Linda Hall - Critical Impact

But then she owed him.

Six months ago she came home to Maine without saying goodbye to anyone. Her mother knew what had happened, but her mother was the only one.

Anna was currently renting a cottage in a resort called Flower Cottage, which was only a few minutes’ walk along the lakefront from her mother’s cottage.

“And when you get out of the hospital, whenever that may be, you’ll be staying with us,” her mother added. “The new windows came today. You’ll stay in the parlor. We’ve already been talking about that.”

Anna smiled up at her mother and her aunt—her only family. The sisters were only a year apart in age, and no one would mistake them for being anything but sisters. Yet their personalities were like the moon and the sun. Her mother was soft-spoken and introverted while Lois was opinionated, outspoken and extroverted. When Lois’s husband died and Catherine invited her to come live in the cottage, Anna worried that Lois would take advantage of her mother, yet Catherine seemed to be holding her own. And for this, Anna was glad.

But what would it be like to add a third person to the mix? She closed her eyes. Maybe she wouldn’t have to find out. Maybe she could go home to her little rented cottage by the lake.

But without the use of her right hand for a while, she guessed she would have no choice but to stay at her mother’s.

“I hate to break up this party,” a nurse said. “But we need to get Anna ready for the night. And it’s way past visiting hours. The doctor will be here in a few minutes.”

The sisters kissed her good-night and left.

“I’m Sara,” the nurse said when her visitors left. “I’m your night nurse. If there’s anything you need, please call me. I’ll clip the button right here beside your left hand. Is that okay?”

“Thank you.”

The doctor was an orthopedic surgeon named Dr. Neale, who told her that she was indeed lucky that her right hand hadn’t been entirely crushed. It had been touch and go for a while, the doctor explained.

Anna nodded.

The doctor went on. It didn’t look as if crucial nerves had been damaged, and they were doing every thing they could to save her hand. The cast and splints had been configured to provide the least mobility now at this critical stage.

Save her hand? Anna blinked. She was told that her wrist and hand would require further surgeries, plus lots of physiotherapy. The doctor concluded by saying that her muffled hearing as a result of the blast should be temporary. Anna nodded, took the proffered pain pills and drifted off to sleep.

Anna woke up. It was dark. A doctor in green scrubs, a surgical mask and a bonnet was standing at the foot of her bed and holding a pillow. Anna squinted. Were they taking her for more surgery? She would be glad when her mother brought her glasses tomorrow. What did this doctor want? More blood? A check of her vitals? To change the IV?

The person with the pillow simply stood there and looked at her without moving.

Finally, Anna said, “Hello?” Her middle-of-the-night voice was feeble and hoarse.

No response.

Anna said it more loudly. “Yes?”

The person in the green scrubs moved to the side of her bed. Then the doctor bent down close to Anna, and with one quick movement plunged the pillow into Anna’s face.

Anna writhed and whipped her head from side to side, trying to break free. It was as if she were in the cave of rubble all over again.

She remembered suddenly about the nurse call button. Sara had said she had clipped it beside her left hand. Was it still there? She grasped for it, somehow found it, and pressed it over and over again.

She felt she was going to lose consciousness when she dimly heard from the PA beside her, “Anna—it’s Nurse Sara, I’m on my way.”

The pillow and the doctor in green had vanished by the time Sara arrived.

“Someone tried to smother me!” Anna blurted out, tears running down her cheeks.

“What!”

“Someone was just in here. All in green. And he tried to smother me with a pillow.”

Sara went out into the hallway. A few moments later she was back again. “I didn’t see anyone in the hallway, Anna. There’s no one else here tonight. It’s a very quiet night.”

“But there was someone. It was a doctor and he put a pillow on my face.” Anna couldn’t breathe. “He was wearing all dark green and a mask, like a surgeon.”

Sara sat down beside her and put her hand on Anna’s left arm. “Anna, there’s no one here. One of the side effects of the amount and type of pain medications you’re on is the feeling of being smothered sometimes. I’ll talk to the doctor about it in the morning. In the meantime, would you like me to sit with you for a while?”

“I would. Thank you.”

With tears stinging her eyes, Anna finally drifted off to sleep. Had someone really been here? Or had it been a dream of the worst kind?

“Your best guess—you guys think what happened at City Hall was an act of terrorism?” Stu poured himself a cup of coffee. He was pretty sure the coffee in the pot had been sitting on the counter in the Whisper Lake Crossing Sheriff’s Office for at least five hours. But since yesterday, Deputy Stu McCabe, Sheriff Alec Black and Deputy Liz Corcoran had been too busy to even rinse out the coffeepot after batches. To make it more palatable, Stu stirred in two spoonfuls of powdered creamer and three spoonfuls of sugar. He stood beside the window and stirred his coffee while he looked at the TV van parked outside.

“I do,” Liz answered, looking up at him. “Anybody who sets off a bomb is a terrorist. Plain and simple.” According to Liz, who had recently moved to Whisper Lake Crossing, all crimes had to do with terrorists, gangs or drugs. “It can’t be any of these weirdos on the anonymous tip line,” she said, holding up the phone. “I just talked to a guy. Says he’s the bomber. Says he’s also single-handedly responsible for assassinating JFK.”

“I hope you took down his name.” Alec looked up from his desk and over the tops of his skinny reading glasses. “Anybody who calls in is a potential suspect.”

“I know, I know…” She went back to the phone, holding up a yellow pad half-full of notes, numbers and details.

As any police officer knew, a tip line tended to bring out all the crazies from the woodwork, yet each tip had to be written down, analyzed and followed up on.

Alec and Stu and Liz had been at this for twenty-four hours and all they seemed to have succeeded in doing was getting the national media here in full force. Even now, a national news van, complete with a satellite dish, was parked out front. A well-dressed anchor-woman holding a microphone was being filmed, and the Whisper Lake Crossing Sheriff’s Department was the backdrop for this scene.

Most of the media action was centered ten miles south at Shawnigan, Maine, where forensics and bomb specialists were still sifting through the rubble. But since Anna Barker and Mayor Johnny Seeley were from Whisper Lake Crossing, this town was also prominently in the news.

The mock disaster was to have been for the entire county of Whisper Lake, which included the communities of Whisper Lake Crossing, Shawnigan at the southern tip and DeLorme in the north.

Of course, the disaster drill had been canceled due to the real disaster, something that the media was finding both ironic and newsworthy.

Stu decided that he’d had enough of a walking-around break. Time to get back to work. All morning he’d been trying to track down the elusive Peter Remington, former boyfriend of Anna Barker.

Anna had left California, “escaped,” she told him, from an ex-boyfriend who had “threatened” her. She’d given him Peter’s contact information, but the e-mails bounced. Stu had left countless messages to no avail.