The Doctor's Guardian

by Marie Ferrarella

  That was when a passing orderly she was marginally familiar with saw her. Gerald Mayfield came running over to offer his help. Taking both her hands as gently as possible, he succeeded in getting her up to her feet.

  The next moment, the man who’d gotten her out in the first place was using his arms to vault himself off the roof of the same elevator car.

  She swung around to look at him. There was a half-amused smile on his lips.

  “Was it good for you?” he asked. “It was good for me.”

  “Getting out was wonderful for me,” she answered, focusing only on the literal interpretation of his question. Nika stopped to take a deep breath before saying anything else. “Who are you?” she asked again, repeating what she’d asked him when he’d burst upside down into the elevator car.

  “Are you all right, Doctor Pulaski?” Gerald asked, concerned. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was interrupting her.

  “Yes, thank you, I am.” Nika started to brush herself off with the flat of her hand, resigned to the fact that it was futile. “And thanks to you,” she added, turning to look at the man who had gone out of his way to extricate her from the elevator.

  “Before you think I’m just some random do-gooder,” he told her, brushing aside her thanks, “I want you to know that I had an ulterior motive for getting you out of there.”

  He caught her completely by surprise with that one. Just what kind of an ulterior motive was he talking about? She did her best to seem both game and ever-so-slightly on her guard.

  He saw a ray of uncertain suspicion enter her eyes. Good. He didn’t think much of people who were too naive to be suspicious. Better safe than sorry.

  “You were on your way to see Ericka Baker when the elevator died on you, right?”

  She eyed him quizzically. “How would you know something like that?”

  Was this a new doctor on the staff whom she hadn’t met yet? At this point, she had a nodding acquaintance with most of the physicians at Patience Memorial, but a few might have slipped her attention. Although, looking at this one—especially right side up—she couldn’t see how that was possible.

  “Did the chief of staff send you to the Geriatric Unit?” she asked.

  God knew she could use the help, and it wasn’t because she didn’t know what she was doing. She’d worked summers while attending both undergraduate school and medical school and each position she took involved working with seniors, both veterans and private citizens, in various different hospitals. She had a very soft spot in her heart for the elderly, but there were only so many bedsides she could be at during the course of a single day. Nika was completely overwhelmed by the amount of work there was, and right now there were only two physicians in the unit to shoulder that work.

  “No.” Busy trying to remove several grease spots from his slacks with his handkerchief, Cole raised his head in time to see the look of disappointment on her face. “Ericka Baker’s my grandmother.”

  Giving his slacks one more pass with the handkerchief, he frowned, gave up and shoved the oil-smudged item back into his pocket again.

  “Oh.” She focused on the bright side. He might not be here to help her with the patient load, but he’d come to her aid nonetheless. “I guess it’s lucky for me that you’re so interested in her welfare.”

  He nodded his head, dismissing what sounded like the beginning of a thank-you speech.

  “So—” He gave her a quick once-over. “Do you need some time to pull yourself together?”

  Except for a few smudges here and there, she certainly didn’t look as if she needed to pull herself together, he thought. But he’d learned a long time ago that he couldn’t go by appearances when it came to women. They had their own set of unique rules.

  She slipped on the lab coat that she’d tied around her waist earlier, hoping she looked presentable. “No, I’m fine,” she assured him. “As long as your grandmother doesn’t scare easily.”

  To his recollection, he’d never even seen his grandmother worried, much less scared. “She has nerves of steel.”

  Nika laughed shortly. He found the sound had a nice, soothing ring to it.

  “That puts your grandmother one up on me,” Nika told him. She glanced down at her hands. There were streaks across the top of each of them. “I just need to wash my hands and I’ll be ready to go.” The orderly retreated back to what he was doing when he’d stopped to help, and Nika paused for a moment as she got a good look at her rescuer’s slacks. She felt instantly guilty. “Oh, your pants.”

  Cole looked down at them himself, checking to see if they had somehow gotten worse in the last minute. Sadly, the grease stains on each leg were just as vivid.

  “Guess the crease isn’t as sharp as it could be,” he cracked.

  “I was looking at the grease,” Nika said before she realized he was being sarcastic. Getting them cleaned was her responsibility, she thought. “Give them to me.”

  “My pants?” he questioned, looking at her in surprise. Just what kind of a doctor was going to be treating his grandmother?

  “Oh, I don’t mean now,” she explained quickly. Not quickly enough, she gathered, judging by his expression. “I mean, the next time you come back here to see your grandmother. I’ll send them to the cleaners—or you can send them to the cleaners and just give me the bill.”

  He waved away her words. He could pay for his own dry cleaning. Or just toss the slacks away if it came down to that. The only thing this woman owed him was taking care of his grandmother.

  “That’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not,” she insisted firmly. He stopped walking for a moment and looked at her. She couldn’t tell if he was impressed or annoyed. Either way, she pressed on. “You wouldn’t have gotten that way if you hadn’t come to my rescue. I believe in paying my debts, Mr. Baker.”

  “That’s detective,” he corrected her.

  She’s resumed walking and now it was her turn to stop first. “Mr. Detective?” she questioned, her brow furrowing.

