From Brooding Boss to Adoring Dad (5 page)

“I misspoke a moment ago. It’s not cockeyed optimism.” He arched playful eyebrows. “It’s cocky confidence.”

“And I’ll take that as a compliment, because most of my life I’ve fought hard to achieve an honest level of confidence, and if you’re seeing confidence of any level in me, then I’ve succeeded. Which means I’m even more prepared than I thought I was to make this hospital a success.” Sure, she was being a little facetious, but mostly, she meant what she’d said. She’d lived most of her life without any appreciable level of confidence and to be told that her confidence was
showing
was good. Outstanding grades in medical school and excellent recommendations from the medical staff and instructors who’d supervised her notwithstanding, she’d always lived with such uncertainty. Sadly, uncertainty bred poor confidence. It couldn’t have been avoided, because chronically sick children did tend to get tossed around emotionally. Her father had tried to help her through it. So had her childhood social worker, Mrs
Meecham, who’d long since turned into a fast family friend. And her psychologist, the one who’d worked with sick and dying children, had helped her, too. Maybe, though, that tag—sick and dying—more than anything else had held her back. Or possibly it was just the fact that for so much of her young life there had been no sure knowledge of anything. Nothing to look forward to.

Whatever the case, cocky confidence sounded amazing and Coulson couldn’t have said anything better to her if he’d tried. “You sure do know how to turn a girl’s head with your sweet talk, Coulson,” she teased.

“Not to hear my ex-wife say it,” he grumbled.

“Sounds ominous.”

“Some days more than others.”

She sensed that chapter in his life wasn’t quite closed. She’d never really been in a married situation—not as a wife, not even as a daughter of a married couple. Her father was a lifelong confirmed bachelor, and her memories of her birth parents were so foggy they really didn’t count for much of anything. “Well, I hope you’re at a place where there are less ominous days than there are more.” Vague words, but she really didn’t have a right to pry.

“And I hope the same for you, except about the hospital. And in that, ominous for you means bright and sunny for me.”

“How predictable,” she quipped, taking her first glance down the corridor ahead of her. It was long, plain, with a few rooms on each side, and one large multi-bed ward at the far end. Nothing on the walls, nothing on the floors. Not even any bulbs in the light fixtures, she discovered, when she turned on the light. “It’s going to work,” she said, more to herself than to Coulson.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Red. Making the necessary
changes and actually turning it into a functional hospital are two entirely different things.”

“But the possibilities, Coulson … It’s what my children need. Not the trappings they get in the hospitals they usually go to. It’s about the possibilities.”

“And that’s supposed to mean?”

“So many things, but most of all hope. There’s really so little hope inside four cold, white, clinical walls. I want more than that and my children deserve better than that. See, those beds in that first patient room.” She pointed to two beds with typical metal frames. Functional, sturdy, institutional. “There’s no hope in those beds. They look like … typical hospital stock. But think about how very little it would take to turn them into something else, something that didn’t remind the children of what they really were. It might just be as simple as a coat of red paint. Who knows?”

Coulson followed her into the large ward, which would bed the bulk of the hospital’s patients. “And this … it’s hideous. One big, open room. How can that be conducive to healing? Children need private space, a space where they can feel safe, not vulnerable the way they would with who knows how many other children sleeping almost on top of them.” It would divide down into private cubicles, though, and no two would be the same because no two children were the same. It occurred to her that she might even be able to match a child to his room. “Don’t you see it?” she asked in earnest.

“What I see is a pipe dream, and they rarely come true.”

“Did you ever dream?”

“Once. Then I discovered it was more of a delusion. I loved her, thought I’d found the kind of dream of my heart
you seem to think you’ve found in this hospital, thought she was something she wasn’t.”

“And?”

“In practical terms, she tried to suck me dry. Didn’t want me coming back to Jamaica. Didn’t want me working in a free medical practice. Wanted a big house with all the trappings. Wanted a life I didn’t have to give her. What started out as a perfect dream dissolved into a nightmare.”

“Leaving you bitter?”

“Leaving me wiser. Which is what I’m saying about this hospital, Red. You’ve got too many dreams riding on it, and it’s going to break your heart. The things we want most in life always do.”

