by Fields, MJ
“Take it, it’s not going to bite, it’s just a fruit salad. It will help rehydrate you.”
I eyed the thing, shocked and a bit stunned that he’d even bothered to check on me, let alone bring me something. “Thank you.”
“You’re not used to anyone doing nice things for you, are you?”
“My dad and stepmom do all the time.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, finally accepting the water and snack.
“Well, now you have another person.”
“Thanks Doctor . . .” Crap. What was his name? He didn’t have his coat on any longer.
“Montgomery.”
“Right. Montgomery, Ryan Montgomery.”
“And you’re Deputy Sadie Lazar.” I tapped my badge where his eyes were focused. “Keep drinking that water, Deputy Lazar. If you need more, I’m right inside.” Hot doctor took a few steps backward.
“I’m good. Two should be just fine.”
“Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
“Yep, inside.” I couldn’t hold back my smile. “Thanks again.” Dr. Montgomery kept walking backward. “Watch your step,” I warned just before he hit the curb. I wanted to laugh but damnit all to hell, the man was cute. After Hottie McDoctorson had finally made his way back indoors, I slowly drank one of the bottles before getting back to work. If people wondered what cops did all day, this was my answer. We did this. We cleaned up messes caused by idiots and occasionally got to talk to incredibly hot doctors.
* * *
“Hey, chickie.” I waved to Bridget, who was tapping her pen against her desk in irritation.
“Hey! Today’s my lucky day. Harley just came in as well.”
“Where is she?”
“Probably still back in evidence. It takes forever to get stuff checked in.”
“Thanks, I’ll be back by before I leave.” I headed off and caught Harley just as she was leaving the locker. “Bridget said you were here, log anything interesting?” I gave a chin nod back toward the evidence locker where she had just left.
“Same old, same old, I can’t wait for an opening in motors, I just want out of the squad car.”
“I hear you. But I learned real fast that we all have shitty jobs, it’s just deciding which shit you prefer to do for the rest of your life.”
“I prefer not having assholes in the back of my squad car tell me all the ways they want to fuck a pretty thing like me.” Harley rolled her eyes, at five foot nine, she could be intimidating to most men. But when she squinted her almost black eyes, she gave off an evil vibe that scared even me, and she was one of my best friends. “What was that call about this morning?”
“Which one? The one where Colton needed female assistance or the car accident?”
“Oh, shit, you’ve had quite a morning.”
“Tell me about it, follow me while I enter some stuff, there was a fatality at the scene.”
“Yuck.” I proceeded to tell Harley about Wanda and Pammy and then about the accident. “Hold up, Lazar, what aren’t you telling me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you. You . . . you make this clicking sound with your tongue when you’re holding something back, like you have to keep your mouth doing something or you might spill. Spill.”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“There, you’re doing it again.” Harley pointed at me. “What happened with the prostitutes?”
“Nothing, Colton and Dan actually arrested them.”
“Okay, what about the accident? What happened there that you aren’t telling me?”
“You need to give up the entire goal of getting on motors and go for detective.”
“Nice try. Tell me what you’re holding back.”
“Nothing, really. But I did run into the most gorgeous doctor I’d ever laid eyes on.”
“Laid, you said laid.” Harley wiggled her brows.
“Shut up or I’m not telling you anything.” I punched her arm.
“Okay.” She mimed zipping her lips.
“It was a bad situation all around, but he had to get back inside the hospital and I had to finish getting statements and wait for investigators to get there. It had been hours, I was dying of heat, and he brought me water and a fruit salad.”
“Did he give you his banana?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay, okay, did you at least get his number?”
“No. I was on a call, official duty.”
“How about his name? Come on, give me something.”
This was where I needed to tread lightly, Harley was the kind to track him down. “Ryan Something or other. I can’t remember.”
Harley eyed me, she was trying to detect whether I was telling the truth or not. I was consciously trying to avoid clicking my tongue. “No, just Doctor Ryan, that might be his last name.”
“Surrrre.”
I turned so she couldn’t see my face, because I was getting flushed and with my pale complexion there was no covering a blush. “I have to get these forms finished for legal since odds are, I’ll end up being called in for a deposition. I swear, a big part of our job is answering questions for insurance companies so that they can try and get out of paying. Wanna help?”
She held her hands up and quickstepped away from my desk. “I’m out of here. I’ll see you at Bridget’s tomorrow night.” She paused to give me a weird look when I twitched my nose. “What are you doing?”
“Twitching my nose, you know, like on Bewitched. I was hoping all this shit would be done and I would be home and in my bed.”
“Sadie, Sadie, Sadie, how many times do I have to tell you? You’re a bitch not a witch.” Harley stuck out her tongue and raced out of the room before I could say anything in return…not that I would get in the last word. Harley was one of those people who always had a smart-ass comeback on the tip of her tongue.
I got back to filling out my forms so that I could head home.
