The Devil's Own Crayons

by Theresa Monsour

  The skin covering the new growth darkened and sprouted soft down. The down darkened and became coarse. The heel of the new right foot toughened and yellowed. As with the heel of the left foot, it would have to support a farmer’s work and weight. Last came the toenails, one at a time. Translucent and thin at first, then thickening.

  Had he been conscious, Jim Schultz would have screamed from the growing pains and passed out. Had she been awake, the sight of the blossoming limb would have traumatized Marta Schultz.

  Sometimes even the devil doesn’t give people more than they can stand.

  Dawn seeped out from around the edges of the closed drapes. Marta sat up in the recliner and pushed down the footrest. Running her tongue around the inside of her mouth, she tasted the previous day’s spaghetti and garlic toast. She got up and went into the bathroom with her purse and a hospital toothbrush. She brushed her teeth and splashed cold water on her face. Dragged a comb through her tangled hair.

  She shuffled out of the bathroom while rummaging around inside her purse for her glasses. Giving up the search, she dropped the bag on the recliner and went to the window. Opened the shades and spotted her glasses on the floor next to the chair. With a groan, she bent over to pick them up. Good thing she hadn’t stepped on them; last thing they needed was to pay for another set of specs.

  “Mart,” said her husband, stirring under the covers.

  “One sec, baby.” She wiped her lenses with the hem of her blouse, put on her glasses and turned around.

  “Mart!”

  “Coming.” She went over to his bedside and put a hand on his forehead. “Your fever is...”

  “Look,” he said, throwing off the covers.

  She jumped back and screamed. “Oh my God!”

  “Am I awake? Tell me! Am I?”

  “Oh my God!”

  “I dreamt it grew back – and it did!”

  Gently, she put her hands over the restored limb. “When?” she panted. “How?”

  Tears were running down his face. “You tell me.”

  She screamed again, clapped a hand over her mouth and ran in a small circle next to his bed. Under her hand, she was chanting. “Oh my God...Oh my God...Oh my God.”

  A gray-haired nurse and a young aide ran into the room. They both screamed. The aide made the Sign of the Cross, darted out of the room and brought back a young doctor. He didn’t know why three women were crying and screaming. He picked up Jimbo’s chart and scrutinized the man in the bed, his hospital gown hiked up to the top of his thighs. Skimming the chart, he frowned. He flipped a page. Another page. Read some more. The doctor said as a statement of fact rather than a question: “You aren’t James M. Schultz.”

  “The hell I’m not!”

  “It’s a miracle!” yelled Marta, pumping the air with her fist.

  Jimbo raised his right leg, bent it and gave a little kick in the air. “Goddamn right!”

  The doctor continued turning pages in the chart. “James M. Schultz had a transfemoral amputation of the right lower limb last spring.”

  “Poor bastard sure as shit did!” Jimbo sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  “Careful, baby!” Marta rushed toward her husband.

  Fending her off, he threw out both hands. “Let me try it on my own.”

  “Sweet Jesus!” said the aide, clapping her hands together.

  “Doc Jansen has got to see this,” said the nurse. “He is not going to believe it!”

  “Go get him!” said the patient, slowly lowering himself onto the floor.

  “I will,” said the nurse, running out the door.

  “Get Goddamn everybody!” Jimbo yelled after her.

  “We got ourselves a miracle!” Looking heavenward, Marta Schultz said, “Thank you Lord!”

  A nursing supervisor walked into the room, inhaled sharply and dropped her clipboard. Put her hand over her heart. “Holy shit!”

  Holding up his hospital gown like a man wading through deep water, Jim Schultz walked toward her. “Good as Goddamn new!”

  “He’s the A.K.A.,” said the supervisor, referring to an above the knee amputation.

  Shaking his head in confusion, the young physician dropped the chart on the end of the bed and left.

  “A miracle,” said Marta Schultz, wiping her eyes under her glasses.

  “Unhook me, Hazel,” said Jimbo, plucking at the tape keeping him tethered to the intravenous line. “I’m outta here!”

