Nursing The Doctor (12 page)

“I appreciate your coming to tell me,” he managed to say in a formal, dismissive tone, and now it was her turn to flinch away from him. “Are you going through to Greenwood for the funeral?”

“Of course I am,” she said passionately. “He’s my father. We didn’t get along, but he was still my father.”

Then her voice broke and the tears came freely.

“Greg, how can you be this way with me, so...so cold, so...unfeeling? How can you talk to me as if I’m some stranger? I’m your mother.” Technically she was, but to Greg it was simply a biological accident. He and Elise had come to a parting of the ways when he was a small child. She’d made it plain then that she didn’t care about him. His love and his loyalties would always be with his grandparents, whether they were alive or not.

As for Elise, it was far too late for her to play the doting-parent role with him. He reminded himself that when he was a very small boy and needed her love and attention desperately, she’d been the one who packed him and his brothers off to live with their grandparents without a second thought. She was young, and three little boys must have really cramped her style.

Then, when the boys had finally adjusted to the change and settled in happily to small-town living, she’d snagged a new husband and decided she wanted them back in the city.

So without a thought for their feelings, without so much as asking them what they wanted, she’d simply arrived one day, packed them up and moved them back to Vancouver, expecting them to accept her overbearing new husband as their daddy.

Greg’s brothers had resisted initially and then made uneasy peace with their new stepfather, but Greg had rebelled. At seven, he’d run away twelve times, trying to get back to Greenwood and his grandparents. When that didn’t work, he’d simply stopped eating, and finally Elise got the message.

Furious with him because he’d bested her in a battle of wills and knowing that her father considered her useless as a parent—Stanley had always been vocal on that score, Greg remembered—she’d had to swallow her pride and take Greg back to her father’s house.

There he’d stayed, happy and content, during all his growing up years, only returning to Vancouver when it was time to attend university and med school.

Over the years he’d seen Elise and his brothers for a week, maybe two, each summer. She’d divorced the stepfather Greg hated and married again, then a few years ago divorced a third time. As far as he knew, she now lived alone.

She’d invited him, but he’d never been to her apartment. Since he’d lived in Vancouver, there were maybe a half-dozen occasions when they met, always at Elise’s instigation. That was more than enough as far as he was concerned. He saw no reason for their non-relationship to change just because he was no longer able to avoid her.

“Greg, you’re an adult now,” she was saying in a trembling voice. “Don’t you think we could at least try to be friends, you and I?”

He held himself rigid, willing her to leave, forcing the terrible sadness and shock he felt over Gramps’s death to stay hidden until he was alone.

“I don’t see much point, Elise,” he managed to say. His voice was flat and emotionless, and he was sure she had no idea what it cost him to maintain that facade. “I don’t need your pity. I don’t need you snatching precious time out of your busy life for me.”

He intended to stop there, but weakness and emotional agony were potent allies. The overwhelming guilt and loneliness he felt made him want to hurt her.

“I really don’t need a mommy at this stage in my life,” he said, sneering. “As you said yourself, I’m an adult. And I’m afraid I’m kinda wiped out at the moment, so I’d really like to be alone if you don’t mind.”

Elise made a sound in her throat, a kind of drawn-out whimper. She thrust her arms into her raincoat and cinched the belt tight.

“All right, Greg. Your brothers are driving through to Greenwood with me tonight. The funeral will be sometime next week. I’ll call the hospital and tell them so you know which day.” She turned and walked out.

For a second he wanted to call to her as she disappeared out the door, her scent still fresh in his nostrils, but the nurse with his pain medication brushed shoulders with Elise, and like a junkie, all Greg could think of was the oblivion that the pills would provide him for a couple of hours.

He gulped them down, far too aware of Elise’s high-heeled boots tapping down the corridor as he waited for the harsh edges of reality to blur.

CHAPTER NINE

“Greg? Greg, are you awake?”

His eyes were closed and he was lying absolutely still.

Lily hesitated, half in and half out of the doorway to his room. She was as nervous as she’d ever been in her life, and she wanted more than anything to turn and run. But if she did, her conscience would only force her to come back again, and then she’d have to go through all the anxiety that had plagued her for the past two days a second time. Better to get this over with now.

He’d been moved to a different room, a private. She’d had to check at the nursing station to locate him, and one of the nurses was an acquaintance. When Lily asked about Greg, the woman confided that he was as difficult to deal
with as any patient they’d ever had.

“We’re hoping we never get another doctor up here,” she said vehemently. “We’ve had some before, and most of them are a major pain in the butt, but your Doc Brulotte wins the prize. We’re praying he gets sent down to rehab real quick. It’s not just staff he’s hard on, either. He’s awful with his family. His mom was here about half an hour ago, and she was bawling like crazy when she left his room. Seems like a nice lady, too. Sharp dresser and attractive. She sells real estate, one of the orderlies bought a house from her.”

Now, hovering at the door to his room, Lily called him tentatively. “Greg?” She pitched her voice a bit louder. “You awake?”

Slowly he opened his eyes and turned his head, and her heart sank. His pupils were glassy, and he had the groggy, spaced-out look of someone who’d recently had strong medication. So it wasn’t a good time to talk to him after all. She needed him wide-awake and alert. It wasn’t fair to tell him about the Hep C when he was too groggy to take it all in. She’d have to come back, but she couldn’t just turn and leave the way she longed to do.

Her stomach knotted and her hands grew increasingly clammy as she moved over to stand beside his bed.

