Sweet Violet and a Time for Love Read online

  “It’s D: none of the above.” KeeKee’s raspy voice was lined with irritation. “Sienna, why didn’t you answer my page?”

  “Aside from the fact that you didn’t give me a chance to, I didn’t answer because I knew that you would call. Now what exactly does ‘none of the above’ mean? Is this really a mental health or substance abuse emergency?”

  “Just come in, Sienna, we need you now. Stat. This one is major.” KeeKee hung up.

  Two pink lines and a new husband who had no idea that I had a collection of positive pregnancy tests stored in my side of the bathroom armoire.

  And now some kind of urgent matter in the ED at Metro Community that required three pages and two phone calls in less than five minutes.

  I was supposed to have the first draft of the first three chapters of my memoir to my agent by Monday morning. I needed to do something with my hair. And, most important to me, I wanted to be home when Leon walked in the door, which I knew would be within the half hour.

  But all of these things were on hold.

  All because I had agreed to carry that on-call pager. For free.

  It was warm for November. Well, at least the Baltimore version of November warm. Though now after midnight, temperatures still flirted with the mid-fifties. As I got into my car and turned west on Boston Street toward the downtown area, I caught notice of the nighttime sky. Cloudless with a million stars that seemed to shimmer like high-quality sequins on a black velvet gown, there was no hint of an earlier rainstorm that had scented the air with wet dead leaves and pavement. Despite the warm air and clear sky, however, an early snow was in the forecast for tomorrow, with temperatures expected to dip all the way down into the twenties.

  So had been my life over the past few months: changes I’d never seen coming; twists and turns I hadn’t expected; opportunities that came and went like the restless weather. Fortunately, sunshine had largely filled this new season of my life.

  Sunshine.

  Leon.

  Change for the better.

  I’d entered Leon’s bakery on a Sunday afternoon this past April, on a day when all had finally and for the first time in my life felt right. After helping to unveil a terrorist who’d bombed BWI airport; after turning down a proposal to a man who could never love me the way I deserved; after closing once and for all the chapter of my estranged husband who turned out to be a sham, and forgiving him so that I could move forward: I unwittingly discovered Leon’s bakery on Pratt Street and was reunited with his sweet skills and welcoming smile.

  It was the smile he gave me when he saw me sitting at one of his tables that let me know he’d returned permanently to my life.

  And I was ready for him. A whole woman. No more pieces.

  Better than the cookies that were still warm from his brand new ovens was the envelope he showed me sitting on his office desk that fateful day.

  Addressed to me, he said he’d written it three months earlier but had just put the stamp on it that morning. While I had been breaking up with Lazarus Tyson and healing over RiChard St. James, God had been working out the details of a love I needed, a love I could receive.

  Perfect timing. Predestined reunion. Purposed plan.

  I never opened the envelope. Never saw the note he’d written inside of it. I didn’t have to. We were together and that was a good enough end to the story for me.

  Only I knew it wasn’t the end.

  A green light and a blaring honk brought me back to the present. “Sorry,” I mouthed and waved to the silver Hummer behind me. The driver swerved to pass me and quickly disappeared into the flow of steady traffic on Boston Street. Midnight in Canton. Leon and I moved into the high-end waterfront neighborhood on the far outskirts of Baltimore’s Harbor shortly after our hastily planned nuptials.

  No more wasting time and a new beginning for both of us. Together.

  It had felt right at the time, leaving behind our old lives and dwellings to settle into a home financed by my practice, his business, and the wave of interviews and endorsements that had greeted my instant fame following the terror investigation. We’d purchased a two-bedroom condo that overlooked the waters of the outer harbor. It had a massive master bedroom suite and a spare space for when Roman came home during college breaks.

  A two-bedroom condo and now a possible newborn.

  “Jesus, is this some kind of joke?” I prayed aloud as I now made my way west on Orleans Street. The neighborhoods, just like Baltimore’s fickle weather, had changed and transformed around me, from glitz and glamour to neglect and desperation, a testament to the turbulence of life and the testiness of times. The sudden rumble of nausea in my abdomen informed me there was no joke, no waiting punch line.

