Dr. Brubaker nodded. “Half drowned, good-size knot on her left temple. Sheila was on duty and heard the alarm go off, looked up and saw her collapse just inside the front door. She said the woman regained consciousness, mumbled something about her car crashing into the lake before she passed out again.
“That’s when Sheila beeped me,” Doc said in an exhausted voice. “I called you right away and was told you’d gone out to the crash site.”
Walker had been taken aback when he’d seen where the woman’s car had left the road. “No way could she climb back up to the highway, so I guess it makes sense that she would come out on the beach. That would have put her out with the hospital being the closest building.”
“That’s probably what had saved her life,” Doc said. “Given the temperature of the air and the water, if she’d been out there any longer she wouldn’t have made it. She was already hypothermic when she reached us.”
“Did she mention her son when Sheila found her?”
“No.” The doctor poured himself more coffee. “She was confused and scared.”
Walker nodded. “I called her in-car emergency provider. The car is a blue Coupe de Ville Cadillac registered to her and a—” he consulted his notes “—Marc Collins, presumably her husband. The address is Seattle. No answer at the primary residence, but I had a black-and-white go over to see if anyone was home. She said her son’s name was Tyler, right?”
Brubaker nodded. “She became so hysterical I had Sheila give her a sedative to calm her down. Anything I’d have said would have only upset her more. She just assumed that her son was here at the hospital.”
“You can’t miss the spot where her car went off the road,” Walker said. “Right there by the cliffs. No sign of the vehicle. But lots of small trees down. Couldn’t have gone off at a worse place if she’d planned it.”
Doc looked up. “You don’t think she—”
“Purposely drove off there?” Walker shrugged. He’d long ago given up trying to guess what a woman might do. “There weren’t any skid marks that I could see. But it was raining, so I couldn’t tell if she tried to brake.”
Doc shook his head and closed his eyes as he leaned back in the chair. “I’m sure it was just an accident.”
Walker was never sure of anything. “She didn’t say what she was doing driving up here at that hour of the night?”
“No. She should sleep for a while. I’m hoping her son is found and I will have good news for her by the time she wakes up.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Walker said, studying the doctor again. Since his wife’s death, Doc Brubaker had been trying to find a doctor for the town. Few doctors wanted to live in such an isolated town, let alone make so little money and work such long hours. Along with being on call for the town, the local doctor saw to the small nursing home facility attached to the hospital.
Doc hired young interns for the summer months to give him a break, but none of them had shown any interest in staying once the first snowflake fell.
Walker knew Brubaker had talked about retiring even before his wife had died. He figured it wouldn’t be long and Shadow Lake would be without a doctor. “You all right?”
Doc opened his eyes, seeming surprised by the question, then uncertain as he glanced toward the darkness beyond the windows. “It couldn’t have been a suicide attempt. Not if the boy was in the car with her.”
Obviously the doc didn’t read the papers. Not having any children of his own, Doc Brubaker had no concept of what parents could do to their children.
Walker stood and noticed he’d left a puddle of rainwater on the floor in front of the chair where he’d been sitting.
“Don’t worry about it,” Doc said, following his gaze. “I’ll get someone to clean it up. Find the boy. I don’t want to tell that young woman that her son is out there in that lake.”
BRUBAKER CLOSED HIS EYES as Walker left. Sheila would come for him when he was needed.
But he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep. Well, he thought ruefully, it wouldn’t be long and he’d get plenty of rest.
He got up and made another pot of coffee. It was going to be a long night and making the coffee gave him something to do. Not that it could take his mind off the woman down the hall. He was worried about her. The cold of the lake had caused heart rhythm disturbance. Sheila had said the woman seemed delirious when she’d been found, suffering from hypothermia.
But he suspected that was the least of it. He’d seen a look in Anna Collins’s eyes that had been painfully familiar.
He hated to think how many times he’d seen that look in his patients’ eyes over the years. More recently, he’d seen it in his wife’s. Defeat. Surrender. A lack of will to live.
With Gladys it had been the pain and knowing what the future held for her. He squeezed his eyes shut remembering the feel of his wife’s hand in his as she met his eyes that final night.
He shoved away the memory and considered the woman down the hall, bothered by the fact that she couldn’t be more than thirty. He realized he could have had a daughter her age if Gladys had been able to carry the baby they’d conceived to term.
Another painful memory to be shoved to the far corner of his heart.
He wondered what had happened to the woman down the hall that had put that look in her eyes.
Most patients were surprised to wake up in a hospital. She hadn’t appeared to be. He could only assume it was because she’d been in a hospital, not that long ago, from what he would guess had been a severe head injury given the sizable older scar that ran from her forehead up into her scalp.
And now she had a cut and goose egg on her temple from her car accident tonight, along with water in her lungs.
He could only guess what this woman had been through. Or what she’d been doing on the lake road this time of year, late at night in a rainstorm. He just hoped she’d been alone in the car, and confused due to her two recent head traumas.
Brubaker couldn’t stand the thought of what it would do to the woman if her son had been in that car.
WHEN ANNA OPENED HER EYES, she found a man about her age slumped in the chair next to her bed. Her heart began to pound as she saw that he wore the blue uniform of a cop.
He had removed his hat. It now dangled from the fingers of his left hand. His dark hair was too long at the nape and his features were rough, his nose obviously having been broken more than once. And, even though his eyes were closed and his breathing deep in sleep, there was a scowl on his face.
Blinking in confusion, she touched her temple and found a small bandage. A mixture of fear and hope filled her as her fingers quickly rushed to touch her forehead, praying that the horrible scar wouldn’t be there.
It was. Tears sprang to her eyes, all hope gone that this was the first time she’d awakened in a hospital, leaving her body like a ghost, her mind and
