K.J. Emrick - Darcy Sweet 12 - Death at the Wheel (9 page)

Jon didn’t say anything as he forced
Alan to turn around and put the cuffs around the man’s wrists.  He just put Alan down to the floor and stepped on him to make sure he would stay put.  Darcy noticed his foot came down on the shoulder where Alan had been shot.  Somehow, it didn’t bother her at all.

When they had crawled far enough away that Darcy felt certain
Alan couldn’t get to them before Jon could stop him, she sat them both down with their backs to the wall.  She waited until Lindsay’s breathing evened out and her coughing fits had subsided before asking her, “Are you all right?”

Lindsay nodded and swallowed again.  “You know,” she said, “I don’t think that man is really my husband.”

The two of them shared a sad laugh through their pain as officers from the Meadowood Police force in their dark blue uniforms poured into the ICU.  It was over.  A nightmare for Lindsay.  A very, very long day for Darcy.  Finally over.

No, not over.
  Darcy forced herself to get up again as she remembered.

Rosie.

***

The
Meadowood officers had arrived at the scene before Jon could, he told her after they had taken custody of Alan.  It took four of them to remove him from the ICU.  He kicked and screamed and demanded not to be separated from his wife.

Darcy could hear his screaming even after they had dragged him out past the swinging doors.

Other officers escorted nurses and doctors as they tended to Lindsay, and then she was taken away too.

Jon held her then, held her tight and wanted to know over and over if she was all right.

“My arm,” she told him.  “I can’t move my arm.”

“Come on, we’ll get you down to the Emergency Department.”

“Not now.  I need to know if Rosie is all right first.”

A tall female police officer had already gone into room 2-C.  Her radio mike hung from a shoulder strap on her blue uniform shirt, and she had her hand wrapped around it, talking to her dispatch, communicating what she had found.  When Darcy saw her kneeling over Rosie’s limp form laying on the floor at the foot of the hospital bed, her heart jumped into her throat.  She clung to the front of Jon’s shirt with her one working hand and tried to reach out with her senses to feel for her friend’s spirit.  She couldn’t be dead.  She just couldn’t.

The officer put two fingers to the hollow of Rosie’s throat and held them there for a few seconds that stretched into an eternity before she looked up at Jon and Darcy.  “She’s alive.  Just unconscious.  I think she’ll be all right.  Can you wait here while I get a doctor for her?”

Darcy was about to say yes, she would stay right here until her friend was okay, but Jon shook his head.  “Darcy needs to see a doctor, too.  I’m taking her downstairs to the ER.  I’ll tell the nurses you need help in here on my way through.”

The Meadowood officer frowned to be stuck here with so much going on, but she nodded.

Jon hadn’t stopped touching Darcy since he’d shown up, out of the blue, to save her life. 
His hand on her shoulder.  A kiss on her cheek.  His body comfortably pressed up against hers as they stood together.  It was the same now as they walked through the second floor to get to the elevator amid a chaos of movement.  Holding her hand—her right hand—like he would never let go, he found the first nurse they came to and told her about Rosie.  Darcy still wanted to stay with her friend, but now that the adrenalin was wearing off she was starting to get worried for herself.  The pain had gotten worse.  Jon was right.  She needed her arm tended to.

And then she needed a long soak in a hot tub with her man still holding her and touching her and kissing her.  That would definitely be all right with her.

More chaos met them on the main floor.  A group of nurses in different colored scrub tops and doctors with serious expressions crowded into the elevator after Darcy and Jon got out.  People ran back and forth.  Calls for assistance to the second floor were almost nonstop over the intercom.  Meadowood officers stood guard over the entrance from the registration area to the ER.

“Guess we came at a bad time,” Darcy joked.

Jon stroked the tips of her fingers with his.  “I’m glad you were here.  Will gave me the basics when he called.  I really think Alan would have gotten away with Lindsay if you hadn’t been here to figure it out.  We were nowhere with the car rental.  Hadn’t even been able to get in touch with Jarred’s family, or they could have told us who was who in this mess.  Without you, Darcy, who knows what would have happened to Lindsay.”

She snuggled into him as they walked.  “I’m glad you got here when you did.”

“Yeah, well, we took a gamble on that.  I called ahead to the Meadowood PD and asked them to wait for me because I knew the players.”

“Cut it kind of close, didn’t you?”

His sudden kiss on her lips took her breath away, in the best way possible.  “I will always be there for you, Darcy.  I promise.”

The Emergency Department was packed now with patients and doctors and other hospital employees.  The overwrought charge nurse looked at them when they came in, assessed her arm briefly, pursed her lips, and told them to go to curtain area two.  Then she hurried off to something else.

