Verdict in Blood (16 page)

The door to her bedroom was shut. My hand was shaking as I turned the knob. The image I’d conjured up of Hilda, dead in her bed, victim of a heart attack that carried her away in the night, was so vivid that, for a beat, I couldn’t take in the reality. She wasn’t there. Her bed was made up, the sheets and blanket pulled so tight under the chenille spread that a dime would have bounced off them. I ran down the hall to the bathroom. It was pristine: sink shining; towels lined up on the towel rack; fresh roll of toilet paper on the holder. For a foolish and relief-filled moment, I let myself think that everything was all right, that Hilda had just become so absorbed in her delvings into Justine Blackwell’s affairs that she had lost track of time. Then, for the second time in forty-eight hours, I turned and saw my son behind me, white-faced and shaking.

“She’s in the kitchen, Mum.”

“Is she … ?”

He shook his head miserably. “I don’t know.” We started down the hall, but Angus turned into my room.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To call 911,” said the son whom I’d accused more than once of lacking common sense.

“Good,” I said. “After you get them, call Alex.”

I ran downstairs. Hilda was sprawled by the back door. She was still in the outfit she’d changed into Saturday night before we left: sandals, apple-green pedal pushers, hot-pink-and-green striped shirt. It was as if the movie I’d been playing in my mind since I heard Rose barking had suddenly become real. There were, however, significant differences between the nightmare and the reality. Even in my worst imaginings, I hadn’t seen Hilda’s face. She was ashen and, for the first time since I’d known her, expressionless. Her mouth was slack, and her eyes unseeing. The other variation was a critical one. In those first, ghastly moments, I had assumed Hilda had been felled by a stroke or a heart attack, but the blood pooled behind her head, and the blood on the croquet mallet thrown to the floor beside her, told a different story. Hilda’s body hadn’t failed her; she had been attacked. When I put my fingers to her throat and felt a faint pulse, I thanked God.

Angus came into the kitchen. “They’re on their way,” he said. “I couldn’t get Alex, so I called Jill. I thought I could go to the hospital with you.” His voice trailed off. He was staring at Hilda. Suddenly, his face contorted in anger. “What the fuck did they think they were doing with that towel?”

I followed the direction of his gaze. One of our kitchen towels had been folded and placed under Hilda’s head.

Angus’s voice broke. “What kind of person would do that? Smash someone’s skull in, then make a pillow for her head.”

The next minutes had the jerky urgency of a movie made with a hand-held camera. As the paramedics fell to their work, they peppered me with questions: What was Hilda’s name? Her age? Had I moved her? Had I placed the towel under her head? Did I know what had happened? Had she been conscious at all since I found her? As I answered, my voice was lifeless. I couldn’t take my eyes off the activity surrounding my friend. It was purposeful but alien. An oxygen mask had been slapped on Hilda’s face, and one of the paramedics, a young man, was kneeling beside her with state-of-the-art equipment that calibrated her pulse, respiration, blood pressure, and temperature. In a careful, calm voice, the young man called out numbers that I knew were related to Hilda’s vital signs, but I was too ignorant to interpret them.

Two uniformed policemen arrived. They had their own questions, and I did my best to answer them, but I didn’t have much information to give. When they were satisfied that I’d told them all I could, they began to check out my house, looking, they said, for signs of forcible entry or something the attacker might have left behind.

One of the paramedics bent and shone a pencil flashlight into Hilda’s eyes, all the while calling her name, trying, I guess, to rouse her to consciousness. A medical collar was fixed around Hilda’s neck, and an intravenous was started in her right arm. Finally, the paramedics slid her onto a kind of board. That’s when I noticed the dark stain in the crotch of her pedal pushers. It was the final indignity: at some point, my proud friend had wet herself.

“No,” I said.

The paramedic closest to me cast me a sidelong glance. “What?”

“She wouldn’t want anyone to see her like that.” I took off my sweater and placed it carefully so that it covered
the stain. By the sink, the younger of the two policeman was wrapping our old croquet mallet in plastic; he, too, carried out his task with exquisite care.

