Hidden Falls (57 page)

Cooper moistened his bottom lip. “I know.”

Liam let out his breath. “So you’ll help?”

“Within the constraints of the law, yes.”

“Do I need to talk to Jack Parker?”

“I promise to let you know if you should.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s Sunday,” Cooper said. “I’m not sure how fast I can turn the wheels of bureaucracy on the weekend, but I’ll try.”

“Anything you can do, I’ll appreciate it.”

“Here’s my deal,” Cooper said. “I was going to go over to the church later. People will want to know how Lauren is, and there’s a lot of cleanup to do.”

Liam nodded. He’d seen the soggy detritus that had overtaken the church lawn in the wake of the storm.

“My guess is the trustees aren’t going to leave that mess alone any longer than they have to,” Cooper said. “There’s too much risk of someone getting hurt.”

Liam scrunched his forehead. What exactly was Cooper getting at?

“I want you to go over to the church,” Cooper said. “Go to the service, find out what the plan is, and do what you can to help.”

Liam swallowed hard. Yesterday’s reluctant community service was the closest he had been to attending church in years, but he would do whatever it took to keep Cooper on his side.

“I’m going to go make some calls,” Cooper said, “and then I’m going to the church. So if you want to know what I came up with, then that’s where you’d better be.”

7:07 a.m.

Nicole wrinkled her nose at the scrambled eggs. Few things were more disgusting than cold scrambled eggs, and even if they were hot when spooned onto a plate, they’d be cold long before she sat down to eat them. A bagel with cream cheese was a much safer choice, and she could never go wrong with a banana.

Dani pushed a tray along the rails of the cafeteria line and loaded it with an assortment of rolls, fresh fruit, and juices. Nicole admired the decisiveness Dani displayed without frittering away time speculating about what her cousins might want to eat. She made straightforward choices in efficient succession. If Cooper and Liam couldn’t find something appealing on the tray, it would not be for lack of options.

“You were awesome yesterday.” Nicole moved her crutches along behind Dani.

“What do you mean?” Dani picked up three pats of butter.

“You kept the looky-loos out of the way.” While Ethan’s medical training kicked in and he examined Lauren and Cooper, Dani had taken control of the crowd, impressing on everyone that they had to stand clear while a select few dragged the tree limb out of the way and the EMTs came in with a stretcher.

“Lauren will be fine.” Dani stopped in front of the cashier and waited for the total before handing over several bills.

“I’m sure she’ll be grateful to hear what you did.”

“Nothing to hear. Sometimes a situation just calls for someone to be sensible.”

They started back down the hall toward the elevators, Nicole’s crutches clunking rhythmically against the tile floor as she swung her good foot between them. The heels of her hands were sore, but she progressed confidently alongside Dani, who carried the laden tray.

Nicole pressed the button that would bring the elevator to them and eyed her bagel on the tray. Hunger had kicked in, and she salivated for the cinnamon raisin meld of flavors. If she weren’t on crutches, she might have reached for the bagel and bitten into it while they waited. The numbered light above the door changed with a
ping,
and the elevator doors opened. Nicole readjusted the grip on her crutches. Behind her, footsteps thumped rapidly toward the elevator. She started to turn to assure the person they’d hold the doors, but instead of a polite, grateful face, Nicole saw only the blur of a form pushing her aside and kicking one crutch out from under her. Hopping, she caught herself against the wall as the doors closed in her face. Dani’s carefully balanced breakfast tray clattered to the floor as she pounded on the doors.

“Green shoes!” Dani shouted.

“Dani, what—?”

But Dani was already yanking open the door to the stairwell.

Nicole surveyed the damage. Breakfast for four spilled across the floor—including a hefty slosh across her fallen crutch. She looked in both directions down the hall.

“Of course, nobody’s around when you need help,” she muttered as she balanced carefully and leaned forward to pick the crutch out of the mess. Nicole’s admiration only moments ago for Dani’s organization and calm evaporated in the reality that Dani had abandoned her. And the tray hadn’t been knocked from Dani’s hands. She’d dropped it in favor of hot-headed pursuit.

