why she was doing it. Prescription pads that she’d throw away when Catherine Ransom ceased to exist. Pens and magnets given to her by the Burnt Rock business owners. Intake forms that existed on her computer. She left her framed license hanging on the wall.
She found several large cardboard boxes that held bulk supplies. Toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer. She dumped the contents out on the floor and filled the empty boxes with her entire inventory of medications and medical supplies, items that would be almost as costly to replace as her identity. She had no time to organize or file, only to take. She thought through what Garner would need, what she would have to access easily, and placed these in a separate, smaller box. One by one she carried these out to her car at the back of the building.
The perspiration of rushing, hurrying, worrying broke out at her temples.
When she finished with the boxes she went to the supply closet and pushed aside the coat she’d stashed there last winter. It was holding up a backboard she’d used only once, when Mazy had slipped on the ice behind her diner in January. Cat took this into the room where Garner rested, fretting. She should have invested in a gurney. It had taken herself and two men to get this hospital-grade bed, then empty, into the room. There would be no getting it out now that it was occupied. She unhooked the IV bag from its pole and rested it on Garner’s chest. She moved around the bed, untucking the sheets from around the mattress, preparing to slide him onto the backboard, strap him in, then drag him to her car. It would be a jarring, primitive effort.
She wedged several inches of the slim board underneath the sheet at his left side and gripped the fabric. When she gave it a firm tug, her fingernails pierced the thin cotton and ripped a six-inch gash in it. Her heart fell at the sound of the threads snapping. This was a job that generally took three or four people and sturdy materials.
She tried again, this time pulling on both the sheet and a belt loop in Garner’s pants. She leaned against the edge of the board and used her hips to shove it under Garner’s body. His backside came up onto the board this time, but his legs and torso bent away from her. Cat went around to the opposite side of the bed as the IV bag slipped off Garner’s chest and plummeted to the floor. She failed to catch it in time, and her despair began to mount, even though the bag didn’t burst and the tube was long enough that it didn’t yank the angiocatheter from Garner’s hand.
Even if she could get him onto the board—which after more than a minute she finally managed, first his legs and then his shoulders and head—his hundred seventy pounds might as well have been two hundred seventy. She didn’t have a clear vision in her head for how this plan would work. One step at a time, one problem at a time. She wrapped the sheet around him and secured him to the board with the safety straps like a baby in a papoose.
After ensuring that the bed’s wheel brakes had been set, Cat pushed the board off the end of the mattress. When it began to gently teeter she went to the foot of the bed and guided the bottom edge of the board to the floor. She jiggled it once to make sure it was stabilized and then stepped away to lower Garner’s head. When she moved, her shoe caught Garner’s foot and she lost her balance, and before she recovered it the board was sliding on the slick floor and Garner’s head was falling, and when her reflexes sent her arm out to catch him, the board with all of Garner’s weight on it fell on top of her hand and pinned it to the floor.
She watched the board bounce and rattle Garner’s head before it came down on her hand a second time. The pain was so quick and intense that Cat couldn’t be sure right away if her bones had been crushed or fractured or merely bruised. For several seconds she couldn’t even move to get the board off of her. She lay prone on the floor, her throbbing hand trapped under the unconscious form of her dear friend, and began to weep.
It was