Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(26)
Chapter 8
It turned out to be a very long evening. When Joanna went back upstairs, she found Marianne Maculyea sitting with Amy in the OR waiting room. The three of them were there together when the surgeon arrived to deliver his difficult news. Armando had survived the surgery and was now in recovery. He told Amy that they’d managed to successfully resection her husband’s bowel. Once released from the hospital, Armando would be wearing a colostomy bag, something that might or might not be reversible at some point in the future. For now the biggest danger was the possibility of infection. Once out of recovery, he would be moved to the ICU, where, heavily sedated, he could be monitored for any sign of infection. In other words, there was nothing for Amy or anyone else to do but watch and wait.
Shortly after eight that evening, Armando was transferred to the ICU, and the others moved to a different waiting room. About that time Amy’s father, Glenn Harper, showed up, arriving with a buddy in tow and with Amy’s car keys in hand. He listened in silence while his daughter laid out the situation, including the fact that in the morning Armando’s sister would be driving their mother over to Tucson from Las Cruces and dropping Amy’s mother-in-law off to stay as long as her help was needed. Glenn Harper, a retired U.S. Army colonel, was used to taking charge, and he did so as soon as Amy finished.
“Okay,” he said. “Sounds like you’re in for a long haul, and I’m glad to hear Consuelo is coming. The kids can stay with Mom and me for as long as necessary. While Armando’s in the ICU, you’ll only be able to see him for a few minutes every hour, so you’ll be better off trying to get some rest, rather than sitting here in the waiting room all night long. I’ve reserved a room for you at a hotel over on Speedway called the Aloft. It’s just down the street on the corner of Speedway and Campbell—within walking distance if need be. Once Consuelo shows up, the two of you can spell each other, with one of you here at the hospital while the other grabs some sleep in the room.”
“Dad,” Amy said, fighting back tears. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Yes I should. You’re my girl, and looking after you is my job. Have you eaten anything?”
Amy glanced in Joanna’s direction and shook her head. “Not really,” she answered.
“All right, then,” he concluded. “In order to take care of Armando, the best thing we can do right now is take care of you. To that end I’m going to make sure you have some dinner and get you checked into the hotel. The hospital will call if you’re needed.”
Joanna knew that Glenn Harper was right. There was nothing to be gained by Amy’s toughing the night out on a hard chair in an ICU waiting room. She was surprised, however, when Amy knuckled under almost immediately and obediently did as she was told. She slipped into Armando’s room long enough to kiss him good night before allowing her father to escort her from the waiting room. With Amy gone and with nothing more for Joanna and Marianne to do, they headed out as well.
As they rode down in the elevator, Marianne murmured sadly, “Aloft used to be the Four Points, you know.”
Joanna nodded, because she knew what Marianne meant. The Four Points was the hotel where she and Jeff had been staying when they’d lost Esther. Reaching out, Joanna took her friend’s hand and squeezed it. “I know,” she said. “This place holds far too many bad memories for both of us.”
Minutes later, after Joanna had turned off Kino Parkway onto I-10, Butch called. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know.
Joanna brought him up to date. He sighed when she finished. “So even after Armando recovers from surgery, he still won’t be able to return to active duty?”
“Definitely not with a stoma,” Joanna replied. “A desk job will be the best he can do for the time being and maybe for good.”
“Which means you’re going to be even more shorthanded in terms of sworn officers than you already are.”
“Looks like it,” she agreed. “I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it. For right now all we can do is hope and pray Armando doesn’t come down with some kind of infection. That bullet didn’t kill him, but sepsis could.”
Joanna made the hundred-mile drive from Tucson in good time and was home in bed by eleven. Even so, it was almost three before she finally fell asleep. It was fine to tell Butch that she’d deal with the personnel crisis later, but that didn’t mean she herself believed it. Finding, hiring, and training qualified people was a difficult, time-consuming process, and keeping them on board after they were hired and trained was even more challenging.
In the end all the tossing and turning did for Joanna was cause her to oversleep. The next morning, by the time she woke up and staggered out of the bedroom in search of coffee, Carol was on duty and she and Sage were already back from taking Denny to catch the bus. Carol, with her own cup of coffee poured and on the table next to her, sat beside Sage’s high chair supervising her breakfast.
“You had a late night,” Carol observed, “and don’t bother telling me about it. I already know why. It made the front page. I picked up your copy of the Bee on our way back from the bus stop.”
The Bisbee Bee was delivered on a daily basis by an auto-route driver who shoved each day’s copy into the metal newspaper cone attached to their mailbox post. This morning’s edition sat on the table next to Carol’s silverware. She pushed the paper across the table until it was close enough for Joanna to read the headline: