The Nightcrawler (17 page)

That page would not come. Scott paced the floor in the waiting room of the Salina Surgical Hospital wanting to be just about anywhere else. He listened to the “Dr. Nobody Cares, please report to wherever” pages and the sound of soft-soled shoes on the shiny tile floor. To the chimes of the elevator down the hall just before it clanged open casting out its cargo of more clip clopping shoes and whispering voices. Most of all, the quiet, the “do not disturb the sick and dying” quiet.

Just when Scott considered making a run for the exit Fred Webster came up and tapped him on the shoulder causing him to jump. “Sorry pal,” Fred said in a half whisper. Fred had been the unfortunate owner of the Suburban that took flight back on the highway. As luck would have it he was also a retired doctor. He was a big man, both tall and wide. He had a kind face that was younger looking than the full head of white hair made him appear. He still wore a shirt and tie, more out of habit than anything. His white shirt was damp and soiled but it looked as though it had been neatly pressed when he put it on.

“Scott, I have never traveled that fast in a car before and I sure hope I never have the pleasure again.” Fred’s expression was a mix of mild amusement and admiration. Scott was in no mood for pleasant chit-chat. He was worried about Ashley. Moreover, he wanted to get out of this hospital as soon as he got word that she would be okay. “Forty-five minutes from there to here has got to be some kind of record. That’s a hell of a car you got there.”

Scott nodded politely, “It actually belongs to a business associate back in Detroit.” It would have been easier to say a friend but Thomas was a pompous ass and Scott didn’t want to call him a friend even in conversation with a man he would probably never see again. “He’s hoping I can find a buyer for it when I get back to LA. I think his wife is making him sell it, probably to get some SUV the size of Rhode Island.”

“My truck might have flown to Rhode Island. Did you see it take off? It flew right over your friend’s car like it had wings and that Charger stayed put.” Fred shook his head, an incredulous look on his face. “Not a scratch on it. When the storm passed and the sun hit it, she sat there shining, red like the devil.”
 

Fred had come bounding down the embankment to Ashley’s aid with the dexterity of a twenty-five-year-old fire and rescue worker. Scott admired the way Fred took charge. He called over to the old couple who were examining their crippled Winnebago. Fred sent them into their broken home on wheels to get clean towels and a first aid kit. The old doctor dressed Ashley’s wound and fashioned a collar out of a hand towel to secure her neck. The Charger was the only road-worthy vehicle left so they got Ashley in the backseat as carefully as possible, where Fred secured her head with a couple of the old folk’s beach towels, then climbed into the passenger seat barking at Scott to get moving.
 

The old couple and a young woman whose minivan the sign had passed through, stood watching the Charger as it disappeared into the haze left behind by the storm. The same storm that would lay waste to the town of Sherwood just minutes later.
 

Sherwood, Kansas, a farming community, was about twenty miles west of where Fred’s Suburban landed in a field of corn. Four people had died in Sherwood and Rosie Sanchez; a two-year-old girl had been torn from her mother’s arms and was presumed dead.

Now Scott stood nodding at Fred’s banter, his mind wandering. His gaze fell on the Charger sitting in the ER parking lot glistening in the sun.
Shining red like the devil.
 

“Scott. Scott, are you okay?”

Scott looked back to Fred and nodded with a confused, blank look in his eyes.
 

“I’m going to check on Ashley. The attending is an old friend and he’ll be straight with me,” Fred said. Scott nodded once and Fred disappeared behind the sliding doors to the ER.
 

A TV mounted on the wall was now showing an on-the-scene report from Sherwood. A pretty young reporter in a stylish yellow rain slicker gave her best effort to appear grief stricken at the devastation surrounding her. The shot started as a close-up and panned out showing a backdrop of ruination. A bleeding woman in a shabby housecoat holding the limp body of what was once her beloved toy poodle wandered aimlessly behind the reporter looking lost and alone.
 

