“Did you bruise your foot too?” I asked.
“I think I might have sprained my ankle.”
I helped get him to an upright position.
“Sorry about the drink,” he said.
“I’ll take a raincheck,” I said as we hobbled down the street. I wanted to take a taxi to the parking lot, but Bill, being stoic, insisted he could walk. I didn’t argue, but by the time we got to the lot, he was flinching badly with every step.
“I don’t think I can drive,” he said apologetically.
I sobered up immediately. “I can handle your car.” Normally I would have been thrilled to test drive his BMW. I inspected the instrument panel: It was like facing an airplane cockpit.
I drove slowly, so as not to send Bill into vehicular panic, and crawled up Eighth Avenue, through the Lincoln Tunnel, and onto Route 3. At the turnoff to Etonville, I broached the subject carefully. “Maybe we should go to St. Anthony’s.” It was the area hospital in Creston and I was intimately familiar with the emergency room having spent the wee hours of a morning there last fall. I’d been conked on the noggin while doing investigative surveillance. But that’s another story.
“I’ll wrap it up when I get home. I had a handful of ankle sprains when I was in the NFL. I’ll be fine.” He adjusted his position and cringed. I wasn’t so sure.
“Bill, I think I need to make an executive decision here. Remember when you forced me to go to the hospital to get checked out last fall?”
“That was different. You might have had a concussion.”
“And you might have more than a sprain,” I said gently.
He put a face on. Before he could protest further, I exited Route 3, cut through the north end of Etonville, and hopped on State Route 53. By the time we pulled up to the emergency entrance of St. Anthony’s Hospital, his face was contorted with pain.
I parked the car and settled myself in the waiting room. The television was turned to late-night entertainment: Stephen Colbert interviewing an actress I’d never seen before. Was it after eleven thirty already? The night had been perfect—the food, the wine, the almost-after-dinner-drink that could have led to who-knows-what… I checked texts. A reminder from Henry to order shrimp for the weekend, a shout-out from Pauli to see how I liked the website updates, and three SOSs from Lola wondering what she was going to do about the show. I texted Henry that I might be late opening up in the morning.
Only five minutes had passed since I’d sat down in the waiting room. I closed my eyes.
A door opened. Bill appeared in a wheelchair, his right foot and ankle in a cast, accompanied by a male nurse in wrinkled scrubs who seemed even more worn out than me.
“Okay, Mr. Thompson. Don’t forget your prescriptions.” The young man set the brakes on the chair. “Are you alone?”
Bill looked to be beside himself. He stuffed the prescriptions in a pocket, flipped up a footrest, and stood up, nearly losing his balance. “No.”
“Whoa there. Take it easy.” He resettled Bill in the chair.
I got up.
The nurse shifted his attention to me. “Are you Mr. Thompson’s wife?”
“No,” Bill and I said simultaneously.
The nurse squinted at us. “He needs to take it easy the next few days.”
I ran to get the car and drove up to the emergency entrance again.
“Stay off that foot,” the young man said as we pulled away.
Bill was so still I assumed he’d fallen asleep.
“You were right. Fractured talus. A clean break but I’m going to have this thing on…” he tapped his cast, “…four to five weeks.”
“Any pain?” I asked softly.
“Just in my neck,” he said. Then snorted.
It was the beginning of a laugh. “Sense of humor still intact, I see.”
“How about that nightcap at my place?” he asked.
“Terrific.” Of course, it would not be as interesting as I had envisioned…
With the aid of crutches, he managed to get to the guest bedroom on the first floor of his center hall colonial. He texted Suki, alerting her to the situation. Good thing he was delegating. I removed the shoe off his good foot, and he shrugged out of his suit jacket and shirt and insisted he could take it from there. He was in the middle of thanking me and apologizing at the same time—forget the nightcap—when his eyes closed and he passed out. Turns out the pain meds were a little bit more potent than Bill had counted on.
It was two a.m. I scrounged up a blanket and pillow out of his linen closet and collapsed on his sofa. It was a disappointing end to a wonderful evening for both of us. Of course, I was the only one conscious enough to realize that. Soft snoring drifted out of the guest room since I’d left the door open in case he needed something. I probably wouldn’t have any trouble falling asleep…
My cell binged at eight a.m. from my purse where I’d left it last night, or rather this morning. It was a text from Lola, wondering if I was awake. I rose and tiptoed to the door of the guest room. Bill had shifted positions in the night but was still dozing. I tapped Lola’s number and listened to the phone ring several times before she picked up.
“Dodie! Finally. I expected you to call me when you got home last night. I was up ‘til all hours. Worrying, of course. Did I wake you?”
I mumbled, “Not really.”
“Why are you whispering? Did you lose your voice? Carol’s herb tea—”
“I didn’t lose my voice. I don’t want to wake Bill.”
I could hear her smile. “Aha… So that’s why I didn’t get a call back.”
“It’s not what you think. He broke a bone in his ankle last night, and we didn’t get out of the emergency room until almost two and then he passed out from the pain meds and I ended up on the sofa—”
“He broke his ankle? How?”
“Dodie?” Bill stood in the doorway of the guest room, his trousers rumpled, his brush cut tousled, and pale blond stubble shadowing his face.
“Gotta go, Lola.”
“Call later!” she begged as I clicked off.
After a civil but heated discussion, I helped Bill up the staircase, clunking step after step with the crutches, to the second floor where he insisted he could bathe and dress himself. He maintained, again, that he’d played through worse injuries on the gridiron. I reminded him, again, that he was supposed to stay off the leg.
I sat at his kitchen counter with a cup of coffee and waited for him to reappear, mentally ticking off my errands this morning.
“Got any more of that?” Bill hobbled his way to the counter.
He’d been right…he was able to clean up pretty well, shave off yesterday’s stubble and get himself into a clean uniform. Despite the hour of the day, his freshly scrubbed look and muscular torso were able to raise my heart rate. But work? “You’re not intending to report for duty, are you? I don’t think that’s what they had in mind when they said ‘take it easy.’”
Bill dismissed my point with a wave of his hand and sipped from the mug I filled. “I have a murder to solve.” He strapped on a shoulder holster.
“Okay. Let’s go. I’ll leave your car—”
“No need. Ralph will be here soon to pick me up and he’ll drop you off.” Bill set his