  My life was about to face major changes once again.

  Chapter 3

  “It’s about time you got here.” KeeKee Witherspoon glared at me from behind the nurses’ station. Five years my junior, she always looked like she was about to hit the runway instead of the emergency department, or ED, as staff called it. She was the only nurse in the ED who could get away with not wearing scrubs, and few questioned it. Tonight, she wore black skinny jeans, a pale pink top, and a rhinestone-studded headband that held back her long braids and matched a single bangle on her wrist. Despite her fashion-forward wardrobe, she wore little makeup, only lip gloss and eyeliner, and had no qualms about taking off her many rings to get her hands dirty. I’d watched her help clean up a child’s diarrheal accident once, and, on another occasion, I witnessed her help carry without hesitation several greasy bags that contained all the worldly goods of a homeless man seeking the warmth and safety of the ED.

  “I’ll be with you in a moment, slowpoke,” she said either to me or a tech who stood nearby. Several charts were in KeeKee’s hand, and pagers, phones, and even the intercom system sounded around her in chaotic dissonance.

  Twelve-thirty a.m. in Metro Community’s emergency department might as well have been twelve-thirty in the afternoon for how busy it was.

  The reality of a hospital by the hood.

  “Bed two,” she barked to an EMT team pushing a new arrival from the ambulance bay. Bright blood trickled from the arm of the young man on the stretcher. Despite having a small stab wound near one of his biceps, a playful smile filled his face as he winked at the young attendant who pushed his IV pole.

  “Put your number in my phone, sweetheart.” He nodded his head at her, as if they were meeting in the food court of a mall and not on the floors of the ED. She, for her part, ignored him, but I saw the flash of interest in her eyes.

  Fiending for love could be more dangerous than craving dope.

  “Sienna, I’ll be right with you,” KeeKee shouted as she darted away and disappeared behind curtain number seven.

  What kind of emergency did she page me for? I shook my head and glanced at the time on a nearby phone. 12:36. Leon should be home by now, his bakery closed, pots and pans cleaned, floor swept and glass display counters sparkling. My lips curled into a smile as I thought about the sweetness of his embrace, the faint taste of chocolate frosting on his lips, the warmth of his body that I knew was waiting in the bed we now shared as husband and wife.

  12:43. My smile stopped. What emergency did KeeKee have me missing my husband for?

  “Right with you!” KeeKee dashed by me again, this time heading for the radiology wing of the bustling ED. I groaned and marched away from the nurses’ station deciding to be proactive. Rooms ten and eleven, the stripped-down, sparse units where psych patients were kept while awaiting emergency evaluations, were on the other side of the station. I stopped in my tracks the moment they both came in view.

  Empty.

  I could see the plastic beds, white walls, and plastic-enclosed televisions in each from where I stood.

  Really? They’re both empty?

  I had agreed to carry the on-call pager for psych evals while a replacement for the vacancy left by the weekend ED social worker’s sudden departure was sought. I vol
unteered after being told it would be three Saturday nights at most with onsite visits only for dire emergencies. The director of social work at the hospital, Mabel Plattsmith, was a good friend of my mentor, Ava Diggs. Ava said she would do it and I said no way. Ava needed to rest and enjoy her retirement. And her cough nagged me.

  This was Saturday number six.

  After making sure one of the three security officers who covered the ED was within running distance, I stepped into both rooms ten and eleven to make sure that I had not missed someone crouching or weeping in the corners.

  They were indeed both empty. Nausea rolled anew through my intestines.

  Why would KeeKee call me down here in the middle of the night if there were no patients for me to see? I headed to the waiting room. Maybe I’d missed a drunk sleeping in the dark blue vinyl chairs who needed a referral to a detox unit. But couldn’t that have waited until the morning? I groaned again as I waved my temporary badge over the box that would open the exit doors that opened to the waiting room.

  Mother with sick baby.

  Man sounding like he was coughing up a lung, and not covering his mouth.

  Teen girl in the corner staring at the space in front of her.

