Page 11

11

FLORENCE

“Just tell us where it is!”

“Oh, don’t shout, for God’s sake, Millie,” I say, realizing I’m also shouting. Millie decided she was tired of the winter so she made a pitcher of sangria and brought her lawn chair out into the common area. She’s been sitting there in a swimsuit and snow boots listening to bachata music all evening while we have been chatting over the next topic for the podcast and how to reach more people…and now we’ve received a call that Poppy has been in some sort of accident, and I need Millie to sober up. We are all awaiting Evan, who we’ve talked into taking us to the hospital in the resident van to see her. While he warms the van up, I don’t think it’s too much to ask of Heather, who used to work at the hospital, to tell us where they keep the visitor sign-in log.

“You’re all behaving very badly,” she says with crossed arms. “That would be unethical, and I think you’re getting too vainglorious for your own good. This podcast is going to your heads.” We all look at Mort.

“It means fame-seeking,” he says.

Then we all look back to Heather, and I must say, I have to mask my astonishment at her knowledge of that word. Maybe we’ve pegged our dim-witted caretaker a little bit unfairly.

“You’re obstructing justice,” I reply back, but she holds firm.

“Does Evan know he’s driving you to commit a crime or does he just think you’re visiting Poppy?” she asks.

“We are visiting Poppy,” Herb says, and then Evan comes in the front doors, banging snow off of his boots.

“All ready,” he says, and I can see through the glass that the Mystery Machine is warmed up and coughing out puffs of smoke from the tailpipe into the icy air.

“Aren’t you on till ten?” Heather asks Evan, not for any noble reason, but because she likes to flop on any furniture nearest to him in the common area and pick at her Coke can and twirl her hair as often as she gets a chance. His helping with the podcast is taking away from that.

“Shelby said if he ever needed to take off early for something that came up, he could. What more important thing could there be than to show our support for her now? Right, Evan?” I say, turning to him. He shrugs.

“I mean…” he says with an expression that reads “she has a point” but he doesn’t say anything else.

Heather chews on her lip and turns on her heel with a “Humph!”

Mort, Herb, Bernie, and I all file out the doors and Evan helps us into the van one by one. We sit and wait for Millie to change into something appropriate, and then we head to the hospital.

The drive to the hospital is solemn until Millie decides to use it as an opportunity to get to know Evan a little bit more be cause she wants to set him up with her daughter, Faye, which I think is a dreadful idea for many reasons, not the least of which is that she has a terribly uneven temper and was once arrested for punching in the drive-through window at a Wendy’s when they ran out of breakfast Baconators. But in all fairness, that could just be a rumor.

“What’s going on with your hair?” Herb asks, his attempt at an icebreaker. Evan touches the side of his head where it’s newly shaved on one side but long and floppy on the top.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“It’s all smashed to one side.”

“Yeah,” Evan agrees with a chuckle.

“It’s neat,” Herb says. “I was a barber in the navy.”

“Oh yeah?” In the rearview mirror, I can see Evan smile, taking interest.

“My father was a barber too…till the Japs blew off his head.”

“Oh… I’m…sorry,” Evan says, looking horrified.

“Not your fault,” Herb says, biting the head off of his Keebler elf cookie and handing the package around to share. “Anyway…it was pretty much all the same haircut. Bzzzz. Nothing cool like that.”

“I can do yours like this if you want. I cut mine myself.”

Herb beams from ear to ear and then Millie takes her turn to chat up Evan but from the back seat of the van, so she’s practically shouting.

“Ya got a girlfriend, Ev? A buncha bastard kids running around somewhere or anything like that?”

“Millie,” I snap.

“What?” she takes the cookies from Herb, and Evan responds before I can interject.

“Fair question, Millie. No to both. I was engaged for a couple of years, and then after my accident happened, she took a job in Toronto. We tried the long distance thing, but it was tough and she met someone else…”

“Kind of a late bloomer, what are ya, forties, and you were just engaged the last few years?”

“Yep, same age as Shelby. We almost went to prom together, but don’t tell Clay that,” he says with a smirk.

“I could see that,” I say.

“Why?” Millie asks. “Shelby doesn’t like cops?”

“Because they’re both nice, I meant, and Shelby doesn’t not like cops, she doesn’t like Riley because his head is full of beef tips,” I say.

“Chipped beef,” Herb corrects.

“That’s just because she broke his heart,” Bernie says, and I resist the urge to turn around to look at him, because it’s not often he pipes in, and I don’t know how in the world he knew that.

“God, did she date the whole town?” Millie asks. “You know someone who’s not a tramp? My daughter, Faye. Do you know my birth canal was narrow, and having her almost killed me?”

“We all know that,” Mort says, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

“She looked like a sea creature, and I had to get her a special helmet for her long head.”

“Okay, Millie. Thank you,” Herb says.

“I’m just saying. She’s a good girl, been through a lot.”

“You’re not exactly selling her, are you?” Herb says, abruptly changing the subject. “So that’s what happened to your face huh? That accident. Heard you got shot. Thank you for your service by the way.” He does some weird salute and I can’t help but look at the ceiling and shake my head at this conversation. He shouldn’t be asking about someone’s deformed eye.

