Smoky Mountain Mystery 01 - Out on a Limb Page 3

  She dabbed gently at the blood on his face and neck and hands until she had him cleaned up, then she disinfected his wounds the best she could. Fortunately, he didn’t need any stitches. As Phoebe began to pack up her gear, he slipped his sunglasses and hat back on and, in iconic redneck style, lit a cigarette. That was Leon, smoking with a split lip that had to hurt like the dickens.

  Phoebe guessed it was part of his artistic lifestyle. He was a bluegrass musician. He could play anything. Even as a kid he’d been able to sing and clog like a professional.

  Nobody had been surprised when he’d moved to Nashville. He’d made a good living as a studio musician and eventually been offered his own record deal, and that didn’t surprise anybody either. But one day something happened to him, and he walked away from it all. From the money, the fame, everything.

  There were widely differing accounts of what had happened, but everyone agreed that he came back home a different sort of person than he’d been before. He was reclusive now, and much more somber. And he’d started hanging around with a bad crowd.

  “Is your truck drivable?” Phoebe asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Where’d you leave it?” Phoebe asked.

  “Side road.”

  “Is it insured?”

  “I ain’t worried about the truck,” he snapped. Then, realizing he’d sounded sharp he mumbled, “I ‘preciate yer help.”

  Phoebe offered to drive him home, but Leon said he’d rather walk. As he ambled off, she finished repacking her supplies, disposing of the sharps and biohazards in their respective containers. Then she got back into her Jeep and set out again.

  Chapter 7

  Ivy Iverson regained consciousness at mid-morning. She found herself splayed in a backbend with her head and feet below the level of her waist. Her head was killing her. And her back. She tried to sit up, but failed because she didn’t have much strength. The effort caused the world to spin in a way that made her sick. She threw up, barely able to turn her head enough so as not to choke. Her situation was dire, even deadly. She needed to concentrate.

  She could tell it was daylight, but her vision was so blurry, that was about all she could be sure of. Her body was a mix of agonizing pain and numbness. She reached around her, grasping only air. After a few panicked moments she remembered where she was and stopped thrashing.

  She felt horribly sick and weak. She had no idea how long she’d been hanging there, but she knew if she didn’t get her head up soon, she’d die. Somehow she had to sit up. That was her first priority.

  She bent her arms and tried to fold them across her stomach. Her shoulders and hands were on fire with pins and needles, but her knuckles bumped against something that had to be the rope.

  While she waited for some feeling to come back into her fingers, she tried to bring her feet together and cross her ankles, but she’d lost the ability to coordinate her leg movements. For long painful minutes, she flexed and relaxed her hands gently until she could feel the main climbing rope, then she took hold of it. Slowly, she raised herself by scooting her fists up until her shoulders were higher than her knees. This way she transferred her weight to the part of the harness that wrapped around her legs.

  Once she was sitting upright, she leaned her face against the rope, feeling herself sway. Then, without any warning, she vomited again. Now she was wearing the contents of her stomach all over herself, but in the state she was in, that was the least of her problems.

  It took many tries, but eventually she was able to clumsily work the zipper of her jacket and fasten it around both herself and the rope. This would hold her upright. She tried to raise her hood, but couldn’t lift her arms higher than her chest. Before she could wonder about who wanted to kill her and why, she grew faint.

  Her last conscious thought was that her personal paradise had gone to hell and she had no idea if she’d be able to make it out alive.

  Chapter 8

  The Smokies landscape lay like a rumpled rug some giant had tripped on. No matter where you were going, you had to climb over ridges and then dip down into hollows, over and over again. Cell phone service in the hollows was spotty to say the least. Phoebe would be out of range of a tower for awhile, but when she crested a ridge she might enter an area with service. When this occurred several calls would come in at once.

  Sure enough, as Phoebe topped Walnut Ridge, her phone chirped. She put the Jeep in park so she wouldn’t lose the signal while she returned a batch of calls. They were all from Waneeta.

