Blue Like Elvis (7 page)

It bothered me
that I let Cassie get under my skin. It made no sense. She was nice enough. But
knowing what I knew about her background and the blue tint of the blood in her
veins, I couldn’t help noticing a distinct air of superiority. Then again,
maybe it was just my imagination. We’d never really talked. I chided myself for
being so critical of someone I hardly knew. How tacky.

“How did it go
with Dr. Love?” Sandra whispered, leaning toward me.

“Good. What a big
sweetheart he is,” I added, before taking a bite of fried chicken.

Oh my goodness. The
fried chicken was just like Mom’s. I tried the mashed potatoes.
Heaven.
I immediately considered making this a weekly habit after all. That, and
shopping at a plus-size women’s clothing store . . .

“Everything okay?”
Sandra pressed harder, still keeping her voice down.

“Sure.” She knew
I’d stopped by the pastor’s office to say hello. A visit from the daughter of
Jack Colter and all that. “Why do you keep asking?”

“Because your
mascara is smeared and your eyelashes are wet.”

Oh no.
“Bad
enough for a trip to the restroom?” I asked.

“No, you’re fine. Here—”
she said, handing me her compact. I discreetly opened to use the small mirror,
took care of the problem, then handed it back to her.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. We’ll
talk later.”

Yeah. I guess
we will.

“Sandra tells us
you’re new to town,” one of the single guys asked. I think his name was Trevor?
He was kind of cute, actually. Sandy blond curly hair cut fairly short, nice
smile. He looked as if he laughed a lot. I liked that.

“I was born here,”
I answered. “But I’ve lived in Alabama since I was ten. But yeah, I just moved
back a couple weeks ago. I’m working at Baptist. I’m one of the hostesses.”

“Really? I never
would’ve guessed.”

The girls and I
were all dressed alike. “Good one. So you’re, what—a brain surgeon or
something? Being so smart and all?” I laughed at my quick wit, stabbing a
renegade green bean as I enjoyed my snappy comeback.

“Well, actually,
yes. I am.”

Everyone laughed.
Evidently we made quite an entertaining duo, this comedian and I.

“Right, and Sandra
here is the Queen of England. Royalty and neurosurgeon, all at the same table.
Aren’t we blessed?” I laughed again, enjoying the camaraderie.

“Um, Shelby?” Chelsea
said with a big grin. “Trevor is a neuro resident at Baptist. I don’t know how
smart he is, but he really
is
a brain surgeon.”

Trevor shook his
head as he stood, clearly amused. “Nah, I’m not that smart, Chelsea. I forgot
my drink. Anybody need anything while I’m up?” He looked at me. “Some humble
pie, Shelby?”

“Funny. Very
funny.”

And so it went.
The easy teasing and lots of good conversation. Everyone seemed to jump right
in and take part.

Well, almost
everyone.

Cassie stood and draped
her designer purse over her shoulder. “I’ve got to run. I’m meeting Tucker in a
little while at Taylor’s.”

“Ooohhh,” Debra
swooned. “Ring shopping?”

“Oh, whatever gave
you that idea?” Cassie teased demurely, then waved her bare left hand. “Bye
bye. See you all Sunday.”

I focused on the
generous slice of chess pie on my plate, cutting a large bite.
Tucker’s
engaged? Why didn’t he tell me? Then again, what business is it of mine?

“Ah, the life of
the rich and famous,” one of the other guys teased. “Anyone care to make a
wager on carat size?”

“Put me down for one,”
Trevor said. “Wait, make that two. Tucker may not cough it up, but Cassie won’t
settle for anything less.”

“Nah,” Leila
added. “Tucker’s too sensible to spend that kind of money on jewelry.”

I tilted my head
to look at her, wondering how well she knew Tucker. In fact, they all seemed to
know Tucker. And certainly better than I did.

I set my fork down
beside the pie. For some reason, I’d lost my appetite.

Chapter 10

Arriving at work
the next morning, Sandra and I had just entered the main floor when a team of
white coats flew by us, two of them pushing an unusual cart. I noticed everyone
seemed to back out of their way.

“What’s that all
about?” I asked Sandra.

“That’s the Harvey
team. Whenever you hear them paged, you’ll know there’s an emergency somewhere
in the building. They’re all on call to drop everything and run when there’s
someone in cardiac arrest or some other life-threatening situation. Their job
is to resuscitate if at all possible. Which explains why everyone always gets
out of their way. Seconds count. Literally.”

I’d heard them
paged before but never thought to ask. Good to know.

As we entered the
office, Mrs. Baker greeted as she always did. “Good morning, girls.” Only this
morning she sounded terribly congested. As Sandra said hello and rounded her
desk heading to the back office, I got my first visual of our boss. Seated
behind her desk, filing through the new patient cards for us, there she sat . . .
with a Kleenex looped and protruding from both nostrils. I blinked, sure I was
seeing things. Apparently she’d fashioned a nose-stopper of sorts by twisting
the tissue into the shape of a short rope, then sticking each end into a
nostril. I’d never seen anything quite like it.

