Chương 3
Claire pressed her fingers over her mouth.
Owen continued.
“I tried to wake him up. He didn’t wake up the first time.”
“I was medicated,” Charles said.
“I know.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I thought he was dying.”
The room went still.
Claire lowered her hand.
“Owen.”
He looked at her with something worse than anger.
He looked embarrassed.
“I called you.”
She remembered.
Not his exact words. That was the problem.
She remembered sitting in the leather chair with her phone against her ear, trying to understand the resort manager’s explanation about road closures. She remembered Owen tugging at her sleeve.
Mom, listen.
Not now.
Mom.
Please, buddy, I’m talking.
The storm had shut the main highway through the pass. Their planned transfer to the regional hospital had been delayed. Charles’s pain medication had finally started working, and for the first time in two hours he seemed calm.
Claire had wanted five uninterrupted minutes.
That was all.
Five minutes without her father insisting he was fine, without Owen asking questions, without ski patrol forms, insurance cards, signatures, calls from her sister in Denver, and resort staff knocking on the clinic door.
She had said, He’s sleeping. Let him sleep.
Owen had said, His boot sounds weird.
She had answered, Everything sounds weird in this storm.
Then he had wandered toward the fireplace.
She had not noticed him pick up the poker.
Until the first strike.
Charles slowly lifted one hand toward his grandson.
Owen came to the bedside.
“You saved me,” Charles whispered.
The boy’s face broke then—not dramatically, not into sobs. His mouth tightened as if he were trying to keep something inside. He took Charles’s hand with both of his.
Claire looked away.
Snow lashed the windows hard enough to erase the trees.
Marcus and Lena exchanged a glance.
There were still five spiders in specimen cups.
There was still an injured leg inside a partially opened orthopedic boot.
There was still a road closure between them and the hospital.
And now, underneath the first wave of shock, a much less cinematic problem was beginning.
How had five spiders gotten inside a medical boot that had supposedly been placed on Charles’s leg after the accident?
Marcus finished removing the outer plaster.
The question bothered him before he allowed it to become a question.
He had practiced emergency medicine for sixteen years, the last four split between a regional hospital and seasonal coverage at the resort’s private clinic. He knew that unusual things happened in mountain medicine. Patients arrived with tree branches embedded in jackets, fishhooks in eyelids, dislocated shoulders from hot-tub slips, carbon monoxide headaches from luxury rental fireplaces, allergic reactions to expensive food no one could pronounce, and once a wedding guest with a champagne cork lodged so tightly in one nostril that Marcus had wondered whether the man had been trying to inhale it.
Spiders in an immobilization boot was new.
But new did not automatically mean sinister.
The boot might have been stored somewhere warm.
A equipment closet.
A basement.
A vehicle.
The spiders could have entered before it was used.
The inner liner could have remained folded while the outer shell was cleaned.
They might have been disturbed by heat, pressure, or movement after the boot was secured.
Marcus disliked explanations that arrived before evidence, especially in frightened rooms. People grabbed them too quickly.
So he did not speculate.
Instead he said, “We’re taking this completely off now.”
Charles looked at him.
“How much is that going to hurt?”
“Possibly a lot.”
“Appreciate the honesty.”
“I’m going to support the lower leg. Lena will stabilize your knee. We’ll move in stages.”
“Do I get more medication?”
“You do.”
“See, this is why I like you.”
Claire pulled Owen farther from the bed.
“Maybe he should go outside.”
“No,” Owen said.
“The hallway.”
“No.”
“Owen.”
“I’m staying.”
Charles turned his head.
“Let him.”
Claire gave her father a look.
“He just attacked your cast with fireplace equipment.”
“Boot.”
“What?”
“It’s a boot.”
“This is not the time to be technically annoying.”
“Then when?”
For the first time since the spiders appeared, Lena made a short involuntary sound that might have been a laugh.
Claire looked at her.
Lena immediately looked at the medication drawer.
Charles smiled faintly.
“There. Morale improved.”
Marcus administered pain medication through the IV line and waited until Charles’s breathing eased.
The old man’s hand remained in Owen’s.
Marcus moved the blanket aside from the injured leg.
“Ready?”
“No,” Charles said.
Marcus nodded.
“Good enough.”
Removing the boot took twelve minutes.
It felt longer.
The liner clung slightly to the sock where melted snow and sweat had dampened the fabric. Marcus cut the sock rather than sliding it over the leg. Charles grunted twice and once said a word Claire had never heard him use in front of Owen.
Owen’s eyes widened.
Charles opened one eye.
“Medical terminology.”
Owen almost smiled.
The leg underneath looked swollen and bruised, especially around the lower shin and ankle. There was no grotesque deformity. No blood. Nothing that matched the violence Owen had imagined inside the boot.
Marcus inspected every visible patch of skin under bright examination lights.
He found two small red areas near the outside of the calf.
Neither looked dramatic.
That did not make them meaningless.
“Could those be bites?” Claire asked.
“They could be irritation from the liner.”
“Or bites?”
“Yes.”
Charles watched Marcus’s face.
“You’re doing that doctor thing.”
“What doctor thing?”
“The one where your eyebrows become Switzerland.”
Marcus touched the edge of one red spot with a gloved finger.
“What would you prefer my eyebrows do?”
“Tell me I’m immortal.”
“I’m not licensed for that.”
Lena returned from the phone.
“Poison control wants symptoms monitored, vitals repeated, and identification if possible. No prophylactic treatment based only on suspected exposure. Dispatch is trying to reach someone from county public health or extension.”
Marcus nodded.
“Good.”
“They also asked whether we have photos from before removal.”
May you like
“I took some.”
“So did I.”
