What You Wish For

by Fern Michaels

  “Lucie can’t seem to get the hang of it.” Helen giggled.

  “Max will teach her, won’t you, big guy?”

  “Sam, there are forty-two orders on the net. And inquiries about the shoes and the fishnets. I’m so excited. Getting that web page set up was the best thing in the world. Do you think it will continue?”

  “Absolutely. Word of mouth is going to be your best advertising, and all those search engines Les signed you up for aren’t going to hurt either. Congratulations!”

  “Sam, the picnic is off. We have to look for a store location. I have to fill these orders. I can make us a late dinner if that’s okay with you.”

  “Whatever works for you, Helen. I was thinking on the ride back that I haven’t been this happy in a long time.”

  “I know. Me too. Okay, I’m ready to go out looking. Are you taking the dogs or should I?”

  “Lucie gets too nervous when I take her. She needs to be able to see you. She lets me walk her as long as your apartment door stays open. It will be better if you take them.”

  “Okay, then let’s do it! This is such a good day, Sam!”

  “Does that mean you’re okay with the confession then?”

  “I’m okay with it. For now.”

  “Why is everything with you for now?”

  “Because that’s the way it has to be.”

  “Okay, Helen, I can live with it. For now!”

  12

  Isabel Tyger shifted her weight on the hospital bed, causing the stacks of paper spread all over the bed to slide to the floor. She cursed ripely, bringing her private-duty nurse on the run. “I want my laptop, and I want it now! I don’t want any excuses either. Fetch it!” she growled.

  “Now, Miss Tyger, you know I can’t do that. Doctor said . . .”

  “I don’t care what the doctor said. I’m sick of these inane soap operas and the game shows. I’m sick of being doped up. No more pills. I’m sick of you, too. I want out of here and I want out of here now. That’s as in right away, this very minute,” Isabel said, her nostrils flaring while her eyes flashed sparks.

  The young nurse took the tirade in stride. She’d been hearing it for days. “I’m sick of you, too! You are the crankiest, the most obnoxious patient I’ve ever had. You are a curmudgeon,” she said cheerfully.

  Isabel grimaced. “It’s true. I can’t deny it. Will you please put a call in to my doctor? I want to see him. I want an appointment where he will sit and listen to me, not run in here on the fly and then run out. He does it on purpose. And when you do call him, tell him if he doesn’t show up within the hour, my bequest to the geriatric ward is off. That should bring him on the run. He’s probably out on some damn golf course hitting little balls all over the place. Damn it, I want out of here! I’m sick to death of all these people staring and poking at me.”

  “Actually, Miss Tyger, I think Doctor’s on the tennis court.” The young nurse twinkled.

  “Same thing,” Isabel snapped. “All this bad humor of mine is being wasted on you, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Ah, here’s the mail. That should keep you busy for a while. I’ll see about your lunch while you read it.”

  “I’ll have a roast beef sandwich, some pickles, some chips, and some chocolate ice cream on top of chocolate cake.”

  The nurse grinned devilishly. “That’s what I’m having. You are having the mixed vegetable plate with crackers and Jell-O for dessert. Your cholesterol is still way too high.”

  “Go already!” Isabel shouted as she ripped at the manila envelope Mona had sent from the shelter that morning. Another week’s worth of e-mails from TTLS and Robin Bobbin. She frowned at the increasingly desperate tone of each of the e-mails. They were much worse than the last batch. She needed to do something and she needed to do it now. She pressed the buzzer on the side of the bed. Her private-duty nurse appeared in seconds, her eyes full of questions.

  “Get my clothes! Call someone, an ambulance if necessary, to take me home. I mean it, Maggie. I’m not waiting for that yuppie to shower after his tennis game. Now, goddamn it! I signed myself in here, and I’m signing myself out! Why are you still standing there? Move, girl!”.

