A Keeper's Truth (29 page)

A
fter
checking the last set of stalls, I surrender the search for Stephen and opt
instead to put my plan into action. Consoling Tess’s brother will have to wait.
Time is of the essence.

I take the
stairs a half-dozen at a time, oblivious to passersby. The labs are on the
bottom floor of the hospital, in the basement. I stop short at the blood bank.
I cock my head, shaking out my arms and shoulders. I need to appear normal,
calm. I’m just an ordinary guy. A Good Samaritan.

Stepping
inside, I scan the barren room. The walls are bare but for a ten-by-ten sepia
print framed in metal and screwed to the wall. The smell of plastic permeates
the room, from new chairs, I think. What isn’t office space with women in
scrubs bustling here and there is room for waiting. Almost every one of the
three-dozen chairs is occupied, some people reading books, some flipping
through magazines, all bored out of their minds.

“Excuse
me,” I say, my French clear and local. I hit one of the ladies behind the desk
with a bogus smile. “I’m here to donate blood.”

The woman
doesn’t even look up from her computer; she just mumbles something about taking
a number. The next card is in the double digits. I’ll be here forever.

Tick tock
goes the clock
.

Tess
doesn’t have that kind of time.

Desperate,
I overlook a personal code of ethics and focus my mind’s eye on the power of
suggestion, insisting this woman move me to the front of the line. My thoughts
are muddled, unpersuasive. I can’t concentrate when I’m so tense, so worried
about Tess. I try really hard and for a moment I think I’ve done it, that this
woman is about to tell me to go on back to give blood, but instead she says,
rather huffy, “Take a seat, sir.”

Bloody
hell.

Raising
the collar on my leather jacket, I lean over the counter to whisper to the
woman. “You are obviously in charge.” She’s the only one in a suit. “You must
have the power to make this a quicker process.”

The lady
sighs but doesn’t move, and two nurses gawk at me from over their paperwork.
One thinks I’m attractive but not that attractive. The other thinks I look like
a bad ass. I glance at the clock. This is going to be harder than I thought.

“Look,” I
say, dangling a ring-free hand over the countertop. “If I’m not back in an
hour, I lose my bet with the guys at the firehouse. And after donating blood
once a month for a year, it would be a shame to go down in flames at the finish
line.”

Come on,
lying has to work. Firemen are the gods of the twenty-first century.

The woman
rolls her chair back and stands, facing me. Her hand, the one twirling the
thick gold wedding band, slaps against her hip. Apparently I’m not the first to
spin this tale. “Too busy for this tonight,” she says, pulling a plastic card
from the stand and sliding it across the counter. “Take a seat.” As she walks
away, I hear someone behind me snickering.

Okay, so
it’ll have to be game plan number two.

Tick tock.

I swipe
the card and turn, sweeping the crowded room. I pick through the thoughts of
everyone holding a card. They aren’t seated in order of number but the single
digits have congregated in the front row. A man in his late sixties looks up at
me. The number seven card teeters between his fingers. He’s angry. His wife was
diagnosed with cancer last month and his daughter has pressured him into
donating blood. He doesn’t see the point.

Luckily, I
sense the number eight a few seats down. “Miss?” I say, and the lady rests her
book on her lap. She smiles and a tinge of pink blooms across her sagging
cheeks. It’s been a long time since a handsome young man has called her Miss.
“I’m in desperate need of your assistance.” I squat, our knees touching. “I bet
you’ve loved another in your lifetime.”

“Gerard,”
she murmurs. Moments with her late husband dance through her head.

“Gerard.”

“I loved him
very much,” she says.

Stick with
the truth. “You see, Miss—”

“Hanna.”
Her eyes are a lovely shade of blue.

“Hanna,” I
say. “The love of my life is fighting for survival. She needs blood, lots of
blood, and it’s killing me that I’m powerless, that I can’t help her. I hate to
be from her bedside, but donating is the only thing I can do. I’ve got to help
her.”

