Chapter 13
The baby was screaming: high, persistent, far away. On and on. She tried to get up, but she was so cold. Where were the blankets? She tried one more time, and then she was rolled, and there was the quilt. The screaming stopped. Russ had taken care of it. She fell back asleep.
Clare woke again to glaring light. She tried to shield her eyes, but her arm was covered with a weighted blanket.
All of her was covered in a weighted blanket.
She became aware of two things at once: she was naked, and she had a headache worse than the time she took part in a Deke drinking contest at UVA.
But she wasn’t nauseous, she was cold. She shivered, and the shivers turned into whole-body shaking.
“Hey.” A strange young man smiled down at her. “That’s good. Let’s up the heat.” The blanket over her—and under her, she realized—flushed warmer. Her shaking subsided. The young man reappeared. “Feel better?”
“Mmm.”
“I’m Kyle. I’m your nurse. Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital?”
“That’s right, you’re at the Washington County Hospital. You’re being treated for hypothermia. We’re warming you up gradually, so you’re going to get cold again. When you do, let me know, and I’ll make the blanket warmer.”
“Head hurts.”
“I bet it does. You had a pretty bad hit on the back of your head. You got stitches in the ED, and the doctor’s going to check you for a concussion when you’re feeling a little better. Once your core temperature’s risen above thirty-five C, we can give you some pain medication.”
“Baby?”
The nurse frowned. “You had a baby with you?” He disappeared from view for a moment. “Oh, the lady who brought you in had a baby with her. Hang on a sec, I’ll see if we have the okay for her to come in and see you.”
Clare closed her eyes. Sometime later—it could have been minutes, it could have been hours—she heard Margy’s voice. “Hey, sweetie.”
Clare opened her eyes.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Awful. Ethan?”
“I called Janet after I got here.” Clare’s sister-in-law. “I didn’t want to expose him to any more germs floating around than I had to.”
Clare blinked in acknowledgment, then thought, why Janet? Why not … “Russ?”
“He’s in the Elizabethtown hospital. He had to get his stomach pumped and IV hydration.”
“What?” Clare tried to sit up. The ache in her head became a clapper of pain, tolling back and forth as if her skull were a bell. She groaned.
“I know, I know. I sure didn’t expect to be the closest relative for both of you on the same day. I swear, the two of you are going to put me into cardiac arrest.”
“Why … did he need his stomach pumped?”
Margy pressed her lips together. “Those militia people he was trying to spy on gave him a bunch of drugs to knock him out. Why on earth he’s getting involved with investigations when he’s retired, I’m sure I don’t know.
At least you helping out that poor girl I can understand. Women need to look out for each other.”
“Tiny,” Clare said, and all at once the whole thing was there in her mind and memory. “Cal!” She tried to grab Margy’s arm, only to catch against the blanket. “Cal took Rose!”
“That’s what we figured. Poor girl, she was a wreck. Not that I can blame her.”
“Amber Alert?”
“She wouldn’t let me.” Margy shook her head. “I’m afraid I didn’t argue very much, and for that I’m sorry. I was focused on you and Ethan, and getting the ambulance, and then Officer Knox called about Russell and it just seemed easier to let her stay in the house and sort herself out.”
“She’s there? My car?”
“I thought of that. Your keys are safe in my purse.”
“Call Lyle. Check on her.”
“Have them send a car over? There’s an idea. Maybe if she talks to an officer in person…” Margy let the sentence fade away.
The sheet was pulled aside by a cheerful woman who could have been mistaken for a rock climber or hiker if not for the large ID reading DOCTOR hanging from her neck. “Hi, Clare. I’m Helen Roberts.” She smiled at Margy. “I’m going to check her out, but you can come back as soon as I’m done.”
Dr. Roberts consulted a beeping device behind Clare’s range of vision and made a satisfied sound. “We can get this off you.” She reached under the blanket and ripped away an EKG sticker Clare hadn’t even realized was there.
Clare hadn’t been tested for a concussion before, but the next twenty minutes or so felt familiar.
The doctor examined her pupils, asked her to repeat a few sentences, and stepped away to see if she could hear a pinging noise.
She had to recite her name, phone number, and retell what had happened to her.
When she got to the part about a man with a gun, Roberts’s eyebrows flew up. “Don’t see much of that here.”
“You haven’t been here long.”
Kyle came in and helped Clare into a johnny gown, and then, over Clare’s protests and pounding head, the doctor had her sit up, checking her knee reflexes, and asked her to stand.
The nurse helped her out of bed and kept close by as she took a few steps, turned around—slowly—and touched her nose.
“It’s like a sobriety test, isn’t it?” He grinned.
“Not going to ask you how you know that, Kyle.” The doctor took Clare’s arm. “Let’s get you back in bed and covered up again. We’re going to keep you overnight for observation.”
Mercifully, before she left, Dr. Roberts judged Clare’s circulation good enough for intravenous pain medication. The nurse left for the prescription as Margy was coming back in. Clare discovered raising her eyebrows questioningly also made her head hurt.
“I’ve got good news and bad news.”
Clare felt a wave of déjà vu. Lyle MacAuley’s same words had kicked off this whole awful afternoon. She still made the same choice, however. “Good news.”
“Russell is doing much better.”
“Good,” she said. “Good.”
“They’re keeping him overnight in Elizabethtown for observation. I’m going to head up there right after our visit.” She oh-so-gently brushed Clare’s hair off her forehead. “Next time, try to at least get admitted to the same hospital, huh?”
Clare tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. “Okay. Bad news.”
Margy took her hand. “Lyle sent a car over to my house. Clare, I’m sorry, but Tiny’s gone.”