Page 19 of Poison Wood

“Oh my God,” the nurse says. “Carita ... I mean Rita. It’s Grace. Grace Atchison,”

My dad and Debby are looking at us now. “You two know each other?” Debby says.

“Kind of,” Grace says. “I remember Rita from Poison Wood. I was a couple of years younger than her.”

I’m not sure why that needed to be thrown in. Probably because she doesn’t want to be associated with my class. Can’t blame her forthat. And although there were under a hundred girls at Poison Wood, the older girls did not fraternize with the younger ones. Especially not my group.

Debby scrunches up her face. “I always hated they called it that. Piedmont was such a proud name down there. The Piedmont family did a lot for that part of the state, and they should have named that school Piedmont.”

“Can’t rewrite history,” I say. Unfortunately.

“So,” Grace says, approaching my father. “I came by to check on you. How are you doing?”

He nods, and his cheeks have turned even paler than when I arrived. It’s the talk of the school. That school with its strange accidents and Halloween pranks gone wrong. And the night one of its students ran off and never returned. After that its doors were permanently closed, and the students scattered like inmates freed from prison, never to reunite again.

Never say never.

Debby says, “We just need to speak with his cardiologist, so we know what the plan is.”

“Absolutely,” Grace says. “Let me check a few vitals, and I’ll see what I can do to get the doctor in here sooner.”

She notes my dad’s blood pressure and respiratory rate, asks him questions about how he’s eating and drinking and how his pain level is. He answers her questions politely, but I can see the look in his eyes that says he’s annoyed. He’s not used to being the one examined. He’s used to being the one on the bench looking down, examining others.

Then nurse Grace asks him if he needs help getting to the bathroom, and I think my father’s head is going to explode. His cheeks redden to the point I fear he may have a second heart attack.

“No,” he says in a sharp tone.

If Grace notices his embarrassment, she doesn’t show it. “Okay then.” She nods at me to follow her.

Outside in the hall, I follow her to the nurses’ station.

“Sorry about your dad,” she says.

“Me too.”

An awkward moment of silence sits between us. That school sits between us.

“So,” she says. “Do you keep up with the others?”

I shake my head.

“Me either,” Grace says. She hands my dad’s chart to another nurse, seated behind a computer. “Can you see about getting Dr. Baker here to see Judge Meade in room 517?”

The nurse nods but doesn’t look up.

Grace turns to me. “So tell me, why are you really here?”

“Excuse me?” Sweet little nurse Grace may not be so sweet after all.

“I mean, no offense, but ... you know, you’re Rita Meade. I figured you were really here for the other thing.”

My body stiffens. I’m not sure which part of this statement has my blood boiling the most. And although I want to correct her with a few choice words, I prove her right by saying “What other thing?”

Her eyes widen, and she leans in closer to me. “The skull thing. I mean they finally found Heather Hadwick.”

“Oh yeah ... that,” I say.

“Yeah, that,” she repeats back to me with a gaze that shows she wants the scoop.