The Nurse and the Single Dad

by Dianne Drake

  Anything to put it off, he thought to himself as he cleared the picnic table. Definitely, anything to put it off.

  * * *

  Zoey didn’t turn back to wave at Daniel and Maddie as she took the walk to her car. She could feel his eyes burning into the back of her, however, and she really wanted to have a look to see if he was staring, or if her imagination was working overtime. But she resisted temptation and walked on, wondering what she was going to do. Daniel obviously wanted something from her, or had expectations of her, and maybe she was sending out signals that were inviting him in. She didn’t know... She didn’t think she was, but it was clear Daniel was reading something.

  “No, I don’t have a boyfriend yet,” she told her mother a little while later. That was the truth, but her mind did wander back to Daniel and, for a moment, she thought about telling her mother about him. Only a moment! Then the urge left her. “I’m still doing the same thing. Nothing’s changed.”

  “You’re not getting any younger, Zoey,” her mother warned.

  Zoey held out her cell phone and frowned at it, not that her mother would sense that frown all the way back in Omaha. But it made Zoey feel better. “My life is good the way it is.” As she spoke the words, though, she wasn’t as convinced as she normally was.

  “You don’t want to make it better?”

  “I thought Brad would make it better, and look what happened there.” Her mother had loved Brad. But Brad had disappointed her, too, as for a time, she’d thought him to be the perfect man.

  “That was unfortunate. He wasn’t who we thought he was.”

  “No, he wasn’t. When I first met him I thought he was wonderful, and if anybody had told me he would drain my bank account, or cheat on me, I wouldn’t have believed them.”

  “He fooled both of us, dear. But you’re strong. You’ll get over it.”

  “I am over it, Mother.” Even with all the talk of Brad swirling around her, Zoey’s mind raced back to Daniel. She liked his manly looks, his manly charms. Apparently her tastes had changed drastically since Brad, and for that she was glad. Daniel gave her an awareness that she welcomed, and he also gave her the hope that sometime, in the future, she could completely step away from her past.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Zoey. I’m on your side. I’m always on your side, which is why I worry about you so much.”

  “No need to worry, Mother. I’m doing just fine.” She said that wistfully, as she was beginning to understand that there was something beyond just fine for her.

  * * *

  Daniel looked at the caller ID on his phone and saw that it was Zoey calling him. Today was Thursday and he hadn’t seen her since Sunday. But he’d thought about her these past few days. Probably too much.

  The phone continued to ring and, for an instant, the excitement stirred in him. But he tamped it right back down when he realized that this had to be the call about Mr. Baumgartner. “Oh, well...” he said as he hit Answer.

  “Can we meet in person, Daniel?” was the first thing she said to him. Not “hello,” or “how are you doing?” or any other pleasantry. No, Zoey led right in with business.

  “Is this about Mr. Baumgartner?” he asked.

  “Yes. But I don’t want to go into it on the phone. It’s too complicated.”

  Now he was puzzled. “I have a light afternoon. Want to meet at the coffee shop?” That was neutral territory, and he assumed she’d be all into a neutral meeting.

  “Or I could come to the hospital, if that would be better.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said, trying not to sound too anxious.

  There was a slight hesitation on her end, then she finally said, “I’m headed into my office to pick up some supplies, so how about I stop in the hospital afterward?”

  “And brave my tiny office?”

  “I haven’t had my wrestling match with cramped spaces today, so I’m probably due.”

  “Then I’ll see you in a little while. Call me when you get here.” He waited for her to say goodbye, or something personal, but instead she merely hung up. Dead silence. No pleasantries again. “So, Zoey...”

  He sighed as he walked down the hall to Room Three-Eleven. His patient there was a young woman diagnosed with an ovarian cyst. It wasn’t serious, but she was falling apart at the prospect of surgery, and he’d been asked in to check her out and possibly prescribe a mild sedative.

  Pulling on the requisite latex exam gloves, he stepped in the room and smiled. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Dr. Caldwell. I hear you’re not feeling so well, so let’s see what we can do about that...”

  A little while later Daniel was strolling down the hall on his way to his next patient when Zoey phoned. “I’m on my way over right now,” she told him.

  “I’ll be back at my office in about half an hour, after I finish my exam here, then do the charting.” He liked hearing her voice. Liked it that she called him. In fact, when her name had come up on his caller ID, his heart had skipped a beat.

  “I’ll be waiting,” she said, then hung up.

  “She sounded sexy,” a man in a wheelchair said, coming up on him from behind.

  Daniel spun around to face him, surprised that the man was so close to him. Had he been so caught up in his moment with Zoey that everything else had escaped him? “You could hear her?”

  “You had the phone turned to speaker. And, if I were you, I’d get on down to your office. You don’t want to keep the lady waiting too long.”

  No, he didn’t want to keep her waiting too long, but that was what it seemed like he was doing in so many ways. Taking a step forward, then retreating. Hesitating. Asking, then fearing the answer... Yes, in so many ways.

