CHAPTER 4
966 Words
CHAPTER 4
By the time Kennedy left Nick in his puddle of queasy nerves and ran to Carl’s office, Sandy was rushing down the hall from the opposite direction. “What is it, honey?” she asked Kennedy, breathless.
“Carl.” Kennedy could barely get the word out.
Sandy rushed into the room, and Kennedy followed right after. Nick hadn’t exaggerated. Apparently, neither had Woong. One of the bookshelves was toppled over, leaning precariously against the desk. Carl was on the floor at a painfully awkward angle, blood pooling beneath him.
Sandy dropped to her knees and scooped his head into her lap. “Carl? Darling? Can you hear me?” Her eyes were wide, but her voice held no trace of the panic and fear that gripped Kennedy’s heart. “Sweetheart? Do we need to call you an ambulance?”
Sandy glanced over and looked at Kennedy. “Do you have your phone on you, dear?”
Kennedy reached into her pocket. Had she been stupid enough to leave it in her backpack at a time like this? No, there it was. Thank God. “I’ve got it.”
She had already started dialing 911 when Sandy said, “Call the paramedics. Let them know he’s a diabetic. I wonder if something went wrong with his medicine. He was supposed to eat his lunch, but he’s been so busy getting everything ready for this conference, and he’s ... oh, my poor, precious darling.” She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. Either she didn’t notice or didn’t care that her dress was stained. Kennedy tried to figure out where he was bleeding from but couldn’t tell from her vantage point. Were there any gloves in the area? Anything sterile?
Sandy kept stroking his cheek, crooning softly.
“Please state the location of the emergency.” Thankfully this dispatcher, unlike others she’d been forced to talk to in the past, sounded more like a human than a robot.
“I’m at St. Margaret’s Church on Elm Street. We need medical care. Our pastor here’s bleeding. We don’t know what happened.”
“Is the patient conscious?”
“No. He’s lying on the floor. There’s a big pool of blood, maybe nine inches in diameter. Maybe more.”
“Is he breathing?”
Kennedy stopped. Why hadn’t she thought to check? She stared at his chest. “Yes, he’s breathing.” Praise the Lord.
“And the source of the bleeding?” the dispatcher asked.
“Don’t forget to tell them about the diabetes,” Sandy interrupted. “He took his insulin a full hour and a half ago.”
Kennedy had a hard time keeping up two conversations at the same time, especially with her heart racing so fast and her lungs threatening to close in on her.
“I think it’s from his head. It’s hard to tell.” She glanced at Sandy’s dress. Was the blood continuing to pool on her lap?
“Don’t forget ...” Sandy began.
“He’s got diabetes,” Kennedy blurted.
“Is he on any medications?” the dispatcher asked.
Kennedy’s lips quivered, but thankfully her voice remained steady. “He takes insulin. I don’t know what else. But his wife is here. She could tell you.” She held out the phone to Sandy. “Do you mind answering a few of their questions?”
“Of course not.” She took the phone with a dignified kind of grace. “This is Sandy Lindgren speaking.”
Kennedy didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation. She tried to remember what other basic first-aid measures she should take while they waited for the ambulance. Slow down the bleeding. That was the first priority. But how? And with what? She didn’t even know where he’d been injured. Something Woong said ran through her mind. A real, actual fight. Like in those Jackie Chan movies. It couldn’t be that though. There had to be another explanation. Nobody would ever hurt Carl. Nobody ...
She shoved those thoughts aside and opened his desk drawers. A devotional by different Puritan authors. Several folders filled with handwritten sermon notes. No first-aid kit anywhere.
“I don’t think so.” She heard Sandy’s voice over the pulse raging in her ears. “His sugar was a little higher than normal this morning, something like 185 when he first woke up if I remember right. Or maybe that was last night. That’s right. Last night was 185. This morning was 192. I told him he should take one of his pills, but he said he’d check it again after breakfast, except he always forgets ...”
Kennedy searched through his desk. More journals. More books. Another drawer filled with nothing but photographs of his dozens of kids and grandkids.
“Oh, you know,” Sandy went on as if she were chatting with a friend over tea. “The big white horse one. They’re for diabetics. You’d recognize it if you saw it. Shaped like a long oval, have a little number on the side ... no, I’m afraid I can’t remember the name.”
Kennedy wasn’t sure if she would scream or pull her hair out. How could Sandy stay so calm in the midst of this madness? Even if Carl weren’t hurt, his office was as chaotic as Murphy’s Law itself. Books scattered everywhere. His bust of Charles Spurgeon had been knocked to the floor and now resembled an ancient ruin more than the nineteenth- century preacher. She knelt down and rummaged through the mess. At this point, she didn’t even know what she was looking for. Medicine bottles so they could tell the paramedics exactly what Carl was taking? Gloves so she could check his injuries without risking infection? A church the size of St. Margaret’s would have a first-aid kit somewhere. But wait. What was ...
“The bleeding?” Sandy asked the dispatcher. “Well, let’s see. I’ve got his head on my lap, and it looks like there’s some blood on me now, so I wonder if maybe he got dizzy when his blood sugar dropped and fell and hit his head.” She paused. “Well, I’m glad to hear that.” She pulled the phone away from her ear and whispered to Kennedy, “The ambulance is only a few minutes away.”
Kennedy stood frozen over the object she’d found. She didn’t dare touch the thing but stared at it with a mix of both horror and incredulity. She tried to find the words to tell Sandy what she’d discovered.
“I’m sorry, what was that, dear?” Sandy asked.
Kennedy pointed to the heavy bookend. The bookend that was partially chipped and had bright red blood streaking across it.
“I said tell them to send the police, too. This might not have been an accident.”
- Writer