Real tears
threaten to spill so I look away.

Hanna
slides her card into my coat pocket and pats my three-day stubble. “You’d have
saved some time if you hadn’t contemplated the old fart.” She points at the
angry man being led to the back room.

I stare at
her in amazement. “You have no idea what this means to me.” I rest my hands on
hers. A nurse calls the number eight, and I plant a quick kiss on Hanna’s
forehead before diving for the door.

The room
is bright white and smells like rubbing alcohol. I’m seated in what looks like
a dentist chair, and before the curtains close I spot identical chairs across
the hall, one containing angry man. He spies me through a slit in the material,
apparently entertained by my success with Hanna.

“Bad day?”
says the nurse, flicking the flap of torn leather on my jacket. She rocks onto
the heels of her running shoes, chock full of energy. She reminds me of Ms.
Rainer, young and peppy. I should lie and tell her I’m fine, but I’m too
distracted, so I only nod in agreement. I watch her take my forefinger and poke
it with a pin. A bubble of blood rises to the surface. “Hemoglobin test,” she
says, noticing my expression. “Iron. We check your iron.” She ties an elastic
band around my arm and shoves a thermometer in my mouth. “Blood pressure and
body temperature too.”

“Ah.” I’m
clueless.

Like a
magician she pulls a rubber bag from her pocket and gives it a good shake
before attaching it to a machine that rocks back and forth. The bag contains
preservatives and anti-coagulants to keep the blood from clotting in transit.
450 ml is stamped on the front. Mrs. Maples said I’d need at least one unit, so
I have to fill it and hope it’s enough.

The bag’s
tubing ends with a needle, a needle the nurse stabs into my arm, a vein now
surrounded by pumpkin-colored liquid.

I look
away. “How long will this take?”

Growing
up, my parents made a point of keeping my brother and me away from doctors. Having
our blood tested would only lead to questions. Not only have I never had a
needle, until today I’d only seen them in memories or on television.

“A big guy
like you,” says the nurse, smiling, “scared of a tiny needle.” She searches the
table for something. “Where’s your paperwork?”

“What
paperwork?”

The nurse
frowns and walks away, shaking her head. A minute later she brushes open the
curtain, handing me a clipboard and pen. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to fill
this out.” She jams a rubber stick into my left palm. “Hopefully you write with
your right.”

Once
alone, I toss the clipboard onto the table and concentrate on my heart. It’s
easy to quicken the pace, I only have to think about Tess, about her suffering,
how she might not survive the night. Fear, regret, yearning, they come racing
back to torment me.

My arm
throbs. Closing my eyes, I try to relax tense muscles. I force the blood to
pump faster, directing it toward the crook in my arm, and sneak a peek at the
bag still riding the teeter-totter.

Only half
more to go.

“How are
you doing?” says the nurse, and I practically fall from the chair. The paranoia
is getting to me. The nurse is behind the other curtain talking to angry man. I
can spot three quarters of his frown.

Focus.

The bag is
bursting at the seams with ten minutes to spare. So far, so good. I yank the
needle from my arm and the puncture wound heals immediately.

Showtime.

From the
inside pocket of my coat I produce the bag of blood I’d pilfered from the
nurse’s station down the hall from Tess’s room. It’s only half full, the other
half I flushed down a toilet. Trying hard to slow my movements, make them
accurate, deliberate, I peel the sticker off the front and stick it to the bag
filled with my blood. Not bad, it matches the bags Martine attaches to Tess’s
IV, only the blood is a few shades brighter. Tucking it into the hidey-hole in
my coat, I pat it gently. This is going to work. This has to work.

Easing the
curtain back, I’m ready to bolt. The nurse is gone and angry man is watching
me, wondering what I’m doing. He’s seen enough to know I’m up to something.
Leaning, he looks past me, at the machine beside the chair. I’ve forgotten to
fasten the blood bag, so it flops back and forth with the machine’s momentum.

“Ma’am,”
yells angry man.

