Lakeside Hospital Box Set

by Cara Malone

  She could just picture the neatly folded pile of clothes she’d had to make in the closet after she realized that she’d forgotten to pack hangers. She needed to find a Target as soon as possible and fix that problem – there was nothing worse than clutter and the thought of all that stuff never stopped nagging at the back of her mind.

  Mercedes pulled out her phone and was mid-way through sending a grumpy text to Jewel when she finally appeared, led through the luxe dining room by a waiter in an expensive suit jacket.

  “I’m sorry,” Jewel said as Mercedes rose to greet her. “Billy’s mom was running late so I had to stick around the daycare and wait with him.”

  Mercedes put aside her irritation and opened her arms. “Hi, Jewel, it’s good to see you.”

  “It’s been so long,” her sister said, coming in for a hug.

  When she pulled back, she took Mercedes in.

  She was wearing a sharp pair of slacks with a faint pinstripe running through them. Her hair was shorter than the last time Jewel saw it – the last time Mercedes and her sister had been in the same room was during their grandmother’s funeral, and back then, her hair had been wild and voluminous, nearly reaching her shoulders. Short suited her better.

  “You look good,” Jewel said. “Seems like Seattle has been good to you.”

  Mercedes smiled. “You look good, too.”

  It was a white lie – Jewel looked haggard and she had dark circles under her eyes. She was four years younger than Mercedes, but with two kids under ten, her job, her husband… and their mother… it wasn’t hard to understand why she looked like she was chronically short on sleep.

  Mercedes took a deep breath and gestured to the booth, saying, “Should we order?”

  “Yeah, I’m starving,” Jewel said as she sat down across from Mercedes. She spotted the bourbon snifter and added, “I wouldn’t mind one of those, either. Michael’s watching the kids tonight so we’ll have as much time as we need to catch up.”

  Mercedes raised her hand, waving their waiter back to the table, and Jewel ordered a sickly sweet-sounding cocktail, then they settled in.

  “How have you been?” Jewel asked.

  “I’ve been better,” Mercedes said. “Dr. Knowlton is pretty upset that I left him in the lurch to handle the clinical trial until I get back. Lakeside seems nice, but it’s tiny compared to Seattle Reserve.”

  “I meant you, not your job,” Jewel said. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  Mercedes took a drink. There was nowhere in the world she wanted to be less than Evanston, but she could honestly say, “I’m happy you and I have a chance to reconnect.”

  Jewel looked away, a flash of annoyance on her face, and the waiter came by with her barely-alcoholic, mostly-sugar apple martini. She took a sip and her expression transformed as she moaned happily – different strokes – then asked, “Have you gone to Mom’s house yet?”

  “No,” Mercedes said. “I’m not ready for that.”

  Jewel nodded understanding. “Have you talked to her?” When Mercedes didn’t answer, choosing instead to take a long sip of bourbon, the dam finally broke and Jewel scowled openly at her. “You’ve been here a week and you haven’t even called Mom yet?”

  “It’s not a simple thing,” Mercedes said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Maybe you’re on good terms with her because you’ve never lived more than twenty minutes away, but it’s been close to a decade since I last saw her.”

  “And why do you think I never moved away?” Jewel shot back. “Just because I enjoy dealing with her? Somebody had to make sure she didn’t bury herself alive.”

  “Yeah, and what a fine job you’ve done,” Mercedes said. She knew it wasn’t nice as soon as she said it, but that was the funny thing about words – you couldn’t pull them back in once they were out.

  Jewel’s lips became a thin line as she narrowed her eyes at Mercedes. Then she took a deep breath and her voice came out more composed than Mercedes was expecting. “None of this is my fault. I did the best I could and I’ve been dealing with her ever since you left us. I was only in high school.”

  “I know,” Mercedes said. It took all of her energy to bite back a further retort. I didn’t leave you, I went to college. Was I supposed to put my entire life on hold because our mother couldn’t just be a responsible adult? “I didn’t mean to blame you.”

