Die Before I Wake (19 page)

I waited. On the street outside, a car passed, the steady boom-boom of its stereo vibrating the floor I lay on. Nobody was going to come. I was going to lie here with a broken ankle, a cracked skull, and possible internal injuries, until I expired. When they finally came home, they’d find me dead on the floor.

And when the pathologist was done tampering with my poor, battered body, he’d shake his head and say,

“If only they’d found her in time.”

“Help!” I screeched, as loud as I could manage.

“For God’s sake, help me!”

Nobody came. I slept again. I know they always tell you not to let a person with a concussion go to sleep, but to hell with what they say. Sleep was a welcome respite from the pain. Being awake was the hard part.

Sometime later, I was awakened by the slamming of a car door. For an instant, I was disoriented, and wondered why I was lying on the floor. My brain didn’t immediately make the connection between floor, staircase, and throbbing body. But the knowledge came back to me on a wave of pain and nausea.

I wet my lips, moved my tongue around inside my arid mouth to moisten it, and yelled again. “Help!

Somebody please help me!”

Silence. “HELP ME!” I shouted with my last reserve of strength. “HELP ME, PLEASE!” I thought I heard footsteps, but maybe it was my imagination. Or the unfulfilled wishes of an overfull bladder.
I’ll never drink Diet Coke again,
I promised myself.
Never, never, never again.

A door opened somewhere in the house, and a man’s voice—the sweetest, most welcome voice I’d ever heard—said, “Julie?”

I wet my tongue again. “Help,” I croaked.

“Front hall.”

The footsteps came nearer, and then Riley loomed over me, his mouth agape. “Holy mother of the sweet baby Jesus,” he breathed.

“Exactly. Try to imagine this…from my per-spective.”

“Are you hurt?” he said, dropping to his knees beside me. “What happened?”

I was capable of responding to just one question at a time. “Pretty obvious,” I said, choosing the latter, the only one that was recent enough so I could actually remember it. “I fell.”

“Hold still.” His hands were exceedingly gentle on my poor, broken skull as he felt for fractures. I winced, and he continued his exploration, moving southward, methodically and thoroughly checking bones as he went.

“Hey,” I said at one point. “Watch it.”

“I’m not molesting you. I was a medic in the Gulf War. I may not have a fancy medical degree like my brother does, but I know what I’m doing.”

“Lucky for me,” I said thickly, “that you’re between jobs.”

“I don’t think anything’s broken. You’ll want an X-ray to be sure. And there’s one hell of a lump on your head.”

“Hit the newel post on the way down. Surprised you didn’t hear it.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. At least I thought it did. Hard to say for sure when I was seeing two of him. “Can you sit up?” he said.

“Sure. Just feels like I’m on one of those sit-and-spin toys. And my vision’s greatly improved. I now see two of everything.” I gave him a dorky grin.

“Did you know you have four eyes?” All four of his eyes rolled heavenward. “We need to get you to the hospital,” he said firmly.

“Good plan. Just help me up. I’ll walk…to car.”

“Right. That should work. Damn it, Julie, how the hell did you manage this?”

“Beats me. I stepped down, and…no footing.

Just…splat.”

Still on his knees, he glanced past my shoulder, spied something on the floor, and crawled past me to get it. “Maybe,” he said, rocking back on his heels,

“these had something to do with it.” He held up the two AA batteries he’d picked up off the floor. “Unless you were carrying these—” He paused, and I shook my head in denial, sending a stabbing pain from my scalp to my toenails. “Then somebody must’ve left them on the stairs,” he said. “You hit these, on those uncarpeted stairs, and you’d just roll off into the wild blue yonder.”

“Yes,” I said, a vague memory prodding at my brain, a memory of the moment before I fell, that brief instant of surprise as my foot landed on something and kept going. “My foot rolled…I took a header into empty space.”

“One of the girls must’ve left them there. I’ll be having a talk with Tom tonight. They have to be made aware of how dangerous it is to leave things on the stairs.”

“No.” My brain was fuzzy, but this one thing I knew. I’d been up and down those stairs a dozen times since breakfast, and the batteries hadn’t been there. If the girls hadn’t left them, and they hadn’t been there the last time I went upstairs, who had put them there? And why?

Riley pulled his cell phone from its belt clip and said, “Hang in there, Cinderella. I’m calling your coach.”

