The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [42]
Doris Doyle gave her son an approving look. “I don’t care about that. You’ve done well. She’s a very pretty girl. Complicated, but very pretty.”
Both younger people were at a loss for words. Doris nodded toward Nancy’s left hand. “The wedding ring.”
Nancy’s face turned bright red, making Doris laugh again. “It’s all right, dear. Lives are led all sorts of ways. I’m no one to judge, God knows.”
She leaned over slightly to fetch something by the side of her chair, clearly fumbling.
“Can I help?” Nancy offered.
“No. You better not. There’s some candy they gave me. I keep it in a cup. The treatment swells up your throat a bit.”
She finally located a plastic cup and poured a lemon drop into her thin hand.
“Was it pretty uncomfortable?” Nancy asked.
They were a little farther than six feet apart by now, and she could almost see the pain pulsing at the back of Doris’s eyes.
“It’s nothing much,” the older woman said quietly. “There is one thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
She looked at her son. “Do you remember that pendant your aunt Rose gave me years ago? The heart-shaped one?”
“Sure,” he said, pulling two chairs over and proffering one to Nancy.
“It disappeared. I think I threw it out by mistake when I was cleaning up around here. They had me tying off garbage bags like there was no tomorrow, even for a couple of tissues.”
Ellis shrugged. “Too bad.”
His mother leaned forward slightly. “But that’s not it. I think I can get it back. When they do all this radiation stuff, they keep everything you throw away—all your trash, your clothes, your laundry. It’s contaminated and they have to lock it up for a long time before they can throw it out for real, or they get in trouble with the landfills for pollution. One of the nurses was telling me all about it. It’s very regulated.”
“Did you ask them about it, then?”
“No. I just barely noticed it was gone. I’d taken it off, and I was looking for it this morning because I knew you were coming. Ellis, sweetie, could you see if you could find it? I hate to ask, but . . .”
Ellis held up his hand, already half out of his seat. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m on it.”
He hesitated halfway across the room. Doris knew why. “You can leave Nancy here,” she told him. “I’ll fill her ears about what a problem child you were.”
Ellis wandered down the hallway toward the nurses’ station, unsure of how to proceed.
“May I help you?”
He turned to a woman in her mid-forties wearing a friendly expression. “Are you a friend of Doris’s?” she continued. “I saw you come out of her room.”
“I’m her son.”
She smiled broadly. “You have a terrific mom. She really lights the place up. Can I help you with something? I’m Ann Coleman.”
He touched his throat. “She lost a pendant. She’s afraid she threw it out in one of the garbage bags. It’s a real sentimental favorite.”
Coleman made a face. “Ooh, that’s not good. Does she remember when?”
“Maybe just this morning. Somebody told her you keep all that stuff until it’s safe.”
Coleman nodded. “That’s true. We do.” She seemed to mull something over in her mind for a few moments before finally saying, “Okay, tell you what. This is totally against the rules, but I really love your mom. You have to keep it under your hat, though, okay?”
Ellis held up his hand, pleasantly surprised. “You bet. I promise.”
Coleman led him over to the empty nurses’ station, looked around guiltily, and then opened a drawer under the counter. “I’m actually the floor supervisor here, so it’s not like it’s a criminal act or anything, but it’s hot-water territory for sure.” She extracted a key from the drawer. “I’m not even supposed to have one of these, for example, but it just makes life so much easier. Follow me.”
They went down the hallway to a door marked Stairs and descended a flight to the basement as Coleman continued chatting. “Between you and me, most of the security around the low-level nuclear medicine stuff is a little much. In the old days, they had no idea and I don’t think it killed anyone, but everybody’s so hypersensitive nowadays that they’ve almost started analyzing pencil