Marriage and Mayhem Read online

  “Good as any, I suppose. So that lumberjack-looking dude is afraid of needles, huh? Big old baby.” We laughed, but only to help ease our tension. There was nothing funny about Bubba’s condition.

  “The combination of not knowing for certain what caused Bubba to stop breathing and being unable to question him, is making matters even more challenging for Dr. Schnuck and the rest of the medical staff,” Stone said. “Even though the medical team assigned to Bubba is treating him as though he’d suffered an extreme heat stroke, it’s obvious they aren’t positive their presumption is correct. They’re concerned there may be something else going on with Bubba they’re overlooking.”

  “So what are they going to do now?”

  “They’re still running various tests and waiting for the results of a tox screen to come back. They put him on a breathing machine, of course, and aren’t allowing any visitors in his room.”

  “Why not?”

  “If Bubba were to flat-line again, they’d need all hands on deck and the patient’s family and friends well out of their way within seconds. Those few seconds needed to clear the room of visitors could be the difference in life or death in a ‘Code Blue’ situation.”

  “Oh, good Lord. I guess you’re right.” I was sorry I’d asked. “Speaking of family, have Bubba’s parents been notified? I assume they live on the east coast, as well.”

  “Andy said his parents were both killed in a bad car wreck when Bubba was barely out of diapers. But he does have an older sister in Arco, Idaho, named Sam, whom Andy’s trying to contact.”

  “Arco? Why does that town sound familiar?”

  “Probably because it was the first town ever to be lit by electricity generated solely by nuclear power. It was subsequently the site of the world’s first, and the United States’ only, fatal nuclear reactor accident. And, as you probably know, Arco was originally named Root Hog.”

  Stone’s remark was said so matter-of-factly, I was flattered he’d think I’d actually know of any of those interesting facts, especially the original name of a town in Idaho. I could count my list of familiar Idaho towns on my right hand. Stone amazed me with all of the facts and figures he could dig out of his memory banks. I’d learned never to challenge him to a game of Trivial Pursuit. And fact-checking him on the Internet had nearly always proven to be a waste of time.

  “Root Hog, huh? No, I don’t think that is why it sounds familiar to me,” I said with a smile. Then it hit me where I’d heard of the town before. “Oh, now I remember. Not long ago, while I was helping Deb Custovio get familiarized with her new position at the library one day, she told me her sister, Yvonne, who just happens to be my hairstylist, lived there years ago while attending a cosmetology school.”

  “Arco’s a relatively small town, little more than a thousand residents, so Sam and Yvonne might be acquainted with each other. Then again, their paths may have never crossed.”

  “Really?” I asked. “You know the population of Arco, Idaho? I don’t even know what the population of Rockdale is, and I’ve lived there for two years.”

  “Rockdale’s official population is 9,889.”

  “You couldn’t have just said ‘around ten-thousand’ and made me feel a little less uninformed?” I teased before returning to the subject at hand. “I assume Sam is short for Samantha?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s let Andy know that when he reaches Sam, he can offer her a complimentary suite at the inn for as long as necessary. Staying with us would be more convenient for her than a hotel. For one thing, it wouldn’t cost her anything, and for another, she could use my vehicle whenever she wants. I’ll have access to yours or Wendy’s if an emergency arises.”

  “Good idea. I hope he can reach her soon. In the event it proves to be something other than heat exposure, she may know of something in Bubba’s medical records that can be useful to the staff.”

  “Yes, and it would be nice for Bubba to have a close family member here for him,” I said. “So her name’s Samantha Slippknott, huh?”

  “Uh-huh. That was her maiden name, anyway. Andy told me she prefers to be called Sam.”

  “That’s nice, although I prefer Samantha. Makes me think of Samantha Stephens, from one of my favorite shows growing up.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Bewitched, of course.” As I replied, I looked up at him and tried to twitch my nose. My attempt to imitate Elizabeth Montgomery’s classic trademark move must have been comical, because it was the first time I’d seen Stone laugh all day. I was hoping that by injecting a little light-heartedness into our conversation, it’d take his mind off the reality of the situation, if only for a moment or two.

