Secrets to the Grave

84

Vince didn’t wait for an invitation to go back into the trauma unit at Mercy General. He crashed the double doors like a bull in a china shop, sending staff scurrying like frightened mice.

He barged into the exam room without thinking, scaring the hell out of his wife. Then he pulled her into his arms and hugged her too tight, immediately loosening his hold at her whimper of pain.

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” he murmured, carefully stroking her hair back from her face. “Baby. Oh Jesus. Are you okay?”

She nodded. Not satisfied, Vince looked her over. Her hands and forearms were raked with cuts and gouges. She had bled through the paper gown in several places on her chest, most notably in her right shoulder.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Where’s the doctor? Have you been seen yet?”

“We just got here.”

“So where’s the fucking doctor?”

“Don’t yell at me!” Anne snapped.

Vince put his hands on her shoulders. He didn’t know who was shaking worse, Anne or him. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m not yelling at you.”

“Yes, you are!” she accused in a harsh whisper. “And keep your voice down. You’ll wake Haley.”

For the first time Vince saw the little girl curled up on the exam table, nearly swallowed whole by a big gray blanket.

“She’s sedated,” Anne said, turning to brush Haley’s hair with the fingertips of her bloody hands. “She saw what happened. She wouldn’t stop screaming, and I had blood all over me. It was horrible!”

“Hush, hush, hush, sweetheart.” He tried to calm himself as much as he tried to calm Anne. He was breathing too fast, and he felt light-headed. “I’m sorry, honey. God, you scared the living shit out of me. When the deputy came and said—”

He stopped himself and pressed his lips against hers and stroked his hand down the back of her head—it came away red and sticky with blood. “Oh my God.” He stepped out into the hall and shouted, “Where’s the goddamn doctor?”

The big redheaded nurse from earlier planted herself in front of him with a ferocious scowl. “Sir, you have to calm down or you’re going to get thrown out of here.”

“Yeah? And who’s gonna do that, Sunshine? You?” Vince demanded, poking a finger at her. “Ten of you couldn’t get me outta here! That’s my wife in that room, and I want her seen by a damn doctor!”

“Vince! Stop it!”

Anne had come to the door, battered and torn, wearing her most fierce expression.

“Stop it and get in here right now!”

“I like her,” the nurse declared. “She’s too good for you. Behave yourself and listen to her. The doctor will be here in a few minutes. He’s dealing with a head injury down the hall.”

“I’m sorry, honey,” he said, following her back into the room. “You should lie down. Please lie down.”

“I don’t want to lie down,” she said, her big brown eyes filling with tears. “I want you to hold me!”

“Oh, sweetheart.”

Vince took her into his arms as if she were made of spun glass and held her while she cried. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it might burst.

“Tell me what happened.”

The story came out in fits and starts. Vince did his best not to react the way his brain wanted to react. He wanted to fly into a rage. He wanted to find Dennis Farman and beat his brains out against a wall. He swallowed all of that down so as not to upset Anne, who was more upset about Wendy and Haley than about herself.

“All I could think was that I was supposed to protect her and here I was making her relive that attack all over again!” she said.

“It wasn’t your fault, Anne.”

“Of course it was my fault!” she said angrily. “You warned me not to stay involved with Dennis, but I couldn’t listen to you. I had to try to help him, and look what’s happened!”

“Baby, you didn’t tell him to burn the hospital down. You didn’t tell him to kill people. You didn’t arm him. You didn’t tell him where we live. How did he find out where we live?”

“Don’t even ask me that right now. I’m so upset!”

“Shhhh ...” Vince held her and rocked her some more. “Where’s Wendy?”

“Down the hall somewhere with Sara. How am I ever going to face Sara again? Her daughter comes to visit me and ends up having to beat a kid in the head with poker! Why do these things happen to me?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said, holding her close again. “I guess they happen because you care too much. If you didn’t give a shit about Dennis Farman he would have gone off to juvie a year ago to begin his lifelong career of incarceration. If you didn’t care about Haley, she’d be with Milo Bordain, for God’s sake.”

He pulled back a little and stroked his hands ever so carefully down the sides of her face. “If you didn’t care so much ... I wouldn’t be so crazy in love with you that I would go out of my mind like I just did and make a big ass of myself in a public place.”

Anne tried to smile a little, but the tears were right there to threaten. “I just feel like I’ve made such a mess of things. Now what’s going to happen with Haley? She was put in danger because she was in our home! Maureen is going to get her taken away from us!”

“Over my dead body,” Vince promised. “Or hers.”

“Milo Bordain will be petitioning the court tomorrow for custody.”

