CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The elevator doors opened onto the fourth floor and Edmund hurried off and made his way, without breaking his stride, past the nurses station. The nurses spoke to him, including the nurse supervisor, but he ignored them all. He headed straight for Maude’s room.
He already knew her room number, and he’d already spoken with her doctor.
To the nurses that lined their station she was a nobody.
Even her doctor had to check his notes: that was how little he thought about her.
She was a nobody to him too. But to Edmund she was somebody so special to him that he could hardly contain himself as he hurried to her room.
She was somebody so dear to him that he was amazed by his reaction to her, and to the news of her misfortune.
When he got to her room, the door was already cracked and he could hear the nurse inside speaking with her.
He stood outside of that room looking through that sizeable opening.
He watched her as she watched that nurse.
And just as he suspected, respect for Maude wasn’t high on that nurse’s agenda either.
“I understand what you’ve got to do,” Maude was saying to her, “but all I want is a little something to eat. I haven’t eaten since I’ve been in this place. Ya’ll won’t let me leave. Why is giving me a little something to eat that difficult?”
“I told you I’m not your waitress,” the nurse replied harshly. “I’m not your maid service either. We’re here to get you well so you can get out of here. Whether you eat or not is not my problem. You should have gotten you something to eat when they brought the trays around this morning.”
“They brought them around but they didn’t bring me one. They said I’m not on the list.”
“That’s probably because your doctor has ordered tests for you and he doesn’t want you eating anything in the interim. How is that so hard to understand? Or are you just dumb like that? Now will you please just answer my questions?”
Edmund watched the strain on Maude’s face. She looked like a woman accustomed to being rushed, unheard, disregarded. “Go on,” Maude said.
“Who is your next of kin? You didn’t answer that on the forms.”
“Like I told the other nurse, I don’t have a next of kin.”
The nurse sighed as if she didn’t believe her. “Nobody?”
“No one.”
“So you weren’t born like regular people, but you dropped down from the sky?”
Edmund could tell that nurse had gone too far. “Look lady,” Maude finally said with anger in her voice, “if you don’t wanna be bothered with me then you can sail your ass up out of this room. Because what you aren’t gonna do is disrespect me like that.”
“I’m not trying to disrespect you.”
“I told you I don’t have a next of kin. Why you keep pushing it?”
“Let me put it this way,” the nurse said. “If something happens to you, who should we call to pick up your body or whatever? Your parents?”
“No.”
“Your husband?”
“I’m not married.
“Your children?”
“I don’t have any.”
“You must think I was born yesterday. A woman like you don’t have any children? I don’t buy it.”
Maude frowned. “I don’t give a good gotdamn what you don’t buy lady! Just leave me alone!”
But Edmund could tell that nurse didn’t think enough of Maude to even give her the curtesy of leaving her alone. “What about a boyfriend?” the nurse asked her. “Surely you’ve got a boyfriend.”
“No I don’t,” Maude said. Which for some strange reason pleased Edmund.
“No boyfriend either?” the still-skeptical nurse asked.
“I told you I don’t have a boyfriend.” Just saying that word caused Johnny’s betrayal to surface again. “I mean, I did have a boyfriend but. . . Not anymore. He’s married.”
“So your boyfriend is a married man?”
“No! I wouldn’t date a married man.”
“That’s what you just said.”
“That’s not what I said. I said. . .You know what? Just get out of my room. That’s what I’m saying. Just take your nasty ass and leave my room right now!”
“With pleasure!” the nurse said as she turned with umbrage and with her clipboard and hurried to the door. When she flung it all the way open she was shocked to see the chief of surgery standing on the other side. “Dr. Keating? I would have never expected to see our chief of surgery standing here.”
When Maude heard his name, she immediately sat up in bed. He was there? He found out and came to see about her? Or was it a different Dr. Keating?
But then she heard his voice.
“Tell your supervisor to come to this room at once.”
“Yes sir,” the no-longer confident nurse said. “Right away, sir.” And then she slithered away.
What surprised Maude was that he was the chief of surgery.
