By: Betsy J. Bennett
CHAPTER 13
Because of the cast, Olivia wore her winter coat like a cape. Richard, who wasn’t moving easily himself, helped to secure it. “You know, for a doctor, you’d think I’d like hospitals better.”
Her hair was down, around her shoulders, still had traces of his blood. They had not allowed her to shower. He dug through his pockets, pulled out a hair tieback that he’d been carrying with him since the wedding reception. It had not been taken from him as he rotted in that small prison cell, apparently it couldn’t be considered a weapon. He had taken it out, holding it over the long hours in the prison cell, using it to bring Olivia closer to him.
She jumped on it, grinned, as pleased as if he had just handed her diamonds.
“As a doctor, you understand hospitals. That’s why you hate them,” Olivia said. She understood Kimble was leaving a week before his physicians would have him go, but he swore he would take life easy, and Olivia’s reputation had reached this far, and it was understood they would take care of each other. Because she growled that she couldn’t pull her hair back herself, he rescued the hair tie, and performed the action himself.
“They offered me a job, you know,” Kimble said. “Emergency room. They’re desperate.”
“They’ve asked me a dozen times too. I keep wondering if I should, part time, to keep my hand in, see what’s new in emergency medicine. Something’s always changing.”
Kimble had been shocked at the request. Couldn’t imagine why they would want him.
“What did you tell them?” she asked.
“No.” He exhaled slowly, prayed silently that he didn’t need a job, that she wouldn’t deny him because although the police were not charging him with murder, a man died, and she could find fault. “I already have a job.”
“Ready to go?” Maggi asked before Livi could respond, if she were planning on saying anything. Maggi was the designated driver, as Richard had forbidden Donna and Len to come up, and Dr. Olivetti had gone back to New York, leaving with orders that they appear for Christmas. Neither felt up to traveling for Thanksgiving. Olivia’s room felt festive with flowers and Get Well balloons, most from Decker, who also had been ordered to stay away.
Olivia tried to pick up her medical bag, and Maggi grabbed it before either Kimble could.
“We need to stop in at the clinic,” Livi said.
Kimble shared a long look with Maggi, both expecting this, both ready to fight her on it. “No. We need to get home. We’re in no position to be seeing patients.”
“No patients, Richard. Trust me. No patients. The clinic is closed for the next few weeks, but there is something I have to do.”
“It can’t wait?”
“It can’t.”
“Alright, Maggi, take us to the clinic.”
The ride was short, and with Olivia by his side, Kimble felt he was leaving a nightmare and coming home, except here was where the current nightmare originated. Olivia let Maggi unlock the door. Then the nurse stepped aside and let the two doctors in. The wind picked up. There had been Christmas decorations on light poles by the hospital, here there was only darkness, and perhaps despair.
The waiting room looked different, although he had been here dozens of times before the first patients arrived. Then Kimble understood what struck him. A fat black, white and orange calico cat rested on Dora Ann’s receptionist desk, wagging a tail, but showing no other emotion.
“This is Hemostat,” Olivia said, trying to pick up the cat. The sling and the pain from the broken bones prevented her from succeeding, but the cat, no kitten this, purred louder.
“Hemostat?”
“I call her Stat! As in find me that cat, Stat!”
Familiar with cats, although he’d never owned one, Kimble scratched its ears, under its chin. This was a rather pampered feline. “We have a cat?”
“We have a cat. It’s going to spend the days here, in the waiting room, and its nights with us. When you didn’t come back from Wisconsin, Donna ordered Maggi to take me to a pet shelter to get a cat. Donna can be very persuasive.”
“I may have noticed that a time or two.”
“She said what I really need is a dog, but since I’m never home to walk or play with a dog, it would be cruel, and that a cat would be better. Stat likes the clinic, and the patients like her too. She wasn’t here when we were attacked, she was getting fixed, but she’s a member of our family.”
“Kids like cats too.”
“I knew you would see this my way.”
“Still, Hemostat? Couldn’t we name her Purr, or Puff, something like that?”
“No. When I first brought her here, she leapt up on an exam table and knocked off a hemostat. She probably chased that instrument around the clinic for an hour before Maggi took it to be sanitized. Hemostats stop bleeding, and that’s what I was doing when you were gone. Not literally bleeding, but lonely. Donna said to get a cat.”
“Ok. We’ve got a cat, Stat,” he said, liking the image of them as a family with a cat. “Now can we go home?”
“One more thing.”
“All right.” Their baby was fine. He’d seen the ultrasounds, spoken with her doctors. He would make sure she took time the next six weeks to sit quietly, and nestle this unborn child she had yet to feel. He would make her drink milk and eat fresh fruit while he tried to come to terms of becoming a father. There was nothing he wanted more than Livi and a family.
Hemostat. Kimble shook his head, considering ramifications. Maybe he’d choose the baby’s name himself.
Leaving Maggi holding a content and purring cat in the waiting room with only a glance that said ‘stay put’ Olivia took Richard’s hand and dragged him to her office. She found her coin purse, and worked one-handed until she found a penny. “No, that’s not right,” she said, and pulled out a second.
“Put this in the pig.”
He backed up, white and as boneless as she felt. He studied the large ceramic bank, felt bile raising. He had used that pig as a weapon.
Had killed a man with it.
“Olivia, no.”
“Richard, this is important to me.”
“He’s dead.” His muscles ached, shoulder again, the same one that had healed from a bullet wound years before when he had been running.
She could be compassionate, it was her primary emotion. She touched him, gently. “I’m not. You saved my life.”
“I never want to see that thing again.”
“We’re keeping it. It was a wedding present and I like it.”
“I don’t. Olivia, please. Don’t make me say this.”
“What?”
“I’m ashamed.”
