To Trust a Stranger

That hope was starting to fade, but Jessie tried to keep it alive even in the face of the gravity of the situation. Several cubicles in the unit were filled with people, and a full complement of doctors and nurses attending to them. Laura hadn’t shown any clarity or recognition yet.

The officer tossed a mostly empty coffee cup into the waste can in the corner of the family lounge. Hospital staff had shooed them out of Laura’s cubicle and hadn’t let them back in yet. “What do you mean?”

“Your title. It’s obviously not just plain ‘Mr.’ Gardner. Are you a deputy, a detective, what?”

“Technically I’m a deputy, and also an investigator. I’ve passed the test for detective but haven’t gotten the promotion officially yet.” He looked as tired as Jessie felt. She watched him reach up and try to knead a knot out of his neck. In this windowless room, Jessie realized she had no idea what time of day it was.

Looking down at her watch for the first time in a long while, Jessie felt shock. They’d been at the hospital over seven hours. “You probably were off duty hours ago, weren’t you?”

The deputy shrugged. “In a case like this, it doesn’t matter. Besides, I brought you here. If I leave now, how will you get back home?”

“I won’t be going home for a while. Not until I talk to my sister, or…” Jessie couldn’t force herself to finish her sentence.

“Or she is past the point of talking,” Deputy Gardner finished. “I’m likely to stay until then, too.”

“You don’t think she’s going to make it, do you?” Jessie challenged.

His dark eyes flashed. “I’m not a doctor, so I can’t predict what will happen. But I’ll admit that things don’t look good. If she makes it, she’ll be in the hospital a long time. You realize that, don’t you?”

Jessie nodded. She felt the same way, but she couldn’t think about saying goodbye to her sister. Laura was the only family she had. What would happen if she died? “I just wish there was something I could do.”

“Other than pray I don’t think there’s anything that anybody, including most of the doctors, can do for her right now.”

“Pray? Do you really think that helps anybody?” Did someone like this man who saw all the evil in life really believe in prayer? It sounded as likely as one of the urban legends she researched.

“I think it helps.” The deputy’s face held no hint of a smile. “Many times I think it’s the only thing that helps.”

“Suit yourself. I can’t imagine something like that helping.”

He looked at her silently and lifted one shoulder, seeming to wordlessly indicate that he wasn’t going to argue with her. That was good. There didn’t seem to be anybody else on her side except this deputy. This wasn’t the time for them to pick a fight.

Deputy Gardner finally went home in the early hours of the morning. He tried one more time to get Jessie to let him take her home. “They’ll call you if anything changes. You need some rest,” he argued.

Her temper flared. “How do you know what I need? It isn’t your sister in the intensive care unit.” Jessie regretted her words the moment she said them. This man had stayed with her at the hospital for hours and here she was snarling at him.

It made her feel even worse when he seemed to be fighting tears. He brushed the back of one hand over his eyes and sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry I suggested it. But I’ve been up for about twenty hours and I have to go home and get some sleep and a shower. I just thought you might want to do the same.”

Jessie tried to keep calm. “Honestly, thank you for your concern but I’ll stay. I’m afraid that if they called me I wouldn’t have time to get back here.”

He nodded. “It could be a possibility. Is there anything I can bring you when I come back?”

Her mind felt totally blank. “Maybe breakfast that didn’t come from a vending machine. And a roll of quarters or a cell phone charger.”

“I think I’ll go for the quarters. There isn’t anyplace on this floor that we’re supposed to use a cell phone.” Jessie felt grateful that he understood that much. She didn’t want to get any farther from Laura than she had to. Even the nurses were beginning to point out problems that Laura was experiencing. Jessie knew that wasn’t a good sign. After midnight a doctor had been in to examine her, and then told them solemnly that they wouldn’t be preparing her for debriding and skin graft surgery in the morning.

That was when Jessie knew she was waiting out a vigil that would only last a day or so…perhaps a lot less. “Maybe you should just go into work instead of coming back here. Start trying to find out who did this to my sister,” she blurted with more anger than she expected.

“There are folks doing that already. We’ve got fire inspectors and crime scene investigators sifting through everything at Bando’s apartment. Until they’re done we can’t do much else.”

“Okay, then. I’ll see you later.”

“Try to get some sleep. I know they’ll wake you up if you sleep in the family waiting room.” Jessie remembered seeing several recliners tucked into corners there and she could almost hear one calling her name.

“I’ll get some rest, as much as I can.” Jessie didn’t expect to sleep with everything going on, but was surprised how quickly exhaustion claimed her when she pulled a soft blanket over her in the vinyl chair.

It only felt like a few minutes later that someone was shaking her awake. “Ms. Barker? Laura’s more alert. And the doctor wants to let her off the ventilator soon so that she can talk a little if she’s able.”