  Maggie left on the run for the nurses’ station, where she had Isabel Tyger’s doctor paged. When the page was returned within minutes, she started to babble. She knew she was unprofessional, but she didn’t care. “She’s leaving, Doctor, and she isn’t waiting for you to take a shower. I’m just repeating what she said. She wants me to call for an ambulance. I’m going to go with her if she wants me to. I don’t have another case so it will work out well. She also said you can forget her bequest to the geriatric ward. I’m sorry you don’t like what I’m telling you, Doctor, but I am just the messenger and have no control over what your patient says and doesn’t say. Personally, I think she’s stayed here about one week too long. I know all about deep pockets and paying patients. Good-bye, Dr. Evans,” Maggie said, slamming the phone back into the cradle.

  Maggie looked around at the other nurses, who were staring at her in awe. “He’s a wise-ass,” she said smartly.

  “A good-looking wise-ass,” one of the nurses said.

  Maggie turned around and smirked. “He wears a hairpiece! Whataya think of that?”

  “No!”

  “It must be a good one. You can’t tell.”

  “How do you know?” another nurse asked.

  “I know,” Maggie fibbed.

  “Wow!” the three nurses said in unison.

  “Miss Tyger, I think Dr. Evans will be here shortly. Are you really determined to leave because if you are, I’ll get your things ready. It isn’t going to be easy for you at home. You need to know that. Then again, I’ve seen patients do remarkably well once they are in their own surroundings. I’m more than willing to go with you. However, if you have someone else in mind, that’s okay, too.”

  “I know all about that. I didn’t get to be this age without learning a thing or two. I’ll sleep downstairs. I can get around with my walker. It’s just a broken hip, for God’s sake. There’s nothing wrong with the rest of me. All right, all right, so my blood pressure is a little high, my cholesterol is out of whack, and my tonsils are enlarged. All those things are fixable. I guess you’re as good as anyone. I need a telephone,” Isabel said tartly.

  “You should have fought for that one,” Maggie grumbled.

  “At first I didn’t care. I didn’t want people calling me all hours of the day and night. I care now, so get me a phone.”

  “It’s against doctor’s orders, Miss Tyger.”

  Isabel stopped stuffing the e-mails back into the envelope long enough to say, “I think you already know my position on that matter. A phone, please. Now!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The instant the phone was plugged in, Isabel started dialing. The first call was to her housekeeper, instructing her to call for a hospital bed to be set up in the den. The second call was to Gerry and the third one to Artie. She dusted her hands dramatically when she hung up the phone for the last time.

  He was tall and he was handsome, hairpiece or not. “So you took a shower after all!” Isabel said, pointing to the doctor’s wet slicked-back hair. “While I waited. I’m leaving, Dr. Evans. I’m sick of being doped up so that I don’t know what day it is much less what time it is. No more dope medicine, do you hear me?”

  “So I heard. Do you think that’s a wise decision on your part? I haven’t discharged you.”

  “According to you, no. According to me, yes. There’s nothing wrong with my head or my brain. I broke my hip. I can walk with the walker. I am capable of going to the bathroom myself. I can take the medication you prescribed at home just the way I take it here. I will have a nurse at home just the way I have here. The same nurse in fact. I’m discharging myself. Now what the hell is our problem here?”

  “The problem is I want you watched carefully. You are not in the best of health, Miss Tyger. I know you haven’t be
en happy, but isn’t it better to be well and on the road to good health? You require supervision.”

  “Cut the crap, Dr. Evans. All this hospital wants is my twelve hundred dollars a day for this fancy suite of rooms I am not allowed to walk around in. How do you expect me to get better if you don’t let me get up and walk around?”

  “The bones needed to knit. You know the first two tries were unsuccessful. You do know you have osteoporosis. People like you have to be very careful.”

  “That does it! That really tears it. Just because I’m small in stature doesn’t give you the right to refer to me as people like you. I’m relieving you of your responsibility. One more day of this place will put me in the loony bin. Don’t you understand? I can’t take it anymore.” She was so angry she was on the verge of tears.

  “When I said people like you, Miss Tyger, I was referring to people who have similar conditions. Your height and weight had nothing to do with my comment,” the young doctor said testily. “Furthermore, Miss Tyger, there are procedures . . .”

  “You know what you can do with your procedures, Dr. Evans. You should have discharged me a week ago. I know it, and you know it. I’m discharging myself. Now, if you want to continue seeing me as your patient, you will have to come to the house. That will be all, Dr. Evans.”