“Don’t you worry about the Bordains. They’ve got problems of their own tonight.”

Someone rapped on the door. Vince scowled at the doctor that came in.

“It’s about damn time.”

“Vince ...”

He shut his big mouth and stood back, barely resisting the urge to lose his temper every time the doctor touched Anne in a way that caused her pain. He was almost sick at the sight of the wounds Dennis Farman had inflicted on her. Only one was very serious, thank God. But several would need stitches and bandages, and would have to be watched for infection.

Anne excused him from the room for that part, and he didn’t argue, knowing he wouldn’t be able to take watching the love of his life being poked with needles.

He walked out the doors to the ambulance bay, needing the damp, chilly air to clear his head. He had forgotten his coat at the SO, and was still in the same shirt he’d been wearing when Zander Zahn had lunged at him with a knife. He wanted to wash the day off with a hot shower and crawl between the sheets naked with his wife.

The adrenaline had all drained out of his system, leaving him weak and shaking. He sat down on a bench, leaned his arms on his thighs and hung his head down, working at regulating and becoming more aware of his heartbeat and breathing.

With a clearer head, the realization of what he might have lost tonight was sharp and stark. For the second time in a year, his love, his second chance at life, his precious Anne had almost been taken from him.

Finally able to have one quiet moment to appreciate that, he allowed himself to feel that fear and cry.

Having been poked and washed and stitched and stuck with needles, Anne was finally able to dress in a pair of surgical scrubs borrowed from a nurse. She sat on the exam table waiting for Vince, petting Haley’s hair.

The idea of CPS taking her away was unbearable. The idea of her going to live with Milo Bordain was unthinkable. The idea that Anne herself had put the little girl through a second living hell tonight was devastating.

What would this trauma bring to Haley, so close on the heels of losing her mother and almost losing her own life? Anne was terrified at the possible psychological damage this might have done. She was going to have to think hard about her future as an advocate if there was any chance of putting her loved ones in harm’s way.

Of course, if she hadn’t been an advocate, Haley would probably have never come into her life at all.

The little girl blinked her sleepy eyes open and looked up at Anne.

“Mommy Anne? Are you an angel now?”

“No, sweetie,” Anne whispered. “I’m fine.”

“You fell down,” Haley said, tears coming. “That boy made you fall down!”

“But I’m all right now, sweetheart, and that boy will never ever come to our house again.”

“He’s mean like Bad Daddy!” she said, the anxiety building in her expression and her voice. She started to cry. Scrambling up onto her knees, she reached for Anne, and Anne pulled her close.

“Is that what Bad Daddy did to your mommy?” Anne asked, hating the need to do it.

Haley nodded against her shoulder, crying harder, edging back toward the hysteria that had gripped her earlier.

“Bad Daddy knocked my mommy down and hit her and hit her!”

“Oh, no. I’m so sorry, honey. I’m so sorry you had to see that. You must have been so afraid.”

Anne held her tight as the terror of that night came back over Haley like a terrible black wave. She could see the picture in her mind’s eye—the black figure knocking Marissa Fordham to the floor, the arm rising and falling again and again as the killer plunged the knife into her body over and over and over.

“Were you afraid, sweetheart?”

Haley nodded, sobbing. “I-I-I w-w-a-s hi-ding!”

“That was a good thing to do,” Anne said.

“B-but then I-I said no!” Haley cried. “I said, ‘No, no, don’t hurt my mommy!’”

Oh my God, Anne thought. She could easily imagine Haley running from her hiding place, rushing to her mother’s side. The killer couldn’t leave her there alive to tell the story. Thank God he hadn’t turned on her with the knife.

Had she been able to see his face? Had it been too dark? Was he someone she had known and trusted or a stranger she had never seen before?

“Did Bad Daddy say something to you?” she asked.

“Noooo!” Haley wailed. “I want my mommy!”

Now the grief came, howling and tearing out of her like a wild animal. Anne held her tight and rocked her and offered what comfort she could. When a nurse stuck her head into the room to ask if she needed help, she shook her head no. She let Haley release the emotion instead of stopping it short.

It didn’t take long to run out. Her energy store depleted itself quickly, and she gave up and settled against Anne. Anne whispered to her and stroked her hair and told her she was safe, feeling like a liar in the wake of what had happened with Dennis.

A sense of security would be a long time coming for Haley ... and for herself. She felt as if what strides she had made in her own struggle with the aftermath of crime had been taken away from her, and she had been pushed backward down that long tunnel. The sense of despair that came with that was so heavy, all she wanted to do was lie down and escape into sleep, and pray that the nightmares wouldn’t follow her there.