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Authors: Abigail Padgett
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grim tenor of his voice. The scent of grieving in the room. The howling of a mythological crone her people nicknamed Cally over the sea outside.
“What's happened?” Had Weppo died? The light in those bright eyes gone flat? Bo gripped an edge of the plaid sheet and noticed that her knuckles were white.
“Somebody tried to kill the boy,” LaMarche pronounced unevenly. “Somebody came in this hospital, two men, armed, for the sole purpose of killing a child. And they shot an orderly. His name was Brad Sutin. He was only twenty-one. He's dead.”
Two men ? Maybe you weren't imagining it after all .
“But Weppo.. . ?” Bo fought a deep need to scream.
“There was a special-duty attendant, a man I knew in the service named Palachek. He saw it coming and hit the floor. He was holding your boy. He saved the child's life.”
The nightmare. Not to be understood. But Weppo was alive, not like Laurie so finally still in velvet and Irish lace.
“I'll be there in twenty minutes,” Bo replied. A taste of salt alerted her to the fact that she'd bitten her lip.
“A semi-jacket hollow point .38 packed with le mercure —” the doctor was raging in a bilingual frenzy. Bo wondered where he was from.
“I'll be there as soon as I can,” she repeated, and hung up.
She had to go, for a multitude of reasons.
Weppo was, legally, in nobody's hands at the moment. Nobody had legal jurisdiction yet over a child who'd come close to death twice in the last twenty-four hours. Twice !
“And the third's the charm.” She rolled her Rs bleakly. The racial memory of a thousand Celtic ancestors thrummed in her skull. That was the reason Celtic designs were often in fours —to trick fate. Weppo would not survive a third brush with death.
And the legal tangle would take all night.
St. Mary's would have procured a permission-to-treat from a judge when the boy was brought in. In the absence of a parent or legal guardian, it was the only way they could legally provide care for the child. But St. Mary's had no responsibility to protect Weppo from assassins. In fact, the hospital's real responsibility lay in protecting the hundreds of other children under its roof from the danger now represented by a deaf four-year-old. A four-year-old somebody was trying to murder. If his medical condition were stable, St. Mary's would have to discharge Weppo immediately. But discharge to whom?
It was a weekend. Legal limbo. No court in session. The paperwork that would assure San Diego County's custody of Weppo wouldn't be filed until Monday, under normal circumstances.
Normal ?
Bo allowed herself to laugh hysterically while pulling clean clothes from a laundry basket. Lois Bittner had pointed out several hundred times, “When you're feeling crazy, is best to look sane.” Good advice.
Bo put together her sanest outfit—a luxuriantly draped wool skirt and leather boots that, with a silk blouse and blazer, made her look like a spinster professor of English literature at some preppy East Coast university. Very sane. She looked around for the matching briefcase and found it, unaccountably, in the bathroom closet behind a stack of furnace filters. Bo wasn't sure her wall furnace had a filter, but they'd been on sale. She tried to confine her typically manic spending sprees to practical items. The filters managed to convey a spirit of practicality, lying there in the closet. A focus. Bo felt better.
She'd have to call a district attorney from the hospital, and then go to the office and complete the eight different forms necessary to secure the court's and the Department of Social Services' custody of Weppo. The D.A. would have to sign them, grant the petition. Only then could plans be made for Weppo's next move.
Bo picked up the phone.
“Madge!” she yelled into Aldenhoven's answering machine at home. “I know you're asleep, but wake up! It's an emergency! Somebody's tried to shoot my NPG at St. Mary's,
“What's happened?” Had Weppo died? The light in those bright eyes gone flat? Bo gripped an edge of the plaid sheet and noticed that her knuckles were white.
“Somebody tried to kill the boy,” LaMarche pronounced unevenly. “Somebody came in this hospital, two men, armed, for the sole purpose of killing a child. And they shot an orderly. His name was Brad Sutin. He was only twenty-one. He's dead.”
Two men ? Maybe you weren't imagining it after all .
“But Weppo.. . ?” Bo fought a deep need to scream.
“There was a special-duty attendant, a man I knew in the service named Palachek. He saw it coming and hit the floor. He was holding your boy. He saved the child's life.”
The nightmare. Not to be understood. But Weppo was alive, not like Laurie so finally still in velvet and Irish lace.
“I'll be there in twenty minutes,” Bo replied. A taste of salt alerted her to the fact that she'd bitten her lip.
“A semi-jacket hollow point .38 packed with le mercure —” the doctor was raging in a bilingual frenzy. Bo wondered where he was from.
“I'll be there as soon as I can,” she repeated, and hung up.
She had to go, for a multitude of reasons.
Weppo was, legally, in nobody's hands at the moment. Nobody had legal jurisdiction yet over a child who'd come close to death twice in the last twenty-four hours. Twice !
“And the third's the charm.” She rolled her Rs bleakly. The racial memory of a thousand Celtic ancestors thrummed in her skull. That was the reason Celtic designs were often in fours —to trick fate. Weppo would not survive a third brush with death.
And the legal tangle would take all night.
St. Mary's would have procured a permission-to-treat from a judge when the boy was brought in. In the absence of a parent or legal guardian, it was the only way they could legally provide care for the child. But St. Mary's had no responsibility to protect Weppo from assassins. In fact, the hospital's real responsibility lay in protecting the hundreds of other children under its roof from the danger now represented by a deaf four-year-old. A four-year-old somebody was trying to murder. If his medical condition were stable, St. Mary's would have to discharge Weppo immediately. But discharge to whom?
It was a weekend. Legal limbo. No court in session. The paperwork that would assure San Diego County's custody of Weppo wouldn't be filed until Monday, under normal circumstances.
Normal ?
Bo allowed herself to laugh hysterically while pulling clean clothes from a laundry basket. Lois Bittner had pointed out several hundred times, “When you're feeling crazy, is best to look sane.” Good advice.
Bo put together her sanest outfit—a luxuriantly draped wool skirt and leather boots that, with a silk blouse and blazer, made her look like a spinster professor of English literature at some preppy East Coast university. Very sane. She looked around for the matching briefcase and found it, unaccountably, in the bathroom closet behind a stack of furnace filters. Bo wasn't sure her wall furnace had a filter, but they'd been on sale. She tried to confine her typically manic spending sprees to practical items. The filters managed to convey a spirit of practicality, lying there in the closet. A focus. Bo felt better.
She'd have to call a district attorney from the hospital, and then go to the office and complete the eight different forms necessary to secure the court's and the Department of Social Services' custody of Weppo. The D.A. would have to sign them, grant the petition. Only then could plans be made for Weppo's next move.
Bo picked up the phone.
“Madge!” she yelled into Aldenhoven's answering machine at home. “I know you're asleep, but wake up! It's an emergency! Somebody's tried to shoot my NPG at St. Mary's,
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