Seeking Carolina by Terri-Lynne Defino

Author:Terri-Lynne Defino [DeFino, Terri-Lynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Four Calling Birds

Efan stood in the hallway with a woman in a white coat, their heads close together and voices low. He lifted his head, motioning Johanna, Emma, and Nina closer, held out his hand as they drew near.

“Then she must be moved,” he was saying, and gestured to the sisters. “These are the ladies Coco. If some sort of permission is required, they can give it.”

“What’s going on?” Nina asked. “Julietta needs to be moved where?”

“Ladies?” The woman in the white coat gestured them into a conference room and closed the door behind them. “I am Dr. Faust, currently your sister’s physician. May I speak frankly?”

“Please do,” Emma said.

“There is nothing physically wrong with Julietta,” she began. “Not even a bruise from the seat belt. There is nothing we can do for her here. This hospital has no psychiatric ward, and I have no expertise with psychiatric matters. From what Mr. Bowen has given me concerning your sister’s past—”

“Mr. Bowen?” Johanna asked.

“That would be me.” Efan raised his hand. “I have only repeated what Michael told me last night in the car, about Julietta’s parents being untreated psychiatric patients who died in a car crash when she was a toddler, and that she nearly died as well.”

“That’s not exactly how it went,” Emma said.

“Forgive me. It is what Michael told me.”

Emma turned to Dr. Faust. “I was in the crash too, and I was older.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I hardly remember. I doubt Julietta does either. We were both knocked out.”

Dr. Faust and Efan exchanged glances.

“What?” Nina asked. “Tell us.”

“Perhaps we should sit.” Dr. Faust gestured to the conference table and chairs. “Mr. Bowen, would you get the ladies some coffee?”

“Of course.”

Efan put pods into the coffeemaker and pressed the necessary buttons. Johanna focused on him, on every move he made.

It’s worse than we feared. Oh, Jules.

“Your sister woke crying,” Dr. Faust began. “She was calling for her father.”

* * * *

Johanna put her head in her arms, closing off the hospital conference room, her sisters, Efan and Dr. Faust still discussing their best options. She wanted it to be yesterday, wanted last night to have never happened.

If not last night, it would have been another time.

Johanna’s own voice in her head sounded callous, however truthful. Julietta’s breakdown had been building since she was a tiny girl strapped into a car seat, bleeding and in pain, while the emergency crews cut her free, while she screamed for her father.

“She is fine staying for today,” Dr. Faust was saying. Johanna picked up her head. “But other than keeping her comfortable, there is nothing we can do for her here.”

“I’m not putting my sister in a ward.” Nina said. “That is absolutely out of the question.”

“She has reverted,” the doctor continued. “At the moment, she is a little girl who just suffered a terrible tragedy. She needs the proper care, doctors who know how to bring her back without causing more harm.”

“No wards. I will not have her subjected to what goes on there.

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