  The gray-haired nurse complied.

  Built like a linebacker and his face as purple as an eggplant, the surgeon barreled into the room. He was in scrubs, a surgical mask dangling from his neck and sweat beading his forehead. “What the hell is going on in here?”

  He’d walked right past the patient. Jimbo stepped in front of the surgeon and raised his gown higher. “A Goddamn miracle! That’s what’s going on!”

  “Jim, get back in...” The surgeon’s jaw dropped as his eyes landed on the restored limb. He squatted down and felt the lower leg with both hands. “How in the hell?”

  Jimbo spoke to the top of the surgeon’s head. “Talk to my wife, Doc. She’s the expert.”

  “This is medically...” Jansen’s voice trailed off.

  “Them angels at the convent,” Marta Schultz told the room. “Three little angels. Little girls. They draw your picture and you’re cured. Trey Petit told me not to say, but...”

  “Trey Petit?” asked the doctor, standing up. “I worked on him, too.”

  Marta held up her left hand and moved her fingers back and forth. “They’re back.”

  “What’s back?” Jansen asked numbly, again staring down at the restored leg.

  “His fingers,” said Marta. “I touched them myself. Trey Petit’s fingers grew back.”

  Squatting back down, the surgeon felt up and down Jimbo’s lower leg. “No sign of trauma. Nothing.”

  Jansen wanted the patient to stay in the hospital – there were tests to be run and experts to be called in - but the couple wanted to get home and show the kids the new leg. Jimbo agreed to sit for one more blood draw before getting dressed.

  While the patient and his wife were in the room with the lab tech, the surgeon called a quick meeting out in the hallway. Jansen told the women that someone was pulling a fast one. Vying for a spot on Oprah or The Late Show. This couldn’t be James M. Schultz. The man was either a twin or another look-alike recruited for the charade.

  The nursing supervisor tucked her clipboard under her arm. “Good call, Steve. You’re absolutely right. Miracle my ass. We’re all professionals here. What were we thinking?”

  The gray-haired nurse wasn’t so easily swayed by the surgeon. “I helped deliver their babies. I know the Schultz family inside and out. Jimbo’s got no stunt double walking around. That’s ridiculous.”

  “How’d they do the switch?” asked the aide.

  “It had to have been in the middle of the night,” said the supervisor. “I’ll have security check the tapes.”

  “Jim and Marta wouldn’t try to trick us,” said the nurse. “They’re good people.”

  Jansen glowered at the closed door of the patient’s room. “What’s more possible: That a man grew a new limb overnight, or that a couple strapped for cash is trying to make a quick buck?”

  The group out in the hall fell silent while they all mulled it over. No one believed Marta’s babbling about miracle children and their crayon drawings. That she’d gotten her information from Trey Petit – a young pothead unable to pay his own medical bills - did not help her cause.

  “Damn,” said the aide, starting to come around. “When you put it that way...”

  “That’s why I wanted one last draw.” The surgeon nodded toward the room. “We’ll run it up against the surgical patient’s blood. The guy who was admitted last night. The real James M. Schultz.”

  The aide’s eyes widened. “Are we gonna do one of them DNA tests?”

  “You’ve been watching too much CSI,” sai
d the supervisor.

  “If we’re lucky, they aren’t even the same blood type,” said Jansen.

  The nurse was still having trouble processing the possibility of a scam. “Jimbo was real sick when he was admitted. I saw his numbers. How you gonna fake a fever that high?”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” said the surgeon.

  “He looks exactly like Jimbo. I swore it was him.” The nurse shook her head sadly. “Trying something like this...I feel sorry for them. They must be desperate.”

  “I heard they were having a hard time with the farm since the accident,” said the aide. “My kid brother goes to school with Jimmy Junior.”

  “They didn’t have to do it,” said the supervisor. “They could’ve gone to the bank. Their friends could’ve helped out. Spaghetti fundraiser or whatever. I heard her family’s got some money.”

