OverTime 04: Settling [THE NEW EDIT]

NEW Chapter 8: Out of the Cast-Iron Frying Pan (Lillabit)

Of course, before I could focus on getting back to 1878, I had a few details to check off my to-do list... like needing a whole new to-do list. I hadn't exactly gotten up this morning planning a sonogram at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in the heart of downtown Chicago.

Dr. Ghali recommended I stay overnight, for observation. She confirmed I had a UTI, which seemed an anticlimactic diagnosis until she fussed about seeing how I "responded to the IV antibiotic" before sending me home with a prescription.

"It's vital that the infection not spread to your kidneys," she insisted. Since "home" would be woefully short of antibiotics for a few generations yet, I didn't fight her on this.

I think she was at least partially swayed by the ligature marks on my wrists. Hospitals are "mandated reporters" when they see evidence of abuse which, go figure, this was. So even as I was still wrapping my head back around indoor plumbing and electric lights, I also had to contend with the police.

The coppers. The fuzz. The po-po.

Or, in this case, Officer Nancy.

The number of professional women I'd run into in mere hours, more than I'd met in months, felt surreal... though I think I got Officer Nancy in part because the request for a rape kit would sound better coming from a female.

I firmly declined.

"You've clearly been through an ordeal," she said. "Not just the nudity, and captivity, but whatever happened to your thighs."

Horses. Riding bareback for too long, wearing a dress, was what had happened to my thighs. I declined to tell her that, either, because it just would have led to more questions. The part of me that used to follow all the rules truly ached to be helpful—but anything referencing time travel seemed like a bad idea.

Psychiatric holds are still a thing, right?

"I'm okay," I reassured her—more than once. "I just don't want to talk about it."

Eventually, she gave me her business card and left.

I slumped back into my ER bed, relieved but not surprised. I'd been questioned by Wyatt Earp in Dodge City, I reminded myself with a surge of pride. I could handle kindly Officer Nancy.

Which is when a police detective walked in, his plain-clothes wrinkled and a badge hanging around his neck instead of pinned to a uniform. They were tag-teaming me!

"Elizabeth Kathleen Rhinehart," he greeted. And of course, middle-names spell trouble. "The same Elizabeth Kathleen Rhinehart who went missing on June 21 this year."

Uh-oh.

Nancy had been the good cop.

This guy, who introduced himself as Detective Vecchio, wasn't anywhere near as easy to put off. When I said I didn't want to talk about it, he asked, "Why not? Feeling bad about all the trouble you caused?"

"Because I'm tired, and sick, and wearing paper. I've had an unbelievably hard day. And I have people to contact—I mean, phone calls to make."

Assuming I could get access to a phone.

And to phone numbers.

"Who do you need to call, Rhinehart? Your Nana, who's been calling the station every week since you vanished, going through hell, thinking you're lying dead in a ditch somewhere?"

That was unnerving—and not just the well-placed kick of guilt. He knew she was Nana, not just my grandmother. He did not, apparently, know that I'd sent her a letter of explanation by means of the slowest delivery system ever. "Yes—she's first on my list."