Forever Sheltered Read online

  “Just sayin’ what I heard.”

  I could believe that Charles, virtually invisible to people as he cleaned floors in his blue uniform, might hear things others didn’t. He’d probably seen hundreds of doctors and nurses come and go. Administrators too.

  Charles straightened his ball cap. “Your Miss Tina has a lot of champions. I think she’ll be back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Charles resumed his mopping. “Just saying that money talks around here. And there’s some money going to be flappin’ like a squawking bird when the word gets out that she’s gone.”

  I had to get back to my rounds. If Charles was right, then something would happen. But that man was as vague as a fortune cookie. I couldn’t risk it. I knew who I had to talk to.

  ~*´`*~

  My father’s office was a twenty-minute drive from St. Anthony’s Hospital, and he wasn’t expecting me.

  I did take the precaution of calling his secretary to make sure he was in, but otherwise I felt it better to not announce my intent to see him in advance.

  As I pulled into the parking garage, I girded myself for the visit. We did not have a good relationship. I rarely saw him, even on holidays, as he refused to allow me to bring Cynthia around him.

  My main goal today, the same as any time we met, was to avoid an argument. He had made some terrible choices, and they had cost my mother and my sister dearly. But he wielded a lot of power, and sometimes I needed him for that.

  He wasn’t someone to make your enemy, although I had tried my darnedest in the years after he left my mother and refused to acknowledge Cynthia as his.

  The California Board of Medicine was housed eight hours away in Sacramento, but being on the board didn’t require being there. My father, and his father before him, had a lot of political influence that got them appointed to the right places.

  My face reflected in the mirrored walls of the elevator looked stressed and haggard. It was hard to imagine that earlier that day I had been in the surgical suite with Tina. The last day as emotional as this had been the one when my sister was born and my father had refused to come, insisting the child wasn’t his.

  He hadn’t attended my mother’s funeral either.

  I had to strike these things from my mind, or the resentment would cause an emotional backlash that might hurt me while dealing with the issue at hand. Someone needed to exert some pressure on the hospital director regarding Tina’s job, and my father was the man to do it.

  I had two ways to play it. I could start with self-righteous indignation over my patients’ suffering, but he’d see through that quickly. Still, applying a gloss of professional interest would grease the later conversation, which would be a lie built on truth.

  My father’s weakness was his intense desire to continue a long family tradition of physicians. I was his only son. He wanted to see me comfortably set up with family and kids, whom he could also bully into becoming doctors.

  So, to save Tina’s job, she would have to be exalted to the position of future mother of his grandchildren. She would never even know this behind-the-scenes action was taken on her behalf.

  My father’s secretary, Martha, had been with him since I was a boy, first answering phones at the clinic where he practiced. Even when he left us for Oxford, the move that split our family apart, she had remained with him.

  “Darion, so good to see you,” she said. “Let me buzz your father.”

  “Thank you.”

  I didn’t sit down, but stood by the windows overlooking San Diego. Winter had settled in, gray and dull. But California had its fans for a reason. Temperate weather. Beaches. I pictured Tina in other places in the city, sitting beneath the trees in Balboa Park, walking along the path by the lighthouse on Point Loma.

  Good grief. I barely knew her. I remembered her angry tirade when I spoke to her yesterday. She’d probably just as soon whack me with a roll of art paper as go out on a date.

  But then there was the way she’d stood on tiptoe, leaning toward me like it was a dare. And how she responded, as though we were two swimmers caught in a current.

  “You can go see him now,” Martha said. “He cut his conference call short.”

  I nodded curtly at her. She beamed like I was still the tyke who dug through her bottom drawer for the butterscotch candies she kept for me. She was a lovely woman who had aged well, spinsterly in a handsome way. I often wondered if there was something going on between her and my father, but even after his divorce from my mother, she never seemed to be anything more than an employee.

  I turned the gold knob to my father’s office. He stood up from behind the polished mahogany desk and held out his hand for a solid shake. “To what do I owe this unexpected surprise?”

  “Just wanted your opinion on an issue at St. Anthony’s.”

  He settled back into his oversized leather chair and gestured for me to sit as well. “How is the new position suiting you?”

  “Good. I see pediatric patients as well as the second-onset adults who were treated as children.”

  “That’s a very good subspecialty. Not a lot of literature exists on the long-term genotoxic effects of chemotherapeutic intervention in children. You could really make your mark there.”

  His smile was genuine, a rare thing. I could see something of Cynthia in it, which is what always riled me when he insisted she was not his. It was obvious to anyone who looked, despite the paternity test.

  “It’s a growing population.” I decided to indulge him in his fantasy that I would achieve some medical breakthrough that would give the family name a place in history.

  “Has there been some resistance to your handling both adult and pediatric cases?”

  “Some. But I’ve been approved for the alternate track to pediatrics.”

  Another proud smile. I wanted to wipe it off his face. I hadn’t repeated all that work just to show off. He wasn’t aware that Cynthia was so ill, and that I needed the credentials to remain involved in her care. I wasn’t certified in pediatrics, but my oncology work had gotten me into St. Anthony’s specialized wing to manage both, even if Mayo had turned me down.

