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“Please, Dr. Mercy,” came Crystal’s soft, hoarse voice. “Can’t I stay here?”
Mercy sighed and looked over into the little girl’s solemn eyes. Her softheartedness always got her into trouble. But she supposed she could call Dr. Boxley as a consult. He was an expert on CF patients, especially children, and he’d given her advice on Crystal’s care before. And Robert Simeon wouldn’t mind checking her out as a favor. With his specialty in internal medicine, he’d had some experience with this, and he lived and practiced right here in town. And the ICU staff at this hospital was the best anywhere. Maybe…
She looked once more into Odira’s hopeful face and sighed. “I’ll set you up for an admission.”
The strain of worry gradually eased from the older woman’s heavy expression. She walked out into the hallway toward the back. “That’s our doc,” she called over her shoulder.
Chapter Two
D eep-voiced curses and shouts careened down the short hallway of the Herald, Missouri, emergency room, followed by the whiff of stale beer and marijuana smoke. The hospital was in for another exciting Saturday night on the shore of Lake of the Ozarks.
Dr. Lukas Bower stepped to an uncurtained window in the E.R. staff break room and stared out at the glimmer of frosty moonlight over the water. Ice crusted the shoreline but didn’t reach the center. He could see the bare branches of trees swaying in the wind like the fingers of skeletons, grasping through the air to catch the wispy clouds that drifted past.
He shivered. This place gave him the creeps, and he’d only been here a few days. He couldn’t say exactly why the town bothered him so much. Maybe it was just because he missed Mercy and Knolls and the friends he’d made there—the life to which he planned to return as soon as the new emergency room was built and his short-term contract here was up. Or maybe it was the depressing, uncooperative attitude of some of the staff here. Or maybe it was his own attitude.
He frowned at his image in the reflection from the window, at the harsh brilliance of fluorescent light that caught and bounced back from his glasses. With so many night and weekends shifts, he’d almost forgotten what the inside of a church looked like on Sunday morning, or how the crisp winter air smelled in the Mark Twain National Forest.
But by no means had he forgotten what Mercy Richmond looked like, the rich alto sound of her voice, the warmth and sweet fragrance of her on those rare occasions lately when they’d seen each other. The thoughts he was having only made things worse.
A shouted epithet echoed through the room once more. He turned from the window and glanced toward the open break-room door. All he’d heard for the past ten minutes was the arguing of the bikers who’d engaged in a brawl down the road at the apartments—if the rickety string of rock buildings by the lake could be called that.
The shouting grew louder. Lukas grimaced. Should he call the police to come and stand guard? With a population of about three thousand, Herald, Missouri, was only about a third the size of Knolls, and the police force had the same number of personnel. This was a rough town.
He walked back into the small five-bed E.R. to see if the X-rays were back on the patient who was shouting the loudest. They weren’t. Brandon Glass, the Saturday night tech, had to take care of both X-ray and lab, and sometimes he couldn’t keep up. He never attempted to disguise his resentment when Lukas gave him more orders.
“I’m not done with you yet, Moron,” one of the bikers muttered to the other through the thin curtain. “If my baby’s got a scratch on her, I’ll take it out of your hide.”
The privacy curtains were open, and Lukas turned around to glance at both men. The mouthy one held an ice pack to his nose, and the skin around his eyes had already begun to darken. Blood matted strands of his brown hair and stained his black T-shirt. Thanks to his running monologue, everybody within earshot knew that his “baby” was his Harley-Davidson. Thanks to his temper—and that of his antagonist in the next cubicle—and a broken beer bottle, his left forearm had just been prepped for suture repair.
Lukas sniffed. The room even smelled like motor oil and alcohol…and pot.