There were two hospital beds just opposite the large square of the main work station where doctors typed at computers or looked over patient x-rays or took phone calls.  The beds were sectioned off by white curtains hung from sliding hooks on the ceiling.  One was already closed off, under a sign that read “Curtain One.”  Curtain Area Two was open and Darcy gratefully sat down on the bed, cradling her left arm.

“Do you think it’s broken?” she asked Jon nervously.

“I’m not a doctor, sweet baby.  I’m a police officer.”

From behind Curtain Area One, someone said, “That’s right, Jon.  Don’t quit your day job.”

Darcy and Jon both looked at each other, then over at the heavy curtain that made a wall between the two areas.  “Grace?” Darcy asked.  “Is that you?”

“Yes,” she answered, sounding miserable about it.  “Aaron here insisted on bringing me to the hospital even though I told him it was just false labor.  It’s not time yet.”

“Your due date is only a few days away,” Darcy heard Aaron scolding her sister.  “You can’t take chances on things like this.”

Jon looked up above them, at the ceiling, figuring out which way the curtain was hung before grabbing hold of it and sliding it aside. 

Grace lay there in the hospital bed, draped by a sheet and already in a short-sleeved gown tied behind her back.  She waved with her fingers.  “Hey sis.  I take it you two are responsible for all the ruckus around here?”

“You could say that,” Jon said, giving Darcy a look that wasn’t exactly accusing, just conspiratorial.  “Your sister’s arm is hurt, Grace.  We’re having it checked out.”

“Darcy, us cops are the ones who are supposed to get hurt serving and protecting.  You know that, right?”

Darcy stuck her tongue out at Grace.  “Whatever.  Just take care of yourself and my new niece.”

Grace rolled her eyes.  “I told you.  It could be a boy—”  She broke off in a wince of pain that had her sitting up straighter and grabbing at her belly.  “Oh, that was a bad one.”

“I’m going to get a nurse,” Aaron told her.

“Don’t be stupid, Aaron,” Grace snapped.  But Darcy could see the strain around her eyes.  “It’s just…oh, oh, oh!”

Aaron looked trapped, not sure whether he should go for help or stick by his wife.  The decision was made for him when a male nurse came rushing over, locking the side bars of the hospital bed in place and releasing the locks on the wheels.  “Mrs. Wentworth, we’re moving you up to Maternity now.  The doctor believes you’re in full labor.  Hold on and we’ll get you right there.”

He said it with a smile, but suddenly there was a look of panic on Grace’s face.  For his part, Aaron gave her his best I-told-you-so smirk.

“Now?”
Grace said even as they were wheeling her away.  “Darcy?  Darcy!”

“Don’t worry, sis,” Darcy called after her, “I’ll be up as soon as I can!”

Darcy couldn’t help but laugh.  Tough cop though she was, her big sister was terrified at what was coming.  The birth of her first child.  It still amazed Darcy to think she would be an aunt soon.

Jon took her good hand again and kissed her knuckles.  Darcy felt so protected whenever he was around.  It wouldn’t be long, she thought to herself, and they might have a few children of their own.

Now wasn’t that something to think about.

***

Temporary compression of the nerve due to hyperextension.  That was the official diagnosis.  All Darcy really understood from everything the doctor told them was that her arm was going to hurt just as bad as it did right now for a few days yet.  More importantly, the doctor’s medical speak meant her arm would heal.  She’d have full use of it again in two to three days and probably have partial use back tonight.

Rosie was moved into the curtain area that Grace had been in previously, right next to them.  She was awake now, angry and scared but all right except for a minor skull fracture.  As Rosie explained it,
Alan Harlow had thrown her up against the wall when she’d tried to keep him from taking Lindsay away.  Her head had smacked into some piece of equipment or something and she’d seen lots of pretty stars before passing out.  The doctors were going to keep her overnight for observation just to be safe.

Lindsay was sore, and scared, and braver than most people in her situation probably had a right to be.  Her arm hadn’t been broken again by
Alan’s insane struggle to leave with her.  It had been recast and this time strapped to her chest.  She was supposed to be back in the ICU for observation, but she had insisted on sitting at her mother’s side and finally the doctors—who already had too much to do—relented.  They checked on her frequently and wouldn’t let her do anything for herself, but they let her stay with Rosie.

She still didn’t remember anything about the accident, or about Jarred
Perrigon, or about much of anything really.  But she remembered her mother.  She remembered a terrible fight that had made her leave home, and she remembered wanting to come back to Misty Hollow to make up for so much lost time.

It was enough to make Rosie cry when she heard it.  Darcy was pretty sure she saw Jon wipe a tear away from the corner of his eye also, when he thought no one was looking.