  Jansen’s mouth hardened. “I don’t give a damn about their circumstances. There’s no excuse.”

  “What should we tell them?” asked the aide.

  “We’ll discharge him,” said the surgeon. “Ask them to keep the news in the family, until we can get a handle on what’s going on. Organize a proper news conference. Call the television stations. Get a press release together.”

  “Good ploy,” said the supervisor. “That’s what these people are after: The publicity.”

  “We’ll tell him to come back in a few days, when our experts can examine the leg,” Jansen continued. “Then we’ll produce the results of the blood work and the security tapes. Call them on it.”

  “You gonna tell the sheriff?” asked the aide. “What would they charge them with? Some kind of fraud?”

  “One step at a time,” said the surgeon. “Let’s wait until we have proof. Meantime, keep this alleged miracle under your hat. We don’t need to embarrass the hospital – or ourselves.”

  “Whole thing stinks to high heaven,” said the nursing supervisor. “Honestly. How’re they gonna sleep tonight?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  During the eleven-hour flight aboard what passed for a papal plane, Rossi, MacLeod and Khoury hoped to catch their first full night of sleep.

  While the Vatican owned no private jet akin to Air Force One, it did have an arrangement with Alitalia, the national air carrier of Italy. One of its regular commercial planes - stocked with its normal crew of pilots and flight attendants - could be reserved for papal travel. Whenever this happened, the craft was designated as “Shepherd One” by air traffic controllers, Nardini explained. Since they were flying sans pope, their plane would get no such moniker.

  Nardini wanted Vatican security personnel to accompany them to the states, but all three of the team members fought him on it. The swarthy musclemen made them nervous, and would sabotage any chance they had of operating in stealth. Rossi likened it to “dropping the Sopranos into the middle of Mayberry.”

  Only she got the simile.

  The cardinal relented. Two suits drove the team to Leonardo Da Vinci Airport and stuck with them all the way to the gate, watching while the trio boarded the plane.

  They sat in first class, where the attendants served them an Italian meal of pasta, chicken cacciatore, and almond cookies on real china. After the service, the crew kept their distance. They couldn’t have been happy about pulling a redeye for three passengers.

  “Who does the airline think we are, to get a whole plane to ourselves?” asked Rossi, sitting across the aisle from MacLeod.

  “We’re rock stars!”

  She set her laptop in front of her and opened it.

  “Don’t you ever let up, sweetheart?”

  “Gotta check something before I hit the sack.” She started typing. “I downloaded every piece of info I could find on this dinky town. I’m worried about the kids. If there’s a school or...”

  “Why kiddies in particular?”

  “Those hands. They’re different from the other shadows. Sloppy. Almost childish.”

  “Aye. Right about that.” He took a sip of coffee. “You think that means something, do ya?”

  “Maybe.” She frowned at the screen. “They used to have a grade school and a high school, but both closed a few years ago.”

  “Nursery school?”

  “We call them childcare centers. Daycare centers.” She scrolled down the page. “Don’t think they have one.”

  “What do they have in this Godforsaken place?”

  “Drugstore. Hardware store. Sports shop. Grocery. Restaurant. Two churches and twice as many bars. A convent...” Her voice trailed off.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Seems weird to plant a bunch of nuns out in the middle of nothing. What would they do all day?”

  Sitting two rows ahead of Rossi, Khoury had his head buried in a Bible. “They could be cloistered. They could be spending their days and nights praying for humanity.”

  “Boor-ring,” sang MacLeod.

  Rossi kept reading. “Here it is. They run an orphanage, one of the last operating in the states.”

  “That’s a little less boring,” said MacLeod.

  She sat back. “The orphanage closed a couple of years ago.”

  “There goes your kiddie angle.” The Scot raised his cup and a flight attendant came by with a carafe. “Got anything stronger, lass?”

  Rossi eyed Patrick. “Will that mix with your pain meds?”

  “Not taking any.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like a stiff drink.”

  “Un whiskey, per favore,” Rossi told the attendant.

