MAX LEFT TO GET GREENLEAF. I rode in the back of the ambulance with Big Al. The old man took a bullet for me. That shouldn’t be confused with my old man took a bullet for me. Big Al was protecting his friend, not his son. But it didn’t matter anymore. He was a hero, no question about it.
From what the emergency responders told me, Big Al had a good chance of making it. I felt bad that Marnee wasn’t so lucky, but Johnson couldn’t take the chance that Marnee would shoot anyone else. He had no choice but to kill her.
*****
When we got out of the ambulance, I ran alongside the gurney as they wheeled my father toward a swinging door. A hospital guard stopped me and pointed toward a counter in the waiting room. “You have to check in over there. They need information.”
I watched as they pushed the gurney through the door and it swung shut. The guard stood in front of the door and gestured toward the reception area, as if I couldn’t figure out where I had to go for myself.
From Big Al’s previous visits to the emergency room, they already had his name and other essential billing information.
“Has his insurance changed?” seemed to be the biggest concern of the woman behind the desk.
I was going to give her a hard time and ask if they were going to deny treatment if he wasn’t insured. As far as I knew, that was against the law and the Hippocratic Oath as well. Instead, I decided that being an asshole wasn’t going to help Big Al, so I lied and said everything was the same as it had been. For all I knew, it was.
“Can I go back there with my father?”
“Right now, they are evaluating the situation. Take a seat and I’ll call you as soon as you can go in.”
The woman pointed to the waiting room, which was crowded with people whose concern about their own loved ones was certainly as major a deal to them as Big Al’s dilemma was to me. Loved one: now that was not a term I ever thought I’d use in the same sentence with the name Big Al.
I was irritated, but I think that was because I knew I had to have a conversation with Greenleaf which I did not want to do. I knew Max would tell her what had happened, but I felt she should hear it from me. I went old school and gave a call instead of texting her.
She was pretty upset and I realized why texting is so much better than talking on the phone. If I had texted Greenleaf, I wouldn’t have had to deal with emotions—hers or mine.
Through her sobs Greenleaf kept asking, “What about you? Are you okay? What about you?”
On my end, I kept mumbling, “I’m fine.”
“As soon as Max gets here, I’m coming down,” she said.
I saw Johnson walking my way, and I had the excuse I needed to tell her that I had to go.
Johnson stood over me and put a hand on my shoulder. I slapped my hand on the stained seat next to me.
“May as well sit down,” I said.
“How’s he doing?”
“They’re not telling me anything.”
“From what I saw back there at the beach, at least the bullet missed his heart,” Johnson said.
“Yeah, small target. Right?”
Johnson didn’t seem impressed by the gallows humor. Maybe I should have said it caught him in his shoulder and left it at that.
“That was the Al I remember. He’d take a bullet for a friend any day.” He pointed to his head. “This may go, but what’s in here...” He made a fist and tapped it against his chest. “What is in here stays with you always. No disease can change a man’s character.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t agree with him as far as my father’s moral qualities, but I wasn’t going to argue. It didn’t matter if Johnson’s perception of my father’s character was the same as mine or not.
“What about you?” Like Greenleaf, Johnson felt it necessary to ask. And I answered him the same way I answered her.
“I’m fine.”
Unlike with Greenleaf, my answer sufficed for him.
I got up and went to the reception desk.
“Can I see Mr. Al DeSantis?”
All that got me was a polite, “We’ll call you as soon as you can go in. Please have a seat.”
“Can you at least tell me how he is doing?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have any information. Please take a seat and we will get right to you.”
Apparently making a pest of myself wasn’t going to move things along any faster. I went back to sit next to Johnson. He was sitting slouched over with his elbows on his spread knees and his hands on his head. I thought he might be praying.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it? I had to kill the girl that your father and I thought we had lost twenty-five years ago.”
So that was it. The old cop needed a little sympathy for himself.
A few minutes later, Johnson hopped out of the seat. “At least it’s over.”
“Is it?”
“Damned right, it’s over. I have the motive, I have the means, and I have the confession. Case closed.”
So that’s how it was in his mind. I was waiting for him to acknowledge that I handed him all of those things, but it didn’t happen. Something told me it was the same thing twenty-five years before when my father handed Gerber over to him. Johnson took the credit.
“Case closed,” I said.
“Damned right!” He said it strong and loud enough for everyone in the room to look our way.
“As soon as they get Big Al back to new and settled in The Palms, we got to go fishing. I know this spot on the Ogeechee River where the striper run twenty pounds.”
“I don’t think he’s going back to the home. They don’t want him. He’s too hard to handle.”
“Who said that?”
“Maryann, the care coordinator at The Palms.”
“You stay here and worry about your daddy. I have to talk to someone.”
Johnson walked off into the bowels of the hospital, and I waited for word on Big Al. I was going stir crazy, so to fill my time, I played solitaire on my phone. It was better than trying to watch the endless court shows on the TV that hung on the wall with its volume off. About a half hour later, I spotted Max and Greenleaf at the reception desk. I was never so happy to see two friendly faces. I went up and tapped Max on the shoulder. She turned and realizing it was me, threw her arms around me.
“I guess I ran off on you again,” I said. Something about the hug told me that everything was good between us. I held on to her, taking in the delicious smell of her hair. It beats me what it reminded me of, but it was good, and thankfully, it wasn’t the scent of Irish Spring. If she paid a Pink Tax to smell that good, it was money well spent. I made the hug last as long as I could before I let go.
“How is he?”
“They said we could go in to see him in about five minutes,” Greenleaf said before I could answer. “I told them I was his wife.”
It wouldn’t have surprised me if she was his wife, too. At that point, nothing at all would have surprised me.
Finally, a nurse called us and led us down a hall lined with patients in beds waiting to be seen.
“He’s under sedation,” she said.
When we got to his cubicle, I let Greenleaf and Max go in first. I took a breath and followed.
Al’s eyes were closed and he had no color.
“Is… he dead?”
Greenleaf glared at me.
“No. Didn’t you hear her say he’s under sedation? And he can hear you, by the way.” Greenleaf said.
The way she put her hand on his, I wondered if maybe there had been something between them at one time.
A young guy with bloodshot eyes came through the curtain and introduced himself as Dr. Nash.
“If all of you could step outside for a minute,” he said and one by one we ducked through the curtain and went back to the waiting room so the doctor could conduct this examination. Johnson was waiting there with a tall woman in a business suit.
“This is my friend Danielle Jenkins. She’s a social worker here.”
Danielle put out her hand. “As soon as your father is better, we’ll have to move him out of here.”
I started to get defensive. “You can’t put him out in the street.”
Johnson held up his hand to stop me.
“That’s true.” She moved a little closer to me and pretended to whisper. “But a hospital is no place for sick people.” She winked at me. “I’ve been on the phone with The Palms. We’re transferring him back there as soon as he’s well enough.”
“Did you talk to Maryann Fena?” I asked.
“I did. And I think that she understands the law a little better now.”
Danielle gave me her card with her number circled before leaving.
“I’ve got to go, too.” Johnson pointed an invisible gun at me. “Fishing... when you’re ready. Don’t forget.”
“A hospital is no place for sick people. Here’s my card,” Max said in a sweet voice. She probably would have gone on mimicking Danielle if Dr. Nash hadn’t come to talk to us. He explained that the bullet didn’t do any major damage and had been removed.
“But he’s getting up there in years and he’s not in the best of health. I’m not going to tell you that it’s not serious,” Dr. Nash said.
He agreed it would be a good idea if I stayed for the night.