Jessie came out of the blur of sleep, sitting up in the darkened room. The clock on the wall announced that someone had pulled the shades to block the morning sun. She felt thankful that the other families had vacated the room and let her sleep into daylight hours. She tried to digest the nurse’s words. Did taking Laura off the ventilator mean she was rallying or that this was a last time to talk?

“Is Deputy Gardner back? Or should you call him?”

“He’s on the way,” the young nurse said. “Now why don’t we find you a cup of coffee and a little time to wash up and you can go see your sister.”

Jessie took a few minutes to pull herself together. She tried to avoid really looking in the mirror, knowing she wouldn’t like what she saw. She felt haggard and haunted and knew from experience there would be circles under her eyes. Splashing cool water on her face, she found a comb in her purse and ran it through her hair.

Then she remembered who she would be seeing. This was her beautiful sister who was always after her to take better care of herself. Drawing a shaky breath, Jessie forced herself to do her hair with more attention and found a tube of lipstick in the bottom of her purse. She willed her hand not to shake as she put it on, and then went in to see Laura.

Jessie stifled a gasp when she saw her sister. Laura seemed to have gone downhill rapidly in the five hours or so that she’d been sleeping. Her face was even puffier than before, and bruises of all colors streaked everywhere. Still, there was a little more focus to her one good eye. Jessie saw that the head of Laura’s bed was raised so that she was lifted into a better position to breathe or speak.

The nurse who’d gotten Jessie from the family lounge positioned herself there, leaning over. “Laura? We’re going to take you off the ventilator like we talked about. You may not be able to stay off of it long, but this will give you a chance to talk to your sister.”

Then the nurse looked at Jessie. “I’m going to have to ask you to step to the doorway for just a moment so that we can take the breathing tube out. I’ll call you back in less than a minute.”

Jessie nodded, too upset to speak right now without letting Laura hear the panic she felt. She stepped to the other side of the curtain that made up the front wall of Laura’s cubicle. Outside Deputy Gardner was there again.

He didn’t look much more rested than she did. His hair was slicked back as if still wet from the shower and his blue shirt and red tie looked hastily put on. “Ms. Barker. They paged me at home. Are things worse?”

“It looks like it. They’re taking her off the ventilator so that she can talk.” Jessie felt her eyes fill with tears. “Do you want to speak to her first? I know you need to ask her questions about who did this.”

The investigator shook his head. “You need to talk to her before I do. She’s on enough pain medication that she may not be able to answer my questions anyway. Plus, she’ll probably panic if she sees a stranger first. When you’ve had a chance to talk, maybe I’ll come in.”

Jessie appreciated his kindness, but she knew that there might not be much time. She wanted him to get as much information as he could, to find out who had done this to her sister.

“You can come in with me now. I’ll tell her who you are. And after we’ve had a chance to talk I’ll let you have your time.” It was important that Laura talked to the deputy in case she could identify her attacker.

The nurse motioned them back in and Jessie went to the head of Laura’s bed, sitting in the chair next to her and making herself stay dry-eyed. “Hi, sweetie. It’s me. I’ll stay here as long as you want me to.” Her sister’s hand reached out and grasped hers with surprising strength. “And the man with me here is Deputy Steve Gardner. He’s one of the people investigating what happened yesterday.”

There were so many things she wanted to say to her sister. So many questions that she might never have time to ask. I will not cry now she promised herself. “I love you,” she told Laura. It was the most important thing she could say.

Laura’s breathing was rough and uneven. Her hand let go of Jessie’s and reached for her face. The effort failed before she made contact. “Jessie?” The word rasped out of her sister like a rusty gate swinging open. “You’re beautiful.” The effort of three words seemed to use all her strength. Jessie didn’t push for more. Instead she grasped Laura’s hand again gently and patted it as softly as possible.

Laura’s breathing became ragged and panic played across her ruined face. “We’re going to have to put you back on oxygen,” the nurse said as she stepped in. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to speak to her.” Jessie realized that the nurse was looking over her shoulder at the deputy.

“Next time,” he said.

Jessie felt like thanking him for his brave words. There probably wouldn’t be a next time, but there was no sense in saying that in front of Laura. In a few minutes her sister was breathing easier again, pure air going to her lungs and pain-killing drugs coursing through her system. Jessie sat in the hard plastic chair still patting Laura’s hand and willing herself not to cry. She felt so many regrets, and most of them went back more years than she wanted to admit.

Unbidden, her mind swirled back to an incident twenty years before. She could almost hear the leaves crunching under their feet as they walked home from school to the foster home where they shared a set of bunk beds.

