by Jane Heller
I surrendered to my misgivings, dragged myself and my laptop into the house, and chatted with my mother, aunt, and grandmother, who were sitting in the den watching a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond. At one point, my mother commented that I seemed “all keyed up.”
“Was it running into Richie Grossman at the coffee place?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye. “Are you seeing him in a new light, sweetie?”
Aunt Toni groaned. “She sees him in the same light as everyone else sees him, Linda. He’s smart, granted, but a little too ambitious, too eager.”
My mother cast her an exasperated look. “I was only wondering if there might be sparks, now that they’re older, more settled in their lives.”
“Ann isn’t settled,” said Toni. “I know you love having her here. We all do. But she’s itching to get back to Los Angeles, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Maybe if she became interested in a local boy, she’d—”
“Stay?” Toni scoffed. “She came home as a temporary measure, to try to face her fears head-on instead of avoiding them like we do.”
Mom looked bewildered. “What fears?”
My aunt rolled her eyes. “I’ve got mine and Mother has hers, but you, Linda, are afraid of your own shadow. You won’t even set foot outside this house.”
“Nonsense,” said my mother, turning up the volume on the TV remote. “I’ve told you over and over. I can leave anytime I want. I just choose not to. This has been a snowy winter and I—”
“Cut it out, you two,” said my grandmother, nipping this latest tiff in the bud. “And quit talking about Ann as if she doesn’t know her own mind. She’s a tough cookie deep down. She’ll find her way.”
“Right.” I faked a big, noisy yawn. “Actually, I’m kind of pooped. I think I’ll turn in, you guys. ’Night.”
I found my way, all right—straight into my bedroom, where I called my best friend on her cell. I couldn’t not call her, I’d decided while my mother and aunt were busy picking each other apart. Tuscany and I had been in touch regularly, but she always did most of the talking because she had the more interesting gossip. Now I finally had something juicy to tell her. Something that would rock her world. Besides, I knew I could depend on her. She would keep Richard’s secret if I asked her to.
She was at her place getting dressed for a dinner date by the time I caught up with her. “I have to look my best, so I’m trying on everything I own,” she said.
“Where’d you meet this one?” I said, thinking of all the men she’d gone out with once and dumped. “At the Mercedes dealership? Office Depot? A traffic light?”
“For your information, I was introduced to him by James,” she said.
“James?” I was surprised, not only because he had never introduced me to a straight man but also because Tuscany tended to dismiss fix ups in favor of pickups.
“Yeah, I’m going out with an actor on The Bold and the Beautiful,” she said. “His name’s Don Carerra and it’s our second date.”
Well, now I was really surprised. For one thing, she rarely had second dates. For another, she had sworn off actors, just as I had. But I was too wired about my own news to obsess about hers. “Look,” I said, “I found out something tonight, something so incredible you won’t believe it.”
“I bet I know. You’re adopted.”
“What?”
“Okay. Your next-door neighbor turned out to be a serial killer.”
“Come on.”
“Then it’s that your aunt is really your mother.”
“No! Stop!”
“Well? Things like that happen in small towns. You hear about them all the time.”
“Tuscany,” I said, adopting a tone I hoped was serious, somber. “What I’m about to tell you is extremely confidential. Richard could lose his job if you repeated it.”
She laughed. “Richard? Dr. Dork?”
“Don’t make fun of him. He’s not a bad guy.” I’d given her the back-story on Richard and she always teased me about him. “I really don’t want to get him in trouble. So promise. What I’m about to tell you has to stay between us. Has to.”
“Okay, okay. I promise. But if this is about some patient who’s suing because they yanked out the wrong—”
“It’s about Malcolm Goddard.”
“Coincidence that you brought him up,” she said matter-of-factly. “I heard he walked off the set of the movie he was supposed to start shooting in Canada. That nasty publicist of his claims there were creative differences, but rumor has it he came back to the States and checked into Betty Ford.”
