Daydreams

by Marcia Lynn McClure

  Copyright © 2009, 2011, 2013

  Daydreams by Marcia Lynn McClure

  www.marcialynnmcclure.com

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the contents of this book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any part or by any means without the prior written consent of the author and/or publisher.

  Published by Distractions Ink

  P.O. Box 15971

  Rio Rancho, NM 87174

  ©Copyright 2009, 2011, 2013 by M. L. Meyers

  A.K.A. Marcia Lynn McClure

  Cover Photography by ©Darren Baker/Dreamstime.com

  Cover Design and Interior Graphics by Sandy Ann Allred/Timeless Allure

  Second Printed Edition: 2011

  Third Printed Edition: 2013

  All character names and personalities in this work of fiction

  are entirely fictional, created solely in the imagination of the author.

  Any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.

  McClure, Marcia Lynn, 1965—

  Daydreams: a novel/by Marcia Lynn McClure.

  ISBN 978-0-9838074-2-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011933848

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Sandy,

  Here’s one just for fun…

  To the immeasurable adventures we’ve had

  through twenty-seven years of blessed and dearly beloved friendship.

  I love you!

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sayler Christy closed her eyes as the breeze whispered through the leaves above. The grass was cool and soft beneath her, and the scent of warm sun on green things filled her senses. The day was fresh, and she sighed, whisked away for a moment in the serenity of summer.

  “Drama,” Monica said. “That’s what I want. Drama.”

  “Drama?” Sayler asked, opening her eyes and rolling them as she looked to her friend. “Drama is too…too…too dramatic, Monie.”

  “You have to have drama in it, Say!” Monica argued, running her fingers through her blonde hair. “What good can romance be without drama?”

  Sayler rolled her eyes again, turned on her side, and propped her head up on one hand. “Okay. What kind of drama are we talking?” she asked, smiling at her friend. “Massive drama? Or just a bit of drama?”

  Monica shrugged and took a bite of her bagel. “I don’t know,” she answered. “I guess too much drama could be bad. But I think there has to be some sort of drama or else, I mean, how boring.”

  “Well,” Sayler said, sitting up and brushing a blade of grass from her elbow. “I suppose, if you think about it, any romance involves a little drama—to some degree.”

  Monica laughed. “I’m glad you’re admitting it. Especially considering.”

  “Considering what?” Sayler asked.

  “Considering what?” Monica exclaimed, wrinkling her brow. “Considering you’re the one who wants to grow up, get a job, and marry her boss! Tell me there’s no drama in that daydream!”

  Sayler smiled and lay back in the grass once more. She watched a heart-shaped cloud floating in the peaceful sky overhead.

  “I just read it in a book once, when I was younger,” Sayler explained. “And…and it seemed so romantic. I never said I wanted to—”

  “Oh my heck!” Monica interrupted. “You are such a liar! You’ve said it for years! ‘When I grow up, I want to get a job, have a handsome boss, and have him fall madly in love with me.’ That is what you’ve always said.”

  “When I was twelve, Monica,” Sayler reminded her best friend. “I said that when I was twelve.”

  “Maybe,” Monica said, stretching out on her back and staring up into the same blue sky Sayler gazed into. “But eighteen isn’t that far removed from twelve where daydreams are concerned. And besides, I’m your best friend—and best friends know when their best friend is being serious. And you, best friend of mine, were being serious when you said it.”

  Sayler looked over at Monica and smiled. “Well, you’re the one who’s been in love with my brother since practically the day you were born!”

  Monica laughed. “Okay, okay! I admit it!” She frowned slightly. “But seriously, Say—don’t ever tell him. Please. I’ll swear never to tell anyone your random fall-in-love-with-the-boss daydream if you swear never to tell my secret fall-in-love-with-Christian-Christy daydream. I would die if Christian ever found out! Even though I have loved him since birth.”

  “Deal,” Sayler said, smiling. She sighed, a great contented sigh—the sigh of youth and innocence and summer serenity. Gazing up into the sky once more, she said, “It looks just like a heart.” She pointed to the heart-shaped cloud lazily drifting across the azure canvas above them.

