Sawbones, Page 4

  “I’ve got it.” Trish was already on her knees stuffing items back in the box.

  Henry and his partner nestled the stretcher into the back end of the vehicle under Patrick’s direction, while Susanne crawled in beside it without ever letting up on Jeannie’s neck.

  “Where should I put the box?” Trish asked.

  “Front seat,” Patrick replied.

  Trish did as she was told. It wasn’t often at her age that Trish was helpful and cooperative. Other adults bragged on Trish to Susanne, but there was a big difference, in Susanne’s experience, between how her children acted for her and for other people. Susanne could cajole and threaten Trish to do the dishes to no avail, but when she babysat for other families from their church, they reported that she did the dishes and the laundry and left the house spic and span. Susanne’s heart warmed to see that in a crisis, Trish came through, even with her parents there to witness it.

  Vangie walked up, and Henry encircled her with his arms.

  Trish leaned her head in the back of the Suburban. “Hey, Mom. I should probably get a ride home.”

  “What about Perry? Has anyone seen him?” Susanne felt like a bad mother. She’d only now thought of her son.

  Trish crossed her arms. “Not me.”

  Vangie raised a hand to get their attention. “We can give Trish and Perry a ride home.”

  “Uh . . .” Trish seemed flustered, but Susanne didn’t have time for it.

  “Thank you, Vangie. If you can find Perry, that is.”

  Vangie gave a half smile. “Neither deer, nor elk, nor coyote, nor any one of God’s creatures can remain hidden when my husband is on the trail. Even a teenage boy. We’ll get him.”

  Doors slammed and Patrick climbed into the driver’s seat. “Susanne, you okay back there?”

  “I am.”

  “If your arms get too tired, we can trade off.”

  “Okay.” Susanne sucked in a deep breath. Dear God, give me the strength and courage to do what needs doing for Jeannie. She readjusted her hands and applied more pressure to Jeannie’s neck as Patrick accelerated. The tires spun without catching for a few sickening rotations, then found traction. They shot out of the parking lot and onto the road down the mountain.

  Chapter Five: Return

  Bighorn Mountains, Buffalo, Wyoming

  Saturday, March 5, 1977, 11:45 a.m.

  Perry

  As soon as he cleared the drifts between the edge of the forest and the ski run, Perry flopped to his back in the snow. It had taken a lot longer to climb back up the trail than he’d imagined it would. He was so hot that he’d tied the sleeves of his coat around his waist. His sweater and wool cap were soaked from sweat. A stomach rumble reminded him that he hadn’t eaten lunch. He pulled his glove off with his teeth and rummaged in his pocket for his PB&J, but came up empty. No PB&J or pocketknife. His dad was going to be mad. Patrick Flint didn’t believe in wasting food or money. But even his dad wasn’t hard core enough to make him go without lunch. Or at least Perry hoped he wasn’t.

  He climbed to his feet and squinted at the lodge. A stream of people was walking away from it to the parking lot. Eyeballing the route, he noticed something funny. No one was on the T-bar lift. Maybe people were just eating, though. He looked around him on the ski run. There were no other skiers on the slope. That was even weirder.

  He was all alone.

  His stomach started feeling weird and jumpy. Something was wrong, and he needed to go find out what it was. He was half anxious to find out, half dreading it. He took a few steps to get his speed up. He didn’t even think about his turns, just pointed his skis toward the bottom. It took less than a minute for him to get down, where he crash landed face first twenty feet from the lodge deck. His goggles got knocked off his face. When he pushed up on his hands, his right one was freezing cold. His glove. He’d forgotten to put it back on. After he wiped the snow out of his eyes, off of his face, and out of his goggles, he checked his pocket for his glove. It was definitely missing. It was somewhere way uphill from him, and there was no way he was walking back up there to get it.

  If his dad wasn’t mad about the sandwich and the pocketknife, he would for sure be pissed about the glove.

  “Perry?”