I wasn’t sure which was worse, the mortification of being lifted on a stretcher into an ambulance by two grim-faced EMTs who looked to be about twelve years old, or the further humiliation of being stripped in the E.R. while my brother-in-law stood guard over my poor, wretched body. It was a dead tie. At least Riley had the good grace to look away while I was being undressed like a Barbie doll and reclothed in the latest hospital fashion. He left the cubicle completely while I used a bedpan to empty my bursting bladder. Afterward, I begged the nurses to let him stay. I didn’t want to be left alone with all these well-meaning strangers poking and prodding and hovering over me. Riley had called Tom, and he was on his way. In the interim, my brother-in-law was pressed into duty as Tom’s standin.

My husband still hadn’t arrived when they sent me down to X-ray, but by that time, they’d given me a shot of Demerol, and I was safely ensconced in la-la land, thanks to the magical powers of pharmaceuticals. They ran a CAT scan to make sure I hadn’t fractured anything. Then, after what seemed an eternity, they wheeled me back up to the E.R., where I found my husband waiting, his handsome face taut with concern. “So glad you’re here,” I said as he stood beside my bed, my fingers threaded with his.

“I’ve been so scared.”

“Not half as scared as I’ve been.” Tom’s blue eyes—what I could see of them—searched mine as if he expected to find the Hope Diamond buried somewhere in their depths. “You could’ve broken your neck,” he said. “You could have—” He stopped, shook his head in horror at what might have happened. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you. Listen, Jules—” He glanced around, leaned closer to speak to me privately. “I’m so sorry about this morning. I was an ass. I had no business going off on you like that. You had no way of knowing.”

“No problemo,” I said. “I’ve already forgotten.

Man, these drugs are great. Where’d Riley go?”

“I sent him home. There wasn’t any need for him to stay.”

“I’m serious,” I said. “You got mad and said things you didn’t mean. You’re off the hook.” It wasn’t the absolute truth, but there was enough truth in it to assuage any guilt I might have felt about lying. I hadn’t forgotten, but I’d managed to forgive Tom for his outburst. I’d given it a great deal of thought after my conversation with Riley, who’d opened at least one or two closed doors and let in the light. At least now I believed I understood my husband’s motivation. I might not agree with it, but agreement wasn’t necessary to understanding.

The curtain at the foot of the bed parted, and the intern who’d examined me stepped inside the cubicle, clipboard in hand. She saw Tom, recognized him, and barely gave me a glance. What the hell, I was just the patient. Not a necessary partici-pant in this interaction at all.

“Dr. Larkin,” she said warmly. “I have the results of your wife’s CAT scan.”

Together, they stepped back outside, and I lay there staring at the ceiling and listening to the low murmur of their voices as they conferred, one doctor to another, too softly for me to make out what they were saying. Eventually, the curtain parted again and Tom came back alone.

“Hey,” he said softly.

I opened my eyes, saw his blurry face, and smiled wearily. “Must have drifted off,” I said. “What’s the verdict, Doc?”

“You have a nasty ankle sprain.You’ll have to stay off it for a few days. We’re going to fit you with an air cast. It’ll give you the support you need until your ankle’s healed enough to support you again on its own. You also have one whopper of a concussion.

Dr. Jankowski wanted to keep you overnight for observation, but I pointed out that as a physician, I’m fully capable of doing any observing that needs to be done, with the added benefit that we sleep in the same bed.”

“Mmm. Convenient. So I’m being sprung?”

“You’re being sprung, just as soon as we get the air cast fitted and the paperwork processed.” He paused. “You took a nasty hit to the head. It’s a miracle your brains aren’t splattered all over the entryway like scrambled eggs.”

“Proves how hard my head really is. Now I know how Humpty-Dumpty felt.”

“I swear to God, Jules, those girls of mine are going to get a piece of my mind they won’t soon forget. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve told them not to leave toys on the stairs. Maybe a good look at you, with your two black eyes, will put the fear of God into them.”

“Black eyes?”

“It’s really not that noticeable. At least not yet.

It’ll be worse tomorrow. But you have bigger things to worry about than looking like a prizefighter who just went down for the count. Come on, let’s get you dressed.”

Something tickled the back of my brain, something important that I couldn’t seem to remember.

Something that had to do with my clothes. What was it? But it was gone, the thought never fully formed, escaped before I could even reach out and try to catch it.

