by Heather Hunt
The last girl in line, a chubby, pink-cheeked girl at least a head taller than the others, rolled her eyes at the comment and tossed her unruly mane of brown curls.
“Like that’s gonna’ happen,” she mumbled as she made her way through the doors, tugging on her badgeless banner in the process.
Grace couldn’t agree more, but before she could say so, the girl continued.
“This place would depress a Psychiatrist. I know so because my mom is one, and you don’t see her here, do you?” With the parting comment, she gave Grace a desperate look over her shoulder and followed the rest of the group through the foyer toward what Grace presumed was an activity room.
For a moment, Grace felt an odd kinship with the girl. She was so obviously out of place with the rest of the group that it was almost laughable. If her lamb-to-the-slaughter expression hadn’t given her away, the lack of neat blonde pigtails had certainly sealed the deal.
“I’m right there with you,” Grace said to herself, wishing all the while that she could escape the place and head back to the Dairy Freeze she had spotted on her way into town. A triple chocolate milkshake would have been the ideal cure for her job-induced melancholy.
She leashed Mr. Knightly to one of the columns and ordered him to stay put before heading into the building
“May I help you?” a voice asked just as Grace turned back toward the door to make the break for town.
Grace raised her eyes to find an uncanny likeness of the evil psychiatric nurse she’d once seen in an old movie standing before her. The woman was dressed in white from head to toe. Grace clasped her freshly manicured hands in front of her to quell an insane urge to flick the starched white cap off the woman’s head.
“Yes, you may,” Grace answered. She took a deep breath and tried to form the business smile the image consultant had shown her. “I’m Grace Woodhouse. I’m with The Woodhouse Corporation. I will be overseeing the renovations and other changes here at Mansfield Park.”
“Hmm. The boss’s daughter.” The woman eyed Grace’s attire and turned her lips down into a distasteful smirk. “We’ve been expecting someone to show up for the past week.”
“I had to take care of a few things before leaving Atlanta,” Grace told her.
“I’m sure you did.” She pulled out a tissue and sniffed loudly. “Well, now that you’re here, you might as well follow me. I’m Agatha North, the Nurse Manager. I’ll give you a quick tour while the boss finishes up his lunch.”
“Thank you, Ms. North,” Grace smiled.
The pale-faced, white-washed witch led her down a hallway littered with forgotten wheelchairs and an odd assortment of clothing and into a dining room where a group of elderly residents sat in uncomfortable silence at a multitude of tables positioned haphazardly around the room. A depressingly uncomfortable lump settled in Grace’s throat at the sight.
As she glanced around the room, she knew that she had to do something for these people. Her father might have planted her here to simply test her mettle, but Grace knew that there was an even greater purpose for her arrival…these folks actually needed her!
A harsh clapping noise interrupted her personal pep talk. The Florence Nightingale wannabe stomped toward the front of the room as she tried to gain the attention of the residents.
“As a part of earning their medical badges, the Willow Mountain Scouts will be assisting our staff with Influenza vaccinations. Appointments are on a walk-in basis and will begin in fifteen minutes in the recreation room. Everyone is expected to attend!” she announced.
The volume of her voice was only a few decibels lower than the screeching landing of a fighter jet, but Grace watched with fascination as the people sitting at the tables barely raised their heads in acknowledgment before delving back into whatever indelicacy the cook had prepared for lunch.
The woman marched toward Grace and snapped her folder closed. “Follow me, Miss Woodhouse. Since you will be working closely with the residents, you will be required to have the vaccination just like the other employees.”
“Vaccination?” Grace felt her knees turn to jelly. “Do you mean I have to get a shot?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Her thin, pinched lips slowly turned upward into something resembling a smirk.
“Uh, but what if I need to be exempt from having one?”
“You’re allergic to the vaccine?” Nurse North stopped mid-step and hit Grace with a piercing stare.
Grace had seen the look before…it was the evil eye. Most every schoolteacher, nurse or parent had perfected some version of it through years and years of practice; however, Grace knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Nurse North hadn’t needed such practice…she’d been born with the skill!
“I might be,” Grace hedged.
“What you might be is full of it.” Agatha North turned around and strutted briskly down the hall, her white orthopedic shoes squeaking noisily on the worn parquet tile floor.
Like a kindergartner headed for the time-out chair, Grace followed her tormentor with her lower lip as close to a pout as her corporate image would allow. It was only the Woodhouse pride that prevented her from giving the woman an actual tear, but it was a struggle. Grace did, however, give in to the urge to stomp her feet as she made her way toward her punishment.
When they arrived at the recreation room, there was already a line at the door. Nurse North left her at the back of the queue and headed in the opposite direction.
“I have to stand in line?” Grace asked. She was miffed at being left alone, and a bit of her bad attitude returned. “It’s not as if it’s the grand opening of a Buckhead restaurant. For crying out loud! It’s the unnecessary infliction of pain on innocent bystanders.”
“And what is your point?” Nurse North must have heard her complaint because she turned back and looked at Grace through her black-rimmed spectacles.
“It’s just that I’m...” Grace muttered, trying not to cringe.