  * * *

  “You’re going over to see him?” Sally McCall, Zoey’s office manager, asked. Sally was a decade older than Zoey, an attractive woman with four children and a doting husband. Over the course of the year that Sally had worked at Home Health Care, they’d become friends of sort. Not close friends, so much as proximity friends. “The same one I’ve heard you talking to on the phone? The same one who causes you to sigh after you hang up with him?”

  “No, I’m going over there to consult on a mutual patient. I called him and set up an appointment because Mr. Baumgartner dismissed us for no good reason this morning, and I thought Daniel... Dr. Caldwell...should know.”

  “And you couldn’t tell him on the phone?”

  “I could have,” Zoey defended, “But I have some other concerns I want to address with him, and that’s best done face to face.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen this Dr. Caldwell face to face, but I’m betting it’s a handsome face, or else you wouldn’t be so anxious to get over there and see him.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “If your mother sounds like someone who would love to see you happy, then I take that as a compliment.”

  “Look, Sally, Daniel’s a nice man. I like him and, yes, I’ve sort of been on the edge of going out with him. But I nursed his wife a year ago, before you came to the agency, and he’s not over her. So, until he lets her go, nothing’s going to happen.”

  “Is he worth the wait?”

  That was a good question—a question that plagued Zoey for the rest of her time in the office and on into her walk over to the hospital. Was Daniel worth the wait?

  * * *

  While he waited for Zoey to show up, Daniel checked on a patient with pneumonia and one with chronic leg cramps, made two phone calls to verify various tests results and charted his notes for several patients. All in a day’s work, he told himself, as he got so caught up in what he was doing he almost forgot that Zoey was on her way to see him. So, as he was punching into the nurses’ station computer the last of his new orders, he glanced up and was actually caught off-guard when he saw Zoey approac
hing. Such elegance in motion, he thought, enjoying the full view of her. “Am I late for our appointment?” he asked her when she stopped directly across the desk from him.

  “Actually, I’m a little early,” she said, her lips curving into a warm smile.

  “Well, I’m done here, and I don’t have anything scheduled for the next couple of hours, so I’m all yours.” In any way she wanted him. “So, what do I need to know about Mr. Baumgartner?”

  She fished a note from the black binder she was carrying and laid it on the nursing station desk for Daniel to see. “This is what he left for me today.”

  Daniel picked it up and read it, the frown on his face growing deeper the further into it he got. Finally, “He’s dismissed you?”

  “And you, apparently. He said he doesn’t want anymore medical attention from anyone.”

  “You’ve talked to him since I have. Did he leave any hints why?”

  Zoey shook her head. “He seemed fine yesterday. Eager to get along with his various treatments. Overall optimistic outlook, as far as I could tell.”

  “Did you see him at all today?”

  “No. After I read the note I decided not to go inside. He made it perfectly clear he doesn’t want me, or anybody else, helping him.”

  “Damn! And I thought he was going to do well, being at home.” Daniel reached up and shoved his hair back from his face. “I wouldn’t have dismissed him from the hospital so soon if I’d known he’d do something like this.”

  “Well, you can’t force it on him, Daniel. The man’s pretty set in his ways.”

  “Ways that will kill him.”

  “Which he understands. I mean, you’ve made sure he knows everything he should know about his condition, and I’ve stressed that if he does well and follows all your orders we might be able to take him out of hospice care and turn him over to general home care, provided we see significant improvement. We’ve both told him it’s possible he might not die for quite some time. So, other than that, what could we have done differently?”

  “To be honest, probably nothing. Some patients think they know more than we do.”

  “And some patients just give up. Anyway, I wonder what he’ll do,” Zoey said.

  “Get a damned house call from me, that’s what!”

  “Seriously? You’d go there?”

  “No reason not to.”

  “Except the obvious one—he’s dismissed all of us. Oh, and you’re a hospitalist, and hospitalists work exclusively in a hospital.”

  “Well, I’m about to make myself the exception to that. Also, I’m not dismissed until Baumgartner tells me directly.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re a good doctor, Daniel. There aren’t too many of your sort who would make that house call these days.”

  He saw the sincerity in her eyes and it tweaked his heart. Compliments were always nice, but this one seemed especially nice coming from Zoey. So, why did it matter so much?

  Daniel thought about that for a moment, then fought off the urge to ponder anymore. There wasn’t any point. She’d made it perfectly clear that she intended to remain at a distance. Like Mr. Baumgartner, she’d made her choice.

  “Can I come with you?” she asked.

  That surprised him. Zoey was the one who officially didn’t want to get involved, yet here she was involving herself in something she really didn’t have to. Impressive, he thought as he nodded his acceptance. “Sure. If you’ve got the time.”

  “Good. Then let me run across the street, throw a couple of things Mr. Baumgartner might need—if he decides to have us back—into my medical bag, and I’ll be ready to go.”

  “That’ll give me time to let my med students know I’ll be out for a couple of hours, so they can cover for me.”

  “Can I ride with you?”

