Free A Bad Day for Mercy by Sophie Littlefield Page A

down I had a chance to check him out, you know, all over.”
    “Well, couldn’t he have died of, I don’t know, a heart attack or stroke or something? I mean, if he came to your door, it might have been just really bad timing. Say he wanted to talk to you, but you guys are out, he’s ringing the bell, he’s frustrated, getting madder and madder, blood pressure going through the roof—”
    “No, it wasn’t like that,” Chip said. “He didn’t just fall in a heap or whatever. He was sort of folded up with a couple of Hefty bags laid on top to cover him up.”
    “Hefty bags … huh.”
    “Sloppy, right? He could’ve at least used a sheet or something. These medical students—I can’t stand ’em,” Chip interjected. “Most of them, they just go through life expecting other people to clean up their messes.”
    Stella’s confusion was deepening. “Uh, you know a lot of medical students?”
    “I work with them, Stella,” Chip said in an aggrieved tone. “I guess I know what I’m talking about.”
    “Chip works in Boberg Clinic, at St. Olaf’s Hospital. Is how we met.” The look of consuming devotion was back on Natalya’s face.
    “Wait, you were there when Benton brought her in?” Stella asked. “For the, uh … unofficially sanctioned procedure?”
    “No,” Chip said with contempt. “He did that at his place. Stole the supplies he needed or bought ’em black market or something.”
    “We go to his house late at night,” Natalya added. “Very late, no one there but us.”
    “Then how did you…”
    “After Benton threaten him, I am still like this?” She touched her fingertip to her swollen mouth. “It was even worse then, and I think, I will go by myself, I will ask what can be done. I think maybe can be fixed, I can be nice instead of mean, convince better. So I go very early in morning, one day when Benton is on business trip. I take his car and park outside clinic. I think I will see each person go inside until I see right one.”
    “I was getting off my shift, and I see this beautiful lady all alone in her car in the parking lot. It wasn’t even light out yet. So I went to see if everything was all right.”
    “We have love at first sight,” Natalya added helpfully.
    “She was crying, so I took her to Dunkin Donuts.”
    “He buy me coffee and fat-free blueberry muffin, he ask me where am I from, he is so easy talking!”
    “Okay, okay, I get the picture,” Stella cut her off. She’d been subjected to these sorts of stories before—only she had a more cynical view than most, having seen how badly some relationships ended up after equally promising beginnings. “So you meet, you start dating—”
    “No, no date, we have to sneak. Benton is very, ermmm … he is having terrible jealousy.”
    “But we found ways, like when he had to travel for work. After a month or so we knew we had to be together. So I went to Benton’s office and told him I was going to marry her no matter what, but he—” Chip glared at the leaking mess as though the man wanted to start up the argument again. “That’s when he threatened me. Said if he couldn’t have her, no American man would, and he’d send her ass right back to Russia.”
    “Could he do that?” Stella asked dubiously.
    Chip’s face darkened with fury. “Stella, if you knew the half of it—why, the way the immigration law’s written they might as well just stand at the border waitin’ for Cupid to fly overhead and shoot him right down like a, like a damn duck. The American government—it’s coldhearted as hell.”
    “Residency permit says I must reside in country for two years after marriage,” Natalya said dolefully. “Two years anniversary is July 4, that is only six weeks away, but—”
    “Bastard said unless I covered all his costs since the first day he went scrolling through the LovelyBrides site on the Internet and came across Natalya, he was going to report her before the anniversary. They can deport her