  With Cynthia at the hospital, I was fine doing extra rounds, extra work, extra everything. My supervising doctor in pediatrics felt I would easily complete my pediatric hours inside a year if I chose to go that direction.

  I could only hope Cynthia would be in remission well before then.

  “I think it’s a good course. It will lend credibility to your papers on the adult second-onset work. Maybe you’ll find the treatments that prevent it.”

  It was a good goal for someone else. Right now I felt in the thick of battle, and thinking about my own future was for later.

  “But that’s not what you’re here for, is it?” he said. “Do you need someone to supervise this alternate track? I could contact Dr. Libson. He’s done work in that field.”

  “No. It’s not that.” Here was the moment. After all that overblown talk about changing medical history, I couldn’t figure out a way to bring up saving the job of the girl I’d felt up in a dark surgical suite.

  But this wasn’t about her. It was about Cynthia.

  “St. Anthony’s has taken some bizarre stance on social workers and has fired several. One of them was making a huge difference with my patients.”

  My father’s face was impassive and blank, a forced expression I knew well. He braced his elbows on his desk, his hands folded in front of a face that looked remarkably like mine, albeit with a hairline I was sure I could expect in twenty years.

  His voice barely held back his disdain. “And you’re bringing this little staffing matter to me.”

  “The director has a stick up his ass.”

  “John Duffrey is a highly respected hospital director. I expect to see him on this board inside of five years.”

  “He’s being shortsighted.”

  “On social workers?” My father leaned back in his chair. “Leave that to HR.”

/>   “The directive comes from him. He should be corrected.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Why are you taking on Duffrey over this?”

  Time to break out the second salvo. “A woman.”

  This brought out a smile. “Ah. Is the mighty bachelor finally settling down?”

  “Not if she moves six states away.” Nice touch.

  “Is she just a social worker?” He tried and failed to remove the disapproval from his voice.

  Hell, I didn’t know what she was. “A therapist, actually.”

  He touched his telephone, then pulled back. “She should be protected, then.”

  Crap. I was talking out my ass. “Well, she’s more of a layman. The art therapy program.”

  I realized my mistake immediately when his face darkened with disgust.

  “I see you’re still hung up on your little drawings.”

  We were back to that. He had swooped back into my life when I applied to art schools instead of going premed after high school.

  “I went to medical school. I have two subspecialties. Let it rest.”

  He held up his hands. “I’ll let it rest.”

  But he wouldn’t. He knew my love of art came from my mother, and that the years he was gone meant that his family legacy of physicians was salvaged only by his monetary bullying.

  “This art therapist got let go?”

  I tried to salvage my argument. “Yes. Since it’s systemic and not just her, I thought it might need looking into.”

  Now came the expression I knew well. Condemnation. “You realize you’re getting involved in something very serious over something very small.”

  “Not small to me.” I managed to keep my voice straight and even, something he’d taught me well, but inside I knew I had lost.

  “You’re not going to get very far in your career if you take every woman problem straight to the top. If you want this therapist to stay around, then get her to stand by your side.”

  “Right, just like you did for Mom.”

  My words rang off the walls as he stared at me. “I’m not getting into this old argument.”

  “Right, because you know damn well you did the wrong thing. I’m trying to do the right one here.”

  He picked up a pen and began flipping through a calendar, signaling that the conversation was over.

  I wanted to smash my hands on his desk. Make him listen. One phone call from him to Duffrey would get Tina back. We both knew this.

  I hadn’t played it right.

  “It would mean a lot to me personally if Tina Schwartz were reinstated to her position. I’ll go to Duffrey myself if I have to.”

  My father stared at me, impassive, but his eyes flashed in warning. “You’d jeopardize your relationship with a very powerful player at your hospital over this girl?”

  “I would.”

  “Then I haven’t taught you a goddamned thing.” He picked up his phone and began dialing.

  Obviously we were done here. I stood up. “Nice seeing you, Father,” I said.

  He waved me away, looking out the window as he pressed the phone against his ear.

  Disappointment in me was nothing new to him.

  The feeling was definitely mutual.

  Chapter 13: Tina

  By the time Corabelle made it over, Jenny and I were halfway through my box of wine and not making much sense.

  “Drunk by midafternoon?” she said, dropping her backpack by the door. She looked at Jenny. “Don’t you have class?”

  Then she noticed the big pink sofa. “What in the world is this?”

  “My newest acquisition,” Jenny said. Her voice might have been slurred. I wasn’t sure if I was an accurate judge at this point.

  “Frankie buying you things again?” Corabelle asked. She sat delicately on the furry cushions, as if the sofa might drag her into its pink clutches.

  “He won’t stop,” Jenny said. She was sitting on the floor now, her glass of wine sloshing precariously.

  Corabelle leaned down and took the glass. “And it’s in Tina’s apartment because…”

  “I ran out of room!” Jenny slapped the floor. She’d ditched her shiny black jacket and tied the flowing pink mane into a ponytail.

  I wasn’t nearly as drunk as her. Probably. I couldn’t tell for sure. I sat at the kitchen table a few feet away.

