TRINITY HOSPITAL WAS LOCATED AT THE NORTH END OF THE CITY. Erin drove up Fourth Avenue, crossing the railroad tracks and passing several blocks of suburban homes. She recognized some of them, the places where her friends had lived when they were younger. Emily Soto’s house was the split foyer with dark green siding. Melissa Perez had lived two blocks away in the tan ranch-style house with purple drapes; only, the drapes were gone now, just an empty window looking out at the street. It was hard to shake the feeling that some of them still lived here—not the adult version of their former selves, but the way they were when they were children. If Erin stopped the truck and knocked on the front door, Meghan Decker would open it, her red hair tied in pigtails, the sun glinting off her recently fitted braces. Deirdre McKinney would greet her, lollipop in hand, her left arm in a sling and wrapped in plaster from the time she fell from the school monkey bars and broke her elbow. And Erin herself would be younger as well, asking them if they could come out and play or go bike riding down by the quarry. It was ludicrous to think that way, she realized, to imagine that it would be as simple as pulling over and walking up to their houses, as if that previous life was still playing out, the outcome not yet decided.
Erin shook her head. She hadn’t kept up with her friends. Maybe, like many families from Wolf Point, they had moved on to other places. No, she decided. She did not want to be a child again. She did not want to return to a time when most of the bad things were still ahead of her.
She pulled into the hospital parking lot and took Diesel for a walk around the back of the building. The few scattered trees were devoid of leaves, their skeleton limbs jutting up against the gray backdrop of November sky. Rows of winter wheat lay dormant in the field to the north.
At the end of the dirt road was an abandoned fruit stand with a wooden placard that read CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. Under those words someone had scrawled, “Everything hear is roten.” It bothered her, the misspellings as much as the message. It was nothing, Erin told herself, the impulsive scribbling of a kid who’d thought it was funny. It made her think of their faces, though. Greg Cannon and Jeremy Grissom. Tony Shifflet with his big slouched shoulders and slow, taunting drawl. And Vinny Briggs, the leader of the group, a wild-eyed kid with a taste for recklessness and violence, as if he’d been born with a swarm of bees in his head that buzzed and stung and flitted their angry little wings and grew crosser every year. Of all the people who had gone missing back then, none of the rotten ones were touched by it. And whether it was irony or the inexplicable will of God or just the way things tended to work, the outcome was the same. Erin’s mother was gone, but the Vinny Briggses of this world lived forever.
They turned around and walked back to the truck, and she opened the driver’s door for Diesel to jump up into the cab. “Gonna have to leave you here for a bit,” she said, and the dog watched from the bench seat as Erin made her way across the parking lot.
The hospital had been here for decades, but Erin had been only vaguely aware of its existence when she was younger. With its single-story brick exterior, it was not much larger than the veterinary clinic she’d worked at near Boulder. The automatic sliding glass door at the entrance opened as she approached, and she walked to the information desk and smiled at the young woman behind the counter.
“May I help you?” the woman asked. She was wearing a white shirt with a faded red vest. There was a name badge—K. Anderson, it read—pinned against her chest.
“I’m here to see my father, David Reece,” Erin told her. “He’s under the care of Dr. Houseman. I was told he’s in the intensive care unit.”
“Yes, ma’am. The critical care room, just next to the emergency department. Let me give you a visitor badge and I’ll show you the way.”
“Thank you,” Erin said, peeling the adhesive tag from its backing and sticking it to her shirt.
“It’s this way,” the woman said. She got up from her chair and led Erin down a narrow hallway with faded yellow walls punctuated by a series of black-and-white photos of Wolf Point at various moments in its history. Erin wondered how far the city dated back. It was the kind of thing she ought to know but didn’t, like the birthdays of colleagues or distant cousins. She made a mental note to look it up.
The woman in front of her turned her head. “You’re Erin Reece, David Reece’s daughter. You used to live here, up until the end of high school, I think.”
“Yes,” she said, “a long time ago.”
“Must be strange coming back. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Katey Perry, or at least I was back then, before I got married. I was a few years ahead of you in school.”
