Lisa Scottoline - Save Me

“Love you, too.”

“Hang in there. Bye.” Rose hung up, then hit redial to get the main switchboard at the hospital. The operator picked up, and she asked, “Can you transfer me to the nurses’ station on the third floor?”

“Certainly,” the operator answered. There was a click, and the phone rang and rang. Nobody picked up, so Rose hung up and redialed.

“I’m the one calling the third floor,” Rose said, when the operator answered. “My daughter is in the hospital, and I want to speak with the nurse outside her room. Her name is Rosie, and the TV in-”

“Hold the line.”

“No, wait!” Rose heard the same clicks and the same ringing. She waited ten rings and hung up. She took her phone from her pocket and plugged it into the charger near the toaster. The phone came to life, the red star telling her there was a message, so she pressed to the phone function. The last call was from Leo’s cell, and she pressed voicemail, for his message:

“Babe, I got your text, and I’m sorry, too. I’m up to my ass in alligators here, so don’t wait up. Hope you found a sitter and give the kids my love. You, too.”

Rose pressed END, happy to hear his voice, then pressed her way to her address book, thumbed to her B-list babysitters, and got busy. Almost half an hour later, she hadn’t been able to beg, borrow, or steal a sitter. She checked the clock, and it was almost ten o’clock. She felt terrible, but she had to call Melly with the bad news. “Honey?” she said, when Melly picked up.

“Mom! When are you coming?”

“I’m so sorry, sweetie, but I can’t. I tried, but I can’t get a sitter. I’ll keep trying, and if I get lucky, I can-”

“Mom, please? I don’t like it here.”

“Did the nurse come back?” Rose could hear the TV, blaring in the background.

“She did but she had to go. Mom, please. Please come.”

“Did you tell her about the TV?”

“No, I felt funny.”

“Mel, see the button on the side of the bed? It’s a white plastic thing and it’s attached to a white cord. Can you press it?”

“Yes. I’m pressing it, but the nurse isn’t coming.”

“Keep pressing it, and she will.”

“She’s not, Mom.” Melly started to cry, softly.

“Honey, don’t cry, everything’s all right. Don’t be upset. When the nurse comes, put her on the phone. I’ll tell her to tell the lady to lower the TV.” Rose heard Melly sniffling, then some noise and talking, and it sounded like the nurse was in the room. “Melly, put the nurse on. Melly? Hello?”

“Yes,” replied a cool voice, clearly not nurse Rosie.

“Hi, this is Rose. Who is this?”

“It’s Annabelle. Are you the mother?”

“Yes, please, help her. She was in that school fire yesterday, and the woman in her room is blaring the TV. The news is upsetting her.”

“Relax. I have it under control. Hang on, please.” The nurse sounded calm, and in the next minute the background noise stopped and the TV silenced, but Melly was still crying softly, which broke Rose’s heart.

“Hello, Annabelle?” she said. “Are you there?”

“Pardon?”

“Can you just comfort my daughter? She’s a good kid, she’s just scared, and she’s been through a lot in the past few-”

“I’m sorry, but we have to hang up. There are no calls permitted this late.”

“No, wait. Don’t hang up. I want to talk to my daughter.”

“There’s an automatic cut-off for phone calls after ten. I’ll take good care of her.”

Rose felt her temper flare. “Let me say good night to her, for God’s sake.”

“Please, hold on.”

“Melly? Melly?” Rose said, but the line went dead. She tried to call back, but there was no answer. She tried the switchboard and asked again for the nurses’ station, but the phone rang and rang, all over again. She hung up, noticing the red light was blinking on her phone, which meant incoming email.

She pressed the button to see the list of senders, but they were all messages sent from Facebook. She scanned the names in the messages: Kim Barnett, Jane Llewellyn, Annelyn Baxter, moms from the class and school committees. When she’d moved to Reesburgh, she’d friended everyone in the class. She clicked the first name, and the email came on the screen:

Kim Barnett has sent you a message on Facebook. “I KNOW THE GIGOT FAMILY AND THEY ARE HEARTBROKEN! HOW DO YOU LIVE WITH YOURSELF?”

Rose set down the BlackBerry. Reesburgh was a small town, and the Internet made it even smaller. She didn’t need to read any more.

She got the gist.

Rose stood at the kitchen counter, drinking Diet Coke and waiting for the TV news. She didn’t relish seeing the story of the school fire, but she wanted to know what Melly might have seen or heard. She scratched the sleeping dog with her foot while the turbocharged theme of Philly News started. A handsome anchorman came on the screen, with a photo of the burning elementary school behind him, above a banner, FATAL SCHOOL FIRE.

“Good evening, Tim Dodson here. In our top story, life in Reesburgh is getting back to the new normal, after a cafeteria fire in an elementary school that left three dead, a beloved teacher and two female cafeteria workers. Tanya Robertson is on the scene at Reesburgh Memorial Hospital, where young Amanda Gigot remains in Intensive Care, fighting for her young life…”

The screen changed to Tanya, holding a bubble microphone to her lipsticked lips, standing in a pool of manufactured light. “Tonight, the two students injured in Friday’s school fire remain in this hospital. They’re little girls from the same third-grade class, but that’s where the similarity ends. The lucky one, Melinda Cadiz, age eight, will be going home tomorrow after being treated for smoke inhalation. Melinda, called Melly, was rescued from the flames by her mother, our reluctant hero Rose McKenna. We were the first to show you that viewer video yesterday, of Rose running out of the smoky school, with her daughter in her arms.”

Rose shuddered, but wasn’t completely surprised. So many people had phones and BlackBerrys. She’d carried a flip camera around since the day John was born.

Tanya’s expression darkened, and a school photo of Amanda popped onto the screen. “Not so lucky is Amanda Gigot, also age eight, who remains in a coma, after a head injury and significant smoke inhalation. Amanda’s the only daughter after two sons, and the Gigot family is headed by hard-working single mom Eileen Gigot, whose husband was killed in a forklift accident seven years ago. The entire extended Gigot clan is now by Amanda’s side, hoping and praying for her recovery.”

Tanya changed her tone, to investigative mode. “Authorities say that the school is set to reopen on Monday, but a spokesman for the Gigot family tells me they’re considering legal action against the school, the school district, and the school’s general contractor for negligence. The Gigot family has already filed for an emergency injunction, trying to stop the school from demolishing the damaged cafeteria until the cause of the fire can be independently determined. They’ve also called for the county District Attorney to investigate the matter for possible criminal charges.”

Rose shook her head. So the Gigots really were going to sue, and she hadn’t known about the injunction. She thought back to her talk with Mr. Rodriguez. No wonder he’d been angry at Kristen for talking about the cause of the fire. Things were about to go from bad to worse, and she hoped that didn’t include suing her and Leo.

“We’ll keep you posted on developments in this heartbreaking story, and I’ll have my exclusive interview tomorrow, my one-on-one exclusive with Eileen Gigot. Back to you, Tim.”