  Maggie turned her head to hide her smile. She heard the handsome doctor scuff his feet on the tile floor, felt his indecision, sensed his humiliation. “Do you have any new orders, Dr. Evans?”

  “Ah, no. I’ll review Miss Tyger’s case and call you tomorrow. Follow the same routine when you get your patient home. Where did that phone come from?”

  “It was a gift,” Isabel said blandly, when it looked like the young nurse was about to confess to going against the doctor’s orders. “Am I going in an ambulance or private car?”

  “I’ll call for an ambulance right now and pick up your discharge papers on the way. I think it will be better if you go in your robe if that’s okay with you. I’ll help you dress when you get home,” Maggie said.

  “That’s fine with me. I can’t believe I’m finally going home. I used to hate my house. Then I remodeled it and it became a real home. The word home is truly a wonderful word. It really is true when people say there is no place like home. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do.”

  “You were a good nurse to put up with me, Maggie,” Isabel said slyly, watching the nurse carefully.

  “Thank you. Are you going to follow the doctor’s orders, Miss Tyger, or are we going to do it the difficult way? It is for your own good, you know.”

  “Yes, I will follow the doctor’s orders as long as they aren’t unreasonable. I’m not ready to pack it in yet. I still have some living to do.”

  “Now, that’s what I like to hear,” Maggie said. “I should have everything ready to go in say, twenty minutes. Then you are homeward bound and you can peck away at your laptop all you want.”

  “I just hope it isn’t too late,” Isabel mumbled.

  “I have friends coming for dinner, Maggie, so you can have the evening off. Go into town and go to a movie with that new boyfriend of yours. My dinner is a broccoli-and-salmon casserole with diet sherbet for dessert. I will have one glass of wine as per the doctor’s orders, and I will take my medicine. My housekeeper will help me into bed. Go and enjoy yourself. You’ve been cooped up here for days. You need to get out and about.”

  “Are you sure, Miss Tyger? He isn’t exactly a new boyfriend. I’ve been dating him for six months or so.”

  “I am very sure. I want to spend some time with my two best friends, and I don’t want you hovering over me. You can trust me. The question of the moment is, can I trust you with that boyfriend of yours?” Isabel’s eyes were flat and hard as she waited for the nurse’s response.

  “I don’t think you have to worry about me. I am going to worry about you though, because you can be pretty crafty sometimes, Miss Tyger.”

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  Maggie laughed. “I think my fella is going to be delighted that I finally have an evening off. It’s kind of hard to keep a romance alive when you work around the clock.”

  “Make tonight count then. This is absolutely perfect the way you arranged this chair and my computer. Go on now and have a good time. Tomorrow I want to hear all about it.”

  “It’s a deal. I think I hear your guests. I’ll let them in, and then I’ll leave. When I get back, I’ll check in on you even if you’re asleep.”

  Isabel nodded as she turned on her computer. The nurse was forgotten a moment later when her e-mail screen came into view.

  “Three days, Izz, and you’re on the computer. Are you supposed to be doing that?” Artie demanded as he strolled into the room.

  “Of course. Hello to both of you. Fix yourself a drink and pour me some tea. That’s another word for bourbon. I have to be careful what I say and whom I say it around,” Isabel said tartly.

  “Are you permitted to drink, Izzie?” Gerry asked, a frown spreading between his eyebrows.

  “Of course not. This is a little celebration. One drinks when one is having a celebration. I’m home. I’m having a cigarette, too. Then I’m going to have a shitty dinner while you two men eat prime ribs. It’s a trade-off. Will you two stop looking at me like that? When it’s my time to go, I’m going to go, bourbon or not. Are we clear on this once and for all?”

  Gerry sighed. “We’re clear, Izzie. Now, what’s up?”

  “Artie?”

  “I’m clear on it, Izz.”

  “Good. What’s up is Helen Ward. She’s getting ready to fly the coop. She’s done very well during the time I was in the hospital. She’s frantic now because I haven’t been in touch with her. Three weeks is not an eternity. I don’t think she would be alarmed if it wasn’t for this man she met. She met this man and . . . do I have to tell you the rest?”