  Waneeta was the dispatcher at Southern Appalachian Home Health Care where Phoebe worked. Waneeta was a lovely person burdened with a name her mother liked the sound of, but had no idea was spelled J-u-a-n-i-t-a. Terrible spelling was pretty common in White Oak, Tennessee.

  She dialed her office.

  “Hey there, sister,” Phoebe said.

  “Where are ye?” Waneeta asked.

  “Walnut Ridge.”

  “What’re ye doin there?”

  “I just escaped from Wanda’s house. I mean that literally. We had a serious difference of opinion over her course of treatment.”

  Waneeta laughed.

  “Then I found Leon Lowery in the road and I had to patch him up.”

  “They,” Waneeta said, using the local dialect’s gentle substitute for an expletive and drawing the word out, but then her diction and topic made a sudden U-turn.

  “What color is the discharge? Does it have a foul odor? Well here’s what you need to do, get a real sharp….”

  Phoebe wasn’t bothered by the non sequitur, knowing this sort of monolog meant Bruce, their boss, had come out of his office and Waneeta was employing a favorite tactic to make him go away.

  Waneeta, four times married and divorced, was a world-class manipulator of men and Bruce was notoriously squeamish. It was child’s play for her to send him running with explicit talk about body fluids, private parts, or surgical procedures. The only reason a man like Bruce could become a health care executive was because health care had gone corporate and was now run by accountants and computer geeks. Doctors, nurses, and patients were little more than an unruly nuisance to the management of Appalachian Health Care, Inc.

  Lucky for Phoebe and the people of White Oak, Waneeta was an equally wily manipulator of the health care system. She was a genius at the art of medical coding, knowing the right number to use to identify a diagnosis and treatment so as to get a reimbursement for the patient. Insurance companies wouldn’t cover an expense unless the right hoops were jumped through. The system was not logical or reasonable, but Waneeta was smart, ruthless, and extremely determined. Getting reimbursement for legitimate services, whether the system was set up to provide it or not, was like a sport to her.

  There was a high demand for good coders in the medical system, but, like Phoebe, Waneeta preferred the challenge of trying to take care of her own humble community rather than making three times more money working for a ritzy orthopedic surgery group in a city.

  Then, just as suddenly as the conversation veered off course, it veered back again, Waneeta said, “So what happened with Wanda?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Phoebe said. “Let’s just say we’ll need to wait a long time before scheduling any follow-up.”

  “That bad?” Waneeta sighed. “Well, don’t worry about it, honey. I’ll think of somethin.”

  ***

  Phoebe consulted with a doctor about each of her calls. She was fortunate to be supervised by the local family physician who’d been her own doctor when she was growing up. Doc Coleman was in his mid-eighties now and retired except for his supervision of Phoebe.

  On most weekdays they managed to have a meal together at Hamilton’s Trading Center. It was the only place where the rural community could congregate.

  A small group of regulars ate breakfast or lunch at the tiny café and deli that occupied a corner of the store, but sooner or later most of the rest of the inhabitants of White Oak dropped by to pick up groce
ries or catch up on gossip.

  Hamilton’s was an authentic country store that had been in the same family for more than a hundred years. It still had the original wooden floor, antique tiger oak display cabinets with ornate brass fittings, and deep floor-to-ceiling shelves that lined the wall behind a long polished oak counter.

  The floors were severely warped and creaked with every step you took. The outside of the place hadn’t been spruced up in so long, the sign painted onto the side of the building had faded to illegibility. All sorts of things were stacked on the front porch, placed there by the current owner’s grandfather during the previous fifty years. But the old man had been much loved, so the family had never been able to bring themselves to throw any of it away.

  Although it was less than a mile from the park, it wasn’t the sort of place tourists would stop at. That suited the people of White Oak just fine. The café regulars were a handful of mostly middle-aged or elderly farmers, Doc, Phoebe, and anyone else who happened to be passing by at mealtime.

