Heather Webber - Digging Up Trouble

Tam was brilliant! I have excellent taste in employees.

Then I remembered Jean-Claude. Okay, somewhat excellent taste.

“Yes,” I said, “we really need to get to the hospital, officer.”

He nodded to me. “Why aren’t you driving?”

Why wasn’t I?

“Oh,” Tam said, “she’s in no condition to drive.”

“You been drinking, ma’am?”

Ma’am . Hmmph. “Me? No!”

“Painkillers,” Tam whispered. “Back problems.”

“Oh.”

“Oooooh,” Tam cried, holding her stomach.

“I’m going to call EMS,” the officer said.

“No, no. I hate ambulances. I can make it . . . if we hurry.”

The back of her head was to me, but I could imagine her blinking her beautiful blue eyes at him.

Digging Up Trouble

21

“Ma’am, I can’t let you do that.”

I lurched forward as Tam stepped on the gas. My jaw dropped open as I looked at her.

She smiled wide, a twinkle in her eye.

“You’re insane!” I cried.

“Where’s your sense of fun?” she asked, still grinning.

“Not here, that’s for sure!” I peered around my headrest, looking out the back window. The officer had jumped in his car and was closing in fast. Oh God.

Sirens filled the air as he pulled in front of us, leading the way.

Tam said, “See?” and stepped on the gas.

“I didn’t know you were such a good liar.” I’d stopped shaking, but my heart was now beating in my throat.

“We all have our talents.”

We made it to the hospital in less than five minutes. Tam parked the car under the emergency room portico and Officer Nice Guy helped her inside.

“Go, go,” she told me, waving me off as a gurney appeared out of nowhere. The officer must have called ahead.

I ran up to the desk on wobbly legs. “Riley Quinn,” I said.

The woman barely looked up. “And you are?”

“His mother,” I lied. I didn’t know if they’d let me in otherwise.

Behind the counter, she rolled her eyes. “Biggest family I ever saw. Go through those double doors, take a left at the green doors, a right through the red doors, then follow the blue line until you get to the nurses’ station. Someone there will help you.”

Green, red, blue, I repeated, trying to remember what she’d said as I pushed through the double doors.

My nose scrunched at the hated hospital smell. Not my favorite scent, that blend of antiseptic and illness.

22

Heather Webber

A handrail lined one wall and a rainbow of colors deco-rated the floor. Looked like a class of preschoolers had had their way with a box of crayons.

I came to a set of yellow doors.

Yellow?

Red, green, blue. Green, red, blue? Blue, green, red?

No yellow at all! Oh no!

“Riley,” I whispered loudly as I passed open doorways.

What was it about hospitals and nursing homes? Why couldn’t I pass a room without looking in? So far all I’d seen were two empty beds and a storage closet.

“Riley?” I whispered louder.

“Shhh!” someone said from within one of the rooms.

“Trying to watch Price Is Right! ”

“Sorry!”

I came to a set of green doors and decided to try my luck.

I pushed through them. They led to another hallway that looked like it had a nurses’ station at the end of it.

Quickly, I walked toward it, still unable to keep from peeping in the rooms I passed. I walked past an open door, looking in out of the corner of my eye, and stopped so fast I turned my ankle.

“Ow, ow, ow!” I hopped around like a rabid bunny. Not that I’d ever seen a rabid bunny, but I figured that’s what I looked like.

I was rambling. Never a good sign.

“Nina Ceceri, is that you?”

Like nails on chalkboard, that voice, German accent and all. I thought about pretending to not hear her.

“I know you heard me,” she snapped.

She sounded awfully healthy for someone lying in an E.R.

hospital bed.

I backed up, stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Krauss, I really can’t stay. I’m looking for Riley.”

Digging Up Trouble

23

She sat upright, the oxygen tube in her nose straining.

“Riley? Something’s happened to the boy?”

The genuine fear in Brickhouse Krauss’s eyes softened my hatred of her. “I don’t know. I got a call that he’d been brought here.”

She scrambled out of bed, tugging her johnnie around her to cover places I never ever wanted to see.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “You’re obviously not well.”

A white eyebrow arched angrily. “Ach.”

Ohh-kay.

With the oxygen tube abandoned and IV pole firmly in hand, Mrs. Krauss shuffled out the door, her paper-thin gown flapping.

“Did you check the nurses’ station?” she asked me.

“No.”

“Never were a good problem solver, were you, Nina Ceceri?”

Mrs. Krauss, aka Brickhouse Krauss, had been my English Lit teacher once upon a time. She was evil, pure and simple, but it seemed as though I was the only one who saw her that way. More recently she had an on-off relationship with my neighbor, Mr. Cabrera. Currently they were off, even though they really loved each other.

It was Mrs. Krauss’s fear of dying that kept breaking them up. See, all Mr. Cabrera’s lady friends had the unfortunate habit of kicking the bucket while dating him. Brickhouse freely ad-mitted she broke up with him every few weeks to even the odds.

“Why are you here?” I asked her.

Her short white hair stuck out in wayward tufts. “I’m not dying, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

“What? Me? Hoping? Never.”

Again with the eyebrow as she narrowed her ice blue eyes on me. I shivered.

24

Heather Webber

“So?”

“Pneumonia,” she said. “Mild case.”

The wheels on the IV pole squeaked as we walked down the hallway. “Isn’t it funny that you get sick when you’re not dating Mr. Cabrera? Didn’t you get strep the last time you broke up with him? It’s kind of ironic.”

“What do you know about irony, Nina Ceceri?” she snapped.

“I paid some attention in your class.”

“Hah!”

Thankfully, we’d reached the nurses’ station, the center of four hallways that created an X. In an odd way, I was glad I’d run into Brickhouse. I had calmed down considerably. “Riley Quinn?” I asked the nurse on duty.

She checked a chart, said, “Room 5, down the hall on the right.” She motioned straight ahead. “Follow the blue line.”

As if it was that easy.

Brickhouse started in that direction, but I held back.

“Tamara Oliver?” I asked.

Again with the chart flipping. “She’s still being evaluated.

Check back in a few minutes.”

I said thanks and rushed to catch up to Brickhouse. As we neared Room 5, I could hear all sorts of commotion coming from within.

The first person I saw when I peeked in was Kevin. All the tears I’d been holding back welled in my eyes.

“Donatelli!” Mrs. Krauss said, clutching the front of her gown.

Everyone in the room turned to look at us in the doorway.

My gaze skipped from Mr. Cabrera, who wore a pea-green-colored, short-sleeve button-down with a polar bear pattern, to an older woman with champagne-colored hair who I didn’t recognize, to my cousin Ana, all big brown eyes, and finally to Kevin.

Digging Up Trouble

25

Kevin’s gaze slammed into mine, and one of those dammed tears fell. “Where’s Riley?” I asked, though it didn’t sound like my voice at all, all choked and strained.

“Ursula!” I absently heard Mr. Cabrera say. “What are you doing here? Are you okay?”