“No, Tuscany.” I took a long, deep breath in an attempt to calm down. My mother was right. I was all keyed up. “He came back to the States and is flying here.”
“Where?”
“Middletown.”
“What?”
“And not for rehab.”
I told her the little bit I knew. “I assume ‘Luke Sykes’ will be admitted in the next day or so.”
“But why your hospital, of all places?” she said, as dumbfounded as I was.
“I guess he got sick on the set, went to his doctor, and said, ‘Send me to the middle of the country, where I can disappear.’ Heartland General has a great reputation for heart-related problems, so his doctor probably said, ‘I’ll send you there.’”
“This is too much! The privacy freak is going where he thinks no one will hound him! Oh my God!”
“Amazing, right?”
“Totally. Did you ever think your shot at getting your job back would come this soon? It’s only been a month since you left.”
“My job back?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“Helloooo? Anybody home? You’ve just been handed the opportunity of a lifetime, Ann. The guy checks into that hospital, a stranger in a strange land, not a friend in the world. Then you show up all sweet and sympathetic. You make him like you and trust you. You change his bedpan if you have to. And before you know it, he’ll tell you everything about himself and you’ll write a fabulous piece about him for Famous. Harvey will be ecstatic and you’ll be back in L.A., earning double what he was paying you.”
I laughed. “Are you stoned or something?”
“No, I’m just so excited for you.” She squealed, forcing me to hold the phone away from my ear. “Is this perfect payback for the way he jerked you around or what!”
“Wait. Just hold on,” I said. “I can’t go running over to the hospital to visit him. He hates me as much as I hate him. He’d have me thrown out of his room.”
“Oh, like he’d even recognize you? He met you once. For a few minutes. He was drunk. It was dark on the patio at Spago. You had cheesecake on your face.”
“I remember,” I said, remembering too well.
“Plus, you were just one of a million reporters who’ve done battle with him. Even if you were wearing a name tag, he still wouldn’t make the connection.”
She had a point. Several points. Still. “So I’d—what?—just appear at his door and pretend I’d walked into the wrong room?”
Tuscany sighed. She was frustrated with me. “Wasn’t this Harvey’s beef with you? That you wouldn’t do whatever it took to get the big story?”
“I—Okay, yes. But there is no story. Not that I can—”
“Oh, there’s a story, all right, and you’re sitting on it. It’s your chance to prove him wrong, Ann.”
I didn’t say anything. I was overcome by the magnitude of Richard’s announcement and by the sudden possibilities it raised for me, for my future.
“You do want your career back, don’t you?” she prodded. “I thought it was your dream to have it back.”
“It is, it is,” I said. “But I don’t even know how long Goddard will be hospitalized. He could be in and out before I even have a crack at him. And then there’s the issue of how to have a crack at him. I’m not a nurse. I can’t just waltz in and draw blood, as much as I’d like to.” I allowed myself a laugh. “I don’t have acc
ess to the patients there.”
“Look,” she said. “You’re the same person who came up with that cheesecake scheme. You figured out a way to get close to him even when the publicist was telling you to back off. So you’ll figure this one out too.”
IT WAS WONDERFUL to have a best friend, and I appreciated her faith in me. But the cheesecake stunt was a Hollywood ploy, a gifting thing. Nobody in Middletown gifted. Sure, I could dig around and find out the names of Goddard’s favorite flowers, stop by the local florist, pick up a cheery get-well bouquet, and present it to him at the hospital, once I tracked down the room where “Luke Sykes” was taking cover. The problem was, why would I be bringing him flowers? I wasn’t supposed to know who he was. I couldn’t just show up like some long-lost relative.
On the other hand, she was absolutely right about Goddard’s reappearance in my life: I’d be an idiot if I didn’t capitalize on it. I had prayed I could prove to Harvey that I was a killer journalist, and now my prayer had been answered. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had to find a way to take advantage of this quirk of fate and get my job back, which meant that I also had to come up with a good reason for being at the hospital.
