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He needed to know. Dear God, she was only one year old. And had been found without any clothes on.
But Kelsey deserved respect. And dignity. And while she was too young to demand that for herself, Ramsey would do what he could to preserve it for her. He wouldn’t ask.
The doctor turned back toward the hall. “If you need anything, the nurses’ station is just around the corner,” she said. “If you’d like me to give you something to help you sleep tonight, have one of them call me.”
Sleeping aids were the last thing he’d use. Ever. Alcohol, meth, cocaine—the drugs of choice posed no threat to Ramsey Miller. But something to help him sleep at night? He feared that if he helped himself once, he’d be addicted for life.
“Detective?” the doctor, he’d missed her name, called from the door.
“Yeah?”
“She wasn’t raped.”
Ramsey watched her until her back was out of range, and only then realized that he had tears on his cheeks.
T here were support groups for families who’d lost someone to abduction. Lucy had never attended a support group. Or counseling, either, for that matter. She’d been born into her situation. Living with the ghost of an abducted family member was normal for her.
Sitting in a hospital waiting room needing to hear about a family member was not.
Seven o’clock Friday evening and she was the only person in the small area of the emergency department dedicated to families of those brought in for serious illnesses. Had Sandy had a heart attack as they all suspected? Was it going to be fatal?
Marie had finally gone home, but only after Lucy promised to call her mother’s longtime best friend—and paid caregiver—the second she knew anything. And only because Lucy had convinced the older woman that one of them needed to get some sleep so that, together, they could take turns caring for Sandy. Lucy, as next of kin, was the obvious one of the two to sit there. Not only because there was no way she’d leave, but, practically speaking, because she was the only one legally able to make decisions regarding her mother’s care.
“Ms. Hayes?” The young male nurse who’d shown her to the room earlier was back. “The doctor would like to speak with you.”
Holding the shoulder strap of her small purse with both hands, Lucy jumped up and followed the nurse’s blue-scrubcovered back to a door down the hall.
Inside the small room, she took the seat indicated for her at the oval table. Dr. Paul Sherman introduced himself again, although she’d met him when she’d climbed off the back of the ambulance at the emergency-room door.
She waited for him to say more. Was afraid to ask. To preempt the news.
She was scared to death.
“Your mother’s resting peacefully.” It took Lucy a second to realize those weren’t the first words the doctor had said. Just the first she’d registered.
“She’s going to be okay?”
“She’s going to live.” The gray-haired doctor’s stern expression wasn’t promising. “I take it, from the little bit of medical history we were able to get, that Sandy Hayes is an alcoholic?”
And at forty-five the alcohol had affected her heart to this extent? Sandy had her problems, but she was young. Having Allie at nineteen, being raped at twenty, she’d given birth to Lucy a year later. Sandy had always had age on her side to help combat the toll her life took on her body.
“She drinks, yes.”
“In excess.”
Lucy had figured that the booze would get her mother’s liver first, not her heart. And not for a long, long time. “Yes.”
“Your mother is suffering from an alcoholic overdose, Ms. Hayes.”
“A what?”
“Her blood alcohol level was close to fifty percent. Most people face death in the forty percentile. As a comparison, the legal limit for motor impairment is point zero eight percent.”
“She didn’t have a heart attack?”
“No, your mother’s heart, believe it or not, is strong and healthy.”
