House of Reckoning Read Free Page B

turned back to her father. “Wh … wh …”
    “You were in an accident, honey,” her father said, his voice trembling, his features strained. “You’re in the hospital now, but you’re going to be okay.”
    Her father was lying. If the pain in her hips and her leg wasn’t enough to tell her so, his voice and expression left her no doubt. She struggled to sit up, but white-hot agony seared down her side. She shuddered.
    “Can’t you give her something?” she heard her father ask, the fear in his own voice reinforcing her own.
    A new voice spoke, a man this time. “She’s awake? Sarah? Sarah, can you hear me?”
    She made herself nod, too tired even to open her eyes. “I’m Dr. Cassidy, Sarah. We’ll be taking you into Surgery in a few minutes to fix your hip and leg. So you just lie back and relax, and let us take care of you. All right?”
    She opened her eyes as the nurse wrapped a warm blanket around her and tucked it under her chin. She blinked a couple of times trying to clear the fog, and looked around. She was surrounded by striped curtains, and several people in white coats stood by her bed.
    “You’re in the emergency room, honey,” her father said.
    She barely recognized his sunken, unshaven face. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with red, and there was blood all over the front of his shirt. And even from where she lay, she could smell the stale beery odor of his breath.
    A new woman slipped through the curtain. “Mr. Crane? I’m Leila Davis from the business office. I need you to come with me to fill out some paperwork. Do you have your daughter’s insurance card with you?”
    Her father’s wince told Sarah there wasn’t any insurance, but he patted her hand and stood up. “Do you really need to operate?” he asked the doctor, his voice low, as if he hoped she wouldn’t hear.
    But every word slammed into her ears like a death knell.
    “If we don’t, she’ll lose her leg,” the doctor said.
    What was that she was hearing?
Lose her leg?
    “Thing is,” her father said, his voice dropping even further and his eyes studying the floor, “we don’t have any insurance.”
    “I can help you apply for Medicaid,” Leila Davis said. “Please come with me.”
    “Don’t leave me!”
Sarah cried, the panic she’d fought back only a minute or two ago now gripping her chest. “Not
now!”
    “Shhh, honey,” Ed said. “I’m right here.” He sat back down in the little orange plastic chair and held her hand. “I’ll go take care of that later.” He looked at the woman from the business office, who checked her watch and then nodded.
    “Through the double doors and to the right,” she said.
    “Sarah?” It was the pretty blond nurse again. She had a nice smile and there was a little koala bear clipped on her stethoscope that somehow made Sarah feel just the tiniest bit less frightened. “I’m going to give you something that will make your mouth cottony, and you’ll get kind of sleepy. You just relax and take a little nap, okay? Soon we’ll be wheeling you down to the O.R.” The nurse injected something into a tube, and a moment later Sarah felt her eyelids grow heavy.
    Now there was another voice, a heavy voice. “Ed Crane?”
    “Yes?”
    Sarah felt her father’s hand slip out of hers, and when she tried to reach for it, she couldn’t find it. Fighting the heaviness in her lids as hard as she could, she forced her eyes open far enough so she could see her father, standing just out of her reach, facing two men who wore police uniforms instead of white coats.
    “I’m Sheriff Wilson, Mr. Crane,” one of the men said. “This is Deputy Clark. We need you to come with us to the police station, to answer some questions.”
    “Not now,” Ed said. “My daughter—”
    “I’m afraid it has to be now, Mr. Crane,” the sheriff said. He glanced at Sarah for a moment, and she let her eyes drop closed so he’d think she was asleep. “You’re under arrest.”
    “It was an