Rose Connors: Temporary Sanity

“Has he done this before?”

Maggie opens her mouth, but no sound comes out. She nods her head up and down, though, hard enough to dislodge her tears from their pools, hard enough to tell me that the answer is a resounding yes. “When he drinks,” she says at last. “And he drinks a lot. He was drinking again before we left.”

She’s had enough. I had planned to explain to her some of what lies ahead-the reporting requirement imposed on the hospital; the police interviews; the arrest; the necessary restraining order-but Maggie Baker has had about all she can handle for the moment. We’re just minutes from the hospital anyway; the shingled cottages we’re passing now have all been converted to doctors’ offices, pharmacies, and medical supply stores. The process will unfold soon enough.

“Maggie,” I ask, “how old are you?”

She squirms a little at this, and I’m charmed by her innocence. Under the circumstances, even Geraldine Schilling wouldn’t press charges against Maggie for driving without a license.

“Are you asking as my lawyer?”

I laugh. “Do you think you need one?”

Maggie’s thumbnail goes back to her teeth and she speaks to the dashboard again. “Maybe.”

“Okay then,” I tell her. “I’m asking as your lawyer.”

“Fourteen.”

“When did you learn to drive?”

“Today.”

She really has had enough. I pull to the curb in front of the emergency entrance, and an orderly pushes a wheelchair up to the back seat almost immediately. Harry called ahead as promised. Sonia Baker lifts herself from the car with a modest amount of help from the orderly, still pressing the blanket to her chest and clutching the bloody kitchen towel to her mouth. The orderly slams the back door and whisks her away.

“Maggie, go ahead in with your mother. I’ll park the car, then come and find you.”

Maggie does as she’s told, but her eyes are like pinwheels. Her hands tremble when she reaches out to close the car door, and a wave of guilt rushes through me. I had to send her ahead with her mother; I need a few minutes alone to make a phone call. But I should have given her some idea of what to expect. The unknown is a terrifying thing.

Cape Cod Hospital’s parking lot is just about full. It takes ten minutes to find a vacant spot, and even that one is partially blocked by a drift from yesterday’s snowfall. I maneuver the Thunderbird into it anyway, cut the engine, and dial the District Attorney’s office on my cell phone. I need to alert them.

One of the ADAs will have to be available, when we’re through here, to appear before a District Court judge with Sonia Baker and secure a restraining order against Howard Davis. Given the extent of Sonia’s injuries, we’re likely to be here for a while.

Geraldine can’t take my call; she’s in a meeting. Stanley, though, is available. He picks up at once. “Attorney Nickerson, so good to hear from you. May I assume you’ve come to your senses?”

Stanley is probably about thirty-five. I wonder how many times he’s been decked.

“No,” I tell him, “you may not assume any such thing. I’m still daft.”

The line is silent. He’s apparently not surprised.

“Listen, Stanley, one of you needs to be in the office at the end of the day. I’m at the hospital right now with a woman who’s been roughed up big time by her live-in. And her live-in happens to be Howard Davis, the parole officer.”

“Jesus Christ,” Stanley mutters.

“Yeah. Sounds like he drank himself stupid and then lost it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Stanley repeats.

“She can’t go home with him there; he was drinking again when she left. I’ll bring her straight to the courthouse from here, but it might be a while. She’s in rough shape.”

“Not a problem. We’ll be here.”

Those might be the kindest words J. Stanley Edgarton III has ever said to me. I thank him and cut the connection, not wanting to press my luck.

The car door smashes into frozen snow when I squeeze out. I hurry back toward the emergency room, my hood useless against the unrelenting wind. It’s about two-thirty. This morning’s sunshine is gone, blanketed by a thick bank of darkening clouds. More snow is headed our way.

The hospital’s automatic doors open as I approach, and I run through them, hoping to join Maggie and her mother before too much happens. Signs in English and Portuguese are posted every three feet or so on the white plaster walls. Some direct patients to have their insurance cards ready. Others inform us that seriously injured patients will be given priority. Still others warn that public cell phone use may interfere with the functioning of diagnostic equipment. I reach into my jacket pocket and shut down my phone.

Two television sets are on in the crowded waiting area, each tuned to a different channel, making their own small contribution to the general chaos in the room. Sonia Baker must have qualified as seriously injured; there’s no sign of her or Maggie among those waiting for medical attention.

“Sonia Baker?” I ask the young nurse at the desk.

She’s a striking blonde who looks as if she’s been on duty too long. Her pale blue smock is stained and she’s obviously harried, but she checks her list of names, then looks up at me and smiles. “We took her straight back for stitches,” she says. “She needs to go to X ray, but the lip’s got to be sewn first. Her daughter went with her. You’re free to join them.” She points down the brightly lit corridor behind the desk. “The young girl seems upset.”

“Thanks,” I call back to her, already heading down the hallway, a seemingly endless tube of fluorescent light. I hear Sonia even before I reach her small curtained cubicle. “He didn’t mean it,” she’s repeating, this time to a young surgeon who’s pleading with her to be still. “He didn’t. He’ll feel awful about it. I know he will.”

I wish she’d stop that.

Maggie sits alone in the area outside the cubicle, her tears gone. She hugs herself with her skinny arms and rocks back and forth on her plastic chair, shaking her head each time her mother speaks on Howard Davis’s behalf. I can’t say I blame her; Sonia Baker should give it a rest.

“Maggie, there are a few things that have to happen now. I want you to know what to expect.”

She stops rocking and stares at me, panic in her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean certain steps have to be taken. The hospital has obligations under the law. All hospitals do.”

“Like what?” she whispers, her panic up a notch.

“Like the police have to be called.”

“No,” she insists. “No cops.” Maggie jumps to her feet and speaks with a force I wouldn’t have guessed she had.

I sink into an orange plastic chair across from hers and tell myself to answer calmly. “You don’t have a choice, Maggie. No one involved has a choice. The hospital has to report this to the police. It’s the law. Someone here has probably called them already.”

Maggie drops back into her own chair and says nothing, but her tears begin again.

“Maggie, you shouldn’t be afraid to talk to the police. You didn’t do anything wrong. Neither did your mom. Howard Davis is the only one in trouble here.”

A look of disbelief seizes her wet face and she gets up again. She rubs both eyes with her fists, leaving a dark half-moon of mascara under each. “Is that what you think? That Howard is the one in trouble?”

“Maggie, he beat your mother. He’s done it before. But this time she’s injured badly. He broke her arm, for God’s sake. We can’t let him get away with that.”

She shakes her head at me, streams of dark water running down her cheeks. “You don’t get it, do you?” Her small voice is desperate. “I thought maybe you could help, but you don’t even get it.”