After a long day of reviewing papers and poll results, Justin rose from his office chair and headed toward the kitchen for a beer. He’d made up his mind and it really shouldn’t have been all that hard in retrospect after pondering on the issue most the weekend. His decision would annoy the more vocal constituents of his base, but his stock there was high. And his base still liked the hunt and what it brought to the town they all loved.
Tomorrow’s public council meeting would be more about political theater instead of a vote anyway. Greg would still be in the hospital and unable to provide his perspective. However, the riding coach from the school, and the importance of the school to the local economy, would likely provide the political cover he needed to vote the right way. He plopped down on the couch with the cold can and reached for the television’s remote control.
CHAPTER—12
Arabell Harper closed the driver’s side door to her Bronco and walked toward the emergency room entrance without bothering to lock. There wasn’t anything inside to steal, and the days of prying an FM radio out of the dash were long ago. She’d rather they just take the handful of coins in the ashtray and not break a window. She and her husband only carried liability insurance on the vehicle, much like her daughter’s car.
As she reviewed her patient list, a board showing a diagram of the beds with color coded magnetic names, she was dumbfounded to see that Bobby McFife was still in her ward. She expected him to be treated and released. Gregory Bartholomew was in the next room. Rounding out the list was a girl who’d broken her radius in a fall from her bike. It was the right number of patients on a Sunday night. Enough to stay busy and help the shift pass for a day of the week in which new arrivals were rare, but not enough to run her into the ground.
She poured a cup of coffee from the pot at the nurse’s station and sat down for a few moments to get copies of the charts organized. The first rule of nursing was get off the feet whenever possible. Right on time, young Marco, with his thin black moustache, came down the hall and into the bullpen. She was his relief, and even though he hadn’t been at the hospital long his reputation was good.
“Good afternoon, Arabell.”
“Hello, Marco. You ready to go home?”
“Yeah, my little sister has come to visit. We’re going for pizza and then have an ice-cream down at Scruffy’s. She’s been doing tax returns but got laid off after April and is thinking of going back to school. Maybe a paralegal. Something not so seasonal.”
Arabell nodded, “Anything I need to know on the ward?”
She wanted to balance showing interest via polite small talk with his desire to get out of there.
“Officer McFife is to be discharged at 6pm, by order of the Chief of Medicine,” Marco replied thrusting a finger into the air like a banana republic dictator giving a political speech. “He should have never been admitted, but has been crying constantly for more morphine and ringing the patient advocacy line off the hook when told he couldn’t have more because his last dose was too recent. I also gave him his rabies booster, telling him it was more pain medicine.”
Arabell smiled, “Too bad it’s not the seventies anymore when we’d have stuck him with a bunch of needles in the stomach.”
Marco smiled and continued, “Master Bartholomew is stable after surgery, but will be in a bad way for a while. They had to put in a steel rod on each side, and are keeping him sedated. Given his age and the shock, the doctors have been checking in on him real regular. A lot of fluids and pain killers are going into him so I’ve been hustling a bit to keep the bags full. They’re worried about infection, so if his temperature or anything else changes at all we’re to page right away. He’s one tough old guy though to come through so well so far.
María Fernanda is stable and will go home tonight with a cast on her arm. Her cousin works at the school taking care of the horses, and will pick her up when he’s done with the evening feed and mucking. They don’t have insurance, but Dr. Potter has authorized liberal interpretation of minimum care levels and will write off any needed comfort drugs as well as a meal. He even reclassified the ambulance ride bill as a training run. She’s awake and brave. Sweet girl.”
“Thanks, Marco. Have fun with your sister. I can take things from here.”
Marco departed like a bullet, and she couldn’t blame him. They cared about their patients but they cared about their own families, too. She poured the bottom half of her coffee into the sink. By the time she made her rounds it would be cold, and fresh from the pot was so much better. Usually she would have finished the cup while reading charts before starting her rounds, but she wanted to see Master Bartholomew first hand. Such visits help put charts into a better context.