Even then she’d been hard on her sister. “So you had that dream again. It’s just a dream, Laura. Nobody will ever believe it’s real. I’m not sure I even believe it’s real anymore.” Their foster mother, Mrs. Dinkins, always said that Jessie was the smart one and Laura was the pretty one. Being smart didn’t seem to matter even back then, because Laura could charm her way out of almost anything.

That day Jessie got gum in her hair and Laura had somehow known what to do. She always knew stuff like that, the things you couldn’t learn from books.

While Jessie haunted the library, Laura’s favorite reading was Mrs. Dinkins’s glossy magazines. If they went to the drugstore Laura always went to the magazine counter to read the ones with models or movie stars on the front.

Usually Laura’s knowledge served her better than Jessie’s book learning. That day she’d gotten the gum out of Jessie’s hair in a flash, working in egg white like shampoo while their foster mother was upstairs soothing a fussy toddler.

Jessie could still picture her sister in the kitchen that afternoon squirting green dish soap in the sink, bubbles rising around her hands. That was Laura’s favorite thing, getting everything all clean and in a row.

If her sister had problems, she hadn’t thought to ask about them. Then, as now, Jessie just dumped her own problems on her sister instead. The memory of the incident probably lasted longer than the reality that afternoon. Jessie looked down at the figure on the bed, not seeing her through the blur of tears. “Those really good times never lasted long,” she whispered. And now she knew those times were over for good.

THREE

At ten that morning the deputy insisted on taking Jessie home. “I don’t care if you come back in an hour, but you need to get a shower, some different clothes and have your own car here.” His expression said he didn’t want any arguments and Jessie couldn’t think of any good ones anyway. She couldn’t remember being this tired and worn-out before.

“Will you go back to the hospital?” she asked on the ride back to the condo. It seemed longer going home, but then they paid attention to speed limits and traffic laws this time.

“Not right away,” Steve said. He sounded as tired as she felt. “I have about six cases I’m actively working right now and several need my attention. Plus I need to talk 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 the last thing he said out loud for quite a while. So when the end came, Jessie wasn’t alone there by the bedside. The deputy didn’t say anything but his presence seemed to lend a strength Jessie needed. She didn’t even comment when he stood there with a firm but gentle hand on her shoulder, obviously in prayer. In Jessie’s eyes Laura was far beyond most human help, and if he thought prayer might do something he was welcome to it. Nothing could hurt Laura now anyway.

After it was all over, hospital personnel led Jessie into the family waiting room where she sat again on one of the couches feeling numb and brittle as an ice carving. After a few minutes one of the nurses asked if she wanted to have a moment with Laura now that they’d taken out all the tubes and needles. Jessie almost said no, but something made her change her mind. Maybe it would hurt less some time down the line if she had a different last memory of Laura than the one she had now.

Jessie passed the deputy, writing something on a piece of paper at the nurses’ station. She hadn’t thought about all the paperwork that must have to get done at a time like this. It pained her that her sister’s life was reduced to paperwork for a sheriff’s deputy. Saying nothing, she went in to see Laura. The form on the bed looked as peaceful as possible. It was good to think that she was done with the horrible suffering of the last three days. Jessie reached out to touch a cool leg where the sheet had slipped. Her sister’s unburned flesh looked like pale marble in contrast to the bandages higher up on her body.

In that act of reaching out, her fingers froze and her brain refused to process what she was seeing. Perhaps she was even more confused than she thought. She went to the other side of the bed and looked down at the still body. Anger and bewilderment welled up in her. “Deputy Gardner?” When he didn’t answer, she said it louder.

He came into the cubicle still holding his papers. “What is it?”

“This isn’t Laura. I don’t know who this was, but it isn’t my sister.”

His brow wrinkled and he looked as if he wanted to say all kinds of things. Instead he stood there silently for a moment before he asked a simple question. “Why do you say that?”

Jessie lifted her right pant leg, exposing her ankle and the tiny bluebird tattooed there. “Look at this. We got them on vacation two summers ago. It was one of those stupid things you regret afterward when it’s already done.” Laura hadn’t regretted hers, though. In fact she’d shown it off.

He looked at the body on the bed before saying anything more, and then, understanding growing, looked back at Jessie. “Your sister had one, too?”

“On her ankle, just like I did.” Jessie pointed to the ankle of the person on the bed. The pale skin was unmarked by fire or anything else. Who just died in this hospital room? And where was her sister, Laura?

Steve Gardner’s brain hurt. An hour after the death of the person he’d thought was Laura Barker he’d made the first round of phone calls to get crime scene investigators involved. Although the hospital itself wasn’t the scene of a crime, the fact that this death was an obvious homicide meant all the sheriff’s department’s resources needed to be called into play.