Darkness Before Dawn (33 page)

“That’s no problem,” Meg replied. “Not much usually happens on a Wednesday night anyway.”

“Thanks, Meg,” Heather said again. “If you get into a bind, call me, and if I feel
better, I’ll come up.”

“Don’t worry about it, just go to bed. Now, bye, Heather.”

Meg hung up the phone and then, picking up a notebook, spent the next hour recording
the events of her confrontation with Jim Thomas. She had written down every experience
since the trial and by looking back through her log, she was able to see clearly just
how much she had broken the spirit of the young man. After she reviewed the whole
journal, a deep feeling of satisfaction filled her heart.

“Oh, Steve,” she whispered, “we almost have him.”

Checking her watch, she decided a nap was in order. Turning off her phone, she set
her alarm and fell into a deep, satisfying sleep.

The alarm woke her at nine o’clock, giving her plenty of time to fix herself a light
supper, take a long, warm bath, and then get ready. Before she stepped out the door,
she looked at herself in a full-length mirror, something she hadn’t taken the time
to do in quiet a while. Her breasts felt swollen and seemed almost unbelievably huge,
and her stomach, that once thin, flat tummy that had made all the other nurses at
the hospital so jealous, was now round and large. Patting it, she smiled. “Well, we’re
stuck with each other, kid. And in a way, I’m glad now. I can use you to help me really
put Jim Thomas through the wringer. He hasn’t seen anything yet!”

Hitting the light switch, taking one last swig of a Coke, she literally ran out the
apartment’s door, down the steps, and jumped into her car. Thinking of the broken
look that she’d seen on Thomas’s face when she had left him that afternoon, she couldn’t
help but smile as she drove to work.

H
OPE YOU BROUGHT A BOOK OR SOMETHING
,” M
ARSHA ANNOUNCED AS
Meg strolled into the emergency room. ���It’s been like a morgue tonight. There’s
absolutely nothing happening.”

“Slow, huh?” Meg asked, surprised the other nurse was even talking to her.

“Slow’s not the word,” Marsha answered. “There’s no one here and you don’t have to
look at a single report. Count the drugs and you’re in. At the rate things are going,
you’ll have the same count when you check out.”

Taking her light jacket off, Meg picked up the report and began the process of checking
in. It was a duty she knew as well as anything in the world.

As Marsha signed, she asked. “Did Heather tell you that you’d probably be alone tonight?”

“Yeah,” Meg replied. Then, right before Marsha walked through the door, she asked,
“Who’s the doctor on duty?”

Sticking her head back through the door, the departing nurse hollered, “McCullen.”
Then the whoosh of the door signaled her exit.

As Meg settled in for the evening, she immediately sensed what Marsha had been talking
about. The hospital was so quiet
and the activity level so light that the only sounds were made by an occasional nurse
walking past ER on her way for a break. If the whole night continued like this, Heather
could have stayed home and no one would have missed her. This promised to be the easiest
gig she’d ever experienced. The phone didn’t ring, no one stopped to visit, and absolutely
nothing stirred. It was almost eerie.

Rummaging through one of the counter drawers, she came up with a fairly current issue
of
Glamour
and slowly studied the magazine’s contents. Two Cokes and four complete passes through
the periodical’s pages managed to kill only two of her shift’s eight hours. Six more
to go! If they’re like the first two, she was going to have every page in the magazine
memorized.

Finding a new information brochure on the latest heart surgery techniques, she attempted
to drum up some interest in its contents. Yet, after she looked up to check the clock
for the third time, she found she had no idea what she’d just read or how far she
had gotten. Pitching the brochure back on the desk, she leaned over the counter and
eyed the blank hallway. Nothing was stirring.

Now completely immersed into boredom, she thought back to her confrontation with Thomas.
He’d been on the curb waiting for her? Why? Oh well, didn’t matter, by now he was
probably fast asleep. Then remembering his haggard state, she grinned, no, he was
probably lying awake and wondering if she’d call. Patting her stomach, she whispered,
“We got him spooked, baby, you and I have him spooked.”

