The Social Climber of Davenport Heights Read Online Free PDF

hippie nurse looked doubtful. “No, I don’t think—”
    “Now!” I interrupted her, already scrambling off the gurney.
    I was never the type of woman who could easily follow orders. And I was inexplicably desperate to see this man again before he slipped out of my life.
    I jerked the high-tech clothespin off my finger and tossed it on the gurney. Getting out of the blood pressure cuff was more dramatic as the Velcro noisily pulled apart.
    “Wait!” The nurse’s voice was almost desperate.
    “Are you going to try to stop me?” I asked the woman, almost daring her to do so. “Or are you going to help me?”
    She hesitated, as if considering her choices. “Let me get you a wheelchair,” she said.
    “I don’t need a wheelchair.”
    “It’s hospital policy,” she said. “You get in a wheelchair and I’ll take you to see him.”
    By the time she wheeled me around to the other side of the E.R., the staff was already in the process of moving Chester Durbin upstairs to a room. My hippie nurse stopped them abruptly and spoke to one of the orderlies privately. I don’t know what she said, but I was given a dirty look before they pushed the bed back into its curtain alcove and told me, “Five minutes!”
    I thanked them dismissively. The man in the bed was quiet and appeared tired and sleepy. I felt uncharacteristically timid as I approached him, rising from my chair to stand at his bedside.
    “Hello,” I said.
    He squinted at me through rheumy eyes.
    “Are you the endocrinologist?” he asked.
    “No, I’m the woman from the car,” I told him.
    “Oh.” He nodded, offering the slightest smile.
    “I…I just wanted to thank you.”
    “You’re welcome,” he replied. His gnarled, brown-blotched hand slid out from beneath the white sheets and patted my own at the bed rail. “You’re all right now?”
    “Oh yeah, sure,” I answered. “I’m fine.”
    That was not how I felt. I was edgy, nervous, ill at ease. The nurse and the policeman had been right about this guy. He did look very old and unreasonably frail. But I could still clearly recall the strength in the arm that had grasped my hand and pulled me to safety. I couldn’t get things straight in my mind. I wanted to talk about it, get the details, resurrect the chain of events.
    “How did you do it?” I asked him.
    The man gave a shoulder wiggle that passed for a supine shrug. “I don’t really know,” he admitted with a light chuckle.“I guess it was one of those curiosities where in an emergency folks discover strength they didn’t know they had.”
    I had heard about that sort of thing. Tabloid tales of a man who lifts a truck off a trapped victim, or a child who can’t swim miraculously managing to drag his unconscious father to shore after a boating mishap. “Did you see the accident?”
    “No, no, I was asleep,” the man said. “But I guess I must have heard it.”
    “You heard it?”
    “I must have,” he said. “I woke with a start, like when you have a bad dream. I looked out my window and I could see the truck on the wrong side of the road. I just knew I had to get down there.”
    “Where did you get the knife?” I asked.
    “The kitchen.”
    “Why did you get it?”
    He looked as puzzled as I was myself. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I can’t even remember thinking about needing it. I do recall running into the kitchen and grabbing it out of one of the drawers.” He chuckled. “I’d never even been in that room. It’s off-limits to the residents.”
    His words left me with more questions than answers. I wanted the events of my rescue tied up neatly, rationally, in a context that I was familiar dealing with. I was not interested in contemplating any mysterious, inexplicable happening. And I staunchly resisted doing so.
    From beyond the confines of the curtains I heard a familiar voice.
    “I was three strokes off the fourteenth hole at La Cantera last Thursday…”
    David.
    The confusion in my thoughts