  Woman playing a game on her cell phone while a male who loved the “f” word and wore a homemade sling over his arm chatted indiscriminately on his.

  Middle-aged man sitting next to a gray-haired woman who smacked her lips over and over as she studied me.

  Nobody stood out to me in the waiting room.

  I looked back over at the teenage girl. The look on her face. Her crossed arms. Alone. I thought of the pregnancy tests I’d hid in my bathroom drawer and wondered if she was facing a similar dilemma.

  No.

  Absolutely not. I caught my flawed thinking and corrected it. We were not facing any kind of similar dilemma because I was not pregnant even if she was. Though I didn’t need the money, I was certain to get a large payout from that pregnancy test company who was putting out defective merchandise.

  I looked again at the girl, her blank stare, mournful eyes.

  Maybe she was suicidal. I waved my badge to get access to the triage nurse to see if she had the scoop on the pensive-looking young girl. Maybe she was the reason KeeKee had demanded my presence.

  As the doors to triage slid open, a shadow near the main entrance of the waiting room caught my eye. A man in a black puffy jacket with a black baseball cap tucked low over his eyes stood near the rotating doors, just behind a tall, fake plant. I wondered if Mr. Phil, the overnight security guard who sat at a desk not far from the entrance, had even noticed the man standing there. Is that man trying to stay unnoticed?

  “Who’s that, Kelly?” I asked the approaching triage nurse. “Did he check in?” I nodded my head toward the man.

  She followed my gaze and shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Quinisha King? Please come back.” Kelly had moved on and apparently so had the man.

  There was no sight of him anywhere, but the gust of wind that filled the waiting room meant that the side door had been opened and shut with great force. I looked over at Mr. Phil. A newspaper had his attention. Was I the only one who had noticed the man?

  The teenage girl, apparently Quinisha, followed the nurse back to a triage station.

  “The flu. I think I have the flu.” I overheard her complaints to Kelly.

  I groaned, but then shook my head at my ill-directed disappointment that the girl wasn’t suicidal. I headed back to the nurses’ station. Back at her post, KeeKee gave me a look that had to be as fierce as the one I gave her.

  “Where did you disappear to that fast?” Her eyes narrowed.

  “KeeKee, please tell me why I am here and not home with my husband.”

  “Sorry, missus, but that good lovin’ gonna have to wait a little while longer. I need you to handle the patient in room twenty-nine.”

  “Twenty-nine? That’s not even one of the psych rooms. Isn’t that the last room in the hallway?”

  “Yeah, well that’s the room the patient wanted to go to, and nobody was willing to force the issue. That’s why we needed you here. I need that room free and that patient discharged. Now.”

  KeeKee must have seen my raised eyebrow because she put down the charts and papers she had in her hand and came from around the desk. “Come on, Sienna. I’ll walk down with you. I’m curious to see how you’re going to handle this.”

  Bed twenty-nine was the last room in the emergency department, the last resort on busy nights. It had been used as a storage room, a private counseling area, and even, on at least one occasion that I’d heard of, as a rendezvous spot for two employees who’d wanted to “get to know each other better.” As we walked toward it, I noted that the last patient room in use before it was twenty-one.

  “So what exactly is going on?” I tried again as we neared the room. KeeKee gave no response as she fooled around with several papers in her hand. The curtain to bed twenty-nine was closed and a shuffling noise echoed from its walls. I noted that a sitter, a hospital staff person assigned to sit with disruptive patients, stood outside the curtain, peeking into the room. She turned around at our approach.

  “Thanks, Tiffany.” KeeKee nodded at the sitter. “Sienna can take it from here. Just let security know not to go too far in case we need them.”

  “Security? A sitter? KeeKee, you’ve got to tell me something here.”

  “If I knew what was going on, I would not have paged you.” KeeKee stopped short of the curtain, looked up from her paperwork, and gave me a smile I could not read.

  I pulled back the curtain.

  Chapter 4

  “Step one, step two, step three and four. Shake it fast, baby, and hit the floor. Ooooh, yeah! Dum dum dum boo dum dum boo dum.”

