A Penny for your Thoughts (On Hold)

Chapter Two

“9-1-1. Delilah Crawford, speaking. Please state the nature of your emergency?”

“My name is Caroline Everly.” Caroline hated the tremble in her voice. “I live at 687 Orchid Beach Drive. I need help--for myself and an injured man on the beach.”

“Please stay on the line while I dispatch someone to that address, Ms. Everly.”

Caroline’s hand barely held the receiver to her ear with her shaky left hand. The cottage’s seventy-two degree conditioned air was blasting away. It felt more like the inside of a deep freeze than the inside of a house. She expected her grandmother’s aqua-blue walls to start frosting over any moment.

Her wet dress moved and slithered across her chilled body with every breath she took, sending tremors all over her body. The trembling made the tendons in her broken wrist spasm, sending cramps clear up to her shoulder.

“Ms. Everly, the paramedics are on their way. Please stay on the line until they get there.”

“Thanks.”

“Can you describe both your injuries for me?”

“I was walking along the beach,” Caroline said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. “In the edge of the water, a man lay washed up on the beach. That is how I fell. I tripped over him in the dark. He’s dying, I think.”

“Uh huh. Are you saying there is a body down on the beach, Caroline?” Delilah forgot all about protocol; or Caroline’s broken wrist at that point. “Or, was it an injured man?”

“No, Delilah. I didn’t say it was a body!” Caroline gritted through her own pain to try to answer’s Delilah’s question. “I said, I think he is dying. He seemed to be in a lot of pain.”

Caroline had known Delilah Crawford since she was a just a skinny black girl named Delilah Johnson in her 9th grade English class. “The man was alive when I left him. He about scared me to death when he grabbed my ankle and asked for help.”

“Where is the man now?”

“That’s why I’m calling for help. He’s still down on the beach. I couldn’t lift him.”

“Did the man appear to be intoxicated, Ms. Everly?” Delilah asked, suddenly remembering her protocol. It also sounded like she’d had her share of injured drunks.

“I don’t think he’s been drinking. I asked him that. I thought maybe he’d fell off his boat and swam or drifted in to shore. He’s wearing a life jacket. He said he’d been shot.”

“Are you saying the man has a gunshot wound, Ms. Everly?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who shot him?”

“Certainly not.”

Caroline saw the reflection of red lights on the window curtains with relief. “They’re here,” she said to Delilah. “I’ve got to go unlock the door. Thanks, again,” she said and clunked the phone back into its cradle.  

Two paramedics in black uniforms stood under Caroline’s yellow porch light when Caroline unlocked the door.

“Is this 687 Orchid Beach Drive?” The paramedics were armed to the teeth with every kind of medical equipment imaginable. Caroline knew them both. Orchid Beach was one of those small towns where the population stuck like barnacles for generations.

“Evening, Jimmy. Patty.” Caroline said and stood back for them to enter her grandmother’s home.

Jimmy Chambers motioned for her to sit in one of the chairs at a small table. They examined her soggy cast.