  “Detective Baker.” Who the hell called anyone “Mr.” Detective? He scrutinized her closely. Had she hit her head when the elevator had initially come to a stop? “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” She was slightly embarrassed. “I’m just a little out of sync, that’s all. It’s not every day I get to climb up a man’s torso to get out of an elevator car and into an elevator shaft,” she told him in her own defense. “I’ll be at the top of my game in a couple of minutes,” she promised.

  His eyes narrowed as he focused on her. “And just exactly what does this ‘game’ involve?” Cole asked.

  She really was having trouble putting her thoughts into words this morning. Getting trapped in the elevator didn’t have anything to do with it. Pulling double shifts, however, did. Someday, she would catch up on her rest and sleep for a week.

  “Poor choice of words,” she acknowledged. “The only ‘game’ in town, as far as I’m concerned, is making sure that your grandmother leaves the hospital healthier than when she came in.” I might as well make use of this man being here, Nika thought as they turned a corner down the corridor. “Can you tell me briefly what her complaints are?”

  She peered at his face as she asked the question and was rewarded to see the corners of his mouth curve ever so slightly.

  The word “complaint” triggered memories of the last conversation he’d had with his grandmother before he discovered her neglected medication. “You mean other than the fact that they brought Becky Warren back from the dead?”

  Nika stopped abruptly just shy of Ericka Baker’s single care unit and stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Becky Warren,” he repeated. “The town ‘harlot,’ to quote my grandmother.” And then he filled her in on the joke. “My grandmother watches Living the Good Life faithfully,” he said, naming his grandmother’s favorite soap opera. “Has for the last fifteen years. It’s her only weakness—or vice. That and dark chocolate with cocon
ut,” he added. “Otherwise, she’s a trouper who doesn’t complain. I wouldn’t have known about her heart condition if I hadn’t been there for one of her ‘episodes.’” He vividly remembered fearing the worst as he saw his grandmother clutch her chest, the side of her neck throbbing wildly. “Scared the hell out of me,” he said as he pushed open the door to his grandmother’s room. “I got her to go see Dr. Goodfellow.”

  Nika nodded as she walked into Ericka’s room. “Good choice. He’s one of the top cardiologists in the state,” she informed him.

  At the sound of their voices, the woman in the hospital bed turned her head toward them. The look on her finely lined face was affectionate disapproval as sharp, sapphire-blue eyes swept over the dirt and grease on Cole’s clothes.

  She shook her head. “Have you been making mud pies again, Coleman?” she asked.

  Chapter 3

  The question his grandmother asked hung in the air, unanswered.

  It scraped against Cole’s heart.

  G wasn’t teasing him the way she occasionally did, and she wasn’t being witty. She was serious. He’d seen that look enter her eyes several times before. The look that silently announced that she had temporarily slipped away from him and was now off into the past. A past when she had been all things to him, including both mother and father.

  Cole slanted a glance at the physician at his side, wondering if anything in his grandmother’s behavior had tipped her off that the woman wasn’t quite lucid.

  But since this doctor he’d brought to his grandmother’s bedside didn’t know G, from all appearances, she seemed to be taking the remark at face value as a sign of affection between his grandmother and him.

  Good.

  Walking over to the older woman’s bedside, Cole leaned over and kissed the weathered yet incredibly soft cheek.

  “Not this time, G,” he said quietly in response to her question. When he took a step back, he saw that she’d returned to her old self and he breathed a silent sigh of relief.

  “Coleman, how did you manage to get so dirty?” Ericka wanted to know, clearly surprised by his less than neat appearance.

  “Rescuing me,” Nika told her, stepping forward.

  Instead of picking up the elderly woman’s chart, or accessing Ericka Baker’s records on the portable computer just outside the woman’s room, Nika preferred to go straight to the source and meet her patients first, then look at their records. It helped her form a relationship with the patient, however briefly it might last, and that, she’d always felt, held her in good stead. It also made the patients feel that she viewed them as people first and patients second.

  But before Nika could introduce herself, the woman in the bed gave her a quick, albeit penetrating, once-over, Ericka’s very blue eyes sweeping over her.

  “And you are?” Ericka asked.

  “Dr. Veronika Pulaski,” Nika told her, putting her hand out to the woman.

  She found herself on the receiving end of a handshake that was both firm and confident. No matter what the notes on the chart claimed, this was no “little old lady.” This was a force to be reckoned with, Nika thought with a warm smile.

  “Dr. Goodfellow asked me to run some tests on you to make sure that the procedure he intends to perform to get your atrial fibrillation under control won’t do you more harm than good.”

  Ericka made a small, dismissive sound, accompanying it with a wave of her hand. “He’s just afraid of a lawsuit.”

  “No,” Nika contradicted, her smile still warm as she continued focusing on the small woman, “he’s afraid of putting you through something that won’t result in you getting better. He is an excellent cardiovascular surgeon,” she told Ericka. “Patience Memorial wouldn’t give him operating privileges here if he wasn’t.”

  “We’ll see,” was all Ericka was willing to concede. She shifted her eyes toward her grandson. “Coleman, you said you had some questions to ask this very young lady,” she reminded him.

