Free Self-Defense by Jonathan Kellerman Page B

made a deep snoring sound, and her
eyes moved under swollen lids.
    More fragile than I’d thought.
    Was her summer as a prostitute the cause
or, more likely, a symptom?
    I wondered if everything she’d told me was
true.
    For all I knew, her father was really a
truck driver from Bell Gardens, no closer to fame than a subscription to People.
    Who’d brought her to the hospital?
    Who’d pulled her head out of the oven?
    Her eyes opened partially. She tried
blinking but couldn’t. I moved into her field of vision; at first she didn’t
focus. Then I saw her pupils dilate. One hand moved, the fingers stretching
toward me. Suddenly, they dropped.
    I took hold of them. Her mouth shifted,
struggling for an expression, finally settling on weariness.
    I smiled down at her. She gave a feeble
nod. The oxygen tube fell out of her nose, the hiss growing louder as precious
gas leaked.
    I replaced it. She licked her lips, and
her eyes opened completely.
    Trying to talk, but all that came out were
wordless croaks. Tears in her eyes.
    “It’s okay, Lucy.”
    She fell back. Her fingers grew cold and
loose.
    For the next twenty minutes, she slept as
I held her hand. A nurse came in, checked her, and left, closing the door hard.
Lucy woke up with a start, systolic pressure jumping.
    Panic in her eyes.
    “You’re okay, Lucy. You’re in the
emergency room at Woodbridge Hospital, and you’re doing fine.”
    She started coughing and couldn’t stop.
The oxygen line flew out again. Each spasm lifted her from the mattress, an
involuntary callisthenic that tightened her face with pain. She coughed harder
and spit up vile-looking gray mucus that I wiped away.
    When the coughing stopped, I put the line
back.
    It took a long time for her to catch her
breath.
    “What,” she said, very softly and hoarsely, “happen?”
    “You’re in the emergency room. Woodbridge
Hospital.”
    Confusion.
    “What’s the last thing you remember,
Lucy?”
    She gave a mystified stare. “Sleeping.”
    Her face screwed up and her eyes closed.
More pain—or shame? Or both?
    The eyes opened. “Hurts.”
    “What does?”
    “Head.”
    She moaned and wept.
    I checked the contents of her IV bag:
glucose and electrolytes, no analgesic. I pressed the nurse call button. A bark
came through a wall speaker. “Yes?”
    “Miss Lowell’s in pain. Is there anything
she can have?”
    “Hold on.”
    Lucy had another coughing fit and spit up.
She stared at me as I wiped her lips.
    “What... happened?” She started to shiver
and her teeth chattered.
    I put another blanket over her. She said
something I couldn’t make out and I bent down to hear her.
    “Sick?”
    “You’ve had a rough experience.”
    “What?”
    Tears trickled down her cheeks, flowing
under the oxygen line and into her mouth. Fear was twisting her face like
taffy.
    “Sick?” she repeated.
    I took her hand again. “Lucy, they say you
tried to commit suicide.”
    Shock widened her eyes.
    “No!” A whisper, more lip movement than
sound. “No!”
    I gave her fingers a soft squeeze and
nodded.
    “How?”
    “Gas.”
    “No!”
    Behind her, the monitors jumped. Heart
rate up, systolic blood pressure rising. The hand in mine was a sodden claw.
    “No!”
    “It’s okay, Lucy.”
    “No!”
    “I believe you,” I lied. “Try to relax.”
    “Didn’t!”
    “Okay, Lucy.”
    “No!”
    “Okay, just calm down.”
    She shook her head. The oxygen line shot
out of her nose like a slingshotted stone. When I tried to replace it, she
turned her head away from me, chest heaving, breathing harshly.
    The door opened and the same nurse came
in. Young and heavy-faced with chopped hair. “What’s going on?”
    “She’s upset.”
    “What happened to her line?”
    “It came loose. I was just putting it
back.”
    “Well, we’d better get it right back.” She took the line from me and tried to insert the nosepiece into Lucy’s
nostrils.
    Lucy turned away from her, too.
    The nurse put one hand on her hip