  “Thank you,” Jewel said, the fire fading from her eyes. She picked up her martini and took a long sip, then changed the subject. “I know you’re a bigshot in Seattle. I wanted to tell you that I understand the sacrifice you’re making to come back here and I appreciate it.”

  “Tell that to the women with preeclampsia I was trying to help,” she said. It was petty – she could hear it in her voice – but there were those pesky words again, coming out before she could stop them.

  Thankfully, she had a chance to ignore her unkind words when the waiter came back and took their dinner orders. Mercedes ordered the filet and Jewel frowned at the menu, then ordered a chef’s salad.

  “Wait,” Mercedes said, putting her hand on Jewel’s menu. “Is that really what you want?”

  “Sure,” Jewel said. “It sounds good-”

  “Order what you want,” Mercedes said. “Dinner is my treat.”

  “Are you trying to buy me off for all those years you were away?” Jewel asked. Mercedes shrugged – maybe so – and Jewel opened her menu again, saying, “You do have a lot to make up for, but one meal doesn’t make us even. I’ll have the porterhouse steak, medium well, with heirloom carrots and garlic mashed potatoes.”

  She handed the menu to the waiter, then arched her eyebrows at Mercedes.

  “What?”

  “You really have no idea what you’re in for,” she said. “Emailing Mom once a week is nothing like actually being here. What are you picturing when you think about the house?”

  “I don’t know,” Mercedes said. “I haven’t really thought about it too much.” More like she’d been actively pushing the idea from her mind. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad,” Jewel said. “I don’t want you to go over there and expect it to look the way it did when we were kids. That’s the thing about hoarders – the compulsion never goes away, but the house never gets any bigger, either.”

  “I’ll help her clear it out,” Mercedes promised.

  Her plan was to rent a dumpster, excavate her mother and chuck everything in the house. Then she’d be on a plane back to Seattle in time to deliver some of the clinical trial babies.

  Jewel snorted.

  “What?” Mercedes asked again.

  “It’s not that simple,” Jewel said. “You know she’s not speaking to me anymore.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I’m here,” Mercedes said. Because my mother and sister couldn’t resolve an argument and now they need me to come clean up the mess.

  “She’s not speaking to me because I tried to clear her house out,” Jewel said. “Many times. The only place that will get you is on her bad side. If you push her, she’ll shut you out, too, and then we’ll really be in trouble. You have to get her professional help and make sure she sticks to the therapy plan.”

  Mercedes let out a long sigh and sipped her bourbon. The more Jewel talked, the more mountainous the task felt, and she really needed to cling to her timeline – a six-month sabbatical to clean out a hoarder’s house, then back to the sanctuary of the west coast.

  All of this was on account of a hysterical phone call that Jewel had placed to her about three weeks ago. It had gone something like this:

  Mercedes: Hello?

  Jewel: I CAN’T DEAL WITH MOM ANYMORE. You have to come home.

  Mercedes: Slow down – what’s going on?

  Jewel: I just can’t do it. It’s too much. I’m freaking tired, Mercedes. She won’t even let me in the house anymore. OUR MOTHER IS LIVING IN A DEATH TRAP HOUSE AND SHE DOESN’T EVEN CARE!

  Mercedes had to take a minute to process that after the phone call ended, and even
now she wasn’t sure she understood it. How was it possible to be a person who, at least on the surface, appeared to be a functioning member of society who reported to work and babysat her grandkids, and then went home every night to a house so stuffed with junk that she couldn’t even access some of the rooms anymore?

  Some memories faded before they could be switched over to the long-term part of the brain, and others retained every vivid detail in living color for a lifetime. One of those exquisite memories formed for Mercedes in the minutes following her call with Jewel.

  She was standing in the obstetrics ward hallway at Seattle Reserve Hospital. There was someone talking over the hospital loudspeaker. The fluorescent lights in the hallway seemed too bright even though they’d never bothered Mercedes before. A couple of orderlies rushed past her with a gurney and instead of chasing after them, she just stood there thinking, my mother is mentally ill.

