aside with his foot. Though sloppy and crude, it might save his life. He had to hurry and brush his teeth and get out to the curb. He wanted to be there when that pickup truck came rolling by.
Shouldn’t’ve taken that Lasix a couple of hours ago. He knew from Mercy that the medicine kept him from retaining fluid, but it also kept him running to the bathroom all night long.
Crystal Hollis lay on Mercy’s softest, most comfortable exam bed in an overheated room, with a pink teddy-bear sheet draped over the lower half of her body. Some of the color had returned to her face, and the sound of her breathing was not as labored, nor her lips as blue, as a few moments before.
Mercy pressed the warmed bell of her stethoscope against the little girl’s chest. “Take a breath for me, honey.”
Seven-year-old Crystal had the body weight of a five-year-old, with stick-thin arms and legs and a slightly protruding abdomen—clearly the cystic fibrosis affected her pancreas as well as her pulmonary system. Which meant Crystal could eat as much as an adult and still not put on weight. It was a constant battle. She had an aura of maturity in her longsuffering expression and sad gray-blue eyes that befitted someone seventy years older.
Her chest sounded a little better, but not enough. She coughed and Mercy grimaced. The breathing treatments weren’t going to cut it this time.
“How’s she doin’, Dr. Mercy?” Odira’s deep voice rumbled from her chair four feet away. She leaned forward, her puffy face filled with tense worry.
Mercy sighed and placed the stethoscope back around her neck. She tucked the sheet back up over Crystal’s bony shoulders and took the little girl’s hand in her own. “I’d like to see her breathing better, Odira.” She perched on the exam stool beside the bed and faced the child’s great-grandmother. “The X-rays don’t show what I suspected, but this could be early pneumonia. I’d like to have her checked out by a pulmonologist in Springfield. I could transfer her to St. John’s and…” The expression of sudden fear in Odira’s face halted her words.
“But you’re her doctor,” the older woman argued. “You’re the one we trust. Couldn’t you just do one of those consults they talk about on TV? That big place up in Springfield would be so scary for Crystal, and they might not even let me stay with her. You know how those big places are.”
Mercy patted Crystal’s hand and released it, then stood up and walked over to the chest X-rays placed in the lighted viewer box. The films most definitely indicated bronchitis. Time to blast those lungs with high-powered antibiotics. Odira always made sure Crystal received the nutritional support Mercy suggested, including the pancreatic enzyme supplements and vitamins, but Mercy would increase the caloric intake even more for a while. Crystal’s fever had dropped a little, but Mercy didn’t want to take any chances.
Accompanied by the unrhythmic sound of Odira’s loud breathing, Mercy checked Crystal’s heart once more. With severe disease, right-sided heart failure could occur, but there was no sign that the CF had progressed that far. Would it be possible to keep them here?
Mercy turned around. “Odira, are you feeling okay?”
“Don’t worry about me, Dr. Mercy. I’m just worried about keepin’ our girl in Knolls. You people know how to take care of us right.”
“I’ll try,” Mercy said. “I’d like to get her temperature down before I decide.”
“You need me to be your nurse?” Odira asked. “I know how to follow orders, you know.”
“Yes, if you would.” Mercy gave her instructions to go to the staff break room and get a Popsicle out of the freezer for Crystal. It would be a special treat for the child and would be a painless way to help drop her temperature and add a little fluid.
Odira struggled to get to her feet and finally succeeded. “I sure do appreciate your heart, Dr. Mercy.”
Mercy knew her patients hated the thought of leaving Knolls for a hospital stay, even to places like Cox or St. John’s, two of the top-rated hospitals in the country. Mercy didn’t blame them. They liked a small community hospital with down-home caring, close to where they lived. Their indomitable hospital administrator took pro bono cases and occasionally paid for them from her own bank account. This would probably be one of those cases.
“Please, Dr. Mercy,” came Crystal’s soft, hoarse voice. “Can’t I stay here?”
Mercy sighed and looked over into the little girl’s solemn eyes. Her softheartedness always got her into trouble. But she supposed she could call Dr. Boxley as a consult. He was an expert on CF patients, especially children, and he’d given her advice on Crystal’s care before. And Robert Simeon wouldn’t mind checking her out as a favor. With his specialty in internal medicine, he’d had some experience with this, and he lived and practiced right here in town. And the ICU staff at this hospital was the best anywhere. Maybe…
She looked once more into Odira’s hopeful face and sighed. “I’ll set you up for an admission.”
The strain of worry gradually eased from the older woman’s heavy expression. She walked out into the hallway toward the back. “That’s our doc,” she called over her shoulder.
Chapter Two
D eep-voiced curses and shouts careened down the short hallway of the Herald, Missouri, emergency room, followed by the whiff of stale beer and marijuana smoke. The hospital was in for another exciting Saturday night on the shore of Lake of the Ozarks.
Dr. Lukas Bower stepped to an uncurtained window in the E.R. staff break room and stared out at the glimmer of frosty moonlight over the water. Ice crusted the shoreline but didn’t reach the center. He could see the bare branches of trees swaying in the wind like the fingers of skeletons, grasping through the air to catch the wispy clouds that drifted past.
He shivered. This place gave him the creeps, and he’d only been here a few days. He couldn’t say exactly why the town bothered him so much. Maybe it was just because he missed Mercy and Knolls and the friends he’d made there—the life to which he planned to return as soon as the new emergency room was built and his short-term contract here was up. Or maybe it was the depressing, uncooperative attitude of some of the staff here. Or maybe it was his own attitude.
He frowned at his image in the reflection from the window, at the harsh brilliance of fluorescent light that caught and bounced back from his glasses. With so many night and weekends shifts, he’d almost forgotten what the inside of a church looked like on Sunday morning, or how the crisp winter air smelled in the Mark Twain National Forest.
But by no means had he forgotten what Mercy Richmond looked like, the rich alto sound of her voice, the warmth and sweet fragrance of her on those rare occasions lately when they’d seen each other. The thoughts he was having only made things worse.
A shouted epithet echoed through the room once more. He turned from the window and glanced toward the open break-room door. All he’d heard for the past ten minutes was the arguing of the bikers who’d engaged in a brawl down the road at the apartments—if the rickety string of rock buildings by the lake could be called that.
The shouting grew louder. Lukas grimaced. Should he call the police to come and stand guard? With a population of about three thousand, Herald, Missouri, was only about a third the size of Knolls, and the police force had the same number of personnel. This was a rough town.
He
