Shades of Twilight

"Young man, I will not lie down on the floor. I’m old and upset, that’s all. You tend to Roanna and don’t pay any attention to me."

He couldn’t treat her without her permission, and she knew it. Webb looked down at her and thought about picking her up and carrying her to the hospital himself, bullying her into letting a doctor check her. She must have known what he was thinking, because she looked up and managed a smile.

"It’s nothing to fret about," she said.

"Roanna’s the one who needs seeing to."

"I’ll go with her to the hospital, Aunt Lucinda," Lanette said, surprising everyone.

"You need to rest. You and Mama stay here. I’ll go put on some clothes if y’all will gather up the things she’ll need."

"I’ll drive," Webb said. Lucinda started to protest again, but Webb put his arm around her.

"Lanette’s right, you need to rest. You heard what the paramedic said, Roanna will be all right. It would be different if she were in danger, but she isn’t. Lanette and I will be there with her." Lucinda clutched his hand.

"You’ll call me from the hospital, let me talk to her?"

"Just as soon as she’s settled," he promised.

"They’ll have to do X-rays first, I imagine, so it could take a while. And she might not feel like talking," he warned.

"She’ll have a hell of a headache."

"Just let me know she’s all right."

With that, Lucinda and Gloria went down the long hall to the back bedrooms, to gather the personal items Roanna would need for even a short stay in the hospital. Webb and Lanette went to their own rooms to dress. It took him less than two minutes, and he reached Roanna’s side just as they were transferring her to a stretcher to carry her downstairs.

She was fully conscious now, and her eyes were wide with alarm as she looked up at him. He took her hand again, folding her cold, slender fingers against his rough, warm palm.

"I don’t like this," she said fretfully. "If I need stitches, why can’t I just drive to the emergency room? I don’t want to be carried. " "You have a concussion," he replied.

"It’s not safe for you to drive."

She sighed and gave in. He squeezed her hand.

"Lanette and I are going to be with you. We’ll be right behind the ambulance."

She didn’t protest again, and he almost wished she had. Every time he looked at her, he was hit by another wave of panic. She was paper white, what part of her face that wasn’t covered by blood. The dark, rusty stain was spread over her face and neck, where it had run down from the laceration on her scalp.

Lanette came hurrying down, carrying a small overnight case, just as they were sliding the stretcher into the ambulance.

"I’m ready," she said to Webb, already moving past him toward the garage.

Sheriff Beshears fell into step beside Webb.

"The boys 265

LINDA HOWAAD

found marks in the dew," he said.

"Looks like someone took out running across the yard. Somebody’s been messing with the lock on the kitchen door, too, there’s some scratches on the metal. Miss Roanna’s lucky, if she came face-to-face with a burglar and a bump on the head’s all she got."

Remembering how she had looked like a crumpled little doll lying in the hall, with blood spreading around her, Webb thought Beshears’s definition of lucky was different from his own.

"I’ll be at the hospital later on to ask her some questions," the sheriff continued.

"We’ll do some more checking around here."

The ambulance was pulling out. Webb turned away and strode to the garage, where Lanette was waiting for him. It took several hours and a shift change at Helen Keller Hospital before Roanna had been scanned, stitched, and settled into a private room. Webb impatiently waited in the hallway while Lanette helped her to clean up and get dressed in a fresh nightgown.

The bright morning sun was shining through the windows when he was finally allowed to reenter the room. She was lying in bed, looking almost normal now that most of the blood had been washed away. Her hair was still matted with it, but that would have to be taken care of later. A white pad covered the stitches in the back of her head, and stretchy gauze had been wrapped around her head to hold the bandage in place. She was very pale, but all in all she looked much better.

He eased down on the side of the bed, careful not to jar her. "The doctor told us to wake you up every hour. That’s a helluva thing to do to an insomniac, isn’t it?" he teased.

She didn’t smile as he’d hoped.

"I think I’ll save you the trouble and just stay awake."

"Do you feel like talking on the phone? Lucinda was frantic."

Carefully she pushed herself higher in the bed.

"I’m okay, it’s just a headache, Will you dial the number for me?"

Just a headache from a bruised brain, he thought grimly as he picked up the receiver and punched the number for an outside line, then the number at Davencourt. She still thought she’d fallen, and no one had told her any differently. Sheriff Beshears wasn’t going to get a lot of information from her.

Roanna talked briefly to Lucinda, just long enough to reassure her that she felt all right, a blatant lie, then gave the phone back to Webb. He was going to give Lucinda his own reassurances, but to his surprise it was Gloria who came on the line.

"Lucinda had another spell after y’all left," she said.

"She’s too stubborn to go to the hospital, but I’ve called her doctor and he’s going to stop by this morning."

He glanced at Roanna; the last thing she needed to hear right now was that Lucinda was ill.

"Keep her in line," he said briefly, and lowered his voice as he turned away so Roanna wouldn’t be able to hear him.