Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
ROXANNE STOOD watching the local morning news as she drank her coffee.
Early morning sun streamed in through the kitchen windows causing glare on the TV screen.
She needed to leave the house within ten minutes to make the meeting with Dr. Oki at the hospital.
Then she needed to meet with her lawyer, Al, and bring him some jewelry to sell for her.
She was about to put her coffee cup down and click the TV off, when a news flash caught her attention.
With her finger poised over the remote’s off button, she watched the camera zoom in on a little girl being brought on a stretcher into Boston’s Children’s Mercy Hospital to the emergency burn treatment center.
There were IV bottles attached and an entourage of EMTs and a doctor running in beside her.
The girl was pathetic and shrunken looking, almost completely covered by a white sheet, in the midst of the commotion.
The man with her, presumably her father, was standing in the background and the camera keyed in on him as the reporter moved in for an interview.
Roxanne was stunned by the man’s seeming detachment.
Roxanne turned up the volume so she could hear as he answered the reporter’s painful questions about the fire with the unflinching succinctness more appropriate to a business meeting than the site of a hospital where his wife was delivered DOA and his daughter’s survival was questionable.
Deep inside her, emotions churned. Tears spilled onto her cheeks.
She reached up and touched them and then looked at her moist fingertips in surprise.
She hurried to wipe the rest of the tears away.
Roxanne was transported back in time against her will to the days when she cried every day, the days when she was a little girl just like this one.
She lost her mother when she was eleven.
And her father loved her even less after that.
Flashes of broken scenes from her childhood panned through her mind.
There was a little girl with a skinned knee longing for her daddy’s embrace, but all he said was, “You shouldn’t cry.
Crying is not a good thing to do. Now be a grown up girl and stop for Daddy.
” Then he patted her on the head and disappeared into his library with a book.
The memory startled her with its vividness.
Why did she remember such an inconsequential thing?
But Roxanne remembered more, she remembered herself wishing so hard for her father to hug her that she gritted her teeth.
And she remembered that after the door closed behind her father, the tears returned, only they had nothing to do with the skinned knee.
Snapping out of it, Roxanne looked at her wrist, checking on her Rolex again. “Oh no!” In one swift motion, she snapped the television off, drained her cup and then slammed it down on the counter. Rushing past Bonnie who’d just walked in the kitchen, Roxanne hurried to the garage door.
“What do you think, you’re in a chugging contest with that coffee?” Bonnie furrowed her brow.
“Gotta go. Be home late. Need to sell the family jewels.” Roxanne flashed a smile at the older woman, but as she was about to disappear through the door, she hesitated, and then walked back to Bonnie and hugged her.
“I’ll give you a call,” Roxanne said and this time she left with the right feeling. Bonnie stood frozen, then shook her head.
As she drove across the narrow road that led off the peninsula, her cell phone rang. A quick check revealed it was Laura.
“Rox, I’m glad I caught you. I’m calling to beg a tremendous favor from you.”
“Let me guess. You want me to cover for you at the emergency room about the little girl they brought in this morning. You’re a little late. I’m on my way. Who’s handling the media now?”
“No one. I’ve been fielding calls at the office. I couldn’t bring myself to go down there. I…kept putting them off. Please?” Laura sounded desperate. There was no way Roxanne would turn her down.
“Okay. But Laura, someday you’re going to have to face this. I know this isn’t the time to discuss the problem, but promise me we will?” Roxanne kept her voice gentle.
“I know. You’re right. I promise.” Laura’s relief was obvious
“So let’s hear the details.” Roxanne felt good about helping her friend.
“You saw it on the news so you know the basics. Very high profile situation…”
“High profile? I had the sound turned down on the TV. I don’t know who…”
“Oh. Rox…I thought you knew…”
“What? Who is the girl?”
“The little girl is Lindy Dennis,” Laura said and then was silent.
Brian Dennis’s daughter. Roxanne swerved the car, but that was nothing compared to what was going on in her gut. Horns beeped at her. She needed to pull over.
