Page 71 of Silver-Tongued Devil
“What?” he managed to get out.
She looked up. “Near-drowning. Sorry. That’s the word.”
“Oh.” He did his best to get hold of himself. “Uh… I’m waiting for her. Letting you know I’m here.”
“Name? Phone number? And I’ll need some information on her. Address, date of birth, insurance carrier.”
None of which he knew. He indicated the comforter. “Seems I came here in my birthday suit. No phone. No wallet.” That was still on the bedside table, back on the boat. “If somebody can loan me a pair of pants and a phone, I’ll get Dakota’s dad out here, and he can give you all her information. But—wait. I don’t have his number. If you’ll look it up for me, I’ll be much obliged. Russell Matthews.”
“You’ll want to get somebody to look at whatever’s wrong with that leg, too,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
She gave him the hairy eyeball. She had those half-glasses that made older ladies look scary. “You’re not fine,” she said flatly. “You think you’re fine. It’s adrenaline.”
“Thanks. I’m familiar with adrenaline. Look, I’m about half crazy here. How about a pair of pants and a phone? I’ve got to call her dad. He needs to know. He needs to get here.” He added, any momentary vestige of humor deserting him, “And I also need you to call the sheriff and get him out here, too, right now. I don’t mean a deputy. I mean the sheriff.”
She eyed him over the glasses some more. “Why would that be? Is there some crime here?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d say so.”
You could say that calling Russell was bad.
Not that the man said much. He just said, “I’m on my way,” and hung up. But Blake stood there at the pay phone in his borrowed blue scrubs and had to lay his forehead and hands against the wall for a minute. Just for a minute. He knew what that call could have been.
After that, he made a call to his assistant—another number he’d had to ask the long-suffering nurse at the desk to look up for him.
Jennifer didn’t ask him why he was calling her at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. As soon as he said her name, she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Long story. Here’s what I need you to do. Find out where my boat is—should be at the resort marina somewhere, but it was loose on the lake, and security’s been running it down, I hope—and get my wallet and keys from the master cabin. Bedside table. My truck’s down there at the marina, too. Take it to my house and get me some clothes and shoes, all the way down to the skin, and bring everything to the hospital. I don’t know where I’ll be exactly, and my phone’s dead, so you’ll have to ask. Ask them what room Dakota Savage is in. I’ll figure out a ride home for you.” He gave her a couple more instructions, then added, “And, Jennifer—right now.”
“I’m out the door already. Dakota? How bad? Did you get hold of her stepdad? You need me to call him?”
That wrenched him out of taking-care-of-business mode once again. He had to take a deep breath before he said, “She’s going to be all right. I hope. I already called Russell.”
“I’m hanging up,” she said. “Driving.”
Blake hung up himself, then made his stiff-legged way back to Emergency. The nurse said, “Good. You’re back. The doctor wants to talk to you,” and pushed a button on her phone. “Go take a seat,” she told Blake as she dialed.
Another lurch of fear, another fierce effort to shove it back down. The guy with the cut hand was gone, and only his wife and the mother and toddler were still in the room. Blake didn’t sit—bending his knee was going to hurt—but leaned against the wall instead and tried not to think.
It was a long ten minutes before the doctor, a youngish guy in scrubs and a stethoscope, came out of the back. “Who’s with Dakota Savage?” he asked.
“Me,” Blake said.
“We’ve admitted her,” the doctor said.
Blake was about to answer, about to ask, but the automatic doors at the entrance were opening, and Russell came in. Evan was behind him, holding Gracie in a car seat. Both men’s faces were set, the way a man looked when he was trying not to show the fear. Blake said, “Wait one” to the doctor and motioned the others over.
The doctor looked between the three of them and asked, “Who am I talking to?”
“Me,” Blake and Russell said at once. After a second, Blake said, “Him.”
“Dakota’s my daughter,” Russell said.
“We’ve admitted her,” the doctor told Russ. “She’s doing well, but we’ll keep watching for respiratory distress for a while. If she still looks good later this afternoon, we’ll discharge her. She’s on oxygen, and we’ve got warm IV fluids going into her, but that’s standard, so not to worry. It’s good the water was on the cold side, actually. That will have diverted oxygen to her organs. Her heart’s sounding good, and she’s breathing all right. She’s coughing, but that’s normal. Tell me what happened as far as the drowning. How long was she under?”
Everybody looked at Blake. He said, “She got trapped on the bottom of the lake. I saw her dive down and not come up, so I went after her. She stopped kicking right when I got there. I saw it. That must have been when she lost consciousness, but it didn’t take me too long to get her out, I don’t think.” He explained the rest of it as quickly as he could, tried not to relive those minutes, and failed.