  Another one of those vivid memories was formed almost exactly thirty years earlier, but Mercedes remembered it like it was yesterday.

  She was eleven. Jewel was seven. Mercedes got tired of never being allowed to bring her friends home, so when their mother left for her night shift at the shipping yard, Mercedes invited her two best friends over.

  “You can’t bring them inside,” Jewel told her, clinging to Mercedes’ shirt as she made her way to the door. “Mom said no friends over.”

  “Mom’s not here,” Mercedes said as she opened the door for her friends, Crystal and Samantha. “Come in – I have a Nintendo 64 in my bedroom.” The girls’ eyes were wide as they stepped over the threshold and into the living room, and not in a good way. Mercedes urged them further in while Jewel stood back, looking nervous. “My room’s back here.”

  She tried to lead them down the narrow hallway, made even narrower by the clear plastic bins that her mother had begun stacking there the year their father died and which now stood as tall as Mercedes’ chest.

  “My mom said I need to be home in time for dinner,” Samantha said, backing toward the door.

  “It’s only four o’clock,” Mercedes said, but Crystal was backing away too, trying not to trip on the various toys, clothes, and pieces of mail that lined a walking path through the living room.

  “I should go,” Samantha said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Crystal hurried to add. “Sorry – we’ll hang out another time, Mercedes.”

  As she watched her friends flee the house, Mercedes had another thought. It was the first time this particular one formed in her mind, but far from the last. My house is not normal.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Mercedes promised Jewel now. “I’ll call Mom tomorrow after work and we’ll make a plan to get her a therapist.”

  The thought was tiring. It wasn’t that she and her mother had a bad relationship. It had just been a long-distance one for half of Mercedes’ life and she’d gotten used to it being that way.

  The food came and when Jewel dug into her steak, Mercedes smirked at her and said, “I knew you wanted more than just a salad.”

  “This steak is melting in my mouth,” Jewel said, rolling her eyes with exaggerated pleasure. “If we do this once a week until you go back to Seattle, I think I might be able to call us even – it’s that good.”

  “Deal,” Mercedes said, picking up her knife and fork to slice into her own steak.

  With one cheek full of heirloom carrots, Jewel asked, “So why are you working, anyway?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You came here and the first thing you did was get a job,” she said. “I’m guessing by the extravagance of this restaurant that you’re not sitting on a secret mountain of debt, so why not just live on your savings for a while?”

  “I can’t do that,” Mercedes said. She was almost physically repulsed at the idea of doing nothing – especially doing nothing except work on her mother’s hoarding problem. She joked, “Gotta keep my skills sharp, and these Evanston babies aren’t going to birth themselves.”

  “Mikey practically did,” Jewel said with a snort, referring to her youngest. “Michael barely got me out of the car at the hospital and he was ready to come into the world.”

  Mercedes smiled. “He seems like a troublemaker.”

  Most of what she knew of Jewel’s kids was gathered from social media, but she tried to stay abreast of what was going on in their lives, and she’d never missed a Christmas or birthday gift – even if she did have to send them through the mail. On Facebook, Mikey was always surrounded by chaos, dirt on his clothes and mischief in his eyes, while his older sister, Faith, seemed to be a social butterfly – in every photo that Jewel posted of her, she was surrounded by at least two or three other little girls.

  “I hope you’ll make the time to get to know Mikey and Faith better while you’re here,” Jewel said.

  “Yeah,” Mercedes said, as non-committal as possible. Wouldn’t it just hurt more when she left if they all got to know each other?

  4

  Lily

  “Hey there, Dr. Thomas.”

  Lily looked up as Mercedes entered the locker room. She’d been running into her a lot over the past week, and those annoyingly inappropriate thoughts that Chloe had put into her head were becoming harder to ignore with every interaction.