The other biker, who wore black jeans and boots and a black leather vest with nothing else, lay with his head turned way from his adversary. His name was Marin—from which, obviously, his biker buddies had hung the moniker of Moron, like little kids taunting one another. Marin’s antagonist attitude had apparently dissipated with the dwindling effects of the alcohol and other drugs coursing through his veins. His eyes gradually closed as Lukas watched. Good. They were winding down. Maybe the police could concentrate on breaking up barroom fights tonight. And maybe they could spend some time searching for that little girl who had disappeared from the Herald city park last week—if that acre of rusted swings and overgrown grass could be called a park. Lukas had overheard a conversation about that yesterday morning between a couple of policemen who were waiting for their prisoner to be X-rayed. Rumor said it was a kidnapping, and she apparently wasn’t the first child to disappear lately in Central Missouri. It made Lukas sick to think about it.
“Dr. Bower, the films are back,” came a strong, deep female voice behind Lukas.
He turned to see Tex McCaffrey—no one ever called her Theresa—hanging the X-rays up on the lighted panel.
“I had to do them myself. Godzilla’s in a bad mood tonight.” She cast a glare toward the open door that led directly into the radiology department. “Can’t get good help around here anymore.”
Lukas wouldn’t have dreamed of arguing with her. Tex was the paramedic-bouncer in this joint, and she served as the E.R. nurse on Saturday nights and quite a few weekdays, from what Lukas could pick up from the nursing schedule. If something came in she couldn’t handle, she could call for a nurse from the twenty-bed floor—not that Lukas had heard of that happening. He couldn’t imagine efficient, self-assured Tex getting anything she couldn’t handle. In just the short amount of time he’d worked with her, he’d been very impressed by her skills…and her size. He didn’t have the nerve to ask how tall she was, but he had to look up at her to make eye contact, so she was taller than five-ten.
Lukas checked the films, nodded, returned to the sink. Nothing broken. “Ready to help me with the sutures?” he asked.
“Got it all set up. I cleansed it, then irrigated it with five hundred of saline.” She paused and grinned in the direction of the glowering patient in question. She blew a couple of stray strands of curly dark blond hair from her face. “Care to guess his alcohol level? Three-twenty.” She almost sounded proud of him as she stepped in his direction. “I put the suture tray out of his reach.”
Broad-shouldered Tex was in her early thirties and could probably throw the whole biker gang on their kickstands if they got too rowdy. She was also Lukas’s next-door neighbor in a duplex at the edge of town. Her first cousin was Lauren McCaffrey, who was once one of Lukas’s favorite nurses down at Knolls—until she got him involved in this mess.
Lukas pulled on a pair of sterile gloves as he followed Tex’s athletic form to the curtained exam cubicle. She had set out 5.0 nylon for the suture and the requested lidocaine for anesthetic. Good. He glanced at the patient’s name on the chart again, hoping he could pronounce the last name properly. Proper name enunciation helped raise the patient comfort level, and he really wanted this particular patient to be comfortable.
“We’re ready to start, Mr. Golho—”
“I told you when I came in, don’t call me mister,” the muscled, tattooed man growled from beneath the ice pack on his nose. “Nobody calls me mister when I’m on the road.”
Oh, yeah. Lukas glanced at a note Tex had penciled in on her chart. So much for proper name enunciation. How could he have forgotten? “Catcher.”
“Ha!” came a voice from the other side of the curtain. Apparently Catcher’s antagonist hadn’t fallen asleep after all. “Why don’t you tell ’em where you got the name?”
“Shut up.”
“You want to know where it came from, Doc? They called him that ’cause he used to ride without a shield, and he caught bugs in his teeth.”
“I said shut up!” Catcher came halfway off his exam bed before Tex grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back.
“How do you feel about another tattoo, Catcher?” she asked, giving him a leering grin as she eased him back onto the exam bed. “Dr. Bower, here, is gonna test your pain tolerance.”
While Lukas cringed at her choice of words, Catcher repositioned the ice pack on his nose and laid his head back against the pillow. “No prob. Go to it.” He closed his eyes.
Lukas nodded. “Okay, Catcher. Have you ever had an allergic reaction to any anesthetic in the past?”
One eye came open. “Why?”
“Because I’ll be injecting lidocaine into the wound.”
