A Second Chance for the Single Dad

by Marie Ferrarella

  “What kind?” Kayley asked. She had picked up a wide variety at the bakery.

  Luke shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “Then how do you know she likes doughnuts?” Kayley asked innocently.

  “My mother-in-law told me.” His eyes all but bored into hers. “Any other questions?”

  “No, but maybe you should ask your mother-in-law what kind of doughnuts your daughter likes so you could surprise her with them. If you still keep in touch with your mother-in-law,” she added, thinking that perhaps, since his wife had died, the man had severed his ties with the older woman.

  “Hard not to,” he commented as he began to walk away. He had a full day to prepare for and he couldn’t do it standing here and talking about doughnuts with Pollyanna. “She lives in my house.”

  “Oh,” was all Kayley said as she went to the break room.

  He’d give her one more day, Luke promised himself. And if she continued meddling in his life and his approach to his patients, as well as offering her fortune-cookie pieces of advice, then he’d just have to tell her that her services were no longer needed.

  * * *

  “I hear you finally have your own physician’s assistant,” Barbara Baxter said to her son-in-law late that evening, when he finally walked in the door.

  He was surprised to find her waiting up for him. He wondered if something was wrong. In addition, her comment caught him entirely off guard. He hadn’t mentioned anything about the change at work.

  Dropping his briefcase near the front door, Luke asked the stately, attractive older woman, “Where did you hear that?”

  “From your new physician’s assistant. Kayley called here today,” she told him. “She sounds like a lovely young woman.”

  He was still dealing with the first piece of information. “She called here?” he asked incredulously. “Why on earth would she call?”

  “She wanted to know what kind of doughnuts Lily likes,” Barbara told her son-in-law. “She said something about sending some home with you tomorrow night. If you ask me, that young woman sounds exceptionally thoughtful. For your sake, I hope that she is as competent as she is thoughtful.”

  “What she is, Barbara, is very meddlesome. She’s been with the medical staff two whole days and she seems to think she can just barge into things.”

  “Like what kind of things?” Barbara asked, interested.

  He answered before he could stop himself. He wasn’t usually the type to grouse. “Like telling me how to be a better doctor.”

  “Can’t improve on perfection,” Barbara said with a smile.

  “I’m not perfect,” Luke protested. Did he come off as thinking he was? Nothing could have been further from the truth. “I never said I was.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Barbara agreed amicably. “So why didn’t you listen to what she had to say?”

  “Because her idea of being a better doctor is to sit around and just talk with the patient. People come to me to be their doctor, not their best friend.” Why did he need to defend himself like this? His mother-in-law had been married to a surgeon. Her late husband had actually been his mentor. Barbara of all people should understand how he felt. “I’m sure that they all have enough friends.”

  “Possibly,” Barbara concurred. “But not friends who understand what they’re going through, what’s wrong with them. That’s something that’s just unique to you, Lucas. Maybe they just want you to tell them that it’s going to be all right.”

  He sighed, shaking his head. “You’re beginning to sound like Kayley,” he complained.

  But his mother-in-law didn’t take it as a complaint. She took it as a confirmation of the other woman’s character.

  Her brown eyes crinkled as she smiled at him. “And by that you mean that you find her to be intuitive and intelligent?”

  He would have laughed, but he felt tired and worn out and whenever he felt like that, the first casualty was his sense of humor.

  “You know, Barbara,” he told her, beginning to beg off, “it’s been a very long day. I think I’ll just turn in.”

  “Don’t you want any dinner?” she asked. “Lily insisted I keep it warm for you.”

  He was certain that it was Barbara, not Lily, who’d thought about maintaining the temperature of his dinner. Luke waved away the notion of eating anything at this late hour. All he wanted was to crawl into his bed and go to sleep.

  “They had pizza at the office.”

  Barbara shook her head, a disapproving expression on her face. “You know, for a doctor you really eat very poorly.”

  “I had cheese, tomatoes and some dough with a smattering of meat,” he said, breaking down what had composed his pizza. “That’s four basic food groups. That’s better than most.”

  Barbara looked at him sadly. Luke began to walk away. “You know, I don’t remember you being this difficult when I first met you,” she called after him.

  “A lot of things were different back then,” he replied. “For one thing, Jill was still alive.”

  Barbara bit her tongue.

  There were a great many things that she wanted to say to Luke, but she had no idea where or how to start—or how to make him open his eyes. It hurt her to see him like this.

  All she could do was hope for a miracle—and hope that it would come before Lucas lost even more time with Lily.

  Chapter Five

  Exiting the elevator the next day, Luke was rather surprised not to find Kayley waiting by the double doors the way she had been the first two days. He was also relieved, or so he told himself even though it did seem a little strange not to see her there.

  His relief, however, was short-lived because as he put his key into the lock for the double doors, he heard the elevator, which was directly on his right, opening its doors.

  He didn’t have to look to know the lone person getting off was Kayley. The light scent of her perfume—was that lavender?—preceded her.

  “Morning, Dr. Dolan,” she sang out cheerfully.

  “Good morning,” he responded in a monotone voice. The door unlocked, and he pushed it open for her. “You know, you don’t have to keep coming in early like this. You’re not getting paid for this time.”

