“Not as much now. But I’m trying out fake feet—now that ain’t the easiest thing. Mama,” he said. She cautiously came to him and carefully embraced him, crutches and all. “Daddy,” he said, and Clarence nodded, crossed his arms over his chest and frowned suspiciously. “I can’t stay long. I have to go back to the hospital and keep trying to get a foot I can walk on. This kind of thing doesn’t happen quick,” he said. “So can we go inside and sit at the table awhile?”
“Clinton, I think you grew while you was away,” Jurea said. “Is that possible?”
“You were just missing him, Mama,” Wanda said. “She was missing you so much, Clinton, it was terrible. Every night at supper she wanted us to tell Clinton stories.”
“That so?” he asked.
“We had to entertain ourselves somehow,” Jurea said. “Usually you’re the one entertaining us all through evening till bed….”
Charlie and Jerry looked at each other. What they had learned in their visits to the Mull house over the past weeks was that this was a family that suffered, but loved each other deeply. They endured illness and poverty, but clung to each other to get by. In fact, to some degree the clinging was keeping them from resolving the other two problems.
“I have to tell you all something,” Clinton said right off. “Both Jerry and Charlie think it’s really important that I tell you this truthful thing. Daddy, I tried to get various people to kidnap you for me. I met the wife of a judge, and she offered to help me, but she wasn’t enough. I asked the doctor—Dr. Hudson, you know—and I asked these two guys, Charlie and Jerry.” Clarence’s expression didn’t change at all. “No one would do it. But do you want to know why I tried to get someone to kidnap you?”
Clarence didn’t answer.
“I think you should tell us why, Clinton,” Jurea said.
“Because the only way I want to come back here to live is if I can have permission to leave the mountain sometimes. To go to school. I want to go to school and maybe play a sport, even with a missing leg. But I can’t get permission to leave the mountain while Daddy’s sick with his paranoia and war injuries. So I thought if…
“Daddy, do you know that in all the years since you been back from Vietnam, the drugs they have to treat sickness like yours have gotten to be so good, they’re like miracle drugs? It’s like you don’t even know you’re taking ’em—except you get to feeling normal.”
Clarence shook that off in disgust and turned his back.
“It’s true, Daddy. They have drugs for hallucinations, for anxiety, for compulsiveness, for phobia. All kinds of things they weren’t using before. And you could start taking medicine now, here at home, and see how it suits you. You don’t have to go to a hospital.”
“That so, honey?” Jurea asked.
Clinton turned his attention to his mother. “Mama, Jerry and Charlie think you can find some help for your scars. They think it’s worth…Charlie, tell her. Please.”
“Jurea, there are a couple of foundations set up by the Veteran’s Hospital that help the dependants of veterans who don’t have other medical coverage, and there’s a plastic surgeon from southern California who visits up here twice a year. He’s got a team that does surgery all over the world, surgery as challenging as yours would be. He’s due here in a couple of weeks. You could see him. He could evaluate you. Tell you if there’s anything he can do.”
“I can’t think there’s any help for this,” she said, raising a hand to her face. “You ever in your life see anything as awful as this?”
Charlie reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a picture, passing it to Jurea. Wanda jumped up and looked over her mother’s shoulder at the face of a woman without a nose. Jurea’s hands went directly to her own, touching it tentatively as if to be sure it was still there. He then produced a picture of the same woman with a perfect nose, and Jurea almost gasped in shock. “It’s pretty complicated,” Charlie said. “Took several surgeries and the doctor had to build a nose out of flesh and muscle and even plastics. But the result is there.”
Clarence, arms still crossed over his chest, turned back to the group and looked suspiciously over his wife’s shoulder at the pictures. They lay on the table—the noseless woman on the left, the perfect nose on the right. Before and after. He reached a hand down and reversed the pictures so that it looked as though the woman had been photographed after her nose was cut off.
