The nurse found me that way. Apparently Ben had pushed his call button over my stumble in the lavatory, uncertain (as last night's escapade could attest) as to whether I had been okay, or would soon start re-ordering strong drinks.
The nurse did not smile when she saw me standing over his bed, scratching around the bandage on his back.
With a commanding, "Missy, what do you think you're doing there?" she hustled me back over to the gurney, single-handedly lifting me into it, as you might lift a child. While she looked me over, and took my vitals, she spoke.
"This one's going to be a trouble, Mr. Fraser, I can see that right now," she told him, clicking her tongue. "I shoulda been more suspicious when you asked for her to be in here with you. Shoulda realized you been looking for some spice n' activity to vary your days. I'm of a mind to take her out of here right now," she teased as she left my side to see to him.
With a few quick and skillful turns of knobs and body parts that I could not quite follow, she had him righted in his bed, nearly sitting up and facing the window.
"Now you two can plan your adventures face-to-face."
"Thank you, Riva," Ben said. His face still had some red pressure marks from the night before, but they were fading quickly.
"Excuse me," I called after her, "when can I be released?"
"Twenty-four hour observation, Miss Magnolia Davis," she told me, wagging a finger and using my full name. "Then you can talk about taking your sore head home--wherever that is. Doctor will be in to see you--" she consulted a clipboard she had with her. "In about an hour. Don't forget your lipstick."
Which I guess was her way of telling me that the doctor was a handsome sort of man.
When she had gone, Fraser asked me tentatively, in a tone I recognized from the many other times I had heard it used before, "Magnolia? As in the flowering tree?"
"Can we just not?" I asked. "You're only supposed to be subjected to your legal name twice in your life. Graduation, and marriage." I sighed. "If my luck holds--and I pray it does--that means once more and I'm free of it."
"I was only going to say that I thought it was a very pretty name. I haven't heard it before," he said apologetically.
"Oh," I said, as this was an uncommon response. "Uh, thank you."
To hide my embarrassment, I looked around the room for something else to focus on and remembered Vecchio's gun, which I could only hope was still hidden in my coat pocket.
"Where are my clothes?"
"In the closet, I believe. Do you need something?" He asked as though he were able to move and get it for me. Which of course he was not.
"In the pocket of my coat. There's something that belongs to Detective Vecchio."
"Ah," he nodded his head slowly, tightening his mouth and brow. "He retrieved it last night. No one saw, I think." Perhaps he had been wondering when I would ask about it.
"Good," I said, relieved, though I couldn't say exactly why.
"Are you licensed to carry a firearm?" he asked.
"I have a valid hunting license for Indiana and Kentucky."
Silence.
"No. I don't have a permit to carry a handgun." Grief, I must have been worse off than I remembered to have taken someone else's gun. I doubt I could have shot better than to miss my own foot anyway.
Ben didn't say anything else about the gun, didn't ask why I had it, how it had come to be in my possession, or upon whom it was intended to be used. I wanted to confess that I wouldn't have been able to kill her, to say it out loud, but I didn't know how.
"The bullet I took out of the chamber--did he get that?" I asked, feeling more than a little like a teenager out past curfew trying to explain their late return.
He nodded, but remained silent. After awhile he did speak again.
"Do you still want that drink?" he asked.
"What?" The IV had seen to it that I was not especially thirsty.
"The whiskey, neat."
"No," I said. Following with, "No--that is, I don't even drink. I mean, I had some champagne at my cousin's wedding a few--I'm not a heavy drinker. Definitely not hard liquor." I turned to him to further my protest, but saw that he was smiling.
"It was a--" he stalled out on the word 'joke,' still smiling. "Well, where do you think it came from?"
"Watching too many hard-boiled detective movies," I confessed.