“Spoken like a true cynic.”

“Spoken from experience.”

“But this hospital isn’t going to break my heart. I won’t let it.”

“And you’re not seeing the reality, just like I didn’t see the reality in my wife. I saw what I wanted to. Fell in love with a vision that wasn’t real.”

“I’m sorry about your marriage, Coulson, but my vision is very real.”

“Then time will tell, won’t it?”

“I suppose it will.” It seemed he’d lost a lot—his wife, his hospital, his dream. The best-laid schemes. Sad for him, but that was him, not her. Her best-laid schemes really were best-laid, whether or not she could convince him. And time would tell … tell Coulson that some dreams could come true.

Continuing down the hall, looking in room after room, nothing was appreciably different. It was a sturdy building, clean, well designed. Even more perfect for her plans than she’d expected. “How many patients will this place accommodate?”

“Thirty-two.”

Just the right size. “Do you think it could be wired for ceiling fans or air-conditioning?”

“Sure. And you can lay down gold tiles, too, if you want them.”

“Bitterness doesn’t become you, Coulson.” She did understand why he was bitter, though, and she truly didn’t blame him because she would have been bitter, too, if this had turned out any other way than it had.

“It does when you disrupt my life.”
And steal my dream.
But he was fighting hard to look on the bright side, even though being here now was throwing him back into the blues. He hadn’t counted on this being so difficult, coming here and finally realizing once and for all, it was no longer his. It was hard to wrap his brain around that fact, hard to eulogize the dream gone dead. Still, his clinic would be better because of the sale of all this and, maybe, from that clinic, he could someday build a functioning hospital. Or, like he’d already warned her, buy this place back when her dream went bad. The truth was, though, he really didn’t want that for her. It hurt, and she was so good-hearted in her intentions. But reality was reality and she wasn’t seeing this situation for what it was. The only medical treatment this area needed was general care for the locals and since that wasn’t her plan, her plan wasn’t going to work. In that, he did feel bad.

Suddenly, he didn’t like being back here. Not the way he used to like coming here. All he wanted to do was finish the tour and get out. “So, at the end of the hall, to the left, is the operating theater. It’s small, doesn’t have any equipment, but I think it can be turned into something respectable. if whatever kind of nontraditional hospital you’re planning needs a surgery.”

“We could. I’d have to make arrangements for a surgeon.

You wouldn’t happen to be a surgeon by any chance, would you?”

“You’re on your own when it comes to a surgeon. I’m a general practitioner. Able to do some basic minor surgical procedures. Definitely not about to attempt anything major.” Another harsh reality for Erin. Getting a surgeon to come out here would be near to impossible. He’d tried, been turned down every polite way a man could be turned down. This area was too far out. The people here didn’t pay, or paid very little. A nice basket of fresh fish was considered ample payment for services, and the surgeons he knew weren’t into fresh fish. But Erin was going to go on believing she would wave a magic wand and produce a surgeon and that made him feel even worse.

The hell of it was, each time one of her dreams failed, it put him right back in the running for one of his to succeed. Yet she looked so … hopeful. It shimmered in her eyes. She was seeing this place as a fully running hospital, not the basic frame of something so impractical. For a moment he considered putting aside his plan and plunging head on into helping her with hers. But he couldn’t. The people here needed more than some dreamy, half-thought-out idea that would never turn into a hospital for children. They needed a full-service medical facility, and he was going to give it to them. That’s all there was to it. He refused to think any other way. “Are you ready for a nyamwich and bammys?”

“You go on,” she said. “I want to stay here awhile longer. Think about what I’m going to do to get this place ready for the children. But thanks, anyway.”

Damn, he hated her hopefulness. Because she truly believed in her purpose, and he didn’t want to take that away from her inasmuch as he knew how it felt to have the hope ripped right out of him. It had been more than two years
and that mess of his former life still returned to tweak him in some little, inexplicable way almost every day. Still, this situation with Erin Glover wasn’t personal. She wanted to do something good here. So did he. Hence the impasse. However, the biggest difference was, his hospital was sensible, and very needed. Hers was a whim, a totally absurd expectation for the area based on factors she couldn’t have possibly thought through. A romantic notion, that’s what it was. And that’s what he had to keep telling himself when he was inclined to get soft and give in. As getting soft toward Erin Glover seemed like an easy thing to do. Too easy.

