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Bennett knew how to navigate the labyrinth of the Colonel William Clarke House. He was inside my mother’s room quickly enough and at her bedside. His calculating eyes made a swift assessment of the state of the room, including the numerous pill bottles. He fished through them, picking up each one as if looking for something specific.
“You said she had seizures, right?” Bennett asked. He placed his hand on her forehead and gently lifted one of her eyelids. She had wide, blown pupils, eyes frantic and moving in every direction.
“Yeah, before they did the MRI. Rachel didn’t say if they kept coming back, though.” All I could do was stand beside him at my mother’s bedside.
“She’s having one right now.” He apparently found what he was looking for and shook the bottle at me. “Depakote. She probably missed a dose. Can you pull her down a little farther on the bed so that she’s flat?”
“Won’t she swallow her tongue if we do that?”
“No, that’s a misconception. Thanks, Hollywood.”
Was… was that a dig?
Bennett said, “Come on, lay her down now.”
I blinked, confused again. “But the ambulance…?”
He fixed me with the icy fire of his blues. No patience, all insistence. “I was a paramedic before I became a cop. I need you to do what I say right now, okay?” He spoke like an official, no kindness, no warmth. Just direction.
“Yeah, sure. Of course.” I pulled back the covers and a foul odor wafted into the air. “Jesus. Ma.” I averted my eyes to the mess beneath her lilac-colored nightgown.
“It happens,” Bennett said.
I gently pulled at my mother’s legs until her body slid down from their pillows. I had expected, what, total body convulsions? That’s all that I saw during the scenes I acted in. Over-the-top caricatures of seizing. I shouldn’t have been surprised that the condition existed on a scale and that Hollywood always picked the most dramatic.
Bennett had produced a foiled packet of something from the nightstand drawer. He said, “Got it. Diazepam. You can step out or stay here for the next part.”
“Why?”
He placed the packet on the bed, then extracted a set of black nitrile gloves from a pouch on his utility belt. He slipped them on with a snap. “Because these are suppositories and that is Cordelia Clarke. She’d use a fancy word in one of her plays for this situation.Ignominiousor something.” He already had the suppository out by the time he finished talking and gently rolled my mother’s body away from him to expose her backside. He didn’t wait for me to make a decision.
Oh, hell. No, I wasn’t about to watch my ex-lover shove something up my mother’s rump. I didn’t leave, but I did turn around.
It didn’t take long. When he finished, he told me as much and then pulled the covers back over her lower half. He said, “I can hear the ambulance. Meet them at the door. They’ll get lost in one of the hallways.”
Another dig?
I couldn’t let my mind fracture between the concern for my mother and a detailed analysis of everything Bennett said. I left the two of them and made it to the front door by the time a team of two showed up, one of whom carried an overstuffed backpack.
“This way,” I said and waved them in.
The EMT with the backpack, a short woman with a ponytail of dark hair, looked vaguely familiar. Friend from high school?
“Did Officer Dubois need to do anything?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah. A suppository. She’s having a seizure.”
We made it to the bedroom and the new team took over with practiced efficiency. Bennett stood by and watched, his thumbs hooked into his belt.
As they worked, I sidestepped to Bennett. His boots added some height to him. If we were both in bare feet, he’d be at the perfect height to squeeze his head into the crook of my neck.
“Is that… Amy? Was that her name?” I whispered.
Bennett looked at me for a long beat before answering. “She went to Concord, not Acton.”
Third dig of the morning. Boy, I was getting somewhere.
Bennett moved to Acton the summer before his senior year of high school. He attended Acton High while I resided in Concord, the next town over with our own high school. I had plenty of friends in the area, many of whom were from Acton, which was how Bennett and I met. The fact that he didn’t confirm Amy’s name and instead reminded me that he wasn’t from my town gave me additional input for my “Does Benny Hate Me?” tracker.