Erin searched her memory, a dusty collection of furniture in an attic she hadn’t explored since childhood. There were things in there long since forgotten, stacked on top of one another and lost in the shadows. There were things in there that could hurt her if she let them.
“Katey, yes,” she said. “I remember.”
Do you? Erin asked herself. Because everything in here is connected. You shouldn’t start opening drawers unless you’re ready to see it all.
“I go by Kate now,” the woman said, “and my last name’s Anderson, although I almost didn’t change it, on account of my mother.”
“Your mother,” she said, and in her mind she could hear one of the drawers sliding open.
“Yes. My mother, Rose. You lost your mother, too. I’m sure you can understand why it was so hard for me to let go.”
Erin stopped in the hallway. “Your mother was Rose Perry.”
The woman stopped walking and turned around to face her. “That’s right,” she said, and nodded, like a teacher encouraging her slowest pupil.
“She was the second person to go missing.”
Again, Kate nodded. “Her and Curt Hastings, yes. They were the second and third people to disappear that year. But they weren’t together that night like some people said. My mom and dad were separated by then, but Curt was married. My mother wasn’t having an affair.”
Erin frowned. “No. Of course not.”
“Well, that’s what some people said. The kids at school, for instance. They used to tease me about it. Can you believe that? My mother was taken from me, and all they could say were nasty things that weren’t true.”
“Who said that?”
“It doesn’t matter. None of them ever amounted to anything.”
Everything hear is roten, Erin thought. She flashed to the day she found them down by the quarry, the four of them pinning Robbie Tabaha against the rocks. She hadn’t known him that well yet, not the way she would come to know Robbie in the years that followed. But it had seemed to her that four on one was the recourse of cowards, that any one of them would crumble if pulled away from the others.
“Kids can be cruel sometimes,” she said.
Kate smiled. It was the kind of smile that people use when there is nothing left to smile about. “Cruel kids become cruel adults,” she said. “Most of them anyway.” She sighed. “My mother was walking home that night after a shift at Old Town Grill. The police told me that Curt Hastings left his house about twenty minutes later after a fight with his wife. They found his truck the next morning, its front end buried in a snowbank near the railroad tracks east of town. The keys were in the ignition and the diesel engine was still running. He left the driver’s door open, as if he only intended to get out for a second and didn’t know he wouldn’t be coming back.”
“But there was no sign of your mother.”
She shook her head. “They found the keys to the restaurant lying on the front steps of Assembly of God Church at the intersection of Fallon Street and Fourth Avenue North. It’s a long way from where they found Curt’s truck. That’s how I know they weren’t together.”
Erin nodded.
“I always felt it was strange for the keys to have ended up where they did,” Kate said. “It was like God reached down and snatched her up but returned the keys later. He dropped them right out of the sky onto the steps of one of his churches to let me know that he was with her. I’m thankful for that. It gives me peace. She’s in a good place now where nothing else can hurt her.”
Erin placed a hand on her upper arm. “I’m so sorry.”
Kate shrugged. “It was a long time ago. It happened to a lot of us. It happened to you, Erin. I understand the pain you must’ve felt in losing your mother.” She turned and started walking again, and Erin followed her down the hall, their footsteps echoing, as if it was more than just the two of them. Erin’s eyes turned to the people in the pictures on the walls. Most of them were dead by now, but there were stragglers maybe, with the fading memories of all that had come before.
They turned left and proceeded down another hallway until they came to a man in a police uniform. He was sitting in a chair, reading a copy of the newspaper. “This is Officer Mike Brennan,” Kate said. “Mike, this is David Reece’s daughter, Erin.”
“Ms. Reece,” Officer Brennan said, rising from his chair and extending a hand. He was a slim man, slightly taller than Erin, with prominent cheekbones and dark eyes that were set deep into his face. His hair was dark as well, kept short with a bit of scalp peeking through at the sides. Erin shook his hand. There was a door behind him, and she caught a glimpse of an EKG monitor through its small rectangular window.