“No, Daddy, that ain’t how it was. Besides, no one even knows if Mama’s face can be fixed, even a little bit. And no one will know unless she goes to the hospital when the plastic surgeon is in Eureka.”
“We should let them think,” Jerry said.
“Yeah,” Clinton agreed. “That’s what you should do—Mama, Daddy. Talk it over and think about it. Daddy, Dr. Hudson, that nice lady doctor, she’d come out here and give you a physical and try you out on some drugs that would help you feel less scared all the time. And Mama, you should think about seeing that doctor in Eureka. Because wouldn’t it be nice if Wanda could go to school in town? And maybe go to a football game, like you did when you were a boy, Daddy?”
Wanda shrunk back a little, looking at her parents with pity. “I don’t need to go to no football game, Clinton,” she said quietly.
“But wouldn’t it be nice if you could?”
Much later that same day, Jurea touched her husband’s hard shoulder with a gentle hand and said, “I always wanted more for them kids than I wanted for myself.”
“What about your face?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I want it to be fixed, but more for them than for me. And for you.”
“This is a great way to spend a Friday night,” June groused, leaning over a cup of coffee.
“My wife would agree with you,” Tom said.
Tom and June sat in a booth near the window in Fuller’s Café while, at the counter, a bunch of people gathered and George cut pie. There was an occasional outburst from one old man or another.
“They’re going to make trouble,” June predicted. “My father has notified everyone in three counties that the prosecutor is determined to bring Leah to trial on murder charges. I honestly don’t know if they’re planning to protest or bust her out.”
“I think they’re focused on bail for the moment,” Tom said. “June, there are two things I’ve been meaning to tell you. First, I looked at the wreckage of your Jeep. It appears the metal was rent at the driver’s door by a sharp object. If the Jeep rolled, a sharp rock could have done the damage. If it didn’t roll, it was probably an ax.”
“I knew it! I knew he was there! He was real!”
“Have you traced the type and age of that cloth?” he asked.
“It’ll take weeks, but it doesn’t matter,” she said, giving her head a shake. “We have an angel at Angel’s Pass, and he saved my life.”
“We may indeed have an angel, June, but the man who saved your life left his ax in the woods, twenty yards from the road. The blade was badly dulled by its work against the metal of your Jeep.”
“But—”
“I don’t know what his business was in that part of the forest, so near Grace Valley farms and orchards. Might be he had a truck nearby. Might be he had reason to leave the scene…. But whatever the circumstances, he was a flesh-and-blood angel with a Black & Decker ax.”
“Jesus…”
“I’m sure when you get the report back on that cloth, it will prove to be no older than what a man carries in his pocket nowadays to blow his nose on.”
“Well, hell….”
“The other piece of news might suit you better. I got a call back from San Francisco this morning. My contact there checked four Bay Area police departments. There is no record of charges of any kind ever being brought against John Stone. Nor lawsuits.”
June looked suddenly deflated. “I don’t understand,” she said. “He’s wonderful, then he’s suspect, then how can anyone think that, then the very woman who brought charges calls me, then—” She stopped talk
ing as a BMW came up the street and pulled behind the clinic. “Speak of the devil.”
“You really should talk to him about this. Perhaps there’s an explanation.”
They could see the light in her office flick on.
“Wonder what he’s doing?” she thought aloud. “Well, no time like the present. I’ll go over there now, while Elmer and his cronies are stirring the pot. We can talk about this tonight, since we won’t be interrupted by patients.”
As she was leaving, she heard Elmer’s voice rise up in passion. “There’s a couple of things fundamentally wrong with this town lately, if a woman can’t defend herself against a violent man, yet we all sit in church and take spiritual advice from a womanizing preacher!”
“I vouch for that! It’s been wrong long enough,” someone said.
When the men as well as the women have had enough of that, June thought, maybe the town will have the courage to change it.
She walked across the street to the clinic, ready to have this issue with John resolved once and for all.
