Designs on the Doctor

by Victoria Pade

  “And what did her daughter think of that?” Jake saw Nina’s eyebrows rise and he knew his victorious tone of voice had been the cause, so he explained himself. “I had a hard time convincing the daughter that there’s a problem.”

  “Poor Ally, she can tell her mother’s not right in the head now,” Bubby said sympathetically. “This is a lot for that girl to take in, Jacob. We’ve all been seeing Estelle slip, but her daughter—”

  “Would have seen it, too, if she’d had more to do with her.”

  “Oy, such a big deal with this one!” Bubby said to her granddaughter.

  Nina laughed. “You know how he is—he can’t believe anybody who has a family can take it for granted. But he does seem awfully invested in this particular family, doesn’t he?” she responded to Bubby as if Jake wasn’t there. “Do you think it has anything to do with how pretty you said Estelle’s daughter is?”

  “Pretty?” Bubby exclaimed. “Pretty doesn’t do her justice. And me? I saw Jacob at the hospital—before he knew who Ally was, when she just came in the door and was at the reception counter? His eyes were glued to her. He didn’t even hear Ruth Cohen ask him if he wanted a cup of coffee out of the machine. It was like in the movies when everything else fades away and he only knew there was her.”

  Jake shook his head at the absurdity of that. Yes, Ally Rogers had caught his attention, but it didn’t mean anything. “The key word in all of that is before—before I knew she was the daughter who neglected Estelle.”

  “What neglect? When Estelle needed Ally for the gallbladder, Ally came. Estelle hasn’t needed her for anything else until now, and where is she now? Here again, that’s where. So what neglect? Those foster homes, those group places you had to grow up in, Jacob, they made you daydream of what real families are. But it’s not so realistic. Families—there’s some good, there’s some not so good—families are families. What they’re not is fairy tales.”

  “If you’re even a little pale one day, Bubby, isn’t Nina going to notice it? And why? Because she sees you. She knows you. She knows what’s going on with you. Would I have to call her and order her to go to your apartment? Would I have to tell her to help you? No, I wouldn’t.”

  “Not everyone is like my Nina. But that doesn’t mean Ally is a bad girl. And Estelle is a hard nut to crack—you know that. How many weeks have you been trying to get her to have a checkup? Where has it gotten you? You called Ally, she came—where’s the crime?”

  “The crime is if she turns around and goes back to California without taking care of her mother.”

  Again Bubby looked at Nina. “He wants this one to be so perfect.”

  “He does seem to want her to live up to something, doesn’t he?”

  “He wants her to be as good as she looks.”

  “I just want her to do what she needs to do. For Estelle,” Jake insisted.

  “Well, she did—how does that make you think of her?” Bubby challenged.

  “What did she do?”

  “Between the both of us we got Estelle to say she would have your tests.” The victory was all Bubby’s now.

  “You got Estelle to agree?”

  “We did. She won’t see her own physician, though. She likes you—that’s what Ally used to make her say she would.”

  “I’ll get right on it, then,” Jake said.

  “And say some sorries to that girl, Jacob,” Bubby ordered. “You’re too hard on her.”

  “I have not been too hard on her,” he defended himself. “I’ve been as hard as I needed to be to open her eyes. Why? Did she complain to you?”

  “No, but I can tell from her attitude. Enough, already! She’s scared enough. This is bad, don’t make it worse.”

  Bubby stood, picked up the pile of dirty dishes that Nina had stacked and headed for the kitchen.

  But while the elderly woman may have seen the subject of Ally Rogers as closed, Jake had one more question.

  “Do you know what Estelle blames Ally for?”

  Bubby stopped short to look at him. “Blame? What’s to blame?”

  “I don’t know. Last night Ally said Estelle blames her for something, but she wouldn’t say what.”

  “I don’t know about that. I just know this—tonight is the night to celebrate the end of the week, to reflect, and then to usher in the start of a new week. A new week brings a new chance to do right. Start the new week by being nicer to that girl, Jacob. You’ll get further.” Then Bubby smiled slyly at him. “And who knows? Maybe you could end up with that family of your own after all.”

  Bubby disappeared into the kitchen and Jake turned his focus to his old friend, thinking Nina would be on his side and understand that there was nothing personal going on between himself and Ally Rogers.

  But Nina seemed to agree with her grandmother, because she was barely hiding a knowing smile of her own.

  The knock on Ally’s apartment door at nine on Friday night startled her.

  Her initial, panicked thought was that her mother had gotten out of the house without the alarm going off.

  But then it occurred to her that if Estelle got out of the house, the last place she was likely to come was here.

  She peeked out the curtain over the window that allowed her a view of the outside landing. And then the late visit made sense—Jake Fox again. He had said he would check in with her today.

  Better late than never. Not that she cared.

  “I wondered who would know to come back here,” she said in greeting when she opened the door.

  “The house was all dark so I figured Estelle had gone to bed early again. I took the chance that you’d still be up and came around,” he explained amiably.

