Читать книгу Memories are Murder - Lou Allin - Страница 12

Preoccupied by her father, Belle hadn’t slept well and was out of the starting blocks at five with no more than coffee and juice. As dawn broke, she was passing the airport, watching the plume of the Superstack in the distance, the world’s largest free-standing chimney, which supposedly scrubbed the air ninety-five per cent clean of sulphur dioxides.

Slowing down after the Falconbridge Road railroad overpass, before she turned right into Tim’s for another java, she glanced at the large billboard warning about “The Silent Killer” and urging people with gas installations to install carbon-monoxide alarms. Hers was in the TV room. Recently when the window had been open and the van had been running outside, the unit had started beeping like gangbusters. Most houses had smoke alarms, but how many older homes added this precaution?

At the hospital at seven a.m., she talked to the heavy-set nurse in the Emergency Room, bleary-eyed after a long shift and blowing her nose. Belle stepped back from the germfest. “Yes, he was seen by Dr. Cowl, a very sharp resident. Spotted it right off. Pemphigoid, an auto-immune disease of the elderly.”

Not mere blisters, then. Belle put her hand on her chest, felt her heart play timpani. Her blood sugar needed a top-up. “Can they help him?” When she got to the office, she’d check the Internet for treatment options.

The nurse smiled in reassurance. “Not to worry. A regimen of steroids, Prednisone probably, will clear him up fast. He’s a sweetie. Talked on and on about how he’d seen every film ever made.”

Belle laughed. In nearly fifty years of working, so he had. “Then he’ll be going right back to the home?” Routines were so important to him.

“High doses of Prednisone can cause anxiety and other disorienting symptoms, especially in seniors. They’ll keep him here to assess his initial reactions for at least a week. And now I’m sorry, but I—”

“Thanks for your patience.” Belle looked around at the many cubicles separated by white curtains. “May I see him?”

“They took him out half an hour ago for some blood work. I’ll tell him you came by.”

At the office, Belle noticed by the trademark shepherd snore that Baron was making himself comfortable in the back room. He was quiet and well-behaved, despite his manly assets. Was Yoyo hoping to breed him? That was easier for the owner of a male. One-stop shopping, and a share of the pups. Still, he had a few conformation flaws.

Yoyo had settled in. The hustling temp had not only helped unload the Adams place, but like a veteran in the trenches, she had cold-called forty people that week, a chore Belle likened to successive root canals, and lined up four eager to sell. Her outfits had toned down. Today featured a tasteful linen dress (high hemline and Lucite platform heels aside), and she’d nearly memorized the stylebook Belle had loaned her.

“I was still having the worst time with this ‘me’ or ‘I’ stuff with prepositions, until I figured out that if it sounded wrong, it was right,” she said with a comical smile. “Between you and me. Duh.”