Chapter 4

 

“Dead?” the doctor asked, supplying the dreaded D word.

We nodded.

“No, but they’re both in critical condition. To be honest, ladies, it doesn’t look good. If either of you know how to contact their relatives, now would be a good time.”

With this he disappeared back into the restricted area.

“Did you . . .” I cleared my throat. “Do you know her family?”

Rita shook her head. “Sheila has a sister, Debbie. Last I heard she was living in LA and had just remarried for the third time. I have no idea how to get in touch with her.”

“What about Sheila’s parents?”

“They both died years ago.” Rita slumped down in a chair, cradling her purse in her lap. “I feel so helpless.”

I did too. And didn’t like the sensation any better than she did. “Why don’t I try to find us some coffee? This is shaping up to be a long night.”

Rita nodded dully. As I started across the waiting room on my quest for a coffee machine, the doors of the emergency room slid open and in walked a trio I recognized from the rec center. For some strange reason they reminded me of Peter, Paul, and Mary, folk singers from the sixties. Sixties? Yikes, the thought brought me up short. That makes me sound as old as Methuselah. How can I protest being “elderly” when I keep having these flashbacks? Isn’t there some kind of pill I can take?

Betsy Dalton, the cosmetics VP, clung to TV producer Todd Timmons while Roger McFarland, Sheila’s erstwhile editor, trudged two steps behind. “I know you don’t care for Bascomb any more than I do,” Betsy was saying, “but Sheila’s another story.”

Absently Todd patted her hand. “I’ve talked myself hoarse trying to persuade Sheila that she’d be better off without that dude. But did she listen? No,” he said, not waiting for an answer. “I tried to convince her that Bascomb’s responsible for the drop in ratings, but there’s no reasoning with her. She insists he appear on her show time and time again. He’s bland enough in person, but on camera, Bascomb projects the personality of a squid.”

Squid? Did this mean Timmons didn’t care for calamari? A pity, but then calamari might rank up there along with the other fried foods Sheila disdains. It struck me that neither Betsy nor Todd were members of the Dr. Vaughn Bascomb fan club. I filed this information away for later.

Waking from my eavesdropping coma, I decided to make myself known as a member of the Sheila and Vaughn cheering section. “Hello,” I said, approaching the threesome with a smile meant to convey sympathy and friendliness. “I’m Kate McCall, a friend of a friend of Sheila’s.”

They stared at me. I felt like an alien from Mars.

But persistence could be my middle name, so I tried again. “Guess you could say that makes me a friend of Sheila, twice removed.”

“Get it?” I asked hopefully, hoping to inject a little levity. “You know, it’s the way Southerners describe relatives—aunts, cousins, what have you—once, twice, three times removed.”

I waited for a glimmer of amusement, a glimmer of anything actually, but from their expressions I could tell I wasting my wit.

Roger McFarland’s chubby face puckered into a frown. “Have we met?”

I took this as encouragement. “No, but I saw you in the audience tonight. My friend Rita Larsen was Dr. Sheila’s college roommate. She was instrumental in bringing Sheila here to Serenity Cove Estates.”

Todd Timmons looked down his nose at me, not an easy feat considering he was vertically challenged. “Then you better hope nothing happens to Sheila, or that precious retirement community of yours will be hit hard enough with a lawsuit to knock it off the map.”

Without another glance, the trio left me in the dust while they beelined for the registration desk. My attempt at Southern hospitality had been a total flop. My good intentions rebuffed, I decided to let them find their own coffee.

I returned fifteen minutes later carrying two foam cups filled with a liquid that had the consistency of mud and smelled like kerosene. Even so I counted myself lucky. The cafeteria had closed hours ago. It was nothing short of miraculous that I’d stumbled across a janitor—are they still called janitors these days, or are they custodial engineers?—who directed me to a bank of vending machines. Without the man’s kind assistance, I’d still be wandering through a maze of dimly lit corridors, past shuttered offices, in the grim hope of finding sustenance. Sustenance in the form of caffeine and sugar. While waiting for the coffee to trickle into the cups, I’d plugged my last quarters into the candy machine. With each step across the waiting room, Peanut M&M’s jangled merrily in my pocket. In times of stress, the sound was music to my ears.

I handed Rita the coffee and sat down beside her. “Still no word?”

She shook her head, took a sip of the brew, and grimaced. “I tried to persuade the nurse to at least let me keep Sheila company, but she said the doctors were with her. She told me that unless I was a blood relative I had to wait out here.”

“I have an idea. What if I convince her I’m Sheila’s sister from Spartanburg? I do have some acting credentials, if you recall,” I added for good measure.

Rita winced at the reference to my recent acting debacle in a production in which she’d served as stage manager. Under less dire circumstances, I would’ve been offended. Instead I tore open the M&M’s.

