THEY ROLLED LATISHA’S BED FROM THE ER INTO FIRST A DIFFERENT wing and then a different room. A new doctor, someone named Dr. Lee, came in and introduced himself. He told Latisha he was prescribing antibiotics for the various infections and giving her something to dull the pain in her tooth.
“It might make you a little drowsy,” he said.
The doctor seemed nice enough, but she was glad the nurses were still in the room while he was there, and she wished that little red-haired woman in the uniform would come back. She wanted to ask about Garth. She needed to know if he was okay.
The nurses covered her with a blanket, but that made her too hot. Her body was accustomed to the chill of the basement. In this very warm room just the sheet was all the covers she needed. But that sheet—that amazing sheet—was smooth and soft and clean. It felt heavenly. She kept running her fingers over the silkiness of it in sheer wonder. Someone—a nurse or maybe a nurse assistant, she wasn’t sure—had rubbed lotion into her hands and feet. That felt heavenly, too. And then, even though there was an IV dripping liquids into her arm, they brought her a tray of food—a bowl of Jell-O and a bowl of chicken-noodle soup. It was a feast, almost as amazing as Garth’s meat-loaf sandwich.
The doctor had said that the pain meds might make her sleepy, but they didn’t—not for a long time. How could anyone sleep with all that noise going on? There were people talking and laughing out in the hallway, people rolling carts past her door, shoes squeaking on the polished tiles of the hallway floor. All that noise and all that light. There was blue sky showing outside her window—blue sky over what looked like a steep red mountain with a flat top.
Gradually the pain meds worked. The noise faded. Latisha drifted off, awakening with a start sometime later. It took her a moment to get her bearings—to figure out where she was. The Boss was gone. She wasn’t in the basement anymore. And when she looked around the room, she found she wasn’t alone, either. A blond-haired woman was sitting on a chair near the foot of her bed. She didn’t seem to be a nurse—she wasn’t wearing a uniform, and she was reading from a Bible.
“Who are you?” Latisha asked.
“My name is Marianne Maculyea. I’m a chaplain. Sheriff Brady had to leave, but she asked me to check in on you.”
“How is Garth?” Latisha asked. “Is he okay?”
“He’s okay, out of surgery, and just down the hall,” Marianne said. “He asked me to give you this.”
She handed over another one of Grandma Juanita’s meat-loaf sandwiches. That time Latisha ate the whole thing.