“Anyone need a hand here?” Maggie heard the camper ask.
“Can you grab the phone, Cal?” Sully asked. Sully put the man in what had been Maggie’s chair and started peeling off his jacket and outer clothes. He leaned the backpack against the porch rail and within just seconds Enid was there with a blanket, cup of coffee and one of her bran muffins. Cal brought the cordless phone to the porch. The gentleman immediately began to devour that muffin as Maggie looked him over.
“Least he’ll be reg’lar,” Frank said, reclaiming his chair.
Maggie crouched in front of the man and while speaking very softly, she asked if she could remove the hat. Before quite getting permission she pulled it gently off his head to reveal wispy white hair surrounding a bald dome. She gently ran her fingers around his scalp in search of a bump or contusion. Then she pulled him to his feet and ran her hands around his torso and waist. “You must’ve rolled around in the dirt, sir,” she said. “I bet you’re ready for a shower.” He didn’t respond. “Sir? Anything hurt?” she asked him. He just shook his head. “Can you smile for me? Big, wide, smile?” she asked, checking for the kind of paralysis caused by a stroke.
“Where’d you escape from, young man?” Sully asked him. “Where’s your home?”
“Wakefield, Illinois,” he said. “You know it?”
“Can’t say I do,” Sully said. “But I bet it’s beautiful. More beautiful than Lejeune, for sure.”
“Can I have cream?” he asked, holding out his cup.
Enid took it. “Of course you can, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ll bring it right back.”
In a moment the gentleman sat with his coffee with cream, shivering under a blanket while Sully called Stan Bronoski. There were a number of people Sully could have reached out to—a local ranger, state police aka highway patrol, even fire and rescue. But Stan was the son of a local rancher and was the police chief in Timberlake, just twenty miles south and near the interchange. It was a small department with a clever deputy who worked the internet like a pro, Officer Paul Castor.
Beau gave the old man a good sniffing, then moved down the stairs to Cal who automatically began petting him.
Sully handed the phone to Maggie. “Stan wants to talk to you.”
“He sounds like someone who wandered off,” Stan said to Maggie. “But I don’t have any missing persons from nearby. I’ll get Castor looking into it. I’m on my way. Does he have any ID on him?”
“We haven’t really checked yet,” Maggie said into the phone. “Why don’t I do that while you drive. Here’s Sully.”
Maggie handed the phone back to her dad and said, “Pass the time with Stan while I chat with this gentleman.”
Maggie asked the man to stand again and deftly slid a thin wallet out of his back pocket. She urged him to sit, and opened it up. “Well, now,” she said. “Mr. Gunderson? Roy Gunderson?”
“Hmm?” he said, his eyes lighting up a bit.
Sully repeated the name into the phone to Stan.
“And so, Roy, did you hurt anything when you fell?” Maggie asked.
He shook his head and sipped his coffee. “I fell?” he finally asked.
Maggie looked at Sully, lifting a questioning brow. “A Mr. Gunderson from Park City, Utah,” Sully said. “Wandered off from his home a few days ago. On foot.”
“He must’ve gotten a ride or something,” Cal said.
“His driver’s license, which was supposed to be renewed ten years ago, says his address is in Illinois.”
“Stan says he’ll probably have more information by the time he gets here, but this must be him. Dementia, he says.”
“You can say that again,” Maggie observed. “I can’t imagine what the last few days have been like for him. He must have been terrified.”
“He look terrified to you?” Frank asked. “He might as well be on a cruise ship.”
“Tell Stan we’ll take care of him till he gets here.”
Maggie went about the business of caring for Mr. Gunderson, getting water and a little soup into him while the camper, Cal, chatted with Sully and Frank, apparently well-known to them. When this situation was resolved she meant to find out more about him, like how long he’d been here.
