Angel's Verdict Part 15

"I wake up?"

"You wake up!"

Antonia looked like she hadn't slept for a week. Her gray University of North Carolina sweatshirt had coffee stains on the front, and it looked as if she'd bitten off a couple of her carefully manicured fingernails. Bree took all this in with a glance and said, "I'm fine, you know."

"Of course you are," Antonia said heartily.

She burst into tears.

"Oh dear," Ollie said. He lifted Antonia's tote off the orange chair and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Sit down, sit down. No, don't go mauling your sister around. Leave go of her foot, dear. You don't want to fool around with burn patients. Scarring. Infection. You just leave her be."

Antonia released Bree's foot and sank into the chair. She swiped her forearm under her eyes. "Right, right."

Bree put her hands up to her cheeks. The skin on her face was tender but intact. Her left forearm was wrapped in gauze, but her hands seemed to be okay. Her right forearm, the one with the IV in it, was one step beyond a bad sunburn. She shifted her legs under the light sheet that covered them. Both legs were in immobilizer casts.

"She's awake now," Antonia said. "She should see a doctor, Ollie. Go get one. Right now."

"Tonia. For heaven's sake. You can't just order people around like that."

"Don't you for-heaven's-sake me! Push that little thing-gummy, Ollie, the emergency b.u.t.ton."

Ollie winked at Bree. "Don't go anywhere, Ms. Beaufort. I'll be right back." He closed the swinging door gently behind him. It opened again, almost immediately. Hunter stepped into the room. The skin around his eyes was drawn tight. Like Antonia, he looked exhausted.

"Not you again," Antonia said. "Not now. She just woke up. Come back later, Lieutenant. Unless you came to tell us you shot the guy that did this to her."

"Not yet." Hunter stepped to the foot of the bed. He took in the bandages, the IV, and Bree herself. His face was expressionless, but there was a glitter in his gray eyes Bree hadn't seen before. Rage? "I'd ask how you're feeling, but you look pretty doped up."

"I'm fine," Bree said. "A little drifty maybe." She smiled. "Sorry I didn't get to deliver the fish tacos."

"Yeah." He ducked his head. Was he crying? Bree struggled once more to sit up.

"Lie down, sister!" Antonia sprang out of the chair and joined Hunter at the foot of the bed. "I don't know why you've been hanging around here, Hunter. You should just leave and go shoot the guy like I said before. She needs to sleep. She needs to see a doctor. She needs my mother, who'll be here any second. She doesn't need you."

"Oh dear," Bree said. Francesca and Royal lived at Plessey, some two hundred miles away in North Carolina. "Did you really have to call them, Tonia?" Then, "What guy?" She closed her eyes in an effort to remember. "What happened?"

"Oh my G.o.d." Antonia bit off another fingernail. "Brain damage. I knew it. Where's that d.a.m.n doctor?"

"Right here." The door to the room swung open and a portly man Bree didn't know walked in. He was dressed in hospital whites. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He was followed by a slight, dark-haired familiar figure. "Dr. Lowry!"

The pathologist grinned and wiggled her fingers in a half wave.

The other doctor picked up the chart at the foot of the bed and flipped through it. "You know this patient, Dr. Lowry?"

"Bree Beaufort? Sure. I've given her a hand with a case or two." She went up to the head of the bed and peered into Bree's eyes. "How're you doing?"

"Pretty well," Bree said cautiously. "How are you, Megan? Have you been appointed to the coroner's office?"

"You mean, am I here to see how fast I can get my hands on your corpse? Nope. Still working there part-time and helping out with my brother's live practice."

"Excuse me." The other doctor, whose name tag read ERIC CAUSTON, moved Megan aside. He flicked his ophthalmologic scope on and shined it into Bree's eyes.

"You're doing remarkably well," Megan said rea.s.suringly. "Just what I'd expect in a patient with the kinds of vital signs you walk around with. I've never seen burns heal so fast in my life! I thought maybe you'd let me take a few tissue samples and haul them on down to the lab."

"Hoping for another Latts cell culture, Doctor?" Causton's tone was sarcastic. He snapped the light off, felt the sides of Bree's throat with cool dry fingers, and then put his fingertips on the pulse at her wrist.

