Trial By Fire

So Mimi Cooper’s relatives aren’t that much different from James’s, Ali thought.

“The name on Serenity’s birth certificate is listed as Sandra Jean,” Hal continued. “With her father’s approval and help, she went to court and changed it on the day she turned eighteen. Why wouldn’t she? Anything that came from her mother, including her name, is automatically suspect. I’ve mostly tried to stay out of her way and not rock the boat. I thought long and hard before I called her to lend a hand while I was gone this last time, but with the surgery coming up and since Mimi’s her mother…” He shrugged and sighed. “That’s what I did-I called.”

“You didn’t call her son?” Sister Anselm asked.

“There’s no point. For one thing, Winston Junior lives in California. He couldn’t have afforded to come look after his mom. He’s gone through a whole series of sales jobs in the last few years. He’s working again now, but they’re just barely making ends meet. His wife, Amy, is pregnant. The two of them would be out on the street if Mimi hadn’t taken pity on them. They live rent-free in a town house Mimi owns in California. Mimi asked Serenity to put him in charge of the Langley Gallery in Santa Barbara, but Serenity wouldn’t hear of it. Fortunately he found work somewhere else.”

Suddenly the pieces all came together in Ali’s head as the names finally registered. Winston Langley Galleries. She remembered Winston Langley Sr. as someone whose path she had crossed occasionally during her time in California. Langley had been a strikingly handsome man with a high-flying art gallery empire that included branch galleries in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, Scottsdale, Santa Fe, and Sedona.

Hal had already mentioned that Mimi had been estranged from her husband at the time of his death. Ali seemed to recall that Winston Langley had died several years earlier, and that his death had been sudden-from a heart attack, or maybe a stroke. Now it looked to Ali as though, after Winston Senior’s death, his widow had taken up with a much younger man. No wonder her kids were a

Ali also remembered what Sister Anselm had said about the estrangements in families that made showing up in a hospital injured and alone somehow more likely. From the sound of it, the Cooper/Langley entourage was suitably screwed up. If the patient in room 814 did turn out to be Hal’s wife, Sister Anselm would have some relationship healing to do here as well.

Ali’s phone rang just then. Taking her hands from the keyboard, she checked the readout. Caller ID said it was Holly Mesina returning her call. “I can’t talk right now,” she said abruptly into the phone. “I’ll have to call you back.”

“But-” Holly began.

Ali simply ended the call. As she put her phone away, she heard the buzzing sound of Sister Anselm’s alarm-the one that gave her a readout of the patient’s vitals.

“I’m sorry,” she said, standing up. “I need to tend to my patient. If she’s willing to see you, I’ll come back and get you.”

“If she’s awake, can’t I see her now?”

“No,” Sister Anselm said. “Not yet. Not until I check with her. Sorry.”

As she walked down the hallway toward the room, Hal Cooper turned to Ali. Evidently the sound of her tapping on the keyboard had penetrated his consciousness.

“You can type like crazy,” he said. “What are you doing, writing a book?”

Ali was taken aback by his scrutiny. She didn’t want to lie, but she couldn’t very well be honest, either.

“Something like that,” she said.

“So you’re here with someone, too?”

Same person you’re here for, she thought.

“No,” she said, thinking on her feet. “I’m doing a special project. For the burn unit.”

If he had asked more questions, Ali wasn’t sure she would have been able to answer, but it turned out Hal Cooper was only interested in his own sad story and not in anyone else’s.

“I just wish Mimi would have taken my phone calls while I was gone,” Hal said, talking more to himself than to anyone else. “That way I would have known what was going on with her. I know why it happened. Mimi spent thirty-five years being bossed around by her first husband. When I told her not to drive, she went ballistic. In a way I don’t blame her, but what will I do if the last memory I have of the two of us together is of standing in the middle of the kitchen yelling at each other?”

With that he buried his face in his hands and began to sob. Just then the elevator door opened and Dave Holman stepped into the waiting room. He stood for a second surveying the room. Then, without so much as a glance in Ali’s direction, he stepped up to Hal Cooper and opened his ID wallet.

“Mr. Cooper?” he asked when Hal finally removed his hands from his face long enough to notice the pair of shoes standing in front of him. “I’m Detective Dave Holman with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. I’m here about your missing persons report. Could I have a word?”

Hal Cooper looked up at him gratefully. “I’m glad to know that someone else is worried about it, too-that I’m not the only one. Of course you can have a word.”

Dave looked around the room. Again his eyes passed over Ali with no sign of recognition. The rest of the people in the room had fallen silent as all of them paid attention to this new arrival.

“Maybe we could go down the hall to someplace a little more private,” Dave suggested.

Hal immediately nixed that idea. “I’m not leaving here,” he said. “Not until I know for sure if my wife is in that room down the hall.”

“For privacy’s sake-”

“I don’t need privacy,” Hal declared. “I need to know that my wife is okay. If you want to talk with me, talk here. Otherwise, go away and leave me alone.”

Shaking his head, Dave pocketed his ID, then pulled up a chair and sat down.

She fought her way back through the flames. Even in the dream, she knew if she could get back somehow, the room would be there waiting for her with the odd but reassuring steady beep of all those machines that told her she wasn’t dead.

She was grateful to know she was still alive, and she hoped that the nun would be there, too. The nun with the magic finger that could press the button and take away the pain, the pain that was even now howling at her. Screaming at her. And she would have been screaming, too, if it hadn’t been for the ventilator. That’s what it was called, she realized. The thing in her throat that made it so she couldn’t speak was a ventilator.

But where was the nun? The woman with a face that was stern and calm and kind. Maybe this time, Sister Anselm wouldn’t be here. Maybe this time she wasn’t aware that her help was needed, but it was. The pain was roaring back, overwhelming her.

Just then Sister Anselm’s steadying face reappeared over the bed, filling the patient with a sense of wonder. Was she an answer to a prayer? How did she know she was needed? What made her come into view at just the right time? Maybe she didn’t go away at all. Maybe she was there in the room the whole time, close but somewhere out of sight.

This time, though, Sister Anselm didn’t push the button, not right away.

“Does the name Mimi Cooper mean anything to you?” she asked urgently. “Blink once for yes and twice for no.”

She tried to gather her thoughts. She tried to concentrate on the name. Mimi Cooper. Was that who she was? Was it possible she was that woman? But the name didn’t seem familiar to her. Not at all. There was no part of the name Mimi that resonated in her head. Shouldn’t your name go with you no matter what? Isn’t that the one thing about yourself that you would always know and remember? Well, maybe not if you had that disease, that old people’s disease-what was it called again? She couldn’t remember the name of that, either, even though it was right on the tip of-well, not on the tip of her tongue. Because she couldn’t talk.