  “Good morning, Dr. Stone,” Lily said. She’d been resistant to using Mercedes’ first name, even though she told her to, so Mercedes teased her now by referring to her formally as well. It was becoming a joke between them. “How are you?”

  “Better now that I’m at work,” she said. It was Monday morning and Mercedes hardly looked rested.

  “Were you on call this weekend?” Lily asked.

  “No,” Mercedes said. “It was just a long one.”

  She didn’t elaborate further and Lily was the first to break their gaze. She turned back to her locker and grabbed her white coat, as well as her phone. When she turned around again, Mercedes had closed the gap between them.

  “Allow me,” she said, taking the coat out of Lily’s hands.

  Lily rolled her eyes. “I’ve been putting this coat on every morning since medical school. I think I can manage.”

  “I never said you couldn’t,” Mercedes said.

  Lily sighed, making a show of her protest as she turned around and let Mercedes help her into her coat. Her hands rested on Lily’s shoulders for just a moment, then she climbed over the bench between them and opened the locker next to Lily’s. Even though she was getting used to running into Mercedes all over the hospital, Lily still blushed and stumbled over her words every time she saw her.

  Maybe if Dr. Stone wasn’t such a huge flirt, it would be easier to be coworkers, she thought. But she didn’t actually want those brilliant, dark eyes to stop looking at her with such intrigue. Mercedes’ interest was apparent and it was fun to be wanted – mostly because there was absolutely no risk of being hurt. Lily was pregnant and Mercedes’ sabbatical clock was ticking.

  Sometimes, Lily played into the flirtation.

  She looked up at Mercedes and, allowing her voice to become just a tinge more vulnerable, said, “Thank you.”

  What if she kissed me right now?

  The thought popped into her head out of nowhere, but it wouldn’t take much to make it happen. She’d just need to turn her body slightly, tilt her head up and lean forward, closing the gap between them. They both seemed to be early risers, and they were completely alone in the locker room, although that could change at any moment. The rest of the day shift staff for the pediatrics and OB/GYN departments would start to trickle in over the next thirty minutes.

  You could do a lot in thirty minutes, she thought, then immediately chastised herself. What is wrong with you? Stop it – Mercedes is your coworker.

  Those hormones were powerful, even at three weeks.

  Lily stepped away and was saved by her phone. She jumped when it rang and she realized it was still in her hand – forgotten for a moment. She gave Mercedes an apologetic smile. “Excuse me
, I have to get this.”

  She hadn’t even looked to see who the caller was, but any excuse to extricate herself and stop being so foolish was a good one. Mercedes nodded and said, “Have a good day, Lily.”

  “You, too,” she said, trying not to be affected by the sound of her name on Mercedes’ lips. She looked at her phone - the area code was one she’d only learned recently – a Nashville one – and it turned out this was an important call after all. As she stepped out of the locker room, she said, “Good morning, Dr. Marsh. I’ve been looking forward to your call.”

  “I’m sorry it took so long, Dr. Thomas,” Dr. Marsh answered. “We’ve been so busy getting the Graft 3D lab set up that I’ve barely had time to sleep, let alone keep up with correspondence.”

  “I completely understand,” Lily said.

  She could feel the envy rising in her chest already – Dr. Marsh was leading a team of doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who were the first in the nation to put a new 3D-printing technology into practice to create living grafts for burn patients. Lily had been following their progress hungrily – something like that would skyrocket Lakeside’s burn center head and shoulders above the one at Lurie Children’s.

  “Well, I’ve got some good news,” Dr. Marsh said. “The lab is now fully operational and we’re expecting to start treating our first Graft 3D patients in under thirty days.”

  “Wow, that’s incredible!” Lily said, awe dripping from her voice.

  Dr. Marsh must have been able to hear it, because she noticed the joy in his voice when he asked, “How would you like to come for a visit and see it in practice?”

  Like Santa delivering a coveted present…

  “Really?” Lily asked, momentarily losing all sense of professionalism and simply becoming a huge science nerd. “I’d love to!”