They could have pushed the button again and still had their breakfast.

Nicole had seen enough of the elevator thief to recognize the blue scrubs of a nonmedical employee. It was a man with dark, close-cropped hair. Beyond that, Nicole wasn’t sure.

The handle of her crutch was sticky with jelly, but Nicole gripped it enough to safely report to the cafeteria cashier that there was a mess in the hall. Then she went into the restroom to clean up. By the time she returned to the elevators, an employee from housekeeping was dropping the breakfast remains into a rolling trash can.

The hospital wasn’t large. There were only three floors. Nicole went up one story to tell the Elliott brothers that the breakfast plans had gone awry—but the waiting room was occupied only by a young couple Nicole had never seen before.

“There were two guys in here,” she said. “Did you see which way they went?”

The couple blinked at her and shook their heads.

Cooper and Liam should have been expecting breakfast. Why would they both leave?

Nicole huffed back into the hall. There weren’t many places they could go. In one direction was a set of swinging doors leading to two squares of patient rooms around central nurses’ stations. In the other was an E
MPLOYEES
O
NLY
sign. Nicole did due diligence and hopped a short distance in both directions to satisfy herself that Cooper and Liam were not simply loitering just out of sight.

Ethan had left for Columbus.

Dani got a bee in her bonnet about chasing somebody just for being rude.

Liam and Cooper had disappeared without explanation.

She didn’t even have a cell phone number for Dani or her cousins—or Sylvia Alexander, who was probably still down the hall in her niece’s room.

Nicole pressed her lips together and hopped back into the waiting room. Her stomach still rumbled for breakfast, but at the moment, she needed to sit down and give her sore hands a break. The young couple were both absorbed in magazines. Nicole moved past them and settled in a chair against the opposite wall.

Ethan would be more than halfway to Columbus by now. Nicole had been dozing with her head on his shoulder when his phone rang at three in the morning and he eased away to take the call in the hall. When he returned, he didn’t say anything more than that he would have to leave.

Nicole had wanted to protest.

What about Lauren?

What about me?

What about Quinn?

But she’d held her tongue. She knew no more about the reality of Ethan’s life in Columbus than he knew about hers in St. Louis. With the upheaval of the newspaper she worked for, the future of her job likely was beyond Nicole’s control, but Ethan might still have a choice. He deserved the chance to choose.

They’d had no privacy or time for the conversation Nicole wished for.

The one where she’d look in his eyes to discern what he felt for her.

The one where she’d say that the storm had frightened her with the thought she might lose Ethan as well as Quinn.

The one where she’d agree he was right when he said they should have no more regrets about each other.

The one where she’d wish he would kiss her.

Instead, they’d stared at each other over the cup of vending machine coffee Ethan would depend on to keep himself awake for a hundred miles or so when he pulled out of the hospital parking lot long before dawn.

Ethan promised to call, that it wouldn’t be like last time.

Nicole wanted to believe him.

She took her phone from her pocket. Nicole’s only charger was at Lauren’s apartment. During the night, Ethan had brought in the charger he kept in his car, so Nicole had some juice, but the battery was not full. She opened her contact list just to stare at the entry under Ethan’s name. Nicole knew the name of the hospital where he worked, and she had his cell phone number. This was more information than she’d had for most of the last ten years. Nicole shut off the phone to save the battery and instantly felt disconnected from Ethan. With the top of the phone pressed against her forehead and her eyes closed, she pictured him in his Lexus driving on Interstate 70 into the rising sun.

He would call. He would.

In the meantime, Nicole kept watch for Lauren, not even knowing if her friend was conscious. Nicole supposed she could call Benita Booker for a ride, once the morning progressed further toward a reasonable hour, but if Sylvia came down the hall with news of Lauren, Nicole didn’t want her to find the room empty of her niece’s friends.

Where had they all gone?

Her eyes still closed, Nicole leaned her head back against the wall. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt Lauren’s phone against her ear and Quinn’s tune playing from somewhere in Oklahoma.

Or anywhere. If the 918 number belonged to a cell phone, its owner—and Quinn—could be anywhere. Nicole wondered if anyone at the newspaper would still talk to her. She needed investigative help, but maybe none of the people she trusted still had jobs. Later Nicole would turn on her phone and try to reach somebody.

