Roses Are Red

my way. Is Jannie all right?”
    The nurse hesitated, then she spoke. “She had another seizure, Detective. She’s stabilized, though.”
    I rushed back to the hospital from Rosslyn and got there in about fifteen minutes. I hurried down to B-1 and found an area marked DIAGNOSTIC TESTING. It was late, almost ten o’clock. No one was at the front desk, so I walked right past and down a light blue corridor that looked eerie and forbidding at that time of night.
    As I approached a room with COMPUTERIZED TOMOGRAPHY and MRI lettered on the door, a technician appeared from a doorway across the hall. He startled me — I was walking in a fog. Thinking, worrying about Jannie.
    “Can I help you? Are you supposed to be down here, sir?”
    “I’m Jannie Cross’s father. I’m Detective Cross. She’s having an MRI. She had a seizure tonight.”
    The man nodded. “She’s down here. I’ll show you the way. I believe she’s about halfway through the test. Our last patient for the night.”

Chapter 30
    THE HOSPITAL TECH showed me into the MRI room, where Nana was sitting vigil. She was trying to keep up a calm exterior, trying to maintain her usual self-control. For once, it wasn’t working. I saw the fear lighting up her eyes, or maybe I was projecting my own feelings.
    I looked over at the MRI machine, and it was state-of-the-art. It was more open and less restraining than others I’d seen. I’d had two MRIs, so I knew the drill. Jannie would be lying flat inside. Her head would be immobilized on either side by “sandbags.” The image of Jannie alone inside the imposing machine was disturbing. But so was her third seizure in two days.
    “Can she hear us?” I asked.
    Nana cupped her hands to her ears. “She’s listening to music in there. But you can hold her hand, Alex. She knows your touch.”
    I reached out and took one of Jannie’s hands. I squeezed gently, and she squeezed back.
She knew it was me.
    “What happened while I was gone?” I asked Nana.
    “We were lucky, so lucky,” she said. “Dr. Petito stopped by on his rounds. He was talking to Jannie when she had another grand mal. He ordered the MRI, and they had an opening for her. Actually, they stayed open for her.”
    I sat down because I needed to. It had been a long and stressful day and it wasn’t over yet. My heart was still racing; so was my head. The rest of my body was struggling to catch up.
    “Don’t start blaming yourself,” Nana told me. “Like I said, we’re very lucky. The best doctor in the hospital was right there in her room.”
    “I’m not blaming anybody,” I muttered, knowing it wasn’t true.
    Nana frowned. “If you had been there during the seizure, she’d still be here having the MRI. And in case you think it could have been the boxing, Dr. Petito said there’s almost no chance. The contact was too minimal. It’s something else, Alex.”
    That was exactly what I was afraid of. We waited for the test to be over, and it was a long, hard wait. Finally, Jannie slowly slid out of the machine. Her little face brightened when she saw me.
    “Fugees,” she said, then took off the earphones for me to hear.
“Killing me softly with his song,”
she sang along with the music. “Hello, Daddy. You said you’d come back. Kept your promise.”
    “I did.” I bent down to kiss her. “How are you, sweetie?” I asked. “You feeling okay now?”
    “They played some really nice music for me,” she said. “I’m hanging in there, hanging tough. I can’t wait to see the pictures of my brain, though.”
    Neither could I, neither could I. Dr. Petito had waited around for the pictures. He never seemed to leave the hospital. I met with him in his office at a little past eleven-thirty. I was beyond tired. We both were.
    “Long day for you,” I said. Every day seemed to be like that for Petito. The neurologist had office hours starting at seven-thirty in the morning, and he was still around the hospital at nine and ten o’clock at night, sometimes later. He actually encouraged patients to call him at home if they had a problem or just got scared at night.
    “This is my life.” He shrugged. “Helped get me divorced a few years back.” He yawned. “Keeping me single now. That and my fear of attachment. I love it, though.”
    I nodded and thought that I understood. Then I asked the question that was burning in my mind. “What did you find? Is she all right?”
    He shook his head slowly, then he spoke the words I hadn’t