Kelly did, and managed a smile at the incongruity of the moment. ‘You sound just like my dad.’
‘Firemen are smart.’ He paused. ‘Okay, your lady friend may have a problem. But she seems like a nice girl, and you seem like a mensch. So do we try and solve the problem or not?’
‘I guess that’s up to her,’ Kelly observed, bitterness creeping into his voice. He felt betrayed. He’d started giving his heart away again, and now he had to face the fact that he might have been giving it to drugs, or what drugs had made of what ought to have been a person. It might all have been a waste of time.
Rosen became a little stern. ‘That’s right, it is up to her, but it might be up to you, too, a little, and if you act like an idiot, you won’t help her very much.’
Kelly was amazed by how rational the man sounded under the circumstances. ‘You must be a pretty good doc.’
‘I’m one hell of a good doc,’ Rosen announced. ‘This isn’t my field, but Sarah is damned good. It may be you’re both lucky. She’s not a bad girl, John. Something’s bothering her. She’s nervous about something, in case you didn’t notice.’
‘Well, yes, but -‘ And some part of Kelly’s brain said, See!
‘But you mainly noticed she’s pretty. I was in my twenties once myself, John. Come on, we may have a little work ahead.’ He stopped and peered at Kelly. ‘I’m missing something here. What is it?’
‘I lost a wife less than a year ago.’ Kelly explained on for a minute or two.
‘And you thought that maybe she -‘
‘Yeah, I guess so. Stupid, isn’t it?’ Kelly wondered why he was opening up this way. Why not just let Pam do whatever she wanted? But that wasn’t an answer. If he did that, he would just be using her for his selfish needs, discarding her when the bloom came off the rose. For all the reverses his life had taken in the past year, he knew that he couldn’t do that, couldn’t be one of those men. He caught Rosen looking fixedly at him.
Rosen shook his head judiciously. ‘We all have vulnerabilities. You have training and experience to deal with your problems. She doesn’t. Come on, we have work to do.’ Rosen took the hand truck in his large, soft hands and wheeled it towards the bunker.
The cool air inside was a surprisingly harsh blast of reality. Pam was trying to entertain Sarah, but not succeeding. Perhaps Sarah had written it off to the awkward social situation, but physicians’ minds are always at work, and she was starting to apply a professional eye to the person in front of her. When Sam entered the living room, Sarah turned and gave him a look that Kelly was able to understand.
‘And so, well, I left home when I was sixteen,’ Pam was saying, rattling on in a monotonal voice that exposed more than she knew. Her eyes turned, too, and focused on the backpack Kelly held in his hand. Her voice had a surprisingly brittle character that he’d not noticed before.
‘Oh, great. I need some of that stuff.’ She came over and took the pack from his hands, then headed towards the master bedroom. Kelly and Rosen watched her leave, then Sam handed his wife the plastic container. She needed only one look.
‘I didn’t know,’ Kelly said, feeling the need to defend himself. ‘I didn’t see her take anything.’ He thought back, trying to remember times when she had not been in his sight, and concluded that she might have taken pills two or perhaps three times, then realizing what her dreamy eyes had really been after all.
‘Sarah?’ Sam asked.
‘Three-hundred-milligram. It ought not to be a severe case, but she does need assistance.’
Pam came back into the room a few seconds later, telling Kelly that she’d left something on the boat. Her hands weren’t trembling, but only because she was holding them together to keep them still. It was so clear, once you knew what to look for. She was trying to control herself, and almost succeeding, but Pam wasn’t an actress.
‘Is this it?’ Kelly asked. He held the bottle in his hands. His reward for the harsh question was like a well-earned knife in the heart.
Pam didn’t reply for a few seconds. Her eyes fixed on the brown plastic container, and the first thing Kelly saw was a sudden, hungry expression as though her thoughts were already reaching for the bottle, already picking one or more of the tablets out, already anticipating whatever it was that she got from the damned things, not caring, not even noting that there were others in the room. Then the shame hit her, the realization that whatever image she had tried to convey to the others was rapidly diminishing. But worst of all, after her eyes swept over Sam and Sarah, they settled on Kelly again, oscillating between his hand and his face. At first hunger vied with shame, but shame won, and when her eyes locked on his, the expression on her face began as that of a child caught misbehaving, but it and she matured into something else, as she saw that something which might have grown into love was changing over an interval of heartbeats into contempt and disgust. Her breathing changed in a moment, becoming rapid, then irregular as the sobs began, and she realized that the greatest disgust was within her own mind, for even a drug addict must look inward, and doing so through the eyes of others merely added a cruel edge.
‘I’m s-s-sorry, Kel-el-y. I di-didn’t tel-el…’ she tried to say, her body collapsing into itself. Pam seemed to shrink before their eyes as she saw what might have been a chance evaporate, and beyond that dissipating cloud was only despair. Pam turned away, sobbing, unable to face the man she’d begun to love.
It was decision time for John Terrence Kelly. He could feel betrayed, or he could show the same compassion to her that she had shown to him less than twenty hours before. More than anything else, what decided it was her look to him, the shame so manifest on her face. He could not just stand there. He had to do something, else his own very proud image of himself would dissolve as surely and rapidly as hers.
Kelly’s eyes filled with tears as well. He went to her and wrapped his arms around her to keep her from falling, cradling her like a child, pulling her head back against his chest, because it was now his time to be strong for her, to set whatever thoughts he had aside for a while, and even the dissonant part of his mind refused to cackle its I told you so at this moment, because there was someone hurt in his arms, and this wasn’t the time for that. They stood together for a few minutes while the others watched with a mixture of personal unease and professional detachment.
‘I’ve been trying,’ she said presently, ‘I really have – but I was so scared.’
‘It’s okay,’ Kelly told her, not quite catching what she had just said. ‘You were there for me, and now it’s my turn to be here for you.’
‘But -‘ She started sobbing again, and it took a minute or so before she got it out. ‘I’m not what you think I am.’
Kelly let a smile creep into his voice as he missed the second warning. ‘You don’t know what I think, Pammy. It’s okay. Really.’ He’d concentrated so hard on the girl in his arms that he hadn’t noticed Sarah Rosen at his side.
‘Pam, how about we take a little walk?’ Pam nodded agreement, and Sarah led her outside, leaving Kelly to look at Sam.
‘You are a mensch,’ Rosen announced with satisfaction at his earlier diagnosis of the man’s character. ‘Kelly, how close is the nearest town with a pharmacy?’
‘Solomons, I guess. Shouldn’t she be in a hospital?’
‘I’ll let Sara make the call on that, but I suspect it’s not necessary.’
Kelly looked at the bottle still in his hand. ‘Well, I’m going to deep-six these damned things.’
‘No! ‘ Rosen snapped. ‘I’ll take them. They all carry lot numbers. The police can identify the shipment that was diverted. I’ll lock them up on my boat.’
‘So what do we do now?’
‘We wait a little while.’
Sarah and Pam came back in twenty minutes later, holding hands like mother and daughter. Pam’s head was up now, though her eyes were still watery.
‘We got a winner here, folks,’ Sarah told them. ‘She’s been trying for a month all by herself.’
‘She says it isn’t hard,’ Pam said.
‘We can make it a lot easier,’ Sarah assured her. She handed a list to her husband. ‘Find a drugstore. John, get your boat moving. Now.’