Judith’s head hit the floor with a sickening thud. She dove for Judith’s head with her hands, cradling it so the violent shaking of her body wouldn’t injure her head any further.
Three pairs of shoes appeared in her peripheral vision. “Get away!” Fenway yelled. “She’s having a seizure! Give her room!”
With surprising ease, she moved Judith onto her side.
“Open her mouth!” Leda screamed. “Open her mouth! She could swallow her tongue!”
Fenway shook her head at the old wives’ tale. “No! That’s not how it works!”
Leda wailed. “Oh—Judith—I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Shut up, Leda,” Fenway snapped. She hadn’t looked at her phone for what time it was when the seizure started, and time seemed to stop as soon as Judith hit the floor.
“But I—”
Judith was still shaking. “Time?” Fenway yelled.
No one answered.
“What’s the fucking time?” Fenway screamed.
“3:11,” Xavier called.
“Is she—” said a female voice. Cynthia? Amanda? Rose?
“shut up!” Fenway yelled. Judith’s head tried to bounce out of Fenway’s hands. She tried to feel where Judith’s head had hit the floor. No blood. “Dad! Go to the door and yell ‘medical emergency’ as loud as you can.”
Her father’s footsteps clapped the floor as he ran, shouting.
“Piper!”
“Yeah?”
“Send every text or call or link—or homing pigeon—to McVie. Tell him to get us out of here now.”
“On it.”
“And then get back over here to move everything out of the way.”
“Don’t die on me, Judith,” Fenway said softly. “Show these people you’re made of stronger stuff.”
But maybe Judith didn’t want to go back to her empty house and fight this terrible cancer without her husband. Without the infuriating man she’d spent the last forty years with. Maybe Judith wanted it this way.
Fenway could only hear the blood pounding in her ears and the roar of rain hitting the roof.
Judith’s legs started to kick out violently and the backs of her heels smashed against the chair legs. “Move those,” Fenway said, and her voice was hoarse.
Fenway had dealt with epileptic patients in the er in Seattle, as well as a couple of others who’d had seizures brought on by cancer. Her textbook pages flashed through her mind. In a study of 5,000 cancer patients, seizures occurred in 12.4% of those patients, and additionally was the main cause of 5% of all neurological manifestations. Take that, Trivia Queen Piper.
The helplessness, though, overwhelmed her, even as Piper moved chairs and Xavier and Amanda looked on with worried faces. Fenway couldn’t do anything—there wasn’t anything to do, except make sure Judith injured herself as little as possible, and then check for injuries when she came to.
A cacophony of sound enveloped Fenway. Her father yelling about the medical emergency, the squeak and grind of chairs on the floor, the labored, uneven breathing of Judith Cygnus, and above it all, the sound of Fenway’s heart pounding in her ears.
Judith likely wouldn’t remember anything—none of her seizure patients ever did. This might very well be Judith’s first seizure. She was late with her medicine, she hadn’t had anything to eat since before nine o’clock, and the cancer had put her in a weakened state.
When would McVie get them out of this courtroom? It had been far too long. She was hungry, she was tired, but she was far from the worst one off. Leda had almost overdosed on her medication, Evans Dahl had a badly sprained ankle—he almost certainly needed to go to the emergency room. And Judith needed an ambulance. As if her medical funds weren’t strained enough. Maybe Fenway could drive her to the hospital.
Fenway closed her eyes.
The shaking started to subside, and Fenway started to relax her hands. Her whole body had tensed up, and she was starting to shake too. Nerves, maybe, or lack of food. Or maybe it was simply the strain she’d been under for the last couple of weeks. Four murders—now five.
The shaking subsided even more, and then it stopped. “Time?” Fenway called, but her voice had no power behind it, and she was drowned out by her father yelling for emergency services.
“Time?” she called again, looking up at Xavier.
“3:13,” Xavier said.
That was only two minutes? Fenway felt like a lifetime had passed with Judith’s head in her hands.
Judith’s eyes fluttered.
Then they opened. She blinked, trying to focus.
“What am I doing on the floor?” she asked, a note of panic in her voice.
“You had a seizure,” Fenway said.
“I’m lying on my side.”
“That’s to keep your airway clear.”
Amanda walked up to them with a black Nidever Forever sweatshirt wadded in her hands, and shook it out. Fenway blinked a couple of times. Judith’s skirt was wet—her bladder had let go during the seizure. Amanda draped the sweatshirt quickly over Judith’s hips, hiding the front of her skirt.
“Who’s yelling?” Judith said.