“Rox? You okay? I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
“I’m fine,” she lied.
“You need to know…a few things. Paul Paris came in with her. His wife, Lindy’s mother…is dead.” Laura paused again. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
Roxanne swerved into a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot and turned off the ignition, still holding the cell phone to her ear, and still not speaking. She realized she was breathing rapidly and took a deep breath.
“Rox? You there? Can you do this?” Laura’s voice changed to a high pitch now.
“Yes. Yes, I’m… I’m taking it all in. What about Brian?”
“The police haven’t reached him yet. I tried calling too, but there’s no answer at his home. Paul didn’t want to call him and neither did his ex-wife’s family and I didn’t have his cell number.” Laura rushed her words.
Roxanne was silent in her car. She shook her head to bring herself fully to attention.
That poor pathetic little girl was Brian Dennis’s daughter.
The enormity of what Laura asked her to do hit her.
She wanted Roxanne to call Brian Dennis and tell him his daughter was critically injured and his ex-wife was dead.
Laura couldn’t do it, so Roxanne had to deal with the situation.
“Okay, Laura. Don’t worry about a thing.
I’ll call Brian.” She hoped she reached him before the police knocked on his door.
The purposefulness in her own tone of voice helped buoy her into professional mode and she listened to the details.
Brian was out of town for a game, or on his way.
After she clicked off the phone with Laura, she called the Celtics front office.
She cut through the formalities and got right to the point.
“Brian Dennis’s daughter and ex-wife have been involved in an accident.
There was a gas explosion. Fire Department thinks it was the stove.
His daughter has been brought into emergency at CMH with severe burns.
His ex-wife wasn’t so lucky.” Roxanne listened to herself say the words as if it was someone else speaking.
Of course the stunned man said he’d deliver the urgent message.
The team was at the airport now and he wasn’t sure if they’d taken off yet.
She knew she made the right choice in having the message delivered through the team. The team was like his family after all.
At the hospital, Roxanne headed straight to the emergency room.
She was already late for a meeting. Her heels clicked mercilessly on the tiles of the freshly waxed floor.
Her quick pace matched that of the people around her.
Nurses and doctors scurried around in all.
Few visitors were around at this time of the morning and it was one of the small windows of time that Roxanne had throughout the day to talk with the doctors as she occasionally did.
Double-checking her Rolex, she realized how late she was.
After a quick check with the nurse’s station in acute care, she found out that the team of doctors that she was supposed to be meeting with were all in the emergency ward conferring over the new patient, Lindy Dennis.
Roxanne headed there immediately. This was the kind of tragic, sensational story reporters longed for, she thought,
She approached the area fast, only slowing after passing a bloodied gurney.
It was a reminder of the reason Laura always avoided this part of the hospital.
Turning a corner, she wasn’t surprised to see the television cameras still around from the earlier reports, and she carefully stepped through the tangle of cables.
They would be expecting someone to hold a press conference shortly, supplying them with as much detail as they were allowed.
They were also probably waiting for a glimpse of Brian Dennis himself. So was she.
Familiar faces greeted her when she got close and she was about to engage in conversation with one of the reporters when the voice of Dr. Oki turned her around.
“It’s about time we had someone who looks good on camera to help us out here.” The doctor gave Roxanne his sad smile of relief.
“Looks like everybody’s at this party.” She surveyed the area and spotted three of the six doctors she was supposed to be meeting with, conferring with various nurses. Then she spotted Dr. Dais talking with a man that looked like Paul Paris.
“I’m considering this new patient for possible admission into one of our experimental treatment projects. That’s her father there,” Dr. Oki said. Roxanne was again impressed with the seeming lack of emotion in Paul Paris’s demeanor.
“No, Doc. That’s her stepfather. Her father is Brian Dennis. It might take him a while to get here.” She glanced away from Paul toward the doctor to see him shake his head with surprise.
She walked toward Paul Paris to do her job—or rather to do Laura’s job. Dr. Davis saw her and greeted her with a sigh of relief.