  “Bewitched? Hmmm. I don’t remember that one.”

  “You don’t remember Bewitched?” I was flabbergasted. “What planet did you grow up on?”

  “Several, actually. Krypton and Vulcan, to name two. For the most part, I pretended to live on the USS Enterprise.”

  “As in Star Trek?”

  “Yep. I imagined myself as Captain Kirk, of course.”

  “Of course. Somehow I never pictured you as a Trekkie.” I laughed as I visualized Stone pretending to be at the helm of the starship, guiding it to “new worlds, where no man has gone before”. While he was saving the universe, I was pretending to be Nancy Drew, craftily solving crimes. It’s no wonder I couldn’t resist getting involved in murders that hit close to home as an adult. “You know what? We should talk more. There’s obviously a lot we still don’t know about each other.”

  “And eliminate the allure of intrigue?” Stone laughed heartily this time, and then quickly scanned the area to ensure no one was watching us. “I’ve heard women think mysterious men are sexy. I’m afraid if you know too much about me, you wouldn’t love me as much as you thought you did.”

  “That would never, ever happen, my dear.”

  Stone grew more serious as we entered the hospital’s main lobby and turned down a lengthy hallway to the ICU waiting room. Halfway down the hallway, Stone stopped me to continue our conversation out of earshot of Andy and Wendy. “I wonder if Andy’s been able to reach Sam yet. He couldn’t even leave a message earlier because it said her mailbox was full. I’m not sure what that means, but he seemed to.”

  “It means her voice mail message capacity had been reached,” I explained. In the rare event I knew something Stone didn’t, I didn’t hesitate to gloat about it. “You really need to use your cell phone more often so you can learn the lingo.”

  “I hate cell phones. I got along just fine for nearly half a century without one, as did everyone else my age. Now, everyone acts as if they couldn’t possibly survive without one in their hand 24/7,” Stone grumbled.

  “I know, dear.” Somehow Stone always managed to take the fun out of my knowing more about something than he did, and this was no exception. Deflated like a used airbag, I reverted to our original topic. “Andy told me Sam was married. I’m assume she changed her surname to her husband’s when she married. I imagine that was a welcome relief. Her new name can’t possibly be worse than Slippknott.”

  “You’d think not, wouldn’t you?” Stone asked wryly. “Now her name is Samantha Slippknott-Sloppenbanger.”

  “Slippknott-Sloppenbanger? She actually hyphenated her last name? That makes for quite a mouthful.”

  “Is that why you chose to keep your former name, rather than be Alexandria Marie Starr-Van Patten?” Stone flashed me a warm smile. For the umpteenth time, I was amazed at how white and straight his teeth were.

  “Not really. I was just too lazy to order new checks,” I replied in jest.

  “Yeah, right. Oh, by the way. I heard they want to keep Raven overnight for observation, even though she appears to be none the worse for wear,” Stone said. “It was nice of her to step in and try to revive Bubba, wasn’t it? The paramedics said she kept oxygen going to his brain until they arrived with the defibrillator. She’s a hero in my book.”

  “Thank
God for Raven and her quick thinking.” I agreed that Raven’s actions had been heroic. “Poor thing. I’m glad she seems to be all right. She recently moved to Rockdale and just started working for Lily Franks at the Lily’s-in-Bloom Floral Shop six or seven weeks ago.”

  “With the recent move and all, I’m sure this is very traumatic for her. The ER doctor told me they have her on oxygen as a precaution. He said Raven exhibited some of the same symptoms as Bubba, but to a lesser degree. She did, however, present a slightly higher temperature than Bubba’s, at 101.7. They suspect she experienced heat stroke or exhaustion, as well. In the unlikely event that wasn’t the cause, they’re trying to determine if there’s some other kind of connection to both of them suddenly passing out. I don’t know how it could have been anything but the heat. I felt a little overwhelmed by the mugginess this afternoon, too. I swear, in that monkey suit I had on, I could feel the sweat running down my back and forming a puddle in my dress shoes.”