It was just after five when I pulled my bike into the tiny garage, and almost as soon as I cut the engine, Wasabi started barking. He sounded like a Great Dane, but in all truth, he was just over three pounds. I closed my garage door and then walked into my house. He was waiting right inside the door, ready to lunge at me and bark until I picked him up. “Wasabi, you are so fucking fierce.” I kissed the poodle that forgot to grow. “I can see that Miss Ellie came today and groomed you.” Since Wasabi was the only thing I had to spoil, I allowed his mobile groomer to do whatever she wanted, and she enhanced his badassness by giving him a Fu Manchu beard and a Mohawk.
“I need a shower, but then we’ll eat.” I set him down, and he followed me to my bathroom and waited. Then the two of us had dinner and watched South Park as the adrenaline from the day slowly eased. I was watching the second episode, and when Cartman yawned, suddenly I was yawning. Why was it that yawns were psychological and had nothing to do with being tired? I could totally be well rested and see someone yawn and then, the next thing I knew, I was yawning. Or I could be cuddled up with my dog, minding my own fucking business and not yawning until some cartoon yawns and then boom I was yawning.
Turning off the television, I scooped up Wasabi and headed to bed. Tomorrow was my volunteer day at Kidz Klub, so it was undoubtedly going to be a long one.
Two
Ryan
I was standing outside a curtained room when I felt it. If I had lived in California, I would have said it was an earthquake, but this was Florida. Last I looked, our weather was clear and we had no hurricanes in the forecast. So, like the rest of the staff, I went on alert because we all knew the world had changed in the last few years. Homegrown terrorism was becoming commonplace and mass shootings were a heartbreaking reality.
“Need all available help outside, quick,” a nurse called. “Multi-car accident on Rollins, serious injuries.”
I tried to erase my mind of the memories, the ones that still haunted me whe
n I heard the words car accident. It didn’t matter how many people were wheeled through those doors of the ER, when I heard them, my heart raced for the briefest of moments.
“Dr. Montgomery, are you ready?” I turned to face Polly as she held out a wad of latex gloves and several boxes of gauze.
I rolled my neck side to side as if I were an athlete warming up, ready to compete, the adrenaline flowing full force. With Polly by my side, I raced out the side door and into the bright morning sun. It was chaos—an ambulance was overturned, several cars were on the sidewalk, and a blue Mercedes was practically split in half.
That’s when I saw the deputy, a woman, a pretty female, the first woman I’d truly noticed since my wife had died. I had no clue what it was about her, but I had a hard time taking my eyes off her. And all day, I kept glancing out the ER doors and checking on her.
Let it go, Ryan, you have no time for a relationship, they are work. Between being a single father and an ER doctor there aren’t enough hours in the day.
Unfortunately, my brain and body were not on the same page, because when I grabbed my lunch, I picked up something for Deputy Lazar as well.
I wanted to keep talking with her, but I needed to get back inside, it had been hectic for the rest of my shift.
I opened my closet, which the hospital called an office, and tossed in my lab coat and scrubs. Then I tugged on my regular clothes, having to lean against my desk simply because there was barely enough room to move, it just happened to be large enough for a desk, not a standard-size office desk either, more like a student’s desk. But, hey, there was a bathroom, which was the only thing halfway decent about the closet. I guess they realized that we needed the shower since having to hose off vomit, guts, and even shit was an almost daily occurrence.
“Ryan, how have you been?” I tensed at the sound of his voice but finished locking my office door before I turned. “By your reaction I can tell that you are still no happier to see me now than you were back then.”
“Mike, I don’t have time right now, I’m on my way home.”
“Oh, how’s Callie doing?”
“She’s great.”
“How old is she now?”
“Six.”
“Wow, so big. And you—”
I cut him off. “Yep, I’m big, too.”
“That’s not what I was going to say. I was going to ask how you were.”
It was weird that he would ask me that now of all days when Deputy Sadie Lazar—no. It was only because of the situation. Plus, I was a doctor, so I felt sorry for her having to stand out in the heat. “I’m fine,” I answered.
Ugh. He was giving me the slow nod and that always meant he was psychoanalyzing me.
“Why don’t you come see me?”
“How about I don’t and we say I did?”
“Ryan, you and I both know that our mind being in perfect health is just as important as any other part of the body.”
“My mind is fine. In fact, it reminds me every day that I’ve lost my wife and I have a little girl to raise, alone.”
“Your situation is different. Not every person has to work where they’ve lost their spouse or continue facing the same situation over and over. Every day you see the exact same scenario that you did the morning Deirdre died.”
“You don’t have to remind me, I know what I see.”
“Come see me, please, at least we can catch up.”
Mike walked off and I didn’t bother to clock out. The drive to my house was short, only five minutes, and then I was pulling into the driveway of my two-story colonial. Inside smelled of oregano, but it was quiet, so I went to look for my daughter, who I found sitting in front of the television, ignoring everything around her—including me. I thought girls stayed close to their daddy, but not Callie. The novelty of her dad wore off fast.