His vision became cloudy, unreliable. “I’ve killed. For years I was considered a killer, now I am. I don’t like it. Even though I won’t be prosecuted, I don’t want to be reminded of it. How can I live with myself, knowing every day there is a weapon on your desk that I used to kill a man?”
“Richard, this is important to me. And there is no shame, not for you, not now, not ever. Take that word out of your mind. What you did showed courage to do the right thing, to save lives, my life, our baby’s life. Korl was beyond sitting down and talking it over with a beer. Richard, he was crazed. Handcuffs wouldn’t have stopped him. He would have continued to fight.”
“I swore I would never do the thing the accused me of, never be guilty of the crime. The only thing that kept me sane all those years, Livi, was I was innocent.”
“You’re still innocent of murder. You need to change your perspective. This idiotic piggy bank wasn’t used to kill a man, this was used to save a life, two lives, of people who love you.”
“Why?” Again, his hands shook, his head started swimming as black spots returned. He wasn’t breathing or was breathing too rapidly, he knew the symptoms, but not enough to do something about them. He leaned against the desk, pleased that something in his life was strong, could support him. Someone had mopped up here. There had been blood, he had been certain of it. His blood.
In a fit of rage Richard Kimble had grabbed that ceramic pig, and used it to kill a man. He was grateful there was no blood on it, no smashed skull and hair, no brain matter. Whether there ever had been, he didn’t know. He only knew he had used it as a weapon to kill.
“You have to listen to me.” Gently, but firmly, she grabbed his right hand, held it still while she dropped two coins into his palm. Her actions were compassionate, and damning.
“Put these two pennies in the bank.”
He backed away, one step, two, unconsciously clutching the pennies like he would a life preserver while he tread water in a hurricane. Is that what her life had become to him, two copper pennies, the least significant of all coins, that he would kill to protect? He had a new nightmare, one he didn’t need to be asleep to experience. He had sworn an oath, First do no harm, and he had killed a man.
“I can’t. I should go.” He thought of running, not from the law, from himself. He wondered if he could run far enough, fast enough, to escape these memories of death. Where would he go without Olivia? How could he survive even an hour without her love?
She was empathetic, must have read the tortured emotions on his features. “I love you. You know that.”
“I will only bring you pain.”
“Richard, you don’t have to be afraid of this pig. We are going to use this to celebrate the good work we do in this clinic, every day for the rest of our lives.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible.”
Had there been a time when he thought the death penalty was the worst possible outcome? How much worse was actually being guilty. Did she not understand?
She handed him the note, let him read it, understood the moisture at his eyes, that was identical to hers.
Piggy banks are traditionally used for saving money, but what you do is far more important than that. You save lives. Every day you work at the clinic, not just one life is better, but dozens, and some of those people would not survive without you. Every time you save a life, stick a penny in here, to show yourself what a difference you’re making. I’m sure when you’re ready to retire, there won’t be enough for a lavish lifetime, but there will be a testament to how well you lived your life.
“Do you understand now? We are saving lives.”
“I’ll buy you another pig.” From Kansas or California or Hong Kong.
“This one.” She all but stamped her foot. “I want this one. And I want you, in my life, in my bed, working beside me. Every time we save a life, we’re to put a penny in here.”
His voice was dry, emotionless. He wondered why he didn’t shatter. “How many do you take out if you kill someone?”
She was not violent, had never been violent, but he could see he was pushing her toward it. He’d leave before it got that far. He swore he’d leave before he hurt her any more. But he needed her. Another second, if that’s all he could get. Another second to cherish for the rest of his life the memory of his love for Olivia Olivetti.
“I need you to understand this. You saved my life and the life of our unborn child. No one can doubt that Korl was going to kill me. Tell me you believe that.”
He would have hugged her, if it wouldn’t have caused them both pain. “I believe that.”
“The police said they were coming. I believe that. But they wouldn’t have been here in time. He would have killed both of us. All three of us.”
He stumbled, sat. Her desk chair was not behind the desk, had somehow gotten in front of it. “Yes.”
“Open your eyes. Look, not at what you think, at what is. I see this pig as an indication of the work that we do here, saving lives. Richard, I know you don’t accept this, but you’re a hero. If you don’t want to hear that, I understand and will try very hard never to mention it again, but the pig stays. Every time either one of us saves another life, we’re going to put a penny in there. Is that understood?”
“Livi, don’t ask me to. I can’t.”
“Richard, remember what I asked you the day we got married?”
He wasn’t sure. Shook his head, wondered if she felt regrets.
“I asked you to define courage. What you did that was courageous.”
“Yes.” He wasn’t breathing any easier.
“What you did, stopping Korl, that was courage. You were afraid then. You’re afraid now. I can see that. I am not trying to make you suffer, Richard, I’m trying to make you see. You were afraid and you acted anyway. You didn’t run away. You didn’t hide. You didn’t allow that maniac to hurt me any further. You stopped him. Isn’t that the definition for courage?”
“This isn’t courage, Livi. I didn’t want him dead. I’d do anything if he weren’t dead.”
“No, you stop that. If he wasn’t dead, I would be. Is that what you want? Richard, accept that what you did wasn’t murder. Accept that you saved my life from a madman. Put the pennies in here, and then we can collect our cat and go home.”
His hands shook. He couldn’t deny that. But looking only at her, and not at the pig he would never again associate as a murder weapon, he dropped the pennies in, listened when they clunked as they hit the bottom. There were already a few in there, five, maybe six. He had no idea if they had been inside the pig the last time he held it, but he suspected they had. Her work here at the clinic was nothing short of miraculous.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said.
“It’s a good day.”
“Livi,” he said, regulating his breathing, “It’s a good day.”
“Now let’s go home. The sooner we heal, the sooner we can be back here. This community needs us.”
And wrapped in her love, he took her good hand and went home.
The END