  In fact, nothing about Jake’s demeanor said he was on the offensive tonight. He actually seemed relaxed—more even than when he’d perched on the arm of her sofa the night before.

  Ally couldn’t help being suspicious of it, though. Even as she found herself unwillingly attracted to it.

  “Come in,” she invited.

  “Thanks.”

  She couldn’t help sneaking a glance at him over her shoulder as she closed the door behind him. He looked great. Whatever had occupied him earlier in the evening must have begun immediately after work because he was dressed much the way he had been on Thursday—casual cocoa-colored twill slacks and a pale yellow dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The only thing missing was a tie. Plus, there was the slight shadow of beard darkening his face, but it only added an appealingly masculine scruffiness that Ally didn’t want to like as much as she did.

  “I talked to Bubby,” he announced as soon as Ally turned to face him.

  “She brought lunch over and stayed most of the afternoon—it was really nice of her,” Ally informed him.

  “And she said you two finally got your mother to agree to let me order tests.”

  “It took some work but, yes, we did. Mother won’t have a full physical, but she said she’d let you do what you want. I’ve reminded her about a million times since then that that was what she’d said she would do so she wouldn’t forget.”

  “How did that go?”

  “She got annoyed and irritated with me, but as of when she went to bed, she was still saying she’d go through with it.”

  “Great! I made some calls, pulled some strings, and even though tomorrow is Saturday, I’ve arranged for her to have a brain scan and blood work at the hospital. The labs will tell us if anything systemic is going on, the brain scan will let us know if she’s suffered a stroke—”

  “A stroke? That’s the first you’ve said anything about that.” Why was it that every time she talked to this guy, things seemed to get worse?

  He sighed. “You’re right. I’m getting ahead of myself. A stroke is another possibility, yes,” he said. “She could have had one in the part of her brain that affects memory, and we could be seeing the damage from that. Or there could be a small aneurysm that’s bleeding into that portion of her brain—”

 
; Worse and worse…

  “That’s why we need the scan, to rule out these other things. If there’s no evidence of a stroke or an aneurysm, and nothing systemic to explain what’s going on with her, then we move to the second stage and I’ll do cognitive tests for Alzheimer’s.”

  Just when Ally thought she might be getting a grip on what she could be dealing with, he added to the list of scary possibilities and made her feel overwhelmed again.

  There was a tiny two-chair kitchen set against the wall near the door. Ally pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, not caring any longer if it was rude to sit when she hadn’t asked him to.

  Jake didn’t wait to be invited to join her. He just did, pulling the other chair from the opposite side of the drop-leaf table to the front of it so he was closer to her when he sat down. Close enough for her to catch a whiff of an outdoorsy cologne.

  “I know, I’m the bearer of bad news,” he said as if he’d read her mind. “It’s not a role I like.”

  Had that contributed to his harshness of before?

  She expected him to talk more about the tests and what they could reveal and how bad it could all be, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “You and I haven’t had a wonderful start, and I think I owe you an apology.”

  Ally stared at him, trying to figure out if she’d missed something.

  “Bubby says I’ve been too hard on you,” he added.

  “I didn’t say anything like that to her,” Ally defended herself.

  “I know. She said she could just tell. But she’s right, I have been a little rough on you. Partly because I hate what’s happening with Estelle, hate not being able to put my head in the sand about it, and partly because I sometimes have unreasonably high expectations of family members—that part comes from my own history—”

  “A history of your own family meeting or not meeting your expectations?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “I don’t have any family.”

  “Oh.”

  But he didn’t give her the chance to probe into it any further. “Anyway, when I’m dealing with my patients and their relatives, I’m good at keeping my personal feelings under wraps. But you got me in personal mode and…Well, like I said, I know I was rough on you. But the important thing is that you are here, doing what you can for Estelle now that you know that something is wrong. So how about if we put everything else behind us and start fresh?”

  Ally still wasn’t sure whether or not to drop her guard with this man. But she’d appreciated Bubby’s help with her mother today and if Bubby had gone to bat for her with Jake Fox, it seemed only fair to accept the olive branch he was offering as a result.

  “You have been sort of awful to me,” Ally said, unwilling to give him a completely free pass.

  He smiled sheepishly—and very engagingly. “But was it so bad that it’s unforgivable?”

  Ally pretended to consider that. But then she conceded. “I suppose unforgivable is a bit of a stretch.”

  “So I’m forgiven?”

  His smoky voice was a blend of humor and mischievous contrition. There was a glimmer in his gray eyes, and one eyebrow arched—the man could be charming when he wanted to…

  And it took Ally a moment to stop basking in it all.

  “You’re only forgiven if I’ve seen the last of that mean guy,” she warned, wishing her tone hadn’t come out slightly on the coy side.

  “I’m on probation then?”

  “Actually, I guess you are,” she said. “Because if the mean guy comes out to bite off my head again I’d just as soon not see any more of you.” Handsome, hunky and charming or not.

  But her ultimatum only seemed to amuse him. “Okay, I guess I had that coming. Let’s just work together for Estelle’s benefit and see if I can’t prove myself while we do.”