No small challenge for someone like me, given my phobia of sick and dying people. After watching my father wither away, I’d developed the fear of catching the helplessness, the frailty, the pain of the sick and dying. I was very close to my dad when I was little. Adored him. He’d take me to the recreational lake in Middletown and we’d sit on the beach and he’d spin tales about the sea and the sky and the planets. I’d be mesmerized. He worked at the bank, was a numbers cruncher, but he had a dreamy, ethereal side. I was his only child and he doted on me, and I was devastated when he disappeared without an explanation that my ten-year-old mind could comprehend. Yes, as an adult I’d read enough articles in Psychology Today to know that my fears—and my mother’s—were probably linked to his death to some degree; that it wasn’t uncommon for anxieties to surface as the result of a loss. But to place myself in a hospital setting for a story, place myself in the very building where I last saw my father alive? No, the idea wasn’t nearly as traumatic as having to fly on Goddard’s Cessna, but I wasn’t exactly embracing it. The day I’d interviewed Richard in his office was the first time I’d been back at Heartland General since Dad died there.
So. To put this in perspective, I had a fear of sick and dying people, a case of hypochondria, and, let’s not forget, a fear of vomit. Patients in hospitals vomited fairly often, didn’t they? Why else would all the rooms have those little kidney-shaped pans around?
Still, I had to get in there. I believed in destiny, in the cliché that things happen for a reason. Perhaps Goddard was about to land in my town precisely because I was supposed to write a story about him and return to L.A. in a blaze of glory. There was no question that I had to follow that destiny, do whatever it took to make it happen.
Plus, I really did despise the guy. Finagling an interview out of him without his permission would give me enormous pleasure. He’d played me. I’d be playing him right back. I just needed a way in.
And then I lit on it. Just lit on it. The idea floated into my consciousness and stayed there, filling me with immense satisfaction because I’d managed to conjure it up.
I’d been thinking about the hospital, about Richard, about what he’d talked about—droned on about—during our interview. He’d been all worked up about the hospital’s financial crisis and he’d specifically mentioned the shortage of qualified nurses—and the effort to recruit more volunteers.
Volunteers. Yes. Heartland General needed more of them.
I would become a volunteer and gain access to Goddard easily. I’d have security clearance, wear a uniform, and roam the hospital as freely as if I belonged there. Well, why not? I didn’t have a job, other than the occasional freelance piece for the Crier. I could devote myself to volunteering without the slightest scheduling conflict.
I was too old to be a candy striper, but I wasn’t too old to walk around smiling at people and pointing them in the direction of the cafeteria, assuming that was all that was required of me. I probably wouldn’t even come into contact with a sick and dying person. It would be a snap. I’d get Goddard to talk on the record without his knowing it, prove to Harvey I was a killer, and life would be good again.
God, yes. It was a brilliant plan, if I did say so myself.
Chapter Twelve
“I see that you’ve had a career in journalism, but have you had any experience interacting with patients?” asked Shelley Bussey, Heartland’s director of volunteers, as she read over the application I’d filled out. I was sitting opposite her in her cubicle of an office on Thursday morning in March, my face flushed from the gale of dry heat that was blowing through the vent over my head.
“No,” I said, “but I’ve interacted with movie stars and they require more hand-holding than any patient ever could.”
She smiled awkwardly. I’d managed to make a joke that was both inappropriate and insensitive, particularly since she’d told me she was a colon cancer survivor and had undoubtedly required plenty of hand-holding. But she maintained her sunny disposition. In her late fifties, she’d been running the department for over ten years and was one of those people who radiates goodness without being sanctimonious about it. With her nearly six-foot height and infectious laugh, she would have been a standout even without her shock of frizzy white hair, which had grown in that way, both in color and texture, after her chemo treatments.
“Okay then,” she said brightly. “We’ve covered your educational background, and we’ve established that you’ve never been convicted of a crime.” She scanned the application, running her finger down the page. “Oh.” She looked up. “There’s a question you forgot to check off.” She passed me the document. “It’s just under the space where you filled in your mother’s name and address. ‘Do you have any physical or mental disorder that would impair your ability to perform as a volunteer at Heartland General?’ See it?”
