Second Honeymoon

Chapter 113

THE NURSE HOOKING up Sarah’s fifth blood transfusion at Great Plains Regional Medical Center had no idea that she and her pink smock were all that stood between me and the verbal beat-down that absolutely, positively was coming my way courtesy of Dan Driesen. He’d just walked in the door straight from Casper, his jacket off and sleeves rolled up. He didn’t say a word to me, but if looks could kill I would’ve been toes-up at the morgue.

I couldn’t blame the guy for being mad as hell. Up until that moment, my reputation had merely preceded me. Now I’d managed to exceed it in ways that would surely get me suspended again, if not booted from the Bureau forever.

Sure, Sarah was a big girl and had made her own decision to join me in Birdwood, but now she was lying unconscious after thirteen hours and counting, having lost more blood than, quote, “most folks live to tell about.”

This according to her doctor, who delivered the line with a face so straight it could cut glass.

“Visiting hours are over in fifteen minutes,” announced the nurse as she left the room. She might as well have rung the bell ringside at Madison Square Garden.

Gentlemen, touch gloves and come out fighting.

Driesen circled me for a moment, as if waiting to see whether I’d offer up some lame excuse or, worse, try to argue that I hadn’t done anything wrong. But that would just be me leaning into his first punch. That much I knew not to do.

Finally, as I simply stared back at him in silence, he unloaded on me.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he asked.

“I’m—”

“Shut up!” he said. “Do you realize how many ways to Sunday you screwed things up?”

“I know that—”

“SHUT UP!” he yelled. “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT!”

I stood up, taking a step toward him. “THEN STOP FUCKING ASKING ME QUESTIONS!” I yelled back.

It was a bad move, but I couldn’t help it. Besides, what was one more bad move on the heels of so many others?

Driesen got up in my face so tight I could count his pores. The thought of leaning into his punch was no longer a metaphor. The guy looked as if he actually wanted to take a swing at me.

It was only fitting, then, that I’d be saved by the bell, courtesy of the same woman who’d rung it in the first place.

The nurse and her pink smock stormed back into the room, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking on the floor like nails on a blackboard.

“That’s it!” she snapped. “Visiting hours are over!”

Driesen looked at her for a moment, his eyebrows angled as if trying to decide how to respond. He opted for calm and apologetic. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “We’ll keep it down.”

“You’re damn right,” she said in reply. “I want you both out of here…now!”

For good measure, she pointed toward the door, like a gestapo Babe Ruth calling his home-run shot.

Of course, as the reigning expert in the room on bad moves, I could’ve told her she should’ve quit while she was ahead.

On a dime, Driesen scrapped calm and apologetic in favor of outright apocalyptic. In a voice louder than I thought humanly possible, he laid into this short and stout woman so fast and furious that it would’ve been funny if it weren’t so scary.

That’s when I knew. Driesen was more than Sarah’s boss. He was a mentor—her rabbi, a father figure. We both really needed her to be okay.

Score one for screaming like a madman.

No sooner had Driesen let up for a second, if only to catch his breath, than we heard the best sound in the world…a voice I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear again.

“Jeez, can’t a girl get some sleep around here?”

In unison we all turned to Sarah lying in the bed, her eyes now open. Driesen smiled. I smiled. Even the nurse smiled.

Then Sarah smiled.

She was going to be okay.