  Worn blue slippers, a blue floral housecoat, a silver mass of hair, and a whole lot of shimmying, clapping, and dancing around. I tried to make sense of the scene in front of me but did not know where to begin.

  A woman who looked as old as Ava Diggs twirled and spun around the room. Brown as hot cocoa and covered with a smattering of dark freckles and visible dirt, she looked like she’d just stepped out of her bedroom; that is, if her bedroom was a gutter. Her bra-less, large bosom hung limply under her frayed housecoat and her ankles and knobby legs were ashy above her slippers. Her silver hair was thick and matted on the sides and she snapped her fingers with chipped and dirty fingernails. She seemed unaware of her audience, KeeKee and me, as her frail hips bounced and shook under the fluorescent lights.

  “Shake it now! We goin’ down. Wooo!” Though probably twice my age, the woman’s moves were as sharp and skilled as if she were in a Soul Train line. The only thing missing was the music, but she bopped her head up and down as if a song played in her head.

  “Uh, KeeKee?” I raised an eyebrow and looked over at the charge nurse.

  “She was bought in by ambo from the Harbor,” KeeKee finally explained. “A group of tourists found her dancing just like this, housecoat and all, in Rash Field and made the call. We put her in one of the psych rooms but some idiot let her off the gurney and she danced her way down to this room. Nobody had the heart to restrain her or pump her with lorazepam to get her quiet and still. Besides, she wasn’t hurting anything but them moves, so I made the call to just let her stay here as long as she doesn’t get too disruptive. And now you’re here to fix it.” KeeKee let out a rare chuckle.

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. She came in with what you see: that robe and those slippers. No ID. No purse. Nothing. Um, I should let you know that it appears she also does not have anything on under that robe. Once you do what you do to stabilize her, I’ll send Dr. Levi in to check her out and make sure there’s nothing medically wrong with her.”

  “Once I do what I do? You’re expecting a psych eval? We don’t even know who she is. Did you call the police?”

  KeeKee shrugged. “They said there
are no active Silver Alerts, no elderly people reported missing anywhere in the area, and they won’t even come look at her unless there are signs of foul play.” She turned to leave but then looked back. “They said to call adult protective services, but that’s your domain. That’s why I paged you. You know what to do with this one, Ms. Social Worker, so I’m leaving her in your hands. I have a gunshot coming in and I’m going to need this room soon since it looks like we’re filling up tonight. Thanks for handling this.”

  Without another word, she broke into a jog and headed back to the action by the main desk. I watched her disappear and then turned my attention back to the dancing woman. Her steps and swirls had eased somewhat and her mouth moved in silence as her head rocked back and forth.

  “Ma’am?” I called out gently. She smiled and curtsied but shut her eyes. She opened them and turned to face a corner of the room and began whispering to the wall. I tried to make out her words, but they were indistinguishable. I inhaled, trying to see if I picked up any smell of alcohol or marijuana. Nothing.

  “Ma’am?” I called out again. “You must be worn out from all that dancing. You can have a seat if you like, and I can get you some water or some ginger ale. Ma’am?” I took a step toward her. Her whispering seemed to lower in response to my movement.

  Leon should be home by now. I imagined him stepping out of the shower, pulling one of his white T-shirts over his head, smelling like Dove soap. He’d probably be wearing his green pajama bottoms. In our bed. Waiting for me to join him. Another rumble of nausea rolled through my stomach. Oh, God. I swallowed hard and willed my intestines to cooperate. I cannot be pregnant.

  “Ma’am?” Even I heard the sharp irritation in my tone. I softened my voice before I continued. “Ma’am, would you like to take a seat and I can bring you something to drink?”

  “Oh, I’ll take a whiskey sour with extra ice, hold the cherry.” She turned to face me. “Whatchu havin’, sugar? Let me guess: a Long Island Iced Tea?” Her eyes were as bright and clear as the starlit night, and just as endless in their depth. “No, a martini,” she announced after studying me for a moment. “You look like you like them high-siddity drinks. Bonjour. Au revoir. Comment allez-vous.” She giggled and curtsied again.