CHAPTER SIX

Bill watched the medical team swarm around Summer.

They called out terms and numbers Bill didn’t understand. It was like hearing another language.

Her voice calm and steady, Dr. Davis said, “We’re going to have to put in a chest tube.”

Bill stepped forward as Dr. Davis pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. They snapped into place against her wrists. She reached toward a silver tray and lifted a shining scalpel, something that looked sharp enough to cut through a tree trunk.

“You have to go, Mr. Price,” Davis said.

A nurse started removing Summer’s gown, exposing her breast. Another nurse used alcohol to sterilize the skin where the doctor intended to cut. Bill didn’t like the way they manhandled her, strangers treating her body as if it were a piece of meat.

Someone stepped in front of him, a pudgy young man in scrubs, his thinning hair a stringy mess. “Why don’t you just step outside, sir?”

“I want to stay.”

“You can’t be in here, sir.”

The man placed his hand on Bill’s chest and applied gentle but firm pressure, moving him backward and toward the door. Bill went along, but he said, “You can’t be in there either. I don’t want some strange man—”

But he was out the door and into the hallway, and the man in the scrubs disappeared inside the room again. Bill took a step forward, intending to go back in, but he stopped himself.

The doctor was right. He didn’t want to see that.

When Summer was little and receiving a new vaccine every other month, it was Julia who went with her. Julia held her hand and told her to look the other way. Bill either didn’t make trips to the doctor, or stayed in the waiting room reading out-of-date magazines while Julia took their daughter back.

He saw that shining, brutally sharp scalpel in his mind again. A device made to puncture and slice and penetrate. He’d watched enough TV shows to know they’d be slipping a rubber tube through the incision. The images nauseated him.

He stepped back from the door and turned around.

Detective Hawkins waited. He placed one of his ham-hock hands on Bill’s shoulder and made a gesture with his head, indicating that Bill should return to his seat on the couch where they had been talking. Bill happily obliged. It felt good to sit, and the nausea subsided once he was on the couch.

Hawkins wandered off for a moment and came back with a paper cup full of water. “Drink this,” he said.

Bill swallowed the cool water and smacked his lips. “Thank you.”

“You’re sure there’s no one you want to call?” Hawkins asked. “What about your neighbor? Mr. Fleetwood?”

“Adam.”

“Right. You’re good friends with him. Do you want to call him to come sit with you?”

“I’ll talk to him soon. He might be working.” Bill used a shaking hand to reach into his pants pocket. He pulled out his phone and checked the screen. A text. “My sister. Paige. She’s coming. Tomorrow, I think.”

Bill struggled to type a response, his hands shaking like a ninety-year-old man’s. He marveled at the way Summer and Haley composed texts at lightning speed, almost like machines trained to do so.

“How about work? Do you need to check in there?”

“I’m an IT guy at a small college,” Bill said. “They can live without me for a while. They’ll probably miss me the most when I can’t go to Trivia Tuesday at the Tenth Inning.”

Hawkins stared at him blankly.

“The sports bar. A group of us from work plays trivia there.”

“Right, I hear you,” Hawkins said. He looked at the closed door to Summer’s room and then back at Bill. The detective’s hands rested on his hips, the skin of his thick ring finger swallowing the gold band.

“What about that stuff you were asking me?” Bill asked, his voice shaky. “Summer’s behavior. I’m confused by all of this right now. I don’t know what to think.”

“I understand completely,” Hawkins said. “I’ll come back and check on you later.”

“That Fields kid, Clinton,” Bill said. “There was something about him, something that happened a year or two ago. What was it?”

Hawkins took a moment before he answered. “He got in a fight at school with another kid.”

Bill waited. “That’s it? I thought there was more—” Then it came back to Bill. The story made the local news for a couple of days. Everybody with kids at the high school heard about it and talked about it. “Oh, I remember. Not just a fight, Detective.” Bill felt sweat forming at his hairline, a sticky, cloying liquid. “He hurt that kid. Put him in the hospital, right?”

“He did, Bill. Clinton Fields got in a fight at the bus stop almost two years ago, when he was fourteen. Broke the other boy’s jaw.”

“Oh, no.” Bill’s hand went to his face involuntarily to rub his own jaw. “He’s a thug—that’s what you’re telling me. A true menace. And you don’t want to arrest him yet?”

“Did Summer ever mention him being violent? Or threatening violence?”

“No. But what does that matter? You’ve got to talk to him. Arrest him.”

“I will, Bill. We’re well aware of all of this. In fact, I’m on my way to check into it more right now.”

“Will you tell me what you find?”

“Of course. Will you call me if you need anything? And let me know how Summer is.” He started to walk away and stopped, his big body showing surprising grace. “I had a collapsed lung once. When I was in college. I collided with another guy during a basketball game. That was enough to do it. I had to have the whole chest-tube thing in to relieve the pressure. The worst part was in the beginning. They said I’d feel a little discomfort, and then they put that tube in.” Hawkins winced, and the exaggerated face looked comical on the big man. “But then I could breathe again.”

Bill didn’t know what to say, so he said, “Thanks.”

“My point is, a collapsed lung isn’t as scary as it looks.”

“That’s one thing that isn’t, I guess,” Bill said. mImZpY8ownYhlKTdBAVh4EBXy8QEOi8JnR6pWhZQe1ffTj51ic4B3EBlJ8IZvIb6