The paramedics began to strap Hilda to the stretcher, and the questions started up again: Did she have any allergies? Any health problems? What medications was she on? Could I check her room and bring any prescription drugs with me to the hospital? When they lifted her and started for the front door, I turned to my son.

“You’ll have to stay here,” I said. “Jill must have been delayed, but she’ll be along. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.” I kissed him on the cheek. “I love you,” I said.

He nodded numbly.

The paramedics wouldn’t let me ride with Hilda. I had to sit in the front seat. The sirens were wailing, and the driver didn’t make any attempt to talk. It was a relief not to have to deal with another human being. As we sped across the Albert Street bridge, I was overwhelmed with guilt. I had promised Hilda I’d call from Saskatoon, but I’d forgotten. I had a clutch of good excuses: my excitement about the baby; Taylor’s boundless enthusiasm; my reunion with Keith; my need to be with Mieka. All my rationalizations made perfect sense; none changed the fact that I hadn’t picked up the phone.

As we pulled into the ambulance bay at Pasqua Hospital, I knew that I would live with that sin of omission for the rest of my life. I followed behind as Hilda was wheeled through the E.R. The medical people exchanged information. Most of it was indecipherable, but the fragments I understood were terrifying: estimated 30 per cent blood loss; thready pulse; pupils sluggish to light; extremities cold.

A nurse stopped me at the double doors that opened into the treatment rooms. Her words were diplomatic, but the message was clear: the experts were taking over; I would just
be in the way. I turned back and, for the first time, I took in the scene in the waiting room.

It was Sunday night, and the place was filled with the pain of other people’s lives: a filthy, wiry man with the crazed eyes of a prophet or a solvent-drinker; a terrified father with a feverish little boy; two uniformed police officers with a young woman who was very drunk and whose arm hung at an unnatural angle from her shoulder; a teenaged couple with a croupy baby; and a dozen other soldiers in the Army of the Sick and the Unlucky. I found a chair facing the doors behind which Hilda had disappeared. If she needed me, I’d be close at hand.

There was a pile of magazines, soft with age and use, on the table next to me. The magazine on top was titled
Southern Bed and Breakfast
. The prospect of losing myself in a world of magnolias, overhead fans, and silver filigreed holders for iced-tea glasses was seductive, but try as I might, I couldn’t close the curtain on the human comedy playing itself out around me. An orderly was leading the wild-eyed man down the hallway; the feverish boy had begun to whimper and cry for his mother. The young woman with the hanging arm had turned against the police who had brought her in. All she was interested in now was getting patched up so she could leave. With her good arm, she was pounding on the chest of the younger of the cops, and saying, “What kind of fuckin’ doctor are you, anyway?” He bore the assault with patience and grace.

Time passed at a snail’s pace. Whenever the intercom crackled or a man or woman in medical gear appeared in the room, my heart leapt. But the name called was never mine, and as the minutes ticked by, panic threatened to overwhelm me. When Detective Robert Hallam came through the emergency-room door, my first thought was that he had arrived as backup for the police officers with the abusive
woman, but although he nodded to them, he kept on coming until he got to me.

In his canary-yellow button-down shirt and Tilley slacks, he seemed an unlikely candidate for knight in shining armour, but, as it turned out, he was able to rescue me. He sat down in the chair next to mine.

“I’m sorry about Miss McCourt,” he said.

My words came in a torrent. “Have you heard how she is? No one’s said a word to me since I got here, and by now someone should know something.”

He sighed heavily. “You’re right,” he said. “Someone should. Let me go over there and see what I can find out.”

Detective Hallam walked over to the desk that separated the ones who feared and hoped from the ones who knew. When he showed the nurse his badge, she picked up the phone and made a call. Almost immediately a young man in surgical greens came through the door behind her. The three of them bent their heads together, then Detective Hallam came back to me.

“It’s not good,” he said. “They’ve done a
CT
scan. She has a bad concussion, but they’re waiting for someone who specializes in head injuries to come in to see if she needs surgery. She’s also seriously dehydrated, and she’s lost a lot of blood. I don’t think any of her conditions are life-threatening in themselves, it’s the combination, and of course there’s her age to consider.” Unexpectedly, he smiled. “If you should happen to speak to her, don’t tell Miss McCourt I mentioned her age.”