The old gentleman was out cold, covered in a light sheet and blanket. In many rural areas, there could be quite the wait until an orthopedic surgical team could be put together. But breaks to extremities happened frequently enough here over the weekends that the hospital simply planned for it. And while it shouldn’t have made a difference, when the team learned the patient’s name they all came right away, day off be damned. Master Bartholomew had been attended to by a full team.
She verified that all was in order, and that Marco hadn’t left anything out. The master’s vitals were right where they should be, and there was another hour or so before she needed to do anything in regards to medication. The doctors seemed optimistic, but wanted to monitor closely. Still, Arabell felt for him. It was a hard injury to recover from, even for a younger person. He may never recover enough to ride again, and that had been his entire life. Certainly, his wife’s absence would be felt like never before.
“How’s Greg doing?”
The voice from behind startled her, and she almost dropped the clipboard in a flutter of papers. An African-American man, wearing dirty jeans and a disheveled denim shirt, appraised him with a serious eye from under the ball cap’s bill. Both shirt and cap were embroidered with a fox jumping a star.
“We normally only allow immediate family on this ward. Are you an acquaintance of Master Bartholomew?”
“He Master Bartholomew to those pay thousands of dollars every year to join the hunt. Those of us who power wash the hound pens every day, he just Greg. I’m Johnbull Sesay. I is the kennel master of the Westburg Hunt.”
Close enough to family in this town, thought Arabell.
“He isn’t awake and we’ll probably try and keep things that way for a while yet,” she confessed. “Maybe you want to try visiting again in the morning?”
Johnbull moved to the chair underneath the television.
“Ain’t no place to go until morning feeding time no how. All the same to you, I keep an eye on things right here.”
“Okay, but please let him rest. Things are at a delicate stage. And I’m sorry your friend fell from his horse.”
Johnbull shook his head slowly.
“Greg didn’t fall from no horse. He not the rider he once, but he been in the saddle for over half a century. And Ollie is bombproof of mount they come. He not afraid of flushing birds, hounds zipping underneath, or obstinate cows. People ask, call it a vigil. But I ain’t going to let nuttin bother him no more.”
Arabell heard a girl’s excited voice from the next room, and a flurry of Spanish she didn’t understand. She nodded as the man settled against the wall in the chair, and strode into the hall.
María looked to be no more than ten, with a cast on her arm and a pink sling. A muscular young man, although the worn t-shirt was stretched a bit by his stomach, holding a silver balloon stood at the foot of the bed. As Arabell went in, he greeted her with a wave of his hand.
“Hi, I’m Jose. I’m here to take my cousin home.”
“I’ve been told to expect you, but thought you would be later.”
“Normally, I am later. Helmut covers for me on Saturdays so I can play soccer and I make it up to him on Sunday. But when our friend Kelton heard what had happened, he helped take care of things so I could get on over her
e.”
“Are her parent’s coming back?”
“They don’t speak hardly any English and forms and paperwork frighten them. There’s a guardianship letter her parents dropped off when she was admitted. Then they called me.”
“Nurse!” an angry voice bellowed from next door.
Jose shrugged, “It sounds as if you’re really busy.”
“It will just take me a moment to get her discharge package. There’s some medicine in there, instructions and a card to put on the refrigerator for her follow up appointment. The big thing is to keep the cast dry and try and get her to take it easy.”
“Thank you, I appreciate the help.”
“Damn the nurses here. I’m going to report all of you,” the voice hollered again.
“I’ll be back with it in just a second.”
Arabell returned to the nurses’ station for the discharge packet and to call for an orderly with a wheelchair. She soon had María and Jose, with hugs and laughter, on their way. Then she stuck her head in Greg Bartholomew’s room once more and noted Johnbull’s eyes were closed with his head against the wall. And then she could avoid it no longer. Arabell took a deep breath, clinched her fists at her side, and rounded the side of the doorjamb into Bobby McFife’s room.
