On the way into Hobart, I stopped at the Dollar General. I bought a dollar gift bag and a package of tissue. In the car, I dropped the nail gun into the bag and put tissue on top. I doubted they would search a present. Hopefully I wouldn’t need it, but Crawford had a way of showing up.
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The Hobart Living Center was a low, one story brick structure. It was situated directly across Lowe street from Elkview hospital where I’d last seen Annabelle Murphy. It had wide windows, with single unit air conditioners under each pair and white shutters. It was trying hard to maintain an air of dignity.
Yelp gave it an average rating of two stars. I didn’t hold much hope for what I’d find inside.
I picked a door at the end and tried it. It opened. Security wasn’t a top concern. The owners likely cut every corner they could to pad their pockets at the expense of families looking for quality care on a budget.
I walked down the hall to the scent of desperation, piss and Lysol. The first couple of doors had no name plaques. Then I saw Lewis, Johnson, and Williams. I walked on. I was hoping to find him before I had to pass the reception desk in the middle of the building.
It was the last door on the left. I poked my head in, a man in a wheel chair sat, staring blankly out the window. The TV was playing the game show network in the corner. The room hadn’t been redecorated in thirty years. It was the kind of place that feels like a human warehouse. I hated it.
“Dr. Jensen?” I said.
The man didn’t move. I stepped into the room and moved where he could see me, keeping the gift bag out of site. I didn’t want to confuse him. The man looked up at me, and his brow furrowed. I could see him running through a catalog of faces. He didn’t find a match. I hadn’t expected him to.
“Dr. Jensen?” a nurse said.
She peaked her head in from the hall.
“Oh, I didn’t realize you had visitors,” she said.
Jensen didn’t say anything. The nurse looked at me, expecting something.
“Oh, I’m uh, his nephew, John,” I said.
“Nice to see you John. He’s due for his medications soon, so don’t stay long,” she said. “What did you say your last name was?”
“I didn’t say,” I said. “It’s Jensen.”
Great. I’d been spotted. Time was short.
“Dr. Jensen, you don’t know me, but you know a friend of mine, Fred Baker,” I said.
“Oh, heh, heh, yes, my goodness yes,” the man said.
He began clapping his hands on his lap.
“Baker’s man, patty cake, patty cake,” he said.
He laughed. I sighed. Great, I needed a medical mind, and I got a zucchini.
“Look, I don’t know if you can understand me, but, a friend of mine needs help. Her name is Leeanne. She came to see you a few years back with Rita Skinner,” I said.
The man’s eyes grew wide. He remembered that name.
“Skinner very scary,” he said.
“Yeah, she kind of is,” I said.
He started coughing. He coughed so hard, I thought he might choke, I moved closer to help him. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me close.
“Listen, kid, they’re spying on me,” he said.
Then he coughed some more.
I was pretty sure he was faking. But it could draw unwanted medical attention.
“That intercom over there, they monitor me. I’ve been pretending to be bananas for a long ass time. Skinner put me here, after I helped your friend,” he said.
He coughed some more.
“Get me out, I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he said.
I looked toward the door. The nurse was coming. I pulled back the curtains, the window was way too high to shove him through.
“Can you climb out that?” I asked.
“Hell yes, I go jogging every night, after lights out,” he said.
I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“I ain’t got time to prove it to you kid, you got a car?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Perfect,” Dr. Jensen said.
He hopped up and slammed the door, just as the nurse arrived, with a big, heavy looking orderly. He pushed the hospital bed in front of the door and tossed his wheelchair on top.
I opened the window and kicked out the screen. We were on the back of the facility, so we had a pretty good jog to the car. I climbed out the window and looked back in, Jensen was mooning the orderly through the narrow-slit window in the door.
“Come on!” I yelled.
He bolted across the room and out the window, like he’d done it every night for years. He was telling the truth. The orderly had a radio to his mouth. I gripped the nail gun and let the gift bag fall. We took off running.
“Keep up kid! I can’t see good enough to drive without glasses,” Jensen said.
He was in good shape.
We rounded the corner of the building, between a large maintenance barn and the end of the residence. The parking lot was twenty yards away and I was at the end of it. There was a low wooden fence, with a gate straight ahead.
We were greeted at the gate by a large, sun tanned gardener in a tan coverall. He grabbed the fence post and laid his weight against the gate to block us. It was his mistake. I nailed his hand to the top of the post twice. His face contorted as he brought his other hand around to grab at his wrist.
I hit him in the throat with the clip of the nail gun. He collapsed. We vaulted the gate, jammed by the gardener’s body, and ran for the parking lot. The orderly was headed our way from the right, pelting down the sidewalk along the front of the building.
We outdistanced him easily. I reached the Sunbird ahead of Dr. Jensen and opened the passenger door.
“Just get in ya panty waist, I can open my own door,” he said.
He slid in. I ran around the back of the Sunbird and straight into a brown, barrel chested sheriff’s uniform. Crawford. I’d been so busy looking behind, he’d hidden behind the car and caught me off guard. He wrapped his arms around me.
