Chapter 4 - The Fortress in Ward 3
The third floor of St. Jude’s Memorial was smelling of floor stripper and industrial disinfectant when I stepped out of the elevator.
Eleanor was standing near the nurse’s station with her arms folded across her floral scrubs. Her hair was pulled back in a loose clip, strands of gray catching the overhead fluorescent tubes. She looked thirty years older than she had at breakfast. When she saw my bruised knuckles and the slight tear in the seam of my left sleeve, she closed her eyes for three long seconds.
She didn't ask what happened. She had been married to me through two deployments to Fallujah and three tours she wasn't allowed to know the names of.
"Is it done?" she asked quietly.
"Part of it," I replied. "Julian Vance showed up."
Her jaw tightened. "The uncle. The one who built the new wing of the medical center."
"The one who thinks he owns the judges." I stepped closer, lowering my voice so the shift nurses couldn't hear. "How is she?"
"The orthopedist set the fifth and sixth ribs," Eleanor said, her voice cracking before she swallowed hard to steady it. "The concussion is moderate. But Marcus... she's terrified. She thinks Dustin is going to send people here. She thinks every orderly who walks past the door is coming to take her back."
I walked into Room 314.
The room was dim, the blinds pulled down against the gray afternoon rain. Evelyn looked so small in the hospital bed, swallowed by white sheets and monitoring wires. Her left eye was swollen shut, a deep plum purple that spread down across her cheekbone. Her lip was split, and her breathing came in shallow, guarded sips of air.
When the floorboards creaked under my boots, she flinched so hard the heart monitor gave a rapid, rhythmic chirp.
"It's just me, Evie," I said.
Her good eye opened. When she recognized me, the tension melted out of her shoulders, followed instantly by fresh tears that tracked through the antiseptic ointment on her cheek.
"Dad," she whispered, her voice rough from the tube they had used during her scans. "You went there, didn't you?"
I pulled the vinyl visitor's chair close to the mattress and sat down. I took her right hand, the one without the IV needle, and held it between both of my rough, calloused palms.
"Nobody is going to hurt you again," I told her.
"He told me... he told me his uncle has friends in the state police," she wept, her chest hitching, every sob causing her to wince from the pain in her ribs. "He said if I went to the precinct, they would lose the report. He said you'd lose your house."
"Your father spent twenty-five years dealing with men who had tanks and heavy artillery, sweetheart," I said, wiping a tear from her bruised chin with my thumb. "A corrupt contractor with a couple of bought aldermen doesn't scare me."
"Marcus," Eleanor said from the doorway. Her voice was taut as a wire.
I looked up.
Standing at the end of the corridor, near the visitor check-in desk, were two men in dark suits wearing city police badges on their belts. One of them held an evidence clipboard; the other was talking quietly into a two-way radio while staring directly at Room 314.
"They didn't waste time," Eleanor whispered.
May you like
"They never do," I said.
I stood up, kissed Evelyn on the forehead, and patted her hand. "Close your eyes and rest, baby. Daddy has to go have a word with the law."