Shit.

I move
quick, lunging for the door. The last thing I hear before the stairwell door
slams is the voice of the nurse. She’s never seen such a scaredy-cat.

Seconds
later I’m
stepping onto the fourth floor landing, my stash
warm against my chest. My breathing is heavy. Not because bounding up six
levels of stairs is exhausting, but because I’m nervous as hell. Thievery,
deception, these aren’t my usual gig. I round the corner, anxiously spying the
officers outside room four-twenty-eight. They’re frenzied, Stephen in the mix.

No. No.
No. Please tell me Tess hasn’t . . .

I pull
Stephen aside. “What’s going on?” His eyes and nose are covered in ruby
blotches.

“The
police thought Tess was married,” he says. “They wanted to know why her husband
hasn’t come back.” He glances at the officers, wiping his nose with his
shirtsleeve. “Apparently someone was here this morning, before me. Some guy
named Beck Morgan, with a Canadian passport to prove it. He claimed he was
Tess’s husband, even told the cops personal stuff about her.”

Like me,
Stephen assumed the police discovered Tess’s identity when he called in search
of his missing sister. In the mayhem, he hadn’t noticed the cops knew her name
before he’d called, that she’d already been claimed. Stephen hadn’t been contacted
because the police already had Tess’s fake husband, Beck Morgan.

The older
cop steps forward, the resulting stench of constricting polyester moving with
him. “We had no reason to doubt the man,” he says. “He spent about forty
minutes with his wife and left to make long-term arrangements for their
daughter, Abby. We didn’t think anything of it until he didn’t return.”

“When they
asked for the whereabouts of my brother-in-law, I thought they meant you,” says
Stephen, pointing at me.

I’ve no
time to be flattered.

Who the
hell is Beck Morgan and why was he here? Could he be the lost soul? Would he
try to finish what he’d started? I try to make the pieces fit, but the blood
bag sits heavy in my pocket, making it hard to concentrate. Tick tock. I don’t
have time for this now. I move toward the door and a young nurse, previously
hidden behind an officer’s burly physique, steps in the way. She’s Da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa without the smile.

“I was on
shift when Mrs. Morgan’s husband arrived,” she says. “This guy was pure
Depardieu.”

Depardieu
is the guy American director’s flag when in need of a French actor. His nose is
practically a French icon.

“He was
hovering over the patient, worried and concerned. Seemed the real deal to me.”
She describes him as attractive and well dressed. “Thirty-five maybe, ’round
your height,” she says, waving at me.

This guy
doesn’t sound like the lost soul that attacked Tess. “Tattoos, did he have
tattoos on his neck?”

“Hmm, no.
Don’t think so.”

The older
cop turns to me. “Do you know something you’re not telling us?”

Do I know
something? What I know would rock your world.

“Just
taking stabs in the dark,” I say. “If I had a clue, I’d be sure to tell you.”

Another
lie added to today’s offences.

Stephen
pipes in, “Could this guy, this Beck Morgan, could he be the one who attacked
my sister?”

“There
wasn’t a scratch on him,” says the officer. “Even if she didn’t fight back,
that kind of beating would leave marks.”

Stephen
leans on the door, obviously overwhelmed. He’s sure his sister would have
fought hard.

The third
officer says, “This bloke had ample time alone with Mrs. Morgan. If he was here
to hurt her, he had the chance and didn’t take it.”

Lost souls
don’t need fake passports either. They don’t pretend and their victims rarely
survive to seek justice. Tick tock
.
If Tess doesn’t survive, she’ll be
no exception. My attention gravitates to the bag of blood in my pocket.
According to Mrs. Maples, I only have an hour before the preservatives destroy
the white cells in my blood. And Tess’s strength is quickly deteriorating. I’ll
have to deal with this Beck Morgan later.

Opening
the door to Tess’s room, I pause to look back at Stephen. “You must be
starving. Go eat something,” I say, urging him to the cafeteria.