Endangered

9

That night in Billings, Marybeth Pickett tossed aside a magazine she’d been scanning in the waiting lounge of the ICU and rubbed her eyes. She’d realized she’d read the magazine before—twice—and she wished she’d thought to bring the charger for her iPad. Before it ran out of power, she’d answered a dozen library-related emails and had updated Joe, Sheridan, and Lucy on April’s condition, like she had every few hours since they’d arrived on Friday.

April had looked peaceful as the propofol was administered via IV, Marybeth told them. Her shallow breathing and severely reduced vital signs were normal responses to a drug-induced coma. One of the doctors compared the procedure they were doing to April to a bear hibernating in the winter. Her metabolism and heartbeat slowed drastically as the beeps on the monitor came farther apart. Marybeth had held April’s limp hand and massaged her knuckles while she slept. Her daughter’s total lack of response was troubling and upsetting, but that was normal, too.

The worst thing, she’d told her family, was how impotent she felt. There was nothing she could do now. She couldn’t really comfort April, but she wrote that she’d feel horribly guilty leaving the hospital. What if she was gone when April suddenly showed improvement? Or if April’s condition rapidly deteriorated? Marybeth couldn’t stomach the thought of her daughter somehow realizing she was alone in a strange room and in a strange city, even though she knew rationally it was unlikely April would be able to think those thoughts.

Marybeth stood and paced. The hospital at night was a lonely and spooky place. The waiting lounge was empty except for her, and the low hum of medical equipment throughout the floor was like emotional white noise. She looked up every time a nurse or doctor walked down the hall and she’d come to recognize most of them. She knew their shifts, their speech patterns, and the way they walked. She’d gotten to know a couple of the staffers, particularly the night nurse. But Marybeth felt she could never get comfortable, that she was in the facility with nothing to do or offer while the outside world spun on.

This was her new self-contained world. It was horrible.

—

SHE’D BEEN SHOCKED to learn from Lucy and Joe about the apprehension of Tilden Cudmore. Unlike Joe, she knew the man personally—she’d met him several times at the library.

Cudmore was an unpleasant man who spent a good deal of time in the library to get on the Internet, read newspapers, and harass patrons. His body odor was the subject of pained jokes among the staff, and his sour smell lingered even after he’d left the building. He loved getting into political arguments with people, and Marybeth had been pulled out of her office several times to intervene. It was also suspected that he used the men’s room to shave.

She’d heard there were library users who steered away from the building if they saw his Humvee in the parking lot.

There was something clearly off about him, she thought, but she’d never gotten a vibe from him that he was a predator. A nutcase, yes. A paranoid schizophrenic, possibly.

She’d told Joe she would not have even thought of Cudmore in relation to April’s attack.

That she’d misjudged the man so completely gnawed at her. Marybeth was perceptive when it came to judging others and to assessing potential threats, especially when it concerned her children. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t picked up on anything with Cudmore.

—

ALL THE DOCTORS could tell her was that it could be days, it could be weeks, it could be months. Marybeth had a long meeting with the hospital bookkeeper that morning and it had been both frustrating and fairly traumatic. Long-term care for April would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. No one knew how much. Marybeth made several calls to their insurance company and received few answers.

“Things are so crazy right now,” one of the insurance staffers told her. “They change the rules on us every week. We don’t know which end is up. So at the moment, I can’t tell you for sure what we can cover and what we can’t.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Marybeth asked.

“I wish I could tell you,” the woman said with genuine empathy. “Health care right now is a nightmare. I hope you can be patient while we try and sort it out.”

—

“I CAN BE PATIENT while we go bankrupt,” Marybeth answered.

She tried not to think about the enormous costs of keeping April alive, but she couldn’t help it. She was in charge of family finances, and she knew this could wipe them out. And no one seemed to be able to answer her questions.

She tried not to think about a possible answer to their financial woes, if it came down to that, but she couldn’t help it. Her mother, Missy, was a multimillionaire. She was also on the run with Wolfgang Templeton. Missy had not been in contact in any way since they had flown away from Templeton’s Wyoming ranch in his plane. But even if Marybeth reached out to her, would Missy help out? She’d never really liked April, and she hated Joe.

