“I could have told you that weeks ago,” Greer said. She yanked open a dresser drawer and grabbed clean clothes, then moved toward the bathroom.
Eb scooped his clothes from the floor. “Guess I better get going too. I don’t want Allie to see me sneaking out of here.”
Greer poked her head around the door. “Hey. Look at that. We spent a whole night together and didn’t even fight once.”
He laughed and kissed her. “I call that progress. Can I buy you dinner tonight?”
“I’ll call you when I get off work,” she promised.
53
Greer was pacing off the perimeter of the casino blast site with the state fire marshal when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She’d set the ring to silent so she could concentrate, and she was annoyed by the disruption. She looked at the caller ID number but didn’t recognize it, so she let the call roll over to voice mail.
The fire marshal’s name was Samuel Stillwell. He was young, with an earnest face and the thickest Southern drawl she’d ever heard, so deep she had to keep asking him to repeat whole phrases.
“Blay-ust zahn?” she finally said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not getting…”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m from Savannah, and I always assume folks know what I’m saying.” He repeated the words slowly and deliberately, and this time she got it.
“Oh! Blast zone. Of course.”
Her phone buzzed again, and this time when she looked at the caller ID screen it popped up as a call coming from Clinton Hennessy. She frowned at it.
“Please, go ahead and take your call,” Stillwell said. “I need to call and check in with my office anyway.”
He stepped into the shade of the casino, and Greer shrugged and tapped the Connect button.
“Greer? Is this Greer Hennessy?” The voice was male, but it didn’t sound like Clint.
“This is Greer. Who’s this?”
“My name is Wally Patterson. I work for your dad. I just tried calling you on my phone, but when you didn’t answer I figured I’d try on Clint’s phone.”
“Look, Wally, I’m working right now, which is why I didn’t take your first call. Why can’t Clint call me himself if he needs to talk to me?”
“Uh, your dad’s been in an accident. The thing is, along with some other stuff, he got a pretty bad concussion, and the doctors at the hospital say they need authorization from a family member to run some tests. As far as I know, you’re all the family Clint’s got.”
Greer’s knees were suddenly rubbery. She sank down onto a concrete bench near the railing overlooking the bay.
“Where is he?” she asked shakily. “What hospital?”
“Warren Memorial,” Wally said. “Here in Williston. I can give you the address.”
“No, text it to me, please. I don’t have a paper and pencil with me,” Greer said.
“So you’ll come? Clint was conscious in the ambulance, and he told the EMTs they should try to find his kid.”
“It’s that serious?” Her stomach lurched.
“I’m not a doctor,” Wally said. “Your dad’s a tough old bird, but he got banged up pretty good in the wreck. If he comes around, can I tell him you’re coming?”
Greer looked desperately around the pier. Her first instinct was to say no. There was so much work still to be done before the Monday shoot. What difference would it make if she didn’t go? Let somebody else give authorization for any procedure Clint needed. Hospitals did that all the time, didn’t they?
She clenched and unclenched her fists. She didn’t need this in her life. This mess, this complication, this … annoyance.
“Yeah,” she said, reluctantly. “I’ll come.”
She raised Zena on the radio. “Sorry about this, but I’ve got a family emergency. My father has been in an accident and I’ve got to get to the hospital in Williston where he’s being treated. You’ll have to take over.”
“Oh no. Your dad was so cute the other day,” Zena said. “Of course. I’ll be right there.”
“You’ll have to finish up with the fire marshal, and make sure you understand everything he’s telling you. He’ll tell you what kind of notification we have to do with all the businesses and property owners on the pier, and within the blast zone. Then you can get started with that.”
“I got it,” Zena said. “Consider it done.”
* * *
According to the Kia’s GPS, the hospital was about an hour away. She tried calling Eb but only got his voice mail. She left a message, telling him where she was going and why.
