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Chapter Seventeen
Evenings were peak operating hours for any hospital, and as Howard stepped through the emergency room doors of St. Anne, he got a taste of the chaos firsthand. Visitors and concerned family members crisscrossed paths with nurses who were busy tending to patients, answering phones, and carrying out various activities that he had no interest in.
Focused, Howard walked a straight path down the center of the wide hallway, forcing people to walk around him to avoid being mowed over. He wasn’t going to slow or stop for anything until he reached his destination.
Howard hit the elevators and punched the button for the third floor where the ICU was located at the end of the south wing. Elevator music hummed in his ears and the popping of the cables set his nerves even more on edge as he pictured one of them snapping and sending the car plummeting into the basement with him in it. He had never trusted elevators.
The second the doors slid open, Howard stepped off, eager to be free of the metal enclosure. Cutting a left, he bypassed the nurses’ station and took a right where the hall branched off in opposite directions. Brent’s room was the fifth on the left.
He found Brent propped up in his bed, an IV in his arm and looking like he could use a shower and a haircut. He was still attached to several monitors. His mother, Teresa, was hovering over him on one side of the bed, shoving spoonfuls of green Jell-O in his face and following it up with a straw attached to an unmarked beverage. One of the boys he’d interviewed early on in the investigation, Marcus if his memory served, sat in a chair opposite looking bored and completely unaffected.
“Mom,” Brent complained, pushing her hand away. “Only one of my arms is broken. I don’t need you to feed me.”
“But you just woke up,” she insisted. “You’re still weak. Why won’t you let me help you?”
Brent groaned. “It’s embarrassing,” he whined, glancing at his friend. “It’s bad enough Marcus has to see it, but what if one of the other guys shows up and sees you feeding me like a baby?”
Teresa’s expression showed the sting of rejection plainly and Howard chose that moment to step fully inside and make his presence known. “Glad to see you awake, son.” Brent and Marcus looked up, startled, at the same moment Teresa spun around.
“Detective,” she said, greeting him with a wide smile. Any indication that she had been upset had completely vanished. “How long have you been standing there? Come in.”
“Not too long,” Howard replied as he approached the foot of Brent’s bed. “How are you feeling?”
Brent lay back on his pillows and closed his eyes momentarily. “Got a pretty good headache, but other than that, I feel okay.”
“That’s good to hear,” Howard said with a friendly smile. He didn’t want to waste any more time. Producing the tablet of paper he always kept on hand for these types of situations, he clicked his pen and looked meaningfully back at Brent, ready to get down to business. “I need you to try and answer a few questions for me. Sound good?” At Brent’s slight nod, he continued. “Do you remember what happened to you?”
“I don’t remember a damn thing, but I’m told some freak ran me down with his truck.” The fierce look on Brent’s face told Howard that one day, no matter what he chose to do with himself in life, he would make waves.
“That’s understandable,” Howard said, feeling a shot of disappointment at the expected but unwelcome news. “Can you tell me anything? Anything at all?”
“Well, it’s kinda hard to take notes when you’re unconscious.”
Teresa spoke up, her tone apologetic. “The doctor said that people with a brain injury don’t remember anything that happened immediately before.”
Howard clicked his pen and returned it to his breast pocket. His disappointment was clear in the tone of voice he used. “Well, I guess we’re back to square one, then.” Tipping his head at Teresa, he glanced briefly at Brent and then at Marcus, who wore an interesting expression that he couldn’t quite read, before wishing them a good night.
He caught Doctor Pinsky just coming down the hall, and stepped in front of him, bringing him to a stop just outside the room.
“Doctor,” he said, leaving the pleasantries at home this time. “I was just in with the Lefebvre kid. His mother said it might be a while for his memory to return?”
Expression dour, Pinsky strode past him. After returning a folder to the nurse’s station, he turned back to him. “I know how badly you want to get answers, Detective, but I’m afraid you won’t find them here. Like I told Ms. Lefebvre, with the kind of injuries Brent has received, he likely won’t ever recover his memories from that night. Maybe a few from earlier on in the evening, but not from the accident itself.”
Howard pursed his lips, not liking what he was hearing.
“Personally,” continued Dr. Pinsky, “I have never seen a patient regain memory after experiencing something like that. I’m afraid you’ll just have to get your information elsewhere.”
Howard glared at him. “Well, I already looked. There is no information ‘elsewhere.’”
“Then I guess you’ll have to move on,” Pinsky said with a shrug, then walked away, leaving Howard standing there alone.
He couldn’t believe that no one, not one person he had interviewed, knew a thing about what happened that night. Determined more than ever to have answers, Howard stomped his determination into the tiled floor as he approached the elevators. Halfway down the hall, he heard the quick footfalls of someone approaching him from behind.
“Detective. Uh, Mr. Young?”
Howard turned to find Marcus jogging toward him. The boy stopped a few inches short of him, his eyes darting nervously.
“Is there something you need?” Howard asked.
