J. Jance - Desert Heat

The walk back to the hospital was only a matter of blocks, but it seemed like miles. The too-large shoes slapped clumsily on the sidewalk, and it was all Joanna could do to put one foot in front of the other. Mid-afternoon sun burned down unmercifully through her double layer of clothing. The twine on the heavy shopping bag cut at her fingers, and she felt sweaty and dirty. More than that, Adam York had left her feeling helpless and violated.

Why had he treated her that way, she wondered miserably. As a police officer’s wife, Joanna knew that in the aftermath of an attempted murder, family members would be expected to provide answers to painfully uncomfortable questions. She knew those questions would be coming soon enough from whatever investigators Dick Voland had assigned to Andy’s case. That was no surprise. And in the light of the television news broad-cast, questions from the DEA as well as the Mexican federales were also to be expected.

But this hadn’t been the kind of kid-gloves type interview to which she should have been entitled. Even if they suspected Andy of wrongdoing, Adam York hadn’t acted at all as though Joanna were an innocent bystander. His whole demeanor and attitude told her that she, too, was under suspicion. For what, she wondered. For taking the ring? For accepting a present that might very well be the last thing her husband ever gave her?

She shifted the heavy bag from one hand to the other. As she did so, the sun caught the sparkling diamond in a flash of light. So where had the ring come from, she asked herself for the first time. Andy Brady didn’t have that kind of money stowed away, certainly not money hidden from her. And as for the extra almost six thousand dollars in their checking account? That had to be a simple bookkeeping error. It might take Sandy Henning a day or two to figure out where it came from, but eventually the money would be credited to the proper account, and the Brady account balance would tumble back down to its usual level of nearly crashing and burning.

Joanna had retraced her steps back up Elm to Campbell which she crossed at the light. As she started up the sidewalk along the hospital driveway, she thought she caught sight of her mother’s purple dress in the shadow of the portico. Sure enough, as she got closer, she saw Eleanor pacing back and forth in the small patch of shade.

The moment Eleanor saw her daughter, she motioned to her frantically and then came rushing down the sidewalk to meet her. As her mother approached, Joanna was surprised to see that her mother’s mascara was smudged. Obviously she had been crying.

“What’s the matter, Mother,” Joanna asked. “He’s gone.”

“Who, Andy? Where’d he go? Did they move him somewhere else?”

Eleanor Lathrop was puffing and out of breath. “You don’t understand, Joanna,” she said. “Andy’s dead.”

Joanna stopped short, thunderstruck. “He’s dead? No. When did it happen? How?”

Eleanor shook her head. “After you left, my good friend Margaret Turnbull stopped by. She and I were sitting there watching “The Young and the Restless” when some kind of alarm went off and people started running around and yelling ‘code red’ over the loud-speaker, whatever that means. Pretty soon some doctor comes out and says to me that it’s all over, that Andy’s dead.”

Joanna dropped the bag, pushed past her mother, and raced into the building. She sprinted through the lobby and shoved her way inside an elevator just as the doors were closing. She stood there shaking her head, not believing it had happened. It couldn’t be true.

Andy couldn’t be gone, not without her being there to say good-bye.

On the ICU floor she slammed open the door to the waiting room. A little knot of people stood near the painting on the far side of the room. They turned to look at her when the door opened. Ken Galloway separated himself from the group and started toward her, but she dodged around him and darted into Andy’s room. The machines were eerily quiet. The bed was empty. He really was gone.

A nurse from the nurse’s station looked up, saw her, and started toward her just as a pair of arms closed around her from behind. “Where is he?” Joanna demanded. “What have you done with him?”

“Hush now,” Ken Galloway said, holding her, trying to calm her.

“But where is he?” she repeated, her voice rising. “I’ve got to see him.”

The nurse was there now, too, reaching out, offering solace, but Joanna was beyond the reach of consolation.

“I want to see him,” she sobbed. “Where is he? Where?”

“They took him back to the operating room.”

Joanna stopped struggling in Ken Gallo-way’s arms. “The operating room? Then he isn’t dead, is he! It’s all a mistake.”

The nurse shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Brady. We tried to find you, but he went into cardiac arrest. Afterward, we had two doctors in to check him, and they both pronounced him brain dead. The form was there in his file, and everything was in order. We contacted the medical examiner and he gave us permission to go ahead. With harvesting organs, there isn’t a moment to lose. I thought you knew.”

Before Ken Galloway could stop her, she lunged out of his arms and raced back out through the waiting room. Another grim-faced family was just then filing into the room to start their own vigil of waiting and worrying. Seeing them, Joanna realized that she was separated from those people by a vast, impassable gulf. The ICU and its waiting room were for those who still clung narrowly to life. The place held nothing for her any more. Andy was dead. There was no reason for her to stay.

In the hallway, her mother was just stepping off the elevator. “Joanna, there you are.”

Without glancing at her mother, Joanna rushed onto the elevator and pressed the but-ton for the lobby. “Where are you going now?” Eleanor Lathrop asked.

“I don’t know,” Joanna choked as the door closed between them. “I don’t know at all.”

Later she would have no remembrance of fighting her way through the lobby or of recrossing the busy intersection at Elm and Campbell. When she came to herself, she was sitting in a tall wooden chair in a shaded patio somewhere on the green, flowered grounds of the Arizona Inn. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting there or how long she’d been crying, but someone was speaking to her.

“What seems to be the problem?” a woman was saying. “Are you a guest here?”

Joanna tried to stifle another sob. The woman, tall and elderly, planted her feet squarely in front the chair. She carried herself with patrician bearing-from her silver hair, cut in a short, elegant bob down to her old-fashioned saddle oxfords. One hand rested sternly on her hip while the other held an old, bentwood cane. Only when she took a step forward did Joanna notice that one leg was en-cased in a heavy metal brace.

“No,” Joanna managed guiltily. “I’m sorry. I’m not. I’ll leave right away.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” the woman said impatiently. “I didn’t mean to chase you away, but you were crying as though your heart was broken, and I wondered if there was someone I should call for you or if there was anything at all I could do to help.”

Joanna straightened in the chair and wiped the tears from her cheeks. The woman’s small act of kindness seemed to work some kind of recuperative magic.

“Thank you,” she said. “I believe you already did.” She stood up.

“Where are you going?” the old woman asked.

“Back to the hospital,” Joanna answered with resigned hopelessness. “I’m sure there are papers to sign, arrangements to be made.”

The gaunt old woman’s skin was wrinkled and parchment thin. She must have been nearing ninety. Age and wisdom both allowed her to see beyond the surface of Joanna’s relatively innocuous words to the real message and hurt behind them.