My Sister's Keeper

Chapter 30

Stepping out of the car, I leaned down into the opening. He faced forward, looking out. "Women like Sydney Deagan don't find me very attractive, Mr. McGillikin. I can only dream about women like her."

He jammed the gearshift into reverse and I scarcely had time to shut the door before the car shot backward into the street and burned rubber as it sped away.

What the hell was that about?

It was nearly 6 p.m. when I lifted the bottle of scotch from the wet cardboard box and breezed out the back door. The cool, evening air penetrated the damp clothes I still wore. My eyelids weighed heavily and my limbs ached. I dropped onto a lounge chair, threw my legs up, and closed my eyes allowing the bottle to rest against the deck floor. No matter what I did, no matter how much new evidence I turned up, things just kept getting worse. The whole world seemed to have turned on me. Even my lawyer had gone weird. I raised the bottle to my lips and as I tilted it to drink, the phone rang in the house. Damn! Didn't I turn that thing off?

I jumped up, burst into the house, and snapped the phone off its cradle. "Hello?"

"I need a ride to the hospital." It was Martha. She sounded anxious.

"What's wrong?"

"Daddy's had another heart attack."

THE RECEPTIONIST IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM at New Hanover Regional Medical Center was an older woman with an exaggerated limp. Lifting her hip, she swung her right leg forward then leaned on it hard when she shifted her weight to that leg. She told us the doctors were working on Dad and that Mom was with him. She said we'd have to wait until she came out or until he was moved to a room.

The place was crowded. Elderly people bent forward at the waist waiting in wheelchairs. Children on the floor fighting over colored blocks. A woman in the corner with her hand wrapped in a bloody towel, and a nervous teenage girl who kept hopping up and running to the restroom.

"I'm going outside," Martha said spinning her chair around.

The last colors of sunset were fading to purple and a light breeze was blowing in from the south. I parked her next to a bench where I could sit with her. She pulled a pack of Virginia Slim Lights from her handbag, flipped a cigarette into her mouth, cupped a hand around a Bic lighter, and studied me as she curled smoke out the corner of her mouth. "You don't look so good."

I hadn't shaved since the morning of the previous day, nor had I changed clothes since getting off the river hours ago. "Thanks. When did you start that?"

Two columns of smoke streamed from her nostrils. "I needed something wicked in my life—something dangerous."

"You don't need cigarettes for that. You just need to tag along with me for a while."

"How'd it go today? On the river?"

I recapped the day and told her about Darla and "Rachel's Diamond" while an ambulance backed up to a loading dock and two EMTs frantically pulled an elderly man with blue lips out and rushed him in a side entrance to the emergency room.

"Richie, that's wonderful! You should be excited!"

"I was until I got home. Jones pulled me back downtown and I got more bad news."

"What bad news?"

I exhaled. "They found my semen in Ashleigh's bed." I could see the questions forming in her head as she took another drag and exhaled the smoke.

"I thought you said..."

"We didn't. I have no idea how it got there."

She watched me for a second. "That's not good, Richie."