Twenty-Four
June and Sadie walked across the street and went in the back door. John didn’t hear them enter because of the noise he was making while rifling through her desk drawers.
“Looking for something?” June asked.
He looked up in surprise and his face was rigid with anger. She actually jumped back at the sight. Indeed, had she ever seen that look before, she’d have been more worried, and much sooner. He slammed a hand on the desk. “What the hell are you trying to do to me, June?”
“What?” she asked dumbly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you the one having me investigated, for chrissake? People from the Marin County Sheriff’s Department have been calling the house, asking about sexual assault charges against me, scaring poor Susan to death! What the hell’s going on here?”
“Shoot,” June said. “How’s that for discreet?”
“June?” he asked. “God, why are you doing this to me?”
“John, I got a call. First I talked to Dr. Fairfield, who was less than complimentary. Way less, let’s be honest. And then, despite the good recommendations I got from others who had worked with you, I did get this call. This very damning call.” She cautiously moved around his side of the desk, opened the top drawer and pulled a piece of paper out of a small notebook. She unfolded it so that the name and number lay exposed. “From this woman, saying she had had you arrested for sexual assault.”
He frowned. “I don’t know this woman.”
“A surgeon? From San Francisco?”
“Feldtbrow? Is that some sort of Indian…” He scratched his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of—” He stopped. His frown deepened. Then he picked up the phone and dialed. The voice mail came on the line. “You have reached five-five-five…” He held the phone away from his ear, smirked, shook his head. “Jesus Christ,” he swore.
“What? You know her?” June asked.
“Oh yeah. Carolyn. My ex. Just when you think you can relax—”
“Your wife did this? But why?”
“My ex-wife created a circus at the time of our divorce! I left the practice because of the upheaval she put us all through, the pressure she applied to the other doctors to get rid of me. But I can swear to you that there were never any accusations like that. None! Have you talked to any of the other staff at the Fairfield Women’s Center?”
“Just one of the names you gave me,” she said. “And of course, Dr. Fairfield.”
“I know how Dr. Fairfield feels about me. Anyone else?”
There was a pounding at the front door of the clinic, which had been left locked. “Someone must’ve seen the light and thinks we’re open for business. I’ll go see.” She started down the hall, John following. “Him being the founder and chairman of the clinic partnership, I figured Fairfield would—”
“He’s my ex-wife’s goddamn father!” John stormed. “I’d like to think I could have landed a partnership in a clinic that respected me without anyone’s help, but the fact is, Carol’s father headed the most prestigious OB-GYN practice in Sausalito. I married into it, for chrissake. And I divorced out of it.”
June was stunned. “No wonder Fairfield had bad feelings about you cashing out your partnership. It was divorce settlement angst!”
“Exactly! And they’re crazy besides. And obviously still pissed off.”
“John, I’ve never heard you swear so much.”
He dropped his chin, contrite. “We try not to…with Syd, you know. But Jesus, June, she makes me so goddamn furious with this—”
“Why would your ex-wife make trouble for you after all this time?”
“It’s her hobby, June. She’s obsessed. She’s hired detectives, leaked inflammatory lies to the press, tried to sue me for everything from fraud to breach of promise. She’s been restrained by the courts. And that’s just what she’s done to me! You can’t imagine how miserable she’s made Susan’s life. She has harassed us for seven years! She’s a spoiled, rich little psychopath who would do anything to—”
The pounding on the front door resumed, with Tom’s shout added to the mix.
“June!”
Tom’s cry of panic, something almost never heard, caused June to turn and struggle to get the door unlocked and opened quickly. Tom was supporting Christina Baker—the very patient who had refused to see John Stone because she found his examination “too personal.” She was barefoot, wearing a sundress or perhaps nightgown that reached midcalf. Her eyes were swollen, tears streaked her cheeks, and there was an impressive contusion on her forehead. Dark streaks of blood ran down her legs.
