Jess Lourey - October Fest

I smiled politely, but my brain was mathing. “But Mrs. Berns got in her accident only a couple hours ago. How did you get here so quickly?”

Her eyes arched, and her resemblance to Mrs. Berns was replaced by her resemblance to her brother. “Same person, different emergency.”

And that’s when Mrs. Berns was wheeled into the room, flat on her back, eyes closed.

My feet were rooted to the floor. Elizabeth gently led me to the side as two nurses wheeled in Mrs. Berns and positioned her bed parallel to Mrs. Skolen’s, the curtain dividing them. A third nurse followed closely with an IV and monitor on wheels. All three of them had grim, distant smiles strapped to their faces.

The nurse who appeared to be in charge, a heavyset blonde, spoke loudly to Mrs. Berns, who had a bandaged head, a face full of purple and black bruises, and her leg propped up in a cast. “We’re in your room now, honey. I know you’re awake in there, so no use pretending. You’re gonna be sore, but the sooner you’re up and around, the sooner you’ll start healing.” She pressed a white cylinder into Mrs. Berns’ hand, which looked as weak and light as a fallen bird. “If you start feeling pain, you just give this a click. It’s your morphine drip.”

My heart lightened, then soared. I knew what was happening! Mrs. Berns wasn’t nearly as destroyed as she appeared. She was playing possum until the nurses left, and then she’d morphine drip herself into Timbuktu while watching Judge Judy , eating lime Jell-O, and crank-calling the rehab ward. It would be her dream vacation. I kept a straight face until the nurses were done with their bustling, and then I leaned toward my old friend, quiet so Elizabeth wouldn’t hear. “You want to watch out with that drip. I’ve heard of people getting video-game thumb from pressing it too much.”

Her eyes fluttered, and then opened, looking rheumy and unfocused. For the first time, I noticed that her skin was so thin it was almost translucent. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she asked, her voice scared, “Where am I?”

And that’s when I remembered that nothing good lasts forever.

Fortunately, Mrs. Berns’ skull was fully intact. Her doctor okayed her move out of ICU as soon as a regular hospital room became available. Mrs. Skolen was required to remain in ICU for at least twenty-four hours longer. Conrad and Elizabeth had rented two hotel rooms in town and returned to them after they’d seen Mrs. Berns settled in for the night. I refused to leave her side. If I was here, I could make sure she didn’t have nightmares or get thirsty. I’d locked up the library as soon as Wohnt had slapped me with the news, and it could stay locked forever as far as I was concerned.

She was in and out of consciousness for the first few hours I was alone with her, heavily doped on meds and unable to find a restful sleep. I sang to her, a quiet hum. She’d have punched me for it if she was awake, but it was enough to finally guide her into a deeper sleep. Either that or she was so annoyed by it she knocked herself out.

As much as I didn’t want to, once her breathing became deep and restful, I called Johnny to ask him to take care of Luna and Tiger Pop. He said all the right things and promised to come straight to the hospital afterward, but I’d convinced him that now wasn’t the time, that Mrs. Berns needed quiet to recover. The tears were rolling down my cheeks when I told him, but I kept my voice even on the phone. I could only deal with one crisis at a time.

I guarded Mrs. Berns’ sleep for a while, her chest rising and falling fitfully underneath the white bandages, her casted leg propped up in bed. The woman had saved my life, could spot a lie at a hundred yards, and made life more fun than it had any right to be. And with her eyes closed, she looked just like any little old lady with a few doddering years left in her. I glanced back at the phone, blurry through the tears, and considered that maybe I did need Johnny to get through tonight. No , I thought, resting my head on the side of her bed, I can get through this alone . It was the only way I knew how.

I couldn’t stand the worrying any longer so replaced it with a prayer to every god I’d ever heard of, with an added plea to fairies, leprechauns, and four-leaf clovers, just in case. There’s no coward like an agnostic who believes her best friend is knocking at death’s door.

“How is she?”

I started. I hadn’t heard the door open. “Bernard?”

He was walking funny, like his leg hurt him, and he had a glistening blue and green bruise on his left temple. “They said she was going to be fine.”

“What happened to you?”

“I fell. How’s the other woman? Freda, is that her name?”

He was anxious, repeatedly running his fingers through his hair and then shuffling them into his pockets to play with pieces of lint or whatever secrets they held. My antennae were up, alerted by his injuries and body language. Neither Conrad nor Elizabeth knew whose Dodge pickup Mrs. Berns had been driving, or where she and Freda had been going. A witness had spotted the vehicle overturned on County Road 29 going east, Mrs. Berns behind the wheel, awake but without her seatbelt on and Freda next to her, belted in and unconscious. I took a stab. “You fall into a steering wheel?”

His eyes narrowed and his hands stilled. “What?”

“You drive a pickup?” The pieces were falling into place. Mrs. Berns was wild, but she wasn’t stupid. She always used condoms, washed her hands after using the toilet, and wore her seatbelt.

His face went ashen, underscoring the ugly nature of his bruise. “I let her borrow the truck. I didn’t know she was such an abdominal driver.” He was backing toward the door.

I stood, the accumulated stress of the past twenty-four hours roaring toward my mouth. “You were driving that pickup when it got into the accident, weren’t you? You unbuckled Mrs. Berns and pulled her behind the wheel and fled, didn’t you?” My hands felt huge and meaty, itching to pound into something. I advanced, and Bernard cowered.

“Stop it.”

My ears perked, and I swiveled to the bed. “Mrs. Berns?” She’d spoken only a handful of words since her surgery, and none of them were commands. “Did you say something, Mrs. Berns?”

Her eyes fluttered open and then focused. “A dumbass says what?”

“What?” I said.

She cackled, which immediately turned into a painful cough. “Damn ribs. They’re broken you know, Bernard. Three of ’em. You get that driver’s license same place you got your journalist’s license? On the Interweb?”

He rushed to her side and grabbed her hand. I thought he was going to pour apologies, but instead he said, “Don’t tell on me. Please. I don’t want to go back to jail.”

I shoved him to the side so I could get in close to her. “How are you feeling?”

“Like the prettiest boy in prison,” she said, and then attempted another weak chortling. “No offense, Bernard.”

“You shaved ten years off my life,” I told her, relieved tears burning hot at the corners of my eyes.

“Think what it did to me.” She fumbled for the bed adjuster. “How’s Freda?”

I chose my words carefully. “She’s pretty banged up, but she’ll pull through. What were you three doing?”

Mrs. Berns’ eyes twinkled, even if the rest of her couldn’t. “Getting a marriage license.”

I glanced quickly at Bernard, but he was stone-faced. “For whom?”

“For the two of us,” he said defensively. “We’re in love and we’re going to espouse each other. On Halloween.”