“No, you won’t.” Both eyes were open now, and their dark brown-gray gaze held Lukas in a hard stare.
“Excuse me?”
“No ’caines. Can’t do them.”
No lidocaine? No anesthesia? Lukas did not want to hear this. He did not feel safe sticking a needle and Dermalon into the flesh of an already combative drunk. “You mean you’ve had a reaction in the past?”
“I mean I’ve been busting a cocaine habit, and I’m not going back to that.” Catcher took a firmer grip on his ice pack. “Just do it.”
Lukas looked at Tex and shrugged. Coming to work in Herald had been a big mistake. Oh, Lord, let my fingers be tender, because any moment I may have to eat them.
“Am I gonna die now?” Crystal’s matter-of-fact tone stabbed the silence in the exam room.
Mercy turned from her vigil by the telephone, where she’d been waiting for Dr. Boxley to return her call. Thank goodness Odira was still in the other room. “No, honey.” She got up and crossed to Crystal’s side and pressed the back of her hand against the child’s face. “You’re just sick again. Are you feeling worse?”
“No.”
Mercy gently stuck the wand of the tympanic thermometer into Crystal’s ear. She waited a few seconds to get a reading. The temp was almost back down to normal. “Aren’t you feeling any better?”
Crystal tilted her head sideways, seriously considering the question. “Yes.”
Mercy sat down on the exam stool next to the bed and took Crystal’s left hand in both of her own. “Then why do you think you’re going to die?”
Crystal’s clear water-blue eyes held Mercy’s for a long, quiet moment. “A girl at school told me.”
“Then don’t listen to her.”
“But then I asked Gramma. She said I might, but when I do, I’ll go straight to heaven and I’ll never get sick again.” She paused for a few seconds. “I’d like that.”
As a mother, Mercy couldn’t help imagining her own daughter saying those words. She’d never heard a child so young expressing a wish to die. What hurt the worst was the realization of Crystal’s suffering, both physical and emotional. From a year of treating Crystal, Mercy knew that the little girl, with her soft heart, worried more about her great-grandma Odira than she did about herself. Odira wasn’t in the best health, with her excess weight and high blood pressure. What would become of Crystal if anything happened to her great-grandmother?
“But, Crystal, we want to keep you here with us longer,” Mercy said softly. “I know it might be selfish of us, when heaven is so wonderful, but do you think you could be strong for Gramma and me?” Jesus, what do I say? How can this be happening? She tried not to think about the situation, but the questions grew too numerous too quickly. Her faith still felt so fragile.
“Gramma needs me,” Crystal said quietly. “I’ll stay awhile.”
They heard the sound of Odira’s footsteps and heavy breathing, and then she came lumbering through the open exam-room door. “I didn’t even think about using a Popsicle to get Crystal’s temperature down. Here’s a red one, her favorite. You’ve got a nice little freezer in there. Looks like you’ve got that back room all set up like an emergency room. I bet you use it a lot, what with the hospital—”
They heard the crash of a door flying open out in the waiting room, then the boom of a familiar voice—like a jet during takeoff. “Dr. Mercy! You in here?”
Clarence held the door open for Buck to carry Kendra through. “Dr. Mercy!” he called again. “Got those patients for you.” He tapped Buck’s shoulder and gestured toward the open doorway that led to the exam rooms at the back of the waiting room. When he’d telephoned Mercy she’d told him just to bring Kendra to the first exam room. Clarence knew where everything was. He should. He’d been here enough times.
After he’d finally lost enough weight to get around on his feet a little better, Dr. Mercy had made him come to her office once a week so she could weigh him and check him over. He hated going, hated the way the other patients in the waiting room stared at him and whispered. Still, when Mercy asked him to do something, he did it. If she asked nice.
Mercy came rushing down the hallway, her long dark hair drawn back in a loose ponytail, wearing baggy old jeans and a thick wool sweater. Her dark eyes looked tired. “Hi, Buck. Bring her back here. I have a bed ready for her. I’ll need you and Clarence to help keep an eye on her.” She reached forward and laid a gentle hand against Kendra’s cheek, and some of the tiredness cleared from her eyes. “Hang in there, Kendra. We’ll get you on some oxygen.” She pulled the stethoscope from around her neck, warmed it in her hand for a second, then placed it against Kendra’s chest.