The parents with the fussy toddler were finally called to be seen. The man with the injured hand kept his gaze fixed on a TV mounted high in a wall tuned to one of those twenty-four-hour news stations. I selected a green M&M and popped it into my mouth. When my children were young, I convinced them the green ones were for mothers only. This way I was assured my fair share. After all, a mother’s duty is to protect their young. And all mothers know too much sugar isn’t good for kids. So I made the supreme sacrifice and ate most of the M&M’s myself, thus saving my offspring from hyperactivity and bad teeth.

Peter, Paul, &Mary, as I was coming to think of the threesome of Todd, Rog, and Betsy, had established squatters’ rights in a configuration of vinyl chairs adjacent to where Rita and I kept vigil. Ignoring a sign prohibiting cell phones, Betsy pressed hers to one ear and jabbered away. The two men slouched in their seats. Roger scowled at the screen of a sleek laptop while Timmons played with a BlackBerry. I recognized the gadget not because I owned one, but because I’ve seen the commercials. I even know about iPads and apps. As for commercials, I watch because I can. Jim, my late husband, was a medalist in the sport of channel surfing. Since the remote control was invented, I rarely saw a commercial and felt totally out of touch with mainstream America. Now that he’s passed, I’m commander of the remote.

Timmons struck me as the artsy type. He was dressed casually in designer jeans strategically faded at the knees, an unstructured blazer, and a shirt that had never met an iron, opened at the throat to reveal a dark T-shirt. Roger, on the other hand, favored rumpled chic. With his tie askew, well-worn cords, and a tweed jacket sporting leather patches on the elbows, he was making a valiant attempt to impersonate a college professor. I gave the boy a B+ for effort.

Time crept by. One hour bled into two, then three. It was getting later and later. The toddler had been sent home with his much-relieved but weary parents. The worker had been stitched up good as new and advised in the future not to mix six-packs with power tools. Except for the five of us awaiting news of Sheila’s and Vaughn’s condition, the emergency room was deserted. I glanced up from my dog-eared copy of Prevention. I thought it an odd choice for reading material in a hospital. I ask you, is that sound business practice? If more people practiced prevention, they’d have little need for a hospital’s services. With no patients, hospitals would have to close their doors. Just a thought . . .

I saw Timmons peek at a watch nearly the size of a dinner plate that probably offered more apps than an iPad. “I’ve had enough sitting around. I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know now.”

He sprang up and trotted toward the reception desk. His cronies followed suit, relentless in their determination to harass a poor, unsuspecting clerk.

“I have a good friend on the staff at Emory,” Timmons announced loudly. “If I don’t hear something soon, I’m calling him.”

Emory, I knew from my brief time south of the Mason-Dixon Line, was a highly respected university hospital in Atlanta. But our smaller regional hospital wasn’t exactly chopped liver. All anyone had to do was look at the many awards for excellence plastered over the walls to know this.

“Sir, if you’ll just be patient . . .”

“We’ve been patient,” Roger cut in. “Maybe this Podunk hospital isn’t equipped to handle an emergency of this nature.”

“Roger’s right,” Betsy concurred. “Perhaps we should insist Dr. Rappaport be airlifted out of here.”

“I demand to speak to the doctor in charge,” Timmons continued his rant. “If he isn’t out here in the next five minutes . . .” He let the warning hang.

I felt sorry for the receptionist who had the misfortune to be working the night shift. “How rude,” I whispered to Rita.

“Ignore them, Kate” she whispered back. “They’re fools.”

I returned to an article on green leafy vegetables but kept one eye on the large clock over the door. I found it strange that the PPM Trio hadn’t expressed any concern whatsoever over Vaughn Bascomb. The poor man had been stricken as well, but they seemed mindless of the fact.

Timmons flicked his wrist and stared down at his watch, evidently prepared to make good his threat. But before he could cause the hapless clerk more grief, the sliding doors whooshed open and the doctor who had asked about next of kin appeared.

“Are any of you related to Dr. Vaughn Bascomb?” he asked, addressing the waiting room at large.

When no one acknowledged kinship, he heaved a tired sigh. “I don’t suppose any of you know how we might reach a relative?”

Rita and I exchanged anxious glances. Something in the doctor’s tone put me on red alert.

“We’re not here for that idiot,” Timmons snapped. “As friends and associates of Dr. Rappaport, I insist on an update on her condition.”

I had to hand it to the doctor. He showed remarkable restraint in dealing with a guy with an ego the size of Jupiter. If it had been me, I’d’ve—to borrow a former coworker’s expression—laid him out in lavender right there on the emergency room floor.

I rose and stepped forward, propelled by sympathy for a man I didn’t even know. “How is Dr. Bascomb? Is he going to be all right?”

The doctor’s gaze shifted in my direction. I sensed Rita right behind me, breathing down my neck as we waited for his response.

“I’m afraid Dr. Bascomb didn’t make it.”

“Didn’t make it?” I repeated. The words echoed hollowly inside my brain, but I couldn’t quite seem to wrap my mind around the concept.

“We did all we could . . . I’m sorry.”