Chapter 8
He had a feeling that there was something wrong with Mulkeen.
He did bump his head when he fell, but it was more than that.
He ordered more tests to find out what had happened that made him so docile.
The man was usually so upset about everything, and he had not commented once about he and Doone being in the same room working. It was out of character for him.
Waiting for the tests to be read, he hoped that he was wrong in that he was just having an off day.
He could almost wish for him to get upset with him just so he’d feel better about the man.
But he was the same—perhaps a little worse for wear—the next morning when he checked in on him.
That worried him a great deal. He decided to talk to him.
“What’s going on with you? This is more than just a few bruises and some stitches that you needed.
Have you gotten bad news or something? You’re not the same man you were before you left the hospital.
” He told him that he was just tired. “You seem to be more than just tired. Tell me what happened to you the morning that you fell with your dog? Did you bump your head a little harder than you first thought? I’m going to run a CT scan to see what’s going on. ”
“I’m just tired, that’s all. I feel like I need a long nap or something.
” He examined his eyes and saw that they were a little slow on dilating.
“When I felt I was thinking that I needed to trim the grass now that it’s getting warm out.
That’s all. I did hit my head on the mailbox, but my shoulder is what hurt me the most. Then my legs got all tangled up in the leash, and Pretty Boy thought that he was in trouble when I yelled at him and tried to get away.
That’s what caused the most cuts on my legs. Nothing more.”
“I’m worried about you, Drake. You’re not your usual cranky self.
” That made the man laugh, and he did feel better about that.
“I’m going to run some more tests on your hard head.
We might have missed something in the first round of them.
Do you have anyone that we can call? I know your sister said she wasn’t coming in, but is there anyone else that I can call in for you? ”
“McFarlen. She’s about the best nurse this hospital has.
If you could convince her to come in and…
well, I was going to say to hold my hand but she’d just as soon tear it off and beat me with it I think.
” He said that he’d call her now that he thought it was her day off.
“Then don’t bother her. She more than likely has plans for the day instead of sitting with an old man like me that has given her such a hard time with working here. ”
“I’ll call her and let her decide.” He reached out to her then and told her what was going on.
She said she’d come right in and sit with him as she didn’t have anything to do right now.
“You just lie here and take a nap. When you wake up perhaps you’ll feel a bit better and McFarlen will be here giving you a hard time. ”
He ordered an MRI and a CT scan to be done of his body.
They had to have missed something when they did those tests when he first came into the emergency department.
He wanted answers and he wanted them today.
As soon as Doone came into the department, he sent her to Drake’s room and had her sit with him.
When he went by his room a little later, she was talking to him and holding his hand.
It was the strangest thing that he’d ever seen but made him more determined to find out what was wrong with the elderly gentleman.
It was found on the second set of tests.
The man had a blood clot on his brain that was pressing against his eyes.
They set him up for surgery as soon as he could find someone to do the operation for him.
They’d not know what they had until they got inside of his head and that worried him a great deal.
The man was going under the knife not five hours after the tests were read, it was that serious.
“I told him that I’d be there when he woke up.
” Doone had been crying and he wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her.
“He said that he didn’t want me to call his sister and let her know.
She wouldn’t come anyway she told me when I called her before.
Bad blood between them and she wasn’t ready to forgive him just yet.
It might well be too late to wait until later, but he won’t allow me to call her. ”
“I just knew there was something wrong by the way he kept quiet all the time. He also kept telling me how tired he was.” They both decided to wait until the surgery was over before going home.
There would be plenty of time, he figured as the surgeon had said that it would be at least three to four hours before they knew anything.
So they were going to wait on the results to make sure that he was going to be all right.
They were in the cafeteria when the surgeon was ready to talk to them.
Drake had a brain bleed and they were going to see if they could drain it rather than to let it go down on its own.
As soon as, as his doctor, he gave permission for it to happen, the surgeon told them that he stood a better chance of living if they were to take care of it while they still had him open.
Now it was going to be a waiting game to see what results he had after it was taken care of.
Falkner didn’t want anything to happen to the elderly man. And neither did Doone.
The surgery lasted for six hours. When he was taken to recovery, he was holding his own and doing well, they’d been told.
As soon as he could have visitors, they took turns going to see him, and it was nearly midnight when they were told to go home and rest. Neither of them left the hospital for fear that he’d wake and they weren’t there to see him.
Finally after two more days of him being in intensive care, they decided to run home and get cleaned up.
Neither of them had been sleeping all that well and it wouldn’t do him any good if they were down too.
So Doone went home first and when she returned, Falkner did the same thing.
Drake had gone through a great deal in the last seventy-two hours and they wanted to be there when he woke up to make sure that he was going to be his cranky old self.
It was another two days before he started waking up.
It would only be for a few minutes at a time and then he was so groggy that he didn’t know what was going on.
But they stuck with him throughout it all and were glad to see that he was making progress.
On the fifth day after surgery, Falkner got a call from the police department.
“It’s Ms. McFarlen. She’s putting up a big fuss about not being able to get to her place.
Something about the people that live around her stealing her things.
I tried to tell her that all her things had been moved out of the house that she’d been in but she’s not taking no for an answer.
I hate to ask this of you, Falkner, but could you…
I don’t know, come down and have a word or two with her?
She’s driving every one of my men insane with her wanting this and that.
” He told him that he’d not be able to be there until later today.
“That’s fine. Your daddy was in to see her too and he told her that she was going to prison.
As you can well imagine that didn’t go over well.
But she seems to think that her daughter is going to get her out.
Something about her owing her. I don’t know none about that. ”
“Neither would my wife.” He had told most of the town that he had been married a few days ago.
It occurred to him that they’d been married for just over a week when he made his way to the doctors’ lounge later that afternoon.
With everything that was going on, it was hard for him to even believe that it had been that long.
“I’ll go and see her, but I’m sure it’s only going to make it worse.
She doesn’t care for me overly much because of the relationship I have with her daughter.
I’ll see if I can get Robert, her husband, to go down and see her, too.
He might have better luck than I would have. ”
“I know that we’re not to contact Doone.
She said that the only way she wanted to be notified was if she were dead.
I didn’t understand that until I spent some time with her.
She’s not a very nice person, is she?” He told him he didn’t know that half of it.
“Well, I do know that she’s not getting out of here and will go straight to prison after the trial.
They take fraud seriously when it comes to government facilities and lying on the forms that get you help. ”
Now, it was nearly four o’clock, and he was headed to the jail to talk to Meggie. He didn’t want to talk to her about anything; it would be all the things that she wanted to happen to her, and none of it would be reality.
He did wonder if she was getting what she felt she deserved and had to laugh a little.
He hoped that she’d get everything she deserved, and that would be the end of it.
But she’d never see it that way and would be put out with thinking that she wasn’t sitting in the lap of luxury while sitting in the local jail.
His dad was there waiting for him when he got to the jail.