Chapter 10 #2
“It’s not like we really get a choice sometimes. I think he was just enjoying the last of the rain. We were almost two hours later getting out than they said we would be. Maybe he thought he’d be home before the rain hit.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Do you think he rides motorcycles in the winter?”
I pulled onto the main drag through Sawtooth, heading straight for Dr. Pendelton’s office. I slowed down for a woman with a young boy in a stroller, darting across the street to her truck.
The wind knocked the hood off her head and the cover off of her baby’s stroller.
I couldn’t help but smile at the look of elation on her little boy’s face as he threw his hands up in glee as the water touched him.
“No, I don’t think he does,” I admitted. “Rain is tough. Snow is, by my best guess, likely impossible for a motorcycle to navigate through. Now, a snowmobile? Yeah, I think he’d ride one of those.”
“What’s a snowmobile?” she asked.
For the next few minutes as we drove and got out of the car, we discussed the merits of owning four snowmobiles, one for each person that was living at our house.
By the time we got into the doctor’s office, we’d moved onto different topics of discussion.
Dinner and a movie.
“Maybe we should do sushi.”
I looked at my five—almost six-year-old and just shook my head. “You’re so spoiled. I didn’t even know what sushi was until I could pay for it myself.”
She pursed her lips and blew me a kiss. “If I’m spoiled, it’s because you made me that way.”
That was true.
I’d been so guilty that she’d lost her father and then had been so sick that I’d given her anything she could ever want.
Ice cream for dinner? Anything to make her pick her head up and smile.
Sushi and crab? If that got her to eat, so be it.
As we got to the receptionist’s desk I couldn’t help but smile at her frazzled look. “What’s going on?”
“Dr. Pendelton is delivering a baby.” She paused. “I know you’re supposed to come today.”
I saw a red truck pull up outside and turned my head to the side to see Odin get out of his truck and head up the stairs to the connected building next door.
“Any way that I could get that blood and go next door to get Odin to do it?” I asked curiously.
I was sure that I could get him to agree.
Plus, if I didn’t get it to her today, I might not be able to get her in until next week due to state testing at her school.
And I hated the thought of seeing her go downhill in any way, even minutely.
The receptionist looked out the window and paused. “You think Odin—Dr. Mayer—will agree to that?”
I knew he would.
“Yes,” I said. “Want me to run over there and ask?”
She blinked. “Yeah. Sure.”
I caught Wendy’s hand and headed next door, hoping that there weren’t any dead bodies out on the morgue table for Wendy to see.
When I got inside it was to see Odin half-dressed, yanking a wet t-shirt off over his head.
He paused and looked over his shoulder. “You knock?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes. But you’re the one who left the door open.”
“Oh, you’re big, Mr. Odin,” Wendy pointed out. “What’s that scar on your chest?”
I studied said scar and wondered about it myself.
“Nothing of importance,” he said as he reached for a t-shirt hanging on a hook by his desk.
He shrugged it on, then gestured at me. “You give me a minute to change my clothes?”
“Sure,” I said as I turned Wendy around and we went to watch out the front door. “Wendy, don’t look back.”
Wendy sighed. “I mean, really? It’s not like he doesn’t have anything that Grandpa doesn’t have.
I walked in on him once while he was in the shower, and he shouted at me to leave.
Uncle Harvey told me that I was a pest. Did you know that Uncle Harvey and Grandpa both have a birthmark on their butt cheeks? ”
I sighed. “Why would you know anything about Uncle Harvey?”
“He told me,” she said. “I have one on my neck right here. And Uncle Harvey told me at least I didn’t have one on my ass like him.”
I sighed, unable to come up with anything else to say.
“Done,” Odin said.
We both turned around and Wendy cooed. “Oh, that shirt looks soft. Can I touch it?”
Odin grunted. “No.”
Wendy shrugged.
“What are you doing here?” Odin asked me.
I gestured next door. “I have a favor to ask. Dr. Pendelton is delivering a baby, and Wendy needs her transfusion today. She has school testing all the rest of the week, which means that she won’t be able to come in until next week sometime. That is if Dr. Pendelton can fit her in.”
Did I sound as desperate as I felt?
I didn’t know why this was actively giving me internal hives, but just the thought of her being a single day late was making me twitchy.
Odin grunted. “Okay. Give me five minutes. Sit her at my desk.”
I sat her at his desk and tried to keep her from touching everything there.
She snatched a pencil up before I could stop her and gasped. “It’s pink!”
I smothered a smile before saying, “I’m sure it was free.”
She yanked open one of his desk drawers and squealed. “There’s more pink pencils!”
Okay, maybe it wasn’t given to him after all.
“And they’re Ticonderoga.” She ran a finger through them before I could snatch her hand out and close the drawer. “He has good taste.”
I snorted and gently removed her hand. “We don’t go through people’s things, remember?”
“You let me go through yours,” she pointed out.
“I don’t let you go through mine,” I corrected her. “I tell you not to, and you do it anyway.”
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” she mimicked.
I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped.
That was my mother coming out in her. I think she said that particular phrase at least three times a day.
“Second Pratt I’ve had in my chair this month,” Odin mused as he came back into the room carrying blood, tubing, gloves, and everything else he would need to get her started.