“My father,” Fenway replied. “We’re trying to get you an ambulance. You hit your head pretty hard on the way down. But you’re not bleeding, which is good.”
Judith pursed her lips.
“Have you had any seizures before, Judith?”
“One, back in March,” Judith said.
“You have epilepsy?”
Judith tried to shake her head. “No. The doctor said it was brought on by the cancer.”
“You take anything for it?”
“Yes. I take, uh, what’s it called? Gabapentin.”
“That’s an epilepsy drug, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. It’s what my doctor prescribed.” She winced. “I have a terrible headache.”
“Dad!” Fenway called. Nathaniel Ferris stopped. “She’s awake now. Hopefully they’re coming with an ambulance.”
“I don’t think anyone is out there,” Ferris said. “And if there is, I don’t know if they can hear us through the door.”
“Okay, it’s fine,” Fenway said. “We’ll figure this out.” She looked down at the woman lying halfway in her lap. “All right—Judith, how do you feel?”
“Like shit,” Judith said.
Fenway nodded. “That’s to be expected. Any pain? You said your head hurt?”
“Like someone’s trying to squeeze my brain from the inside.”
“Your head hurt anywhere else?”
“Like how?”
“You hit your head when you went down. I wasn’t able to get to you in time.”
“Well, I tell you, this day keeps getting better and better,” Judith said, shifting her weight. “What the hell?” She pushed herself up. “Oh, that’s just great. I pissed myself.”
“It happens during seizures. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
Judith laughed. “Yeah, the next time you piss all over yourself I’ll tell you it’s ‘nothing to be embarrassed about.’ Let me know how that works out for you.”
Fenway nodded. “Yeah.”
“And can you just put my head down? My ear is right next to your stomach and it’s grumbling so loud I figured a medevac helicopter was landing on top of me.”
Fenway chuckled and moved, with Judith pushing herself up to her elbows. “Nice to know you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“The day I do is the day I die,” Judith said.
“We don’t need any more of that today,” Fenway said, then caught herself. “Oh—I mean—sorry.”
But Judith hadn’t been listening. “I was kind of hoping I’d wake up and this whole day would just be a bad dream.” She sighed. “No such luck.” She cackled, and then her voice broke. She put her hand over her face. “What the hell am I going to do now?” she said, her voice low. “What the hell am I going to do?”
“Piper,” Fenway said, “see where McVie is, would you?”
“Sure.”
“You sent him a text?”
“About five minutes ago. Then I came down here, but I have another few ideas about what we can do to communicate with him.”
“Really?”
“It depends on how this place is wired, but I think I can use my ip phone to make a phone call to him through the wired connection. I might even be able to start up Skype and tell him to record the session—I could even get a camera on the courtroom—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, Piper. You’re super smart. Just do what you have to do, okay? We’re all ready to be out of here, so let’s go before there are any more medical emergencies.”
Piper nodded and went through the gallery gate to go back to the judge’s bench.
“I—I don’t think I want to get up,” Judith said. “I know I’m in the middle of the aisle, but my head is splitting.”
“That’s fine,” Fenway said. “You’re okay right there.”
“Can you imagine being the designer for this courtroom?” Judith said, staring at the ceiling. “All this beautiful dark wood, the architectural design of the chairs and the lighting, and the first day it’s in use, it gets shot up and an old lady pees right in the middle of the floor.”
“You could have just said you preferred neoclassic style,” Fenway said with a crooked smile. “There’s no need to get urine involved in your critique.”
Judith laughed, and it turned into the dry, hacking cough that Fenway had heard in the Cygnus’s house the week before.
“Sorry,” she said, when the coughs died down.
“Any word from McVie yet, Piper?” Fenway called.
No answer.
Fenway turned to the judge’s bench, but since she was sitting on the floor of the aisle, she couldn’t see anything behind it. “Piper?”
“Uh—yeah, Fenway, I’m here.” Piper’s voice was shaky.
Fenway pulled herself to her feet. “Everything okay?”
“You better—you should just come up here.” Piper’s voice didn’t have the edge of confidence it usually had.
Fenway looked down at Judith. “I’ll be right back.”
“Thank you, Miss Stevenson.”
“For what?”
“For taking care of me. You didn’t have to.”
Fenway nodded, and hurried through the gate and up the side steps. Piper sat at the desk, pushed back about five feet, her head in her hands.
“What happened?” Fenway said, and her eyes widened.
The decorative gavel sat askew on Piper’s keyboard.
Piper’s laptop screen was smashed right in the center. The screen was dark.