  “I guess you’re right. It was incredibly scorching and humid. And here I thought I was just having a hot flash.” Even though I hoped everyone’s assumption of the two incidents being caused by the heat of the day was correct, I couldn’t get past the feeling there was something entirely different at play that had yet to come to light. But saying something like that out loud would only worry Stone. His blood pressure had dropped significantly since I’d assured him I’d never involve myself in a murder case again, after nearly losing my life a year ago while trying to track down a killer in an RV park in Cheyenne, Wyoming. With all that behind us, there was no sense in tipping over the outhouse now. The last thing I needed was for my husband to stroke out on me.

  “Andy and Wendy must be beside themselves.”

  “Speaking of which, Lexie, we need to get back to the waiting room. After all they’ve been through today, the kids will probably welcome some support.”

  “And they’ll probably welcome these cups of coffee, too.”

  “Even though they came out of a vending machine?” Stone asked. He was much more persnickety about coffee than I was. But then, I don’t know of anyone who isn’t.

  “As I’ve always said, bad coffee is better than no coffee any day of the week.”

  “Yikes!” Stone exclaimed as he looked down at his coffee. “This is strong and thick enough to seal the cracks in the hospital’s parking lot.”

  “I actually thought it was pretty tasty.”

  Stone shook his head and looked up toward the ceiling. “Beam me up, Scotty!”

  Twenty-Two

  The hospital released Raven a few hours later. She had arrived in the ER with a slightly elevated temperature and a perfect sodium level. Since regaining consciousness just moments after passing out at the wedding, she’d exhibited no other symptoms other than a bit of light-headedness and some minor confusion. Within an hour of arriving at the hospital, Raven’s temperature had returned to normal. The temperature inside the hospital had been so cool―to prevent the growth of bacteria, no doubt―Raven was probably more in danger of suffering from hypothermia than heat stroke.

  Against the doctor’s recommendations, she insisted she be released. Though the medical staff wasn’t fully confident that heat stroke or heat exhaustion caused her fainting spell, they couldn’t find a good reason to hold her overnight. The medical team attending to her had voiced an interest in retaining her for testing purposes, but when Raven expressed concern about the limits of her health insurance coverage, the medical team relented and discharged her.

  Bubba Slippknott remained comatose and his prognosis looked grim. The tox screen results came back later that day. He had tested negative to all of the toxins covered by the analysis. The head physician stated that though not all toxins were included in the standard screening, it did include the most probable poisons people have been known to ingest, accidental or otherwise. The tox screen reports did not, the doctor emphasized, rule out some of the more uncommon poisonous substances.

  For the moment, all we could do was sit back and pray as we waited for his condition to either improve or, God forbid, take a turn for the worse. Most of the predictions that came from the hospital staff were not optimistic. In fact, it appeared as if their focus changed and they were now more worried about how to protect themselves from a potential malpractice lawsuit if the patient passed while under their care.

  Neither Stone nor Andy had left the hospital since Bubba had been wheeled into the trauma center on a gurney. Andy had tried to reach Bubba’s sister, Samantha, numerous times to no avail. He did, however, reach Sam’s best friend, who claimed not to have seen her in several days. According to the friend, Sam hadn’t showed up at work for the past two days. This friend, who’d been keeping an eye on Sam during her husband’s deployment, had contacted the building super at Sam’s apartment complex. He checked her apartment and found nothing amiss. Nor did he find his tenant.

  Andy had advised Sam’s friend to contact the police and she promised she would do so. He’d told her about Bubba’s dire condition and explained Sam needed to get in touch with the ICU department as soon as possible. The friend recalled Sam mention once that Bubba had been deathly allergic to peanuts as a child, but thought he’d pretty much grown out of it by adulthood―or had learned to avoid them. And, as Andy had told the head physician, Bubba was mildly asthmatic, although he hadn’t had an asthma attack in years.

  “Though his condition may not be related to a peanut allergy, there was a bowl of mixed nuts on the refreshment table,” I told Stone. “I recall the doctor telling us Bubba’s sodium level had been elevated. I can’t think of anything else on that table that was particularly salty, except maybe the shrimp rollups.”