  His mom’s friend, Mrs. Sibley, was standing beside him, holding up one of his skis. She was a teacher in town, but for the little kids. He’d never been in her class. Then he noticed her stomach. It was enormous. He tried not to look at it, but he couldn’t keep his eyes away. Away and back. Away and back. Away and back, where they stayed.

  “Hey, Mrs. Sibley. Where is everybody going?”

  A funny look crossed her face, like she was sad about something. “There was, um, a bad accident. Your parents had to take someone to the hospital, and the ski resort owners decided it was best to just shut down for the rest of the day.”

  He stood up, scrunching his forehead. My parents just left me? “What about Trish?”

  Mrs. Sibley tousled his hair. He forced himself not to duck away, even though he hated it when people rubbed his head like he was a baby. He was thirteen. Almost a man, if his growth spurt would just start. And his voice would get deeper. And his whiskers and chest hair would come in.

  “She’s with Henry. We’re giving you guys a ride home.”

  “Okay.” He took off his other ski, retrieved the one Mrs. Sibley was holding for him, and tucked both of them under an arm. “Who got hurt?”

  The two of them started walking past the lodge together. Perry’s feet clomped in the ski boots. Snow started building up on the bottom of them, and it was hard for him to keep his balance.

  “Jeannie Renkin. Do you know her?”

  “Does she go to my school?”

  “No, she’s older. Older than your parents.”

  He shook his head. He was glad it wasn’t someone he knew.

  Mrs. Sibley guided him toward the ski rental shop. “This way. We have to return your equipment.”

  “Okay.” He reached a wooden walkway and stomped his feet to get the slick snow pack off his boots.

  After they turned in his stuff, they headed for the parking lot. Perry saw Mr. Sibley standing by a truck talking to two men in deputy’s uniforms. The men shook hands with Mr. Sibley, then they walked off.

  “She found you, Perry. You all set?” Mr. Sibley clapped Perry on the shoulder.

  That was more like it. A masculine gesture, from one man to another. He nodded at Mr. Sibley. “Yes, sir.”

  Mrs. Sibley rotated in a circle. She wobbled, a little like a Weeble. “Is Trish in the bathroom or something?”

  Mr. Sibley opened the passenger side door and took her elbow. “I let her ride home with her boyfriend.”

  Mrs. Sibley froze. “We don’t have permission to let her do that.”

  “She said it was okay with her parents. I thought that meant it would be fine.”

  Mrs. Sibley raised her eyebrows at Mr. Sibley. The look she gave him reminded Perry of how his mom looked at his dad sometimes. It meant, “That’s what you get for thinking.” Or so his mom had told him.

  Perry opened the back door. As he climbed in, he realized Trish was going to get in trouble with their parents. She was mean to him most of the time, so he grinned. “Trish always says that.”

  “So, she’s not allowed?” Mr. Sibley paused with his hand on the door frame.

  “Most definitely not.” Mrs. Sibley harrumphed. “I keep telling you, this parenting thing is harder than it looks.”

  Mr. Sibley shut the door. Through the window, Perry thought he looked like he was going to throw up.

  Chapter Six: Strive

  Buffalo, Wyoming

  Saturday, March 5, 1977, 12:10 p.m.

  Patrick

  Patrick jumped from the Suburban and ran beside Jeannie Renkin’s stretcher through the hospital parking lot. Two emergency medical techs were pushing the stretcher, one a woman who walked stiffly on the back of her feet, the other a man with a gray beard and ta
ttoos showing above the top button of his shirt. Wes Braten, Patrick’s tall, lean buddy and an x-ray tech for the hospital, appeared beside them.

  “Where to, Doc?” the male EMT asked.

  “Best to take her to the OR where I can evaluate the wound and see if we can stop the hemorrhaging. She’s lost a lot of blood.” To Wes, he said, “We started fluid resuscitation in the ambulance, but her blood pressure keeps dropping. Do we have any O negative packed red blood cells here?”

  Wes fell in to help with the stretcher. “No, Doc, we don’t. We used our last unit yesterday on an OB patient from Gillette.”