“Thank you for your service, Herb,” Evan says back. “Yep, I sure did. But I got through it. I mean I can’t see out of an eye of course…and there’s some hearing loss and dizzy spells—can’t serve on the force anymore. I’m sure you saw your share of things like that in the service,” he says, kindly obliging Herb.

“Well, I mean I already told ya my dad got his head blown off, so…”

“You sure did,” Evan says, because what else can he say? And then, mercifully, we are pulling into the hospital parking lot and Evan drops us right at the front emergency exit and tells us he’ll wait right here and play Forge of Empires on his phone until we’re through…whatever that means.

We all buy a gift for Poppy from the gift shop, and everyone hands them to me when it’s decided that I’ll go up while they wait in the lobby waiting room so it’s not too much. As I wait in the elevator, I look down to see that the gift Millie handed me was a pair of red mittens she must have been working on for a very long time to learn how to make for little Poppy and my heart warms and I feel a tear threatening to fall, but instead I smile at the beautiful gesture and stay strong as I walk down the hall to her room.

When I see Shelby, she’s pacing outside Poppy’s room on the phone, dabbing her eyes with a paper towel, then she ends the call and notices me. I hand her a tissue from my purse and she seems quite surprised I’m there, but hugs me tightly anyway.

“What are you doing here?”

“We’re all here. The gang is down in the waiting room. We don’t want to bother Poppy, we just wanted to come and sit with you if you need us,” I say, and she hugs me again and sits on the little vinyl bench in the hallway. I sit next to her.

“What happened? Is she okay?”

“She’ll be okay. We pulled her out right away and the fishing hut was really warm, we had heated blankets while we waited for the ambulance. God!” She starts to cry again. “I have been on the phone with the police, and they’re saying someone did this.”

“What do you mean? How could someone…”

“They found…someone cut holes all over the ice near our spot. Someone was probably trying to weaken the ice so maybe the ice hut would fall through and kill us. It’s a miracle nobody else fell into one of these when we walked across from the car to the ice hut. Someone wants me dead, Flor. And he almost got Poppy instead,” she sobs into my shoulder.

“But she’s okay, love, she’s okay.” I pat her back and make a soothing noise with my lips, but I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I mean, I know the threats are real and something terrible is going on, but there are little girls involved, and for someone to go to such lengths…my God.

“How could someone do that and not be seen?” I ask, because that’s the first question in my head.

“Nobody else has been out on the ice in days because it’s too cold. They would have had every opportunity, probably hoping the weather warmed maybe—so by the next time we were there, the ice would be weakened even more. It could have been so much worse,” she says, and then blows her nose and wipes the mascara from under her eyes.

“I’m so sorry, love,” I say.

“Thanks. She’s asleep, but I wanna be there if she wakes up. Tell the gang thanks for coming, but I’m gonna stay with her.”

“Of course. Here,” I say handing her some coloring books and a stuffed elephant and the lovely red mittens. I point to them. “From Millie,” I say, and she squeezes them and smiles.

“We just wanted to be here if you needed us.”

Shelby stands to go, then she sits back down suddenly, holding the gifts on her lap, looking left and right to make sure nobody is within earshot.

“That podcast. I’ve thought about it, and I wanna help. Let’s get this motherfucker,” she says. Then she stands again, moving to Poppy’s door, and turns to me one more time. “Don’t tell Mack. She’ll freak, but maybe we can get enough info out there to make a difference until she finds out about it on her own. It’s my girls involved now. I can’t worry about that.” I nod and she disappears back into the hospital room.

I’m glad to hear this because I planned to do it anyway, but it’s very pleasant news that I won’t have to deceive my friend in order to help her. Before I go and find the rest of the gang, I look to see if Karla Laurier, the nurse who tended to Otis much of the time, is working. Winny told me she’d be a good person to chat with if I wanted to suss out some information that might help us, and she doesn’t have the stomach to come back to this hospital. I can’t blame her for that.

I ask after Karla at one of the nurse’s stations and a distracted woman in tight scrubs and a side ponytail tells me she’s in Critical Care on the third floor. As I walk down the sad, gray hallway and smell the antiseptic and bleach wafting from hospital bedding and the microwaved food sitting untouched in room trays, I feel a pang of sadness for Otis who had to spend his last moments here, but I take a deep breath and try to keep my head in the right space. I am here for information.

The receptionist points me to room 302 when I ask again for Karla on the hub on floor three, and moments later I find her in an empty room, wrapping a vomit-soaked sheet up into a bundle and throwing it into a linen bin.

“Oh, Mrs. Hopkins was brought down to imaging, I’m afraid,” says the stout nurse with rosy cheeks, her hair pulled back so tightly into a bun it looks like her hair follicles might be torn from the roots.

“Oh, no, dear, I came to talk to you, if that’s alright.” Karla stops what she’s doing and turns to look at me.

“Oh. Um, what can I help you with? Are you a family member?”

“Actually, I’m here about Otis Thorgard. I was told that you cared for him often.”

