“Shut. Up,” Molly said. “Did you run out of doctors? Did the hospital institute a hiring freeze on physicians, or what?”
“Ha, ha. No, I just re-evaluated my dating life a little bit.”
“Got anybody in mind?”
“Kind of, yeah. Do you know Jake Williams?”
“The real estate guy? I don’t know him, but I know who he is. His signs are everywhere.”
“Maybe you should give him a call. You still haven’t sold your old house, right?” Lori knew Molly was reluctant to give up the house in which she’d grown up and then raised her children. She’d moved in with her husband David months ago, but had resisted cutting ties with her old house.
“I know I need to. I’m not sure what’s holding me back. I just have lots of memories of raising the kids there. I had in mind that maybe one of the kids would want to live there, but Suzie is set on moving to a bigger city after graduation, and Beth has no idea what she wants to do. Tommy doesn’t, either. I don’t know. Maybe I should sell it.”
“What does David think?”
“He thinks I should sell it, but he isn’t pressing me. It’s been kind of a pain in the butt, actually. I still have to pay for insurance and utilities and taxes. I’ve thought of renting it, but then I’d have to deal with tenants.”
“Give Jake a call. He’s actually a very good agent. He’s made buying a house pretty easy.”
“He isn’t too bad looking, either, is he?” Molly said slyly, pushing another cookie toward Lori and taking another for herself.
“He’s actually incredibly gorgeous, and I’m actually incredibly irritated that he turned me down when I asked him out,” Lori admitted.
Molly rolled her eyes. “I bet when your business with him has concluded, he sings a different tune.”
“I’m thinking maybe. I already planned what I’m wearing to the closing.”
“I knew your ‘no new clothes’ thing wouldn’t last.”
“As a matter of fact, this is a dress I already own. I haven’t bought a single new thing since I decided to buy the house.”
Molly raised her eyebrows and dipped her cookie in her tea. “You really have turned over a new leaf. I’m impressed. No new clothes, open to dating non-doctors … what other big changes have you made?”
Lori gave in and took the second cookie. “Well, as a matter of fact, you may not believe this, but … I have washed all the dishes in the oven,” she said dramatically.
Molly was one of the few people who had visited Lori at her apartment and knew about her extreme disorder.
“Holy cow! Don’t spring surprises like that on a pregnant woman! I just about went into labor!”
“Ha, ha. No, I really have decided to make some real changes. And wait until you see the house! It’s a totally funk-a-riffic bachelorette pad. Which reminds me. I was going to ask Tommy if he wanted to make some money helping me clear up the basement and paint a few things as soon as it’s officially mine. He did a good job helping David on this place.”
“I’m sure he’d love to. I’ll have him give you a call tonight after he gets home,” Molly said.
“Awesome. I’m also planning to throw a housewarming party as soon as I’m settled in. Probably right before Thanksgiving. So don’t go dropping that baby too soon, right?” Lori teased.
“Don’t worry. I can assure you that the baby and I have every intention of picking a day that’s convenient for you,” Molly replied.
Chapter 9
Lori was lolling around reading a hot new romance Saturday morning when she received an unexpected text from Jake: “Do you ever do private duty nursing, or do you know somebody who does?”
She guessed this had something to do with Jake’s brother. Maybe the nurse he usually got for the weekends had quit.
She returned his text: “I don’t normally, but I’d be willing to help out”
Her phone rang immediately.
“Jake here,” he said. “Look, I know this is an odd thing to ask, but let me tell you what’s going on.” He briefly explained about his brother’s condition, and added there’d been an issue with the home health service he’d been using. “My parents will be very upset if I can’t bring Josh home this weekend,” he said. “And we’ve tried managing things ourselves without a nurse to help. It just doesn’t go well at all, I’m afraid. I know it’s a huge imposition, but even if you could just come by for a few hours, it would be a huge help, and I would be extremely grateful. I’ll pay you the going rate, or whatever you think is fair, of course,” he added.