  “I know,” she replied in what he deemed an annoyingly chipper voice. “I don’t mind having a little extra time to set everything up. This way I don’t feel as if it’s taking time away from the duties that I am being paid for.”

  Luke stared at her, confused. “‘Set up’?” he repeated.

  “You know, in the break room.” When he continued to look at her blankly, she explained further. “Making coffee.”

  “Look, I admit that you make really good coffee,” he told her—and she did. Somehow, instinctively, she seemed to make it just the way he liked it, dark and rich. The receptionists who took turns making the coffee wound up producing something that tasted as if a brown crayon had been dipped in hot water.

  “Thank you!” she cried before he could go on.

  The enthusiastic words of gratitude were accompanied by what he had come to regard as that killer smile of hers. Not fully immune to it, Luke made a point of gazing above her head when he addressed her so that it wouldn’t cause his attention to deviate.

  “But it’s not your job to make coffee,” Luke continued. “That’s for one of the administrative assistants to do when they get here. I’m told they take turns.” And although none of them seemed to have Kayley’s touch, that was beside the point.

  “Oh, I really don’t mind,” she told him. “I like doing it. When I was a little girl, I used to get up early to make my mother coffee. In a way, since she’s gone now, making coffee here kind of connects me to her.”

  At a loss, Luke gave up trying to argue with his PA. Instead, he merely shrugged. “Well
, I wouldn’t want to deprive you of that. But just remember, you don’t have to do this and the moment you get tired of making coffee first thing in the morning, I want you to stop. Nowhere in your job description does it say ‘Has to make first pot of coffee in the morning.’”

  Her eyes seemed to almost be shining as she said, “I know.” About to go, she stopped at the last minute. “Oh. I almost forgot.”

  Kayley dug into the tan shopping bag she had brought in with her. There was a logo from French’s Bakery stenciled on the side of the bag. She took out a small box—there was apparently a much larger box directly beneath it—and handed it to Luke.

  He took it warily, the way someone would accept possession of a bomb. There was suspicion in his eyes. “What’s this?”

  “Sprinkled doughnuts for Lily. Two. I would have gotten her more, but I didn’t want her bouncing off the walls for you. And there’s also one in there for your mother-in-law. Jelly, not sprinkled,” she clarified. There was that smile again. Didn’t anything make this woman come down off her cloud? Luke silently demanded. “I got Mrs. Baxter to admit she had a weakness for them.”

  No doubt about it, he was starting to feel very overwhelmed by this five-foot-four whirling dervish. He didn’t think she even came up for air.

  “Did someone appoint you goodwill ambassador to the rest of the country somewhere along the line?” he asked, asking the sarcastic question in a less-than-cheerful tone.

  “No—but I’m open to the position should there be a need for one,” Kayley told him.

  And with that, she took her shopping bag filled with the remaining box of doughnuts and headed for the break room, leaving him staring after her back.

  Apparently, sarcasm had no effect on her, Luke concluded. He was at a loss as to what to make of the woman.

  In his experience, gifts, even doughnuts, came with strings. There was always some kind of give-and-take involved, or an angle, some piper to pay, a price down the line to be leery of.

  But for the life of him, he couldn’t discern what that could be in this case. The woman already had the job he assumed she wanted and it wasn’t as if the position was a rung on a corporate ladder that she could climb in order to get to more advanced positions.

  His eyes narrowed as he tried to get a handle on what she was thinking, what ultimately made his new PA tick. Since he didn’t believe in beating around the bush, Luke decided to ask her outright.

  He followed her to her cubbyhole of an office. “What’s your angle, Kayley Quartermain?” he asked gruffly. “Just what are you after?”

  He needed to review some CAT scans before his first patient of the day came in. That was what his early mornings were for, reviewing files, not trying to figure out what was going on in his PA’s mind. But he felt he’d have no peace until he at least tried to figure out exactly what she was up to—although he was beginning to think that just might be a lost cause.

  She set the box with the doughnuts down on her side table. “I’m not after anything, Doctor,” she told him guilelessly. “Do you have all the scans that you need for this morning?” she asked, deftly turning his attention back to his patients.

  “Yes,” he snapped, then spun on his heel and walked out of her office. He was right—getting down to the bottom of things with her was a lost cause.

  * * *

  Luke had seen seven patients in a row and his morning was going fairly well and without incident—until the last patient he had scheduled before noon arrived.

  Ralph Jordan was eleven and he came in with his mother, Janis. It was obvious that he wanted to hold on to his mom’s hand, but because he was eleven, like most boys that age, he felt he was too old to do that. So he fidgeted.

  From the moment he walked into the exam room, favoring his left leg, it was clear that it was causing him a great deal of pain even though he was attempting to tough it out.

  Using a minimum of words, something he had gotten very good at overseas, Luke got down to the heart of the problem. Ralph was a die-hard soccer player, and in his ardor to be the best, he had wound up tearing a ligament in his left leg.

  Rather than saying anything to the boy, Luke told Ralph’s mother, “I’m going to need an MRI to see the exact nature of the problem.”

