“I’m going to realign your nose,” the doctor said. Susan was pretty sure he was eighty years old. When he’d first come in, she’d thought he was one of those old people hospitals used to staff the gift store.
“With your hands?” she asked, horrified.
“Yes.” He reached up, and before she could defend herself, he took hold of her nose with both hands. There was a flash of pain and she made a garbled noise and he lowered his hands and smiled.
“There,” he said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Susan lifted her hands to her face. “Ow,” she cried.
“The nurse will splint and bandage you and you’ll be ready to go.”
“Don’t I get pain meds?” Susan asked.
The doctor patted her on the hand. “Ice and Advil. You’ll be right as rain.” He turned to Henry, who had insisted on coming and was sitting in a chair next to the examining table. “This your husband?”
“No,” Henry and Susan both said quickly.
The doctor walked out of the examining room. “No one gets married anymore,” he said on his way into the hall.
The nurse smiled. She was tall with dark hair pulled back in barrettes and features that were all scrunched together at the center of her face. “He’s old-school,” she said. “He doesn’t even use anesthesia.”
Susan touched her nose. The slightest brush of her fingers made it throb. Her mother had been taken back to the Arlington by two patrol cops. Bliss didn’t have the stomach for emergency rooms anyway. Susan wasn’t sure if the patrol cops were supposed to protect Bliss or keep her in custody.
The nurse started dressing her nose with white gauze and tape.
Henry stood up. “I’m going to check on Bennett,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Is Dr. Fergus working today?” Susan asked the nurse as soon as Henry was gone.
“Yes,” the nurse said. “Do you know him?”
Susan smiled sweetly. It made her whole face ache. “I’m a family friend,” she said. “Can you ask him to stop by and see me?”
Susan was sitting cross-legged on the exam table wearing the oxygen mask and reading People magazine when Fergus came in. He looked the same as the last time she’d seen him, when she’d interviewed him for her profile on Archie Sheridan. Same white bristle cut. Same hulking figure. Same superior attitude. He’d agreed to participate reluctantly, and then only after Archie had signed a HIPAA waiver.
He squinted at her for a moment, not recognizing her with the turquoise hair and bandaged nose. Then he blanched, his upper lip lifting. “Oh, it’s you,” he said.
Susan didn’t give him time to leave. She knew Archie took a lot of pills. And she’d started thinking that he might need a refill. If he did, it might be a way to find him. She let the oxygen mask drop to her lap. “Archie’s medication,” she said. “Does he have enough, or would he need more?”
Fergus sighed and put his hands in the pockets of his white medical coat. “I can’t talk about my patient with you.”
“He’s in trouble,” Susan said.
“Detective Sobol has been in touch,” Fergus said. “If anyone tries to refill any of Archie’s meds, Sobol will be notified.”
“Oh,” Susan said. She probably should have known that Henry had already thought of it.
Fergus turned to leave.
“He’s sick, isn’t he?” Susan called out.
Fergus stopped. His shoulders lifted and fell. She thought he was going to tell her something. It was the way he set his shoulders back, like he wanted to get something off his chest. She leaned forward, ready to hear it.
“You’ll want to keep ice on that,” he said.
Henry found Claire in the ER waiting room. She’d found time at some point that day to go home and change and was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a grizzly bear on it and jeans and red cowboy boots. He felt grimy and tired and his scalp itched. A simple explanation. That’s all he wanted. An accidental carbon monoxide leak. A misunderstanding. Bennett to get a few stitches and laugh it off. Anything that would allow Henry to go to bed for a few hours.
Claire was on her cell phone next to a big sign that read NO CELL PHONES. She got off the call when she saw him.
“What’s the word?” he asked her.
“He’s in surgery,” she said. “She drove a fragment of his skull into his brain.” She smirked. “That Buddha packed quite a wallop.”
So much for the nap. “He going to live?” Henry asked.
“Possibly,” Claire said. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head slowly. “He did it.”
Henry raised his eyebrows.
“Heil just called,” Claire said. “We got Bennett’s prints on the furnace. He loosened the thingy.”
“The thingy?” Henry said.