Walt Fleming entered St. Luke’s emergency room to the stares his sheriff’s uniform typically provoked. Reaction was never neutral, and it affected him, to varying degrees. People were both afraid of and impressed by police. Everyone was guilty of some infraction, no matter how minor; it came down to how much of it they wore on their sleeves.
“Kenshaw!” he barked at the nurse behind the registration desk, never slowing a step. Despite his concern for the well-being of the child fished from the Big Wood River, he was impatient and tense about the condition of the child’s rescuer.
“Observation two!” the nurse called down the hall after him.
The walls were beige, the ceiling lighting intense, the complex aroma-medicinal disinfectant, bitter coffee-vaguely nauseating. He ran, did not walk, to Observation 2. He yanked back the privacy curtain, not waiting for permission.
“Oh, damn!” he barked out unintentionally upon seeing her. He stepped inside and drew the curtain closed behind him.
A nurse tending to an IV bag turned and was about to let loose on the intruder when sight of the uniform stopped her.
“Leave us a minute,” Walt told the nurse as he met eyes with Fiona.
“I’m fine,” Fiona said.
“Yeah, I can see that.” She looked horrible.
The nurse gave Walt the once-over on her way out. She clearly had some choice words to offer, but contained herself.
Fiona wore a blue and white hospital gown-a loosely woven yellow blanket covered her from the waist down. Her face and arms were badly scratched, both carrying some butterfly bandages. Her scalp had been shaved in a spot about the size of a quarter over her left ear and was dressed with a small bandage. On her upper left shoulder he saw the glow of a bruise forming.
“They took some X-rays,” she said, “against my better judgment. I really am fine. It’s nothing. I realize I must look like hell, and you have no right to be-”
“You look good,” he said. He’d rarely paid her any kind of compliment about her looks. It hung in the air uncomfortably. “Alive is good,” he added. Fiona would never win any beauty contests, but in his opinion she’d turn heads decades into the future. Her kind of tomboyish looks didn’t need a surgeon’s knife to remain interesting. She changed her looks frequently, using ball caps or haircuts. It was impossible to pin down her age, but she was over twenty-eight and under thirty-five if he was any judge. She took a lot of sun from her hours as a fishing guide, but she wore it well, not leathery the way some of the Ketchum women aged. In a strange way, her wounds added to her attractiveness, as if mystery were all she’d ever lacked.
“Given the options.”
“What’d you do, fight a bear to get to her?”
“A fir tree, I think it was. Lots of nasty branches.”
“That kind of goes hand in hand where trees are concerned-the branches thing. I heard the kid’s fine.”
“So I’m told.”
“You’re a hero.”
“I may need your help with that,” she said. “Sit.”
Walt drew a rolling stool up to the side of the bed and rested his hands on the bed’s stainless steel frame. He’d been reaching for her hand, but stopped himself.
She took his hand in hers, stretching the IV to do so. “Is this what you wanted?”
“Yeah.” He absentmindedly glanced toward the pulled curtain.
She let go of his hand. “It’s all right,” she said, sensing his reluctance and misinterpreting it as embarrassment.
He regretted losing her touch, regretted having looked behind him, regretted that he couldn’t see a few seconds ahead to know when to keep from doing something stupid.
“The IV,” she said, following his eyes, “is nothing but a precaution. They have to charge you for something.”
“The department’s insurance will cover it.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I wasn’t on the job.”
“You’re always on the job.”
“I’m a civilian employee-part time at that-who serves at the pleasure of the sheriff. That doesn’t come with benefits, last I looked.”
“Well, you didn’t look carefully enough. You serve at my pleasure, and it’s my pleasure that our policy will cover it. Have you ever seen the bill from an emergency room visit?”
“I’ll withhold my objections until I know what we’re talking about.”
“That’s better.”
“So the ‘Oh, damn’? Was that for my face?”
“General condition,” he said. “The hospital gown. Lying there like that. Your face… I like your face. No complaints.”
“The doctor said it won’t scar. Some will heal faster than others, but they’re nothing to worry about.”
“You saved a life,” he said.
“I need you to go to bat for me.”
“Regarding?”
“Pam.”
Pam was Fiona’s other boss, the editor/owner of the Mountain Express, Ketchum/Sun Valley’s weekly.
“Because?”
“There were a lot of people taking pictures.”
“Heroic moments tend to get that.”
“I don’t want my picture to run.”
“I doubt you’ll have any say in the matter. For once your modesty, the way you stalk about, is going to lose out to the needs of the masses. Pam will run it on the front page, I would think.”
“She can’t,” Fiona said defiantly.
“But she will, no matter how much you object.”
“It’s a giveaway. The front page hardly matters.”
“A good front page, the more copies you give away, the more you can charge for your ads next time.”
“Whose side are you on? I need you, Walt.”
“It’s false modesty: you saved a life.”
“My picture cannot run in that paper.” Her tone and demeanor had changed. The physical pain and shock behind her eyes had given way to anger.
“O… k… a… y. Maybe we should talk about this.”
“I can’t. That’s not going to happen. I just need you to speak with her, to convince her.”
“And you need me to do this because…?”
“Because I’m her employee. I’m your employee. Employer to employer, I need you to talk to her and make up anything you want, any reason you want, just make sure no photo runs.”
“If you were trying to win my curiosity, you’ve succeeded,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”
She seemed ready to tell him something, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.
“Talk to me,” he said, his own voice now sharing her concern. He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the stainless steel fixtures. He had a wide face, slightly boyish, with kind eyes. His hair was short and graying prematurely. His ex-wife had once advised him to use “product” on his hair, but he’d resisted. He was suddenly revisiting that idea.
“I need you to convince her not to run any photos. I’m a civilian employee of your office-part time-and you want to protect my privacy. Make up anything you like.”
“There’s a little thing called freedom of the press.”
“Which is why it can’t come from me. From you it carries a lot more weight.”
“My office can’t make that kind of request without being able to back it up. I’ve never made such a request. And there have been plenty of times I didn’t want a photo to run. We’ve blacked out eyes a few times. I could ask her for that-but I’d have to have a reason.”
“That’ll just cause more of a sensation,” Fiona said. “That’s worse than just running a picture.”
“You’re not giving me a lot of options here.”
“Can’t I get a favor with no strings attached? Please. Ask her not to run my picture.”
Something had been nagging at Walt that now made a world of sense. Again, he voiced it without taking proper time to think through the consequences.
“This paranoia of yours… It doesn’t happen to have anything to do with your always being on the other end of the camera, does it?” Her eyes grew intense. If what he’d seen a few seconds before was anger, this was now rage. “You take the pictures to make sure no one takes them of you? Is that it? Could that be any more insidious?”
“Please, stop,” she said.
The nurse knocked on the frame. “I’m coming in there,” she announced.
“I’ll talk to her about it,” Walt said, amazed by the relief that washed over Fiona’s wounded face, and the warmth of her hand as she once again touched his.