K.J. Emrick - Darcy Sweet 12 - Death at the Wheel (4 page)

“Love you, too.”  Darcy gave him a quick hug as a thank you before slipping into the interview room.  Rosie looked up at her with tears in her eyes and a trembling lip.  “Oh, Rosie, I’m so sorry.”

She swept across the tiny room in three steps to bend down and embrace her friend sitting in the chair on one side of the metal interview table.  Rosie was more than twice Darcy’s age, but the two of them had been friends for years.  There was no embarrassment now as they cried together.

“They wouldn’t let me go in to see her.  At the hospital,” Rosie stumbled her way through an explanation.  “I called and told them I was Lindsay’s mother and they said she was in surgery and I couldn’t even see her until she came out and that was hours ago!”  She took a shaky breath.  “I had to come here and see
what was going on and your Jon took such good care of me, Darcy.  I’m so glad he came back to our little town.”

“So am I,” Darcy admitted, smiling even as she held back tears for Rosie.  “I tell you what.  I’m done here and Izzy can watch the store for me.  Why don’t I drive you over to
Meadowood and we’ll find out if you can see Lindsay now, all right?”

The look of gratitude in Rosie’s eyes was overwhelming.  “I’d like that.  I haven’t seen my daughter in so long, Darcy.  She was my youngest. 
Just the baby of the family.  Just a few years older than you.  We had the stupidest fight and we’re both so stubborn about these things.  I had almost given up hope of ever seeing her again but now that this man is in her life she wanted to reconnect with me.  This was supposed to be such a happy day.  Now I might lose her…”

Darcy hoped that wasn’t true.  She didn’t pray very often, but she silently asked God, or the Great Spirit, or whatever name was appropriate for the being t
hat oversaw the Universe and its little problems, to please let Rosie’s daughter be all right.

St. John
Camilus Hospital in Meadowood was the closest one to Misty Hollow.  It was a half an hour’s drive away and Rosie spent that time telling stories of when Lindsay was a young girl, and then a teenager, before she’d walked out of her mother’s life.  There was laughter and sadness in those stories, and all of the things that went into a good life.  Darcy listened to every word as she drove Rosie’s car as fast as the speed limit would let her.

When they got to the hospital and parked in a space close to the building, all of the urgency drained out of Rosie.  She sat there, staring at the brown brick of the three story hospital building.  Darcy put her hand on her friend’s shoulder.  “Are you ready?”

“What if she doesn’t want to see me?  What if…what if she’s hurt so badly that I need to say goodbye to her…after we just…”  Her voice trailed off as she choked up.

“Of course she wants to see you,” Darcy argued gently.  “She came all this way, right?  She wants to see you.  Come on, I’ll be right there with you.”

Rosie managed a smile and a nod of thanks.  With a deep breath, she opened her door and waited for Darcy to come around the front of the car.  Together, they went into the hospital.

The Intensive Care Unit was on the second floor, through a set of metal swinging doors that separated it from the rest of the hospital.  The nice woman at the nurse’s station told them which room to find Lindsay in after confirming Rosie was a relative. 

She told them something else, too.  Lindsay’s husband was in the room with her.  He’d stayed here in the hospital until Lindsay had come out of surgery and he’d been here in the ICU ever since.

There were only three rooms here, lined up on the right side of the hallway that comprised the entire Department.  The rooms on the left were offices and closets.  Lindsay’s room was the last one on the end.  As they stood in front of room 2C, Rosie looked uncertain.  She drew in a deep breath as Darcy smiled her encouragement.  After a moment, she straightened her dress and pushed the door open.

The room was painted in shades of cream and light green.  Two hospital beds were surrounded by monitors and strange machines on poles and other pieces of equipment.  Only one of the beds had a patient at the moment.  The redhead Darcy had seen at the accident scene lay there in a white hospital gown, the bed elevated so she was nearly sitting upright.  Her right arm was in a straight cast that started at her shoulder and left only her fingers poking out of the end.  A sling supported from a hook on a ceiling track kept the arm elevated and stationary.  Her face was bruised and both eyes were black.  Her breathing was slow and even as she slept.

Next to the bed, in a chair on the other side from the door, sat the man Darcy had talked to at the accident scene. 
Alan Harlow.  He was in the same blue shirt and black slacks that he had been in before, ripped and torn from the crash, his left sleeve cut away so that a bandage could be wrapped around his shoulder and upper arm.  He sported a bruise of his own on the side of his face, dark stitches holding a cut closed in the center of it.  He blinked at them from behind his glasses.

“I remember you,” he said to Darcy.  “You were at the accident scene.”