I hadn’t forgotten to check that one off. I’d simply avoided checking it off, thinking maybe she wouldn’t notice the omission. “Physically, I’m fine,” I said, figuring I might as well be open about my “handicap,” as Peggy Merchant had dubbed it, in case it reared its head while I was on the premises. “But I’ve been dealing with anxiety lately. I’m not psychotic or anything, I swear. I just have panic attacks at inopportune moments, like when I’m in a crowd or about to board an airplane.”
She didn’t say anything, so I rushed in to fill the dead air.
“I can give you a personal reference,” I offered. “I went to grade school with Richard—sorry, Dr.—Grossman, the assistant chief of staff. I’m sure he’d vouch for me.” I hadn’t told him yet about my sudden impulse to volunteer, but I assumed he’d be pleased and would, indeed, provide a reference.
She sat back in her chair and smiled. “First of all, you can call him Richard or you can call him Dr. Grossman or you can call him Tight Ass. It’s all the same to me.”
I laughed. “Tight Ass?”
“Well?” She arched her eyebrow mischievously. “He’s all business around here, all hustle. Not exactly the class clown.”
I decided not to tell her I was afraid of clowns too. I really liked this woman. She was kind and caring but a straight shooter. And I appreciated her sense of humor. It felt like an eternity since I’d worked for someone who had one.
“Second of all, there are a lot of reasons people choose to volunteer their time and energy,” she said. “Some are on a crusade and believe it’s their duty to serve others. Some are lonely and need a place to come to on a regular basis. Some have been sick, like I was, and want to give back to the hospital that saved their lives. And then there are some”—she paused, her eyes shining with compassion for me—“who are trying to find themselves or find their strength of character or conquer their demons. You’d be surprised how a gesture as simple as reading to a
patient can make a volunteer feel heroic. Giving to others does that for people. It’s more rewarding than you can imagine.”
I also decided not to tell her that, while I certainly admired people who came away from volunteering feeling heroic and all that other good stuff, I wasn’t wild about getting close to the patients, plural. I was only interested in getting close to one patient, and once I got my story about him, I was gone. I know that sounds callous, but it was true. I would do my very best to help out at the hospital as long as it didn’t involve anything too creepy, but I had a career to salvage. “So you’re not blackballing me for losing it every now and then?” I said instead.
She shook her distinctive white head, which reminded me of a tropical bird. “We all lose it every now and then. I’m much more interested in your ability to keep our patients happy than I am in whether you get a bad case of flop sweat whenever you fly.”
“Thank you, Shelley,” I said, touched by her willingness to overlook my shortcomings. Well, the ones I’d been honest about.
“You’re welcome,” she said, turning to her computer screen. After a few clicks, she pulled up a page that looked like a schedule. “Let’s begin by assigning you a shift. Shifts are in four-hour blocks. Do you like mornings? Afternoons? Weekdays? Weekends?”
“My date book is wide open.”
“Good. For beginning volunteers, I don’t recommend taking on too much. I’ll start you with two shifts per week and see how it goes.”
On one hand, I was relieved when she said I didn’t have to come more often. On the other hand, I didn’t know when Goddard was being admitted or how long he’d be a patient. I didn’t have the luxury of time. “How about Friday and Tuesday afternoons?” I said. “That way, I could start tomorrow.”
“I like your spunk,” she said, typing the information into her computer. “Fridays and Tuesdays from one to five.” She turned back to me. “Now, which of our programs would you like to try?” She ticked off a list. There was a program where volunteers with dogs brought them in to boost patient morale, but since our family didn’t have a dog, given my mother’s fear of them, that one was out. There was a program where volunteers with musical talents performed for the patients, but since I couldn’t carry a tune or play an instrument, that one was out. And there was a program where volunteers with strong religious backgrounds provided patients with spiritual counseling, but since I was the sort of Jew who celebrated Christmas, that one was out too.