For the Sake of the Children

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“Why not go with the mobile units?” she asked. “Surely that would have been the better solution.”

“No. Because for one thing, we’d have to pay big bucks for a lunchroom-size unit, or use several smaller ones, instead. Plus, from a health standpoint, a lot of area schools have had health complaints from students when they do put in mobile units for classrooms, and we get severe weather here in the spring. We’re at risk for tornadoes off any hurricane that might hit. What’s more, I can put that spare hundred forty thousand in the bank toward a brand-spanking new school, which would solve all our problems.”

Had anything he’d said sunk in? He couldn’t tell. Dana twirled the tweezers in her fingers absently.

“Funds for school facilities are limited,” he continued

“Why not build the school now? This building is old. Sure, it’s been renovated, but—”

Patrick scoffed and pushed the chair back into its place. “Because I had no other choice. We just don’t have the money, not without going to the taxpayers with a hefty tax increase.”

“Do it. Ask them. I’ll back you up. I’ll explain how the mold endangers—”

“No! I do not want to start a panic. You have no idea what you’re suggesting. Talking about this would be like crying ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.”

He could deduce from her stubborn expression that she just didn’t get this at all. “Look,” he said, modulating his tone. “If a parent asks, give them the truth. I’m not saying cover anything up. But I’m suggesting that we simply don’t volunteer the information.”

“Uh-huh.” Her voice was flat, the tweezers in her fingers still.

“Let’s hear it from your point of view. What good would it do to sound the alert? Since we have no funds to do anything else beyond what we’ve done.” He splayed his hands. “I’m open to suggestion.”

Now the tweezers beat out a rhythm against the palm of Dana’s hand. “An informed parent is always the one less likely to sue,” she noted. “And suing is what you’re actually worried about.”

“No, it’s not. At least, not the only thing. And I’m insulted that you think that about me. I have two daughters myself.” Patrick found the clinic too small to get a decent pacing going, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. “You met them. You believe I don’t understand the concerns of the average parent?”

“Then think like one!” She pushed from the counter and stood toe to toe in front of him, blocking his pacing. “Remember, these parents don’t have all the information they need to decide whether their kids should attend this school.”

She was so close to him that he caught her scent. Some sort of fruit? Peaches. It was peaches. He shut his eyes and swallowed, trying hard to focus on her words. If he could just focus on the mold issue and not on what scent she wore, he could defend his reasoning.

“That might make a difference in Savannah, where there’s more than one elementary school, but not here,” Patrick stated. “We’re the only game in town, and most of our parents can’t afford transportation and tuition costs to another school.”

“Shouldn’t this school system be offering to help with that?”

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and his hand throbbed even more. How could she look so sweet and say things that scared the crap out of him?

“We’re fully prepared to offer…” Damn. That peaches smell again. He blinked and stepped back. Better. Much better. He could think now. “If you feel we should offer the asthmatic children that option—”

Demon woman that she was, she stepped closer to him again, intent on driving home her point—or driving him insane. “Relax. I was just wondering if that responsibility had completely escaped you.” She appeared yet more disappointed in him than earlier, if that was possible, and that it bothered him confused him even more. “In the long run, it would be cheaper to buy mobile units. At least you’d get them paid for. Transportation and tuition costs are never ending.”

He made an effort to move back to escape her nearness, but the edge of the exam table jabbed into his left kidney.

“You know, you’re talking to the wrong person. I’m only one vote, and most of the time I’m just a tiebreaker. If you’re so passionate about this—” Suddenly the word passionate and the smell of peaches together in Patrick’s overheated brain induced a three-second fantasy about whether she’d taste as good as she smelled.

She didn’t back down. “I am passionate about this. If you’re just the tiebreaker, I need to be talking to the board. When’s the next meeting? I want to be there.”

Man, had he ever muffed this. Either way, whether he said yes or no, he was a big-time loser in this proposition.

“It’s tomorrow night. We meet once a month. I’ll add you to the agenda.” With that, he fled the hypnotic effect of the smell of peaches.

T UESDAY NIGHT FOUND Dana a bundle of nerves. She was never good at public speaking, not since fourth grade when she’d barfed in front of her social studies class during a report on the state of Maine.

Dana had to be honest with herself: she would have run out the door, back home, where Lissa was watching Kate, if Patrick hadn’t placed a hand on her elbow the moment she walked in the door.

He steered her through the lobby, past the Christmas tree and holly the staff had put up, into the superintendent’s office, where Vann Hobbes was gathering up papers in preparation for the meeting. To Dana, he didn’t look like her idea of a superintendent. Aside from his football-player appearance, he seemed far too young to shoulder the responsibility of the whole school system.

“Hey, Vann,” Patrick greeted him. “Anything I should know?”

“Guess not—Oh. That guy from the paper is here. Hope he can manage to get the quotes right this time. Last time he had things so screwed up….” Vann shook his head and gave the papers in his hands a final tap.

Patrick cursed. “Why couldn’t the little pipsqueak have had something better to do tonight? Just my luck.”

Dana saw the mild reproach Hobbes shot toward Patrick. The superintendent swiveled his gaze to her. “Ms. Wilson, you look a little green around the gills. We won’t bite. Promise.”

“I, uh, I’ve never been good at speaking in front of crowds,” Dana admitted.

“Except for the guy from the paper, it’s only me and Patrick and four other board members. Patrick said you had some concerns about the mold and the way we’re tracking the students.”

Dana swallowed. “I do. I still don’t know what possessed me to say I wanted to do this.”

Hobbes grinned. “You’d better watch this fellow. He’ll have you saying yes to a lot of things you hadn’t planned on. He’s got his finger on everybody’s ‘Yes, of course’ button. I’ve known him all my life and I still haven’t figured out how does it.”