Erin stood in the doorway of her hospital, watching Coulson walk over to Trinique’s. Watching the little boy dart out of nowhere and shadow him, trying to match him step for step, trying to imitate the swagger she’d already come to know as exclusively Coulson. Cute boy. She’d seen him before, outside Trinique’s, sitting on the step. Hadn’t paid much attention as children scampered everywhere. That’s one of the reason she loved it here. But this little boy … even from this far away, she could see that he adored Coulson. Did Coulson adore him back, though? She wanted to think that he was more than what she saw of his craggy exterior. And maybe he was. At least, the little boy seemed to think so. Kids usually had good instincts so maybe there was something more than met the eye with Adam Coulson.

Before going back inside her hospital, she watched Coulson and the boy a few more moments. Then suddenly all her apprehensions were alleviated in a simple gesture. Coulson reached over and tousled the boy’s hair. It wasn’t much, but it spoke volumes.

“Uncle Serek,” Erin said, falling into the man’s arms. He was a mountain of a man, large, fleshy, a grin so broad his
ears wiggled when he smiled. At least, that’s what she’d thought when she’d been a child. She had been almost college age when she’d learned that wiggling his ears was a trick meant only for her. “It’s so good to see you.”

“Erin,” he said, hugging her the way a father would.

“You get more beautiful every time I see you.”

Serek Harrison was one of her father’s oldest and dearest friends. A man who, over the years, had been wise in his advice on her own treatments. Her godfather, actually, not her uncle, even though that’s what she’d always called him. Also an oncologist and head of the Port Wallace Public Hospital, he was semiretired now, and Erin believed with all her heart she owed part of her life to this dear man. “And the ocean breeze isn’t taming my hair at all,” she said, laughing. Prior to all her various times through chemotherapy, her hair had been more on the brownish side and definitely as straight as a board. Over the course of time, it had turned into a wild mane not completely out of control but close to it if she wasn’t careful.

“It’s beautiful hair,” he said, in his smooth Jamaican lilt. “So, tell me, child. How is my old friend doing? I don’t get very good feelings when I talk to him, and I haven’t had time in the past few months to go to Chicago to visit him.”

Pulling out of his arms, she sighed. “It’s hard to tell. He doesn’t talk about it. But he doesn’t do much of anything nowadays either. He’s totally quit his practice, as well as his position at the hospital. And while getting the children’s hospital up and running has him interested, even that wasn’t enough to motivate him to come here with me. And you know he’s never passed up a chance to come home. But now he’d rather sit in his study, making phone calls, than be here.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I’m worried about him,
Uncle Serek. I’ve never seen him like this and it scares me. It’s like he doesn’t have anything to live for any more.”

“Well, Algernon is a stubborn man. Not prideful, but set in his own ways, and when he’s fixed on doing something—like adopting a pretty little girl child no one wants him to have—you can’t get him to change his mind.”

“That’s the problem. He’s so set right now, and not set in a good way. He says he’ll come down here when I’m ready to make the final move, and maybe he will, but I’m not even sure about that any more. Not sure about anything where my father is concerned.”

“Walk with me, child. I have a patient to see in Emergency. One of our moonlighters, as you call them, is attending one of my Hodgkin patients for a non-related problem, and he wants me to come and have a look.”

“You don’t like moonlighters?” She was referring to physicians who worked various shifts at the hospital but were not regular employees. They were called moonlighters because more often than not they worked the dreaded night shift, the shift regulars liked to avoid when possible.

“We love our moonlighters. Have a very good one I’m afraid we’re going to lose shortly. Or so I’ve just been informed. Of course, if you’re moving to the island permanently.” He grinned. “I can be persuasive, Erin. I’ll give you my time for your kiddies like I’ve already promised, and maybe you can give me a little of your time for my emergency department. Does that seem like a fair exchange?”