Reliving the emotions of the confrontation could only bring so much satisfaction.
Soon thinking about Thomas grew old. Getting up, she stretched and strolled through
the ER looking for something else to occupy her time.

Someone had tossed a newspaper in the trash. Recently she hadn’t given herself much
of an opportunity to read the paper.
She had devoted so much time to haunting Thomas that she’d usually picked up the editions,
and then, without even opening them, thrown them away. Maybe the printed news would
offer some escape from the dullness of her shift and also bring her up to date on
many of the current local happenings. Retrieving it, Meg checked the date, found it
to only be a day old, went back to her seat, and began to read.

Scanning the front page, she noted a headshot of Cheryl Bednarz. Quickly reading the
story, she discovered the assistant district attorney had resigned her position and
was moving back home to Texas to open up a private practice in her hometown. Cheryl
had predicted as much. Probably forced out because she won the case. If it hadn’t
been the middle of the night, Meg would have called the woman and wished her well.
But as she hadn’t talked to her since the trial, that bond had been broken anyway.
They’d used each other and moved on. That was the way life was.

Flipping through the first and second sections of the paper, she finally found “Dear
Abby.” She was halfway through reading it when she heard a car driving up to the emergency
entrance. Maybe it was finally time to go to work. Setting the paper aside, she looked
up to see who would come in.

“Nurse?” The woman who asked the question looked to be in her late twenties. She was
fairly plain and thin and had obviously been asleep before coming to the hospital.

“Yes,” Meg answered, stepping out from behind the counter.

“My husband, Ed.” Glancing behind the woman, Meg saw a heavy, balding man whom the
nurse judged to also be in his late twenties, enter the doors, a bloody towel, covering
his right hand. “You see, he couldn’t sleep and he got up to fix something to eat
and cut his hand on a Spam can.” Looking back at the hulking figure standing behind
her, the woman angrily
barked, “He just can’t do anything on his own without making a big mess out of it.”

Meg smiled and stifled the urge to say, “Evidently not even get married.”

“Well, don’t just stand there, stupid,” the woman growled at the man. “Show the nurse
your hand, Ed.”

Meg took a look at the man’s cut, picked up the phone, and paged Dr. McCullen.

Turning back to the couple, she said, “Okay, Ed, why don’t we go into room 2, it’s
right across the hall and we’ll get this wound cleaned up. Then the doctor will look
at it and probably give you a few stitches.”

“Nurse,” the woman asked, tapping Meg on the shoulder. “What should I do?”

Reaching behind her, Meg grabbed a clipboard with the proper forms already attached
and handed them to the woman. “There’s a pen on the counter. Why don’t you fill these
out?”

Meg had just gotten finished cleaning the man’s cut, when she heard more noise outside.

“Things are picking up,” she said to no one in particular.

“What?” It was the first time Ed had said anything.

“Ed,” Meg smiled, “you do have a voice!”

Leaving the man by himself, Meg briskly walked out into the receiving room to find
out what was going on. As she stood by Ed’s wife, who was still struggling with the
paperwork, things looked normal, but there was a terrible commotion outside the emergency
room doors. Excusing herself, Meg walked outside to see what the problem was. She
had no more than gotten through the doors when she heard a female voice screaming
hysterically. “He’s dead! He’s dead!”

W
HAT IN THE WORLD
?” M
EG EXCLAIMED, AS SHE HURRIED DOWN THE
ramp to the parking area.

“Help me, please. Somebody help me.”

Meg could now see it was a teenage girl who was doing all the screaming. She was standing
by the rear door of her car, it was open, and she was jumping up and down, crying
hysterically as she peered into the backseat. Seeing Meg, she ran up to the nurse
and pleaded, “You have got to save him. Please, you’ve got to do something! Hurry.
I think he’s dead!”

The girl tried to pull the nurse back toward the car. Reaching out and grabbing the
young woman by the shoulders, Meg demanded, “What’s wrong?”

Still, crying and screaming, the girl sobbed, pointing to where the boy lay. “It’s
my friend. I don’t think he is breathing . . . he’s in the car. I think he’s dead.”