“Hi, Greg.” He was wearing green hospital pajamas that bared his muscular upper arms. The hair on his head was longer than usual, curling around his ears and down his neck. He’d been shaved, but he looked weary and disheveled and disgruntled. And yet, in spite of the cast and the bandages, he was still wildly attractive and very male.

“Hello, Lil.” He used his left hand to push the control that raised the head of the bed.

She considered repositioning the pillows behind him and decided against it. Even when he was drugged, there was no telling what would send him into a temper.

“So, Lil.” His words were slurred. “Are you here to lecture me again on my bad attitude?”

His words were meant to be derisive, but something in his voice reflected the same dejection she herself was feeling.

“I’m not really in the mood to give anybody a lecture tonight,” she heard herself say. “Truth is, I’ve had a rough day.” Instead of leaving it at that, she babbled on. “My niece, Zoe, is two, and she spilled a whole bottle of my brother’s best olive oil on the kitchen floor. It was like a skating rink. It’s almost impossible to clean up, and while we were sliding around in it, my grandmother came charging into the kitchen and slipped and fell. I was terrified that she’d broken a hip or something, but she was fine, just mad at me. I got her and Zoe and the floor cleaned up finally, with Gram giving me holy hell for not watching Zoe more closely.”

Lily didn’t add that the reason she hadn’t been keeping a closer eye on her niece was because she was trying to get her grandmother dressed. It was one of those days when Hannah was at her most contrary, taking off each item of clothing as soon as Lily put it on.

“How old is your grandmother?”

Lily hadn’t expected a response from him, and for a moment she was taken aback. “She’s, ah, seventy-six. She’s got Alzheimer’s, which is really tough because she’s always been so capable and strong. She raised my brother and me after my mother died.”

Again, Lily amazed herself by offering so much information. She certainly hadn’t planned to tell him about her family. “I remember you telling me you grew up with your grandparents, too, Greg.”

“Yeah, I did.” He turned his head and looked out the window. There was only blackness and lashing rain against the glass, and Lily wondered what it was he was seeing in his mind’s eye.

“My grandpa Stanley’s eighty one,” he said in a husky voice after a long silence, and then something seemed to catch in his throat, and he coughed hard. “Was eighty one. He died this morning. Massive stroke.”

Shock rippled through Lily, and for the first time in days, she forgot all about what she’d come here to tell him.

“Oh, Greg. I’m so awfully sorry.” The words were inadequate, but they were all she could come up with. Waves of sympathy and compassion rolled through her; she knew how she’d feel if it were Gram, and tears burned at the backs of her eyes. Without stopping to consider, she reached out and took his hand in both of hers and squeezed.

His fingers closed around hers in a convulsive movement. “Yeah, it’s a shock. I knew he was old, but somehow I just saw him as immortal. Dumb, huh?”

The strained huskiness in his tone and the rigid set of his jaw told her he was near tears. “I feel as if I failed him, y’know, not being there more for him in the past couple of years. I always meant to visit more often, stay longer, but somehow I was always busy with other things.”

He jerked his chin toward an envelope on the bedside table. “Gramps heard about my accident and he wrote me that letter. It came two days ago. He never mentioned feeling sick or anything. All he was concerned about was me. He said he’d drive down soon and make sure the young fellows here at the hospital were doing the right thing for me, which really touched me, ’cause Gramps hasn’t left Greenwood in years. It was a good thing, considering the way he drove.” A sound that was intended to be a laugh but sounded more like a muffled sob came from his throat.

“He was the worst behind the wheel. Everybody in town knew Gramps’s car, a big old black Olds, and they just made allowances. He never signaled, and he’d just abandon it anywhere, no parking zones, reserved parking, whatever. The cops never bothered to ticket him, they knew the magistrate would just let him off anyway. Gramps saved his kid’s life once. Grandpa Stanley treated everybody in Greenwood at one point or another. When I was a kid, I thought he was the boss of the whole town.”

“He sounds like a wonderful man.” Lily wanted him to go on talking, to let out some of the pain if that was possible.

“He was.” Greg nodded, and she could see that tears were perilously close. “I’m even gonna miss his funeral. That’s the toughest part.”

Silently she squeezed his fingers, and again they closed convulsively over hers. “Tell me about when you were a boy, Greg, living in Greenwood with your grandparents,” she said softly.

He’d been holding his body stiffly, but now he rested back on the stack of pillows and closed his eyes.

“It’s the weirdest thing, but when I was a real little kid it seems to me now as if it were nearly always summer there. It gets really hot and sort of still in the interior on summer evenings, and sometimes Gramps would take Grandma and me in the car down for an ice-cream cone. There was an old Italian guy, Mr. Antonelli, who made ice cream in the back of his store.

“Then when I got older, I was on the ball team, and they’d always come and watch my games. Even when I played hockey and football, they were there. Grandma never really got the hang of any of the rules, and he used to get so exasperated explaining them to her. He didn’t have a whole lot of patience. He used to say he didn’t mind fools, he just didn’t want them around him.”

Lily smiled. It sounded as if Greg had inherited his grandfather’s disposition. “You had a great childhood.”

“I did. I was lucky they raised me.”

“I’ll bet they felt that way, too. I know I feel really fortunate being able to watch my little niece grow up. I love having her around and getting to know her.”

He’d opened his eyes again and was looking at her. “She’s your brother’s kid?”

“Yes. Kaleb’s divorced and we have Zoe a lot.”

“You live with your brother?”