That was the kind of footage that often made national coverage, but it didn’t. What did reach the National News from Sherwood was Pete, an old trucker with a friendly smile and a little girl named Rosie Sanchez. Pete had just delivered a load of Pringles to Salt Lake City and was now on his way to Toledo with a load of some kind of health food snack he hadn’t heard of. He had just got moving again after waiting out the storm on the shoulder of the road when he saw her. “Damndest thing I ever saw”, he would tell the reporters. “She was walking down the side of the highway a mile and a half from where she had left her mommy. At least that’s what the officer told me,” Pete said. The reporter said she was scared and cold but otherwise unhurt. Pete was being called a hero but he said that all he did was bring a little girl to the police so they could find her mommy. Pete said, “it was little Rosie who was the hero.”

The people in the waiting room cheered when they saw little Rosie reunited with her mother. The “don’t bother the sick and dying” quiet
didn’t seem to be offended by this interruption. It was a respectful, polite cheer that was stifled by another page that nobody in the waiting room heard. The page just made them aware that they were interrupting the quiet. There was a brief buzz in the waiting room as the occupants discussed the news report. The buzz faded to a low hum and then the quiet came again.
 

Scott felt cold as an air-conditioned blast from overhead blew down on his wet clothes raising goose bumps over the exposed skin of his arms and neck. He decided to go to the car and get a change of clothes. Stepping out into the sun was liberating. He felt warm and free. He didn’t want to go back in there. He was out. He could just get in the car and leave. Then he remembered, he had put Ashley’s pack in the trunk to make more room for her to lie in the backseat. He couldn’t leave with her pack. He picked it up and looked at it. A name tag on the zipper filled in with pink ink. Ashley Troop. He hadn’t even known her last name until now. All he had to do was leave it with the front desk and he was gone.

“Nice car, son.”

Scott turned with a start and saw a state trooper standing beside him.
 

“Funny thing about this car, son, I was heading west after the storm went through and I see this red blur streak past me faster than I ever seen a car go on that highway. And I seen plenty of speeding on that stretch.”

He wasn’t looking at Scott. He was looking into the trunk, craning his neck to look inside the car. “I figured anyone driving that fast must be in trouble or on drugs. You on drugs, son?”

Scott was beginning to look a little nervous.

“As I live and breathe. Wayne Tucker, is that you?” Fred was approaching the car dressed in clean scrubs and sporting an ear to ear grin.

Scott looked at the two of them. Fred the old doctor and Trooper Wayne Tucker and thought,
of course Fred knows him. He probably knows everybody around here.

“Well shit, Doc. You back in the saddle?”

Fred looked down at the scrubs and explained the events back on the highway. Then he asked Wayne how his boy was doing. Fred had set his leg after a tree climbing incident some years back. Wayne’s boy was now in his second year at college and his boy this and his boy that. Scott tuned out and was now looking at the name tag. Ashley Troop. Had they got in touch with her parents? Had she regained consciousness? Hell if she hadn’t then they sure as hell hadn’t called her family. Nobody even knew her last name around here until now.

“Isn’t that right, Scott?” Fred said unaware that Scott hadn’t heard a word.

“I’m sorry. What was that?”
 

“I was just telling Wayne how you and that car there may have saved that girl’s life.”

“Is she going to be all right?”

“Her x-rays are clear. She’s awake now. Boy, can that girl talk.” Scott couldn’t help but smile at that. There were a few times in the car when he feigned sleep so she would shut up for a few minutes. “They got in touch with her mother,” Fred continued, “All looks okay for now, should be out of here in a day or two.”

“That’s great,” Scott said looking at the officer and still feeling uneasy. “I’ll just leave her pack at the nurses’ desk and get going.”

“She asked about you, asked if you had been hurt. I think it would help if you went in and said goodbye,” Fred said, his eyes less friendly than they had been. “I know you’ve only known her for a couple of days but you’re the closest she has to a friend for a thousand miles.”

“Well, I’m not going to get back on the road tonight anyway.” He threw her pack over his shoulder and grabbed his own bag out of the trunk. “Is there a place in there I can get out of these wet clothes?” He looked over at trooper Wayne and asked, “Is there anything else you need from me, officer?”

