Saving Allegheny Green (8 page)

“We recently met. I barely remember him from high school. He was a senior when I was a freshman.” And he’d been the son of one of Cloverleaf’s prominent citizens, while I’d been the girl with the kooky family from the wrong side
of the river. I’d known from the beginning that Sam Conahegg was out of my league.

Maddie nodded. “He graduated valedictorian. Did you know that?”

“I’d forgotten.”

“Hard worker. And one of the brightest pupils I ever had the pleasure of teaching,” Maddie mused. “But things weren’t easy for Sam.”

“What?” I pricked up my ears. Do tell.

“Sad.” Maddie clicked her tongue.

“In what way?”

“Lew Conahegg was a drunk. Used to beat the boy. You didn’t know that?”

I shook my head.

“Oh yeah. Lew hid his dark side from the public, but he showed it to his family. His wife, Sally, Sam’s mother, was pitiful. She bent over backward trying to please Lew. Course nothing she did suited him. What do they call it? Codependent?” She stopped to haul in a breath. “Sally smothered poor Sam. Always fussing over him. When he was in my fourth grade class she sent a note forbidding him to go outside in the winter, even on pretty days. She packed his lunch with crazy health food—tofu and brown rice and organic vegetables—long before it was popular. She walked him to school every morning, was there every evening to pick him up.”

Ah, so that explained why Sam had left Cloverleaf, joined the Marines and never looked back. He’d been trying to escape. So why had he come home?

“He’s another one with a responsibility complex,” Maddie said. “You two are peas in a pod.”

“What do you mean by a responsibility complex?” I frowned.

She waved a hand. “Don’t take it the wrong way, Ally. You
both have this need to take care of things. To be in control. There are worse flaws. But because of your like temperament you two wouldn’t make a good match.”

“Who said anything about us making a match?”

Maddie’s eyes twinkled. “Sam’s got his hands full as it is.”

“What do you mean?” I added the vancomycin to the small bag of saline solution and hooked it into Maddie’s catheter.

“Big problems in the sheriff’s department.”

“Oh, that leftover stuff from Sheriff Jameson’s administration.”

“Yes and more.”

“More?”

“Trouble’s brewing.”

“What kind of trouble?”

Maddie shrugged. “I’ve heard rumors that someone in his department is selling the drugs they confiscate from drug busts.”

“You’re kidding?” I stared at her.

“It’s only a rumor, mind. But it’s going to destroy Sam’s run as sheriff if he doesn’t find out who’s behind the thefts and put a stop to it.”

“Maybe he should ask you who’s doing it,” I said.

Maddie grinned. “How would I know that?”

I started Maddie’s IV drip. After that, I checked her blood pressure and pulse, then had her turn to one side so I could change the surgical dressing on her hip.

“Goodness,” she said. “It’s nine o’clock. Time for my program. Would you hand me the remote, dear?”

I gave her the television remote control and sat down on the sofa to wait for her IV to finish.

She snapped on the television set and turned it to the Religious Channel. “I missed his Sunday broadcast,” she said. “But they repeat it on Wednesday mornings at nine.”

“Who?”

“Why the Reverend Swiggly, of course.”

“You watch his program?”

“Oh, my yes! Ever since I broke my hip and haven’t been able to attend local services. Have you ever seen him? He’s so full of fire and emotion. I was tickled pink when I heard he was building a summer house on the river.”

“Right next door to me,” I mumbled.

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“Yep.”

“I suppose you heard about his heart attack.”

“He had a heart attack? When?”

“Why last night, dear girl. Really, Ally, you’ve got to start paying more attention to what goes on in your community.”

Maddie watched Swiggly strut across the stage. He ranted and raved. He praised God. He sang. He pounded his fist on the podium. He broke down into tears. He put on a pretty good show if you went in for that sort of thing.

The program ended at about the same time Maddie’s antibiotic treatment did. “Sweetie,” she said. “Could you get me my purse.”

“Sure.”

I brought her purse to her. It was almost threadbare, the pockets bulging with coupons and tissues and pictures of gap-toothed children from years gone by. She pulled out a checkbook.

I didn’t mean to be nosy but I was hovering around her chest closing up the subclavian catheter and I saw her making out a check to Reverend Swiggly for two hundred dollars. I couldn’t believe it. Miss Maddie lived on a teacher’s pension. She couldn’t afford that kind of tithe.