Rushing down the ambulance ramp, Meg reached into the darkened car. Finding an arm,
she grabbed the wrist and searched for a pulse. Nothing. Reaching further into the
vehicle, she found the boy’s neck and checked again. Nothing. Turning back to the
girl, she hollered, “How long has he been like this and what happened?”

“I found him in his garage,” she frantically replied. Then, she began crying so hard
she couldn’t talk.

Jumping up from the car, Meg grabbed the girl, shook her hard, and shouted, “I can’t
help him unless you tell me what happened. Now!”

Taking a deep breath, the girl rattled out. “He’d turned the car on in his garage
and the door was down. I found him that way. I brought him here as fast as I could.”

“How long since you know he was breathing?” Meg demanded.

“It couldn’t have been over ten minutes.” Then she must have remembered something
else. “No, he coughed once when we pulled into the parking lot.”

If the young man had coughed as they entered the parking lot, he had a chance. Pointing
toward the ER, Meg ordered, “Find a doctor and get him out here with a gurney! Go
now!”

Running back to the car, she pulled the young man out of the backseat and onto the
ground. “Okay, kid,” she exclaimed as she fell to her knees, “don’t give up on me.”
Pushing his body into the proper position, she put her hand behind his neck, and then,
just as she was about to begin CPR, she froze. For a few seconds, she looked into
the boy’s face, staring at the anguish written in his now twisted features. Jim Thomas!
Reaching into her pocket, she took out a small flashlight. Lifting his right eyelid,
she checked for a reaction. A big part of her was hoping she would get none.

When the pupils responded to the light, she knew the kid still had a chance. Yet his
only chance at life was if she reacted quickly. It was up to her.

She heard the emergency room doors open behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she
saw the teenage girl.

“Is he going to be all right?” she sobbed.

Looking up at the girl, Meg shook her head and said, “I think he’s gone. I think you
got to him too late.” Turning back toward the boy, she almost choked on her own lie,
but it was a lie that no one would ever catch her in. She was safe. The girl was too
ignorant to realize that Meg was allowing precious seconds tick by and doing nothing.

She looked back into Thomas’s face. This was a moment she thought she would have once
given anything for. Victory was hers. But once the “dark music” started to play, as
she watched the life slowly ooze from the young man’s body, she felt dirty. Only a
monster would let this happen and that is what she’d become. She was a monster. Fighting
with herself, she looked away from the boy and tried to think of Steve.

He was in a cold grave and that was where this boy deserved to be, too. By letting
him die she would be faithful to Steve. Her plan had worked. Luck had been on her
side, and thanks to Heather’s illness, she was here at just the right moment to make
sure it all played out. This was the way things were meant to be. So, she wasn’t a
monster, only an instrument of fairness. This is the way it should be—an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth. Almost choking on her own thoughts, she whispered, “And
a life for a life.”

Looking back up at the girl, Meg shouted, “You can’t do anything out here for him.
Go back inside. When you see the doctor, send him out.”

For a second, the frightened girl stood anchored in place, anguish etched on her face.
Then she turned and walked slowly back up the ramp. This was probably the first time
she’d ever heard the “dark music.”

Meg turned to once again face the young man she’d driven to suicide. Somehow, seeing
the life drain slowly out of his body didn’t give her the satisfaction she had expected.
She felt no thrill, no triumph. A small part of her, buried somewhere
deep in the hidden recesses of her mind, actually wanted to help him—to save his life.
Still, even though his life clock was running out, she did nothing.

Noting a crumpled piece of paper in Thomas’s hand, she bent over and pulled it out.
It was one of her wanted posters. Even in the palely lit parking lot, she could see
that he had written something on it. Lifting the page closer to her face, she read
the hurriedly scrawled words.

I blew my shot at life. I had everything and I tossed it away. Worse, I killed a man
I never knew and then turned his wife into an ugly creature filled with hate. I don’t
deserve to live. The world is better off with me dead
.

Crumpling the note in her fist, Meg slowly rose from her knees and began to walk up
the ramp. When she passed the front fender of the car, she stopped.

What had she done? God had given her exactly what she’d asked for, and now she wondered
if she really wanted it. Was this the way it had to play out?