“Turn that off and wash your hands, let’s eat,” I ordered and then moved into the kitchen.
“Dadddd, wait, her brothers are bears.”
“You’ve seen Brave a hundred times. Come on.” I waved her toward me before turning to the woman standing at the stove. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, have a seat. I made lasagna.”
“You’re a lifesaver. How was your day, everything with Callie go smooth?”
“My day was fine. Callie is Callie, struggled to get homework done but then a burst of energy to watch television. I swear that girl is going to need glasses if she continues staring at that boob tube.” I smiled at my mother’s antiquated terms.
Before I sat, I washed my hands and grabbed a Coke from the fridge. “Callie, turn the television off and get in here now.” When the movie still hadn’t been turned off after three seconds, I yelled again. “Callie, now or no television for a week!”
Her huff of displeasure preceded the stomp of her feet as she marched to the bathroom to wash up and then continued stomping into the kitchen.
“Hello, sunshine, how was your day? Tell me what you did at school.”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing. I couldn’t do anything because I was in a dress.”
“Then don’t wear dresses,” I replied, as if that should solve that.
“Young ladies wear dresses to school,” my mother cut in. I wasn’t going to argue because, what did I know about what girls wore? Hell, I wasn’t even sure of when the last time I bought clothes for myself was, let alone bought them for my daughter.
“Well, Nana knows these things.”
Callie let out another grumble, and I swore to god she was six going on thirteen. I dreaded the day her hormones went into full swing.
“You had to have done something at school. Even if it was stare at a wall, tell me about it.”
“We worked on our quadrant math,” she mumbled around a mouthful of lasagna.
“That’s horrid.” I shook my head, math today was harder than college calculus. I will never grasp splitting numbers into quadrants and then going square by square just to come up with a simple number.
“Do you have homework?”
“Nana already helped me.”
Thank you, I mouthed to my mother, who gave me a gentle smile in return. Getting more than a few words from my daughter was like pulling teeth.
We finally finished our dinner, and I grabbed my mom’s dirty plate from her. “Mom, why don’t you go on to your house, Callie and I will clean up the kitchen, won’t we, Callie?” I gave my daughter a subtle wink. She knew what this meant.
“Yes.” It was the first time in a while that I saw true excitement in her eyes.
“What are you two up to?”
“Nothing. Promise.” I crossed my heart.
“Nope, nothing, Nana.”
“Very well.” My mom stood, gave us both a goodbye hug, and headed out. It wasn’t as if she had far to go. When Deirdre and I found out she was pregnant, we moved here because the pool house out back had already been converted into an in-law suite. With both of us being doctors, we knew we’d be working crazy hours and would need the help.
Callie peered around the kitchen corner. “She’s gone.” She ran to the television and changed the channel from Apple TV to Apple Radio. God, kids today knew how to work every gadget, gizmo, and app there was.
The sounds of George Thorogood vibrated through the house. Callie slid back into the kitchen, and while I cleaned up, she pulled out sundae cups, ice cream, and a variety of different toppings so she could make dessert while we both sang “Bad to the Bone.”
“Bbbbaaaaddd,” we sang in unison and then laughed.
Once the kitchen was clean and sundaes were made, we moved into the living room and piled onto the couch.
“What do you want to watch tonight?”
“Does it have to be Disney?”
“No. It can be whatever you want. What did you have in mind?”
“G.I. Jane.”
Okay, call me a bad dad, but she liked the movie and knew she couldn’t cuss, so I wasn’t overly worried about the rating. It was about a woman
who proved to people that she could do whatever she set her mind to—like being a Navy Seal. I wanted my daughter to feel like this, I didn’t care what she wanted to do, nothing would stand in her way if I could help it.
“Sounds good.” I pulled the coffee table forward so her little feet could reach it and she could stretch out just like me.
Three
Sadie
“You need to sign in.” I glanced up at Lizzy and glared. Really? I’d been volunteering at Kidz Klub for three years. That was longer than she’d been the director here, but Lizzy still tapped one gnawed fingernail on the counter as she waited for me to add my name on the list.
“Nervous habit?” I pointed to her fingers.
“I do it when I’m thinking.” More like when she was being conniving, but what did I care? I was here for the kids, not some miserable bitch. When Lizzy was first hired as the director, I liked her because she truly did love the kids. What she didn’t love was when she felt that the kids loved someone else more.
I headed down the hall and into the great room where many of the children hung out. The Kidz Klub was one of those places that many people had no clue even existed and would never grasp the importance of its purpose, but for those who did, this place was a godsend. I knew how they felt, I’d been them. Kidz Klub was devoted to elementary-age children who had lost one or both parents.
People say that you don’t remember things from when you’re little and that you only remember what people tell you. But I remember as if it were yesterday. I patted my chest, I didn’t have many memories of my mom, but I remember that night my dad came and told me that my mom had passed.