“Surely you’re not sending him that much money?” I asked. I looked around at Miss Maddie’s tiny abode and
thought of the fortress Swiggly had built on the river. And that was just his summer home.

“Mind your own business, Allegheny Green,” she said in a polite, but firm tone.

“He’s a huckster, Maddie.”

“He gives me comfort, child. Now hush.”

Properly chastised, I gathered up my things and headed for the door.

“Will you drop this in the mail on your way out?” Maddie asked, sliding the check into an envelope and licking it closed.

“Sure, Maddie.” I sighed. “Whatever you want.”

“G
OT ANOTHER NEW PATIENT
.” Joyce dropped the file on my desk and waddled toward the coffeemaker.

Somehow, I’d made it to Friday without any more excitement in my life. I paid the bills, did my daily stint at the gym and got a haircut. For some unknown reason, that had absolutely nothing to do with Sam Conahegg, I even had my hairdresser put some gold and auburn highlights in my mousy brown hair. I liked the change.

I even went grocery shopping and almost bumped into Conahegg. I was cruising down the frozen foods aisle and wheeled past a man with his head poked into the freezer. His cart was filled with artery-clogging junk. Frozen pizzas, French fried potatoes, fish sticks. Clearly, he needed someone to mother him whether he knew it or not. I shifted my gaze to the man.

And recognized the backside.

Conahegg.

I actually whispered, “Yikes” under my breath, took off at a dead run and managed to get around the corner of the aisle by the time I heard the freezer doors pop closed. I didn’t even finish my shopping, just went straight to the checkout counter. I couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t simply said hello and walked on. Maybe it was lingering embarrassment over the awkwardness at the gym. Or maybe it was because I’d had an overwhelming urge to make him a decent meal.

The deal was, I wasn’t sure how Conahegg felt about me. At times I was certain he was interested in me as a woman. I’d seen him perusing my body with fascination. But I also got other vibes from him and I’m not sure what it meant.

Since I’m being honest, let me say that I’ve been confused by what’s been happening in my life. My sister shooting people in the toe. My patient committing suicide by autoerotic asphyxiation. An unfriendly televangelist moving in right next door. My own inexplicable sexual awakenings. It was a lot to absorb in a week’s time.

And I’d become really dissatisfied with my life of late. I was tired of being everyone’s mama but I didn’t know how to act any differently. I kept telling myself that my attraction to Conahegg was a symptom of my restlessness not the cure. But my body was in full-blown denial about that.

“Ally?” Joyce called my name. “You hear me? You got a new patient.”

“You already gave me two new patients,” I protested, snapping back to the present.

“Yes, but one died and besides, the new patient lives right next door to you.”

“Huh?” I flipped open the file. Reverend Ray Don Swiggly. I groaned.

“Yep. The televangelist. They let him out of the hospital yesterday evening. Straight from the ICU home.” Joyce shook her head and her jowls quivered. “Don’t know what health care is coming to. He had the heart attack on Tuesday night. The guy’s got great insurance and they still toss him out after only three days.”

“It is a shame,” I agreed.

“Go see him first, will you? His wife’s already called twice and it’s only eight-thirty.”

“What’s she calling about?”

Joyce crinkled her nose. “I get the impression the good Reverend is something of a handful.”

I remembered meeting Swiggly at the sheriff’s department, his rantings imprinted on my brain. “Great,” I muttered.

I stepped outside into the sweltering July heat and made a beeline for the Honda. I cranked the AC full blast and turned the radio to an oldies Motown station. “My Girl” wafted from the speakers.

I sang along off-key at the top of my lungs struggling to psych my mood for dealing with Swiggly. Mentally, I reminded myself that I’d become a nurse to help people and that I enjoyed my job.

Most of the time.

Over the course of the last few months my discontent had grown. An “is-this-all-there-is-to-life” sort of sensation gnawed at the back door of my soul.

I wanted adventure. I wanted excitement. I wanted romance.

I wanted Conahegg.

I wanted him the way a child wants a cookie. A child doesn’t care about gaining weight or rotting her teeth or ruining her supper. She sees a cookie and she goes for it.

I wanted to consume him in one greedy bite and lick my fingers afterward. I wanted him without consideration for any consequences. I wanted to smell his scent on my skin, taste his tongue in my mouth, hear his voice as he called out my name in the heat of passion.

To hell with one cookie. I wanted the whole frigging jar.