  “You said he was okay. You said he checked out.”

  “I did say that, and yes, he is who he claims to be. He’s in love with Helen and I think Helen is in love with him. She’s selling lingerie on the Internet. Come here, I want to show you her web page. No drooling, gentlemen.”

  “Uh-huh,” Artie said.

  “Very . . . ah . . . nice,” Gerry said. “I always did like feathers. That lace is kind of nice. There’s something about red underwear . . .”

  “This girl has a brain,” Isabel said, ignoring Gerry’s flushed face. “When that impossible person she worked for fired her, she got a job waiting tables. We all know that’s hard work and definitely underpaid. She managed to get this web page up and running and according to this last e-mail from her, the orders are coming in fast and heavy. She’s rented store space and is hiring more seamstresses. Lucie is doing well and Mr. Tolliver’s dog is with Lucie all the time. They play together. Isn’t that nice? Helen says they moon over each other, and if they’re separated, they cry by the door. I wasn’t wrong about her. She did break the rules, though. I guess I can understand that. If you go to bed with a man, you want it to be for all the right reasons and you don’t want to start off a relationship that might eventually lead to marriage with a lie.”

  “Where is this going, Izzie?” Gerry demanded.

  “She’s honest and a hard worker. She’s caring and loving. Part of it is my fault because I didn’t keep up with the sessions on the net. I left her to flounder, but it was only for twenty-one days. Considering the circumstances, I think she did very well. Now, do we let her stay in the program knowing she told Sam Tolliver who she is or do we cut her loose? Since we’re only a three-person board, you each have a vote. I vote to keep her.”

  “Keep her,” Artie said.

  “I agree,” Gerry said.

  “Then it’s unanimous.”

  “What would you have done if we voted no?” Gerry asked.

  “It would have broken my heart, but I would have gone along with you.”

  “Do you know anything new a
bout Daniel Ward, Artie?” Isabel asked.

  “He’s been doing some consulting work for Lomax Industries. Strictly freelance stuff. One of my managers told me he saw him at a steak house a few weeks back. With a woman. He said he didn’t look like he used to look when he worked for us. He said he looked like someone down on his luck.”

  “What is he doing?” Isabel fretted. She hated it when things didn’t go according to plan. Tripping over the housekeeper’s scrub bucket wasn’t something she had planned. Breaking her hip was not in her game plan, but she had to deal with it the best way she knew how. Now she was going to have to deal with Daniel Ward on a more personal level, and Helen as well.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what he’s doing. He’s trying to find his wife. He’s scouring every database in this country and probably outside the country, too. He’s hoping that sooner or later she’ll slip up, and then he’ll pounce. Maybe you should relocate Helen now, Izz. She’s been in Jersey for sixteen months,” Artie said.

  “I don’t want to do that unless I have to. Upheaval is a trauma in itself. Helen has had enough of that. So has Lucie. There are new factors in the equation now, Mr. Tolliver and his dog. If he’s the kind of person I think he is, he isn’t going to let anything happen to Helen. When you’re in love, you take care of those you love. I’m putting a private investigator on Daniel Ward. Around the clock. I wish I had thought to do it earlier. I can’t imagine why I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t do it because Daniel Ward was here and Helen was safely out of state. Ward is still here, so that means he has no clue as to Helen’s whereabouts,” Gerry said.

  “She’s special. Don’t look at me like that. You saw her that night, Gerry. Tell me she isn’t special.”

  “I can’t. I thought the same thing myself. You’re getting personally involved, and we all agreed we wouldn’t allow that to happen, Izzie. The truth is you were involved from the get-go.”

  “Some rules are meant to be broken,” Artie said. “I think hiring a private dick is a very good idea. Ward could flip out, he could take off in the middle of the night and we’d be left sucking our thumbs. If he didn’t think he was on to something, he would have taken one of the lucrative jobs that was offered to him. He can’t live on consulting fees, and since he cashed in his 401K, he’s going to be hurting for money pretty soon. They were in hock up to their eyeballs. It’s amazing the things you don’t know about people,” Artie complained. “By the way, I’ve made up my mind to retire the first of the year.”