Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

Venus might tumble off the stretcher, but he’d he ready to catch her if she did.
    The two men began to wheel Venus out and get her to the hospital as fast as the ambulance could maneuver through the narrow streets of the way West Village. She was gray, her skin dry, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open. I looked at her chest to see for myself that she was breathing. Like my grandmother Sonya, I was quick to seek something to be grateful for, even in the worst situations.
    The younger of the two paramedics, a blond kid with freckles and a cowlick, began running backward, pulling the stretcher toward the door. One of the uniforms held it open. I watched them wheel Venus out, the stretcher leaving parallel red lines in its wake, tracks that got paler and paler as it neared the open door, heading for the ambulance out front.
    Careful to step over the trail of blood, I moved into the doorway.
    “What happened?”
    “A freak accident,” Nathan said.
    “A freak accident?”
    “She must have gotten dizzy and fallen. It looks as if she hit her head on the edge of the desk.”
    “How awful.”
    I glanced at the desk.
    “Dad has a colleague at St. Vincent’s who he’s already called. He’ll let us know the extent of the injury as soon as he can.”
    “Was anyone here? Was she alone?” I asked. “Who found her?”
    I tried to make myself slow down, but it was impossible. I was on the job. I felt responsible.
    Nathan stepped back and made room for Eli to pass him, then stepped out into the lobby and let the door to Venus’s office close. He looked after his father, who had walked out front to talk to the uniforms. Four of them were standing in front of Harbor View now, one of them taking notes.
    Then Nathan took my elbow and led me into Eli’s office, next door to Venus’s.
    “She fell and hit the back of her head?”
    Nathan let the door close.
    How come the cops were out there, I wondered, not in Venus’s office? What the hell was going on?
    “We have to wait and see what the doctors say,” he said. “She went down hard.”
    “No one saw what happened?”
    “No one.”
    “Well, then, how did you know she was hurt? Who found her?”
    “Sammy went to get her, to ask her to join us in the dining room. He found her lying on the floor, unconscious.”
    “None of the kids were in there with her?” I asked.
    “No, I already told you,” he said, “she was alone. Everyone else was in the dining room. In fact, Sammy used his key to get in.”
    “His key? But why would he do that if she didn’t answer his knock, if it appeared she wasn’t there?”
    “Because she’d stopped in the dining room a minute or two before. We’d asked her to join us for lunch, and she thanked us and declined. She said she had too much work to do. But then something came up in our discussion, and Dad thought that Venus would be the best person to respond to it.”
    “I see.”
    But of course, I didn’t. I didn’t know what he was talking about nor how I’d find out. He was already looking annoyed. And none of those others was going to talk to me, tell me about their private meeting. I also didn’t know when I’d be able to get into Venus’s office and see what I could learn on my own, hoping it would be sooner rather than later, hoping it would be before anyone else got in there.
    “I think Samuel’s going to teach soon, Rachel. I’m sure Dashiell could help calm everyone down.”
    “First Lady, then Harry, now Venus. If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” I said.
    “We are having a particularly difficult time now,” he said. “But one way or another, it’s never easy around here. You must understand that. You and Dash have been in other institutions of this sort.”
    “So you were all here when this happened? You were all in the dining room?”
    “We’d decided to have lunch here. It seemed the appropriate place to be, after the service.”
    I couldn’t picture the Poole clan getting all excited about eating institutional cooking, but I nodded anyway.
    “As I already explained, Rachel, these things happen.“
    „But—”
    ‘The only thing that’s important is that Venus gets the care she needs as quickly as possible. Don’t you agree?”
    I didn’t answer him. For what seemed like much too long, we stood there, staring at each other, neither of us speaking. That kind of eye contact, had we been dogs, would have led to some serious fur flying. But we weren’t dogs. We were civilized human