But the cookies were locked up behind a badge and I was growing weak with hunger. Did I have the strength to battle for what I needed?

“Stop this, Allegheny. You’re only making things worse.” I shook my head and forced my attention on the road.

Cloverleaf is three-fourths surrounded by the Brazos River.
It sits like a hub, eight roads fan out into spokes. Seven of the roads lead to the river. The main avenue cuts east toward Interstate 20 and Fort Worth. I took highway 51. If you keep going for seventeen miles, you’ll run into Granbury. If you take a right after the first bridge you’ll run into my house.

By way of the river, Swiggly’s house was right next door to ours, but by road the entrance to his place was a good half mile away since we lived in separate subdivisions.

Instead of taking the turn off into my addition, Brazos River Bend, I traveled south and took the exit into Sun Valley Estates.

Swiggly’s swanky community was a far cry from both my middle-class neighborhood and the low-rent abodes of Andover Bend. These expansive houses sprawled across threeacre lots and boasted perfectly manicured lawns. Doctors and lawyers and pilots had summer homes here. CEOs and computer software consultants and electrical engineers built retirement mansions along the riverbank. Mercedes and sport utility vehicles and Lexus sedans were parked in the yards. Most of the residents owned elaborate boats that cost more than my annual salary.

When I arrived at Reverend Swiggly’s house, I had to be buzzed in via locked gate. I parked behind Miss Gloria’s El Dorado under the shade of a sheltering elm and walked up a newly poured cement walkway to the front door. The doorbell chimed out some warped Muzac and belatedly, I recognized the old gospel hymn, “Lamb of God.”

The door swung open revealing a Mexican woman dressed in a long black skirt and white blouse topped with a sunflower-decorated apron.

“Hi,” I greeted her, assuming she was the maid. “I’m Ally Green, Reverend Swiggly’s home health nurse.”

She bobbed her head and stood to one side.

“What’s your name?”

She seemed surprised that I would ask. “My English—” she smiled shyly and ducked her head “—it not so good.”

“It’s a lot better than my Spanish,” I said to put her at ease. “I’m going to be around a lot and I don’t want to holler, ‘hey you.’”

White teeth flashed in her brown face. “Esme.”

“That’s a beautiful name.”

Esme had placid, nondescript features. She could have been anywhere from thirty-five to fifty with her thick black hair, threaded with gray strands, plaited into one long pigtail down her back. Clearly, she was accustomed to keeping a low profile, like Gloria Swiggly.

“Please.” Esme wiped her hands on her apron. “You come inside.”

I stepped over the threshold. Esme closed the door behind me and the resounding click echoed high into the cathedral ceilings. Immediately my eyes were assaulted by row upon row of religious paintings lining the endless hallway.

Jesus on the Cross. The Last Supper. Moses on the Mount. Noah and his Ark. Jesus on the Cross again, different painting, different artist, same message. Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus in the manger, the Three Wise Men hovering in shadows.

Whew. No wonder Miss Gloria always looked so overwhelmed.

“Esme?” Miss Gloria’s voice floated out to us. “Is that the home health nurse?”

“Yes ma’am.” Esme curtsied as Miss Gloria stepped into the foyer. As when I’d seen her before, she was wearing a dirt-brown ensemble.

“Oh.” Miss Gloria stared at me, her eyes widening. “It’s you.”

“Home Services sent me,” I explained, holding up my medical bag.

“That’s all, Esme.” She dismissed the maid without looking at her. “I didn’t realize you were a nurse,” she continued after Esme departed.

It occurred to me that my presence was making her uncomfortable. What if I happened to tell Reverend Ray Don she’d been next door consorting with Aunt Tessa?

“Yes. I’ve been an RN for nine years. I have a BSN from Texas Christian University.”

“Really? A religious college?”

“Graduated top ten percent of my class,” I couldn’t help adding.

What did she think I was? Spawn of the devil? Actually, I’d gone to TCU for two reasons. One, it was the closest to home and my family. Two, at the time I went they hadn’t required statistics like the University of Texas at Arlington where I’d tried twice to pass the course and had gotten a D both times. Never could understand that bell curve and mean, medium and mode stuff.

She raised a hand to her throat. “Er, about the other day when I was preaching the gospel to your Aunt Tessa…”

“Don’t worry,” I said, pantomiming pulling a zipper closed across my mouth. “My lips are sealed.”

I noticed she was wearing the crystal earrings Aunt Tessa had given her and I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of problems had driven her to seek my aunt’s counsel.