  She came back with two cut crystal tumblers and two mini bottles.

  MacLeod opened his bottle and poured the Scotch into the glass. “I adore first class.”

  Rossi closed her computer, set it down and poured her drink. “This should knock me out good.”

  “Father Ryan, care to join us in a nightcap?”

  “Too tired.” The priest closed the fat book, shut off his overhead light and leaned his seat all the way back. Stretched out his long legs. “Have one for me.”

  “I’d be delighted.” MacLeod raised his tumbler. “Here’s to the men of all classes, who through lasses and glasses, will make themselves asses.”

  “One of my favorites,” said the priest, adjusting the pillow under his head.

  MacLeod and Rossi tipped back their glasses and emptied them. MacLeod held up two fingers, and the attendant set two more bottles in front of him. He handed one to Rossi. They took off the caps and poured. Raised their glasses.

  “My turn,” she said.

  “Go to it, love.”

  “Here’s to you and here’s to me, may we never disagree. But if we do, the hell with you. Here’s to me.”

  “Brilliant,” said MacLeod.

  They reached across the aisle, clinked and drank.

  MacLeod set down his glass and smacked his lips. Leaned across the aisle and asked in a low voice. “May I ask you a personal question, Sam I Am?”

  She took another sip. “Go ahead, though I reserve the right to not answer it.”

  “Why can’t you stay married?”

  Rossi froze with the glass halfway to her mouth. She shot a glance at the priest, who seemed to be asleep. “Father Ryan asked me that very same question, exactly that way. Did you two have a conversation about me?”

  “Not at all,” said MacLeod. “Why talk behind someone’s back when you can piss them off to their face?”

  “Strange that you asked in identical wording, like you were a fly on the wall or something.” She finished her drink and set it down. “Why is this divorce issue rearing its ugly head?”

  “You’re so interesting and attractive, it’s hard to believe ...”

  “You don’t know me,” she said, and let loose a brutal self-evaluation. “I can be a pain in the ass. I’m a control freak. Bossy. A bitch when I don’t get my way. And it’s tough being married to an FBI agent. A lot of female agents marry male agents because they get it. They u
nderstand the job. They don’t freak if you have to ditch a party to chase a bank robber.”

  “No children?”

  “Put it off for the career. Now it’s too late.”

  “You love your job, though.”

  “Want to hear an FBI riddle?”

  “Certainly.”

  “What do they call a female agent?”

  He shrugged.

  “Breast Fed.”

  He barked a laugh.

  “I’m serious. That’s what they call you. So yeah. I love my job, but sometimes it doesn’t love me.” She fiddled with the empty whiskey bottle, screwing the cap off and putting it back on. “What’s your story? No little MacLeod’s running around?”

  “Not that I’ve been made aware.”

  “So...”

  “So I had a miserable childhood and that’s given me some serious intimacy issues. When I feel threatened or when others try to get close, I use humor as a defense. I fear opening up to people, especially women, will return me to the same state of helplessness that I experienced as a child. Additionally, the lack of a father or father figure during my pre-adolescent years contributed to my...”

  “You sound like a damn psychologist.”

  “I am a damn psychologist.” He raised the empty toward the flight attendant. “But more to the point, we have a saying in the old country: Confessed faults are half mended.”

  The flight attendant set two bottles in front of MacLeod. Rossi waved away the whiskey. “You were saying your lack of a father figure...”

  “Forget it.” He took the cap off his bottle and poured. “I’m a mess. That’s all you need to know.”

  While the priest and Rossi fell asleep quickly, MacLeod fidgeted. His injury was making it difficult to get comfortable. The wound ached and itched at the same time. When he moved wrong, he could feel the tug of the stitches. Plus first class or not, something was stinking up this section of the cabin. He sat up and motioned to one of the attendants.

  “Lass, what’s that fascinating aroma?”

  She clearly didn’t understand him, but smiled pleasantly.

  Struggling with his Italian, he tried to complain while also being diplomatic. “Abbiamo un problema con la camera.”