He certainly found my “yes, of course” button . Dana pushed away the memory of standing close enough to kiss Patrick, of actually hoping that he might. Which was stupid, stupid, stupid. She’d insulted his whole handling of this issue. Why on earth would he want to kiss her?

But he’d offered her this opportunity to speak out, so maybe he was wishing that if the board heard the seriousness of the situation from someone else, maybe something more could be done. She’d felt vindicated at first by his concession. Then, when the reality of having to speak in public hit her, she’d gotten scared to bits.

Now, in the boardroom, she felt the curious eyes of the other board members on her. From their nameplates, she put the names Mitchell Curtis and Johnny Evans to the men to the right of Patrick, and Gabriella Jones to the lone woman on the board, who sat on Patrick’s left with another man, Joel Gibson.

At least Gabriella Jones accorded her a welcoming smile. Dana smiled back, then glanced around the boardroom, which was big enough for the board table and a few chairs for spectators.

Patrick busied himself with the stack of papers in front of him. Even the faded chambray shirt he wore couldn’t detract from his good looks. Dana tried not to think about how disappointed she’d been at his reaction to Kate, or how he’d protested at her asking for Lissa’s number to babysit Kate tonight.

“I’m not certain she doesn’t have plans. She may have a test or something,” he’d said. But finally he’d relented and given her Lissa’s number.

Lissa had responded enthusiastically, “Of course I’ll babysit Kate.” And she had shown up a blessed twenty minutes early, to boot. Dana had had time to change her mind twice about what outfit to wear.

Not that she was attempting to impress Patrick. She knew better. A guy was not going to be interested in any woman with a child, and she would be crazy to think otherwise.

Patrick must have sensed her peering at him, because he glanced up from the papers in his hands and caught her eye. He hesitated, then treated her to a nod and a smile. She smiled back and forced herself to look away.

The young string bean of a fellow slouched in a chair two seats down from Dana must be the reporter from the local paper. He was doodling along the top of the notepad he had flipped open. Her stomach went all queasy again at the thought that whatever she said might well be in this week’s paper.

Was Patrick right? Could she incite a panic? Or had he just been calling her bluff by agreeing for her to be here?

Dana struggled to cover her nerves by reviewing the notes she’d jotted down on index cards. She peeked at her watch: straight up seven o’clock.

As if on cue, Vann Hobbes rose to his feet and faced the flag in the corner of the room, his hand going for his chest. He cleared his throat and said, “Let’s stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

For the first part of the board meeting, Dana sat through mind-numbing talk of budgets and field trip approvals and the other administrative items on the agenda. She noticed the reporter didn’t bother to disguise his boredom. His notepad appeared littered with more lightning bolts and thunderclouds than notes, and the notes he did have were brief: field trip, operating fund, bus maintenance.

How did Patrick manage to endure this month after month? It would drive Dana nuts.

But the reporter perked up when the superintendent switched gears to the mold issue at the school. At the mere mention of the word mold, the kid leaned over his pad, his pen poised.

His eagerness made Dana choose her words with extra care. “I want to thank you for allowing me the chance to speak to you,” she said, reading off her first index card. She glanced up and saw Patrick staring at her. Her heart skipped a beat. Was this some sort of test?

“Thank you for giving up your evening,” Patrick told her. The comment, and the unexpected kindness in his voice, was enough to settle some of her nerves. “I understand you have some concerns about how we’ve abated the mold we discovered during repairs of the lunchroom.”

“Yes. I know you did the best that you could with the funds available at the time—” Dana was gratified by the way the Patrick’s clenched fist relaxed at her words “—but I’m afraid that the intensive testing you’re asking me to do is not serving its purpose. Without a baseline measure, checking the peak-flow meter readings of asthmatic children is not…well, it’s meaningless.”

Gabriella Jones sat forward intently. “So how do we ensure that these kids are okay and that any residual levels of mold are not affecting them?”

“Um, you can’t. Not really. Unless we can discern trends over the entire testing population, daily tests aren’t any better than weekly tests.” Dana elaborated on the amount of instruction time the children were missing, and she was pleased to note heads nodding in agreement.

Patrick, though, looked grim. He tapped a pencil on the notepad in front of him. “So what are you suggesting?”

“Well, the real solution, the ultimate solution, would be to take the mold out of the equation altogether. I don’t believe that a do-it-yourself project would be effective enough to eradicate all the mold. Plus, you’ve got lunchroom workers and faculty who are similarly exposed. Granted, the faculty and staff are like the kids, minimally exposed because they’re in the lunchroom for brief periods of time. But the lunchroom workers spend their working days in there. This could be…” She glanced at the string-bean reporter, who was madly scribbling all this down. “They have reason to go to OSHA.”

At the mention of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the point on the pencil in Patrick’s hand snapped. His jaw worked, and she could tell that he was holding back what he wanted to say.

“We’ve informed the lunchroom workers and the janitorial staff, and we’ve had no Workers’ Comp complaints,” Patrick replied evenly.

“Yet,” Dana muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said yet. You haven’t had complaints yet. Why not beg or borrow the money to put in mobile units? If this can be done for the troops in Iraq, surely someone can make a school-cafeteria-size mobile unit. Later on, you can sell it.”

Her suggestion was met with silence interrupted only by the thrum of the air-conditioning unit. The board members exchanged glances but waited for Patrick to lead the discussion.

“I agree that we should be looking out for the students’ welfare.” Patrick’s comment was apparently the signal for the other board members to relax. They settled into their chairs, only to spring back to alert with his next words. “Let’s face it. Our elementary school is over fifty years old. We cannot keep patching the old girl together with staples and bailing wire.”