  That was very bad news. Emergency surgery, and fast, was Jeannie’s only hope. If there was any hope at all, he had to find a way to stop the hemorrhaging before she bled to death. He prayed it was an external vein injury and not an injury to the internal jugular vein or carotid artery. He would be taking a huge risk clipping or tying off either of those vessels. But his intuition told him it was an arterial bleed.

  He hoped operating on her wouldn’t do more harm than good. Because that was his goal today and every day. First, do no harm—the common shorthand of the Hippocratic oath for physicians. Some days it was more challenging than others. He’d received the best in medical training in school at the University of Texas Southwestern and in his residency at Minneapolis General. He’d added the experience of close to a decade of emergency room and family practice. Yet each day made him more aware of what he and the rest of the medical community didn’t know. They were barely past bleeding with leeches and administering strychnine as a remedy for heart and respiratory complaints in some ways. He shuddered. And to think he’d been poisoned with strychnine only a few months earlier. It had nearly killed him. So, every day he reminded himself to do no harm. And every day since he’d been forced to take a life, however unintentionally, to save his daughter, he reminded himself he was in the business of saving lives, not taking them.

  In other words, do no harm. Full circle. Jeannie will die without the surgery, he reminded himself. Any harm from the surgery wouldn’t be caused by him. It would be because she was marked for death by the killer’s bullet.

  The four of them hustled their patient through the door and the waiting room of the ER, quiet except for the squeak of a door in need of a good greasing and the buzz of fluorescent lights. They passed the receptionist—a new employee, fresh out of school and eager to do a good job.

  “Has Judge Renkin arrived yet?” he asked her.

  She stood as if coming to attention, but she didn’t salute. “No, sir.”

  “Let me know when he arrives.” He needed to talk to him about Jeannie’s prognosis. It wouldn’t be an easy conversation.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  As they wheeled onward to the OR, Patrick’s brain processed the information about Jeannie’s condition like a mainframe computer. Unfortunately, besides the surgery, there was probably nothing more they could do to save her. She’d been bleeding so profusely from the get-go that he’d known her carotid or jugular had at least been nicked. Another of his fears had been injury to her cervical spinal cord or lower brain stem, but, if the latter had taken the hit, she would have died before they’d ever left the ski resort. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure how she’d lived as long as she had. Or how he’d kept the Suburban on the road on the way down the mountain. Certainly, he couldn’t have covered the distance any faster. By the time they’d come upon and flagged down the ambulance from Buffalo, he’d made it fifteen miles from the ski resort, all the way to the turn-off to Hunter Corrals. Jeannie was already in shock by then. Susanne had taken the wheel of the Suburban, and they’d loaded Jeannie. He’d waved goodbye to his wife as the doors to the ambulance had shut behind him.

  Patrick, Wes, and the EMTs arrived at the OR, where they were met by Kim, an efficient duty nurse who wore her gray hair in a low bun and looked like she could play fullback for the Wyoming Cowboys.

  The female EMT started rattling off an update on Jeannie’s condition. She was out of breath and talking fast. “Patient has endured a massive hemorrhage. Blood pressure is 70 over 30, pulse rate is 130. She’s in shock, with diminished capillary refill, and has never regained consciousness.”

  Patrick already knew all of this, but he appreciated her following procedure, and it saved him from repeating the information himself. “Thank you.”

  “Of course.”

  They transferred Jeannie onto the OR table. The EMTs bade them farewell and headed back toward the exit with their stretcher.

  Patrick issued orders to the OR staff. “Please get me the vascular tray. Hang another liter of Ringer’s and run it wide open for now. She’s in serious hypovolemic shock, and we have to try to support her blood pressure until I can stop the bleeding. We’re going to try to repair or tie off the bleeding vessel.”

  Kim started hooking Jeannie up to the monitors and preparing her for surgery.