“What?” the woman interrupted. “The boss’s daughter?”
“I just meant...”
“Do you think that being the boss’s daughter is going to get you anywhere around here?”
“Of course not, Nurse North.” Duly chastised, Grace barely kept from hanging her head in defeat as she answered the question.
“That’s what I thought,” the woman said with a satisfied smile. “Now wait right here. They should get to you in a little while.”
“Thank you for your help,” Grace managed to say with the barest hint of a smile. “I suppose I’ll look you up when I’m finished here.”
“See that you do,” the nurse grumbled and pushed past a group of old ladies whose tittering conversation seemed too carefree for Grace to believe they were actually headed to the needle-wielding sadists in the recreation room.
Resigned to wait in line, Grace eyed a pair of ancient men in front of her and realized with a sigh that there wasn’t a chance in the world that she would be offered ‘ups’. The more she thought about it, there was probably no such thing as ‘ups’ when those men were in school. Talk about ancient!
Thirty minutes later, Grace reached the Promised Land...Promised Land as in, “I promise this is going to hurt.”
She made her way toward an empty chair just as a construction worker rolled down a sleeve over an impressive muscle and ambled toward the doorway. Grace wasn’t able to see the man’s face, but from the back, he was definitely headed toward the higher numbers on the one to ten scale of male perfection.
For a moment, she was stunned. Unfortunately, the man walking across the room had little to do with it. Grace cringed and willed away the tears forming in her eyes.
“Couldn’t you have given me a warning?” Grace glared at the woman as she pulled the needle from Grace’s arm and slapped an adhesive bandage over the gaping hole.
“Next!” Without a hint of apology, the nurse stripped off her gloves and gave her hands a quick squirt of hand sanitizer as she waited for Grace to climb out
of the chair.
“What a wimp,” a freckled scout giggled as Grace passed the table where several girls were handing out orange juice and cookies.
With shaky legs, Grace turned on her three-inch heels to give her adolescent tormentor a piece of her mind. As she did, she felt an unmistakable slide of Italian leather on something she could only describe as gross.
She didn’t have time to consider what the offensive substance could have been, for in the span of two seconds flat, she found herself heels-over-head and painfully sprawled on the floor. Her left elbow ached, and her left leg was twisted into an unnatural angle.
Grace groaned. The demise of her ferocious backhand was the farthest thing from her mind as pain shot from her elbow to the tips of her fingers. She tried to redistribute the weight from her throbbing ankle, but with her arm in such a painful bind, the movement was impossible.
Now, definitely at the point of tears, she looked down to find her modesty, not to mention her smoke-gray thigh-high stockings, in shreds. She finally gave up the struggle to maintain any semblance of decency. The pain in her left arm was so excruciating that she could have cared less that she was giving the entire room an unobstructed view of her most recent lingerie purchase.
At least she tried to convince herself that she didn’t care. In actuality, she was using the time between shooting pains to take a mental inventory of how many cellulite divots were congregating above the lines of her stockings.
Oh, well, she thought. If nothing else, she’d certainly made a memorable entry into this aged society. The self-effacing part of her personality even longed to call out “Hello, Eden! Eve has arrived!” But as tempting as she knew the sight of her in all of her helpless feminine glory must be to them, she quelled the urge. The truth was that her extremities, not to mention her pride, were hurting too much to make the effort. She groaned in embarrassment as more people began to crowd around her.
“Someone grab an incident report!” The offensive whine of Nurse North echoed down the hall. “That stupid girl has fallen in those silly shoes of hers.”
Grace squirmed around like a fish on land. Finally, she managed to scoot up against a wall into a sitting position. By that time, there was a group of at least ten people circling her like a flock of vultures. Through a maze of walkers and orthopedic canes, she saw a pair of worn work boots approach. The crowd parted like the Red Sea...or rather, a very slow mudslide...as a man gently made his way past tittering grandmothers and gaping men whose attention appeared to Grace to stem more from curiosity than true concern.
Grace closed her eyes and tried to visualize a calming scene instead of the disturbing image of how many old geezers were currently craning their necks for a closer look at the lace edging on her thong underwear. That the underwear happened to match her stockings to a tee was no consolation in her present predicament.
Her tearful gaze followed a pair of muscular, blue-jean clad legs upward to a torso made in heaven. Honest to goodness, God had done a fine job designing the fellow standing in front of her.
Embarrassment quickly replaced her interest in the man, however. A disheveled, battered excuse for a woman lying spread-eagle and literally airing out her laundry in the midst of twenty geriatric onlookers was not the best first impression she could have made.
Grace knew that she would eventually have to face the music of her situation, though, and never one to shy away from a problem, grasped for whatever shred of courage remained in her arsenal. Her own inescapable embarrassment aside, she still hesitated to look upward because she was even more convinced that her rescuer was the man she had seen in the recreation room. It just had to be him!
She took a deep breath and chanced a peek.
“Oh, my.”
She felt a tingle all the way to her toes. Even through the haze of pain, she recognized that the man standing before her was unlike any man she’d ever seen. His eyes were as bright as the cold, Arctic Sea, and his smile...well, it was simply yummy!