She took off Roy’s shoes and socks and looked at his feet—no injuries or frostbite but some serious swelling and bruised toenails. She wondered where he had been and how he’d gotten the backpack. He certainly hadn’t brought it from home or packed it himself. That would be too complicated for a man in his condition. It was a miracle he could carry it!
Two hours later, the sun lowering in the sky, an ambulance had arrived for Roy Gunderson. He didn’t appear to be seriously injured or ill but he was definitely unstable and Stan wasn’t inclined to transport him alone. He could bolt, try to get out of a moving car or interfere with the driver, although Stan had a divider cage in his police car.
What Maggie and Sully had learned, no thanks to Roy himself, was that he’d been cared for at home by his wife, wandered off without his GPS bracelet, walked around a while before coming upon a rather old Chevy sedan with the keys in the ignition, so he must have helped himself. The car was reported stolen from near his house, but had no tracking device installed. And since Mr. Gunderson hadn’t driven in years, no one put him with the borrowed motor vehicle for a couple of days. The car was found abandoned near Salt Lake City with Roy’s jacket in it. From there the old man had probably hitched a ride. His condition was too good to have walked for days. Roy was likely left near a rest stop or campgrounds where he helped himself to a backpack. Where he’d been, what he’d done, how he’d survived was unknown.
The EMTs were just about to load Mr. Gunderson into the back of the ambulance when Sully sat down on the porch steps with a loud huff.
“Dad?” Maggie asked.
Sully was grabbing the front of his chest. Over his heart. He was pale as snow, sweaty, his eyes glassy, his breathing shallow and ragged.
“Dad!” Maggie shouted.
If you tell the truth you don’t have
to remember anything.
—Mark Twain
Chapter 2
It’s different when it’s your father, when your father is Sully, the most beloved general-store owner in a hundred square miles. Maggie felt a rising panic that she hoped didn’t show. First, she gave him an aspirin. Then she rattled off medication orders to the EMT, though she wasn’t the physician in charge and it would have to be approved via radio. Poor Mr. Gunderson ended up in the back of Stan’s squad car and Sully was put on the gurney. The emergency tech immediately started an EKG, slapping electrodes onto his chest, getting an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.
Maggie was in the ambulance immediately, reading the EKG as it was feeding out. Beau was barking and jumping outside the ambulance door, trying to get inside.
“Beau!” Maggie yelled. “No, Beau! Stay!”
She heard a whistle, then a disappointed whine, then the door to the ambulance closed and they pulled away.
“Maggie,” Sully said, pulling the mask away. “See he didn’t follow. I don’t leave him very much.”
Maggie peeked out the back window. “It’s okay, Dad. He’s in front of the porch with that guy. That camper. Enid will see he’s taken care of.”
The driver was on the radio saying they were en route with a possible coronary.
“The lost guy with dementia?” the dispatcher asked.
“Negative, we got Sully from the store. Chest pains, diaphoretic, BP 190 over 120, pulse rapid and thready. His daughter is with us. Dr. Maggie Sullivan. She wants us to draw an epi and administer nitro. She stuck an aspirin in his mouth.”
“Is he conscious?”
“I’m conscious,” Sully whispered. “Maggie. I ain’t quite ready.”
“Easy,
Dad, easy. I’m right here for you,” Maggie said. “Let’s start some Ringer’s, TKO.”
“Not you,” Sully said. “You’re shaking!”
“You want me to do it, Sully?” the young EMT asked.
“Better you than her. Look at her.” Then he moaned.
“We need morphine,” Maggie said. “Get an order for the morphine and ask for airlift to Denver. We have to transport to Denver stat. Gimme that IV setup.”
She got the IV started immediately, so fast the EMT said, “Wow!”
A few years ago Walter, her stepfather, had suffered a small stroke. Stroke. That was her territory and she handled him with calm and ease. He was treated immediately, the recovery was swift, his disability minor and addressed in physical therapy in a matter of weeks. A textbook case.
This felt entirely different.