  “I saw Bubba sampling the icing on the cake when he thought no one was looking.” Stone chuckled at the memory, then grew serious. “There weren’t any nuts in the cake or icing were there?”

  “No. At least there shouldn’t have been. I’m sure we’d have paid extra for them if there were.”

  “Andy remembers Bubba ate a handful of mixed nuts while they mingled with the guests before the ceremony began. A handful’s not a lot, but the doctor said it doesn’t take much to cause anaphylactic shock if someone is highly allergic to a certain substance.”

  “Well, maybe the few peanuts in that handful are what caused Bubba to pass out,” I said skeptically, “but what about Raven? What are the odds she has a nut allergy, too?”

  “Yeah, that’s just it,” Stone replied. “Dr. Schnuck said Raven claimed she had only one allergy—to penicillin. They were preparing to give her intravenous antibiotics, but nixed the idea after questioning her. They went ahead and put Bubba on them, just in case, hoping it might be helpful if he had an infection of some kind. In essence, the medical staff took the information about Bubba’s childhood peanut allergy with a grain of salt.”

  “Maybe they shouldn’t have dismissed it so hastily,” I said.

  “Well, obviously they didn’t think it had any bearing on their patient’s condition, but they assured us they weren’t going to rule it out, along with any other kind of known, or undiagnosed, allergy. People can develop allergies at any time during their lifetime, Dr. Schnuck said, but the general consensus among the medical staff remained unchanged. They believe Bubba had been wound up by the excitement of the day, extremely hot from wearing a black tuxedo in the brutal sun, and ultimately overcome by heatstroke.”

  I thanked Stone for filling me in and left him to resume his pacing, as both he and Andy had been doing since Wendy and I first arrived at the hospital. Just then, a cluster of physicians walked in through another portal. Stone and Andy pounced on them like kittens on a bead of light from a laser pointer. They insisted Bubba be transferred to a larger hospital that was more able to deal with his illness.

  Stone barked at one of the head physicians in frustration. “Why in the hell can’t Bubba be life-flighted to a better-equipped trauma center, like the Mayo Clinic, where his chances of survival would be greatly
enhanced?”

  I wasn’t sure “life-flighted” was the proper term, but neither life-flown or life-flit sounded right, either. I suppose the fact I was even ruminating over such a trivial thing showed how frazzled I felt.

  “The Mayo Clinic is just over three-hundred miles as the crow flies.” I could see Stone’s blood pressure shooting up like a Roman candle as he spoke to the attending physician. “Bubba could be flown there in short order. If his insurance won’t cover it, I’ll pay for it personally.”

  I wasn’t surprised Stone knew how far it was for a crow to fly to what was one of the most advanced medical centers in the world. I also wasn’t particularly surprised when the medical staff rebuffed his suggestion. However, I’ll admit I was slightly surprised when Stone offered to pay the cost of life-flighting Bubba to Minnesota if the young man’s insurance wouldn’t approve the expense. I could visualize our plans of taking an extended Mediterranean cruise that winter evaporating like morning dew on a musk melon. However, I, too, was willing to sacrifice whatever it took to make sure Bubba received the best care possible.

  The medical staff didn’t seem to appreciate Stone’s inference that they weren’t competent enough to keep the young man alive. But protecting their sensitive feelings just then was not high on my husband’s priority list.

  Twenty-Three

  An hour later, Stone and I were walking up the hallway toward the parking lot. Exhausted, I knew I needed to get some sleep as much as Stone clearly did. By riding with him, Wendy’s car would be available if she chose to return to the ranch before Andy. I had a hunch he’d be spending the night at the hospital to be on hand if Bubba regained consciousness.

  As we rounded a corner, we came face-to-face with Sheila and Randy. I hugged them both. “Are you here to check on Bubba? I’m sorry. I should have sent you an update before now.”

  “No, that’s not it,” Sheila said. “Wendy updated us on his condition earlier.”