Heaven continued to make hungry eyes at Wayne Jarvis as I led her to the bedroom. I needed her out of the way so I could help Wayne.
“I’m taking him to the hospital. Don’t go anywhere while I’m gone!”
Downstairs, Wayne Jarvis hadn’t moved.
“Please be alive. Please be alive,” I chanted, just as I had a few days ago over Heaven. If he was dead, I would be covering up a murder in my brand-new hometown. I grabbed a pair of yoga pants and wound them around his neck as tightly as I could without strangling him to staunch the bleeding. With a surge relief, I heard his heartbeat. I could save this man. I could save this situation. This wasn’t good, but it was better than murder.
As soon as Tyrone’s brake lights disappeared down the driveway. I scooped Mr. Jarvis up like a baby and carried him to the car. “Sorry about the hearse, Mr. Jarvis.”
He groaned as I propped him against the passenger side door. “At least you get to ride up front,” I joked.
He turned his head just enough to see the coffin and lost consciousness. Okay. That would make things a little easier.
I typedemergency roominto my map app and hit the road with a dying human in my car for the second time in a month.
Valentine Hospital looked more like a small elementary school than a hospital, except for the brightly lit signs designating the emergency department entrance. I pulled the hearse into the turnaround and waited for someone to rush out with a stretcher shouting commands. Next to me, Mr. Jarvis’s breathing was labored and a bloom of red was seeping into my makeshift tourniquet. I tapped the steering wheel in time with the blinking digital dashboard clock but the automatic doors to the hospital stayed shut, no sign of activity. What kind of hospital was this?
Unable to wait while Mr. Jarvis continued bleeding, I hurried through the automatic doors into a mostly empty waiting room. There was one patient snoozing in a lobby chair and an EMT eating some very dry rice with a fork. Not a lot of the rice was making it from the Tupperware to his mouth.
“I have an emergency!” I shouted.
The EMT looked up. “Do you have your insurance card?”
“No. I drove a man here.”
“Oh.” He stood, too calmly for my anxiety level, brushed the rice off his pants, and followed me outside. In the turnaround, he squinted at the hearse. “Ma’am, if you’re picking someone up, you need to drive to the back of the building.”
I blinked back through my false eyelashes and freshly blown-outfringed bangs. “What?”
“The morgue has a separate entrance.”
“Noah,” I said, with a glance at his name tag, “This is my car. I’m bringing someone in. He’s not deadyet.”
“Oh, okay. Gotta get someone to help lift him.”
Fucking A. I was facing the possibility of being responsible for someone’s death. For murder. I didn’t bite Mr. Jarvis, but I might as well have.
“I do a lot of…Pilates.” Without waiting, I lifted Mr. Jarvis into a waiting wheelchair and wheeled him into the hospital myself while Noah watched. No one would believe him later.
Inside the hospital, Jessica from the SugarBoo Ball decoration committee came out dressed in pink scrubs and with a bouncy step that didn’t match the surroundings.
“Hey, Tiff,” she said with a cheerful wave, completely unperturbed by Mr. Jarvis. “What happened here?”
“It’s a long story.”
Jessica took over and wheeled Mr. Jarvis into a surgical room along with a doctor who looked to be about twelve.
“Start an IV, Noah,” Jessica said.
The baby-faced doctor untied the yoga pants from Mr. Jarvis’s neck with a raised eyebrow. “Normally, a tourniquet is a good idea…” He squinted at the wound. “What kind of animal did you say bit him?”
“I didn’t. Maybe it was a coyote,” I riffed.
Jessica gave me a puzzled look. “A coyote bit him…on the neck?”
“I saw a documentary on coyote-wolf hybrids. They’re pretty bold.” Better a coyote than Heaven. “I think’s that’s what it was. I’ve never seen so much blood.”
Noah frowned. “Don’t you drive a hearse?”