Lindsay’s one regret, she said, was that she couldn’t remember her real husband, couldn’t tell her mother anything about him.  Rosie patted her daughter’s hand and told her that would come, with time. 

Beside Lindsay, Darcy saw a figure shimmer into being. 
The shadow spirit of a tall man with a pudgy face and messy, dark brown hair.  Jarred Perrigon’s ghost put his hands on Lindsay’s shoulders and then leaned down to kiss the top of her head.  Lindsay, probably without realizing she was doing it, leaned back into him.  Her eyes closed as she smiled.

The things that had been tying
Jarred’s spirit to this realm were all taken care of.  His killer had been brought to justice.  His wife would be taken care of.  Everything was as it should be.

He turned to Darcy and smiled at her.  She smiled back.  Then he grew fainter, and was gone.

***

Up on the third floor where the spacious maternity wing was on careful lockdown after the events from earlier in the evening, Jon and Darcy stood in front of a large
plexiglass window, looking at two rows of newborn children, all in cute little beds with tall clear plastic sides.  There were seven of them in all but Jon and Darcy were looking at one in particular all the way to the right in the front row.  A squirming baby wrapped in a pink blanket and wearing a pink cap. 

Darcy’s first niece.
  A beautiful baby girl.

Her little face scrunched up as she tried to sort out the world around her, but she didn’t cry.  She turned her head this way and that, listening to everything, and tried to unravel the blanket she had been tucked into, and basically just looked too cute for words.

A name card had been taped to the front of the cart where her tiny bed lay.  Her greeting to the world.  “Hi.  My name is Addison Darcy Wentworth.”

“Guess your sister wanted Addison to look up to you right from the start,” Jon said, holding Darcy around her waist, careful of her left arm in its sling.

“She never even told me what she was going to do that.”  Darcy grinned from ear to ear.  She couldn’t be happier for Grace and Aaron.

Baby Addison turned her head just enough so that she was facing Darcy.  She really was a cute baby, Darcy thought to herself, and she already looked like Grace…

Something tugged at her thoughts.  She couldn’t quite place what it was.

“I’m happy for Grace,” Jon said.  “But now I’m out another partner.  Will is going to be off for at least the next three weeks.  They’re going to have to reconstruct part of his leg.  God alone knows how long it will take him to get back on his feet. 
Uh, literally.”

Darcy shrugged off her stray thoughts and turned him to look at her.  “Sorry to hear that.  I guess that means you’ll have less time for me?”

“Never,” he promised, kissing her lips tenderly.  “I can do my job and be there for you, too.  I kind of got the impression Will wanted the time off anyway.  He said something about wanting to help Lindsay get her memory back.  Whatever that means.”

Darcy knew exactly what it meant.  It meant Wilson was still in love with Lindsay, after all this time.  Sometimes good things came from bad times.  Hopefully it would be that way for Wilson and Lindsay.

Her attention was drawn to baby Addison again.  When she looked, her niece’s little baby lips moved, almost like she was trying to talk.  Silly, Darcy knew.  Such a cute baby…

Again, something moved through her thoughts and this time Darcy knew it hadn’t come from her.  It was a warm something, like the feeling of comfort and peace she got when she looked into Jon’s vivid blue eyes, flooded her senses.

Darcy stared.  Could it be?

In the viewing room, baby Addison turned her head away and the feeling that had weighed so strongly through her mind was simply gone.  Darcy stepped right up to the
glass, put her hand flat against it, wanting to reconnect with that sensation, that bond, that she had felt when baby Addison had turned her way.

The feeling had come from the baby.  As crazy as that sounded Darcy knew it was true.  They had made a connection, through Darcy’s sixth sense. 
Through her gift.

The same gift that baby Addison had.

She smiled, although she had to contain her enthusiasm.  Should she tell Grace that the same abilities that had been passed down to their Great Aunt Millie and then to Darcy were now developing in her and Aaron’s baby?

That was something to think about. 
Definitely.  For now, she would keep it to herself and just be happy for baby Addison and what her future might hold.

“Should we go home?” Jon asked her.  “It’s very, very late.  Grace is already asleep, remember.”

Darcy nodded.  After a three hour labor she would probably be exhausted, too.  Aaron had been snoring in the comfortable easy chair in the corner of Grace’s hospital room for a while now.  Everyone else was taken care of.  Jon would have to give his statement to the Meadowood police investigators about this whole entire mess but they had promised there was already enough to charge and hold Alan Harlow for the night.  They wouldn’t need to speak to Jon until tomorrow.

“Yes,” she said to him, leaning back against his chest and letting him wrap his arms around her.  “Let’s go home.”