  Other than introducing herself to both the boy and his mother, Kayley had remained quiet during the exam. But now she looked at the boy’s face. It was clear that Ralph was more than a little frightened of what lay ahead of him.

  “What’s that mean?” Ralph asked. When he didn’t receive an immediate answer from the doctor, he pressed, “What’s an MRI?”

  “Just something the doctor has to do,” his mother told him dismissively. The woman appeared to be close to the end of her rope. Not for the first time, Mrs. Jordan glanced at her watch. “Is this going to take long?” she asked nervously.

  “It should take about half an hour,” Luke told her, giving her a rough estimate. “Fortunately, you don’t need to take your son to another building. We have an MRI machine on the first floor.” He turned toward Kayley. “Call down to see if the technician is available now to do a scan of the patient’s left leg.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  Kayley checked quickly, and as it turned out, the tech was free. She conveyed the information to both the doctor and the boy’s mother.

  Luke looked as if he expected nothing less. Mrs. Jordan, however, seemed about to come out of her skin.

  Running her tongue along her upper lip, she looked anxiously at the doctor. “I know this is highly irregular, but I have a four-year-old to pick up from preschool. The school’s not that far from here,” she added hastily, probably hoping that fact would tip the scale in her favor. “Can you do this MRI scan if I leave my son with you? I promise I’ll be back within the hour,” she said, her eyes all but begging the doctor.

  “You can’t leave me here, Mom!” Ralph almost shrieked. Visibly scared, the eleven-year-old also sounded as if he was about to have a meltdown at any second.

  “Ralph, don’t make a scene,” Mrs. Jordan ordered. “It’ll be all right. Won’t it, Doctor?” Again, Ralph’s mother silently pleaded with the doctor, this time for some words of encouragement for her son.

  Kayley could see that Dr. Dolan didn’t have anything like that to give her. It just wasn’t his way. She immediately intervened by volunteering. “I can go with him to get the scan, Doctor.” Then, turning to the boy, she promised, “It’ll be a piece of cake, Ralph.”

  Kayley could see out of the corner of her eye that her boss was less than thrilled with the way this was all going. But to her, the important one in the room was the boy. She needed to keep him calm.

  Ralph’s mother looked relieved to be able to have someone take charge of her son while she went to pick up her younger child.

  “Thank you, Doctor. Kayley.” Janis Jordan expressed her thanks on the run as she hurried out of the room. She was gone before her words registered.

  With a garbled cry of protest, the terrified boy grabbed on to Kayley and held on as if letting go meant being forever lost.

  Kayley’s heart went out to him. There must have been a better way for his mother to have handled this. But then, Kayley told herself, she’d never had two children demanding her time, so she shouldn’t be judgmental.

  “I’ll take him down to radiology now, Doctor,” she told Luke.

  Ralph tugged on her arm. “What’s radio-ology?” he asked, his eyes as large as the proverbial saucers. She could see that he wasn’t about to go along quietly until he understood where it was he was going to.

  Kayley kept her answer simple. “That’s just another name for the place where they’re going to be taking pictures of your leg so that Dr. Dolan can fix it and make it all better.”

  Ralph appeared to respond to the promise of being “fixed.”

&
nbsp; “For real?” he asked, his voice hopeful.

  “For real,” Kayley assured him. “We just need to make one stop before we go down to the first floor, okay?”

  Pressing his lips together bravely, Ralph surrendered a reluctant “Okay.”

  The stop that Kayley made was to her locker. She took out her headphones as well as the tablet that they were plugged into.

  The white headphones were a source of curiosity for Ralph. “What’s that?” he asked, eyeing them suspiciously.

  “That’s just something for you to use so that you can watch a movie on my tablet. It’ll take your mind off the boring test,” she told him. She waited for further questions, but for now, there were none. Putting out her hand to Ralph, she asked the jittery little boy, “Ready to get those pictures taken of your leg?”

  He blew out a long, deep nervous breath, then reluctantly said, “I guess.”

  Because his injury made it difficult to walk, Kayley avoided the stairs and they took the elevator down to the medical building’s first floor. Radiology was located directly opposite the elevator.

  “What’s that?” Ralph asked the moment they went through the doors and he heard a loud, rhythmic clunking noise. It sounded very much like a motor hitting the inside of a drainpipe.

  Kayley explained without hesitation, “That’s just the picture machine warming up.”

  She felt the boy tightening his fingers around her hand. He seemed to shrink into her. “It’s scary,” he breathed.

  “It’s just a machine,” she told him in a very calm, soothing voice. “It can’t hurt you.”

  Ralph didn’t look convinced.

  And he looked even less so as they walked into the room where the MRI was located.

  The technician, Teddy, glanced up when he heard them come in. “This the patient?” he asked, nodding toward the boy clinging to her.

  “The one and only,” Kayley answered. “This is Ralph Jordan. Ralph, this is Teddy, our super-smart MRI technician,” she said, keeping her voice incredibly upbeat. “It’s Teddy’s job to make sure everything is running super smoothly. Okay, Ralph,” she said, her smile never waning. “You’re going to lie down on this table—” she pointed to it “—and the machine is going to take lots of pictures of your leg.”