Wait just a minute! Grace’s thoughts stopped mid-assessment. Is he laughing at me?
For a moment, Grace was just a teensy bit annoyed that the man’s baby blues were flashing more with amusement than concern. Then she noticed his lips. They looked so perfectly kissable that Grace caught herself nibbling her own lower lip.
“Have mercy, Grace! As if it matters whether or not you’re still wearing lip gloss,” she mumbled under her breath.
Still, she just couldn’t help herself! The man was just about the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. His thick, wavy black hair just touched his collar. His amazingly straight white smile was not even necessary for the equation to be perfect. The package was just too irresistible…and in the blink of his sooty black lashes, Grace decided to forgive his amusement at her most recent, less than graceful incident.
“What’s going on here?” his deep drawl echoed throughout the hallway. At the sound of his voice, it was all Grace could do to keep herself from sliding back into the puddle from which she had so inelegantly crawled just moments before. Her rescuer reached down his hand.
“Don’t touch her!” a man called out as he frantically entered the fray without a thought for the elderly men and women gathered around.
Ouch! Grace grimaced in commiseration as a petite, white-haired observer took an elbow.
Thankfully, with a warbled-voiced curse and an elbow of her own, the woman held her ground. Grace sighed in relief for she was pretty certain that if the woman hadn’t stood firm, the domino effect would have surely led to nothing less than a massive collapse of arthritic bodies and orthopedic equipment...and a huge claim on her father’s liability insurance.
“Wait! Don’t move her!” Another voice, this one high-pitched and feminine, called from across the room. “This may be the only chance I’ll get to earn my first aid badge!”
Grace caught a glimpse of the badgeless scout she had noticed on the front steps as the girl plowed over her fellow troop members.
“I’m fine,” Grace assured everyone. She held up her good hand, an action designed more for defense than entreaty. This had to be the most embarrassing day of her life. Way worse than in eighth grade when Jimmy Gonzalez had stolen her purse and ended up sticking a couple of her tampons in his ears in some twisted rendition of Frankenstein.
The girl knelt down beside Grace and leaned toward her ear.
“Listen, lady. I have no idea what I’m doing, but just play along with me, okay?”
The girl looked so desperate that Grace had no choice but to give in to her ministrations. Still reeling from her fall down the rabbit’s hole, Grace nodded mutely then cringed when the scout yelled in an authoritative voice.
“Do you have any neck or back pain, ma’am?”
Grace shook her head “no” without a hint of pain, but she thought as she did so that she would soon have a headache if all of the infernal yelling didn’t stop soon.
“Ladies and gentlemen, that’s a good sign!” the girl announced in her loud voice. “At least I think so,” she mumbled under her breath. “Where is the pain?”
“Just my left ankle and my left elbow. I think that I landed on that side.”
“I’ve got a plan. Just trust me,” Grace’s rescuer said more for her ears than anyone else’s.
Then with a voice as confident as any paramedic’s, the girl called out to the man standing nearby. “Hey, you! Carpenter Man! We need a set of muscles over here!”
And as the gorgeous stranger bent down to lift her into his arms, Grace realized why the girl had reminded her so much of herself when she had seen her earlier in the day. She had turned out to be an utter GENIUS!
Chapter Two
Pride, Pain, and Prejudice
“What do you mean, I have to use a cane?” Grace looked at the blonde Adonis who had taken charge of her, medically speaking, after what seemed like hours of health questions and a series of X-rays.
Full of adrenaline and smarting from the pain, she looked around t
he room with an unnatural zeal. The visit was sure to hit her father’s worker’s compensation insurance with a hefty bill. For crying out loud! Her father would have gotten off a lot cheaper if he’d only sent her to the Big Apple!
Take that, Daddy, she wanted to shout, but her teeth were so tightly clenched with ire and pain that it was impossible to get more than a few words out...at least for the moment.
She turned from the doctor for a moment and gave her knight in shining armor a helpless glance.
Jackson Ellis.
He’d finally gotten around to introducing himself after hoisting her into the front seat of his extended cab. A manly truck for an oh-so-manly man, Grace had thought upon seeing it.
In the five minutes it had taken to get from Mansfield Park to Manhattan General, she had discovered that not only did Jack Ellis come to the aid of damsels in distress, but he was also the general contractor for the Assisted Living Home’s renovation. Grace had immediately recognized the name, but the face had been another story. Jackson Ellis Construction was an Atlanta-based firm her father used for most of his jobs, but she had never met Jack. He was the only grandson of the company’s founder and took care of most of the business outside Atlanta. His father dealt with things at their corporate office in the city.
Grace grumbled to herself as she looked at Jack. Her father certainly had a lot to answer for. Assigning her to Granny Patrol was one thing, but keeping the prime specimen of manliness currently gracing her hospital room a secret was an unforgivable offense. Why on earth had she been sitting through the Singles class at church and praying every night for the perfect man when he’d been on her father’s payroll all along?
She should have entered the family business ages ago! It would have saved her a lot of heartaches...not to mention all of the time she had wasted on the losers she’d been dating.