Uncle Sarge

His parents had gone into hospitals and not come out. That Rick Larsen had not come home was a good thing in the long run, but Rich still missed his mother every day of his life. Please, he prayed silently, let this not be history repeating itself. He clutched the edges of the passenger seat and held on for dear life. Please, he prayed again, let Sherry leave this place. Let her go home to her kids.

Jennifer turned into the parking lot and followed the signs that directed them to the main entrance. “Do you want me to drop you at the door, or can you wait till we park?”

That was the $64,000 question. Yes, he wanted to see Sherry so bad he could taste it, but to do it, he’d have to go inside the hospital. He drew in a long, shuddering breath. He could wait a long time for that. He gripped the seat tighter. “I’ll wait,” he said finally. If he had to do this, he’d rather do it with Jennifer.

He didn’t need her to hold his hand, but he had no objection to it.

She found a parking space close to the front doors, and pulled in. “It’s close to the end of visiting hours, I’d expect,” she said as she turned off the engine. “We probably don’t have much time.”

The possibility that he might not get to see Sherry at all gave him the strength to release his death grip on the seat. “Okay,” he said, his throat tight, his voice husky. He pushed open his door.

And couldn’t move an inch.

Damn, had his apprehension affected him so much that he was paralyzed with fear? Then he looked down.

He hadn’t unfastened his seat belt.

Hoping that Jennifer hadn’t noticed, but certain she had, he released the mechanism and stepped to the ground.

The air was still and thick enough to slice. Clouds piled up in the distance, obscuring the sinking sun, and flickers of lightning occasionally brightened the dark gray sky. The storm must be far out over the Gulf because there was no sound of thunder, but its proximity added a feeling of foreboding to the sultry atmosphere.

Rich felt a hand on his arm, and looked away from the gathering clouds to Jennifer. “I guess we’d best go see what we can see.”

Jennifer slid her fingers down his arm to squeeze his hand. “It’ll be all right. Didn’t Mrs. Benton say your sister was going to rehab soon? They don’t send them there unless they’re ready for physical therapy. And they don’t give them therapy if…” She didn’t finish, but Rich knew what she meant.

If they were at death’s door, she hadn’t said.

“Yeah.” He scanned the aisle for cars. “Let’s do it,” he said as if he were readying himself to jump out of the rear of a C-130 over a hostile drop zone. He set off with Jennifer in tow.

The front doors swooshed open at the touch of their feet to the door pad, and chilled air blasted them as they stepped inside.

Rich steeled himself for the medicinal odor that he associated with hospitals and death and still smelled in his nightmares, but it wasn’t there. Relieved, he hurried to the information desk, then peered through the glass partition. “I’m looking for my sister, Sherry Connolly. I just found out she’s a patient here.”

The receptionist typed the name into a computer and after an eternity, or so it seemed to Rich, the information came up on a screen. She jotted the floor, ward and room number onto a sheet of paper and pointed Rich in the general direction. “Just follow the green lines to the elevator, and when you reach the floor, turn left.”

Rich nodded, grabbed Jennifer by the hand and followed the green line to a bank of elevators.

As the doors closed behind them, Jennifer drew in a deep breath. What was she doing here with a man she hardly knew, visiting a sister he hadn’t seen in years? She didn’t belong here. She didn’t want to be here.

But when she glanced at Rich and caught his grim expression in the mirrored walls of the elevator, she knew she had to stay. She might have entered into this venture as a detective, but now she was emotionally involved. If not with Rich, at least with the case.

She had to know how it turned out. She had to know if there was a happy ending.

The elevator stopped at the appropriate floor with a gentle jerk, and the doors seemed to take forever to open. Finally, they stepped out and into a wide area that branched into three halls. “Left, the receptionist said.” Jennifer urged him through a set of swinging doors and toward the nurses’ station beyond. She didn’t know why, but she could tell that Rich’s state of anxiety had to do with more than just worry for his sister.

A pretty, young woman looked up and smiled. “Are you Sergeant Larsen?”

“Who to—? How…?” He wore the expression of a boy caught with his fingers in the cookie jar, and Jennifer loved the way it softened his hard face.

“A Mrs. Benton called and said you were on your way,” the nurse said, putting down a chart and coming around the desk. “She wanted to be certain your visit wouldn’t be too much of a shock.”

“A shock?”

Jennifer hadn’t thought of that, and Rich hadn’t been thinking clearly at all. It hadn’t occurred to her that this visit might be upsetting to Sherry. “Will she be able to handle seeing her brother?”

“It’s probably the best medicine she could have other than having her children come see her, but you know the rules about children on the wards.” She gestured toward some chairs in a small waiting area.

“I’d rather go see my sister,” Rich said, holding his ground.

“And so you shall,” the nurse said. “But I have to prepare you for what you’re going to see.”

“Prepare me? Is there more I don’t know?” Rich sat in the indicated chair though he looked like he wanted to get up and run.

The nurse sat across from him, her knees almost touching his. “No. I just want to assure you that your sister will probably make a complete recovery. She’s not in that much pain, though she’s obviously sad.” The nurse placed a hand over Rich’s, and Jennifer felt a slight finger of jealousy stab at her, but she shook that notion away. She barely knew the man.

“Your sister is wearing a rather complicated apparatus called a halo. It looks frightening, but it’s serving to stabilize her neck, and it’s actually relieving her of pain, rather than causing it.” She described it, then waited for Rich’s response.

“I don’t care if she’s in plaster from head to toe. It’s been a long time, and I just want to see my sister.”

“Then, let’s go.” The nurse rose and gestured toward a corridor behind the nurses’ station.

Jennifer squeezed Rich’s hand. “I’ll just stay here. This is your reunion. I don’t know your sister.” She wouldn’t tell him that she was a coward, that she was afraid of the intense emotions this moment was about to bring.

“No. Come with me. Wait out in the hall, or something. Just be nearby in case I need backup.”

As much as Jennifer didn’t want to go, the panic in Rich’s eyes told her she had to.

Rich followed the nurse down the corridor feeling as though his feet were encased in concrete. He wanted to see Sherry, yet he dreaded what he might find. He’d had more than his share of shocks today.

“Wait here,” the nurse said as they reached a door. There was a nameplate of sorts: a strip of masking tape with Connolly scrawled on it with a red marker. They waited outside for what seemed like the longest moment of his life while the nurse went in.

“Richie?”

It sounded like Sherry. Only softer, huskier. The lump returned with vengeance, and Rich’s eyes burned. Had the change in the timbre of her voice come from her injuries or the passage of time?

The nurse beckoned, and Rich stepped inside.

“Richie. It is you,” a pale apparition inside an Erector set project of braces and stainless steel said. She looked as if she were being tortured by something from the Spanish Inquisition, but the smile on her face was angelic. She reached through a maze of tubes and wires toward him.

“It’s me. In the flesh,” he said, taking her hand. That lump made it damned hard to talk.

“And so much more flesh than the last time I saw you,” Sherry said. “I guess they feed you pretty well in the air force.”

“They did. Now I feed myself. And I work out.” As if two hours of hard PT every day would qualify as a workout. It was more like the Olympic Decathlon with the Bataan Death March combined.

“You look wonderful.” Sherry smiled ruefully. “Don’t feel you have to compliment me in return. I know what I must look like.” She let go of him and waved, encumbered with tubes from a nearby intravenous setup, toward the halo apparatus. “I promise, I’m not into body piercing,” she said, indicating the brace that appeared to be anchored directly into her skull.

“You look damned good to me. I didn’t think I’d ever see you ag—” He stopped, his throat too constricted to go on.