Clarence watched Mercy as she guided Buck into the exam room and helped him lay his wife on the bed. He enjoyed watching her work. When she treated patients, she acted as if they were a part of her own family. Of course, that also meant she nagged them like family. At five feet eight, she was four inches shorter than Clarence, but there were times when she seemed bigger than life, especially when she stood over him as he balanced on that dinky little exam bed wearing nothing but his shorts and a sheet.
But the times she made the biggest impact on him were when she saw his depression and bullied it out of him. He didn’t get that way as often as he used to, but some days the heaviness of his thoughts messed him up big-time. Those were the days he didn’t want to diet, didn’t want to exercise, didn’t even want to get out of bed. That was when her tender toughness showed itself. She could look into his eyes and say, “Clarence, we’re going for a walk. Get your shoes on,” or “You haven’t come this far to give up. Just get through today,” and then she would tell Ivy to keep watch. And Ivy could be the queen of mean.
As soon as Buck eased Kendra down onto the exam bed, Kendra covered her face with her hands. Her body shook with sobs that grew louder and more forceful. “Why didn’t you just let me die?” She turned her head sideways on the pillow, and her light brown hair, as soft-looking as a sparrow’s breast, fell across her cheek. “Everybody’d be better off that way.”
Buck took a deep breath and hung his head, his square jaw working like a grinding machine. Buck was a big man, lots of muscles, with hair cut so short that his ears, which were already big, looked like doorknobs. He had a big heart, and nobody doubted that he loved his wife. Except her.
Clarence wished there was something he could do to help them both.
Mercy leaned over. “Kendra, tell me how you feel. Do you have a bad headache?”
Tears dripped across Kendra’s nose onto the pillow, and her lower lip trembled. “Yeah, real bad.”
Mercy gestured to Buck. “Would you please hook up the oxygen? I want her on a one hundred percent nonrebreather mask.” She reached toward a box beside the bed. “Kendra, I’m going to put this little clip on the end of your finger. It’s attached to something called a pulse oximeter, which will tell me how much oxygen you have in your system. And I’m sorry, honey, but I’m going to have to stick you for blood. It’s going to hurt, because I have to go deep enough for an artery. We’ve got to find out how aggressively we need to treat you. Buck, has she been confused?”
“Yes, at first.” Buck scrambled around until he found the tubing and mask he needed. “On the drive in I had the windows open, and she cleared up. Now she just keeps crying.” He stepped back over to his wife’s side.
Mercy leaned over Kendra again. “Are you dizzy? Do you feel sick to your stomach?”
Kendra’s face puckered. She covered it with her hands once more and didn’t reply.
Buck cleared his throat, tried to speak, cleared it again. “She was feeling sick earlier, Dr. Mercy. She had some shortness of breath.”
Mercy turned around and saw Clarence standing in the doorway. “Call an ambulance for me, would you?”
“No!” Kendra cried out. She reached toward Buck, eyes wide and frightened, and tried to sit up. “Don’t let them haul me away!”
“It isn’t for you,” Mercy took Kendra’s arm and eased her back down. “I have another patient tonight. I need to transport her over to the hospital, and I can’t leave you right now.”
Clarence picked up the telephone in the room, then hesitated and frowned at Mercy. “You want to call an ambulance to haul somebody less than a block? Doesn’t make sense to me.”
Mercy checked the pulse oximeter box. “Do you have a better idea? I have a sick child in there, and her great-grandmother isn’t in much better shape.”
“Let me take ’em.” Clarence spoke the words against his will, as if something outside himself were making the decision for him.
“I can drive, long as I can fit behind the wheel. I’m a mechanic, you know. My driver’s license is up to date.”
