the local families from their homes.
Hard feelings still abounded. People were forced out and watched helplessly as their homes were bulldozed or allowed to fall into ruin, and access to family graveyards was restricted. It wasn’t like this was ancient history either. Plenty of people were still alive who’d been born and raised on beautiful mountain farms that the U.S. government had taken from them by force.
But the cost of building a road across such a remote mountainous wilderness for access to the North Carolina graveyards was incredibly expensive and had gradually been halted. That meant people had to travel across Fontana Lake by boat to reach them on Decoration Day.
Phoebe knew the Road to Nowhere ended in a quarter-mile long oddity called the Tunnel to Nowhere. When she read the portion of the directions that concerned the tunnel, Phoebe thought, how could that be right? The incredibly expensive tunnel had been completed just before the road construction was abandoned, and as far as Phoebe knew, there was no road on the other side of it. Thus, its nickname.
The mountains in this area made cell phone service extremely spotty, to say the least. So before she lost all possibility of contact with civilization Phoebe stopped and called Waneeta again to let her know she was alright. Then she asked for news from the café.
“They’s no new bodies showed up, if that’s what you mean,” Waneeta said. “Leon and Ivy are fine and they said to tell you they brought your Jeep back and hid it in Leon’s barn. The key’s in it, if you need it.”
Phoebe gave Wanteeta, and thereby the entire community of White Oak, an update on her activities, her patient, and her near term plans. She knew her escapades would provide much good-natured entertainment for her friends and neighbors.
She hung up, relieved of her worries about her friends. She needed to be able to concentrate if she was going to successfully navigate this mysterious segment of her commute. The directions made no sense. She read them aloud to herself, Turn right after passing through the tunnel.
The tunnel was a well-known landmark to hikers, but no one ever drove into it because it was dark, spooky, and a dead-end. At least it was supposed to be. Phoebe sat facing the black hole with her high beams illuminating the curved mossy ceiling and walls. She couldn’t see any obstacles but neither could she see any light in the distance. That was ominous, but she gamely began to move into the darkness, rolling slowly along the pavement. There were leaves scattered on the ground, but otherwise the surface was in surprisingly good condition.
Phoebe crept along in Leon’s ancient little truck, farther and farther into the gloom until she knew she had to be nearing the end of the tunnel. Then she stopped when her headlights illuminated what appeared to be a solid wall of moss-covered concrete in front of her. A moment later she felt something give underneath her.
She opened the driver’s side door and looked down. She could see that she was sitting on a segment of pavement that was about twenty feet long and separated from the rest of the road by a thin crack at both ends. It was like a truck scale, but concealed.
There was a low grinding noise and the wall in front of her started to move. A second later, there was light at the end of the tunnel.
Abracadabra, she whispered, in awed tones. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. The magnitude of this deception stunned her. The level of power, privacy, and security represented by a secret entrance like this was beyond anything she’d ever heard of.
The world was being turned on its head, again, for the second time in two days. What the heck was going on? And what had she done to be drawn into the vortex?
Phoebe had no idea who she was on her way to see. It wasn’t unusual for a rural home health care nurse to be dispatched to care for a stranger. The nurses went wherever they were called. Phoebe’s previous work had covered a large, highly dispersed, rural community. But it was odd to not have been given the patient’s name. She’d been so happy to get a job, it hadn’t occurred to her to question it. She’d blithely assumed she was going to see an eccentric musician, but now she doubted if that was sufficient to explain the tunnel gambit unless it was Elvis.
She came out into bright sunshine on the other side of the high ridge. She rolled carefully along the last remaining bit of paved road that became a manicured pea gravel lane that led up a slight hill. When she topped the rise she was presented with a glorious view. A vast, endless hardwood forest stretched before her, covering the undulations of countless green ridges that, in the distance, disappeared into the world famous blue haze.
Trees and sky as far as the eye could see. Nothing made by the hand of man disrupted the landscape. That was an increasingly unusual phenomenon these days. Unspoiled panoramas were already nearly nonexistent on the Tennessee side, and now were becoming rare on the North Carolina side, which had histo
rically been protected from overdevelopment by having far fewer roads through the areas adjacent to the Park.
Two miles to the house, said her scribbled notes. Phoebe continued until the road came to another apparent dead end. She sat in the little truck, not moving. She was facing a pile of boulders at point blank range. They were poised on the edge of a bluff with a tumble of fractured rock typical of the area. Beyond the boulders, the ground fell away for hundreds of feet in a sheer rock face.
She opened her door and got out.
Chapter 17
Phoebe stood quietly next to the truck, looking around, enjoying the soft breeze and the splendid view. Then she checked Nick. His breathing and pulse were excellent. His skin was a nice healthy pink except for the left side of his face where he was developing a colorful black eye. He seemed to be recovering nicely. She knew this deep, drugged-induced sleep would be healing for him after all the stress he’d experienced.
She thought about untying him, but remembered how her ranger friend Henry always held wild critters down until he was certain they were wide awake so they couldn’t accidentally wander into a road or a river or fall off a cliff on account of being woozy.
With a cliff this close, Phoebe didn’t dare untie Nick. She tugged a corner of one of the blankets loose, though, and rearranged it, draping it over a tie-down so it would keep the sun off his face.
She walked toward the edge of the cliff, along the row of boulders, and called out, “Hello!”
When no one responded, she took a few paces toward a particularly large rock, and then went around the side of it. There was a large natural crevice between two of the massive stones that was wide enough to walk through.
Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 02 - The School for Mysteries Page 6