  The store owner, Jill Walker, cooked for the restaurant and deli and lived in the back. She was married, but her husband had left years ago and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.

  Jill wasn’t a very good cook, but she could produce edible, local ethnic cuisine. She cooked more or less as a favor to the men who didn’t have anybody else to cook for them. The store and the restaurant brought in a modest income, but she made most of her money by sewing elaborate and beautiful crazy-quilted coats made from sweaters she bought on sale at thrift stores and Goodwill, earning her the nickname Goodwill Jill.

  Doc always sat at a table in the corner and if she was able to be there, Phoebe ate with him. She’d ask his advice on tough cases and they’d swap stories.

  When she was young, Doc had encouraged Phoebe to go to college and to pursue a career in health care. He’d even given her money for books and tuition when she ran short. So when Doc needed to retire on account of his health, and no doctor could be found to take his place, that was the final bit of motivation Phoebe needed. She came home to take over as much of his practice as she could.

  Now they were happy to be able to catch a meal together every day or so and revel in the trials and triumphs of providing medical care in the southern Appalachian highlands.

  “Hey Doc,” Phoebe said, as she pulled out a chair.

  “Hello there girl,” Doc said. “How’re you holdin up?” Doc knew Phoebe was having a hard time and he searched her face for signs of the strain she was under.

  “Pretty good,” she said. “Better’n Leon anyway. I ran into him on the road this mornin. He’d had some sorta wreck and got his face all beat up. Nothin too serious.”

  “That boy,” Doc said, shaking his head.

  “I know people say all sorts of things about him,” said Phoebe, “but I don’t know, I just like him.”

  “Leon’s a remarkable person,” Doc mused. “His grandmother was a real special lady, too.”

  “I remember her,” Phoebe said.

  Leon had been raised by his grandmother. Not because his parents weren’t good people who loved him, but because he and his granny had a special bond so he’d preferred to stay with her most of the time.

  She was a well-regarded herbalist. And everyone knew she had the second sight. It ran in Leon’s family. In fact, it was fairly common in the insular mountain community. Outsiders might scoff at the idea of being psychic, but the people of White Oak knew better. Phoebe suspected the mists in the Smokies conveyed not only earthly sounds, but also unearthly voices.

  “He never seems to gain any weight, and I worry about that,” Phoebe said. “Of course he smokes like a stack. Please let me know if you think of anything else I can do for him.”

  “I will,” Doc said. “But you’ve got to keep in mind that some conditions are more resistant to treatment than others. And some problems you can’t treat at all. But no matter what’s going on, everybody deserves good nursing care. Sometimes that’s all anybody can do, but often it helps more than anything else.”

  Phoebe smiled. Doc had always told her that nursing was where the rubber really met the road. It was why she’d become a nurse in the first place.

  “I’ve had quite the morning,” Phoebe said, sighing. “It’s only 11 o’clock and I’ve already had to run for my life by way of the bathroom window.”

  Doc laughed. “Some house calls are a lot rougher than others,” he said. “That’s why doctors quit making them. What’d you get into?”

  “Wanda,” Phoebe said, and left it at that.

  Doc nodded, “Diabetics are a different breed. It’s interesting. The disease isn’t just about blood sugar.”

  Doc had accumulated all sorts of stray bits of wisdom from observing life so closely for so many years.

  “Science doesn’t understand much about any disease process. Not really. We like to pretend we do, but all we actually know is how to treat some symptoms. Our science doesn’t give us much meaningful information about what’s actually going on.”

  Phoebe nodded.

  “What’s in a person’s soul matters more than anything else, and yet we don’t pay much attention to that. The simplest truth is that we’re all killing ourselves with our temperament. A person will tend toward being bossy, or high-strung, or depressed, or listless. And this has predictable physical consequences. If we don’t learn to become aware of our moods and take steps to moderate them, we’ll eventually die from our habits. This is where heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and autoimmune problems come from.”

