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His lips pursed. The exaggerated slaps, punches, and kicks of a movie fight joined the steady stream of curses and vulgar insults. The glass woman hissed through gritted teeth as the nurse tugged a shard the size of a quarter from her shin. Fainter, coming from another part of the ER, someone retched. A man wailed in pain. An alarm of some kind shrilled.
Gretchen said, “Is that why you were in contact with Sylvia recently? You wanted to pursue something with her now that you’re divorced?”
Dr. Holmes pointed a finger at Gretchen and then at Josie. “I want to be very clear. I have always been faithful to my wife.”
“But you had feelings for Sylvia,” Josie said. It wasn’t a question.
“If I tell you this, will you please leave?”
“Can’t make any promises, Doc,” Gretchen said. “But it sure does increase the odds.”
He lowered his voice even though no one around them was listening. “Fine. Yes, I developed feelings for Sylvia. Not right away. When my oldest was born, I couldn’t have picked her out of a lineup. My wife had a difficult pregnancy and a difficult delivery. Postpartum depression. I was wholly focused on her and my son. With our second child, things went more smoothly for my wife, but our daughter was a challenge. She was colicky. Turned out to have a lot of food sensitivities. She screamed almost continuously for hours each day. Sylvia was invaluable. My wife had postpartum again. Things were very bad. I kept Sylvia on far longer than we would normally ask a doula to stay. Paid her double her rate. We got to know one another. I admired her. Respected her.”
“You were attracted to her,” Josie said.
He huffed a laugh. “Of course I was, but I never would have acted on it.”
“Never would have,” Gretchen repeated slowly. “Did you act on it? Even once?”
“My wife and I separated when our daughter was two. I moved out for four months. Sylvia was working for a different family. I ran into her and we took a drive together. I told her that I had been attracted to her for a long time, that I hadn’t stopped thinking about her. She acknowledged that she had similar feelings. I told her my wife and I were separated and I had moved out. When I suggested perhaps we see one another, she shut me down immediately.”
Of course she had. As a teenager, Sylvia West had been groomed by an older man and impregnated. Before she was even old enough to drink legally, she’d given birth to two children. Then she was abandoned by her husband. Left with nothing, she’d hustled to provide for her sons, working long hours, taking care of other people’s newborns while her own children were left alone to get themselves up and ready for school. She’d gone from home to home, getting a front-row seat to the kind of life that had been snatched away from her. One in which husbands didn’t leave. One in which they provided. What had it been like for Sylvia to spend so many hours in the midst of happy families with devoted husbands, while she had to work so hard that she couldn’t stay awake to make dinner for her own children?
It was a wonder that she hadn’t laughed in Holmes’s face. Sylvia West had deserved better and she’d known it. A woman who knew her own worth was rare indeed. Josie’s gut clenched as the image of Sylvia’s lipstick-smeared mouth flashed through her mind. She hadn’t even been afforded the dignity of having her body preserved. Instead, she had been reduced to a clump of charred remains. She’d deserved better in so many ways. Better than Louis Fisher. Better than spending thirteen years afraid of a killer. Better than her savage death. Josie’s entire body vibrated with anger for the woman.
“How many times did she shut you down?” she asked.
Dr. Holmes had the good sense to look embarrassed. He glanced across the hall as the nurse dabbed an alcohol pad along the glass patient’s legs, narrowly avoiding a kick to the face as the woman jumped and squealed.
“It wasn’t as tawdry as you make it sound. Sylvia came back to work for us when our youngest was born. Things were perfectly professional. Obviously, she still felt comfortable being in our home.”
Or had she desperately needed the money that the Holmes family was willing to pay for her expertise and her familiarity with their routines and preferences?
“Did she still feel comfortable when she left?” asked Josie.
“Yes, yes. Of course. My wife and I had worked through many of our issues. Things were good at that time.”
“When did they get bad again?” Gretchen said.
“We had some highs and lows. Things were always tempestuous.”
“How many times after your third child was born did you separate from your wife and seek out Sylvia?”
A masculine cry of “Help! Help me over here” boomed from the movie-watching patient’s cell phone. The nurse treating the glass patient started down the hall just as another nurse skidded from around the corner.
“Good God!” Dr. Holmes thundered. “Turn that down!”
The man shifted on the gurney, twisting his body to glare at Holmes. “Get me some pain meds, dickhead, and maybe I will.”
“Should I get security?” the nurse at the end of the hall asked.
“Go ahead,” the man sneered. “Get security. I’ll tell them how I’ve been sitting in this hallway for two hours and no one’s even offered me pain meds.”
Holmes waved her off. The other nurse went back to picking glass fragments from her patient.
With no pain meds forthcoming and no security to complain to, the man returned to his action film.
“How many times did you seek Sylvia out over the years when things weren’t going well with your wife?” Josie repeated.