“Christina,” June exclaimed, joining Tom in supporting her. The young girl was trembling with fear, her small body vibrating.
“The bleeding,” she murmured weakly. “I hurt. This isn’t right. This isn’t…right….”
John muttered, “Dear God,” before he brushed June and Tom aside, swept Christina up in his arms and carried her to the back of the clinic.
“Get my dad and Charlotte, and take the dog to the café,” June ordered Tom. “Sadie! Go with Tom!” Then she went to the file cabinet, pulled Christina’s file and ran to catch up with John.
John took their patient directly to the treatment room rather than an examining room, anticipating an emergency delivery. June snapped on a pair of gloves and held a pair toward John, who accepted them before continuing, though he’d already been exposed to all that blood while carrying her.
Christina lay whimpering on the table. John had slapped a blood pressure cuff on her arm. He palpated her uterus and got her vitals while June pulled out the emergency delivery kit kept in the treatment room and withdrew sterile sheets, gowns, gloves and other paraphernalia from the cupboards. Neither of them paused for even the seconds it might take to appreciate how well they worked together.
“Christina,” John asked. “Did anything happen to cause the bleeding? Did you get hurt?”
“Fell. I just fell. I drove myself here as soon as… I drove myself here when the blood started.”
John made eye contact with June, and for the second time that night, she saw fury there—but this time she didn’t understand.
“We need an IV here, angio catheter, sixteen-gauge, Ringer’s. And an ultrasound, stat.”
“We’ve got an ultrasound at twenty-six weeks,” June told him, flipping open her chart.
“That’ll do for me,” John said. “Emergency transport?”
“Fifteen minutes. One way.”
“Damn small towns,” he muttered. “Call. Tell them to put a doctor on, and a baby transport unit. First, the IV, then draw me some blood. We need to know if she’s in DIC.”
June immediately knew this wasn’t going to be an ordinary rushed delivery. John wanted blood drawn that would show, within ten minutes, if she was clotting. “Disseminated intravascular coagulation” was the blood’s inability to clot, not particularly rare in the case of placental abrupt
ion. The patient could bleed to death during an emergency C-section. John was prepared to open her up right here in the Grace Valley Clinic, where the most serious surgery performed was a simple lumpectomy.
June drew the blood and was hanging a bag of Ringer’s on the IV stand when the front door slammed. When Elmer appeared at the treatment room door, she shouted, “Call medevac and have them bring a doctor and a baby transport unit. Possible abruption.”
“Probable abruption,” John corrected. “Her pressure’s dropping and we have fetal distress. Baby’s heart rate is sixty. Where’s that ultrasound?”
June passed him the folder that held the precious record of Christina’s test. He took a very fast look at the report. June already knew it showed the placenta was not in the way of the birth canal.
“What have we got here for a surgical procedure?” he asked.
“Brevitol…”
“Nope. We can’t reverse the effects of Brevitol on the baby with a Narcan injection. What else?”
“Only morphine. It probably won’t knock her out but it will calm her down and help with the pain. Lidocaine, Narcan, surgical kit, emergency delivery kit, oxygen, the bare essentials.”
“Spinal needles?”
“Yep.”
“Hemostats? Clamps? Retractors?”
“Hemostats,” June repeated, cautiously opening the sterile kit. “Ten. Eight clamps. Four retractors.”
“We’ll be retracting with our hands for the most part. We going to get some help around here?” he shouted. “Drain the bladder and set her up. Throw a wedge under her left hip—a rolled up towel should do it.” He locked his hands on the hem of Christina’s dress and gave it a rending tear. June lifted the patient’s knees and got to work on the catheter.
“Christina,” John said, his voice calm and confident and silky. “It looks like your baby is ready whether you are or not. We’re going to deliver the baby, Christina, and you’re going to have to be very still and brave. Hold on to these hand grasps, here, but don’t move or wiggle. Can you do that for me?”