“About damn time you answered my summons,” the dog catcher said from his bed. He was sitting up and his television was on.
“I’m not coming because of your summons. I’m coming because I see all my patients on my ward in turn.”
“Never mind that. This dinner is terrible. You need to provide me with a real meal.”
“The good news is you’ve been discharged, and are free to go to dinner anywhere you like.”
“But I’ve been wounded in the line of duty. And they’ve been withholding my pain medicine.”
“I’ve brought you your medicine right here,” she said holding up an orange bottle and giving it a gentle shake to rattle the pills inside.
He grasped it and looked at the label and then his eyes scowled, “This says amoxicillin. That’s just an antibiotic, isn’t it?”
Arabell nodded, “Dr. Potter, who’s our deputy chief of medicine, has reviewed the orders of your attending physician.”
“Good, so there’s something else coming?”
Arabell shook her head, “No. The only thing coming for you is security who will arrest you for trespassing if you haven’t vacated the hospital grounds by 6pm this evening.” She kept her voice as sweet as she could, thinking to herself that her daughter was going to laugh hysterically upon hearing the tale. “That gives you about fifteen minutes. Dr. Potter also added a note to your police file that you are cleared for routine duty. I’ll send an orderly around with the wheelchair for your ride. When you were in treatment yesterday, Sergeant Barker brought around a fresh uniform for you that is in the cabinet. Please be ready when the orderly arrives.”
Bobby McFife rose from the wheelchair at the curb, trying to carry himself with some dignity, like a heroic soldier wrapped in bandages walking down the jet bridge after returning from war to cheering onlookers. But the parking lot was deserted of other people. A hospital security man asked him to sign for his sidearm that his sergeant had dropped off. Then the sound of the automatic doors opening and closing behind him let him know that security and the orderly had left him and the hot humid night for the air-conditioning.
The gun wasn’t his, although it was the same type and model. The department of public works would had recovered his from the storm drain, and sent it to the crime lab for DNA testing. In short, he had all the equipment he needed. And the department had dropped his patrol truck off, knowing he would need a ride home. Sergeant Barker was good at such details.
The bite wound on his upper arm was very sore to touch, and ached with some swelling, but he made it across the parking lot okay. He fumbled his keys trying to use his left hand, and finally gave up and used his wounded side to retrieve them from the ground and open his truck’s door. He hated that. Not because it hurt, but rather that it didn’t hurt that bad and made him face his indolence. Bobby started the engine, but before putting it in gear, got on the radio.
“Westburg Command, this is Unit 4 entering radio net.”
“About time, McFife,” quickly came Sergeant Barker’s voice. He was no nonsense. “Need you out at the school to do a look around.”
Bobby rolled his eyes and slouched his shoulders.
“I just got out of the hospital. Why do I have to go on a call?”
“No, you were out of the hospital last night. What you’ve been doing on your day off since then is your business. Your split shift started nearly an hour ago, and you are marked for duty. Get on station or I’m writing you up for malingering. Do I make myself clear? Are you on my frequency? Or are you on an unemployed civilian frequency?”
“Yes, Sir, I read you. I’m en route.”
Bobby put down the radio, and put the truck in gear. He took a left out the hospital’s front parking lot and sped east on Main Street, passing city hall across from the Duplication Station Business Park. He whizzed through the flashing yellow light where Full Cry road came out of the north in front of the bank in the middle of downtown. Bobby passed the dry cleaner and the pizza parlor, and stopped at the traffic light in front of the Full Cry Market. Here Main Street turned into State Route 715, and intersected with Full Cry Road again forming the eastern end of the bypass.
He wondered briefly if it would have been faster to have turned north at the flashing yellow light in front of the bank, but dismissed it. During the day, it could be faster to go north out of town and take the hairpin to the northeast sector of the bypass, passing Stirrup Cup Road and entering the school from the other direction. But with the light traffic on Sunday night, Main Street was more direct. And besides, he was here now and there was no going back.