“Mrs. Baker, you
sound terrible,” I said, wondering if she knew the thing was still gracing her
face.

“I know,” she
answered, sounding as plugged up as she looked. “But it’s just allergies. Always
hits me this time of year when everything’s in bloom. Nothing to worry about.”
She smiled and went back to work.

I made my way to
the back office pressing my lips together. As we all put away our belongings, I
picked up on a considerable amount of snickering from my co-workers.

“What’s with the
Kleenex up her nose?” I whispered to Debra.

“It’s her own
invention. We call it the Schnauzer Stopper. Not to her face, of course.”

“She just leaves
it there?” I pressed. “Even with the office door wide open and hundreds of
people passing by all day?”

“Doesn’t seem to faze
her,” Leila whispered. “It does the job, she can keep working, and all is well
with the world.”

I wasn’t sure I
could keep a straight face, so I tried to avoid her on my way out the door.

Pamela told me she’d
be upstairs in a few minutes. Today was her last day, and we had a going-away
party scheduled for later that afternoon. I really hated to see her go, but
then again, if she wasn’t leaving, I wouldn’t have a job.

My first visit was
to the room of a gentleman who’d had emergency bypass surgery the night before.
I was fairly sure he’d be lights out, but I stopped by anyway, first tapping
quietly on his door. “Mr. Gerard?”

As I stepped into
his darkened room, the window blinds closed tight, the first thing I saw were
his feet. They were sticking straight up in the air. Unfortunately, his
hospital gown wasn’t covering the . . . subject. His hands pawed
the air as if he were climbing something. I quickly turned my back, unsure what
to do. “Mr. Gerard?”

“Milwaukee Tower,
four-five-six-seven-Foxtrot is holding short runway seven, ready for takeoff.”

Oh boy.

“Mr. Gerard, can
you hear me?” I asked, my back still turned.

“Cleared for
takeoff, runway seven-right.”

“Good. That’s
good. Okay, then. I’m just going to leave my card here and if you need
anything, you just give me a call, okay?”

“Copy that. Wind twenty-seven
at ten.”

All righty
then.
I slipped out the door and caught up with Samantha, one of the
nurses. “Has anyone looked in on Mr. Gerard in 903 in a while? He’s coasting at
about three-thousand feet by now. I think that’s a 747 he’s flying in there.”

She laughed. “Morphine
drip. Makes ‘em all loopy. But thanks, Shelby. I’ll take a look.”

I was still trying
to banish the visual from my mind as I stopped in to check on Mr. Underwood a
little while later. “How are you today, Mr. Underwood?”

“Shelby! I’ve been
waiting for you. I wanted to tell you—I got to see Margaret last night!”

“Really?”

He was seated in
one of the chairs by the windows and motioned me over. “Yes! Dr. Montgomery
finally relented and allowed me to see her. He had one of the orderlies roll me
down there to ICU.”

I couldn’t imagine
his reaction at seeing his wife in that condition. “How was she?”

“Oh, she’s fine.
Just fine. Just like you said. Mind you, she wasn’t awake. They told me the
pain medication she’s on keeps her asleep most of the time. But she’s going to
be fine.”

Wow. Speedy
recovery?
“What all did they tell you?” I took a seat in the other chair.

“Oh, not much
really. They were very nice, of course. But without Dr. Montgomery there, I
suppose they wanted to leave it to him to tell me how she’s doing. But she
looked good. Beautiful as ever, my Margaret.”

How sweet was
that? His poor wife, all banged up and bruised and frail, and he still thought
she looked beautiful.

“That’s wonderful.
I’m so glad to hear it.”

“Isn’t it? I hope
to get back down to see her this afternoon sometime. My son should be arriving
sometime tonight. I’ll feel better when he gets here.”

“That’s great. And
I’m so pleased you got to see your wife.”

 “But say, did you
tell me you could help me make some phone calls?” he asked.

“Of course. What
do you need?”

He had a bunch of
papers in his lap—a lap thankfully covered by a blanket. “I need you to talk to
my insurance people. I’ve tried twice and can’t make heads or tails of what
they’re saying. I want to make sure they’ve been notified that my SU-BA-RU was
totaled.”

SU-BA-RU?
I’d
never heard it pronounced quite like that.

“Sure, I’d be
happy to help.”

Or so I thought.
An hour later I was still on the phone with his insurance company. It was
ridiculous. Of course, it didn’t help that Mr. Underwood kept talking to me the
entire time the agent was talking in my other ear. After getting the agent’s
name, I finally hung up and assured my patient they were looking into it.

“That’s what they
all say,” he grumbled. “That’s the last time I ever buy a foreign car, I’ll
tell you that much for sure!”

“Why’s that?” I
asked, confused.

“Those SU-BA-RU
people are no help. A bunch of foreigners, they are. Haven’t got a clue how we
do things here in the good ol’ U.S.A.”

“But those were
insurance agents we were talking to. They don’t work for Subaru. It’s an
American company, your insurance people.”

“Doesn’t matter.
They don’t know what they’re doing.”