“Gimme your cell phone,” she said to the EMT. She didn’t have hers, of course, because it was back at Sully’s in her purse. The young man handed it over without question and she called Municipal Hospital. “This is Dr. Maggie Sullivan. I’m in an ambulance with my father, en route to you. I don’t have my cell. Can you connect me with Dr. Rob Hollis? It’s an emergency. Thank you.”
It took only a moment. “What have you got, Maggie?” her friend Rob asked.
“My dad—seventy-year-old male,” she said, running through his symptoms. “The EMT is running an EKG and we can send it.” She looked at the EMT. “We can send it, right?”
“Right.”
“If we get medical airlift from Timberlake, we’ll be there in no time. Will you meet me?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Try to stay calm.”
“I’m good,” she said.
“She’s a wreck,” Sully muttered. “Airlift. Gonna cost a goddamn fortune.”
“I gave him nitro, oxygen and morphine. He seems to be comfortable. EKG coming to the ER for you.”
It was not like this with Walter. With Walter, whom she’d become close to once she’d passed through adolescence, she was able to be a physician—objective, cool, confident. With Sully, she was a daughter clinging to her medical training with an internal fear that if anything terrible happened to him she would be forever lost.
Sully was not experiencing terrible pain once the morphine kicked in; his breathing was slightly labored and his blood pressure remained high. Maggie watched over him through the transfer into a medical transport helicopter and stayed with him while he was taken into the emergency room where Dr. Hollis waited.
“Jesus, Maggie,” Rob said, his stethoscope going immediately to Sully’s chest. “Nothing like making an entrance.”
“Who are you?” Sully asked.
“Rob Hollis, cardiac surgeon. And you must be Sully.” He picked up a section of the EKG tape, glancing at it almost casually. “We’re going to run a few tests, draw some blood, bring down that blood pressure if possible and then, very probably, depending on the test results, go to the OR and perform a bypass surgery. Do you know what that is?”
“Sure I do,” Sully said, his voice tired and soft. “I’m the last one on my block to get one.”
“Maggie, this is going to take a while even though we’ll push it through with stat orders. Maybe you should go to the doctor’s lounge and rest.”
“She should go grab a beer and find a poker game but she don’t need no rest,” Sully said. “She’s plenty rested.”
“I’ll stay with my dad,” she said. “I’ll keep out of your way.”
“You’re going to be bored,” Rob said.
Not as long as he’s breathing, she thought. “I’ll manage.”
* * *
Maggie knew almost everyone in the hospital, in the ER and the OR. Because of her stature as a surgeon, she was given many updates on the tests, the results, the surgery. She even thought to ask one of her friends, an operating room charge nurse, for the loan of her car once Sully was out of recovery, out of danger, and resting comfortably in the coronary care unit. Here she was in Denver with no vehicle, no purse, credit cards, phone, nothing, but there was a spare key to her house under the flowerpot on the back patio and she could write a counter check at her bank for cash. There might even be a duplicate or extra credit or debit card she didn’t keep in her purse. In her closet there would be something to wear. In fact, there were drawers full of scrubs, if it came to that.
She wasn’t bored and she’d had plenty of sleep before Sully’s medical emergency, but by the time she stood at his bedside in the CCU at five in the morning she was so exhausted she could hardly stand up. She had the wiggles from too much caffeine, looked like bloody hell and hadn’t had a shower since leaving Denver for Sullivan’s Crossing. It reminded her of some of those days in residency when she stayed at the hospital for over forty-eight hours with only a catnap here and there. This time it was all stress.
She went home in her borrowed car to freshen up. She located an old wallet and purse, found a credit card she didn’t often use in her file cabinet and was back at the hospital by eight. By nine they were rousing Sully.
“Maggie, you gotta get me out of here,” he rasped. “They won’t leave me alone.”
“There’s nothing you can do but be your charming self,” she said.
“They got some breathing thing they force on me every hour,” he complained. “And I’m starving to death. And it feels like they opened my chest with a Black & Decker saw.”