“I won’t,” I said. Then out of nowhere, the tears came.

Robert Hallam waited out the storm. When I was finished, I blew my nose and turned back to him. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s the not knowing that makes you crazy,” he said simply. “But they have promised to let us know as soon as
they decide about surgery.” He gazed at me assessingly. “Are you up to a few questions?”

I shook my head. “I told the officers who came to the house everything I knew.”

His voice was kind. “Well, sometimes people know more than they think they do.”

At first, it seemed I was not among them, but when Detective Hallam asked me about the croquet mallet that Hilda’s assailant had used, an image, disquieting as a frame in a rock video, flashed through my mind. It was of Eli, whirling his mallet high in the air on the day he and Angus had their crazy game. I didn’t tell Detective Hallam about the memory. Stated baldly, it might have evoked a possibility that was unthinkable, and I banished it.

Detective Hallam had a few final questions. He had just snapped his notepad shut when a nurse came out to say that Hilda was being moved to intensive care, and I could see her briefly. I was on my feet in a split second. Finally, I was going to get to pass through the double doors.

Hilda was almost unrecognizable: a prisoner of tubes and of machines calibrating the vital signs of a no-longer-vital life. I bent to kiss her, but I was afraid I’d knock lose some critical piece of the apparatus, so I took her hand in mine. It was icy, and there were pinkish stains on her fingers. Whoever had taken off her favourite Love That Red nail polish had been in a hurry. A doctor came in to examine Hilda. The name on his identification card was Everett Beckles. I stepped back and watched. When he started to leave, I touched his arm. “Is she going to die?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve done a diagnostic workup, and we’ve decided against neurosurgical intervention.”

“She doesn’t need an operation,” I said. “That’s good news, isn’t it?”

Dr. Beckles didn’t answer me. He was a black man about my own age, and he looked as exhausted as I felt. “As you can see, we’ve closed the lacerations on your mother’s skull and we’re transfusing her. We’ve given her something to reduce the brain water, and we’ve started anticonvulsant therapy. In intensive care, they’ll monitor her level of consciousness and her vital signs. Everything possible is being done,” he said.

“Will it be enough?” I asked.

“We can only hope,” he said. “You might as well go home and get some rest. Your mother’s going to need you in the next few days.”

I started to correct him, but the words died in my throat. My mouth felt rusty, and I ached. I covered Hilda’s hand with my own. “I’ll be back,” I said.

As I waited for my cab, I looked up at the looming bulk of Pasqua Hospital. My second hospital of the day. Two hospitals, two cities: joy, sorrow; hope, fear. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled. Its cry, feral, heartsick, and lonely, stirred something in me. Only my superior position on the evolutionary scale kept me from howling too.

It was 1:00 a.m. when I got home. Jill had cleaned up the dog mess in the front hall, but Rose lowered her head in shame when she saw me. I bent down and put my arms around her neck. “It wasn’t your fault, Rose,” I murmured. “Don’t blame yourself.”

Jill came out to the hall when she heard my voice. She was carrying the Jungian biography of the prime minister I’d been reading. She had her place marked with her finger.

“How’s Hilda doing?”

“She still isn’t conscious,” I said. “They sent me home. She has a concussion; she lost a lot of blood and she was dehydrated. The worst thing is that no one knows how long she was lying here. It could have been twenty-four hours.”

Jill caught the edge in my voice. “Don’t beat yourself up about this, Jo. Much as we want to, we can’t always keep the people we love from harm. Sometimes terrible things just happen.” She put her arm around my shoulder and led me into the family room. “Come on. Let’s have a drink. One of the delights of this particular B and B is its well-stocked bar.”

I sighed. “Scotch, but make it a light one. I have a nine-thirty class.”

Jill frowned. “You’re not planning to go to the university, are you?”

“I am. First-year students need some sense of continuity; besides, I’m afraid Rosalie will yell at me if I cancel out this early in the semester.”

“The only rationalization I would accept,” she said.

When Jill came back with our drinks, she handed me mine and took a long pull on hers. “What can I do to help?” she asked.

“You’ve already done it,” I said. “I’m so grateful you could come over and be with the kids tonight. Did Taylor ever wake up?”