Natasha never mentioned that. But then again, they were never close like that.
And she didn’t exactly have time to mention anything extra that day she gave Maude that list. They were just colleagues once upon a time and nothing more.
But to save her own career she had to save Natasha. Which would forever interlink them.
But Edmund wasn’t there because of her association with his sister whatsoever. He was there because of her association with him. Which was so brief it should not have been so impactful. But it was. He could not explain why it was, but it was.
He slowly walked into the room. He was pleased to see her sitting up in bed and looking none the worse for wear, but he kept his face stoic. Because he felt so guilty! But was that all he felt?
And although Maude was relieved to see somebody she at least halfway knew in that awful hospital, she curbed her enthusiasm on seeing him too. He looked like he didn’t particularly want to be there. “Good morning,” she said to him.
As soon as he saw her, that same sensation of warmth, of concern, of a deep-seated feeling for her he couldn’t even verbalize overtook him once again. And it baffled him even more than the first time.
Because this time it wasn’t just a fleeting sensation.
Seeing her in that hospital bed, looking so alone and dazed all because he didn’t care enough to call her a cab or even call up his own driver to take her where she had to go, did something to him.
It would have been so easy for him to have helped her.
It would have been so easy for him to have protected her so that she would not have been so brutally attacked.
But his selfish ass didn’t even think about it last night.
He wanted her out of his house so he didn’t end up in bed with her.
So he didn’t have yet another woman to deal with when Teri and Shannon were enough already.
That was his entire motivation for letting her go. Which disgusted him now.
He unbuttoned his suitcoat, placed his hands in his pockets, and made his way to her bed. “Good morning,” she said to him again even though he never responded to her the first time.
But she stared at him as he moved so effortlessly in his fancy suit and looked all freshly scrubbed and ready to take on whatever the day might bring.
He seemed so unperturbed by what happened to her last night that a part of her was pissed with his seeming disinterest. Why was he even there, she wondered?
When he closed that door on her and left her out there in the dark all alone like she was a stray dog that had interrupted his night, she tried to play the fearless grown up who knew what she was doing.
But as she made her way towards the front of that subdivision, she was scared to death.
She watched those true-crime shows on TV.
Anything could have happened to her! And as that fear began to grip her, she started sprinting trying to get to that guard booth.
At least when she got to the guard booth there would be somebody there to watch over her until her Uber came. But she got no grace there either.
But she was dead wrong about Edmund. He wasn’t disinterested.
He was overly interested. That was the problem.
He didn’t respond to her good morning out of malice, but because he had a heaviness still on his heart that he was trying to shake.
And as per his usual behavior, he turned inward when he had something heavy on his mind.
People could talk to him all day long, but he was in his own little world.
That was Edmund. But Maude didn’t know him like that. All she saw was selfishness.
He grabbed her chart hanging on the end-of-bed clipboard and reviewed it with furrowed brows as if he was in deep concentration.
Maude waited for him to finish, but he seemed to be flipping pages and reading every word.
Then he stopped reading and just stood there for a few seconds, as if something in that chart had disturbed him.
Then he put the chart back on the clip, and then slowly walked up to her bedside.
When he got beside her bed, he looked down at her with that still-pensive look on his face. Then he placed two fingers on the side of her neck, feeling around it as if he was checking for a bump or a lump. “How do you feel?” he asked her as his sky-blue eyes stared unblinkingly at her.
His touch touched her in a way that should not have felt so meaningful, just as it had last night, but she managed to keep her composure. “I feel a little stiff, if you wanna know the truth. But all things considered, I feel great.”
But the look on his face didn’t say she was so great to him. He even pulled up a chair and sat at her bedside. Why on earth would he do that? What did he see in her chart?
Edmund leaned back and crossed his legs. He looked so elegant to Maude that it made her wonder why was he there at all?
Then he said: “He didn’t rape you.”
She wasn’t sure if that was a question or a statement. And why would that be so high up on his list of questions or statements? He didn’t kill you would have been first on her list! She studied him. “No. He didn’t do that. Thank God.”
“But he tried?”
“I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.”