Hidden Falls (62 page)

Monday
4:03 a.m.

S
o I’m good to go?” Ethan rubbed his eyes as he sat up on the sofa in the staff lounge at the Hidden Falls hospital. He looked up at Dr. Glass.

“How long have you been sleeping?” Dr. Glass asked.

“On and off about six hours.” It wasn’t much for almost forty-eight hours since Ethan’s last full night of slumber, but exhaustion had made the sofa more restful than he’d expected, and only twice had anyone else come into the room in the middle of the night.

“The hospital board has cleared you for emergency privileges.” Dr. Glass removed his spectacles and rubbed the sides of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “I’m getting too old for this middle-of-the night stuff. I’m grateful you’re here, but I’ll be responsible if you operate when you haven’t slept.”

“I slept.” Ethan threw off the blanket one of the nurses had scrounged up for him. “I know we only met a couple of days ago. I appreciate your willingness to go to bat for me, and I don’t intend to let you down.” He wasn’t going to let Lauren down, either.

“I’ll be in the OR,” Dr. Glass said. “That was one of the conditions of emergency privileges. But the scalpel will be in your hand.”

“Thank you.” Ethan would need someone there who knew his way around the unfamiliar facility. There was no time for tours and orientation.

“Your association with Dr. Gonzalez’s program went a long way to commend you,” Dr. Glass said.

They must not have called Gonzalez,
Ethan thought. They would have gotten an earful. Nobody wanted that in the middle of the night. The hospital board members probably wanted to go back to sleep.

“How soon do we cut?” Ethan stood up.

“They’re getting the OR ready now. The nurses tell me some of your friends are still down the hall.”

“I’ll go talk to them.”

“Fine. I’ll make sure the paperwork is above reproach and meet you in the OR.”

Dr. Glass left, his long white coat flapping over his green scrubs. Ethan crossed to the kitchenette, found a clean tall tumbler, and downed two full portions of cold water from the faucet over the sink. The hydration made him feel more alert almost immediately.

Ethan went down the corridor to the waiting room and stepped from hallway brightness into the dim shadows. The only light came from a low table lamp in one corner. Nicole and Cooper were the two who had refused to go home when even Ethan said he was going to find a place to sleep. Nicole was stretched out on a couch with a throw pillow, and Cooper sat in a chair with his legs extended in front of him and his head tilted against the wall. Ethan paused in the doorway long enough to hear the even breath of sleep. Nicole had been ignoring her own need for rest and healing all week. Ethan was glad to see her conked out, her jaw slack and her mouth open slightly. For a moment, he considered not waking them. In a little while, he could come back with news that the surgery was over. But Cooper stirred and his eyes opened.

When he saw Ethan, Cooper reached over to nudge Nicole’s leg. “How is she?”

Nicole pushed up on one elbow.

“They’re going to let me do the procedure,” Ethan said. “I don’t expect it will take very long. I have every expectation Lauren will be fine.”

“I want to see her.” Cooper got to his feet.

“I doubt she’ll know you’re there,” Ethan said.

“That isn’t the point.” Nicole reached for her crutches. “We’ll know. Sylvia will know.”

“All right.”

They moved quietly through the hall down to Lauren’s room, Nicole’s crutches thumping against the tile and Cooper barely able to keep himself from running ahead of her measured pace. At the head of the bed, Sylvia was alert and lit by the bank of lights that stayed on all the time with patients who needed extra attention from the nursing staff.

It had been Sylvia who realized Lauren was not simply sleeping. Though Sylvia had been able to rouse Lauren and alerted the nurse, Lauren was extremely lethargic and barely responsive to questions. The possibility of being discharged evaporated into the reality that pressure was building on Lauren’s brain. Dr. Glass had returned to the hospital about the same time Ethan did and ordered another scan.

“She hasn’t woken up,” Sylvia said softly. “I call her name every now and then, but she doesn’t answer.”

“We’re going to fix that,” Ethan said.

“We should pray for her.” Cooper moved to the bedside and lifted Lauren’s limp hand.

“The OR should be ready any minute,” Ethan said. Prayer was not going to heal Lauren. She had a bleed in her brain and treatment protocol was proven and clear.

“Please,” Sylvia said. “Just until they come for her.”

Other than his own unbelief, Ethan could think of no reason to deny them the comfort of their faith. It would do no good in a medical situation, but neither would it cause harm.