  “It does,” Monica agreed. “But you better get back to work. Your grandpa will chew you up and spit you out if you’re late again.”

  “Grandpa wouldn’t,” Sayler said. “But Denay and Fabiana would.”

  “I can’t stand them!” Monica grumbled. “How do you tolerate them? I swear I couldn’t take it. They’re the most stuck-up, arrogant chicks I know—so smug because they’re nurses. They’re not even that much older than you—what, like 5 years? I don’t know how you take it.”

  “Me neither, sometimes,” Sayler admitted. She breathed a heavy sigh and wished Denay and Fabiana would quit their jobs at her grandfather’s rehab center. Fabiana hadn’t been so hard to take on her own, but once Denay had started working at Rawlins Rehabilitation Center, everything had changed. She often wondered if she should tell her grandpa what utter brats they were together. Still, so many of the staff working at the Center already complained about Miles Rawlins hiring his teenage granddaughter. And even though Sayler knew she earned every dollar she made, she didn’t want the staff to start thinking she was a rat as well. Surely someone else at the Center would eventually get fed up with Denay and Fabiana too. Then Sayler could let somebody else go to her grandpa, and she could simply confirm the reasons for the complaints when he came to her about it.

  “But you’re right. I better get back,” Sayler said, standing up. She retrieved her white-and-red vertical-striped apron from the grass, slipped the neck strap over her head, and tied the sash at her back.

  Monica smiled. “Aren’t you just the cutest thing,” she giggled.

  Sayler smiled with sarcasm and curtsied. “Sometimes I do wish Grandpa would do away with the old, traditional candy-striper’s apron thing,” she said.

  “Oh, but it’s so cute! And just look at all those pockets,” Monica teased. “Just be glad he doesn’t make you wear a white dress and white orthopedic shoes too.”

  “Totally!” Sayler agreed, gathering up the remains of her sack lunch. “Thanks for meeting me, Monie. Have fun shelving books!”

  Monica had landed a summer job at the public library, and Sayler envied her at times. The library was quiet with one very kind elderly librarian, who pretty much let Monica work completely on her own. In contrast to working with Denay and Fabiana at the Center, Monica’s library job seemed pretty cushy.

  Still, Sayler was grateful for her own job. And it was a nice perk, seeing her grandpa every day.

  Sayler’s grandfather, Miles Rawlins, owned the Rawlins Rehabilitation Center and prided himself on running a fabulous facility. There were several wings to the Center, serving everyone from the terminally ill to those in need of physical therapy. It was a wonderful facility, and Sayler was proud and happy to work there—at least most of the time. Yet since Denay Brandy had been hired, working at the Center had lost a lot of its allure for Sayler. Denay was a young, know-it-all, envious, control freak of a nurse who managed somehow to weasel
her way into being front-desk attendant most of the time. Further, she’d joined forces with Fabiana Hoffman to make Sayler’s life at work a nightmare more often than not.

  Sayler’s job included reading to patients, running small errands for them, and basically just keeping them company and seeing to their seemingly trivial, but often very important, needs. Denay, however, found ways to entirely annoy Sayler. She’d interrupt her reading to patients to have her do some meaningless errand for the staff or implied Sayler was just a product of nepotism, not serving any real service at the Center. But Sayler knew the patients appreciated her. Their faces always lit up when they saw her coming, and her grandpa told her many patients said the best part of the Center was the visits by the little candy striper.

  Sayler liked to help people. She liked to make them smile and feel important and to spread a little sunshine to those who desperately needed it. People like Denay and Fabiana had no concept of putting the happiness of others before their own comfort or convenience. And, Sayler told herself, it was another legitimate reason for her to endure their bad treatment of her—for the sake of the patients.

  So, tossing her scrunched-up brown paper lunch sack into the trash can at the back entrance of the Center, Sayler drew in a deep breath of resolve and went back to work.

  “I’m back,” Sayler told Denay as she passed the front desk of the physical therapy wing.

  “You’re late,” Denay said. She didn’t even have the courtesy to look up at Sayler.

  “I’m not,” Sayler said, quickening her step.

  “Hold on,” Denay called. “We need you to do something else. The kids can wait.”