“I did. Oh, sweet Otis. I’m so sorry. He was your…”

“Friend,” I say. “Winny tells me you were a great comfort to him.” And when I look at Karla I’m certainly not getting murderer vibes, but I guess that’s probably the case with all of these sorts of awful situations. Amelia Dyer notoriously murdered four hundred people and she looked like the organ player at my church. But it really could be anyone with access to Otis. The hospital staff are all listed on the website and I plan to go through each name, but the list is so big it’s beginning to seem like a futile task. The visitor log coupled with the hospital staff site might at least give us a short list of suspects.

“Did Otis have many other caregivers or visitors?” I ask, and the look on her face is hesitant, like she might not answer or might begin to question my question, but it’s innocent enough and I put a pearl headband with a rose on it in my hair earlier for extra effect, so she just sits down on the edge of the bare bed and sighs.

“He had a million visitors. Everyone loved Otis, and he’s lived in town his whole life. Why do you ask?”

“I’m writing a story about dear Otis,” I say. “Just interviewing folks close to him in his final days so I can paint a nice picture.”

“Oh,” she says, perking up. Maybe happy I’m not going to put her in an uncomfortable position, or just happy to be named someone “close to Otis.” “Buddy from the cafeteria would come and do crosswords with him, Clay Dawson would bring him waffles from the IHOP sometimes when he’d come in for shift, Nancy from the gift shop would bring him balloons sometimes—the ones that were losing their helium and would go to waste. He always got a kick out of that, even though the Elmo’s and Dora’s faces looked droopy. Gosh, all the nurses doted on him. He had lots of friends and family visit. Hard to keep track. I guess you can put down that he was surrounded by love and support by those who knew him best,” she says.

Thanks for the cliché, I think to myself, but leave the writing to me, but of course I don’t say that. This was a fool’s errand, it seems, but I dare to ask one last question.

“Do you remember anything about a ripped-up note—something Otis seemed upset about at all?”

“Um… I don’t know about a note, but I do remember him tearing up something—some paper the night before he passed, because I swept up the scrap he dropped and asked if I could throw the rest away for him. He shoved the scraps in his sweater pocket, which I thought was odd…which is why I remember, but patients like him have a lot of strange behaviors, so I didn’t think much of it,” she says, and then she’s paged from the little radio thing she wears on her waistband and quickly excuses herself.

I stand, brush the folds in my slacks with my palms, and pick up my handbag. Well, at least Winny hasn’t lost the plot. Otis did put that torn note in his pocket. Of course I believed her, but I did wonder a little bit about the validity of her story. What if someone planted it there, what if she herself had gone off her nut and done something terrible? I mean, when things become this strange all around you, you really can’t trust anyone. But he certainly did write those warning words and try to hide them from someone. I shudder as I walk out of the vomit stench of the room and back down the bleak hallway. At least that was something. A small piece of the ever-expanding puzzle. Poor Otis.

When I arrive back downstairs, I clutch my chest and rush to the front desk when I see Bernie lying on the ground in front of it, staff circled around him.

“Oh God! What’s happened?” I cry and see Herb behind the desk shoving a file folder into his coat. Millie and Mort stand over Bernie with the nurses, and Millie leans into me and whispers. “Don’t worry, he’s fine. He’s creating a diversion.”

I look at Millie with my mouth agape and then down to Bernie, who gives me a very subtle thumbs-up as he lies there with his eyes closed and his tongue hanging out. I cannot believe what I’m witnessing.

“Don’t look at me like that, it was Bernie’s idea,” Millie says, and then I see Bernie open one eye and see Herb with a thumbs-up, and he suddenly begins to push himself to a seated position.

“I’m okay, just low blood pressure,” he says, and the nurses help him to sit in a wheelchair that someone brought over.

“Are you kidding me?” I whisper. Then there is some back and forth when Bernie tries to stand and say he’s fine and is going home and they insist he stay for a while for observation.

“Okay, alright,” he finally acquiesces. He winks our way and then makes a waving gesture to us to make a run for it. Before I even fully register what is happening, Millie has me by the hand and the four of us are scurrying out the front door and into Evan’s waiting van. As soon as the doors are closed, Millie hollers, “Go, go, go!”

Evan flashes a confused look into the rearview mirror. “Um…okay.”

“Before they catch us!” she adds dramatically, and Evan presses the gas to our getaway car and we pull away from the hospital full of adrenaline and pride. Herb hands me the file covertly, pleased with himself for his accomplishment, and I take it and quickly begin looking through it with the light on my phone on the ride back.

“Anything I should know about?” Evan asks.

“Nothing!” Herb says and pulls out his Keeblers at some feeble attempt to appear normal. I scan through the visitor log of people who signed on the date of Otis’s death and the surrounding days. There are dozens, of course, but it’s not a huge hospital, so not so many I can’t get a quick assessment, and it’s a lot of names I know because I’ve lived here so long, and some I don’t, and then one name stops me cold. I suck in a sharp breath when I see it there in black-and-white. It’s so shocking I can barely believe I’m looking at it.

Leo Connolly was there, signing his name into the visitor log at 10:18 p.m. the night before Otis died.