“Yes.  I, uh, own a store right there on Main Street.  You’re Alan, right?  You’re Lindsay’s husband?”

He stood up, slowly, favoring his left hip.  He held his hand out to Darcy.  “I am.  Her
husband, I mean.  We were coming to meet her mother.”  He took his hand back and offered it to Rosie.  “I’m guessing that would be you?”

Rosie held
Alan’s hand in both of hers, hesitantly, her gaze watery.  “I’m Rosie.  Lindsay called me just last week to say she was coming to see me again with the new man in her life.  She didn’t tell me anything about him.  About you, I should say.  I’m so sorry that we had to meet like this.”

They stood there for a long moment until Lindsay shifted on the bed and drew
Alan’s attention away.  He went back to his seat next to her.  “She’s been doing that ever since they brought her in here.  She’ll lie so still for so long and then there’s this little movement that makes me think she’ll wake up.”

There was another chair against the wall at the foot of the bed.  Rosie sat down in it, carefully watching her daughter for any other signs of movement. 
Darcy leaned against the wall near the porcelain sink.  Apparently any more introductions would wait for Lindsay to wake up.

The silence stretched, punctuated by Lindsay’s slow breathing and Rosie’s periodic sighs.  Darcy could feel the emotional tension permeating the room.

“I heard the driver didn’t make it,” she said to Alan, needing to say something.  “I’m sorry.  He was your friend, right?”

“Who?” he asked.

Darcy racked her brain to remember the name Jon had told her.  “Uh, Jarred.  The one who was driving your car.  He was your friend, right?”

Alan
stared at her blankly for a few seconds.  Then he blinked and shrugged, like he had just grasped what Darcy was talking about.  “Yeah.  Jarred and me.  We were friends for years.  He was happy when Lindsay finally agreed to marry me.”

His hand went to a chain he wore around his neck, pulling on the ring at the end of it.  A man’s wedding band, Darcy realized.  Lindsay had been wearing a necklace like that in the crash.  He spun it on its chain like a talisman, in much the same way that Darcy used her Aunt Millie’s ring.  Like a talisman. 
Something to center himself with. 

She was a little puzzled by his reaction when she mentioned his friend’s death.  Everyone reacted differently to that stuff, she supposed.  Being around death a lot herself, because of her gift, she had seen people scream, cry, argue, and even shrug like
Alan had just now.

“My goodness,” Rosie said, just noticing the ring
Alan was holding on its chain.  “Why are you wearing your wedding ring around your neck?  Did they take it off you after the accident?”

“No, nothing like that,” he answered.
  “Lindsay and I agreed to wear our rings like this.  It was a tradition in my family dating back to World War Two when the Nazi’s had a habit of liberating jewelry from people to pay for their war effort.”  He smiled and held his ring up.  “She liked the tradition so much she insisted on doing it with me.”

The lights in the room glinted off the curved surface of the steel ring.  Darcy could see there was an inscription on the inside but she couldn’t see what it said. 
She thought back to the one Lindsay had been wearing.  Matching wedding bands worn on necklaces.  She thought that was a sweet tradition to have.  She hoped she and Jon would develop their own traditions when they started their life together as husband and wife.

“Did the doctor tell you anything about my Lindsay’s condition?” Rosie asked after another long moment of silence.

Alan had gone back to watching Lindsay with fierce intensity.  He sat there silently staring at his wife for so long that Darcy thought he wasn’t going to answer Rosie at all.  Finally he nodded, but did not turn his head as he spoke.  “He said her arm is broken.  There was internal bleeding.  They’ve fixed her up inside and set her cast.  Between the concussion and the anesthesia they gave her for the surgery they just aren’t sure when she’s going to wake up.”

“Oh, my,” Rosie said, pressing her knuckles to her lips.

“I’m surprised they don’t have someone watching her,” Darcy wondered.

“The monitors display directly out at the nurse’s station, from what I understand,”
Alan said.  “Plus, I haven’t left her side.  I won’t leave her side.  Not until she wakes up.”

Rosie resettled her hands in her lap, fidgeting with her fingers.  “I’m so glad my daughter has someone like you in her life.  The distance we put between us…I wish it hadn’t been that way.  Now this has happened.  I nearly lost her.  I just can’t imagine what would have happened—”

“Do the police have any information on the other driver?” Alan asked, cutting Rosie off.