"You never know," Megan said eagerly. "Cells are amazing things."

Megan Lowry was exceptionally thin, very tiny, and wore thick tortoisesh.e.l.l spectacles. Bree bet she wasn't much older than Antonia. She'd suspected that Megan was some kind of medical wunderkind when she'd first met her on the O'Rourke case, and the irritated att.i.tude she was getting from Causton bore that out. Established physicians didn't like compet.i.tion from brash young newbies anymore than anyone else. "Causton's taking your pulse himself because he doesn't trust the machines. You're going to be amazed, Causton. This woman's the fittest patient I've ever had."

"Ever treat real athletes, Lowry? The kids on the basketball team at Duke, for example? You wouldn't believe how fast they heal. Youth, good health, motivation. It all goes into the picture."

She pushed her spectacles up her nose with her forefinger. "Can't say that I have."

"Then I'd keep my bright ideas to myself." He looked down at Bree. "But you're healing remarkably quickly."

Sam moved to the other side of the bed and took Bree's undamaged hand in his. "The intake report doc.u.mented extensive burns on the legs, forearms, back. She has a tibia plateau fracture of the right leg and a cracked collarbone. I want a prognosis."

"And a concussion," Megan said with relish. "You got a whack on the occipital area that should have felled a horse. But it just put you in la-la land for a few days!"

"I want to know the origin of each of the injuries, too," Hunter said.

Causton glanced at Megan with dislike. "She can tell you that."

"I don't think so," Hunter said. There was something in the tone of his voice that made Causton straighten up. "Cooperation makes better medicine, same as police work. I'd like to hear what both of you have to say."

"You didn't see her at intake, Causton," Megan said. "There was some question about whether or not she was going to make it."

Sam's hand tightened painfully on Bree's.

"So I got over here as fast as I could. I mean, she's a patient of mine, for goodness' sake. Plus, I thought I could maybe get a tissue sample right off. She checked in with concussion, fractures, et cetera, et cetera. What he said. You gave a very accurate summary, Lieutenant. Hunter. Anyhow, I talked to one of the EMTs, and in the twelve minutes that it took to get you here, you already had visible signs of burn healing."

"Nonsense," Causton said.

"You didn't go over her with a magnifier, like I did. I mean, it was barely visible, even under a strong scope."

"Healing begins immediately," Causton said disapprovingly. "There's nothing unusual about that."

"Not visible to the naked eye!"

Causton made a disgusted movement.

"Tell me about the head wound," Sam said. "Now."

Causton's fingers were surprisingly gentle at the back of Bree's head. "A depressed fracture, right here."

"Could that have happened when she was. .h.i.t by the car?"

"I was. .h.i.t by a car?" Bree said.

Causton frowned. "Possibly."

Megan said, "Absolutely not."

Causton reached the end of his patience. "What the h.e.l.l, Lowry. You seem to know it all. Go ahead."

"I took a few bits and pieces when she was in the ER, just to get a head start. The blood and tissue sample from the occipital area showed evidence of ... guess what?"

The silence in the room was heavy, and not encouraging.

"Cast iron!"

"Cast iron?" Hunter said.

"Yes. The kind of cast iron you'd find in a frying pan. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that's what it was."

"Somebody hit me with a cast iron frying pan?" Bree closed her eyes. "You know what? There was a cast iron frying pan on the wall of the restaurant. Along with a lot of other stuff."

"Do you remember anything else?" Antonia asked.

"Don't bite your fingernails," Bree said. "No. I don't remember a thing about the accident. What happened?"

Hunter's hand still gripped her own. His voice was a little hoa.r.s.e. "You punched the Walk b.u.t.ton to cross Bay to come home. A beer truck went through the intersection just as the light turned green. When the truck pa.s.sed, I saw you lying in the street. A car came zipping around the corner, swerved to avoid hitting you, flipped up onto the sidewalk, and burst into flames. I went across the street and got you out from under the car."

"What about the driver?" Bree asked.

