The Real Macaw: A Meg Langslow Mystery

much the same as it had been on the third floor, where I’d had my brief stay in the maternity ward in December. To my right, the corridor continued a little way. Then, after the nurses’ station, it made an abrupt left turn. To my left, it continued on much farther. Room 242, I realized, would be near the end of the corridor.
    Why so far from the nurses’ station? Then I realized that his room would be directly over the ER, and only a short flight of steps or a quick trip in the service elevator away from whoever was on duty there. Maybe that was their usual place to put patients who were no longer on the ICU but still needed watching.
    Or perhaps, even unconscious, my grandfather was enough of a troublemaker that the nurses wanted him as far away from them as possible.
    I could see a nurse sitting at the station. Her head was bent, and she seemed to be reading something under the light of a desk lamp.
    I decided to ask her about Grandfather’s remote location. When I’d taken a few steps toward her, she glanced up and I recognized her. One of the two women Corsicans who’d been so visibly upset by Parker Blair’s death. The well-dressed redheaded one. I smiled and searched my memory for her name as I approached the desk.
    “Vivian?”
    “Yes?”
    “I almost didn’t recognize you in your uniform.” Actually, I had no trouble recognizing her. The red hair was unmistakable, and never had I seen a nurse who made her uniform look more like a Paris original.
    Her professional smile froze for a moment, then changed to a more personal one as she obviously recognized me. “Oh, yes. You must be Dr. Langslow’s daughter. Maeve?”
    “Meg.”
    “The one who’s being so generous about sheltering the animals in your house.”
    Clearly I hadn’t made my desire for the animals to leave clear enough, if the Corsicans were still calling me generous.
    “You must be here to visit Dr. Blake,” she went on.
    “How is he?”
    “We were a little concerned for a while, but he regained consciousness about an hour ago and your father says everything’s looking good.”
    “That’s wonderful!” Relief washed over me—relief, and just a touch of guilt that I hadn’t come down in time to provide moral support while he was still unconscious.
    “By the way,” I added. “Why is he so far away from your station? Is there some reason you want him right over the ER?”
    “We had to move him after he regained consciousness,” she said, permitting a slight frown to crease her brow. “He was disturbing the other patients.”
    “Disturbing them how?” I had a brief vision of Grandfather howling in pain.
    “Well, so far he’s complained about being left to starve, having to eat inedible food, being awakened for his meds, not being given his meds soon enough, the lack of the Animal Planet channel on his TV, the lukewarm water in his carafe, the bad taste of our ice cubes and—well, I don’t know what else.”
    I winced.
    “And I gather he’s not complaining quietly,” I said.
    She shook her head.
    “Luckily we’re not full up,” she said. “We were able to move him to the far end of the hall and the other patients up this way, so we can have a couple of empty rooms on either side of the hall as a buffer zone.”
    “Sorry about that,” I said. “He’s a pain in the neck sometimes.”
    “He’s a great man,” she said. “A noble crusader for the environment and the welfare of animals.”
    “Yes,” I said. “But that doesn’t make him any less of a pain in the neck, does it? Can I go and see him now?”
    She nodded and returned to her paperwork.
    When I got closer to 242, I heard voices inside. I paused in the open doorway. The room’s bathroom door was to my left, off the small entrance hallway, and at the end of the hallway my view into the main part of the room was blocked by a curtain. Not a full-length curtain, though—I could see two pairs of male feet below it, presumably standing at the foot of the bed. One was a pair of glossy black oxfords whose regulation shine had held up well in spite of a long, busy day. The other was a pair of beat-up sneakers that Mother had been trying for years to get Dad to throw away.
    “Retrograde amnesia,” Dad was saying. “It’s not uncommon after a blow to the head.”
    “What are the chances he’ll eventually remember what happened?” the chief asked.
    “Impossible to predict,” Dad said. “Some people completely recover their memories of the events