Page 17 of Falkner
“My sister.She’s going to want to be called.”She took the number and asked if he wanted to do it.“No, she might not be so embarrassing if you do it.She’s going to cause a big fuss, and that won’t help me.”
“I can call her after the tests are run if you want.That way we’ll have more to tell her.”Mulkeen said that would be fine, and he laid his head back on the bed.“All right.I’ll wait until all the tests are back and we can go from there.I’ll keep her number on me, and if you change your mind, you let me know, and I’ll call her for you.”
“Thank you.”He was being so nice that it was hard to equate this man with the one who had been hounding him to death when he first started.He wondered if something had happened in addition to the dog knocking him down.When he finally closed his eyes, Falkner left the room and headed to the lounge again to make notes on his new patient.
~*~
Doone didn’t understand why she was being questioned in the case against her mother.Well, she actually had an idea, but nothing concrete.Sherman, Falkner’s dad, said that he’d go with her, and she was glad for the company.He was just as confused as she was as to what was going on.
“Ms.McFarlen, it’s been brought to our attention that you gave your mother a car.You’re not in trouble over that; it’s just that she sold it off not three days after you gave it to her.Was that the intention all along?For your mother to sell the car for cash?”She explained how it was getting harder daily to keep up with her mom, so instead of missing work all the time, she had the car put in her name so that there’d be no trouble with her owning it.“Yet she sold it.I’m confused if you want to know the truth.”
“So was I.In the event that you’ve not met my mom, she can be very demanding.And when she wanted to do something, she didn’t care if I had to miss work or not.So, as I know she has a driver’s license, I thought that this would solve her problems of getting around and me not missing so much work.”He asked her if she knew that she’d sell it.“I had a feeling that she was going to do something to the car, but since I’ve been able to borrow one from a friend of mine, it mattered little to me what she did with it.”
“Good for you.But there is the matter of her not claiming the car as income.She had plenty of time to claim the car and even the cash that she got for it when she sold it.There are rules in place that she must abide by in order to live in the houses that we have provided to people, much like your mother.”She said she was to understand that her mom had stashed the money in the house, along with the money she got from the joint account with her dad.“Yes, that’s something else that we’re looking into.That’s quite a bit of money there that she didn’t claim on her paperwork.Had we known about it, I dare say she wouldn’t have been able to get into the housing that she currently has.”
“I didn’t know about it either.There are quite a few things that I’m only just finding out when it comes to my mother.”He said that he was as well.And a great deal of it was against the rules concerning her living arrangements.“What will happen to her now that you’re finding these things out?Will she have to pay all the money back for what she took from the agency?”
“That remains to be seen.We’re still gathering evidence.And there is quite a bit of it to find, too.Someone let her slip through the cracks, and we don’t like making those kinds of mistakes when it comes to government housing.”She asked if they’d be in trouble, as she would hate that.“We’ll take care of it.There is no reason for you to worry about anything.Without your help in this and that of your attorney, Mr.Dixon, I doubt we would have caught her.That’s just between the two of us, however.”
“Yes, I understand completely.”He told her that she might be called in to explain the car and why she’d given it to her mother, but didn’t foresee any issues with that.“I was just trying to save my job.I love what I do and didn’t want to jeopardize it because of my mother being so demanding.”
“Yes, well, we’ve had a couple of run-ins with your mother since she’s been arrested.You wereright in saying that she’s demanding.And she certainly loves that word deserves.She wants what she deserves a great deal.”He laughed, then told her he was sorry.“I shouldn’t be talking to you about your mother this way.It’s unprofessional, and I do apologize for that.”
“Thank you, but I agree with you, so no harm done.”She looked over at Sherman when he cleared his throat.As he talked with the other man, she thought about her mother and all the things that he’d been able to find out about her.She’d been acting this way since before her dad had married her.Why he had, she was still trying to figure out.
He’d told her that it was charming at first.How she wanted things to be just so.Then, after a while, it had turned annoying and caused a great many fights between them.Then the lump was found in her lung, and she went crazy trying to figure out a way to get it taken care of.He just couldn’t stand it any longer and left her.But he’d never divorced her.He still loved her, he told her, and that was something that didn’t come along twice in a lifetime.
“She might be annoying as hell, but there was no reason for us to be divorced.It just didn’t seem right.Then, when you started doing what she wanted, I tried to get you to come and live with me, but you wouldn’t have it.I suppose that I should blame that on Meggie as well.She filled your mind with poison about me, and that was the end of it.I’m so glad that you called me when you did.I might well get the divorce now that I’m thinking straight.There is something wrong with your mother, honey, and the sooner she gets help, the better.”