But why was she going? The urgent nature of her father’s friend’s call had been enough to propel her into the car and put her on the road, but what would she accomplish by showing up at the hospital?
She stopped at a convenience store on the state highway, bought a cold drink, and sipped it while her gas tank was filling. She kept looking at her cell phone, hoping it would ring, that there would be news about her father. He was better, she didn’t need to come. Didn’t need to get involved.
When the gas tank was full she pulled slowly away from the pumps. She wanted to head west—back to Cypress Key, her job, her commitment there, and most of all, to Eb. Hadn’t she promised him she’d stopped running away?
Clint’s friend—was his name Wally? He’d said Clint asked the EMTs to contact his kid, his only family, to let her know about the accident.
Funny, in all of this, she’d never thought of Clint Hennessy as her family. Oh, technically, she knew it to be true. There was never any doubt that Clint was her biological father. Lise had showed her Clint’s baby pictures, and even Greer could see the strong family resemblance. She had his DNA.
But family was not the same thing as biology. For most of her life, Lise and Dearie had been her family. Her only family. She might have yearned for more, but looking back on it now, they had been all the family she needed. Somehow these two strong women had managed to raise her, to clothe and feed and educate her, and to launch her into the world and into a career in the industry they had both loved. With Lise gone, all she had left was Dearie, still feisty at eighty-seven.
Lise. Those last months, watching her die, had been the hardest thing she’d ever gone through. A part of her still felt hollowed out from all the sadness that poured out of her during her mother’s illness. Would she be forced to relive that experience all over again—but with a man she barely knew?
Her phone rang and she snatched it up.
“Hey, babe,” CeeJay said. “Zena just told me about your father. So, you’re really flying to his bedside?”
“I guess.”
“Greer? You are, or you aren’t. Which is it?”
“I’m on my way to the hospital. His friend said they need some kind of authorization to do more tests, or procedures, on Clint—I’m not even sure which. As soon as that’s done, I’m out of there.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Greer said firmly. “To tell you the truth, I honestly don’t know why I’m bothering.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” CeeJay said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Greer’s eyes darted back and forth on the road, always vigilant for bears. Or any other mammal that might wander onto the asphalt. She’d only been on the road for ten miles and already she’d spotted enough roadkill to fill a zoo.
“It means I think you care more about your old man than you want to admit.”
“No,” Greer said. “It means I’m afraid Lise would haunt me from her grave if I didn’t go to the hospital to check on Clint. So I’m going. And I’ll be back tonight.” She hesitated, and then decided to throw her friend a crumb of information. “I actually have kind of a date.”
“With the Professor?” CeeJay squealed into the phone.
“Calm down. Yes, with Eb. We, uh, sort of made up last night.”
“Did that happen to involve makeup sex?”
“I’ll never tell,” Greer said. “By the way, I let Eb
know Jared was harassing you last night. I think he and Ginny are going to ask him to move out of the motel.”
“I can’t say he’ll be missed,” CeeJay said. “Let’s catch up when you get back here.”
* * *
The hospital was the smallest she’d ever seen, no bigger than the elementary school in Cypress Key, and it was even built in a similar architectural style.
She’d forgotten to ask exactly where Clint was being treated, but since she assumed he’d been taken by ambulance to the emergency room, she decided to start there, driving around to a side entrance with a neon EMERGENCY sign.
A pair of automatic doors slid noiselessly open and she walked into a small, linoleum-tiled waiting area. The room was cold and smelled like antiseptic. A row of hard vinyl chairs faced a ceiling-mounted television, and a very young, very pregnant teenage girl sat on one of the chairs, with a hard-eyed woman on one side of her and a scared-looking boy on the other. The youngsters were holding hands.
A young male clerk in aqua hospital scrubs sat behind a reception desk, typing on a computer terminal. His name tag said “Mr. Gower.”
“Hi. I’m looking for Clinton Hennessy? He was brought in earlier today? He was in a car wreck?”
