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“Not exactly,” Royce said, disciplining a yawn. Blinking, he fought off the drug-induced lethargy. “I want you to find a therapist for Tammy. She has to have been traumatized by all this.”
Dale fixed him with that no-nonsense, lawyer glare of his. “Royce, did Tammy see her mother push you? Is that what this is all about?”
“No. And even if she had, I wouldn’t let anyone badger her about it. She needs to talk to someone she can trust, someone neutral. I mean it, Dale, someone neutral. This isn’t part of the case. This isn’t discovery. This is my daughter. She needs help.”
Dale straightened and nodded. “Right. Sorry. I’ll get on it as soon as I leave here. You know, though, that Pamela’s going to fight us on it.”
Royce nodded wearily. “I’m going to ask my doctor and the kid’s pediatrician to recommend it.”
“That’ll help,” Dale said doubtfully.
The door swung open then, and Nurse Gage walked through bearing a green plastic tray. “Dinner.”
Despite his fatigue, Royce’s stomach rumbled and he smiled. “I think I’m hungry enough even for hospital food.”
“I didn’t know anyone got that hungry,” Dale quipped as the nurse slid the tray onto the bed table.
Apparently unamused, she pointed a finger at Dale and said bluntly, “You have been here long enough. He needs to eat, take his medicine and rest.”
Dale’s thin brows arched. With an amused glance at Royce he stood and threw his shoulders back, emphasizing his height. Executing a smart salute, he winked at the diminutive Nurse Gage. “Aye, aye, sarge.”
She barely spared him a glance as she elbowed him aside, lowered the bedside rail and rolled the table into place, positioning it over Royce’s lap. Royce chuckled. “Thanks for coming by, Dale.”
Defeated, Dale started toward the door, saying cheerily, “I’ll be back this evening.”
“See you then.”
Nurse Gage bent to depress the button that lifted the head of the bed. When his body was adequately contorted, semi-sitting with leg suspended and right arm propped on a stack of pillows, she shook out a thin paper napkin and tucked it into the too-high neck of his hated hospital gown. “Now, then,” she said briskly, “let’s get you fed.”
She lifted the domed cover off his plate, revealing grayish meat and limp, overdone vegetables. Taking knife and fork in hand, she began cutting up the meat. He wondered, with some amusement, right up to the moment she placed the fork in his left hand, if she was actually going to feed him.
Ping, ping, ping, ping.
Glancing at the alarm board, Merrily shrugged into the roomy lab coat she preferred to wear over her simple scrubs. Room 18, Royce Lawler. Lydia Joiner, the charge nurse, groaned.
“Not again.”
“What’s wrong?” Merrily asked, checking her voluminous pockets.
“Eighteen’s on a rampage,” Lydia said, rising from the desk. “Found out he’s got to have surgery again on that leg, and he’s taking it out on the whole nursing staff.”
“I’ll go,” Merrily said, aware that she didn’t have to, since she was early for her shift.
Lydia inclined her head appreciatively. “Thanks, kid.”
Kid. Always the kid. Lydia was no more than three years her senior, but due to her appearance, Merrily was “the kid.” Sighing with resignation, Merrily moved toward Royce’s room. The alarm board ping-ping-pinged again as she pushed through the heavy door.
“Thank God!” Royce Lawler exclaimed, tossing the bell remote into his lap. “It’s about time somebody with some sense showed up around here. Where the hell have you been?”
Merrily tamped down a surge of gratification at his greeting. “I just came on shift.”
“They’ve moved the damned phone again. Every time they come, they shove that table aside and leave it that way, then I can’t reach the phone!”
Merrily pulled the table closer to the left side of the bed and shifted the telephone to the far right edge, within reach. “How’s that?”
He dropped his head back onto his pillow. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“The problem,” she explained, squeezing behind the table to check his IV output, “is that the IV poles are fixed to the head of your bed. I’ll see if I can’t get a rolling pole in here and place it in front of the table.”
“Why didn’t they do that to begin with?” he grumbled.
Merrily bit her lip to quell a smile. “Because you are not ambulatory,” she explained patiently.
“And I’m not likely to be anytime soon,” he complained. “They’re going to put a metal rod in my leg. I won’t even be able to go through the metal detector at the airport!”
She laughed. She just couldn’t help it. He glared at her, but then the furrow in his brow eased and his mouth curved into a wry smile.
“Okay, okay. So it’s not that bad. And don’t you dare say that I did it to myself. My mother has already pointed that fact out to me—not that I wasn’t already aware of it.”
“I understand,” she said. “When did they remove the fingertip monitor?”
“They didn’t. I did,” he declared flatly.
“I see.” She checked his pulse with her fingers. He lay still and quiet as she counted the beats and marked time on her wristwatch. As she retrieved his chart to make the proper notation on it, he lifted his head from the pillow to watch.
“You aren’t going to scold me?”
She didn’t look up from the chart. “Would it help?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. But after a moment he asked bluntly, “How old are you?”
The clipboard bearing his chart fell to her side. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you have to be older than you look.”
She squared her shoulders beneath the crisp white lab coat, trying to conceal how sensitive the subject was. “I’m twenty-six.”
“Holy cow! I’d have guessed eighteen, twenty, younger before I got to know you.”
Chagrined, Merrily snapped, “What makes you think you know me?”
He shrugged his left shoulder and fell back on the pillow. “I know you’re the only one around here with an ounce of compassion. First they tell me to rest, then they keep me up all night with tests. What kind of sense does that make?”
“Fiscal,” Merrily answered succinctly. “The hospital labs are so busy with outpatient procedures during the day that they have little choice but to conduct inpatient tests at night. Hospitalized patients, after all, aren’t going anywhere.”
