Scott Pratt - In good faith

Over the next hour and a half, I paced constantly around the waiting room, to the parking lot, back to the waiting room, to the nurses’ station, where I was told at least five times that a doctor would be out to talk to me as soon as Caroline was stabilized. They wouldn’t give me any information about what was wrong with her or how she was doing. The only thing the nurse would tell me was that they were “treating her.” I didn’t want to call Jack or Lilly until I knew more, and Melinda had turned stone-faced and silent. All I could do was pace and think.

As I paced, thoughts kept flashing through my mind: Sarah being beaten, Lilly being attacked by a Doberman, Boyer dead on the floor. Barnett sitting in the chair: “I’m going to hell with you.” I walked back in from the parking lot and glanced across the emergency room lobby. An elderly man in a long sweater was making his way to a chair with the aid of a wooden cane. He reminded me of the old man who warned me of the curse.

Oh, my God. Caroline… this is my fault. I’m so sorry.

I remembered the old man’s voice as I was walking out of the coffee shop: “One of you has to die.” Had I been wrong to ignore the warning? Had I been too cavalier? Too full of hubris to recognize the threat to my family? And if the old man was right, and the curse was real, what was I going to do? I couldn’t just go to Natasha’s and kill her. What would I tell the police? That I was defending myself from a Satanic curse? Good luck selling that to a jury.

Finally, a doctor I recognized came into the waiting room. Collins Reid was the oncologist who was overseeing Caroline’s chemotherapy program. He wore a white medical coat and had thick, longish black hair and a beard that covered a pale, round face.

“How is she?”

“Let’s go back into the private area,” the doctor said, and he led Melinda and me down a short hallway into a large room that was furnished with three brown overstuffed chairs and a matching couch. As I looked around the room, I realized that it must be a place for families to grieve. There were prints of Jesus with the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm beneath them. My throat tightened.

“I really don’t understand this,” Dr. Reid said when we all sat down. “Her white cell count was fine when we drew blood before her last chemo treatment. Her count has dropped, which is normal with chemotherapy, but the problem is that it dropped so low that she became what we call neutropenic, which in turn made her vulnerable to a variety of infections. She’s now developed a condition known as sepsis, which basically means her bloodstream has become filled with bacteria. I’m afraid it’s quite serious.”

“What does ‘quite serious’ mean?” I asked. “Is this life-threatening?”

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. I could tell from his demeanor, and from the way he was avoiding eye contact with me, that he was extremely concerned about Caroline.

“I’m afraid it is. She’s going to be in isolation for a while. We’ll treat her with antibiotics. Her survival depends on how she reacts to the antibiotics. And I’ll tell you this up front: patients often develop further complications from the antibiotics.”

“Isolation?” I said. “Does that mean I can’t see her?”

“I’m sorry. She has to be in a sterile environment. We can’t risk having anything, or anyone, around her until we get the infection under control.”

“How long?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“How long before I can see her?”

“Please, Mr. Dillard, take it easy. This type of thing happens rarely, but unfortunately, it happens. I’ve seen patients recover in a short amount of time, and I’ve seen them require months of hospitalization. But Caroline is relatively young and, up until the cancer diagnosis, she’d been healthy. All we can do is follow the treatment plan and hope her youth and strength get her through this.”

“Is she in pain?”

“She’s sedated now. She shouldn’t be feeling any pain…”

As the doctor continued to talk, I felt myself slipping into a deep psychological void. I could hear him, but his words sounded distant and muffled. Time suddenly seemed to slow, and I found myself contemplating particles of dust that were illuminated by sunlight pouring in through a window. By the time the doctor left, I’d entered into what must have been emotional shock. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even think. Melinda said something to me before she left, but I had no idea what it was.

I don’t know how long I sat on the couch, but I eventually forced myself to get up and walk over to admissions. My legs felt as though they were dragging a ball and chain as I made my way through the bustle of people coming and going through the main lobby. I sat down in front of the clerk and somehow managed to give her my insurance card and the information she needed. Caroline, she said, had been moved to an isolated room near the intensive care ward.

I got up and wandered back through the lobby, not knowing what to do or where to go. I’d never felt so helpless. Thoughts of Caroline lying alone in a hospital bed, hooked to tubes and monitors and fighting for her life, caused my throat to constrict so tightly that I had to stop, lean against the wall, and gather myself. As I walked down the hallway towards the cafeteria, I caught a glimpse of a small cross on a sign just to my right. It was the hospital chapel, and I felt myself being pulled towards it as though by force of gravity. I opened the door and looked inside. The chapel was empty. There were eight pews, four on my right and four on my left, and a simple altar at the front of the room.

I took a deep breath and walked in. It was quiet, the air perfectly still. As I moved slowly towards the altar, tears began to stream down my face. I tried to control them, but there were so many emotions running through me: sorrow, pain, fear, sympathy, anxiety… by the time I reached the altar I was sobbing.

And then I did something I hadn’t done since my mother told me there was no God. I got down on my knees, bowed my head, and prayed.

Hank Fraley drove towards Natasha’s with a feeling of excitement mixed with anxiety. It had taken him only half a day to secure a search warrant for Natasha’s DNA sample and the necklace, and now, after a night of tossing and turning, he, Norcross, and two other agents were heading to Natasha’s to execute the warrants at seven a.m. A cold, overcast dawn was breaking, and Fraley flipped on the windshield wipers as a light rain began to fall.

Norcross sat in the passenger seat. He was wearing a brown suit covered by a black overcoat and a tan, button-down shirt that was too tight for his muscular neck.

“Hey, Thor,” Fraley said, “I’ve been thinking about this crazy little bitch, and I’m betting she’s got something special planned.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Think about it. She goes down to the juvenile detention center and meets with Barnett three days before the hearing. She knows that Boyer is about to rat her out. She knows their little train has come to the end of the tracks. So she talks Barnett into killing Boyer and then himself. He goes out in a blaze of glory, gets a whole bunch of press. But I don’t think she’s the type to let Barnett steal the spotlight for long.”

“What do you think she’s planning?” Norcross asked.

“I don’t know for sure, but I’m thinking it’ll be some kind of mass murder-suicide thing. Maybe a shopping mall, maybe a school. That seems to be a popular way of going out these days.”

“Let’s hope we can arrest her and lock her up before she does it.”