To Trust a Stranger. Lynn Bulock

peanut butter sandwiches. Now that she knew the gravity of her sister’s condition, she planned her stay at the hospital to be a longer one.

      Hunting for the car charger to her cell phone, she remembered she’d given it to Laura last week. No sense in trying to find that. She made a mental note to ask Deputy Gardner about Laura’s car. Somewhere in an apartment complex parking lot there was a sporty blue compact unless it had been destroyed by the fire, as well.

      Jessie checked the contents of her bag and picked up her address book. By tonight she would need to call the department chair and a few others so that she could arrange for somebody to cover her classes for a while. She drove back to the hospital on automatic pilot, thankful that no traffic cop caught sight of her on the way.

      “Dr. Anderson? I don’t recognize you. Can I help you with something?” The sharp-eyed nurse’s comment almost made Cassidy drop the medical chart. Why did the woman have to show up now, in this small window of time?

      “I’m doing a neuro consult for Dr. Peterson on another case and this woman caught my eye,” Cassidy said with conviction. A firm voice could get one through almost any situation.

      The nurse’s eyes narrowed. “Surely you don’t think anybody’s going to ask you to do a neurological exam on my patient?”

      “Not a full exam, no. But I’m working on a paper on the neuropathology of specific trauma survivors and wondered if your patient might fit as part of my study. Once I looked at her chart more closely, I could see that won’t be the case.” Cassidy handed the chart back to the nurse. “I won’t disturb her.”

      The nurse’s silent glare said that no one would be disturbing her patient while she was around. Cassidy walked away quickly, the way any busy specialist in a large hospital would. No one followed. Into the stairwell and down a flight quickly, Cassidy made it onto the staff parking lot before anyone could notice. The close call had been worth it; one look showed that the patient wasn’t going to cause any problems for anyone.

      Laura didn’t show any more signs of being alert. “She’s not in terrible pain,” the nurse assured Jessie. “With third-degree burns the nerve endings are numbed enough that things aren’t as painful. We’re almost glad to hear that someone’s in a fair amount of pain because it usually means they’ve got more second-degree burns than third. Pain is easier to treat than the more severe burns.”

      So what sounded like good news at first didn’t look like good news at all. Jessie asked about getting her sister off the breathing tube again, but that request was turned down. “She sounds like she could be developing pneumonia. We can’t risk it” was the doctor’s terse reply. After that he whisked Jessie out of Laura’s cubicle for a while for treatment. She went back to the family waiting room, which seemed quiet for a change.

      “Ms. Barker? Jessie?” She knew she needed rest when she startled awake stiffly from her position on the couchlike vinyl bench attached to the wall. Even sitting straight up with the television high on the wall droning through news headlines, she’d fallen asleep. And judging from the urgent tone in the nurse’s voice it must have been for a while. “You need to come back with us now.”

      Somewhere during Jessie’s last vigil at her sister’s bedside, it got dark outside. Laura didn’t ever look her way again with any kind of understanding in her eyes or say anything even when they switched the oxygen tube for one that would have let her talk. When they asked Jessie if there was anyone they should call, at first she shook her head. Then she called the nurse back and gave her Deputy Gardner’s business card.

      He was there in a very short time. He looked as if he’d dressed hurriedly when he was called, no tie and a shirt that hadn’t been pressed. “You came,” Jessie said. “Thank you. I didn’t want to be alone right now.”

      “You aren’t alone. You won’t be alone,” he said simply.

      “Do you want to sit down?” It seemed odd to be talking about such mundane things while her sister lay dying.

      “No, I’ll stand.” He looked at the figure on the bed. “It always seems more respectful somehow.” The way he said it made Jessie wonder how many people Steve Gardner had seen die. Personally she hoped she would never have to do this again. She felt ripped apart by grief as she watched Laura.

      “Do you want me to call someone else? One of the chaplains or somebody from my church?”

      Jessie shook her head, watching her sister’s struggle to breathe. “I don’t want anybody else, especially not some stranger.”

      “All right.” It was the last thing he said out loud for quite a while. So when the end came, Jessie wasn’t alone there by the bedside. The deputy didn’t say anything but his presence seemed to lend a strength Jessie needed. She didn’t even comment when he stood there with a firm but gentle hand on her shoulder, obviously in prayer. In Jessie’s eyes Laura was far beyond most human help, and if he thought prayer might do something he was welcome to it. Nothing could hurt Laura now anyway.

      After it was all over, hospital personnel led Jessie into the family waiting room where she sat again on one of the couches feeling numb and brittle as an ice carving. After a few minutes one of the nurses asked if she wanted to have a moment with Laura now that they’d taken out all the tubes and needles. Jessie almost said no, but something made her change her mind. Maybe it would hurt less some time down the line if she had a different last memory of Laura than the one she had now.

      Jessie passed the deputy, writing something on a piece of paper at the nurses’ station. She hadn’t thought about all the paperwork that must have to get done at a time like this. It pained her that her sister’s life was reduced to paperwork for a sheriff’s deputy. Saying nothing, she went in to see Laura. The form on the bed looked as peaceful as possible. It was good to think that she was done with the horrible suffering of the last three days. Jessie reached out to touch a cool leg where the sheet had slipped. Her sister’s unburned flesh looked like pale marble in contrast to the bandages higher up on her body.

      In that act of reaching out, her fingers froze and her brain refused to process what she was seeing. Perhaps she was even more confused than she thought. She went to the other side of the bed and looked down at the still body. Anger and bewilderment welled up in her. “Deputy Gardner?” When he didn’t answer, she said it louder.

      He came into the cubicle still holding his papers. “What is it?”

      “This isn’t Laura. I don’t know who this was, but it isn’t my sister.”

      His brow wrinkled and he looked as if he wanted to say all kinds of things. Instead he stood there silently for a moment before he asked a simple question. “Why do you say that?”

      Jessie lifted her right pant leg, exposing her ankle and the tiny bluebird tattooed there. “Look at this. We got them on vacation two summers ago. It was one of those stupid things you regret afterward when it’s already done.” Laura hadn’t regretted hers, though. In fact she’d shown it off.

      He looked at the body on the bed before saying anything more, and then, understanding growing, looked back at Jessie. “Your sister had one, too?”

      “On her ankle, just like I did.” Jessie pointed to the ankle of the person on the bed. The pale skin was unmarked by fire or anything else. Who just died in this hospital room? And where was her sister, Laura?

      Steve Gardner’s brain hurt. An hour after the death of the person he’d thought was Laura Barker he’d made the first round of phone calls to get crime scene investigators involved. Although the hospital itself wasn’t the scene of a crime, the fact that this death was an obvious homicide meant all the sheriff’s department’s resources needed to be called into play.

      It had been difficult to explain to the medical examiner’s staff why he needed as much care taken as he did. Nothing about this case so far made any sense. At first things seemed merely confusing; a young man who appeared to have come from nowhere was missing and a woman who’d only known him a