Read Online Dry Spell: A Mercy Watts Short by A.W. Hartoin - Free Book Online Page A

Says she has to talk to you. Tell her about Iron Fit.”  
    Not in a million years.  
    “Sure.”  
    The door closed. Ellen was here at my work. My heart rate went through the roof. Ellen had been my best friend for forever. In all those years she’d never shown up at my work unexpectedly. She’d call. Ellen didn’t go to the bathroom without an appointment.  
    I yanked open the door and walked into the hall. The pain was gone like it’d never been there at all. Something was wrong with Ellen. My white tennis shoes made a squishing sound on the cream-colored tile as I walked down the wide hall past patients’ closed doors and innocuous prints of landscapes designed to be soothing but were merely nondescript.  
    When I turned right, I saw the desk at the end of the hall. Ellen was standing there with her head down on the high counter. Everything about her said stress from her stiff legs to her hair. Ellen was, as my mom liked to say, neat as a pin with a sleek brown bob that had never known a tangle. My hair loved a good tangle. My best friend and I couldn’t have been more different. The hair was just the beginning.  
    Ellen didn’t look up as I approached and I broke out into a jog. My squishing was more plaintive now. It was the sound of a code blue, an emergency and time to do your best. It was not the sound of a slow code, a hopeless case when nothing would be good enough.  
    It seemed to take forever to run that hall and thoughts of what terrible thing had happened swirled around in my brain. Accident. Death. It could be anything. All I knew for sure was that it wouldn’t be good. Good news can wait. Bad news can’t. I reached the desk panting. Ellen looked up, her eyes red-rimmed. “Thank goodness! I thought she’d never find you.”
    “What’s wrong?” I said.
    “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I have to talk to you.”
    “Don’t do this to me. What is it?”
    “Can we go somewhere else, someplace private?” she asked.  
    I took her arm, led her into the treatment room, and closed the door. Val wouldn’t complain if I disappeared for a while. If she did, I didn’t give a care. I was PRN, not one of her regular nurses. I worked when and where I wanted. Val was sharp. She’d have noticed that I didn’t take a smoke break every hour or constantly call my boyfriend just to see if he missed me. Plus, it was her fault I couldn’t get off a toilet. That should buy me some leeway.
    “Alright,” I said, “What is it?”  
    “I don’t know where to start. I’m so freaked out,” said Ellen, brushing damp strands of hair out of her face.
    “Just tell me, please.”
    “Promise you won’t say that I’m being ridiculous and stop worrying. I’ve heard enough of that.”
    “Promise.”
    “It’s Janine. I was going to call your dad, but I thought I’d talk to you first. I didn’t know what he’d say.”
    “What do you want with Dad?” I said, but the answer was obvious. She wanted what everyone else wanted. My father was Tommy Watts, famous, some would say infamous, private investigator. I felt my shoulders tightened with fear when I thought of Janine. She was four and the kind of child molesters wet the sheets over. Dad had spent twenty years on the St. Louis Police Force and he had connections in low places. Dad would be my first thought if I wanted a child molester quietly moved off my block. I, on the other hand, was useless in that regard.
    “Has someone hurt Janine?” I took off my stethoscope and ran the tubing through my fingers.
    “No, not exactly. Something’s going on. I know this can’t be right.” She ran her fingers through her hair and tore out a few strands. That really scared me. I’d never seen her like that.
    I swallowed hard. “Has someone approached her?”
    “No, nothing like that. We took her to a child psychologist and she said it was okay, just an imaginary friend. But I know this isn’t imaginary, and it sure as hell isn’t friendly.”
    Ellen