There was only one target, and somewhere inside myself I waged a philosophical war over whether to shoot another man in the junk with a nail gun. My practical side won out. I swung the gun forward and connected with the sheriff’s groin.
For a second, I thought I hadn’t hit the plunger, but the gun bucked, and the sheriff released his hold on me and instantly vomited all over the trunk of the sunbird. He rolled down into the parking lot.
I shoved him aside and climbed into the driver’s seat. I threw the nail gun into the back seat. I really had to buy one of those.
Rather than back over the sheriff’s bulk, I hopped the sunbird over the concrete parking barrier and headed onto Lowe street. I figured by now, the local police had been called, unless Crawford had a deal with Hobart living center.
I took side streets out of town and headed north. I wasn’t sure what to do with Dr. Jensen. A place to talk seemed to be in order. Thirty minutes later, we pulled into a diner in another tiny town. I parked in a lot in back, in case an APB was out on the Sunbird after our escape.
I looked at Dr. Jensen. He was wearing sweats and a pair of Velcro sneakers. He would pass.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“Food,” he said. “I’ve been eating a soft diet for three and a half years. Do you know what that does to a man’s digestion?”
“Fair enough,” I said.
We took a booth at the back of the restaurant, near a rear door that led to the back lot, and a clear view of the front, in case anyone came in. I had the nail gun on the seat next to me.
“Did you just nail the sheriff’s balls to his leg?” Dr. Jensen asked.
I felt a little queasy, thinking of it like that. “Don’t remind me,” I said.
“Remind you? I want to give you a medal,” he said.
The waitress came. Jensen ordered a double cheeseburger and loaded fries. I ordered a grilled ham and cheese.
“What the hell just happened?” I said.
“You broke me out of a hell hole of a nursing home that I feel horrible for recommending to patients for years,” he said. “I think it was karma for that and helping the mayor that I got stuck there.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, it was all I could think of. I faked a stroke,” he said. “As long as I was near vegetative, they left me alone. They visited twice a week to make sure. The only time I can do anything like watch something besides The Game Show network, or be active, is after hours.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Truth is, after hours, a lot of nights, no one is there but the patients. They lock us in and go home,” Jensen said. “I had to give mouth to mouth once, and changed I don’t how many prescriptions that were given just to keep patients sedated.”
“They never noticed?” I asked.
“They counted us and did what the chart said. That was it,” he said. “Otherwise, they were strictly non-contact.”
“So, now what? I guess you’re a dead man?” I asked.
“Same as you, I bet,” he said. “I knew someone would eventually show up. I was forced to do their medical work for them for years. They had my daughter. But, once she died, they had nothing on me. So, I went to the county. That night, I got a visit. They threw me in a trunk. Took me out on a bridge at night, threatened to throw me off if I did it again.”
The food was okay. I’d grown a healthy expectation from these small-town cafes and this one was lowering the standard a bit. But, it was warm and filling.
I didn’t want to seem pushy, but I had broken him out of his self-imposed imprisonment for a reason.
“Tell me about Leeanne,” I said.
“Well, they had me set broken bones and do stitches on her, almost every time she fought. Then she stopped coming in for a while. About eight months after I’d last seen her, I get a panicked call at eleven o’clock at night,” he said. “It was mayor Skinner, needed me to come right away.”
Jensen took another bite of his burger. I did a sweep of the restaurant. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us. The ham and cheese was better after the first bite. I took another sip of sweet tea.
“So, I get there, and Rita shows me Leeanne. She tried to tell me the girl was only a few weeks along, but she was close to delivery. She tried to force me to do an abortion right there, while she watched. I convinced her it would kill Leeanne and had her brought to my clinic,” he said.
“How had she hidden it that long?” I asked.
“I guess she kept fighting until she was almost five months along,” he said.
“Then what?” I asked.
“Well, she faked an injury the first time, and I helped her, by putting a cast on her arm. Just to give her some time off, I didn’t know about the pregnancy,” he said. “When that was ‘healed’ she faked having chicken pox, the mayor is a germaphobe, so she wouldn’t go near her. They didn’t need me for that. By the next month, it was obvious.”
“So, you did her abortion and helped her escape?” I asked.
“No, I never did an abortion,” he said. “I’m catholic. No matter how skewed my moral compass became, I couldn’t do that. It didn’t make me a saint, hell, I knew those kids didn’t have much chance, but I had to give them a shot. I delivered it, C-section, hid it from the mayor, then took it out of state.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Kansas City,” he said. “Nice couple there adopted him.”
“It’s a boy?” I asked. My eyes were filling with tears.
“Yeah, they named him Paul, I think,” he said. “Must be about five.”
“That’s the mayor’s grandson, you know that?” I asked.
Dr. Jensen sighed. “I figured,” he said.
I paid the check and we went out to car.
“So, where you off to?” he asked.
“Leeanne,” I said.
“Can you drop me at the bus station?” he asked.
“Hell no, you’re going to face that girl, and tell her. Then we’re going to Kansas City and get that kid,” I said.
“What, are you gonna make me?” he asked.
“How do you feel about having your balls nailed to your leg?” I asked.