 By now my head
begun to throb. I stood up. “Well, I’ll check in later and see how you’re
doing, Mr. Underwood. You should probably get some rest.”

I wasn’t finished
with my rounds but I needed some Tylenol, so I headed to the office. On the
elevator, I ran into Leila.

“Hey, Shelby.
Where are you headed?”

“The office. How
about you?”

She leaned closer.
“To Mindy’s office on Five. Wanna come?”

I’d never been to
the mysterious “office” on Five, so I decided to tag along. Each floor of the
hospital had its own prayer room, a small room tucked around the corner from
the elevators. Pamela had shown me the one on Nine and told me the prayer rooms
were basically all alike. Dim lighting, sofas, chairs, a small desk with a
Bible, hospital stationery and pens, and several boxes of tissues. At the
opposite end of the room, a fake stained glass window, backlit to look like the
real thing.

Leila used her key
to open the door. “Since Mindy keeps supplies in here for the baby pictures she
sells, her prayer room has a lock.”

I stepped in,
surprised to find four other hostesses. “Hey y’all,” they said. Debra was
reading, Tess was doing needlepoint, and Rebecca was curled up, sound asleep.

“Well . . .
hey,” I said, following Leila to an empty loveseat near the desk.

“Welcome to my
happy little home,” Mindy teased, seated at the desk. “Come see my babies.”

There on the desk
and on a rolling cart beside it were a couple dozen packets. Mindy opened one
to show me one of the newborn photographs. “Look at this little sweetheart,”
she said, holding the 8x10 portrait of a tiny sleeping infant, its light brown
face all wrinkled beneath a pale yellow stocking cap.

“So cute,” I said.
“Boy or girl?”

She checked the
information on the packet’s label. “Girl. LaTeesha Lorraine Jameson. Born yesterday
morning at 3:45 a.m. Isn’t she adorable?”

She explained her
work, making rounds to visit the new mothers on her floor, offering them our
usual services as well as the option to buy the baby pictures taken by a
hospital photographer on their child’s first day. Many of the photos weren’t
that great, the babies’ faces all scrunched up in a good cry or temporarily
misshapen from the recent tour down the birth canal.

“The moms don’t
care. They all love the pictures regardless. And I always make a fuss over
them, no matter how pitiful the little munchkins look.”

“This must be the
happiest floor in the hospital,” I said.

“It is. Have they
told you about the Christmas stockings?”

I shook my head.

“During the entire
month of December, every newborn goes home in a Christmas stocking. The women’s
auxiliary makes them out of soft flannel. They’re adorable. The parents always
want pictures of their little Christmas babies in those.”

“What a great
idea,” I said. “Can’t wait to see them.”

The girls rambled
on a bit, telling me some of the other fun parts of the job. I learned that the
hostesses dress in costume on Halloween, making the rounds on the pediatrics
floor.  Then, come Christmas, I learned that we help deck the halls, including
painting a giant Christmas mural on the window of the Madison Avenue lobby.

“You like to
paint?”

“I do. I’d love to
help.”

“Then you’ll be
most
popular. I can promise you that,” Mindy said.

I sat back and
noticed Leila was already engrossed in a Sidney Shelton paperback.

“So explain this
to me. You all just hang out here when you’ve got nothing to do?”

Tess pulled a
thread of yarn from a skein. “Yes and no. Sometimes we come in here when we’ve
still got stuff to do, but need a break. Mrs. B doesn’t like us hanging around
the office til later in the day. So we come here. It’s nice and quiet. Out of
the way.”

“Do you ever get
caught?”

Debra looked up
from her book, some kind of Bible study. “Ohhhh yeah. Major, major
embarrassment. Sometimes a doctor will bring family members in here to discuss
their loved one’s case. Or sometimes visitors or family members stop by for
prayer.”

 “Thus the name, ‘prayer
room,’” I teased. “What do you do?”

Mindy snorted. “They
scamper outta here like a bunch of rats. I’m the only one who’s got a reason to
be here, so it’s not a problem for me.”

Everyone went back
to what they were doing. I bummed a couple of aspirin off Rebecca then leaned
my head back against the sofa and closed my eyes. Except for Mindy’s quiet
humming of Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better,” the room was quiet. I was
glad we could still hear the paging system.
Must be a speaker just outside
the door.

For no particular
reason, I thought about Tucker and wondered how the ring shopping had gone last
night. I still couldn’t understand why the thought of it bugged me. Yes, I had
to admit, it was nice to get reacquainted with him again after all these years.
Especially since he’d grown up and was no longer intent on pestering me to
death. But I had no interest in getting involved with anyone, least of all
Chubby Tucker, so why did it bother me? Why should I care?

Good question.

I woke up half an
hour later as the girls were gathering their things.

“C’mon,
sleepyhead. It’s time for lunch,” Debra said, stashing her book in the closet
Mindy kept locked. Tess stowed her needlepoint in there as well. I wasn’t sure
how I felt about this little subterfuge. It felt a little strange. Dishonest,
somehow.

Then again, it was
nice to know there was some place to go after dealing with naked patients and
insurance agents.