“Thank you, Clarence. Take my car.” Mercy leaned back over Kendra. “My keys are on the desk in my office, and use the south entrance at the hospital. Get a move on. They’re waiting for the patient.”
For a moment, disbelieving, he could only stare at her. Just like that? He hadn’t driven in two years, and she trusted him with her new car?
And then, in spite of the pain that still lingered in the room from Kendra’s tears and Buck’s stoic silence, he felt a glow of satisfaction that he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. For once, he was on the giving end.
Chapter Three
T ex blotted and held, blotted and held as Lukas finished the last of the twelve interrupted sutures on Catcher’s arm. The big biker hadn’t even grunted through the ordeal. In fact, Lukas was sure that he himself had been the only one who grimaced every time the needle pierced flesh. Even with alcohol to mask the pain, it had to hurt. This man was tough.
Company had begun to arrive halfway through the procedure, as the first of Catcher’s biker friends came clomping into the E.R. carrying plastic packs of pimento cheese sandwiches and chips and soda they’d purchased from the vending machine in the waiting room. After an irritable glance in their direction, Tex had shown no reaction to their arrival. Even when one of the buddies came in and handed half a sandwich to Catcher, Lukas didn’t make a remark. They weren’t supposed to have food in the E.R. and if OSHA found out about the infraction, there would be complaints and fines and forms filled out in quadruplicate, but Lukas wasn’t in the mood to play hall monitor to a bunch of aging tattoos this early on a Sunday morning. Most of them just came in for a minute to check on their buddies, then wandered out to the waiting room, which was separated from the treatment area by a door and a sliding window where the secretary sat.
One husky woman wearing tight denim jeans and a heavy gray sweater shoved through the dividing door, food and soda tucked against her side by her left arm, holding a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in her right hand.
“Hey, Catcher!” she blared. “They treatin’ you okay back here? I’ll bash heads if they’re not.” She took a deep whiff of air. “Phew, smells like medicine and puke back here. Don’t you guys have any air freshener?”
Lukas clipped the nylon thread. “Okay, two more and we’re finished poking you, Catcher.”
Someone else in leather and tattoos stepped into the E.R. doorway from the waiting room beyond. “Hey, look, they got a TV! Hey, nurse, you guys got cable here?” A blare of music screamed through the rooms.
Lukas heard Tex’s sharp intake of breath and caught a glimpse of her angry scowl, and he shook his head at her. “We’re almost finished here.” Lord, please just hold this all together a little longer. Give me patience and compassion.
A loud clank and clatter pierced his concentration. His hands almost jerked the final suture too tightly. Neither he nor Tex could look up from their work just now, but as soon as he’d snipped the last of the threads, Tex put her things down and snapped off her gloves.
“If you’ll finish up here, I’ll check out the crash,” she said.
Lukas could almost see her flexing her muscles as she metamorphosed from Tex the paramedic to Tex the bouncer. Uh-oh. Not only was she about to make a scene, but she was also about to make him look like a coward. He did have a little pride left.
“Um, Tex, why don’t—”
Catcher groaned. “Oh, Doc, I think I’m gonna hurl.”
With a final glance over his shoulder to see Tex strutting off to bash heads, Lukas grabbed an emesis basin. “Breathe in through your nose if you can, Catcher, then out through your mouth. There you go.” He took the ice pack from Catcher’s limp hand and placed it against the man’s forehead.
More voices shouted from the other room. Tex’s was the loudest. “I said put that chair back down where it belongs and give me that coffeepot!”
Lukas had Lauren McCaffrey to thank for all this. Sweet-faced, innocent-eyed Lauren. When her cousin Tex heard through the family grapevine that there was an E.R. physician temporarily without a job, she’d called Lauren, looking for a replacement for a doctor on suspension.
“Scenic views, right there on the Lake of the Ozarks,” Lauren had said. “Small-town E.R. probably a lot like Knolls. It’ll be like a vacation. How much trouble could a five-bed E.R. be?”
And so Lukas had signed on for three months—until the earliest estimated time of completion for the Knolls E.R.
