I watched as she stripped the sheets from my bed, snapped some clean ones open over it, and expertly began making up the bed. “I’m going for a clean blanket,” she said, indicating a light brown stain on the one I had been using.
“Sorry.” I felt myself blush. “I must have nodded off with a Coke in my hand.”
She was a long time coming back. When I got tired of waiting, I got up and slid my feet around the room, admiring the flowers my friends and family had sent. Emily’s roses were beginning to open. I buried my nose in one of the blooms and inhaled deeply, reminding myself of the rose gardens my mother had planted in every house we had ever lived in. The red and green carnations, I saw, were from Scott and Georgina. I wondered if the children had picked them out. There was even an arrangement from Whitworth & Sullivan. That touched me. My old boss, Fran, must have sprung for it. I couldn’t imagine Cooper, Whitworth & Sullivan’s office manager-cum-drill sergeant, coughing up the cash. Especially for an ex-employee he’d so recently had the pleasure of laying off. Steadying myself with a hand on the bed, I inched along it until I reached the bedside table where I’d piled the books I hoped to get to during my hospital stay. Paul’s selection, the latest mystery by Kate Charles, imported from Britain, teetered on top. As I reached for it, I knocked the whole damn pile onto the floor. Klutz! Holding on to the IV apparatus, I bent my knees and sank slowly to the floor.
Next to the books, on a floor otherwise so spotless you could eat off of it, lay a purple plastic cap, like the top of a ballpoint pen, only smaller and narrower.
I picked it up and was examining it closely when the nurse returned. “What on earth are you doing on the floor?”
“Picking up my books.” With both hands on the IV pole, I struggled to stand. “What’s this?” I held the purple thing out.
She answered at once. “The protective cap for a hypodermic syringe. Where did you find it?”
“On the floor.”
She studied me curiously, her head cocked to one side. “That’s odd. You weren’t scheduled for any additional medication.” She spread the blanket over the clean sheets on the bed and began to tuck it in, making neat, square corners. “I’ll have to speak to housekeeping. Somebody’s been careless with the sweeping again.”
I curled my fingers around the pole so tightly that my fingernails cut into my palm. Somewhere midway between the incision on my abdomen and the new breast taking root on my chest, a cold knot of fear began to grow. When Paul returned carrying a paper cup from the Seattle Coffee Company, I was already tucked up in bed, shivering, the blanket wrapped tightly around me. I wrapped my hands gratefully around the cup and felt the warmth spread up my arms, but I doubted it would melt the iceberg taking up residence in my gut.
“Paul?”
“Yes?”
“Look what I found.” I reached into the pocket of my robe and pulled out the mysterious piece of plastic.
“What is it?”
“A syringe cap. I found it on the floor this morning.”
“So? This is a hospital, Hannah.”
I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs out of my brain. “While you were gone, I thought Dr. Voorhis came into my room.”
Paul set his coffee on the bedside table and turned his full attention on me. “The pediatrician? Why would he come all the way down from Baltimore just to visit you?”
“At first I thought I was dreaming. But now I think maybe I wasn’t. He had a hypodermic with him. What if he injected me with something?” My imagination was running wild. “What if he’s given me AIDS?”
Paul was incredulous. “Your first instinct was right, Hannah. You were having a nightmare.”
“Then how do you explain this?” I held the purple cap between my thumb and forefinger and extended my arm. “I’m sure I heard a snap when Dr. Voorhis twisted this off the needle.”
“Look at me, Hannah!” His face was inches from mine. “You’re talking to a man who sat here all night while you moaned and groaned and talked a blue streak.”
“I did?”
“You did.”
What was I going to say? Paul knew about my crashing the therapy group, of course, and about my trip to Dr. Voorhis’s office with Julie, but I hadn’t told him about my interviews with Voorhis’s daughter’s former patients.
“Well…” I set my cup on the bedside tray next to the breakfast I was no longer hungry enough to eat. I considered confessing to my crimes, but decided this wasn’t the time or the place. Once too often before, I’d stuck my nose where it didn’t belong. The last time I’d nearly drowned and taken Paul’s sister along with me. “Maybe you’re right,” I said at last. “Perhaps I was dreaming.”
But the syringe cap, tucked deep into the pocket of my robe, remained a tangible reminder of what might have been. Apparitions don’t touch you, after all. And they certainly don’t smell like Old Spice.
chapter 17
Whoever said that laughter is the best medicine didn’t have a row of surgical staples marching across his belly. Well-meaning friends would invariably try to cheer me up with jokes and convoluted shaggy-dog stories, the kind that always seem to be streaking their way around the world on the Internet. “Stop!” I’d yell, the therapeutic pillow pressed firmly against my stomach to keep it from hurting like hell whenever I laughed.
I’d been recuperating at home for nearly a week, installed on the sofa in the living room, when Ms. Bromley brought me all twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers on tape. I cheerfully accused the mystery novelist of trying to kill me.
Otherwise, I was bored out of my skull with nothing better to do than brood over what might have been a botched attempt on my life. To humor me, Paul had called Dr. Voorhis’s office and learned he was attending a medical conference in Pebble Beach, California; that didn’t stop me from insisting that he double-lock the doors behind him whenever he left the house.
Friday morning, thank goodness, he stayed home. I was touched when he cut my peanut butter sandwich into four narrow strips like I used to do for Emily. I dipped a rectangle into a mug of tomato soup that I was steadying with two fingers on the arm of my chair. I watched the bread wick up the soup, then popped it into my mouth. I wiggled my fingers in Paul’s direction, but all I could see was the top of his curly gray head behind The Baltimore Sun.
The sports page spoke. “What are you up to today?”
“Boring, boring, boring.” I dipped another piece of sandwich into my soup. “I can’t wait to get these stitches out.” I squirmed around on the sofa to face him. “They’re beginning to itch like crazy.”
Paul peeked around the page. “That’s a sign it’s healing.”
“And I’ve got cabin fever. Big time. I’m even missing Ruth and her holistic homilies.”
Paul laid the paper on his knee and held it there with the flat of his hand. “She’d probably wave one of those useless crystals over your chest.” His smile changed to a worried frown. “I wish there was something I could do.”
I fussed with the afghan that covered my legs and folded my arms over my chest before remembering that that wasn’t a good idea. “Ouch!”
“Careful, honey.”
“I want to do something, Paul. Something more exciting than walking back and forth to the bathroom.”
“You’re a clever girl, my love. You’ll think of something.” The corners of his mouth held the promise of a grin as he shook his head back and forth and returned to the paper. I watched while he breezed quickly through the basketball section and got to the page where they listed the local college scores.