  Phoebe loved it when Doc talked like this. He was a wonderful doctor with deep and wide experience.

  “I’ve been reading up on plant essences and essential oil therapy,” he said. “It’s fascinating stuff. The idea is that we can use plants as templates to nudge the soul in the right direction. Either that or we can keep behaving the same way we always have and rely on mainstream medicine to try to cope with the symptoms.

  “It’s pitiful really. The practice of medicine should focus more on the problems in people’s hearts and minds, before the problems work their way into the body. But I don’t suppose the drug companies wouldn’t like that.” He winked at her and added, “And we don’t dare cross em, do we?”

  They sat in companionable silence and pondered the medical mafia. Phoebe’s glance was drawn to the window over Doc’s shoulder. She noticed a flash coming from a high ridge in Greenbrier. That was odd. It was a particularly remote, nearly inaccessible area.

  Jill came to the table to refresh their drinks and Phoebe pointed and said, “Wonder who’s up there?”

  “Nobody in their right mind,” said Jill, smiling. Then she turned and looked again, serious now, and saw the flashing, too. “Lord help anybody tryin to hike way up there.”

  “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help,” Doc quoted, “My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.”

  Both Phoebe and Jill said, “Amen.” Then Phoebe stood and said, “Well, I’ve gotta be goin.”

  “You take care of yourself,” Doc said.

  She went to the counter to pay for her meal, and Jill followed her to the register. She rang up Phoebe’s lunch on an antique oak cash register, pressing down hard on the tall brass keys. The two women were friends from childhood. They’d kept in touch sporadically during the years Phoebe had been gone and now that she was back, their friendship picked up again as if she’d never left.

  “You hangin in there?” Jill asked.

  “Yeah,” said Phoebe.

  Jill looked at her with sympathy, but didn’t press. “Well, call me or come by if you need anything.”

  Phoebe nodded.

  The bell on the front door tinkled as it opened and two men walked in. It was Lester and Fate, a two-man crime wave and the bosses of White Oak’s underworld. As they passed the cash register, Fate set a heavy brown paper grocery bag on the counter without saying anything, then joined his associate at their re
gular table beside the large front window. Jill looked in the bag. It was full of fresh tomatoes and carrots from somebody’s garden. No telling whose.

  Leon had been hanging around with them recently, but he wasn’t with them now. “Y’all be good,” Phoebe said in the general direction of the men and they nodded politely, without promising anything. Then she went out to her Jeep.

  When she got in she noticed a white plastic trash bag in the passenger seat that hadn’t been there before. She peeked inside. It was full of exotic new antibiotics that were a week or so past their expiration date. It was thousands of dollars worth of pills and capsules.

  God bless those hoods, she thought, whichever of them it was who stole the medicine for her. She hoped they hadn’t hurt anybody to get it. Oh well, she didn’t have time right now to worry with imaginary problems, she had real ones to think about. She’d put it off as long as possible, but now she’d have to face one of them head-on.

  She had to go to Sean’s funeral.

  Chapter 9

  Phoebe had been dating for a very long time without ever losing faith that there was someone out there somewhere who was perfect for her. And she figured they were searching for her. But even the most optimistic people had their limits. Today she was seriously considering giving up on men altogether.

  Neither she nor her most recent ex-boyfriend could be blamed for this current romantic disaster. She pondered whether at age fifty-four the entire concept of dating wasn’t downright unseemly. She asked herself this as she stood next to the grave of the man she’d been on a date with last Saturday, a mere four days ago. He was her latest, now late in the worst possible way, boyfriend Sean.

  She couldn’t really take it in yet, still couldn’t feel much beyond numb shock, but she knew she’d miss Sean. He’d been a character, to use the local euphemism that covered a mind-boggling array of quirks, but he was kind and thoughtful and Phoebe had learned to value these qualities over looks and income-producing capacity.