“Uh, no,” Darcy said, biting back a comment about
Alan’s rudeness.  He was probably not in his right frame of mind, after all.  Still, Rosie jerked in surprise to be cut off like that, and a frown settled into place on her face.  Darcy hoped her new son-in-law acted friendlier once he knew his wife was out of danger.  “My fiancé is a detective with the police in Misty Hollow,” she explained.  “He says they’ll know more once they run the license plates on the car he disappeared from.”

Alan
‘s dark green eyes narrowed as Darcy explained what Jon had told her.  “A police detective, you said?  Your fiancé is a police detective?”

“Yes.  He’s one of the best.  He’ll figure out who did this to you.  I can promise you that.”

Alan tugged hard on his necklace, then turned his attention back to his wife.  “That’s good.  I wouldn’t want whoever did this to Lindsay to get away with it.”

Darcy could hear the tension in his voice.  “You know, we can watch over Lindsay for you if you’d like to get some rest.  You got pretty beat up in the car accident, too.  Some rest would probably do you good.”

“Not as beat up as Lindsay got, I might say,” Rosie commented, not looking directly at Alan.

It was an odd thing to say.  Did Rosie sound mad?  Darcy couldn’t quite tell.

“No,” Alan was saying.  “I don’t want to leave her side.  Not until she wakes up.  I need to be here when she wakes up.”

“But you won’t do her any good if you’re exhausted yourself,” Darcy reminded him.

He scooted his chair in closer to the side of the bed and took Lindsay’s left hand in his.  “I will not leave her.  She’s my wife.”

And that seemed to be the end of the conversation.

“My, but I’m simply parched,” Rosie said, patting her hand to her throat.  “Darcy, would you mind helping me find one of those vending machines?”

There was obviously more to Rosie’s request than she was letting on.  Darcy followed her out of the hospital room with a single backward glance to the bed where Lindsay lay, and to where
Alan Harlow sat still as a statue at her side.

Rosie didn’t say another word until they were through the swinging doors of the ICU, back in the main part of the second floor, and walking down to the elevator.  Even then she checked both ways up and down the hall to make sure no one was around.  “Darcy, there’s something wrong with that man.”

“What makes you say that?” Darcy asked.  She felt it, too, but she had chalked it up to his concern over his wife.  “He’s just worried about your daughter.  Isn’t that what you want for the man she married?”

“That’s just it.  I don’t know what to think of him.”  The elevator dinged as the doors opened.  It was an empty car, and as soon as they were inside Rosie jabbed the “door close” button several times to make sure it shut with just them inside.  “How am I supposed to know what sort of man he is?  I just have this feeling.  This terrible, terrible feeling that there’s something bad going on between those two.”

“Rosie,” Darcy said as gently as she could, “you haven’t seen Lindsay in a very long time.  You can’t know everything that’s going on her life.  I admit Alan is a little, well…”

“Creepy?” Rosie said harshly.

“I was going to say different, but he’s at your daughter’s side and hasn’t left through the whole thing.  Doesn’t that count for something?”

“You mean because I had to leave when the hospital told me to?” 

There was bitterness in Rosie’s voice and Darcy knew she’d overstepped herself.  “No, Rosie, of course not.  That’s not what I meant at all.  I just mean, you should give him some time.  Get to know him first.  Him, and your daughter.”

They were quiet again as the doors dinged open.  Darcy had expected Rosie to get off on the first floor but she just stood there, waiting for the doors to close again.  When they did, she grabbed Darcy’s hands tightly with her own.

“You feel things sometimes, don’t you Darcy?  Do you feel anything this time?  With Alan, or with Lindsay, or with anything?  Something isn’t right here, I’m telling you!  Something is not right with that man.”

For a moment, the vision she’d had after touching
Alan’s hand came back into her mind.  That didn’t mean anything, Darcy reminded herself.  She had visions often, and not all of them meant murder or death or mysterious, evil things.  Well.  Okay.  Most of them did, but that didn’t mean this one had to.

Did it?

Darcy sighed.  “Look, Rosie, I’ll keep myself alert to anything.  If I get any…feelings, I’ll be sure to let you know.  Okay?  For now, though, just be happy your daughter is going to be all right and that she has a man who loves her.  That’s what counts, right?”

Rosie seemed unconvinced, but she nodded and let go of Darcy’s hands.  “All right, Darcy. 
As long as you promise to keep an eye on him for me.  I’m so worried about Lindsay that I can’t think straight.”

“I think maybe that’s what you’re sensing from
Alan,” Darcy offered as she reached out and pushed the button for the second floor again.  “Just give him some time.  Did you really need a drink?  There’s a vending machine on the second floor.”

“No, I’m fine.  I just needed some air. 
And a good friend to talk to, I suppose.  Thanks, Darcy.”