“I’m going to head back to my desk now,” Kate said. “I’ll contact Dr. Houseman and let him know you’re here. His office is right across the street.” She started down the hall, then stopped and turned around. “I know they’ll find the person who took my mother and bring him to justice. It’s been twenty-two years since she went missing, but I’ve always believed in that.” She hesitated for a moment and glanced at the officer before she looked back at Erin. “Maybe now the tide is turning,” she said. “The Bible tells us that the Lord loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones. But those who bring evil unto the world will be destroyed, and the offspring of the wicked will perish. That’s Psalm 37, verse 28. You should look it up sometime. It’s one of my favorites.”
Erin nodded. “It’s important to have faith, and I appreciate what you said about my mother. There were times when I was away that I got to thinking that maybe my father and I were the only ones who still remember her.”
“I remember,” Kate said. “Welcome home, Erin. I always figured you would find your way back someday.”
She gave them a brief smile and walked away, and Erin and Officer Brennan stood there in the hallway, not speaking, as the sound of her footsteps faded down the hall.
“He’s doing okay?” Erin asked eventually, turning to the officer.
“I don’t know, ma’am. I’m just assigned to sit with him.”
“Why is that?” she asked. “Why has a police officer been assigned to watch over my father?”
Officer Brennan shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Lieutenant Stutzman asked me to give him a call when you got here. I’m sure he can answer all of your questions.” He gave her a brief smile, then turned and took a few steps down the hallway.
“I’m allowed to go inside?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I’m sorry. You must be eager to see him.”
She watched the officer for a moment longer. There was a portable radio clipped to his utility belt, but instead of using it, he pulled a cell phone from its leather case and began typing.
Erin stepped forward and opened the door to her father’s hospital room. And there he was, lying on a bed with raised side rails. There was a cardiac monitor perched above his head, and its green digital display kept vigilance over her father’s vital signs. A bag of saline and a bottle of white milky substance hung from an IV pole to his left. Lines of IV tubing ran through a pump and then snaked their way beneath his gown, just below the collarbone. David’s eyes were closed. A breathing tube exited his mouth and was attached to a ventilator. The soft rhythmic sound of the machine filled the room as it shuttled oxygen and carbon dioxide in and out of her father’s lungs.
In the corner of the room, a woman rose from her chair as Erin stepped inside. There was a bedstand in front of her and papers were spread out on its surface. She wore blue scrubs, and her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. A red stethoscope was draped over her shoulders.
“Hello,” Erin said, and she introduced herself before they turned their attention to the man lying on the bed in front of them. “How’s he doing?” she asked, and there was a brief silence as the woman reached forward and adjusted the sheets at the foot of the bed.
“Much better than when he first came in,” the nurse said. “When he arrived in the ER five days ago, he had a low blood pressure and was having trouble breathing. He was intubated and put on the ventilator almost right away. Dr. Houseman thinks it’s pneumonia or maybe influenza. The flu swabs came back negative, but . . . they’re not always accurate.”
“You’ve been giving him antibiotics?”
She nodded. “Two of them, plus a drug for influenza. His blood pressure’s stabilized, and his oxygen level is better now.” She pointed to the monitor. “His heart rate’s been a little fast, and he’s anemic. He received a blood transfusion three days ago.”
“What was his hematocrit?”
The nurse frowned. “Let’s see, I’ve got it in the chart.” She turned to the table, shuffled through some papers. “You have some medical background?”
“With animals, not people,” Erin said. “I’m a veterinarian.”
“Oh, wow. That’s great,” she said. “It must be hard, seeing animals hurt and sick like that. I had to put my cat to sleep two years ago. Kidney failure. He was sixteen years old.”
“I’m sorry.”
“One of the saddest decisions I’ve ever had to make. I don’t know how you deal with it on a daily basis.”
“Euthanasia is a small part of the job,” Erin told her. “We see young and old, sick and healthy. We have a lot of success stories, too.”
“Yeah,” she said, “good things and bad, just like with people.” She picked up a piece of paper. “Here it is. Hemoglobin of 6.2 grams per deciliter and a hematocrit of eighteen percent when he got here.”
Erin frowned. “I know the normal hematocrit for cats and dogs. For people, I assume it’s . . .”
“Somewhere around forty percent. A little higher for men and a little lower for women.”