“Of course, I’d be glad to help,” she said. “And I wouldn’t think of charging you.”
“I’d really prefer to pay you,” he said. “But we can discuss that when you see what is involved.” He gave her his parents’ Springfield address and all the details, and she agreed to meet him there after lunch. She knew she was going as a nurse, not as his date, but she still saw it as a hopeful sign.
She was wearing her scrubs but had packed jeans and a sweater in her overnight bag. Jake had said it would be OK if she could just come for the day, but she heard the relief in his voice when she readily agreed to spend the night. She pulled up in the driveway of the address he’d given her, seeing Jake’s fancy SUV already there. His parents’ home wasn’t what she expected. It was decent, but clearly Jake hadn’t come from money. She assumed the financial pressures of having a profoundly handicapped child had taken precedent over lifestyle.
Lori nervously rang the doorbell and Jake opened it immediately — he must have been watching her approach.
“Lori, welcome. Thanks for agreeing to come. These are my parents, Estelle and Francis.” Lori shook hands. His parents were about as down-to-earth as anyone she’d seen. But Jake actually fit in here. Instead of a fancy suit, he was wearing a faded plaid shirt and jeans that looked well broken in. But this didn’t make him less attractive to her. She realized that the ability to look comfortable in any surroundings was an oddly appealing quality, though it had never struck her that way before. Maybe his fancy suits were just a uniform for him — just as her scrubs were for her. Besides, these old jeans fit his butt just right, she couldn’t help noticing.
Estelle showed Lori to a guest room. “This is where our nurse stays. We’d had the same one for several years but she quit abruptly a couple weeks ago, and the new one they sent last week didn’t work out at all. We’re not sure what we’re going to end up doing, but when Jake said he knew a nurse, we were sure glad. He seems to think a lot of you.”
Lori raised her eyebrows but said nothing. She murmured something polite and tossed her overnight bag on the bed. Jake had said good things about her? She tried not to make any assumptions. Maybe he approved of her nursing skills, but that didn’t mean he approved of her as a date.
Back in the living room, Jake explained that they’d go together to pick up his brother. “We’ll take my parents’ van. It has a wheelchair lift,” he said. “He lives in a sort of nursing home here in Springfield,” he said.
On the way to the place where his brother lived, Jake filled in a few more details. “I spend most weekends at home, and when I can’t, my parents are still able to keep Josh as long as we have a nurse to stay with us. Mom and Dad are getting too old to lift Josh and do all the physical parts of caring for him. They can just visit him in the home, of course, and they do that almost daily, but they were pretty upset when they got to where they couldn’t care for him at home. The weekend visits help a lot. We don’t really know how much Josh understands, but if there’s even a chance he understands, we want to make sure he knows we all care about him.”
Lori understood perfectly. “I have the same belief. Sometimes patients are unconscious or even in a coma, but I still talk to them and encourage their families to talk to them, too. We don’t know everything. I like to think it’s possible that patients understand that someone is there who cares.”
“This is it,” Jake said. He pulled up into a handicapped spot near
the entrance of a sprawling brick building. “He’s in the left wing,” he said.
As far as such homes went, this one was nice. Josh shared a room with another young man who was obviously severely developmentally disabled. “It’s sad,” Jake said. “I haven’t ever seen anybody here visiting his roommate.” Then he spoke to his brother.
“Hey, buddy. Ready to come home? This is Lori. She’s nice. She’s going to help take care of you this weekend, OK?” Josh gave a slight smile and seemed to follow Jake’s movements, but didn’t say anything. With Lori’s help, they moved Josh into a wheelchair and Jake pushed him toward the nurses station. “I’m signing out Josh,” he said. They knew Jake’s routine and quickly pushed a form to him, which he signed. They had a small bag packed with Josh’s medications and other needed items, which Lori slung over her shoulder and carried out.