  “How will we work together?”

  “For starters, tomorrow I’ll pick up the two of you, take you both to the hospital and stick with you through the tests. There’s only so much friends can do to get the ball rolling with someone like Estelle, but once it is rolling, we can be there for all the help and support you need.”

  “Are we going to be friends?” Ally challenged.

  “At least,” he countered with some devilishness to his expression.

  He couldn’t be flirting with her, could he?

  That just didn’t seem likely.

  And yet, she had the sense that he was.

  She was still trying to figure it out when he abruptly got to his feet. “I should go. I haven’t been home since six this morning,” he announced.

  Feeling more steady, Ally stood again, too.

  “What time tomorrow?” she asked, following him to the door.

  “I’ll be here at about one. Be prepared for some waiting, though—I’ve made these arrangements with an emergency-room doctor who’s a friend of mine. We’ll go in there, he’ll order labs and the CT, but if the E.R. is busy—”

  “Everyone else will go ahead of us because we’ll be there on the sly,” Ally guessed.

  “Right. But we’ll still get the tests done and get the results right away—that’s the advantage of the E.R.”

  The results…

  The color felt as if it drained from her face and it must have because he smiled at her again, compassionately this time.

  “It’s better to know what you’re dealing with, Ally. And by tomorrow night we’ll have more to go on,” he said.

  Ally nodded even though she wasn’t entirely sure if he was right. Sometimes ignorance was bliss.

  He raised his hand to press the backs of his fingers to her cheek as if to test for temperature. “Are you gonna faint on me again?” he asked with a hint of amusement in his deep voice.

  “No, I’m fine,” she said, unusually aware of the feel of his skin against hers.

  “We’ll handle whatever we need to, you know?” he assured.

  He was pretty free with those we’s. And yet, somehow, it was reassuring.

  He took his hand away from her cheek, but his eyes were still on hers, and if this had been any other situation she might have thought he was going to kiss her.

  But this situation was a long, long way from a kissing-good-night situation, and she wasn’t even sure why that had crossed her mind.

  “Tomorrow at one,” she repeated when neither of them had said anything for what seemed like a while and they were still standing at the door staring into each other’s eyes.

  “Call me if Estelle gets up in the morning and forgets she agreed to do this. I’ll come earlier and we’ll go to work on her like you and Bubby did today so we can still get her there during my friend’s shift.”

  “Keep your fingers crossed that she remembers,” Ally advised.

  He raised that same big hand that had been on her face a moment before and showed her crossed fingers. “You, too.”

  She did the same and he touched the tip of his to the tip of hers as if they were toasting something. And a little jolt of electricity went from him into her, sending a tingling up her arm.

  He opened the door then and stepped out onto the landing. “Get some sleep,” he suggested.

  Ally raised her chin as if she intended to, when the truth was, worry was keeping her from getting more than minimal rest and she still felt jet-lagged.

  “See you tomorrow,” she said.

  He nodded and headed down the stairs with Ally watching him go, watching him until he disappeared around the corner of the house to get to the front.

  Then she closed the door and turned from it, catching the faintly lingering scent of his cologne.

  And even though she didn’t understand why, she couldn’t resist breathing it in deeply and picturing Jake all over again.

  Jake standing at the door, facing her, towering above her in all his broad-shouldered, masculine majesty.

  Jake looking into her eyes.

  Jake with his hand against her cheek.

  Jake in a position from which he could easily have kiss
ed her…

  Ally yanked herself back to reality.

  Kissing Jake Fox?

  She shook her head and went back to the kitchen. “Maybe I should have my head examined, too.”

  Chapter Four

  “You know, when you first called me and said you were a friend of my mother’s, I thought you must be in her age bracket,” Ally said to Jake as they sat at a table in the hospital cafeteria late Saturday afternoon.

  “That makes sense,” Jake allowed.

  It had been a relatively busy day in the emergency room, which meant that despite the fact that they’d arrived at one-thirty, it was nearly four before Estelle was taken for her CT scan. Jake and Ally had gone to the cafeteria for coffee.

  Jake took a sip and then said, “I thought you’d be older, too. Most of Estelle’s friends’ kids are in their fifties.”

  Estelle had monopolized Jake since he’d picked them up, so this was actually Ally’s first chance to talk to him. Her mother had basically left her out of the conversation as Estelle and Jake had discussed people and events Ally had no knowledge of, and although she didn’t want to admit it, she’d felt a little jealous. Jealous of how easy it was for Jake to relate to her mother when she always found it to be a struggle, and jealous of Jake’s attention to Estelle, too.

  That jealousy was not made easier by the fact that he looked terrific dressed more casually in khaki slacks and a yellow polo shirt. It wasn’t made easier by the fact that he smelled good, or that the charm of the previous evening had been in play today, too.

  He looked good, he smelled good, he was charming, nice, personable—it was all working together to effectively dim the memory of his bad start with her. And now that she had him alone, she was more interested in him than in explaining why the daughter of a seventy-nine-year-old was only thirty-one.