“Tell me about it,” he mumbled. Then suddenly he announced, “I’m hungry.”
Merrily folded her arms. She’d noticed the “no intake” sign on his doorside clip. “What time is your surgery scheduled for?”
He looked at the ceiling. “Three.”
“Tell me what you want for dinner, and I’ll make sure it’s here when you get back.” She didn’t have to tell him that it was the best she could do.
Sighing richly he seemed to consider, then his eyes narrowed and he said, “Pizza with chicken and shrimp, pesto sauce, black olives, pineapple and mozzarella.” He lifted his head to see how she’d taken that.
Smiling because she knew he thought he’d stumped her, she said, “Number six, Riccotini’s. There’s one around the corner. I’m having the salmon and sun-dried tomatoes myself.”
“Number nine,” he said, tussling with a grin.
“Anything else I can get you? Orange iced tea, maybe?”
“Mmm. About a gallon ought to do it.”
“A number six with a large orange iced tea.”
“And turtle cheesecake.”
“And turtle cheesecake,” she echoed. Chuckling, she headed for the door.
“Wait.” He waved her back toward the bed and indicated the bedside table with a nod of his head. “In the drawer.”
She opened the drawer to find his wallet. “Oh, don’t worry about that.” Ignoring that, he groped the drawer blindly with his left hand until he found the wallet. Flipping it open, he laid it in his lap and extracted a twenty-dollar bill.
“Dinner’s on me,” he said, thrusting the money toward her.
“Oh, no, that’s all right. I was planning on going out, anyway.”
A grin spread across his face. “So? What’s your name? Given name, I mean.”
“Merrily.”
The grin spread wider. “Well, Merrily, I insist on buying your dinner, since you volunteered to pick up mine. No arguments, now. It’s the least I can do.”
Suddenly he stuffed the bill into the breast pocket of her lab coat. Electricity flashed through her, so strong that she stumbled backward a step—and into the corner of the bedside table, rocking it enough to send the telephone sliding toward the floor. She grabbed for it at the same time he did, and while they managed to keep the phone from falling, their arms became entwined. Her gaze collided with his and stuck.
For a moment the world and everything in it stopped. The second hand on the clock of time froze as they stared into each other’s eyes. Then, slowly, he blinked and carefully extracted his arm from the loop of hers. Sinking back onto the pillow, he cleared his throat. Merrily settled the phone.
“What, uh, what time do you think I might get to enjoy that dinner?” he asked, his voice thick.
She tried to keep her tone level, normal. “Best guess, around eight.”
He grimaced and covered his eyes with his hand. “I trust you’ll still be on duty then.”
“Until ten,” she confirmed.
He said, “Good.”
Good. She tried very hard not to let that please her in any personal fashion.
“I’ll, um, be in later to perform the preop.”
He let his hand fall to his side. “Sure. Better you than Nurse Disjointer.”
Merrily ducked her head to hide her smile as she fled the room.
Katherine Lawler lifted her patrician chin and sniffed, silver hair swinging against her nape. “All I said is that it’s a pity he can’t sue himself.”
“That’s what’s wrong with this country!” Marvin, her husband and Royce’s father, proclaimed. “Everyone’s sue happy. Let the blasted insurance pay for it. That’s what it’s for. Not that it isn’t his own fault. He built the damned stairs.”
Royce groaned, wondering desperately where Merrily was with that pizza. He hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of her since he’d returned to his room nearly an hour ago. The piteous sound elicited not a glimmer from his parents.
“You sued your own partners,” Katherine pointed out.
“That was different! I had to get an accurate accounting, didn’t I?”
“You already had an accurate accounting.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
The door opened, and to Royce’s immense relief, his angel swept into the room, carrying two small pizza boxes and a brown paper sack.
“Finally!” he exclaimed on a long sigh, relaxing at last.
Her soft, muted-green gaze skidded right past him. Smiling at his parents, she left the pizza and sack on the bedside table. Briskly, she lifted the head of his bed and moved to the sink to moisten a cloth with antibacterial solution so he could clean his hand, saying, “Your postop exam was fine, so you get to eat now.”
“It’s about time,” he said, though in truth he wasn’t nearly as hungry as he thought he would be. He chalked it up to the drugs that were keeping him comfortable. He’d had a much easier time coming out from under the anesthesia this time, fortunately.
“Excuse me,” Merrily said sweetly to his parents, wheeling the lap table into place. “These little rooms get awfully crowded. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind standing in the corner over there. Just in case. He’s a little awkward with one hand.”
It was all the excuse his parents needed to beat a hasty retreat. Royce could’ve kissed her. Again.
“We’ll let you enjoy your dinner in peace,” his father pronounced, lifting a hand toward his mother.
Katherine kissed the air next to Royce’s cheek and instructed in her long-suffering tone, “Try not to hurt yourself again.”
Then they both went out the door without so much as a glance for Merrily. Glad as he was to see them go, Royce frowned. The least they could have done was spare a word of thanks for the only person around here who actually made him feel better.
“Who do I speak to about getting you a raise?” he asked, closing his eyes in gratitude. “Your timing is perfect. I was contemplating a heart attack in order to get them out of here, but I’m not that good an actor.”
Merrily chortled and dug change from her shirt pocket, dropping it into the drawer of the bedside table. “The look on your face said it all. Who were they, anyway?”
“My parents.”
Her eyebrows shot up, slender, winged things with a hint of gold in their gentle brown coloring. “I guess I should have recognized them, their photos are in the paper so often.”
“Ah, you’ve made that connection, have you?”
“Who hasn’t? Listen, I’m sorry.”
