Free One Fool At Least by Julia Buckley Page B

know the police talked with me in the emergency room. Did your abductors do this to you? asked a detective, apparently wanting it to be so. I assured him that I’d done it to myself in a moment of clumsiness. He asked a few more things, said his men were even now closing in on Jim and Randy, who had no longer been present at the house, and that they would be in touch.
    Then a woman in white with soothing hands touched my swollen ankle, gave me medicine, and sent me off to X-ray. Someone told me to lie just so, protected me with chain mail, and clicked a shot of my poor, much abused foot.
    Back in the office, the soothing woman spoke to me rather like a Latin teacher: Fibula, tibia, talus. Subtalar, calcaneus, lateral malleolus. It sounded vaguely like a Catholic blessing, when in fact she was telling me that my ankle was broken. “It’s stable, that’s the good news,” she said as she touched my foot carefully. “We may not have to cast it. I’ll start you with a brace; if it’s mending well when you come back, we’ll leave it at that. All right, Madeline? And I have some lovely pain pills for you, after that shot wears off.”
    I nodded, clinging to Jack’s hand like a six-year-old. They were still like a dream, all the events in this strange new scenery. Pat came in to see us, to ask how I was, and Jack told him that I had fractured my medial malleolus. It sounded like a spell that Harry Potter would put on Malfoy. For some reason this made me laugh. Pat looked at me worriedly, then took out his cell phone and went back to the waiting room to fill in Libby and the children, who presumably would pass it on through the entire Shea phone tree.
    The doctor looked at me with compassion. “I understand you’ve had quite a day.”
    I nodded.
    “And that this is your honeymoon.”
    I looked at Jack, who nodded.
    “You should know that it is possible to have intercourse with this brace on; it will just be slightly more challenging.” She looked at Jack. “You’ll have to be careful not to put pressure on it.”
    “No, of course not,” Jack assured her.
    I laughed again, but somehow a few tears came out. Now
I
was worried. Was I, on top of everything else, insane?
    Jack stroked my back and the doctor tossed in some more Latin as she competently bound my foot. Before our departure, I saw her speaking to Jack in a low voice.
    When we left, I was a new woman: broken, but healing; in pain, but flying on wings of morphine; traumatized, but giddy with relief. Between the easing of tension and the workings of drugs, I was quite the humorist when we got back to Pat’s car. I was remembering jokes my brother Fritz had told me, jokes which had bombed horribly, but which now seemed amusing, and I shared them with Jack and Pat as I hobbled along on my newly-fitted crutches. I didn’t realize that I was babbling until Jack leaned over, kissed me, and said, “Maddy, you don’t have to keep up your spirits for us. We’ll understand if you just want to lie back and relax, or take another nap.”
    I stared. “Am I talking too much?”
    “No, no,” they both said.
    They were being very accommodating, I thought. Whatever I wanted, they were happy to give. Perhaps, I thought, I should ask for diamonds.
    Jack was tucking me into the car when Pat received a call on his cell phone. He spoke briefly, staring at the ubiquitous mountains and spitting once before he hung up and turned to me. “That was the police. They picked up Randy and Jim Bruder, and the two of them are basically cooperating. They say it wasn’t a kidnapping, more like they were an escort service, just helping to facilitate a meeting between you and their boss.”
    “Bullshit!” Jack yelled.
    “Who’s their boss?” I asked.
    “Their boss is Damian Wilde, the biggest name in these little parts. He grew up here. He’s become a very successful businessman. An entrepreneur. He has a home up on the Cats’ Teeth Trail. He bought out Bruder Brothers supply a