  Patrick leaned over Jeannie, prying open one eyelid and shining a penlight into it. He lowered the light to his side. Suddenly, Jeannie’s eyes opened, and her fingers clamped onto Patrick’s wrist with an icy grip. Her lips opened and closed. She was trying to talk. He needed to go scrub in and take a few deep breaths. But he couldn’t run out on her when she wanted to say something. She deserved a few moments of comfort. He leaned close to her, listening.

  Her words sounded like she was gargling, but he understood enough combined with reading her lips to guess what she was saying. “My . . . husband.”

  He squeezed her hand. “He’s on his way. You’ve been shot, Mrs. Renkin. We’re taking you into surgery now to fix you up. Do you want me to bring him to see you?”

  She closed her eyes. “No. His fault. His.” Then her hand went limp, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

  Kim broke in. “She’s coding, Dr. Flint.”

  “Dammit.” He placed his hands on her chest and started compressions. The surgery was a long shot as it was, but it was a no-go if she didn’t have a heartbeat before they went to work on her.

  Kim placed a bag-valve mask over Jeannie’s nose and mouth, tilted her neck to open her airway, and begin ventilating her. Then, with her other hand, she pressed into the side of the neck opposite the wound, checking for a pulse.

  Patrick stopped the chest compressions. “Anything?”

  She shook her head.

  Patrick restarted. So did Kim.

  After another two minutes, they repeated the process. Compressions stopped, Kim palpated for a pulse.

  Kim said, “Still nothing, Dr. Flint.”

  He nodded. They both kept going anyway. Sweat dripped down Patrick’s forehead.

  Wes said, “Let me take a turn, Doc.”

  Patrick made room for Wes. “How long?” he said to Kim.

  “It’s been nearly five minutes.”

  The two men continued trading off on compressions until Kim told them fifteen minutes had passed. By then, Jeannie’s pupils were fixed and dilated and didn’t respond to Kim’s penlight.

  Patrick lifted his hands from Jeannie’s chest. “Time of death 12:30 p.m.”

  Chapter Seven: Sneak

  Buffalo, Wyoming

  Saturday, March 5, 1977, 7:30 p.m.

  Trish

  Trish wrapped her arms around herself. It was cold outside the theater where she was playing hooky from Rocky, the movie she’d told her parents she was going to see with her best friend Marcy, when what she was really planning to do was hang out with Brandon. They did this every Saturday night. They would park one street over, sing along to the songs on the radio in his truck, and steal kisses. He would try for more, she would fend him off. She couldn’t believe her parents hadn’t figured it out yet. Or that they’d let her go out at all after her mom had blown a gasket over Trish riding home from Meadowlark with Brandon.

  She blew on her hands and stomped her feet. What had happened to the stupid groundhog seeing his shadow and the short winter it was supposed to mean? It h
ad been nothing but cold here in Buffalo since forever. October or November at least. If Brandon didn’t show up soon, she was going to turn into a human popsicle.

  She was starting to get concerned about him. He was never late. They always timed their meet-up so people weren’t coming in or out of the theater—after the feature started, plus a few extra minutes to dodge the latecomers. That way no one would tattle to their parents. If she stayed outside much longer, someone arriving early for the next movie was going to see her.

  After another five minutes freezing her tush off, she decided to hide out in the theater bathroom and read. Her parents had given her Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry for Christmas, and she was just now getting to it. Between basketball, school, Brandon, friends, and her horse Goldie, she’d been busy. But as she pulled the door to the theater open, she heard the distinctive thumping noise of Brandon’s truck. He needed a new muffler, but he didn’t have the money. The truck was not only loud, it stunk like gasoline all the time, too. Brandon suspected the carburetor was behind the odor. That cost money to fix, too. He planned to get a job after basketball season ended. Then, after he’d fixed up his truck, he was going to take her out to dinner at a real restaurant in Sheridan, where no one would recognize them.

  Releasing the door, she tried to contain her goofy grin. The brown truck bounced over a pothole and into the parking lot. When the streetlight backlit the truck cab, she frowned. There were two heads inside it. Who was with Brandon?