"Jumped free. And there was no one else in the car, thank G.o.d, or I would have been patching up two victims instead of one." Causton tucked the end of his stethoscope into his jacket pocket. He crossed his arms. "You think someone hit her from behind before she was. .h.i.t by the car?"

"I'm sure of it. Knocked her into the path of the car. We cited the driver for failure to yield, dangerous driving, and a couple of other infractions."

"I'd like to get my hands on him," Antonia said.

"He's in the Chatham County Jail at the moment, pending the results of the traffic investigation."

"Anyone I know?" Bree asked.

Hunter nodded slowly. "Phillip Mercury."

"Really." Bree absorbed this for a long moment.

"Claims he did what he could to avoid you."

"The newspapers said he was drunk," Antonia said. "Or high. You cited him for DUI, didn't you, Sam?"

"We did."

"So he's going to jail for a long time. Of course, not as long as if ..." Antonia's voice choked with sobs.

"Well, I didn't die," Bree said tartly. "Get a grip, sister."

The door to the room burst open. A small, red-gold whirlwind spun into the room, followed by a tall, handsome man with gray hair.

"Mamma!" Antonia threw herself into Francesca's arms. "You're here, Mamma. She's going to be all right. She's not going to die! I was so sure she was going to die!"

Bree smiled at her heart's true father, Royal Winston-Beaufort. "Hey, Daddy. That's my diva sister for sure. I'm fine. It's like they say. The whole thing was a long way from my heart."

"Darlin' girl," her mother said. "We've come to take you home."

Eleven.

There was never yet philosopher,

That could bear toothache patiently.

-Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare "I'm not staying in this bed a minute longer!" Bree shouted. She wasn't in the best of tempers. Sasha was curled on the floor nearest her right hand. Once in a while he lifted his head and b.u.mped her hand.

It'd been a three-day ha.s.sle to get out of the hospital, and it was even more of a ha.s.sle to resist the efforts of her parents to take her back to Plessey. At least she was set up at the town house. Her mother and father had taken over Antonia's bedroom. Antonia was set up in the living room on the pull-out couch. Bree herself was in her own room, propped up in her bed, feeling like a turkey trussed for stuffing.

It wasn't the disruption of her days that bothered her so much.

The peac.o.c.k pin was missing. And she couldn't get up to search for it.

Bree had discovered it as soon as she'd managed to go through her purse and her briefcase at the hospital. Flurry's accordion folder was there. Her cell phone, credit cards, and driver's license were there. She had a hundred-some dollars in cash, and that was there, too.

The missing jewel led to a lot of questions, and Bree wanted some answers.

"You hear me, Sasha? I'm getting up." Her bedroom door was half-open. She could hear her mother rustling around in the kitchen. "And my folks are going back to North Carolina if I have to stuff them in their car myself. I'm going nuts cooped up here."

Bree liked this room, but she didn't like it well enough to stay stuck in bed for however many days her mother was planning to keep her there. The town house had been in the family since before the War Between the States; two hundred and fifty years ago, it had been an office for the warehouse below it. The room still had the original narrow plank floors, now covered by a rose-figured carpet. There was an old chest of drawers directly across from the bed, the kind with a mirror attached. Bree could see herself. Her hands were pink, but not as red as they had been. Her hair was hidden beneath a gauze cap. She felt carefully under the edges at the back. They'd shaved off part of her hair. Her cheeks were a shiny pink; Causton had told her this was from the heat of the flames that had burned her arms and legs.

Her legs. Her mother had thrown a light blanket over her. Bree twitched it aside. They'd removed the immobilizer cast from her right leg, since the burns were healing well. Her left was now in some sort of a resin cast. Her knee was bent at a slight angle. They'd put a pin across the top of her tibia. She'd be up and weight-bearing in a few days, with any luck.

"I'm getting up," Bree said to Sasha, "and I'm not kidding."

"What's that, dear?" Her mother bustled in with an armload of fresh towels. Francesca was small, comfortably round, and the sunniest woman Bree knew. The red-gold hair that caught Royal Winston-Beaufort's eye thirty-odd years ago across the main dining room at Duke University was helped a little nowadays with a rinse. But the light, pretty voice that was so much of Bree's childhood was untouched by time.