“Uh-oh,” he said.
She chose a more colorful word. “Crud.”
Her van was gone.
“There were only four payments left!” Eva Belle Russell squawked. “And I just had it repaired.”
Brooks dropped the small cell phone into his coat pocket, sighing deeply. “According to the police, you were four payments behind. They had no choice but to impound the vehicle.”
What a mess. At least he had learned her name and that the vehicle had been financed through a bank in the Kansas City area, though what good that information did him, he wasn’t sure, especially if she continued to refuse treatment.
“Well,” she drawled, employing that broad wit of hers, “my aunt always said I’d wind up a streetwalker. Looks like she was right. Literally.”
She reached for the door handle, but of course he couldn’t let her just get out and walk away, not in her condition. Objecting would undoubtedly cost him, though; in fact, he had to make himself do it. She actually got the door open and one foot out before he could speak.
“Eva, wait.”
She looked around at him. “Got my name, did you?”
“Eva Belle Russell.”
She wilted, sinking back into the seat as if defeated by the simple fact of being known. “What are you going to do?” she asked warily.
“Depends. How much trouble are you in?”
Some of her spunk returned. “My head’s cracked. I’m broke. I’m stranded. My car’s been repossessed! Is that enough for you?”
“Are you in legal trouble?” he demanded.
“No!” She folded her arms, muttering, “Other than the repossession thing. And I guess that’s taken care of now.”
“I mean, criminal trouble,” he clarified.
She gaped at him. “You think I’d be going without meals if I didn’t have scruples?”
That made a certain sense. A criminal would have simply shoplifted her next meal or walked out on an unpaid bill. He supposed the threat of repossession could be reason enough to want to keep her identity a secret, though with the original license plate hanging out there for all the world to see, such secrecy felt pointless. On the other hand, given her physical condition, who was to say that she was even thinking clearly? He wished she’d let him take the EEG. That, however, was not the immediate problem.
“Is there anyone you can call?” He knew she had a cell phone on her and that it contained no preprogrammed numbers and not one iota of personal information.
“No.”
“Where are you headed? Maybe I can take you there.”
She pulled in a deep breath. “Um, what’s the next town of any size down the road? Waco?”
Obviously she had no real destination in mind. The woman was a gypsy, a free spirit, peddling her artwork wherever she could. A free spirit with very real problems.
“I’ll take you back to the hospital.”
“Forget that.” She shook her head, rippling her blond locks and making her eyeballs roll with pain so that she clasped the bandage beneath her hair gingerly.
“Look,” he said, tiring of the game, the situation and the whole endless day. “I know about the brain tumor. We did a non-contrast CT while you were unconscious. It’s standard proce—”
She all but leaped out of the car. It was nearly dark and the middle of January, but the fool woman actually got out of the car and headed off as if she had someplace to go.
“Eva!”
“Thanks, Doc. I’ve had fun. So long, now.”
“Eva Belle Russell,” he hollered, at the end of his tether, “you get back in this car!”
She walked off toward the grocery store. Grinding his teeth, Brooks got out and went after her.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Where it’s warm.”
“You can’t sleep in the grocery store.”
She swirled in a circle, her scarves whirling around her, but she kept walking. “I’ll have you know that I once slept all night in a lawn chair. I’ll be fine.”
“The grocery store closes at ten.”
She lifted both hands. “You must have a homeless shelter around here somewhere.”
They did, but they wouldn’t take her with that bandage on the back of her head. She might sneak it past them, but he doubted it. Besides, she belonged in a hospital, at least until he knew exactly with what she was dealing.
“Have you ever spent the night in a homeless shelter?” he demanded, stopping in his tracks.
She stopped, too, and turned to face him. “I’m not going back to the hospital.”
“Do you even know what type of tumor it is?”
“Oligodendroglioma.”
Not good, but not necessarily fatal, and he noted that the medical term rolled off her tongue with the ease of familiarity.
“Temporal, obviously,” he noted to himself. “Grade?”
“Three.”
“For sure?”
“Sure enough.”
“Anaplastic?”
“I haven’t had a biopsy, but it’s assumed.”
“Other than the language issues, which are transient, and some impulse control, are you having any other symptoms? Seizures, perhaps?”
She shrugged.
Exasperated, he demanded, “How can you not know if you’re having seizures?”
She parked her hands at her waist. “Well, I haven’t exactly been eating regularly, as you’ve pointed out.”
The anger caught him entirely off guard. “In other words, you don’t know if you’ve been getting dizzy and passing out from hunger or from seizures?” She shrugged again, and it was all he could do not to shake her by her too slender shoulders. “You belong in a hospital.”
“I’m not going to the hospital,” she stated flatly. Then she added in a silly singsong, “and you can’t make me.” She actually stuck out her tongue.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or tear out his hair, so he did neither, instead saying with admirable coolness, “I won’t dignify that with a reply. Just tell me why you won’t go back to the hospital.”
She folded her arms. “I have my reasons. That’s all you need to know.”
He closed his eyes. God, why would You do this to me? But that didn’t really matter. He’d dealt with brain tumors before, quite a few of them. Besides, she was not his wife, and just because she was refusing treatment didn’t mean that her case was anything like Brigitte’s. He really had no choice about what to do with her, though.
“I’ll take you somewhere else.”
The thought had been hovering in the back of his mind since he’d realized her van was gone, but he knew that it would mean prolonged interaction with her, and he really didn’t want that. Yet, he was a doctor. He would do what he had to do to take care