"I'm sure the EMTs who transported her conferred with the supervisor on the scene before they took her anywhere. Do you want me to call and check?"
Ali could imagine how long it would take Officer Green to navigate through any kind of bureaucratic roadblock.
"No, thanks," Ali said. "Don't bother. I'll find out for myself."
"The hospital?" Dave asked, following Ali out to where his car was parked directly behind hers.
"You don't have to come," Ali said.
"I'm coming," Dave declared.
"All right then," Ali agreed. "The hospital."
It was after two A.M. when both vehicles pulled into the hospital parking lot. The hospital was locked down tight. A security guard met them at the main door and led them to a lobby counter.
"We're here to see a patient," Ali said to the clerk seated in front of a computer screen. "She's on the maternity ward. Her name is April Gaddis."
The clerk typed something into her keyboard then looked back at Ali with a frown. "Are you a relative?" she asked.
Clearly the clerk was less than prepared to hand out any information. And with the new federal privacy rules, Ali knew she was fighting an uphill battle. She tried to lighten the mood.
"Not a relative," Ali said breezily. "Just a good friend. I'm going to be the baby's godmother."
"Excuse me," the clerk said, rising. "If you'll just wait here. I need to check with a supervisor."
"Not good," Dave said under his breath. "When they have to go check with a supervisor, it's never a good sign."
A few minutes later a formidable black woman emerged from a closed door behind the desk. "I'm a supervisor, Audrey Barker. May I help you?" she asked.
"I came to see April Gaddis," Ali said. "She's a patient herea maternity patient. She was brought here by ambulance a couple of hours ago."
"And what is your relationship to Ms. Gaddis?" Audrey Barker asked. "Are you a relative?"
"As I already told the other woman, I'm not a relativejust a good friend."
"Would you happen to know the names of any of Ms. Gaddis's relatives? She told us her mother is deceased."
"Monique Ragsdale is deceased," Ali answered. She was starting to get a bad feeling from all the questions. Surely coming to visit a patient didn't usually result in the visitors being given this kind of third degree.
"Do you know of any others or how we could contact them?"
"I never met her father," Ali said. "And as far as I know, April is an only child. She used to have a stepbrother, but not anymore. Why?"
"But you and she are good friends?"
"Yes," Ali said at once, carefully avoiding meeting Dave's eye as she said so. "Why?"
"Because," Audrey Barker said kindly, "I'm afraid I have some very bad news."
CUTLOOSEBLOG.COM
Monday, September 19, 2005
First of all, my mother is safe. She was found a few hours after I posted that last message. She was slightly hurt in the process but not enough that she required either treatment or hospitalization. Thanks so much to those of you who wrote to express your concern.
This has been a dreadful week. My husband is dead. So is his girlfriend and so is their unborn baby. My husband was found murdered late last week and I remain a "person of interest" in that homicide. April Gaddis, his girlfriend and the mother of his unborn child, committed suicide after being admitted to the maternity ward of Cedars-Sinai Hospital. I'm able to report her name here because April's next of kin, her long-estranged father, has now been located and notified.
Overwhelmed by events, April suffered some kind of breakdown. In the process she not only murdered her own mother, she ended up holding two other people at gunpoint. My mother was one of the two. I was the other. When officers finally arrived at the second scene, April was taken into custody and transported by ambulance to the hospital after convincing EMTs she was about to give birth. Once there, she went into the bathroom of her hospital room, supposedly to change clothes. Instead, she somehow managed to hang herself.
During my years in the news business, I remember using the words "senseless violence" on occasion. And the words apply here as well. A whole family has been wiped outone that would have been my husband's second family. Four people are dead, including a baby who never had a chance to draw her first breath and a grandmother who never saw her granddaughter's face.
In the process, my own life has been threatened. So has my mother's. I've also been accused of murder. In the course of all the turmoil, things became so complicated that I was told to avoid blogging entirely for fear I might end up saying something in my commentary that would be considered self-incriminating. (As you can see by this post, I'm not always good about taking advice from attorneyseven when I'm paying them big bucks to give me that selfsame advice.)
Putting all that together, you can probably understand that when I came dragging back to my hotel this morning at a little past four, I was feeling more than a little shattered, to say nothing of exhausted. To top it all off, my faith in the human race was pretty much obliterated. My mother, who had been missing, had been found safe, but I was too tired to count that as a blessing right then. She had been endangered for no other reason than she is my mother, who had come to L.A. to help me with my mounting difficulties. I believe this can be filed under the heading of "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished."
In other words, everything that had happened had been more than I could handleand then some. So once I finally made it back to my hotel and dropped my car off with the valet, I staggered into the lobby intent on going straight up to my room to go to sleep. Halfway across the lobby I was waylaid and greeted by name by someone I knew but had never met in person.
She was an older lady with bright blue eyes and a halo of thinning snow-white hair. She was sitting on a couch just inside the entrance. Parked next to her was a walker that sported red, white, and blue tennis balls and a tiny American flag. She stood up the moment she saw me. "There you are, Babe," she said. "How's your mom?"
Those of you who have been following cutloose for some time will recognize the name Velma T of Laguna. She had read my previous post, the one that said my mother was missing. She was so concerned about what was going on that she ended up doing some detective work of her own. She figured out where I must be staying, and came herein a cab!!!! When I told her my mother was safe, she simply smiled and nodded. "I know," she said. "I've been praying for her all night."
I offered to give Velma T a ride back home, but she turned me down. "You look tired, honey," she said. "You'd better get some sleep. I got here under my own steam, and I'll get home the same way."
And so, with my faith in humanity restored by an eighty-eight-year-old bundle of goodwill, I came up here to my room, stripped off my clothes, and slept like a baby. Without moving a muscle. When I woke up late this morning and logged on to my computer, there were 87 messages in my in-box, almost all of them expressing concern for my mother. (Please pardon me if I don't respond to all of them.) A few of the ones from this morning were from people who had already learned from some other source that my mother had been found. I guess by now I should be accustomed to the amazing immediacy of the Internet community, but I'm still learning. And I'm still grateful.
I have no idea when bodies will be released for burial or to whom, so I have no idea how long it will take for funeral arrangements to be made. As a consequence, I have no idea how much longer I'll be in the area. But believe me, I'm more than ready to go back home to Arizona. Sedona is sounding pretty inviting to me about now.
Posted 11:43 A.M., September 19, 2005 by Babe