“All right,” he said, “but it won’t be long.”

Nicole shuffled over to the far side of the bed. Sylvia moved to the foot and put her hands on Lauren’s blanketed ankles. Surrounding her on three sides, Lauren’s friends bowed their heads.

Ethan stepped back and turned his head toward the door to watch for the transit staff. He didn’t listen to the words Cooper murmured. In fact, he was surprised Cooper had been the one to suggest prayer. Cooper didn’t strike Ethan as the faithful sort. Then again, Ethan would be hard-pressed to describe the faithful sort, and crisis tended to make people hedge their bets in favor of religion. He’d seen it before.

A young man in blue scrubs and soft-soled shoes entered. “I’m here from transit.”

Ethan cleared his throat, and the others raised their heads. The transit employee looked at the name on the papers in his hands and checked the hospital bracelet around Lauren’s wrist.

“I’m Dr. Jordan,” Ethan said. “I’ll be doing the surgery.”

The young man looked doubtful, and Ethan didn’t blame him. Ethan wore street clothes and had no hospital ID badge.

“My job is just to take her down to pre-op.” The man began exchanging the stationary machine that monitored Lauren’s vitals for the portable model that traveled with the bed. “After that you can take it up with them.”

“I’ll come find you as soon as it’s over.” Ethan herded Cooper and the others toward the door.

“I hope you don’t mind if we pray for you, too,” the mayor said.

Ethan shrugged. If it made them feel better, what was the point of protesting? What mattered to him was the confidence that he was well trained—and that this was not a particularly difficult procedure for a neurosurgeon. Based on Lauren’s symptoms and information available from routine tests, Ethan was hopeful he would only need to bore two holes and suction the excess fluid away. Ethan did procedures like this every week.

Cooper had his phone out. “I’m going to call Liam and Dani.”

“I’m sure they’re asleep,” Ethan said.

“I need them here. They’ll come.”

Ethan shrugged again. Liam and Dani couldn’t do anything, but he wasn’t going to argue with Cooper. His focus was his patient.

The young man from transit released the brakes on Lauren’s bed and swung it toward the door.

5:16 a.m.

“Sylvia, trade places with me.” Nicole leaned on the end of the waiting room couch and stood up on her good foot.

Sylvia was satisfied with the chair she occupied, but since Nicole was already up, she complied with trading seats.

“It’s not a bad sofa for a doze,” Nicole said. “You should at least try to catnap.”

“I feel surprisingly good.” Before Lauren’s downturn ten hours ago, Sylvia left Lauren in the company of Nicole and Cooper and went home for a few hours. She changed clothes, ate a good meal, checked on her mother, and straightened up two guest rooms—one for Lauren and one for Nicole. Sylvia even managed to work in a short nap before returning to the hospital to await Lauren’s discharge and bring her home.

Beside the bed, Nicole believed Lauren to be sleeping. Cooper had stepped out of the room. The peaceful scene erupted when Sylvia called Lauren’s name and got no answer.

Sylvia, Cooper, and Nicole hadn’t spoken much since resuming their vigil in the second-floor waiting room. They were all equally exhausted from the last two days, but for Sylvia, at least, the spike of worry fractured soon enough. Even Dr. Glass agreed his patient was fortunate Dr. Ethan Jordan was available for the procedure, and the bleed was slow. Lauren was in capable hands, and ultimately she was in God’s hands.

Sylvia had a harder time letting go of her worry about Quinn. In the eight days since his disappearance, Sylvia’s hours filled with her duties as mayor, reopening her shop, checking on her mother, and now being on hand as Lauren’s closest family. Undulating beneath the rise and fall of sunrise and sunset was swirling disappointment that she couldn’t call and confide in Quinn. She didn’t know what happened to him, so she didn’t know whose hands he was in.

Quinn was still in God’s hands, Sylvia reminded herself. Somehow that assurance was less comforting without the visible form of a trained physician like Ethan Jordan. She closed her eyes to pray.

Squeaking steps in the hall carried in Liam and Dani. Cooper perked up. Dani dropped into a chair next to him.

Liam was neatly dressed in pressed khakis and a dark green polo shirt. And he looked rested—more rested than Sylvia had seen him appear in the last week. His eyes, though sad, had lost the frantic expression Sylvia saw the day he came into her shop and on Saturday at the health fair before the storm hit. The tension had vacated his shoulders, and he offered his brother an embrace.