Her smile was strained. “Thank you.”

“Where’s the patient?” I asked.

“Napping in the sunroom. Follow me.”

We walked for what seemed like miles, past more Jesus paintings and elaborate Venetian tapestries that took my breath. Our feet glided from Oriental rugs to Italian marble tile to teakwood floors.

I couldn’t help but think about Swiggly’s congregation
and I wondered if they had any notion he lived like royalty while they subsisted on social security and cheap cat food. I remembered Maddie and the check she’d written. Two hundred dollars was a fortune to her. To Swiggly it was a gilded toenail clipper.

“Miss Gloria!” We heard the Reverend before we saw him. “I need another blanket, I’m cold.”

Miss Gloria shook her head. “He hasn’t been able to warm up since that awful intensive care unit. You know, they wouldn’t let him wear his pajamas. They made him put on one of those vile faded cotton gowns with the backside cut out and he about froze to death.”

I clicked my tongue and made a tsking sound. Ah. Life was so hard when you were accustomed to the finer things and you ran smack-dab into the reality of the every day.

“Ray Don,” she said, leading me into a sunny open room with plate glass windows overlooking the Brazos. A variety of exotic plants shared the room with the man stretched out on a Corinthian leather sofa clutching a worn copy of a large-print King James Bible in his lap. “The nurse is here.”

“About time!” he exclaimed, turning his head and catching sight of me.

He frowned.

I smiled.

“Don’t you live in that run-down farmhouse next door?” he asked.

“That’s me,” I said, resenting his jab, but too professional to show it. I set my bag down on the brass and glass coffee table with a large African violet in a ceramic pot as a centerpiece.

“You’re the one with the heathen family.”

My smile tightened around my clenched teeth. “Guilty as charged.”

He glared. “Are you really a nurse? I don’t want some
nurse’s aid meddling with me. I want a registered nurse with a degree.”

“Do you want to see my license?”

For a moment, he actually considered it, I could tell by the gleam in his eyes, but then he motioned me forward. “That’s not necessary. I believe in trusting a person until they have proven they aren’t trustworthy. That’s the way Jesus conducted his life.”

“Why don’t you let me examine you and then you can tell me what sort of problems you’ve been having.” I affected my most professional tone.

“Is that necessary?”

“It’s what I’m here for.” I took a stethoscope from my bag and plugged it into my ears. “Shirt up.”

Swiggly raised his silk pajama top and I was forced to come close enough to lay the bell against his surprisingly hairy chest. Lub-dub, lub-dub. Silently, I counted the beats.

“Heart sounds good.”

“How can it sound good?” he asked. “I had a heart attack.”

“No irregular beats.”

“That’s because I’m on a truckload of medication and if you think swallowing those horse pills is fun then you’ve never tried it.”

“You’re right.” I smiled benevolently. “I’ve been blessed with good health.”

“Thank God for that, missy. Things can change,” Swiggly said darkly.

“I’m aware. So tell me more about your heart attack, Reverend Swiggly. How did it occur?” I folded up my stethoscope and stuck it in the pocket of my lab jacket. My gaze skimmed his body. I assessed his color, his skin turgor and his respiratory rate. Everything checked out.

“What are you quizzing me for? I already gave them that
information at the hospital. Isn’t it in your files?” Swiggly groused.

“I need to make my own records.”

“Bullshit.”

“Pardon me?” I’d bet my favorite pair of running sneakers that
bullshit
was not part of Jesus’ working vocabulary.

“Bureaucratic bullshit.” Swiggly snorted.

“You’ve got me there, sir, but you’re in the system and I’ve got to ask these questions. You don’t have to answer them but then I will have to document the fact that you were uncooperative and who would ever believe the esteemed Reverend Ray Don Swiggly would resist answering a few little medical questions.”

Swiggly glared as if he would prefer to gut me like a fish.

I picked up his file, then sat down in the wicker chair next to him, pulled a pen from my pocket and glanced over the two page faxed admission form we’d received from the hospital. “Let’s see, it says here you suffered chest pains on Tuesday evening, is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Did anything precipitate the pain?”

“What do you mean?”

I clicked my Bic. “What preceded the chest pains? Did you receive bad news? Were you mowing the lawn, lifting something heavy?”

He straightened up on the couch, ran his hands through his silver pompadour. “Young lady, I’ll have you know a man of my stature does not engage in manual labor.”