  “Sure. Especially since we have to come back here afterward.” And most especially since more time alone with Zoey was an exciting prospect.

  “Good. Then I’ll see you in a few minutes. I’m right across the street in the Tower Building, Suite Two-Twenty. Ask for me at the desk.”

  “See you in a few,” he said, heading out to his office, telling himself every step of the way, This is not a date. But, damn! Why was he as excited as if it were? And why wasn’t Elizabeth’s image plaguing him with guilt the way he expected...maybe even the way he wanted? What was this? Was he finally moving on? Did he want to? Could he do it?

  God help him, would he do it?

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE RIDE TO Mr. Baumgartner’s house was particularly quiet. So much so that Zoey actually felt a little uncomfortable sitting in the front seat next to a very still Daniel. He talked about work occasionally, and primarily focused on topics that elicited only a yes-or-no answer from her, which didn’t exactly give her a prime opportunity to participate in the conversation. Thankfully, the trip took only ten minutes—a long ten minutes, though.

  “Has he been your patient long?” she finally asked once they turned off the main drag onto a side street that led straight to Baumgartner’s house.

  “He was admitted three weeks ago, and that’s the first time I met him. He’d asked me to follow him, though, and I was going to do that through our clinic.”

  “So why isn’t his family doctor looking after him now?” She really wanted get off the topic, but Daniel didn’t seem to want to steer the conversation in any other direction.

  “He didn’t have a family doctor. In fact, he told me he hadn’t seen a doctor for anything in more than ten years.”

  “Ten years? That’s crazy!” Crazy, maybe, but so many of her patients told her the same thing. They didn’t go then, when they finally did, it was too late.

  “Some people hate doctors. Or are afraid of them. I think he was one of them. Or maybe he’s just plain negligent and doesn’t care about his health.” Daniel frowned. “Which explains why he’s in the condition he’s in. Congestive heart failure is fatal if left untreated, and he’s had it—untreated—for a while.”

  “While I know he’s classified as end stage, he doesn’t necessarily have to die from it right now, if you can keep it under control. See, that’s what I don’t understand. Mr. Baumgartner has a lot riding on the care he’s receiving, yet he’s refusing it. If any of my other patients were given the least little bit of hope like he was, they’d do whatever they had to in order to hang on a little longer.” She thought about Elizabeth and how fiercely she’d fought for more time with Daniel and Maddie. Daniel had to be thinking the very same thing, too. So, after being on the patient’s end of it, how could he treat someone like Mr. Baumgartner who was refusing to join in the fight for his life?

  Maybe it all boiled down to one thing: Daniel was an exemplary man.

  “It happens, Zoey. I see it all the time. People make the choices they do for reasons I probably would never understand.”

  “You’re too patient,” she said.

  “Years of practice.”

  “Well, I’ve had years of practice, too, and I still get frustrated.”

  “Because you can’t control the situation?”

  She laughed. “Because I can’t control me.”

  “Ah, the wild spirit in the lady takes over.”

  “Well, that wild spirit is not always an attribute I admire.”

  “Are you going to unleash it on Mr. Baumgartner?”

  “What I’m going to do is keep my mouth shut and let you do all the talking. Let’s call it a case of the nurse deferring to the doctor.”

  “And you don’t like to defer, do you?”

  “Not usually. But today I’ll make the exception.”

  “Elizabeth said you were fiery.”

  “She saw that in me? Because I really try to hide it when I’m with my patients.”

  “S
he was a perceptive lady who saw things other people couldn’t. That’s how we met, actually. She was visiting a friend in the hospital and, even though her friend said she was feeling OK, Elizabeth read the situation differently. So she came down to the nurses’ station and practically dragged the first doctor she saw down to the room.”

  “That doctor would have been you.”

  He nodded. “And, as it turned out, Elizabeth was right. Her friend was on the verge of a diabetic crisis.”

  “Then the two of you fell in love immediately?”

  “Actually, it took a couple of dates. But those came up in the first week we knew each other, and we were married two months later.”

  She glanced at his eyes and saw a trace of sadness take them over. There was no way she could measure herself against his memories. No reason to try. So she settled back into quietness for the rest of the ride.

  It wasn’t but a couple minutes later that Daniel slowed the car, flipped on the right-hand blinker then turned into a long, straight driveway leading up to a tiny white-framed house. Its yard was overgrown with trees and shrubs, and in the garden directly beneath the front window stood a collection of weather-beaten, blue-bodied, red-hatted gnomes. Overall, the house had a disheveled look to it. Not tidy at all. In fact, neglected throughout the years. “I don’t think Mr. Baumgartner’s much into yard work,” she commented as Daniel stopped the car directly adjacent to the front walkway. “But the good news is, the inside of his house is better than this.” Only because she’d had a cleaning crew come in her first day there.

  “He told me his wife left him five years ago, so I guess that explains the lack of care. She was probably the one who saw to those things.”

  “She must have been the glue that held him together.”

  Daniel nodded. “The glue that ran off with a man twenty years her junior.”