A Full House. Nadia Nichols

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СКАЧАТЬ your cereal.”

      “Do you think she’ll let me visit my dad this summer?”

      Ana Lise turned back to her tasks with a shake of her head. “I am not paid to tell your fortune, young lady. Eat your breakfast. Your mother will be home soon and you can ask her yourself.”

      But Annie did not get home until nearly noontime, and Ana Lise had switched from breakfast mode to dinner mode, it being a Sunday. A roast was baking in the oven and she was verbally contemplating a Yorkshire pudding when Annie slumped wearily into the apartment. She dropped into a kitchen chair with a soft moan. “What a night,” she said. “And what a morning.”

      “A hard one, ja?” Ana Lise said sympathetically, pouring a cup of coffee and setting it, strong and black, in front of Annie.

      “Hard? Oh, Ana Lise.” Annie let her head fall back and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Where’s Sally?”

      “In her room listening to her music. She’s worried about tomorrow. About the hearing. She didn’t eat any breakfast and she says she is too nervous to eat lunch.”

      They heard the door to Sally’s room open and her light, quick footsteps in the hall. “Mom? I thought I heard your voice.” Sally paused in the kitchen doorway, her face mirroring her mother’s, though for entirely different reasons. “Mom, I’m so nervous about tomorrow that I feel sick.”

      Annie opened her eyes and inhaled another deep breath, releasing it somewhere between a sigh and a moan. “There isn’t going to be a hearing tomorrow, Sally,” she said. She raised and rotated her shoulders to ease a sudden muscle cramp. There was nothing like a long stint in surgery to trigger painful muscle spasms. “Your arresting officer was shot last night. I spent most of the night and the better part of this morning trying to keep him alive.”

      Sally’s face was blank. For a moment she said nothing, just stood in the kitchen doorway and stared at her mother. “Is he…dead?” she finally blurted.

      Annie raised her eyebrows. “A fine question to ask. Don’t you have any faith in your mother’s skills?”

      Sally slumped against the doorjamb. “Then…he’s still going to testify against me in court?”

      “Not tomorrow, he isn’t,” Annie said flatly. She picked up her coffee cup and took a sip. “I spoke to the big cheese at the station house. He was at the hospital, along with half a hundred other police officers. He told me the hearing would be rescheduled when Lieutenant Macpherson’s health permits. So, sweet little best friend of mine, it would seem that you have been granted a temporary reprieve.”

      Sally’s eyes fixed gravely on her mother’s face. “For how long?”

      Annie took another sip of coffee. “He’s young and strong. I expect an uncomplicated recovery. Let’s say three weeks, four at the outside. By then he’ll be able to sit in a courtroom and tell the whole world how you were out gallivanting around in the middle of the night with a bunch of pot-smoking juvenile delinquents.”

      “But I wasn’t smoking pot…”

      “Don’t expect much sympathy from me right now, young lady. I’m dead tired.”

      Ana Lise refilled Annie’s coffee cup. “What you need right now is a long soak in a hot bath, ja? I know how that helps you after you’ve spent a long time in surgery. I will get it ready.”

      Annie smiled wearily at her housekeeper. “That sounds lovely. I’ll take you up on that offer.”

      Half an hour later she was immersed to her chin in deliciously hot water and lavender oil. Her eyes were blissfully closed and she was nearly asleep, her mind drifting toward that quiet, peaceful place where the wind blew all the clouds away and the horses ran free, when Ana Lise tapped on the bathroom door.

      “A call for you, from the hospital,” she called apologetically.

      Annie moaned. “Take a message.”

      “He says it is an emergency.”

      “Okay,” Annie said. The bathroom door opened and Ana Lise’s arm stretched around with the cordless phone in her hand. Annie took it. “Thank you,” she said as the door closed. “Yes?” she said into the phone. It was Matt.

      “I’m sorry to call you, Annie, I know you just left here, but your patient, Macpherson, went into cardiac arrest about ten minutes ago. We jump-started him, but he’s not too stable. Blood pressure’s 90/70.”

      Annie was rising out of the tub even as Matt spoke. “Where’s Palazola?” she asked tersely. “Isn’t he senior surgeon on call?”

      “He’s in OR with a little boy who was run over by a bus.”

      “What about Macpherson’s heart sounds? Are they muffled?”

      “Yes.”

      “Dammit! He was fine when I left. Okay, I’m on my way. We’ll need to aspirate the blood around the heart. Can you do it?”

      “I can try.” Matt’s voice mirrored his uncertainty. “How soon can you be here?”

      “Ten minutes.”

      “I’d rather wait for you…”

      “If you have to do it, Matt, do it,” Annie said, throwing the phone onto the vanity and reaching for a towel. “Ana Lise, call my driving service!” she shouted out the bathroom door. Fifteen minutes later, hair still dripping, she was running down the hallway to the Intensive Care Unit. Matt was inside the cubicle watching the monitors and two nurses were with him. Annie listened to Macpherson’s heart and noted the distention of his neck veins. “People, he should already be in the OR,” she snapped, her nerves on edge. “I trust you’ve cleared it?”

      Matt’s face flushed. “We’re good to go.”

      Aspirating the blood from around the heart was not a long procedure, but Annie blamed herself for not anticipating the complication. She had checked for cardiac tamponade several times since Macpherson had been admitted, both before, during and after the surgery. At no time did she discern a problem. Still… She exited the OR for the second time that day in a haze of exhaustion, stripping off her gloves and mask and tossing them into the disposal unit.

      “I’m sorry, Annie,” Matt said, hurrying out behind her. “I should’ve spotted the warning signs sooner.”

      “I shouldn’t have left,” Annie said. “I’ll check on him when they bring him into recovery. If anything changes, I’ll be in the lounge.”

      “Annie.” She stopped and turned. Matt was holding his arms out at his sides in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry I messed up.”

      Annie shook her head wearily. “Just come and get me if there’s any deterioration in his condition. He can’t die on me, Matt. That just can’t happen. They’d think I did something deliberately so he couldn’t testify against my daughter.”

      “No one would ever think that.”

      Annie didn’t answer.

      “Get СКАЧАТЬ