“Believe it or not, we had two car wrecks today. Was he the older gentleman?”
“Yes. He’s uh…” Greer blushed. She had no idea how old Clint was. “He’s in his seventies,” she said finally.
Mr. Gower clicked some keys on the computer terminal, then looked up at her with a sad face. “You’re his next of kin?”
Greer felt a stab of anxiety. She swallowed hard, waiting for the bad news. She’d spent a lot of time in hospitals lately and had never heard anything but bad news in one. That antiseptic smell brought it all back to her. All the hours sitting in rooms like this, waiting for test results.
Her mouth went dry. “Yes,” she managed. “Is he…”
“He’s back in curtain three.” Mr. Gower pointed toward a set of swinging doors.
She felt suddenly dizzy. And nauseous. She held on to the laminated surface of the counter while the room swirled around her.
Mr. Gower’s face was fuzzy. He ran around the counter, took her by the arm, and led her to one of the chairs. “Are you all right? Miss?”
She swallowed, trying to fight off the wave of nausea. Finally the room tilted back into the proper frame. “I guess I forgot to get lunch today.”
“I’ll be right back,” the clerk said, and true to his word, a minute later he was handing her a Fiber One bar and a Dr Pepper. “Let’s get your blood sugar up,” he said, sitting down beside her.
Greer chewed the bar and sipped the drink, and the dizziness subsided. “I’m okay,” she said weakly. “Really. I’ve just had a long couple of days. Can I go back and see him now?”
“Let one of the nurses know if you feel dizzy again,” he said. “We can’t have you in a double room with your dad now, can we?”
The thought horrified her.
* * *
When Greer pulled the curtain aside she found a white-coated doctor, who had the darkest skin she’d ever seen, standing beside a hospital bed, taking the patient’s pulse.
She assumed the patient was Clint, but it was hard to tell. The top portion of his head was swathed in a large bandage. Tufts of white hair stuck out above the bandage, and his jaws were covered with thick white stubble. An oxygen mask covered the lower portion of his face.
He looked, she thought, small and broken. The neck of his cotton hospital gown had slipped down, and his bony pink chest reminded her of an underfed broiler chicken. His arms and hands were crisscrossed with cuts and scrapes. His head lolled back against the pillow, eyes closed. He was either asleep or in a coma.
The doctor turned and smiled. His hair was a brilliant silver, and he had a tiny clipped mustache. “You’re Greer? Clint’s girl?”
The accent was foreign, Pakistani maybe?
“I’m Greer Hennessy,” she said. He took her hand and pumped it vigorously.
“I’m Dr. Gupta. Nobody here can say my last name, so it’s just Doc. I’m so glad you came, Greer. Your father will be very, very glad, too, when he wakes up and sees you here.”
“How is he?”
She realized she was holding her breath.
“Lucky to be alive.”
“Oh God. It’s that bad?”
“No, no,” Doc said quickly. “His injuries are not at all life threatening. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. He has a concussion and, you can see, lots of cuts from broken glass. Also a cracked rib. If he were a younger man, without the medical issues Clint has, we would have discharged him already.”
“What kind of medical issues does he have?”
Doc frowned. “He hasn’t discussed this with you?”
“Do you know my father?” Greer asked.
“Oh sure. Everybody knows Clint. We play poker. Well, he plays poker. I sit in sometimes. He’s a terrible card player, but a wonderful man. But you already know that.”
She shook her head. “The thing is, I don’t know that much about him. My parents divorced when I was five, and up until a couple weeks ago, I hadn’t seen or talked to him in nearly thirty years.”
“What?” Doc glanced over at Clint. He lowered his voice. “But he talked about you all the time. He has pictures of you, tells us about your work on the movies. He was so excited last week, when he went to visit you in Cypress Key.”
Greer shrugged. “I guess maybe my mother sent him pictures, recently. We’d been … estranged, I guess you’d say. So I really don’t know anything about his health.”