Missy would be her last possible option, Marybeth concluded. And it might be preferable to declare bankruptcy over that.

The combination of Tilden Cudmore, April’s condition, and the insurance problems—plus being away from her home and family—were weighing her down mightily. After visiting hours the previous two evenings, she’d drunk a bottle of wine by herself in her hotel room so she could sleep through the night.

—

AS SHE PACED, she felt a tremor in the floor. It felt at first like heavy equipment being moved down the hallway. Then she realized the vibration didn’t come from inside the building, but from the roof. The Life Flight helicopter, likely the same one that had transported April and her a few days before, was landing on the helipad.

Her observation was confirmed when the hallway came alive with emergency room doctors and technicians. An empty gurney sizzled down the hallway with nurses on either side.

Curious, Marybeth stepped out into the hallway after they’d gone by.

“Hi,” she said to the night nurse at the station. “What’s going on?”

They’d gotten to know each other since Marybeth arrived. The nurse was named Shri Reckling. She had three daughters, and a husband who worked for the state of Montana. Because of their similar families and situations, Marybeth and Shri had bonded instantly.

“Emergency landing,” Reckling said. “A gunshot victim in critical condition. He’s from Wyoming, just like you.”

“Really,” Marybeth said. “My husband says that because the state has such a low population, there is only one degree of separation. If you don’t actually know a particular person, you know someone who knows him or her.”

“Montana is the same way,” Reckling said with a sly smile. “Is that your way of asking who is in the helicopter?”

“Yes,” Marybeth said.

“I don’t have a name yet,” Reckling said. “When they do the admittance paperwork, we’ll know more. All I know at this point is the FBI is involved somehow.”

“So he’s with the FBI? Or a fugitive?”

She knew Joe had worked closely over the years with the FBI, particularly a special agent named Chuck Coon. So the one degree of separation would likely come to fruition.

Nurse Reckling leaned back and shrugged. “I’m not supposed to release the names of patients, you know.”

“I know,” Marybeth said. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

Reckling looked up and down the hall, then whispered, “Stay in the lounge. I’ll drop by when I know something.”

Marybeth winked at her. Waiting would give her something to look forward to besides deciding what kind of wine to buy on her way to the hotel.

—

LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES LATER, the team of emergency doctors rushed the gurney back down the hallway from the elevator. Marybeth looked up from her magazine—which she was reading again—to see a scrum of alarmed men and women clatter by. All she saw of the shooting victim was a glimpse of a man’s large and lifeless hand hanging down from under the sheets.

The hallway went quiet again when the double doors to surgery wheezed closed.

She waited another half hour, checking her watch every few minutes.

Finally, Nurse Reckling leaned in the doorway.

“He’s in emergency surgery,” she said. “He’s likely to be in there for hours.”

Marybeth arched her eyebrows, as if anticipating more.

Reckling raised an electronic tablet and said, “It says here ‘N. Romanowski.’”

Marybeth went cold and the magazine slid from her hands and dropped to the floor.

“Nate Romanowski?”

“No first name given,” Reckling said. Then: “Oh no. Do you know him?”

“God, yes,” Marybeth said, standing up unsteadily. She reached out for the back of the chair to steady herself. “Is it bad?”

Reckling took a deep breath. She said, “I’m not in the ER.”

“Please.”

“I heard one of the doctors talking to somebody with the FBI,” Reckling said with a sigh. “Special Agent Dudley was his name. He insisted I put him through to surgery. The surgeon there told him it doesn’t look good. The injuries are massive and he doesn’t think Mr. Romanowski can make it. I heard the FBI guy on the other end screaming at him until the doctor just hung up on him.”

Marybeth was stunned.

The phone rang at the nurses’ station, and Shri Reckling said, “That’s probably him again. I don’t really want to answer it. Are all those FBI types so pushy?”