“How long is this going to take, Mr. Odin?”
“How long does it usually take?” Odin asked.
“A couple of hours,” she sighed. “Do I have to wear one of those monitors?”
Odin’s lips twitched. “Yep.”
“Fine,” she grumbled.
He got the transfusion started, and Wendy never made a peep at being pricked with a needle.
She hadn’t since she was a small kid.
That’s what you get with constantly ill children, though. They’re not affected by much.
Odin’s hands were adept for being so dang large.
“Don’t they say that doctors aren’t generally as good at finding veins as nurses?” I asked curiously.
“Generally, yes,” he mused. “I start a lot, though.”
He didn’t say why or how, and I didn’t push.
I did, however, wonder what kind of practice he got when he was working with dead people.
He hadn’t had any trouble starting mine the other day…
“I think you did splendidly,” Wendy mused. “This chair is huge. Can I have some of your pink Ticonderoga pencils?”
My eye twitched.
“How do you know I have more?”
“Because I opened your drawers,” she said. “Do you have any snacks?”
He hung the bag of blood on the same coat hook that he’d used for me the other day and opened his desk drawer. He pulled out a couple before saying, “Just don’t tell anyone where you got them. I don’t want them asking.”
Wendy cupped them to her chest like they were precious.
He walked away and came back a few minutes later with some monitoring equipment that was typical for when you were getting a blood transfusion.
I’d had it explained to me by Dr. Pendelton that, though they didn’t expect anything to go wrong, they still wanted to make sure.
And the only way to do that was to monitor the levels with equipment.
It looked way scarier than it actually was, according to him.
I actually liked to hear the sound of Wendy’s heart. It reminded me that she was still here, and thriving.
Once he had Wendy settled, he pulled out some blank computer paper and set it on his desk in front of her. Wendy smiled and got to work practicing her letters.
Odin went to work, doing something in the large room behind me.
I sat on the edge of the desk then so I could keep an eye on both of them.
Wendy was perfectly content.
Meanwhile, Odin looked partially frustrated.
“What is it?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
Odin looked up and shrugged. “Work stuff.”
He didn’t tell me that he couldn’t tell me, but it was obvious.
The door to the office opened and a large man wearing a sheriff’s uniform stepped inside.
The scowl on his face had my heart hammering.
He stopped when he saw Wendy and me and frowned.
“Black,” Odin said. “What’s up?”
Black.
Sheriff Black.
I hadn’t had a chance to meet him yet, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. The sheriff’s office sometimes brought animals in that would need checked out or they’d found along the side of the road.
Eventually I’d meet them all.
“Who is this?” Black frowned.
“Someone I met on jury duty,” he answered. “Her daughter receives blood transfusions once every three months. Pendelton couldn’t do it today, so she asked me.”
Black’s eyes tightened around the edges as he narrowed them at me.
I shifted on the desk I was leaning against and stood up, feeling suddenly cautious.
“Not the best place for it since you were supposed to go over your findings with me,” he pointed out.
“It’ll be fine,” Odin said. “She’ll keep her kid distracted.”
The way he said it made it sound like a threat.
I sighed and turned Wendy’s chair to the side so that it was facing the wall and not the open room behind her.
Odin nodded and headed toward a rectangular drawer along the wall.
He pulled it open, and I saw feet tucked away inside.
I winced and pulled out my phone.
Maybe this wasn’t the best idea but…
“What about Coco?” Wendy asked.
“Coco?” I questioned.
“Your name. If you don’t like Con-Con,” Wendy mused. “I think this one needs sharpened. Do you have one?”
Instead of looking for one, I pulled out another one of the sharpened pencils from the drawer and handed it to her.
As I did, I got a glance of the body that was covered by a sheet.
My heart instantly ached.
I wasn’t a stranger to loss.
I’d lost quite a bit over my lifetime.
But I’d never seen a dead body. Nor had I seen a dead body belonging to a teen.
He was so young…
Odin’s eyes caught mine over the body and his eyes narrowed.
I looked down as he and Black talked.
Odin pointed at things along the kid’s neck. Gestured to something on his hands. Then again at his fingernails.
They spoke for a while before the boy was pushed back into the freezer and the door was closed.
I thought that it was over, but I was proved wrong when they moved to a second drawer and pulled that one open.
This was the other kid that’d died.
What was going on?
They spoke some more. Gestured some more. Examined some more.
Then they were tucking that boy away into the freezer as well.
Black moved to lean against the table as he went over some paperwork that was on the center island.
Odin joined him, pressing his hands on either side of the island and leaning in, exposing corded, muscular forearms.
“Coco.” I looked down at my daughter who showed me her work. “What do you think?”
My lips twitched when I saw the large blob on the page with arms and legs. The letters “ODIN” were above the large blob.
“That’s pretty great,” I said. “And you spelled his name right.”
“I asked my teacher about it yesterday. She told me how to spell it. I drew him with paint at school,” she explained.
My lips twitched. “Is that right?”
“Constance?”
I looked up to find Odin looking at me, Black right beside him but looking at the papers again.
I stood up and walked toward them, curious.
“Yes?”