Somehow, Tom managed to prop me upright in a wheelchair, and he dressed me the way he’d have dressed a small child. Thanks to the Demerol—not to mention the concussion—I was too out of it to put up much resistance. I just sat in my wheelchair, hunched over like an old woman, while he lifted and arranged each limb. The nurse bustled in with the air cast. Between the two of them, they figured it out, wrapping it around my calf until it fit snugly. Tom signed a sheaf of papers with his illegible physician’s scrawl, pocketed the packet of pain pills we’d been issued, and wheeled me out into a small-town dusk.

It was a lovely Indian summer evening, but I was too loopy to notice. Getting me into the car was a chore, because I had absolutely no control over my body. My limbs just flipped and flopped, and Tom finally had to pick me up and drop me into the passenger seat like a sack of potatoes. He clicked my seat belt and adjusted it, planted a tender kiss on my temple, and walked around to the driver’s side of the car.

We were halfway home before my befuddled brain suddenly kicked into gear and I remembered what it was that had eluded me earlier. Beth’s note.

The one I’d been planning to take to the police. I’d shoved it in my pocket just before I stepped on those batteries and went ass over teakettle. Just to reassure myself that it was still there, I slid my hand into the pocket of my jeans. Felt around, then dug deeper.

Nothing. I knew I’d put it in there, so where was it?

I flicked a glance at Tom, but he was focused on his driving and wasn’t paying me the least attention.

Maybe I was wrong. After all, I’d taken a hard blow to the head. My memory was bound to be a little shaky. Maybe I’d put it in the other pocket. I furtively checked, shoving my hand in deep, all the way to the bottom, and scrabbling around like a crab scaveng-ing for food on the ocean floor. But it was pointless.

An exercise in futility.

Because both my pockets were empty.

 

Nine
I tried not to worry about what had happened to the note, but I couldn’t help myself. Had it fallen out of my pocket at some point and been picked up later by a cleaning person who read it and then discarded it? Or would the hospital maintenance crew have been trained to turn in to the nurse’s station any random papers they found on the floor? I’d been gone for over an hour to X-ray. All that time, my clothing had been sitting unattended in the E.R.

cubicle. Anybody could have rifled through my pockets. Riley had been there, and Tom. Dr. Jankowski, and a never-ending stream of nurses in their modern-day uniforms of pastel polyester pants and tops that featured happy little cartoon animals. The nursing profession had come a long way from the days when they wore white dresses with starched collars.

All considerations of nursing attire aside, I had a serious problem. Somebody was in possession of Beth’s note. Somebody who wasn’t the police. Or me.

And I had no idea who.

To say the idea was unsettling is an understate-ment, but once we reached the house, I didn’t have time to worry about it, because everybody in Newmarket, it seemed, was there to greet the returning invalid. Claudia was there, and even Monica, the teenage babysitter. A stone-faced Riley remained silent, but Claudia greeted me with a gasp and an,

“Oh, you poor thing!” which made me suspect my appearance wasn’t quite as innocuous as Tom had claimed. Sadie, big-eyed and concerned, plastered herself to my side, while Taylor, reticent as ever, stayed in the background, although her eyes never seemed to leave me. While Tom got me settled in semi-comfort on the living room couch, with a feather pillow that was heavenly and a blanket I didn’t really need, Jeannette hovered anxiously, wringing her hands and casting furtive glances at Tom. “This is not my fault,” I heard her say once, to nobody in particular. “Nobody is going to blame this on me.” Since nobody was accusing her of anything, I thought it strange. Was she expecting to be criti-cized for her housekeeping skills, allowing random objects to show up in even more random places? Or was she expecting at any minute that I would say to her, “Aha! It was you who drove home from work in the middle of the day to place those batteries on the stairs so that when I came back down from the attic, I’d fall and break my ass.” For an instant, I semi-seriously considered saying it, just to see what would happen. But I wasn’t into deliberate cruelty, even towards a woman who seemed to hate me for no better reason than the fact that she could. Since the night I’d heard her arguing with Tom in the kitchen, our relationship—if you could call it that—had been civil but strained. I knew she wanted me gone from this house, from Tom’s life. But I couldn’t imagine her stooping so low as to booby-trap the stairs in the hopes that I’d break my neck. Jeannette might hate me, but I couldn’t see her sitting in a jail cell, awaiting sentencing for her murder conviction.