creeps.”
I can sympathize and the mere mention of maggots has me feeling them crawling on me all over again.
Desi lets me eat a plate of her wonderful dinner and after scarfing it down, I say my good-byes, shoo Erika and her friends out of the hearse, and head for the hospital to check on William.
Most of the people on duty in the ER at this time of day are night-shifters, and I don’t know them as well as I do the day folks. So rather than venturing into the ER proper, I head for the waiting room, where I find my mother sitting in one of the chairs, reading a magazine.
“Hey, Mom, how’s William doing?”
She sets her magazine aside and motions for me to sit next to her. “They stitched up his scalp wound, but only after William made the doctor clean everything five times. He’s down having a CT scan of his head now. The doctor said he’s pretty sure it will be negative.”
“That’s a relief,” I say.
“He’s an interesting guy, very clean. Are you dating him?”
I shake my head. “We went out on a blind date once, but it didn’t work out.”
“I see.”
“So he’s all yours.”
She gives me a sly look and says, “Is it that obvious?”
“Well, it is to me. After all, I’ve seen you court before. I know the signs.”
She flashes me a grim smile. “I haven’t had the best track record when it comes to husbands and beaux, have I? I’ve always been proud of you girls for marrying so well.”
“Well, it turns out I didn’t do as well as we originally thought,” I counter.
She gives me her classic pish-paw wave of dismissal. “You did fine. David made a little mistake. That’s all. I think you’re writing him off too easily. It’s every girl’s dream to marry a doctor. You shouldn’t be so eager to just throw all that away. It gives you social standing and credibility.” She pauses, then adds, “The cream always rises to the top, you know.”
So does pond scum, I think.
“Sorry to disillusion you, Mom, but that never was my dream. My dream is to be married to a man who loves me, a man who is faithful, a man who doesn’t risk my health and my life for the sake of a little sexual gratification.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have looked elsewhere if he was getting what he needed at home,” she says with a sniff. “You know what I’ve always told you girls about keeping things interesting.”
I did. It was Rule #6 in Mother’s Rules for Wives: don’t be afraid to experiment in the bedroom. David and I did experiment some, but it was pretty chaste. Mostly it consisted of trying different positions and him asking me to wear sexy lingerie. I always went along until the day he came home with a Xena, Warrior Princess costume. I put it on but rather than looking sexy, I looked like the starring role in a Wagner opera. The only thing lacking was one of those Norsky Viking helmets, which would have been somewhat appropriate given my real name, though it also would have lent a whole new meaning to the term
I’m groping for a way to get Mom off topic when a nurse comes out of the ER care area and approaches. It’s Lucy “Lupus” Julseth, someone I used to work with and one of the people whose names was on Luke Nelson’s patient list.
“Mattie!” she says, greeting me with a smile. “How the heck are you?”
“Good as can be expected,” I tell her.
Lucy looks to my mom and says, “He’s back from his CT so you can come and sit with him if you’d like.”
“I would,” she says. She looks over at me with a questioning expression and I wave her on.
“Go ahead. I have to get home but I’ll call you in a day or two.” As my mother heads for the care area of the ER, I say to Lucy, “So you’re working the night shift these days?”
“Not by choice. Mark and I split up so I needed to make other arrangements for childcare.” She sighs and looks longingly out the window toward the parking lot. That’s when I remember that Lucy is a smoker.
“Want to step out for a puff?” I ask her. She nods and looks relieved. We head outside to an area just off the hospital property and Lucy lights up. She takes a long drag and blows it out slowly, taking care to see that the smoke blows away from me.
“It’s hard to arrange childcare when you work these twelve-hour shifts,” she says, taking another drag. “But I need the money and the night shift differential helps. So for now, the kids are spending the nights at my parents’ house and I sleep during the day while they’re in school.”
“I’m sorry to hear about you and Mark. When did it happen?”
“A month ago. He said he needed to find himself.” She finger quotes the last two words and rolls her eyes. “What a bunch of bullshit.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
She puffs on her cigarette, shrugs, and nods.
“Is that why you’re seeing Luke Nelson?”
Her brow furrows and she gives me a startled look. “How do you know about that?”
I explain about my investigation into Shannon’s death and how I came across the list of names. “I assure you I’ll keep the fact that you’re seeing Nelson confidential,” I tell her. “I don’t really need to know why you were seeing him, but I’d like to ask you some questions about him, if you don’t mind.”
“If you want to know if I had an appointment with him on the day Shannon died, some detective already asked me. I did.”
“What time was your appointment?”
“Three o’clock.” She stubs her cigarette out on the sidewalk and stuffs the butt back in her pack. “I was there for an hour.”
“Have you been seeing Nelson for a long time?”
“I started a couple of months ago when I sensed that Mark and I were drifting apart. I thought some counseling might help me figure out how to get things back on track.”
“Did it?”
“Obviously not,” she says with a wry chuckle. She turns to head back inside and I follow along beside her. “Maybe if Mark had gone with me it might have helped but I couldn’t get him to do it and Nelson said he’d prefer to keep it one-on-one for the time being anyway.”
This strikes me as odd since I’ve always heard that marital counseling is more effective when both parties are involved. “Has seeing Nelson helped you deal with the breakup?”
We are at the entrance to the ER waiting room and Lucy pauses with her hand on the door. “I started having panic attacks about a week after Mark left and despite trying several medications, they’ve been getting worse. So for my last few visits, Dr. Nelson tried something new, some sort of hypnotherapy. I guess it’s working because I haven’t had an attack since, though to be honest, I don’t remember a whole lot about the sessions.”
“Interesting.”
“Look, I have to get back to work, but it was good to see you again. You doing okay since you and David split?”
“I have good days and bad days.”
“Any chance of reconciliation?”
I shake my head. “No, we’re done. I can’t get past the whole cheating thing. I’m a pretty forgiving person, but that’s a bit more than I’m willing to take.”
Lucy nods and looks away. I sense she’s uncomfortable with my comment and wonder if Mark has strayed, too.
“You take care,” she says, and before I can ask her anything else, she opens the door and disappears inside.
Chapter 33