“So why was my father’s red blood cell count so low? Was he bleeding from somewhere?”
She shook her head. “Not that we could figure out. No injuries, and there was no evidence of bleeding from his intestinal tract.”
“Eighteen percent,” Erin said. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Well, he’s up to twenty-five percent after two units of packed cells. Dr. Houseman thought he might benefit from another unit, but he wanted to discuss it with you first, now that it’s not such an emergency.”
“Erin? Erin Reece?” a man asked from the doorway.
Erin turned and saw a tall thin figure dressed in slacks and a tan blazer. Like David’s nurse, he was wearing a stethoscope around his neck, although his was black, the same color as his hair. The bell of the stethoscope rested against a white shirt and canary-yellow tie, and the top of a pen protruded from his shirt pocket like the head of a prairie dog checking to see if it was safe to leave the protection of the tunnels.
“Mark?” she asked, surprised by how different he looked from the meek and quiet boy she remembered. He was maybe six-four, and he stooped a bit when he took her hand. He still had the cowlick, she noticed, and when he smiled his face looked younger, more like the one she’d envisioned when she spoke to him on the phone.
“My God,” he said. “How long’s it been?”
“Fifteen years,” she said. “I graduated from high school, took a little drive, and just kept on going.”
He looked at her, his big hand still wrapped around her fingers. “I wish I could say a lot’s happened since then,” he said, “but it hasn’t. Wolf Point is pretty much the way you left it. Smaller, maybe. Fewer people.”
“Where did they go?” she asked, and then immediately regretted the question.
“I don’t know,” he said, and his smile faded. “They wandered off, I guess. Just like you.”
A motor clicked on, followed by the steady whisper of forced air filling a container. Beneath the sheets, something crackled.
“Sequential compression device,” the nurse told her. “We call them squeezers. It pumps air into sleeves wrapped around your father’s legs. Helps with circulation and prevents blood clots from forming.”
Erin nodded, and looked back at Mark. “How bad was it?” she asked. “It sounds like he came pretty close to dying.”
The doctor frowned. “He gave us a bit of a scare. One of your father’s employees found him lying on the ground next to a trench on his farm. If he hadn’t stopped by and found him, if your father hadn’t gotten here when he did . . .” He shook his head. “David is a stubborn son of a bitch, and always has been. An underground irrigation pipe on his farm had ruptured. He was trying to tend to it himself while he was in septic shock with a fever of a hundred and five and a blood pressure in the toilet. Most people can’t get out of bed when they’re that sick. Your father”—he looked at him, lying there beneath the blanket—“was out in the fields in early November trying to fix a water main.”
“Dad,” she said, shaking her head. She went to the bedside and laid a hand on her father’s forearm.
“He’s lucky to be alive,” Mark said. “The ER crew did a great job, and Shelly here is one of the best nurses we have. You have her to thank more than anyone.”
Erin turned to the nurse. “Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate your taking such great care of him.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and looked down at the floor.
“Your father will survive this, barring any unexpected complications. Trinity Hospital has exactly one critical care room, and this is it. Ordinarily, we don’t keep critically ill patients here beyond the initial resuscitation. We ship them out to Billings Clinic or to St. Vincent. But in David’s case we decided to make an exception, mostly because he was getting better. We expect to take him off the ventilator soon. After that, he’ll be moved to a regular hospital bed.”
Erin reached down and placed her palm on the back of her father’s hand. “I’m sure he’ll be happier waking up in Wolf Point.”
“And he’ll be glad to see you when he does,” a man said, and they all turned to the figure standing in the doorway. “Hello, Erin,” he said. “I’m Jeff Stutzman. We knew each other growing up.”
“Jeff.” She stepped forward and shook his hand.
He smiled briefly and looked around the room, his eyes settling on David Reece before he turned his attention back to Erin. “Today you’re a popular person,” he said. “You have more to discuss with the doctor, I’m sure. Take your time. And when you’re done, if it’s not too much trouble, I wouldn’t mind having a word with you myself.” He glanced again at the man lying on the hospital bed. “We can meet at the station, whenever you’re ready.”