Scavengers

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The hand on her shoulder was gentle but insistent. Estelle pressed her eyes tightly shut, blocking out the artificial daylight from the hallway. “Your mother would like to talk with you,” the voice said. “Are you awake?” Estelle cracked one eye and saw the blurry form bending over her.

“What time is it?”

“Six-thirty,” the voice said.

Estelle groaned and burrowed her face in the folded jacket that had served as a pillow. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said. “Thanks.” The hard vinyl couch in the hospital’s ICU waiting room hadn’t been the most comfortable bed in the world, but it had been efficient. Her cellular phone and radio rested on the small end table, on top of a pile of months-old Family Circle magazines. The radio was turned off, and the phone had been mercifully silent for the past two hours.

Estelle swung her feet down and sat upright, rocking her head to relieve the crick in her neck. Her husband had been right, of course. Her own bed in her own home would have been a marvelous luxury, a tonic. She might have been able to sleep the morning away as Irma Sedillos, the ever skillful nana, guided the ruckus of the two small boys away from their mother’s bedroom.

She sighed and reached across for the phone and radio. A small yellow note was pasted to the radio’s leather holster. She peeled it off and held it to the light from the hallway, immediately recognizing Tom Pasquale’s scrawl. “ES ROR’d 5:15,” the note read. “Mears wants to talk to you whenever.”

“Whenever,” Estelle said, and shook her head to clear the cobwebs. One of the nurses must have whispered in to leave the note. Had Tom Pasquale delivered it in person, he would have braked to an embarrassed halt in the waiting room doorway and said, loudly enough to awaken her, “Oh…are you asleep?”

She stood up and shrugged her clothes straight. She’d apparently slept like a stone, since neither her jeans nor the sweatshirt were wrinkled beyond what one would expect after catnapping on the ICU couch. Earlier, she had slipped home for a wonderful fifteen minutes under the shower, trying to rinse the acrid fire residue out of her hair. It would have been so easy to doze off right there, among the clouds of steam. But she had returned to the hospital, stretched out on the couch for just a moment, and fallen asleep. She shook out her jacket, clipped both radio and phone to her belt, and then paused at the small mirror by the door.

“We’ve never met,” she said to her image, and ran her fingers through thick, tangled black hair until the stuff sat on her head roughly the way it was supposed to. She turned away with a sigh.

The night shift ICU supervisor looked up and smiled brightly as Estelle entered the unit. “Sleep some?”

“Too much,” Estelle said, recognizing the voice that awakened her. “Thanks for coming to get me, Julie.”

“You probably could have used another twelve hours or so,” Julie Castañon said. “Your mother’s been awake since about five, raring to go.”

“Is Francis still here?”

“Been, gone, returned. He’s down in the ER right now. Something about a two-year old, a vacuum cleaner, and a broken toe.”

“All in the middle of the night,” Estelle said. “As an old friend of mine is fond of saying, ‘humans are interesting critters.’” She ran the fingers of both hands through her collar-length hair again and started around the nurses’ island.

“I think that Dr. Guzman planned to take your mother home just as soon as he was finished down in the ER,” Julie said. “He was going to let you sleep until he was finished.”

Estelle nodded her thanks. “And Mrs. Pope?”

The nurse’s face crumpled with sympathy. “She’s stable, but that’s the best I can say.”

The privacy curtains were drawn around Eleanor Pope’s bed, and Estelle slipped her hand around the end, lifting the white fabric just enough to slip through. The woman lay as before, jaw slack, eyes half-lidded, each breath coming as a major victory. Moving close to the bedside, Estelle took the older woman’s left hand in hers, letting it lie flat on top of her own.

Whatever other health problems had plagued the woman, Eleanor Pope had been blessed with a strong pair of hands. Her skin was rough from the demands of garden and livestock. Bright red polish decorated fingernails that were rough and broken.

Estelle gently rolled the woman’s hand palm up, seeing the calluses on each stubby finger. It wasn’t hard to imagine those hands wrenching a hay bale off the pile, clipping the wire, and prying off a flake for each waiting pet-or temporary tenant. The old, worn-out, oxygen-starved body behind the hands was the problem, and Estelle could imagine Eleanor Pope puffing for breath as she waddled from stall to stall. When simply opening a can of cat food was a chore, tending a single donkey would be a monumental task. Running a donkey motel would have been far beyond Eleanor Pope’s endurance. Denton “Woody” Pope must have helped with the daily chores.

“I wish you could talk to me,” Estelle whispered. She squeezed Eleanor’s hand gently. “But you’re somewhere else now, aren’t you?” The hand remained unresponsive. She felt a presence at her elbow and turned to see Julie Castañon. The nurse stretched over the bed and straightened an imaginary kink in the oxygen tube.

“Just a good rest,” she said softly. “That’s what she needs.” At the same time, she glanced first at Estelle and then at the cardiac monitor, shaking her head. She patted Eleanor’s shoulder, standing for a moment at the bedside as her fingertips kneaded the woman’s ashen flesh with affection.

Once well away from the woman’s bedside, Julie lowered her voice so that Estelle almost had to read her lips. “Being alone must be the hardest part,” Julie said. “Maybe they can hear what we say to them, maybe not.” She smiled again. “It’s a challenge to stay optimistic, isn’t it?” She moved toward the other end of the ICU, toward Teresa Reyes’ bed. “I don’t know how you do it, sheriff,” she said.

“How I do what?”

“Stay optimistic. With all the things that you see.”

“Sometimes I don’t,” Estelle said, and let it go at that, feeling too disheveled and weary to wax philosophical.

