The doctor had said these aftereffects could linger for up to a day, but would ease as the hours went by. He took another of the pills from his pocket and told himself that the worst of it was behind him now. He needed it to be, because in addition to coming to grips with what he’d just heard from his father, there was also a score he needed to settle before a certain young woman’s trail became too cold to follow.
As Noah hurried down the stairwell toward the mailroom he lost his shaky footing and nearly tumbled down the last half flight. The people he passed in the hallway stood back and gave him a wide berth; whether they sensed his illness or his anger, they obviously didn’t want to catch whatever he was carrying. He was breathing hard as he made the last corner, feeling chilled and damp under his clothes.
It’s not that he expected her to be at work that day, innocently sorting the mail as though nothing were wrong. But he was going to find her one way or the other, and this was the closest stop on the tour.
“Frank!” Noah called.
The department manager popped his head out from behind the sorting shelves. “Yes, sir.”
“Have you heard from Molly today?”
“No, sir. She was on the schedule but she ain’t been in. I called her agency about an hour ago and they haven’t got back to me yet.”
“Okay, thanks. Does she have, I don’t know, some emergency contact numbers down here, from her application?”
Frank looked a little surprised to be asked such a thing. “Maybe that’d be up in Human Resources, Mr. Gardner. All I could give you is the number of the place we hired her from.”
“You’re talking about that temp girl, Molly?” Another of the mail-room staff had apparently overheard the conversation, and he came nearer. “Somebody called here for her over the weekend. I picked up the voice mail when I opened up this morning.”
“Do you have that message?” Noah asked. “It’s important.”
“I deleted it, and I didn’t write anything down, since it was a personal thing. The fellow who called must have just tried all the numbers he had for her. He said her mama was in the hospital.”
Noah stood there and let that bit of news sink into his empty stomach. As it gripped him there he remembered what Warren Landers had said, up in his father’s office. It had passed in one ear and straight out his other, because, as usual, he was immersed in his own significance, as though the only bad things that existed were the ones that had happened to him.
We’ll make them sorry. That’s how Mr. Landers had put it.
“Which hospital?”
“Uptown, Lenox Hill,” the man said, and then he leaned in and offered a quiet addendum. “None of my business, Mr. Gardner. But it didn’t sound so good.”
CHAPTER 33
In the cab on the way uptown Noah had made two phone calls, one to the hospital’s automated system to find the patient’s floor and room, and the other to an old and trusted acquaintance who was now on her way to meet up with him at Lenox Hill.
Over a long-ago summer Ellen Davenport, of the East Hampton Davenports, had become his first real friend who was a girl. It was a new thing for him, because though they’d hit it off immediately, they both also seemed to realize that dating each other was the last thing they should ever do. They’d actually tried it once just to be sure, and the discomfort of that terrible evening was matched only by its comic potential when the story was retold by the two of them in later years.
Now Ellen was a second-year neurology resident at Mount Sinai Hospital across town. His call had caught her at the end of a twenty-six-hour shift, but, true to form, she’d told him that she’d be right over without even asking why.
As he walked down the hallway of the ward he saw three things: the crowd of people overflowing from the double doorway of the floor’s small chapel, a smaller knot of visitors waiting outside a single room down near the end, and Dr. Ellen Davenport, still in her wrinkled scrubs, waving to him from an alcove near the elevators.
Ellen gave him a hug when he reached her, and then held him away at arm’s length and frowned. “You look like hell, Gardner.”
“Thanks.” He was preoccupied, looking over the people milling through the hall, every bit as afraid that he might see Molly as that he might never see her again. Some of these people were looking back at him, too, and by their manner it seemed they knew who he was.
“Hey.” Ellen snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. “I mean it. You look like you need to lie down.”
“I need for you to do me a favor,” Noah said. There was a slight tremor in his hands as he retrieved the medicine from his pocket, shook out a pill into his palm, and swallowed it dry.
Ellen took the vial from him, rattled it, and held it close to her eyes. She looked at him again with a little more concern than before. “If you’re going to ask me to score you some methadone, I left my prescription pad in my other pants.”
“That woman in the room down the hall there,” he said. “I need for you to help me-I don’t know, line up a specialist, make sure everything’s being done. I just want her to be taken care of.”
“They’re pretty good at that sort of thing here, Noah.”
“Ellen, listen to me-”
Whatever Noah had been about to confess, he was interrupted by the approach of a stranger. It was an older woman, frail and thin as dry reeds, and from the corner of his eye he’d seen her come from the direction of that room near the end of the hall. The woman nodded her respect to Ellen, turned to him, and then spoke with a gentle gravity in her voice that said more than the words themselves would convey.
“She’s awake now. Somebody told her you were here, and she says she wants to talk to you.”
CHAPTER 34
He stood just inside the open doorway, watching the remaining visitors say their good-byes before they quietly walked past him, one by one. Flowers were arranged all around the room, in baskets and vases and water pitchers, on extra rolling tables that seemed to have been brought in just to accommodate the overflow of gifts from well- wishers.
The door was closed by the last man who’d left, but still Noah stood where he was until Beverly Emerson looked over and smiled as best she could, inviting him to her bedside with a weak motion of her bandaged hand.
“We meet again,” she said. It was barely more than a whisper, spoken as though her lungs might hold the space for only a thimbleful of air.
There were bruises on her face and arms, dark, uneven spots within yellowing patches, and a bandage on her neck with a soak of crusted brown near its center. She was withered, already a shadow of the person he’d last seen on Friday night. The only thing that remained undimmed was that unforgettable spark in her light green eyes.
He had no idea what to say, but he said it anyway.
“You’re going to be all right.”
That brought a smile again, but she shook her head slowly and touched his hand that was nearest hers.
“We shouldn’t deceive ourselves,” she said. “I’m afraid there isn’t time.” She was measuring her breath as she spoke, managing only a few words of each phrase between shallow inhalations. “I don’t expect you to understand why Molly did what I asked her to do.” The grip on his hand tightened, as though all the strength she had was centering there. “You should blame me, and not her. But I hold the privilege of a dying woman now, and I want you to put everything aside except what I’m about to say.”
“Okay”
“My daughter is in danger. I need for you to promise me you’ll see her to safety.”
