to the fire investigators and verify that this was arson. And we need to make sure there wasn’t anyone else hurt or killed in the fire. Most of the apartments in the complex were empty, it being the middle of the day, but there are always exceptions.”
Jessie shivered, thinking that some other family might be going through this the way she and Laura were. Her thoughts took her to a dark place and the deputy had to put a hand on her shoulder to let her know they had stopped in her driveway. It took a moment to come back to full alertness. It took even longer to make sure she had her key and thank the man for all he had done so far.
“I’d say I do this for all my cases, but that isn’t quite true,” he said. He was close enough to her, standing on her front porch, that she could see things about Stephen Gardner that she hadn’t noticed before. His dark eyes had little green flecks in them, and he had tiny, thin lines that could have been smile lines starting to crinkle just a bit at the corners of his warm eyes.
Right now he didn’t look as if he’d smiled in quite some time. “If you don’t give most people this kind of attention, why are you doing it now?” Jessie didn’t know why she asked the question, but suddenly the answer was important.
“Something about your sister…and you…has me deeply involved. So involved that I should probably turn the case over to somebody else, but I can’t.” He straightened his shoulders and looked back toward the car. “Right now I need to go work on this, and the other cases I’m investigating. I’ll see you soon.”
Jessie nodded. She didn’t know what to say. Stephen stood on her doorstep long enough to watch her put the key in the lock, open the door and verify that everything was all right. Then he left and she came into the condo past the front hall and sat on the sofa.
Jessie figured she would spend about half an hour at home and head back to the hospital. The rooms echoed with loneliness without Laura around. Would she ever come back here?
Looking over to the living room bookcase Jessie saw the photo album between two college textbooks on the bottom shelf. Getting up, she pulled it out and opened it to the first page and got a shock. The picture of the two of them on their picnic was right there in the album. But how could that be? Surely Laura would have told her if she had a copy made. This didn’t make sense. The print didn’t look as if it had been removed from the album and replaced any time recently, either.
She felt so tired she didn’t know whether she could trust her own senses. Maybe there really was a logical explanation for this. Jessie just couldn’t think of one now. Instead she went into her bedroom and pulled out clean clothes. After a hot shower she pushed away the temptation to crawl into the beckoning bed and went to the kitchen instead. She packed a bag full of the kind of snacks she usually took to school when she had long office hours and added a couple of peanut butter sandwiches. Now that she knew the gravity of her sister’s condition, she planned her stay at the hospital to be a longer one.
Hunting for the car charger to her cell phone, she remembered she’d given it to Laura last week. No sense in trying to find that. She made a mental note to ask Deputy Gardner about Laura’s car. Somewhere in an apartment complex parking lot there was a sporty blue compact unless it had been destroyed by the fire, as well.
Jessie checked the contents of her bag and picked up her address book. By tonight she would need to call the department chair and a few others so that she could arrange for somebody to cover her classes for a while. She drove back to the hospital on automatic pilot, thankful that no traffic cop caught sight of her on the way.
“Dr. Anderson? I don’t recognize you. Can I help you with something?” The sharp-eyed nurse’s comment almost made Cassidy drop the medical chart. Why did the woman have to show up now, in this small window of time?
“I’m doing a neuro consult for Dr. Peterson on another case and this woman caught my eye,” Cassidy said with conviction. A firm voice could get one through almost any situation.
The nurse’s eyes narrowed. “Surely you don’t think anybody’s going to ask you to do a neurological exam on my patient?”
“Not a full exam, no. But I’m working on a paper on the neuropathology of specific trauma survivors and wondered if your patient might fit as part of my study. Once I looked at her chart more closely, I could see that won’t be the case.” Cassidy handed the chart back to the nurse. “I won’t disturb her.”
The nurse’s silent glare said that no one would be disturbing her patient while she was around. Cassidy walked away quickly, the way any busy specialist in a large hospital would. No one followed. Into the stairwell and down a flight quickly, Cassidy made it onto the staff parking lot before anyone could notice. The close call had been worth it; one look showed that the patient wasn’t going to cause any problems for anyone.
Laura didn’t show any more signs of being alert. “She’s not in terrible pain,” the nurse assured Jessie. “With third-degree burns the nerve endings are numbed enough that things aren’t as painful. We’re almost glad to hear that someone’s in a fair amount of pain because it usually means they’ve got more second-degree burns than third. Pain is easier to treat than the more severe burns.”
So what sounded like good news at first didn’t look like good news at all. Jessie asked about getting her sister off the breathing tube again, but that request was turned down. “She sounds like she could be developing pneumonia. We can’t risk it” was the doctor’s terse reply. After that he whisked Jessie out of Laura’s cubicle for a while for treatment. She went back to the family waiting room, which seemed quiet for a change.
“Ms. Barker? Jessie?” She knew she needed rest when she startled awake stiffly from her position on the couchlike vinyl bench attached to the wall. Even sitting straight up with the television high on the wall droning through news headlines, she’d fallen asleep. And judging from the urgent tone in the nurse’s voice it must have been for a while. “You need to come back with us now.”
Somewhere during Jessie’s last vigil at her sister’s bedside, it got dark outside. Laura didn’t ever look her way again with any kind of understanding in her eyes or say anything even when they switched the oxygen tube for one that would have let her talk. When they asked Jessie if there was anyone they should call, at first she shook her head. Then she called the nurse back and gave her Deputy Gardner’s business card.
He was there in a very short time. He looked as if he’d dressed hurriedly when he was called, no tie and a shirt that hadn’t been pressed. “You came,” Jessie said. “Thank you. I didn’t want to be alone right now.”
“You aren’t alone. You won’t be alone,” he said simply.
“Do you want to sit down?” It seemed odd to be talking about such mundane things while her sister lay dying.
“No, I’ll stand.” He looked at the figure on the bed. “It always seems more respectful somehow.” The way he said it made Jessie wonder how many people Steve Gardner had seen die. Personally she hoped she would never have to do this again. She felt ripped apart by grief as she watched Laura.
“Do you want me to call someone else? One of the chaplains or somebody from my church?”
Jessie shook her head, watching her sister’s struggle to breathe. “I don’t want anybody else, especially not some stranger.”
“All right.” It was