  Corabelle got up and came over. “So, they fired you?”

  “Not qualified,” I said. “No certification.” I might have added an extra syllable in there.

  She picked up my wine glass as well and placed them both in the sink. “Are you going to go back to Massachusetts?”

  I laid my head on my forearms. Damn, I was tired suddenly. “I’ll probably marry the doctor instead.”

  Corabelle whipped around. “What?”

  Jenny’s voice had a singsong quality. “Tina and the doctor sitting in a tree…” she trailed off.

  Corabelle sat opposite me. “I’m guessing things progressed.”

  “Yep. Right there on the gurney in Surgical Suite B.” Even though I was talking flip about it, I couldn’t get the feel of his hands on me out of my head. One-and-done. I needed the one-and-done.

  Why had I said something about marrying him?

  No more wine.

  “You had sex with him at the hospital?”

  I lifted my head. Corabelle’s face was bright red.

  “No, no,” I said. “Just, oh, I don’t know. Stuff.”

  Jenny stumbled to her feet. “No orifices were penetrated. I already checked.” She went into the kitchen and retrieved her wine glass. “I mean, I didn’t CHECK check. But I asked.”

  Jenny paused in front of the Pink Monster. “I promise not to puke on the new sofa. You should take it since Tina doesn’t want it,” she said.

  Corabelle shook her head. “I don’t think it’s Gavin’s style.”

  “Little Manny will love it,” Jenny said. “He’ll think it’s a giant stuffed animal.” She paused. “What’s big and pink and furry?”

  “Your brain with Frankie,” I said, and we both laughed so hard I almost fell out of the chair.

  My cell phone buzzed, but I had no idea where it was.

  “I don’t think you should get that,” Corabelle said.

  I struggled to my feet. “But it could be the good doctor,” I said, although there was no way that was true. I’d refused to give him my number. Said I’d contact him. Silly me.

  The phone was out on the coffee table. “It says St. Anthony’s Hospital,” I told them. “Maybe they’re hiring me back.” I fumbled and hit the talk button.

  “Give me that!” Corabelle hissed and took the phone. “This is Corabelle, assistant to Tina Schwartz.” She flashed me a horrible look, but this just made me giggle. I plunked down on the sofa.

  “No, she isn’t here at the moment,” Corabelle said. “Can I take a message for her?” She looked around for a piece of paper, saw none, and snatched up a pen to write on her palm. “Okay, got it. Yes. That’s great. I’ll let her know.”

  “Well, good news.” She set the phone back down. “The director of the hospital wants to see you first thing in the morning about enrolling in some program. Sounds like you may have your job back.”

  No way. Things never went right for me. Somebody had pulled a string. A big one.

  I had underestimated the doctor.

  Chapter 14: Darion

  Cynthia wasn’t in her hospital bed when I checked on her that afternoon. A quick glance at the empty bathroom told me no one was there. Panic threatened to consume me as I jerked my phone from my pocket to call Nurse Angela. Cynthia’s ANC was under one hundred. She had no immune system to help her fight off contagion right now. None. Anything could happen.

  Staph infection.

  Fungus.

  Bacteria.

  God, even the common cold could kill her right now.

  I paced the small room as I rang Angela. She was a nurse. And smart. She would make sure Cynthia was do
uble masked. They were probably outside in the courtyard getting some air. That was safe enough as long as they watched what they touched, who they talked to.

  Angela answered within two rings. “I’m going to have to call the alert code,” she said without any greeting. “I assume you’re in her room?”

  “Yes.” I strode straight out the door. “How long has she been missing?”

  “Ten minutes. Should I call the code?”

  A missing child was a Code Amber to alert the staff. Cynthia was willful and prone to wandering since she knew I was near, so I asked Angela to hold the code unless we had to call it.

  “You checked the art room?” I asked.

  “First thing. It was empty.”

  Nurses looked at me curiously as I passed. I was probably radiating fear. “Where are you now?” I asked.

  “Heading to the cafeteria. She talked about ice cream earlier. Maybe she thought she could sweet-talk someone into some.”

  I didn’t bother to ask how Cynthia got away. The girl was sly. If Angela went to the bathroom, or even nodded off for a few minutes, my sister would find a way to escape her room.

  Particularly to find Tina.

  I snapped the phone shut. I had to bring myself down. I couldn’t seem overly alarmed for a doctor asking after a patient. But my heart was practically beating outside my chest. Why did Cynthia do this? Maybe we would need to put an IV back in her just to keep her tied down.

  I blew past the art room, then slowed down and turned around. How carefully had Angela looked in there?

  I headed for the door. Tina was gone, so it was surely unused. My stomach turned over again just thinking about her holding that box of possessions.

  It opened easily. Like Angela said, the room was silent and forlorn. The walls were blank, and the string to hold drying artwork cut across the room with nothing but clips on it.

  I stepped inside. I could picture Tina standing by the cabinet, clutching a box of paints, so mad at me she could almost spit fire. The grief of the loss of her added to my upset. These past few days simply could not have gone any worse.

  I turned around to head out when I heard the smallest noise, like a sniffle. I paused, listening. Yes, someone was in here.