Mary scrambled over the unraveled plastic and around the staging to get to me. I looked up at her, wide-eyed, mouth gaping like some kind of fish that had jumped too high and ended up on the shore. Mary used a swear word that I didn’t even think she knew. It was so out of character, I would have laughed if it hadn’t been for that pesky breathing thing.
“Kathleen, are you all right?” Mary asked, kneeling beside me.
I nodded, making squeaky sounds as I tried to get a full breath.
Larry appeared behind Mary. “Do you want me to call nine-one-one?” he asked.
“Yes,” Mary said.
I shook my head vigorously, which only made the wheezing squeaks sound worse. I was not going to the hospital, because if I did, I wouldn’t be here when Will Redfern came in from the parking lot or wherever he was. I wouldn’t be able to take a couple of swings at him with that three-foot roll of vapor barrier that had just whacked me on the shoulder. I closed my eyes for a second and had a Walter Mitty-esque moment, in which I imagined myself swinging the roll of plastic like I was Big Papi swinging for the stands, as I chased Will over the rock wall and down to the lake.
“Kathleen, you need to see a doctor,” Mary said.
“I . . . I’m . . . fine,” I managed to gasp.
“Mary’s right,” Larry said, pulling out his cell.
Without thinking I reached for the phone, grimacing as I moved my left shoulder.
“See?” Mary said.
I sighed, mentally, if not literally. Truth be told, I had a bit of a phobia about hospitals. When I was seven I’d gotten lost in an old hospital in Key West. My parents had been doing Alan Ayckbourn’s Table Manners. My dad had skidded on the edge of a rug during his entrance in act two. By the end of the play one side of his face was a gigantic bruise and his eye was swollen shut. We ended up at the emergency room, along with the rest of the cast, the stage manager and the young woman who worked the last shift at Dunkin’ Donuts and had a massive crush on the actor who played Tom.
In all the uproar, I went for a walk and got lost. Let’s just say that when you’re seven, it’s close to midnight and you’ve spent most of the evening hiding backstage with a big bag of cheese puffs, the sight of an artificial leg can scare the life out of you—or at least a lot of half-digested cheese puffs.
Larry flipped his phone open just as Roma came through the library doors. Mary caught sight of her at the same time I did and waved her over.
Roma knelt beside me on the tiled floor. “What happened?” she asked.
“That roll of plastic”—Mary pointed—“fell off the staging and hit her. She doesn’t want us to call an ambulance.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Roma said. She held up a hand. “Hang on a second and let me take a look.” She began to probe the back of my head with her fingers. “Kathleen, this is getting to be a habit and not a good one.”
“Not my head,” I wheezed, reaching for my right shoulder. “Hit my shoulder.”
Roma’s fingers moved down to my shoulder. “You had the wind knocked out of you, too,” she said. She laid the palm of one hand flat against the front of my shoulder, holding it steady, while her fingers felt around my shoulder blade and up along my neck. Then she took my arm and moved it slowly forward and back. “Does that hurt?” she asked.
I shook my head. She sat back on her heels and studied me. “You don’t need an ambulance,” she said.
Larry and Mary exchanged looks before he slid his phone back into his pocket.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I was just about breathing normally again.
“It doesn’t look like anything is broken,” Roma said, lightly touching the top of my shoulder. “But I’d feel more confident saying that if you had four legs instead of two.” She extended a hand to help me up.
Larry took my other arm. He looked over at the unwound plastic and shook his head, his face tight with disgust. “That’s vapor barrier,” he muttered. “Why did they need that up there?”
“Could you please roll that up before someone trips on it and get hurt?” I asked.
“Sure thing,” he said.
Gingerly, I rolled my shoulder slowly forward, trying not to grimace.
Roma folded her arms over her chest. “You’re going to have a nasty bruise,” she said. “Try an ice pack.”
“I will,” I said. The shoulder was making popping sounds. “Thank you for taking care of me again.” Embarrassingly, I felt a sudden prick of tears and had to blink them away.
Roma smiled and shook her head. “Oh, you’re not getting off that easy this time. This is the second time in just a couple of days that you’ve been hurt. You need to see a doctor—the kind that specializes in patients that don’t lick themselves clean. That shoulder needs to be X-rayed, just in case.”
I opened my mouth to argue and Roma held up a hand. “Save your breath, Kathleen,” she said. “I’ve held down a nine-hundred-pound cow in labor. Don’t make me toss you in my truck.”
Mary gave me a triumphant smirk. I felt like sticking my tongue out at her, but that didn’t seem very responsible and I was supposed to be the one in charge. “All right,” I said. “But it’s Friday afternoon. It’ll be next week before I can get an appointment at the clinic.”
“Who’s your doctor?” Roma asked. I told her. She pulled out her phone and punched in a phone number, walking a few steps away from us.
I turned to Mary. “Thanks for being so concerned,” I said. “I’m okay—really. You can go back to the desk.”
She glanced over at Roma. “Okay.”
Larry had rolled up the plastic vapor barrier and leaned the roll up against the side of the circulation desk.
“Eddie knows better than to leave something like that up above people’s heads and then just take off,” Mary said. “So does Will. You could have been badly hurt.”
I could have. Or Mary. Or Abigail or Jason or anybody coming into the library. I’d let Will get away with too much because I’d wanted to be reasonable. “I’ll take care of it,” I said to Mary. She didn’t look convinced, but she went back to the desk.
Roma walked back to me, slipping her phone into her pocket. “You’re all set. Four thirty at the clinic. They’ll X-ray your shoulder and then the doctor will take a look at it.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling a little overwhelmed by her kindness. “How did you manage that?”
Roma stifled a yawn. “Sorry,” she said. “Early start to the day. As for the appointment, I used to babysit your doctor.” She laid a hand on my shoulder. “So go to the clinic and take care of that shoulder.”
“Thank you, Roma,” I said, “for looking at my shoulder and getting the doctor’s appointment for me. I owe you.”
She smiled and turned toward the music department. “Yes, you do,” she said over her shoulder.
Mary was back behind the desk, on the phone. I went over to the entrance and looked outside. There was no sign of Will’s truck in the lot. I walked back to the staging and circled it slowly, checking it carefully from every angle. There was nothing else that could fall on someone, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
There were four yellow plastic sandwich boards that said DANGER, WET FLOOR in the janitor’s closet. I dragged them out and roped off the scaffolding by linking the sandwich boards with a roll of fluorescent orange streamers from a box of Halloween stuff in my office.
The leak in the computer room had slowed to a trickle. “Larry, did you by any chance come past the Stratton on your way here?” I asked the electrician.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Why?”
“Was Oren’s truck there?”
He thought for a moment. “Yeah, it was. Are you going to see if he’ll take a look at this window?”