“I’ll ask for more pain meds,” she offered. She lifted a hand toward the nurse and got a nod in return.
“Maggie, you gotta go run the store...”
“The store is fine. I called Enid an hour ago, gave her a progress report and checked on them. Frank stayed with her yesterday till closing, they took Beau home with them and they should be opening up about now. She’s going to call Tom Canaday and see if he has any extra time to help out. It’s all taken care of.”
He just groaned and closed his eyes. “’Bout time Frank worked off some of that coffee he’s been freeloading. What about you?” he asked.
“What about me? I’m here with you.”
He opened his eyes. They were not his usual warm or mischievous brown eyes. They were angry. “I’m not good with hospitals. I’ve never been in one before.”
She thought for a moment because surely he was wrong. “Huh,” she finally said. “Never? That’s something, Sully. Seventy years old and never spent a night in a hospital.”
“Turns out I knew what I was doing. Look what happens. They have a tube shoved up my—”
“Catheter,” she said.
“Get it out! Now!”
The nurse arrived with a syringe, putting it in the IV. “You should feel a lot better in just a few minutes, Mr. Sullivan.”
“How long do I have to stay here?”
“In the care unit? Just a day or two.”
“Then I can go home?”
“That’s a good question for the doctor, but it’s usually anywhere from three to eight days.”
“I’ll do two,” he said without missing a beat. “That’s all I got.”
“There’s recovery time involved after heart surgery, Dad,” Maggie said.
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to stay with you. Take care of you.”
He was quiet for a moment. “God help me,” he whispered.
We’re going to need a lot more drugs, Maggie thought.
* * *
A great deal of maneuvering was required for Maggie to get her affairs in order, so to speak.
According to Enid, Tom Canaday, their handyman and helper, was going to adjust his schedule to spend more time at Sully’s. Tom had a lot of jobs—he drove a tow truck, worked on car repairs in a service station, drove a plow in winter and did road work in summer, w
hich kept him on the county payroll. He did a variety of handyman and maintenance jobs around the area. He’d do just about anything if the money was right because he was a single father with four kids aged twelve to nineteen. Sometimes he’d bring one or two along to help him or just to hang out with him. And now, when Tom couldn’t work, he could send his oldest son, Jackson, the nineteen-year-old.
Maggie asked Enid if she could come to Denver to pick her up, drive her back to Sully’s where she would get her own car and some incidentals like her cell phone, purse, extra clothes, makeup and the like. Also, she would get some clothing and a shaving kit for Sully, who was not going back home soon, a subject she was not looking forward to discussing with him.
Enid said she’d be at the hospital in the morning. “Can I see him when I get there?” she asked.
“You don’t want to see him, Enid. He’s a huge pain in the ass. He’s been complaining and trying to get out of here from the minute he arrived and the fact that he can hardly get out of bed hasn’t deterred him one bit.”
“Well, I could’ve told you it would be like that.”
* * *
Maggie was waiting outside the hospital’s front entrance for Enid when who should pull up in a banged-up old red pickup truck but Frank. Maggie sighed. Just what I need—two hours held captive by Frank.
All the way back to Sullivan’s Crossing, Frank droned on and on about the evils of government in every conspiracy theory ever imagined, including his belief that commercial jetliners were spraying the atmosphere with enhanced jet stream in an effort to lower the temperature of the earth to combat global warming. “Of which there ain’t no damn such thing anyhow.”
By the time they got back to the crossing, she was exhausted all over again. “I can’t believe you did that to me,” she said to Enid.
“You find him a little talkative, Maggie?” she asked with a teasing smile. “He got there, didn’t he? We’re a little short-handed around here, you know.”
Maggie hurried to gather up what she needed and asked Enid to make her a sandwich.
“Already done, cupcake. Turkey and swiss on whole grain. And I packed up a box of cookies and muffins for Sully.”