19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19) - James Patterson Page 0,33

and I answered, laughing, “Gloria. Our stove malfunctioned …”

CHAPTER 38

THERE WAS A lot of background noise—a siren? A voice I didn’t recognize said, “Mrs. Molinari?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Doris Dillon. I’m an EMT.”

I felt a cold shock of fear as I understood the siren. How did the EMT get Mrs. Rose’s phone?

“A woman took a fall at Whole Foods. We’re taking her to Metro. She must have been trying to call you. I accidentally hit ‘send’ when I picked up her phone.”

“What’s wrong? Can I speak with her?”

Doris said, “She’s unconscious. I have to go now.”

“Wait. What happened?”

The line went dead.

I shouted, “Hello. Hello?” And I pressed Redial. There was no answer. I pictured Mrs. Rose falling down. Hitting her head. Or having a heart attack and falling. I saw her inside the bus, strapped to a stretcher, lines in her arms, mask over her face. Alone.

She had been there for us whenever we needed her since Julie was born.

Joe was in the kitchen trying to fix the stove. I yelled, “Joe. Gloria fell. She’s unconscious and on the way to the hospital. I’d better go.”

“Oh, no. But wait, Linds. What can you do for her?” Joe asked.

“Whatever she would do for me. I’ll try to reach her daughter. Becky lives in New York. You think she could get a flight out tonight?”

“You stay and I’ll go,” he said.

Since driving me home from Harriet Street, Joe had had a couple of drinks. I had not. I was in pajamas. He was not. I’d been working for the past twenty hours. He’d been home for a while.

We were batting this all back and forth when Julie woke up and started screaming. I wanted to scream, too.

In the end, there were no good solutions, but we decided on one.

We were all going.

Joe took the noodles out of the microwave and forced me to eat some. Then I got dressed and went into Julie’s pale yellow bedroom. She was still fussing in her new big-girl bed.

“Julie, want to go for a ride?”

“Noooooooooooooo.”

“We can watch planes and stuff.”

My three-year-old gave me a dubious look, as if she were in Interview 2 and I had asked her if she wanted to waive her rights. She lifted her arms.

Leaving our senior dog in charge of the apartment, the Molinaris locked up and drove to Metro.

CHAPTER 39

THE WAITING ROOM outside the emergency department at Metropolitan Hospital was packed, standing room only.

A wrong-way car accident on the Bay Bridge had resulted in fatalities, many injuries, and all lanes blocked with burning wreckage. It was some kind of miracle that ambulances had gotten in and then out to Metro.

I learned from a harried, tight-lipped ER nurse that some of the injured were still in the emergency room, others were in surgery, and more were in critical condition in the ICU.

The stricken faces of the friends and families ripped from Christmas parties or beds spoke without words of the devastation.

Joe stood with his back against a wall hung with children’s Christmas drawings. I sat a few feet away in a row of attached chairs, holding Julie in my lap. The woman sitting beside me was a few years older than me. Her arm was around the shoulders of a young teen, her son, who was cut and bruised and waiting to see a doctor.

The woman turned her stunned face to me.

“My oldest, Jeffrey, went through the windshield. He’s … they’re operating … it was bad …” She started to cry. Her younger son threw his arms around her and said, sobbing, “He has to be okay. He has to be okay.”

Sitting in this waiting room was like being wrapped in sheets of broken glass. I felt for the parents and their children whose lives had been tragically altered. I was also flooded with horrific memories of my own, spanning decades.

I pictured Joe and me sleeping in these chairs, holding hands in this very room when Julie was an infant with a rare disease, not knowing if our tiny baby would survive to see her first birthday.

I flashed back to waiting-room vigils for cops who’d been shot, the death of a partner. And I’d waited in one on that horrifying day, not long ago, when Joe was brought to San Francisco General with a life-threatening head injury after the bombing of the science museum.

How quickly a romantic dinner had changed to what could have been the worst day of my life and the end of his. I felt his presence behind me