Doc put a hand on her arm. “Let’s go to the coffee shop and talk, shall we? I don’t want to disturb him.”
* * *
They found a table in the tiny coffee shop. Doc drank green tea, Greer had a bottle of water.
“Your father should make a complete recovery from this accident,” Doc started out. “He does have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, because I gather he smoked quite a bit when he was younger.”
Greer nodded. She remembered sitting on Clint’s lap, as a child, complaining of the tobacco smell that clung to his clothes.
“We’re keeping him overnight because he had an irregular heartbeat when he was brought in,” Doc said. “And with the concussion, and his age, I want to keep an eye on him.”
“Okay,” she said. “I meant to ask, how did the accident happen? His friend … Wally?… said it was a wreck, but that’s all I know.”
“Oh my goodness,” Doc said, shaking his head. “I meant it when I said Clint was lucky to be alive. He pulled out into an intersection, right into the path of one of those huge log trucks. Luckily he was going slowly, for once in his life, and the truck was, too. Otherwise your father would be dead.”
Greer looked down at the hand holding the water bottle. It was shaking.
“Wally said you needed me to sign some kind of authorization? For a test, or a procedure? What was that about?”
Doc smiled ruefully. “Well, I’m afraid that was a bit of subterfuge on my part. I didn’t feel right, letting Wally know about your dad’s confidential medical information, but I had to be sure you would come today, so I can impress upon you how serious Clint’s condition is.”
“But … you just said he should make a complete recovery. I don’t understand.”
“Clint is losing his eyesight,” Doc said gently. “That’s what caused this accident. He has macular degeneration.”
54
Greer was holding her breath again, waiting.
“Clint’s known about this for some time now,” Doc said. “I told him he had to stop driving but, well, he’s a car guy.” He reached across the table and patted her hand. “I’m sorry this is all such a shock to you. I had no idea you and Clint weren’t close.”
“I’ve heard about macular degeneration,” she said, trying to assimilate the barest facts she could recall. “It means he’s going blind, righ
t?”
“Maybe not totally blind. I’m not an ophthalmologist, but basically what you need to know is that there are two kinds of macular degeneration. Your dad has the rarer variety, wet MD. It’s where you develop tiny blood vessels that leak fluid and cause your macula to degenerate. Right now, Clint tells me, he can see some things, but it’s as though there’s a large blot in the center of his field of vision. The blot is growing larger. There are some treatments that may help slow the progression of the disease, but there is no cure.”
“He never said a word,” Greer said. “I didn’t have time to talk to him last week, when he delivered that car to the set. But earlier, when I went to his house, he didn’t mention it.”
“I think he’s still in denial,” Doc said. “This wreck he had today, it’s not the first. He’s had a couple of small fender benders in the past year. And I noticed, on poker nights, that he seemed to have cuts and bruises on his arms and his shins. Finally I flat-out asked him about it, and he admitted he was having vision problems. I referred him to a specialist at Shands, and they made the diagnosis.”
“Shands?”
“I forget you’re from California,” Doc said. “It’s the teaching hospital at the University of Florida, in Gainesville. They’re one of the leading research institutes in the field. He’s lucky they’re so close by.”
Greer picked at the paper label on the water bottle. “What happens next? I mean, he’ll be blind, right? But how will he live? Who will take care of him? He can’t keep living alone, right?”
Doc shrugged. “I can’t answer those questions. People with visual impairments do live alone, and independently, and that includes people with macular degeneration. Fortunately, your father is fairly healthy. He’s active, and he’s lived alone for some time now, right? Also, he has you in his life now. Right?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “This is a lot.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “I live in L.A. I travel all the time for my job. I don’t know anything about him. Thirty years he’s been gone. I can’t tell you how old he is, or his birthday.…”
“There’s time for all that,” Doc said, his voice gentle. “He should have been moved over to a room by now. Shall we go check?”
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