While waiting at the traffic light, Bobby glanced over at the Market’s parking lot and tried to guess the time it would take to get a cup of coffee. But he was no fool. He knew he’d overstepped with his boss, and didn’t want to push things further. He’d wait him out. Soon the sergeant would find other things to do and he could go back to being his low key self. There weren’t many calls on a Sunday night and he could not only get some food but find a place to pull over and take a nap until it was time to go home. In the meantime, for the next hour or so, it was probably best to toe the line. He turned left when the light changed, and a minute later saw the stately white columns of Fox Ridge School.
“Command, Unit 4. Turning in to the school. What am I looking for?”
There was a pause.
“Mrs. Grant called asking us to make a sweep.” It wasn’t Sergeant Barker’s voice, but Officer Johny Temple’s. The boss was bored of him already.
“Anything I need to keep an eye out for?”
“Yeah, she’s worried this guy and dog has been trespassing and posing a danger to students. It sounded like it might be the one that bit you yesterday afternoon. Mrs. Grant said there was no reason to stop in and talk to her tonight, but wanted us to check the grounds.”
Bobby gripped the steering wheel tighter, making the vinyl squeak under his sweaty fingers as his hands twisted. His taunt muscles made the swelling around his injury throb and ache, incensing his anger at his escaped assailant, and making his hold even harder.
“You copy all that, Bobby? Or are you too busy asking girls when they turn eighteen?”
He released his grip so he could key the radio’s microphone, “Roger, Command. Unit 4 copies.”
Barker’s voice came back on the radio. It was faint because it was just a handheld transmitter instead of a powerful base station that control was using, but it was clearly audible nonetheless.
“Temple, my office.”
Bobby laughed so hard that saliva sprayed over his dash and windshield. Barker was an intense supervisor, but he was so focused that his doghouse only had room for one dog. And Bobby had just been set free by default in re
cord time when Johny earned the wrath. Barker liked a clean radio. All transmissions were recorded, and subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. A reporter doing a story, may stumble across things that were non flattering and on a slow news day make an issue of it.
He thought about heading back to Full Cry Market for that coffee, but decided to slowly scoop the loop once on the account that he was here. He’d sure love to bust the guy who’d caused him scars and misery. And if he was honest with himself, who’d made him look so incompetent. Bobby wasn’t the most energetic officer, but he did hold long grudges. And frankly, it gave his small life some meaning. Most of his shifts were quite sedate.
The faculty front parking lots were largely empty. He saw a van for the cleaning company and custodians walking in and out the open main doors of the front entrance with trash bags and brooms tidying classrooms for the upcoming week. Likewise, cars by the side loading dock indicated servers and dishwashers were still busy with the Sunday night meal. Bobby also noted the station wagon of the assistant librarian, Mrs. Beechcroft. But that was all. The grounds of the campus seemed still and quiet as the summer humidity settled.
He started to drive about the perimeter road, but with starts and stops. He pulled the compact binoculars from the glove box and lowered his windows for better viewing. The condensation on the glass from his truck’s air conditioner was fogging the windows. Bobby would pull forward a few feet until he could see around a building or a tree, and then put his foot on the brake. Using the field glasses, he took long hard looks. He even looked at lit windows, just in case there was something important there that Mrs. Grant would be concerned about. He didn’t really see the things he would brag to Johny Temple about later.
Bobby took a good hour to work himself around the perimeter road. The houses on the southern side of the hockey field were lit up, and every once in a while, he’d see a bobbing head of someone walking through the downstairs common rooms. The barn seemed quiet, although a couple of girls rode in the indoor ring. As the light faded, he noted the old German trainer and a couple of other students leading horses out two at a time to paddocks for the night. There was a lightning flash out on the horizon, but it looked like the storm would slip by to the north and east.
By Dog Alone: A Kelton Jager Adventure Book 2 Page 11