“Try ‘she looks a lot like you.’” Anita straightened the sheet, but her gaze was focused on her patient. “Pretty compromised. Just when we think we’ve got her stabilized, she starts to crash.” She bit at her lower lip as she concentrated. “Some of her symptoms aren’t consistent with her injuries, and Dr. Henner is still trying to figure out what’s going on internally. X-rays, MRIs, CAT scans, but. .” She glanced at the laptop computer that was also hooked to all the monitors. “Since she’s comatose, we can’t ask her what happened, and no one was with her or has come forward. She can’t give us any information on her pain or if she was on some kind of drug or had a seizure… lots of unanswered questions, but the lab work should come back this morning. Then we’ll know a little more. A couple of detectives were here last night and said they’d be back in the morning.”
“Detectives?” Again, that tiniest of shivers.
“Yeah, two women who were checking out the accident.” She glanced at the clock mounted on one wall. Frowning, her eyebrows drawing together, she added, “They’ll probably show up soon, so I’ll double-check with the lab. Maybe they’ll know something more. You’d think someone should be missing her. She came in wearing top-end jogging clothes, jewelry, and had an iPod in her pocket. It’s not like she was destitute. Trust me, someone’s missing Jane.”
Kacey, too, saw the time. “I’ve got to get going. Tell anyone who might still think I’m lying in that hospital bed that I’m alive and kicking and I’m definitely not the Jane Doe.”
“Will do,” Anita said. She was just walking back to her station when the ICU buzzer announced a visitor.
Anita hit a button that unlocked the doors, and they were immediately pushed open as Trace O’Halleran, his face a grim mask, strode into the unit. Unshaven, hair mussed, wearing work clothes under a heavy jacket, he looked shaken and none too happy about being at the hospital. Two women were with him, just a step behind. The taller of the two was a redhead, mid-to late thirties, who introduced herself as Detective Pescoli. Her partner was shorter, Hispanic, and said her name was Alvarez. Both wore the no-nonsense attitude of cops on duty.
Anita wasn’t impressed with their credentials. “We can’t have more than one visitor at a time in ICU. What’s he doing here?” She pointed at the rancher.
O’Halleran’s gaze met Kacey’s, and she noticed a spark of recognition in those deep-set eyes. What was it his son had said? That she looked like his girlfriend? A little drip of trepidation slid through her bloodstream.
“This is Trace O’Halleran,” Pescoli said. “He thinks he might be able to identify the woman who was brought in last night.”
Anita wasn’t persuaded. “Only one at a time.” She held up a hand as if to physically halt the two officers. “There are several patients here, and we’re not going to disturb them.” As if to enforce her authority, she glanced toward Kacey. “This is Doctor Lambert. She can take Mr. O’Halleran to the patient’s bed, and you two can wait here, by the door.”
The officers looked as if they wanted to argue but held back, and Kacey managed a smile she didn’t feel. She was suddenly cold as ice inside. O’Halleran and the Jane Doe? “Over here,” she said and led the way, slowly drawing back the curtain so that he could view the patient.
He visibly flinched at the sight of her, his jaw tightening, his eyes closing for the briefest of seconds before he opened them again and took a long look.
“Jesus,” he whispered under his breath. Then more loudly he said, “It’s Jocelyn,” turning away from the bed to face Kacey. “Jocelyn Wallis. The teacher Eli was talking about.” He didn’t explain any further to the detectives, and Kacey figured they’d already covered that ground. He looked once more at the battered woman lying, unmoving, in the hospital bed. The corners of his mouth twisted downward. “How the hell did she fall?”
“That’s what we want to find out,” Pescoli said. “We’ll need you to tell us everything you know about her.” The taller detective was moving toward the newly identified patient, but Anita stepped between them.
“Uh-uh. You can handle this interview outside the room.” The smallest person in the area, she was still very much in command as she faced off with the cops. “I mean it. Out. But… I’ll need to get some information, too.” She glanced at O’Halleran. “Medical. Family.”
“I don’t. . I don’t know her that well.” He rubbed a hand behind his neck, and Kacey wondered how much he was covering up. How involved was he with Jocelyn Wallis? “I think she has a sister somewhere in California.”
“California’s a pretty big state,” Alvarez pointed out.
“That’s all I ever heard. California. I told you I don’t. . didn’t really know her.” But he was thinking now. “Her maiden name was Black, she said, and her parents are from somewhere in Idaho. Around Pocatello?” he said as if asking himself a question. “She mentioned her dad a couple of times…. What the hell was his name? Cedric? No… Cecil.” He snapped his fingers. “That’s right. Cecil Black, but I don’t remember her mother’s name. The school would have a lot more information. You can probably get it from the principal. Her name is Barbara Killingsworth.”
Anita was nodding and shepherding them out. O’Halleran glanced back at Kacey just as one of the monitors started to give off an alarm.
Anita spun on her heel. “Oh, hell! She’s crashing!” To the detectives, she said, “All of you, get out of here! Now!” She was already reaching for the alarm button on her desk to alert the rest of the staff. Kacey had moved to Jane Doe’s — now, presumably, Jocelyn’s — side, ready to administer CPR and hoping to high heaven that the crash cart and doctor arrived soon.
She started CPR on the woman… two breaths, then chest compressions. Come on, come on, Jocelyn. Stay with me, she thought as she counted aloud.
“One, two, three, four, five—”
For a second, the woman’s eyes opened, and Kacey nearly gasped as the resemblance to herself was almost uncanny.
“Doctor!”
Anita’s voice pierced her brain, and she realized she’d stumbled on the count.
“That’s fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,” Anita prompted, and Kacey caught up just as the doors to the ICU flew open again, three nurses and two doctors streaming in, the crash cart rolling toward the bed.
“Get these people out of here!” a strong male voice ordered, and from the corner of her eye Kacey watched as Anita shooed the detectives and Trace O’Halleran through the doors. “I’ll take over now,” the same voice said, and she glanced up to see Dr. Wes Lewis walk quickly to the bed, waiting for her to hit thirty before stepping in as she withdrew her hands and a nurse sidled the crash cart to the patient. Lewis began giving orders to the staff as easily as he had as a quarterback in college. Big, black, and usually affable, he was all business today, but Kacey felt it was too late. She’d sensed it, that recognition that a patient was slipping away. Whether it was conscious or not, there came a point where the body was done.
“It’s when St. Peter comes a-callin’,” her grandmother, Ada, had whispered into her ear as she, crying miserably, watched as her favorite old horse, lying in the straw of his stall, shuddered his last breath.
Her grandfather had glanced at his wife, as if to disagree, but the look she’d sent him had silenced whatever he’d wanted to say.
“St. Peter needs horses?” Kacey, at nine, had asked. Her throat had been so thick, she’d barely been able to get the words out.
“Course he does,” Grannie had insisted, hugging her so close that the smells of the barn — the acrid odor of urine, the dust in the hay, and the warm, heavy scent of horses — had faded to the background. All Kacey had been able to smell was the sweet scent of the wild roses in her grandmother’s favorite perfume. “Course he does.”