Jake had clearly done this dozens of times and didn’t need Lori’s help to get Josh’s wheelchair situated onto the lift. He secured the chair into the van and they were back at Jake’s parents’ house in just a few minutes. It was a quiet drive. Lori didn’t feel comfortable talking to Jake as if Josh weren’t there, and she would have felt fake making small talk with a man who didn’t know her and probably couldn’t understand her in any case.
Jake was able to get his brother into the house without any problems; a wooden ramp had been added onto the porch at some point.
“We’re back,” he called out. His parents greeted both their sons, Estelle hugging Josh, and Francis ruffling his hair.
“I have dinner on the table,” Estelle said. “They eat pretty early at the home and he’s probably hungry.” Dinner was a little awkward. Estelle spoon-fed Josh before eating her own dinner, even though Lori repeatedly offered to do so. Feeding Josh was not unlike feeding a small child. He wore a bib and Estelle wiped his face often. But Josh smiled much more often now, and made small sounds of pleasure when Estelle fed him a few bites of chocolate pudding for dessert.
“He knows he’s home,” Jake said to Lori. “You can see he’s happier here.”
“It’s good that you are able to bring him home for weekends,” she said. “I feel bad for the patients who have to stay there all the time.”
“Some of them don’t have anybody,” Francis said. “When he was born, we knew things were wrong. We thought if we found the right doctor, we’d be able to fix things. But he never learned to walk or talk. That’s just how it is. When he hit the teen years, we got to where we couldn’t take care of him full-time ourselves.”
“We were worried about what would happen to him when we got old, and after we were gone,” Estelle said. “But Jake is our blessing. We don’t worry anymore.”
Jake looked embarrassed. “Anybody would do what I do,” he said.
“No, they wouldn’t,” Lori said. “That’s a horrible thing to say, but it’s the truth. Not everybody steps up.”
“Well, let’s go over what we need this weekend from you,” Jake said. “We usually get him ready for bed right after dinner.” He went over the routine with Lori. It was nothing she hadn’t done before, though she hadn’t done this kind of care since she was in training.
Estelle cleared up dinner while Francis wheeled Josh into the living room, leaving Jake and Lori alone at the table for a few minutes. “I forgot to settle on pay,” he said.
“No, honestly, I don’t want to accept any money. I shouldn’t, anyway. I’m here strictly as a friend, not as a hospital employee or anything like that.”
“I don’t feel comfortable with asking for this big of a personal favor,” he said.
“I’ll tell you what. Take whatever you were planning to pay me and donate it to the Sarah Andrews memorial fund, why don’t you?”
Jake looked relieved. “Deal.” He paused. “I know you have confidentiality rules, but I think she died while I was there with my splinter. You helped care for her, didn’t you? I remember a couple came in who seemed pretty upset, and I saw you and another nurse take them into a private room while I was still there. I remember thinking at the time that it looked like they were there for bad news, and then the next day I saw on TV what happened.”
“I do have confidentiality rules,” she said. “But maybe you aren’t wrong.”
“I don’t think I’ll forget the expression you had on your face when her parents arrived. You looked strong and sad at the same time. That’s what impressed me. We’ve worked with a lot of nurses through the years. Some of them have been great and some haven’t been. The good ones always find the right balance with their feelings.”
“You have to feel enough to care, but you have to be able to do the job. That means you can’t let your feelings take over, or you’d just cry all the time and you wouldn’t be good for anybody that way,” Lori said.
“You’re a good nurse,” Jake said. “Thanks again for helping my family.”
“I haven’t done anything but eat your mom’s cooking yet,” she said. That was about to change, though. Lori had a couple of hours of solid nursing work getting Josh clean, changed and ready for bed. It wasn’t difficult, but it wasn’t fun, either. Still, she kept up a constant one-sided conversation with Josh as she changed his diaper, gave him a sponge bath and cleaned his teeth. Jake popped in a time or two but left her to do this part of the evening herself.