She’d asked him if he thought that she’d get better.“I mean, she’s been like this for as long as she’s been a kid.I don’t see her changing her ways now, do you?”He shook his head and said that it might well be too late for her.“That’s really sad if you think about it.She and I could have had a great relationship now that I’m older.But she ruined that with her demands and deserves.I wonder why she thinks that she deserves things.I mean, it’s not like grandma and grandpa had any money for her to want things like she did.We might never know what started her on the path that she’s on.”
They had talked about her mom for the rest of the evening.Dad was going to go to the courthouse with her in the morning to be there when she married Falkner.She was about as excited about that as she was about anything else that had happened in her life.She couldn’t wait to be Mrs.Doone Dixon.When Sherman poked her in the arm, she turned to look at him.
“You all right?”She told him that she’d never been better.“That’s good news.We have everything cleared away for your mother’s day in court.It should be an easy one, if not for the fact that I think your mother is going to be causing trouble.If that happens, then they’ll just take her back to jail and go on with the trial.I don’t know how they’ll find her anything but guilty, but stranger things have happened.”
On her way home, she decided that she was going to order some Chinese food for dinner.It was something that she and Falkner both enjoyed, and since they’d both worked today, it would be an easy meal that they could have.She was going to order extra so that she could have some for lunch tomorrow after the wedding.
Giddy with excitement, she ordered the food and sat down to wait for it to be delivered.When Falkner arrived home just as the food was at the door, they both sat down in their dining room and enjoyed the feast.She should have known there wouldn’t be any leftovers when she ordered.They were both about starved.
Chapter 8
He had a feeling that there was something wrong with Mulkeen.He did bump his head when he fell, but it was more than that.He ordered more tests to find out what had happened that made him so docile.The man was usually so upset about everything, and he had not commented once about he and Doone being in the same room working.It was out of character for him.
Waiting for the tests to be read, he hoped that he was wrong in that he was just having an off day.He could almost wish for him to get upset with him just so he’d feel better about the man.But he was the same—perhaps a little worse for wear—the next morning when he checked in on him.That worried him a great deal.He decided to talk to him.
“What’s going on with you?This is more than just a few bruises and some stitches that you needed.Have you gotten bad news or something?You’re not the same man you were before you left the hospital.”He told him that he was just tired.“You seem to be more than just tired.Tell me what happened to you the morning that you fell with your dog?Did you bump your head a little harder than you first thought?I’m going to run a CT scan to see what’s going on.”
“I’m just tired, that’s all.I feel like I need a long nap or something.”He examined his eyes and saw that they were a little slow on dilating.“When I felt I was thinking that I needed to trim the grass now that it’s getting warm out.That’s all.I did hit my head on the mailbox, but my shoulder is what hurt me the most.Then my legs got all tangled up in the leash, and Pretty Boy thought that he was in trouble when I yelled at him and tried to get away.That’s what caused the most cuts on my legs.Nothing more.”
“I’m worried about you, Drake.You’re not your usual cranky self.”That made the man laugh, and he did feel better about that.“I’m going to run some more tests on your hard head.We might have missed something in the first round of them.Do you have anyone that we can call?I know your sister said she wasn’t coming in, but is there anyone else that I can call in for you?”
“McFarlen.She’s about the best nurse this hospital has.If you could convince her to come in and…well, I was going to say to hold my hand but she’d just as soon tear it off and beat me with it I think.”He said that he’d call her now that he thought it was her day off.“Then don’t bother her.She more than likely has plans for the day instead of sitting with an old man like me that has given her such a hard time with working here.”
“I’ll call her and let her decide.”He reached out to her then and told her what was going on.She said she’d come right in and sit with him as she didn’t have anything to do right now.“You just lie here and take a nap.When you wake up perhaps you’ll feel a bit better and McFarlen will be here giving you a hard time.”
He ordered an MRI and a CT scan to be done of his body.They had to have missed something when they did those tests when he first came into the emergency department.He wanted answers and he wanted them today.As soon as Doone came into the department, he sent her to Drake’s room and had her sit with him.When he went by his room a little later, she was talking to him and holding his hand.It was the strangest thing that he’d ever seen but made him more determined to find out what was wrong with the elderly gentleman.
It was found on the second set of tests.The man had a blood clot on his brain that was pressing against his eyes.They set him up for surgery as soon as he could find someone to do the operation for him.They’d not know what they had until they got inside of his head and that worried him a great deal.The man was going under the knife not five hours after the tests were read, it was that serious.