“If the Doc thinks you’re okay then I’m done here. Mind you don’t race outta town the same way you came in, okay, son?”
 

“You can count on that,” Scott said and headed back inside.
 

“Hold up Scott, I’ll show you where to get cleaned up,” Fred called out, shaking Wayne’s hand and telling him to say hi to his boy. He trotted up to where Scott stood and put an arm on his shoulder leading him back inside.

Scott crept into Ashley’s room with the stealth of a cat burglar. He slowly peered around the corner hoping she had gone back to sleep so he could leave her pack and get out. Maybe even leave a note wishing her well. But he wouldn’t be so lucky. When his head rounded the corner Ashley called him in, beaming like she was reuniting with her long lost brother.
 

“So they say you’re going to be okay.”

“Yep, Dr. Fred says you and that car are genuine heroes, he also says he doesn’t ever want to ride in that car again.” They both laughed. Ashley’s chuckle was tempered by a grimace of pain in her head. Scott thought she looked like something out of an old civil war flick, lying in bed with the top of her head bandaged.
 

“I brought your pack in,” he said, holding it up to show her. “Fred says they got in touch with your mom. Are you going to go home until you heal up?”
 

“Naw, Mom just took care of the paperwork with the hospital over the phone. She tried to get me to come home but I have to keep going. If I don’t I may spend the rest of my life thinking ’What if?’”
 

Scott hadn’t really recognized her as an adult until this moment. She yawned and apologized saying it must be the drugs. He set her pack beside the bed and promised to drop by in the morning before he hit the road, then without even thinking about it, he reached out, took her hand and gently squeezed it.

Fred was waiting outside her door. When Scott exited the room he put his hand on Scott’s shoulder and they walked out of the hospital together without speaking. The sun had set and the last of the day’s glow was fading behind the horizon. The shrubs and trees were still visible in the weak residual sunlight but they had lost all color and looked more like shadows than the vibrant greenery that tomorrow’s sunrise would again reveal. The automatic doors slid closed behind them trapping the quiet inside. Scott welcomed the sound of the street. Even the scream of an incoming ambulance siren was music that would chase the last of the quiet from his head.

Scott stood next to the Charger breathing in the muggy night air. “Feels like we got more rain on the way,” he said.
 

“Yes, it sure does.”

“How are you going to get home?” Scott asked. “I don’t think that SUV of yours is going to do you much good.”

“The wife should be here shortly. I called her while you were in the girl’s room.” Fred looked at Scott with an inquisitive look in his eye and asked how he ended up traveling with Ashley. Scott told him the story of the Mad Batter.

“Maybe you’re that girl’s guardian angel, Scott.”

“She’s in a boatload of trouble if that’s the case,” Scott said.

Scott got directions to a few hotels from Fred while he waited for his wife to arrive. Fred had seen the golf bag in the trunk and invited Scott to the club for a round. Elks is in great shape this year Fred added. Scott took down Fred’s number and said he’d let him know after his visit with Ashley in the morning. Just then a cream colored Chrysler 300 pulled up beside them and Fred announced, “And there’s my ride.”
 

Scott countered with, “you got a Hemi in that thing?”

Fred pointed at the C on the fender and waved as he got in the passenger seat and the car disappeared from sight. Standing alone in the ER parking lot Scott Randall felt at peace for the first time in three days and then he looked at the Charger.
 

Chapter Eighteen

Roger woke to a constant ringing echoing between his ears, bouncing from the left to the right. His stomach retched, but he fought off the urge to vomit. His bladder, which must have tripled in size due to the night’s consumption of Corona, had caused a bloated ache in his lower abdomen. A gurgling sound of pouring water somewhere to his right magnified exponentially the urge to relieve himself. So this is a hangover, he thought. Many times he had experienced what he thought were hangovers after college keggers, but they must have been just a warning of what could happen because this was infinitely worse. This is what he got for not heeding those earlier warnings.