The Edge of Dreams(14)

I tried to stand up and felt woozy. I had to be able to walk out of here.

“Do you carry smelling salts?” I asked Sid.

“Certainly not. Never having worn a corset in my life, there has been no need for smelling salts,” she said. “Are you feeling faint?”

“Just rather unsteady. I’ve hardly had a thing to eat all day.”

“Then let me see what I can do. You sit down and start getting dressed and I’ll be back.” She set off down the ward. I was just wrestling with getting my dress over my head when I heard an angry voice beside me saying, “Mrs. Sullivan. What do you think you are doing?”

I pulled the dress down from my face. “My doctor learned about my accident and has sent someone to take me to a private nursing home,” I said. “There’s a letter here on the bed.”

She picked it up, sniffed, and said, “I see. I don’t know what Dr. Harrison will say about this. It’s really up to him to discharge a patient. But I have to suppose you are going to good care.”

“The best,” I said.

“Nice for those who can afford it.” She sniffed again. “Didn’t you say your husband was a policeman?”

“We have connections,” I said, trying to sound breezy. “Could you help me get into this dress? I can’t lift my arms.”

She helped, rather roughly, I thought. And I was just having the buttons done up when she looked up and exclaimed, “What the devil?”

Sid was coming toward us, now wheeling a wheelchair that rattled across the floor.

“How do you do?” Sid said. “I’m here on behalf of Dr. Goldfarb and Dr. Walcott. We’ve a cab waiting outside for Mrs. Sullivan.”

“Very well, then.” The nurse looked stunned and lost for words. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Will you take your medicine before you go?”

“I don’t think so, thank you,” I said. “Dr. Goldfarb will prescribe a sleeping draft if I need one.”

Sid helped me into the chair and wheeled me to freedom. Once we were safely in the cab we both burst out laughing. It was a brief moment of triumph.





Five

Soon I was safely tucked into Sid and Gus’s spare bed, with Liam lying beside me, peacefully sucking his thumb and clearly relieved to have his mother back at his side. I had asked Sid to send a message to police headquarters to let Daniel know I had joined Liam at their house, and I lay back, content that I was safe, relatively unharmed, and in a few days would be back in that house across the street.

Sid and Gus looked after Liam like old hands. I heard his delighted squeals of laughter, and then they brought him up to see me, saying they had fed him chicken soup with dumplings and he had eaten like a horse. Gus cooked the promised duck breast with orange sauce for our dinner and served it with crispy potatoes and a green salad. She even insisted on a glass of wine to accompany it. “It will help you sleep. Better than any of those sleeping drafts they force on you in the hospital,” she said.

I nodded. “They had some kind of noxious mixture they wanted me to drink, but I turned them down. How lucky, or I might have been fast asleep when Sid arrived and wouldn’t have been able to be rescued.”

I was lying back, feeling pleasantly drowsy, when there came a thunderous knock at the front door. I heard barked words in an angry voice and footsteps thundering up the stairs, before Daniel burst into my room.

I saw his face and attempted to sit up. “Daniel, what’s the matter?” I asked.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “I go to the hospital to visit my wife, only to find her bed empty and some strange story about a doctor moving her to a private nursing home.”

“Hold your horses.” I raised my hand. “I wrote you a note. I sent it to headquarters with instructions that it was to be given to you immediately. Didn’t you get it?”

“I didn’t go anywhere near headquarters,” he said. “I had a long meeting with the commissioner and the mayor—at which I was soundly chewed out yet again, by the way—and then I rushed straight over to see you. Only to find you gone and hear a garbled story about who had taken you.”

“I’m sorry, but I did try to let you know.”

“You were supposed to stay in that hospital until tomorrow, weren’t you?” He was still blustering. “How could you countermand a doctor’s orders like that?”

“Daniel, calm down,” I said. “You’re shouting and you’ll wake your son—to say nothing of upsetting my hostesses. They were keeping me overnight for observation, that’s all. And I was highly uncomfortable. The bed was hard, the woman next to me was snoring and moaning, and I wouldn’t have fed the slop they call food to my dog. I couldn’t have been more overjoyed when Sid came to rescue me.”