Finally she got him into bed, but he seemed wide awake, so she kept talking, telling him her version of a bedtime story. “Your brother helped me buy a house, Josh,” she said. “It’s a funny house that nobody has changed for a long, long time. But I’m going to live there all by myself and be happy. I’m going to invite over all my friends and have a party. I’m going to dress up all retro and play a lot of ’70s music. I’m hoping your brother will come. Maybe he’ll dance with me this time. What do you think, Josh? Does your brother only like me as a nurse?” Josh didn’t reply, but he smiled in reaction to the sing-song voice she was using. “Maybe I’m just keeping you awake,” she said. “Are you ready to go to sleep? I’m going to turn the lights down,” she said. “But I’m going to sleep in the next room, and I will check on you several times. Sweet dreams.” She left the door open, as instructed, and prepared to enter her own room. She was surprised to find Jake standing just outside the door and let out a little sound of surprise.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I was just going to say goodnight to Josh.”
“Of course,” she said. “And your parents will want to, I guess. I’ll tell them he’s ready for sleep.” She was glad of the excuse to avoid Jake for a minute. Had he overheard her say she wanted to dance with him? Or that she wondered if he liked her as more than a nurse? Shit! She should have known better than to say anything like that out loud. She entered the living room and told the parents Josh was ready for his good nights, and then slipped into her room. She took a quick shower, slipped into pajamas she hadn’t worn in years — she usually slept naked — and opened her door a crack so she could hear if Josh needed her during the night. Then she pulled out her book to read a bit before going to sleep. Only a few paragraphs in, she heard a tap on her door.
“Come in,” she said. It was Jake. “Everything OK with Josh?” she asked.
“He’s fine. And he’ll probably sleep through the night,” Jake said. “No promises, but he will probably let you sleep until 6, which is wake-up time at the home. We try to keep him to the same schedule here.”
“That’s fine,” Lori said. She felt naked under his gaze. She had scrubbed off all her makeup and wondered if he thought she looked terrible without it. She reached a hand up to her hair, which was growing out nicely from the short precision cut she’d been rocking for several years, and smoothed it self-consciously.
“I’m sorry. I feel like I’m making you uncomfortable. I didn’t realize you were already in bed. I can talk to you in the morning,” he said.
“It’s OK,” she said. “I admit I feel kind of naked when anybody sees me without my makeup.”
; “You shouldn’t. Would I be totally out of line if I said you look more beautiful without it?”
“That depends. Was I totally out of line when I invited you to have a drink with me?” She held her breath.
“I’m having a beer in the kitchen. Mom and Dad have gone upstairs. If you want to join me now, feel free.”
“I don’t ever have a drink when I’m working,” she said.
“You aren’t working,” he said. “You’re here as a volunteer, remember? You can have one beer.”
“I don’t like beer,” she said. “I’ll take a glass of wine or something else if you have it, though.”
“My parents don’t drink, so I’m afraid it’s the beer I brought with me or nothing.”
Lori got out of bed. “Well, I can try to drink a beer, I guess.”
“Cards on the table?” Jake said, pushing a bottle of beer toward Lori. It wasn’t a hipster craft beer like she’d expected; it was the good old American stuff her own dad used to drink from time to time.
“You want to play some cards?” she asked, confused.
“No, I mean let’s put our cards on the table. This is probably a terrible idea and I’m probably a terrible person, but I’m just going to say it. I overheard what you said to my brother.”
Lori sucked in her breath.
“I wasn’t sure how you meant it when you asked me to have a drink at The Clipper. I don’t date clients, but I wasn’t sure if you meant it to be a date or not anyway. I’ve been trying to figure you out since we met.”
“I’m not that hard to figure out,” she said.
“Is having this conversation going to make it awkward for you to finish out the weekend with my brother? I don’t know why I started down this road. I probably should shut up right now.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll feel awkward, because I don’t know what you’re going to say.”
Jake took a long swallow, finishing off the bottle, and pushed it aside. “I don’t think I know, either.”
“But you can’t leave it like this,” Lori said.
Kiss & Tell (Small-Town Secrets-Fairview Series Book 2) Page 5