While the tune played in her head, the sequence of pitches formed in Nicole’s throat, and she softly released them to the empty corner where she sat. She longed to hear Quinn’s soothing whistle. Ethan’s scent wafted around her, and for a moment Nicole marveled at how real it seemed even in his absence. When someone dropped into the seat beside her, Nicole’s eyes fluttered open.

The scent was not a memory.

Ethan’s dark eyes were inches from her.

“What are you doing here?” Nicole’s heart raced. He should have been closing in on Columbus by now.

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

A grin split her face. She drew in breath. “What about your job?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Whatever damage I’ve done to my career is not going to get worse at this point.”

Nicole swallowed the thickness in her throat. “I’m glad you’re here.” She was—though she hoped he hadn’t thrown away his residency in his decision to turn around.

“As long as I’m here, I might as well act like a neurologist,” he said. “I want to see Lauren’s chart and check her CT scan.”

“Will they let you?”

“I might be able to prevail on professional courtesy, especially if Lauren says she’d like my opinion.”

“I’m sure she would.”

“It’s almost the start of visiting hours, anyway,” Ethan said. “Let me go see what I can do.”

He stood up, and she tilted her face up at him. When he bent to kiss her cheek, Nicole said, “Bring me breakfast.”

8:06 a.m.

Ethan figured twenty-four minutes before the official start of visiting hours was close enough to push through the swinging doors. He hoped one of the nurses on duty would remember his presence yesterday afternoon, when he followed Lauren’s transfer from the ER to a regular room. A gray-haired woman in the corner, probably the charge nurse, looked up from her stack of paperwork.

“Dr. Jordan, isn’t it?”

“Good memory, Nurse Wacker.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Dr. Glass.”

“Right. About your friend with the head trauma.”

“I was hoping for sort of a professional courtesy conversation.”

The nurse picked up her phone. “I’ll page him.”

“Thanks.”

Ethan wandered a few yards away from the nurses’ station but stayed within sight. When his phone rang, he glanced at the ID.

B
RINKMAN.

He ignored the call. Ethan had nothing to say to Phil Brinkman, and he doubted his friend Hansen would call. Good news from Columbus, scarce to begin with, was out of the question now. If Dr. Gonzalez had not already returned to the hospital, he would within hours. Brinkman would alternate between a martyr who never left his duties in the chief’s absence and a tattletale about Ethan’s negligence. Ethan hoped Hansen had covered his own tracks enough not to be caught in the fallout. The next conversation Ethan expected to have would be with Gonzalez himself.

And it was not going to be pleasant.

“Dr. Jordan.” Nurse Wacker signaled from the nurses’ station. “Dr. Glass just got here. He’s in the lounge down the hall and would like you to join him. Just push the buzzer by the employee doors and he’ll let you in.”

Ethan hadn’t met Dr. Glass yesterday. A generalist in the ER had treated Lauren and admitted her for observation. But Ethan remembered the public health nurse mentioning Dr. Glass yesterday at the health fair.

That was less than twenty-four hours ago, and once again, everything had changed in Hidden Falls.

Ethan buzzed the doors, and a man more than twice his age peered through a narrow pane of plexiglass before opening the door.

“Dr. Jordan, I presume.”

“Thank you for seeing me.”

“I understand you’re a friend of one of my patients.” Dr. Glass led the way down the hall to a staff lounge.

Ethan took the chair Dr. Glass offered. “I haven’t seen Lauren in the last twelve hours. I wondered about her status.”

“I haven’t seen her yet this morning, either, but my understanding is she had a good night, considering. My orders were for the nurses to wake her every two hours.”

Ethan nodded. “Do you think I could see her chart?”

“Don’t worry. We did all the scans. She has a significant concussion, but we’re following protocol.”

“I’m sure you are. I’m a neurosurgical resident. If you could indulge me, I’d appreciate it.”

“Neurosurgical, eh?”

“Nine months to go.”

“Where?”

Ethan named the hospital in Columbus.