Now they were five. Still silent, for the most part. Still waiting. Still captive to their own thoughts.

Nurse Wacker entered the room, and as if on a conductor’s cue, all five of them sat erect.

“I see the gang’s all back.” The nurse looked at Dani and smiled. “I hear I missed quite a tackle yesterday afternoon.”

Liam furrowed his forehead into four rows. “Excuse me? I don’t understand.”

“Dani knows,” the nurse said. “Nicole and Cooper, too.”

Sylvia sighed. Why was it that lately she was the last to hear about anything?

“Dani took down one of our transit employees,” the nurse said.

“I had a good reason,” Dani muttered.

“Is Lauren out of surgery?” Cooper asked.

“Not quite,” Nurse Wacker said. “But Dr. Jordan wanted me to tell you—”

A shriek pierced the early morning tranquility, jolting everyone but the nurse.

“That will be Room 231, right on schedule,” she said.

After a few seconds of silence, a fresh scream filled the hall.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “I’ll have to go help settle her down or she’ll keep doing that and have everyone on the wing awake.”

She turned and left before any of them could protest.

Liam turned to Dani. “What was she talking about? Who did you tackle?”

“Bobby somebody.” Dani leaned back in her chair with her hands on her hips. “And I’d do it again.”

Sylvia folded her hands in her lap. “Maybe this would be a good time to hear the story.” She was the mayor, after all.

“I tracked down the guy who put that hole in my boat,” Dani said. “He works here. Somebody had to catch him.”

Sylvia’s eyes moved to Cooper. “Oh? I didn’t hear about this.” Even while she was sitting with Lauren, Sylvia’s cell phone had been within reach. If even one of the recent crimes in Hidden Falls was solved, the mayor would like to know about it.

“There wasn’t much to hear about,” Cooper said. “Witnesses say Dani assaulted Robert Doerr.”

Dani shuffled her feet. “Think of it as a citizen’s arrest.”

“We don’t do that around here.” Cooper’s voice remained as calm as it always did. “I wish you’d clued me in to what you suspected.”

“Was I supposed to let him walk out of the hospital?” Dani glared. “You could give me credit for nabbing him.”

Sylvia tilted her head at Cooper. “Is he the guy?”

Cooper shrugged. “Innocent until proven guilty.”

“Did you arrest him?”

“We took him in, but it was because he took a swing at me when he was trying to get away.”

“Sounds like suspicious behavior to me,” Sylvia said.

“I wasn’t in uniform,” Cooper said. “The man had just been knocked down by a stranger.”

“I can see your point.” Sylvia glanced at Dani.

“Whose side are you on?” Dani rolled her eyes. “This could be the guy who smashed up your store, too.”

Sylvia knew better than to try to persuade Dani when she was in this kind of mood. “Cooper, if you took him in, what happened?”

“The sheriff ordered his release a few hours later. We don’t have anything to tie him to Dani’s boat.”

“I’ll show you the pictures,” Dani muttered.

“You didn’t even take the pictures you think incriminate him,” Cooper said, “and happening on somebody out in the woods is hardly the same as catching him at the scene of the crime.”

“Did you even question him?”

“We didn’t get much out of him before he played the ‘I want a lawyer’ card.” Cooper gave a sly smile. “But we got his fingerprints.”

Dani elbowed him. “Don’t give me false hope.”

“We can at least see if he has a record, or if he matches any of the prints we’ve taken.”

Sylvia inhaled slowly. “You mean in my shop?”

Cooper nodded.

“And Quinn’s car?”

He nodded again.

Sylvia wasn’t sure if she hoped the prints would match any in Quinn’s car or not. Fingerprints belonging to somebody with a record might point to foul play. While Sylvia couldn’t imagine why Quinn would decide to pick up and go to St. Louis after not leaving the county for more than thirty years, she preferred that mystery to the possibility that someone meant him harm.

“You know you can’t get prints from my boat,” Dani said. “What are you going to do about that?”

“One step at a time,” Cooper answered.

“What motive would tie everything together?” Sylvia asked. She could understand the thefts, but putting Dani’s life in danger was a different sort of crime, a fiercer vandalism even than the unbridled destruction in Sylvia’s store.

“We’re working on that,” Cooper said, “but sometimes people like to see what they can get away with. I doubt Dani was supposed to figure out it wasn’t an ordinary leak in an old rowboat.”