  Nika picked up on the woman’s inflection. “I’m not as young as I look, Mrs. Baker,” she assured her.

  Ericka blew out another breath. “You couldn’t be,” she retorted. “And don’t go dismissing that particular attribute so lightly,” she warned. “Someday, when you’re an old lady like me, looking younger than your years will be something you’ll treasure, not disclaim. Mark my words,” she underscored with a look meant to pin Nika against the wall.

  “You’re not an old lady, G,” Cole rebutted affectionately, taking her hand in both of his. “You’re just a little older than I am.”

  “This is why I keep him around,” Ericka confided to her new doctor. “He’s very good for my ego. Even if he lies really badly,” she added with a laugh. “Now, ask her what you want to ask her, then go before they realize they can do without you at the precinct.” Her thin lips pulled into a frown as she reviewed his attire again. “And maybe you’d better stop at your place to change,” Ericka added with a shake of her head. “What exactly did you rescue Dr. Pulaski from?” she asked, curious. “A garbage dump?”

  When the detective didn’t look as if he would answer right away, Nika was more than happy to fill his grandmother in.

  “The elevator I was on got stuck between floors and the repairman wasn’t going to be able to get here for a few hours.” She looked across her patient’s bed at the detective. “Your grandson very kindly shimmied down the elevator cables to get me out of there.”

  Ericka nodded, as if there was no other course her grandson could have taken. “He is a good boy,” the elderly woman said proudly, giving his hand a squeeze.

  Detective Cole Baker hadn’t been a boy in a very long time, Nika caught herself thinking. What she first saw coming to her rescue, his legs wrapped around the cables as easily as if he was climbing down a rope in gym class, was without question all man.

  She noted that he appeared somewhat embarrassed by his grandmother’s simple declaration, even though he was trying not to show it. She decided one good rescue deserved another and came to his—verbally.

  “So, what are these questions you want to ask?” Nika prompted.

  He seemed surprised at her directness. Did she intend to discuss his grandmother’s case in front of her? “You don’t want to go somewhere private to talk?”

  “Why? This is about your grandmother.” Nika nodded at the woman who was listening intently to every word. “She has a right to hear whatever’s said.”

  Ericka’s thin lips spread even thinner in a pleased, wide smile.

  “I like this girl, Coleman.” She looked at the young woman. “Most doctors treat patients as if their minds had already evaporated. That’s especially true if those patients are my age.”

  “I think you have every right to know and understand what’s going on,” Nika told her simply. She knew she would want that in the woman’s place. “Dr. Goodfellow wants me to carry out a series of lab tests, and run an EEG to make sure that you’re strong enough to go through this procedure. By the way, when you do have the ablation procedure,” she continued as if passing the tests was a foregone conclusion, “you will have to remain awake.”

  Cole eyed her sharply. “They’re not going to put her out?”

  “No, but they will numb the area so that you won’t feel any pain,” she reassured both the patient and her grandson quickly. “They just want to know if something out of the ordinary happens. The best way is to keep you conscious and responsive,” she told Ericka. “You’ll be able to help guide them by saying if you can still feel certain things when they test different areas on your body.”

  This was all news to the older woman. “Well, if I’m going to help, then I shouldn’t have to pay them the whole charge—” Ericka declared.

  “G,” Cole’s tone cautioned his grandmother not to say something that could be construed argumentative.

  “You won’t be paying anything,” Nika pointed out, opening the woman’s chart. “You have Medicare and a supplementary secondary carrier. The
y’re the ones who’ll take care of the bill.”

  “Yes, well, it’s the principle of the thing that matters,” Ericka said, her voice trailing off slightly as she seemed to lose momentum.

  “How long will it take?” Cole asked, turning his attention to her.

  “The surgery?” Nika repeated, guessing what his question referred to. “Most ablations usually run about—”

  “No, the tests,” he interrupted before she could finish. “How long before you know if she can have the surgery? The last attack she had was pretty bad. It lasted over two hours.”

  “Tattletale,” Ericka accused with an annoyed pout.

  Their roles, it occurred to Cole, had somehow gotten reversed and now he was the parent and she the child. He wasn’t used to this.

  Nika glanced toward the woman in the bed. A hundred fifty years ago, Ericka Baker would have been viewed as the perfect prototype for a robust, determined pioneer woman. Pioneer women didn’t have time to be sick. It got in their way and annoyed them.

  “She doesn’t like the way those palpitations have been restricting her activities.” It was an educated guess on Nika’s part.

  He shook his head. “Not a hell of a whole lot, no. Would you?” he challenged.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” she said honestly. “We should have everything back tomorrow, noon.”

  “That long?”

  Gauging the duration was all in the eyes of the beholder. Nika laughed. “There was a time when a simple appendectomy kept a patient in the hospital for two weeks,” she told him. “In comparison, this is pretty fast and streamlined.”

  She could see that her answer didn’t satisfy him. Hard man to please, she thought. But he wasn’t her concern. His grandmother was. “I’ll call in a favor and we’ll bump you up to the head of the line,” she promised Ericka. “It’s the least I can do, seeing as how your grandson rescued me.”