When the curtain parted, the first thing she saw was her mother carefully coiling up the oxygen tube around knobby, arthritic fingers.

“Aquì,” her mother said to Julie Castañon, and she handed the tube to her. “Es una lata.” she added, and Julie looked at Estelle, not following the rapid Spanish.

“She says it’s a nuisance,” Estelle said, and then switched to Spanish. “You should wait to see what Francis says, Mamá. ”

“He’s a nuisance too, that oso,” Teresa replied. She pushed herself up on one elbow and swung tiny feet over the side of the bed, barely giving Julie enough time to release the side rail. With a grimace she sat up straight, the thin hospital gown hanging like a tent around her tiny body.

Julie started to say something, but Teresa waved her away. “I’m fine,” she said in English. “Leave me with my daughter.”

“Don’t you do too much, now,” Julie said, and then to Estelle, “Call if you need anything. I’ll check with Dr. Guzman to see how long he’s going to be.”

Teresa Reyes’ black eyes watched the nurse as she left, and Estelle saw the crows’ feet at their corners deepen. “She’s a good girl,” Teresa said, once more in Spanish. “She worries too much all the time, though.”

“She’s concerned about you, Mamá. ”

“Well I am, too,” Teresa said. “You look like you’ve been up all night, Estelita. ”

“I have. We’ve got a real mess on our hands.”

“The lady next to me?”

Estelle nodded. “That’s part of it?”

“She’s gone, you know.”

“I know, Mamá. ”

“How’s Carlos?”

“He’s fine.” Teresa looked sideways at her as if to say, “How do you know?” “Irma is with the boys. She said she’d stay with them until we get you home.”

“That’s today,” Teresa said with surprising force. “There are places to hate, and this place tops my list.” The sentence was almost too long for her air supply, and she straightened up and tried to take a deep breath. “It doesn’t smell good around this place.”

“You want to lie back down?”

“I think so.”

“Did Francis say that you should wear the oxygen tube?” Estelle asked as Teresa settled back against the pillow.

“Of course he did.”

“Well, then…” She slipped the oxygen tube around her mother’s head. “It’s no big deal, Mamá. It helps you breath, is all.”

“I don’t like it in my nose.”

“There aren’t too many other choices, querida. ”

Teresa chuckled, a dry, thin little sound. “So, are you going to take me home, or is Irma?”

“I’m going with you.”

Teresa closed one eye, the other holding her daughter’s gaze with amusement. “You can’t afford the time, can you?” Before Estelle could answer, Teresa added, “but I feel like being selfish just now.”

“It’s not being selfish, Mamá. ”

“Oh, yes,” the old woman said, and closed her eyes. “There’s always something, I know that.” She lay quietly, eyes still closed, Estelle’s hand gripped tightly in hers. “It will be interesting to see what becomes of the boys.”

“I’m not sure the world’s ready for them.”

“Well, it better get ready,” Teresa said. She opened her eyes.

“Time goes by so quickly, eh? It always surprises me.”

“All of us, Mamá.”

“No, in your case, you’ve got so much to do, all the time, day and night. You and that husband of yours. But me, what do I do? Still, the time just slips away so fast.” She smiled at Estelle. “And if I don’t visit Tres Santos today or tomorrow, I never will. And that’s the truth. And I know it to be the truth.” She squeezed Estelle’s hand. “So I want to be a little bit selfish, Estelita.”

“I’ll talk to Francis as soon as he’s out of the emergency room, Mamá. And then we’ll go. Maybe right after lunch.”

“That would be fine.” Teresa raised her right hand, thumb up. “But no maybes. I might be standing out by the road like this. What do you call it?”

“Hitchhiking. Let me get my camera before you do that.”

Teresa Reyes frowned with mock seriousness. “And don’t you think I won’t.”

“You won’t have to, Mamá.” With a head shake of irritation, Estelle realized that she had been calculating how long the drive would take round-trip, how long they could afford to stay there, maybe visiting with neighbors…In short, how she could squeeze into a frenetic day a single monumental favor to her mother. “I look forward to going there with you. Do you want the boys to go along?”

“Tres Santos means nothing to them, querida. No, this time I want to be selfish. Just the two of us.” She lifted her head off the pillow and stroked her chin as if deep in thought. “And maybe we don’t have to take the police car, eh?”

Estelle laughed. “I’ll leave the radio at home, Mamá. No one will be able to reach us.”

“You know that’s not true,” Teresa said ruefully, and Estelle nodded with resignation.

“Bob Torrez is on his way back from Virginia, so maybe things will quiet down a little,” Estelle said.

Teresa sniffed. “What difference will that make, Estelita? But maybe no one will tell him where you went.”

The cellular phone on Estelle’s belt chirped, and as she reached for it, Teresa said, “There. You see? They always know.” She listened to the cryptic conversation, and when Estelle folded the gadget to put it away, Teresa said, “Right after lunch, then?”

“Right after lunch, Mamá. ”

“So, you’re leaving now?”

“I have to. Just for a little bit. Francis will be back up in a few minutes.”

“What do they want?” Teresa nodded at the phone.

“Interesting developments,” Estelle said.

“And aren’t they always?”

A few minutes later, as Estelle passed by on her way out of the unit, Julie Castañon paused with one hand on Eleanor Pope’s privacy curtain. “Nice to see you,” she whispered to Estelle. “Your mom is doing better, isn’t she?”

“Much,” Estelle replied. “We’ll take her off your hands as soon as Francis is finished up.”

“I wish I spoke better Spanish,” Julie said. “She’s so interesting to talk to. I wish I had the time just to sit down with her for a morning and listen to her.”

“Me, too,” Estelle said.