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Galloway tore off the page with the phone numbers and slapped it down on the table. "You got your case."
"What a surprising turn of events." Faith flashed him a smile, handing him a card. "If you could please fax all witness statements and preliminary reports to my office. Number's on the bottom."
He snatched the card, bumping into the table as he walked away, grumbling. "Keep smiling, bitch."
Faith leaned down and picked up the chair, feeling a bit woozy as she straightened. The nurse educator had been more of the former than the latter, and Faith was still unsure about what to do with all the diabetic instruments and supplies she had been given. She had notes, forms, a journal and all sorts of test results and papers to give to her doctor tomorrow. None of it made sense. Or maybe she was too shocked to process it all. She had always been very good at math, but the thought of measuring her food and calculating insulin made her brain go all fuzzy.
The final blow had been the result of the pregnancy test that had been kindly tagged on to all the other bloodwork. Faith had been clinging to the possibility that the over-the-counter tests were inaccurate— all three of them. How exact could the technology be for something that you peed on? She had vacillated daily between thinking she was pregnant and thinking that she had a stomach tumor, not exactly sure which news would be more welcome. When the nurse had happily informed her, "You're going to have a baby!" Faith had felt like she was going to pass out again.
There was nothing she could do about it now. She sat back down at the table, looking at Rick Sigler's and Jake Berman's phone numbers. She would have made a bet that Jake's was false, but Faith wasn't new to this game. Max Galloway had been annoyed when she had asked the men to see their driver's licenses and copied down the information in her notebook. Then again, maybe Galloway wasn't a total idiot. She'd seen him scribbling down his own copy of the phone numbers while he was on his cell. The thought of Galloway having to come ask Faith for Jake Berman's details made her smile.
She checked the clock again, wondering what was keeping the Coldfields. Galloway had told Faith the couple had been instructed to come to the cafeteria for their interviews as soon as the ER cleared them, but the couple seemed to be taking their own sweet time. Faith was also curious about what Will had done to make Max Galloway call him a lunatic. She would be the first person to admit that her partner was far from conventional. He certainly had his own way of doing things, but Will Trent was the best cop Faith had ever worked with—even if he had the social skills of an awkward toddler. For instance, Faith would've liked to have found out from her own partner that they were assigned to this case rather than hear it from an inbred Weimaraner from Rockdale County.
Maybe it was for the best that she had some time before she talked to Will. She had no idea how she was going to explain why she had passed out in the parking deck at the courthouse without actually having to tell him the truth.
She rifled through the plastic bag filled with diabetic supplies and pulled out the pamphlet the nurse had given her, hoping that this time she would be able to concentrate on it. Faith didn't get much farther than "So, you have diabetes" before she was telling herself once again that there had been some kind of mistake. The insulin shot had made her feel better, but maybe just lying down for a few minutes had done the trick. Did she even have a history of this in her family? She should call her mother, but she hadn't even told Evelyn that she was pregnant. Besides, the woman was on vacation in Mexico, her first holiday in years. Faith wanted to make sure her mother was close to good medical care when she told her the news.
The person she should really call was her brother. Captain Zeke Mitchell was an Air Force surgeon stationed in Landstuhl, Germany. As a doctor, he would know everything about her condition, which was probably why she cringed at the thought of reaching out to him. When fourteen-year-old Faith announced that she was pregnant, Zeke was just hitting his senior year in high school. His mortification and humiliation had lasted twenty-four hours, seven days a week. At home, he had to watch his slut of a teenage sister swell up like a blimp, and at school, he had to listen to the crude jokes his friends made about her. It was no wonder he'd joined the military straight out of high school.
Then there was Jeremy. Faith had no idea how she would tell her son that she was pregnant. He was eighteen, the same age Zeke had been when she'd ruined his life. If boys did not want to know their sisters were having sex, they sure as hell didn't want to hear the news about their mothers.
Faith had done most of her growing up with Jeremy, and now that he was in college, their relationship was settling into a comfortable place where they could talk to each other as adults. Sure, she sometimes had flashes of her son as a child—the blanket he used to drag around with him everywhere, the way he constantly used to ask her when he was going to get too heavy for her to carry him—but she'd finally come to terms with the fact that her little boy was now a grown man. How could she pull the rug out from under her son now that he'd finally gotten settled? And it wasn't just that she was pregnant anymore. She had a disease. She had something that could be carried in families. Jeremy could be susceptible. He had a serious girlfriend now. Faith knew that they were having sex. Jeremy's children could become diabetic because of Faith.
"God," she mumbled. It wasn't the diabetes, but the idea that she could end up being a grandmother before she hit thirty-four.
"How are you feeling?"
Faith looked up to find Sara Linton standing across from her with a tray of food.
"Old."
"Just from the pamphlet?"
Faith had forgotten it was in her hand. She indicated that Sara should sit. "Actually, I was questioning your medical abilities."
"You wouldn't be the first." She said it ruefully, and not for the first time, Faith wondered what Sara's story was. "My bedside manner could have been better with you."
Faith did not disagree. Back in the ER, she had wanted to hate Sara Linton on sight for no other reason than she was the type of woman you'd want to hate on sight: tall and thin with great posture, long auburn hair and that unusual kind of beauty that made men fall all over themselves when she entered a room. It didn't help matters that the woman was obviously smart and successful, and Faith had felt the same knee-jerk dislike she'd felt in high school when the cheerleaders had bounced by. She'd like to think a new strength of character, a spurt in maturity, had allowed her to overcome the petty response, but the truth was that it was hard for Faith to hate someone who was a widow, especially the widow of a cop.
Sara asked, "Have you had anything to eat since we talked?"
Faith shook her head, looking down at the doctor's food selection: a scrawny piece of baked chicken on a leaf of wilted lettuce and something that may or may not have been a vegetable. Sara used her plastic fork and knife to cut into the piece of chicken. At least she tried to cut into it. In the end, it was more like a tearing. She moved the roll off her bread plate and passed Faith the chicken.
"Thanks," Faith managed, thinking that the fudge brownies she had spotted when she walked in were much more appetizing.
Sara asked, "Are you officially on the case?"
Faith was surprised by the question, but then again, Sara had worked on the victim; she was bound to be curious. "Will managed to snag it for us." She checked the signal on her cell phone, wondering why he hadn't called yet.