  Sayler stopped but paused before turning around to face Denay. She always visited with the children in the physical therapy wing after lunch. But Denay was her superior, so she slowly turned around, folded her arms across her chest, and waited for instruction. She considered the nurse for a moment, her pinched face, her painted-on makeup. She couldn’t stand the woman! Her hair, mousy-brown as it was, was always perfectly in place, her beady blue eyes hidden by too much mascara.

  “There’s a new coma patient,” Denay told her. “They brought him in while you were at lunch. He’s in room 116.”

  “116? Why is he in this wing if he’s a coma patient?” Sayler asked. “Shouldn’t he be over at the—”

  “We weren’t expecting him yet. He arrived early,” Denay interrupted. “He’ll be in physical therapy until we get a room ready in the coma wing later this afternoon.”

  “That’s weird,” Sayler mumbled.

  “It’s the way it is.” Denay said. “Here,” she continued, handing a tiny jar of lip balm to Sayler. “I don’t know what kind of a facility he was in before, but it couldn’t have been a very good one. He’s got bed sores like you wouldn’t believe and dry skin and lips. I’m busy—everybody’s busy—so I want you to put some of this on his lips and then read to him a bit. Do you think you’re capable of doing that?”

  Sayler nodded, trying to ignore Denay’s condescending manner. “Anything else?” she asked, reaching over and retrieving her book bag from behind the counter.

  “No. Just the lip balm and the reading,” Denay answered. “But be ready, Sayler,” she added. “It’s a sad case because he’s so young. Looks like he was really gorgeous too. So be prepared because I’m sure it will freak you out a bit.”

  “I’ll be fine, Denay,” Sayler said. Certainly it was hard for Sayler to work with the seriously infirm, terminally ill, or coma patients. It broke her heart to see their lives coming to an end. Often it caused her to tear up, feel heavyhearted. The way Denay always made it sound like Sayler was too fragile, unable to handle it somehow, just thoroughly perturbed her.

  “I’m sure you will,” Denay said. Sayler turned and headed toward the physical therapy wing.

  She began seething. She could not stand Denay Brandy! She was so smug, radiated such an air of infinite superiority. Sure, she was a nurse and five years older than Sayler, but it gave her no right to be so patronizing and arrogant.

  Because of Denay, Sayler was fairly livid with annoyance by the time she reached the new patient’s room. Still, she paused for a moment before opening the door, inhaling deeply and calming herself. Her grandpa believed coma patients could sense so much of their environment, even the character and mood of those tending to them. It was important to enter the room with a calm, soothing demeanor.

  She opened the door and quietly stepped into the room. She shook her head and smiled at herself. She was always so careful to be quiet around the coma patients, as if any sudden noise might disturb them, wake them up.

  A man was lying on his back in the bed. Sayler frowned, puzzled by the lack of heart monitor, IV, and other equipment in the room. Surely this patient should’ve had the necessary equipment needed to monitor him, unexpected arrival or not. Shrugging her shoulders, however, she passed the concern away. She wasn’t any sort of medical worker, and she knew everyone was properly cared for at Rawlins Rehabilitation. Her grandpa made sure of it.

  As Sayler approached the man in the bed, she raised her eyebrows and nodded with approval as she looked at him. He was definitely very handsome. Beyond handsome! Young too, just as Denay had said, and it did make her feel sad to know he would most likely never be conscious again.

  His hair was a warm dark brown, his jaw square and strong. Sayler marveled at the healthy color in his face, the bronze of his arms and shoulders. One strong-looking hand rested on his perfectly sculpted chest. Sayler surmised his comatose state must be fairly recent, for the muscle tone of his body and healthy glow to his skin would not be present in a long-term patient. Sayler wondered why the staff had covered him from only the waist down. Further, why was he bare-chested? Most coma patients were dressed in hospital gowns. Still, it was nothing she knew the ins and outs of exactly, so she set her book bag on a nearby chair and retrieved the jar of lip balm from one of her many candy striper apron pockets.

  She paused for a moment, somewhat unsettled as she looked at the handsome, unconscious man. The coma patients at the Center always frightened her a bit. Not because of their condition but more because she was constantly expectant one might abruptly regain consciousness and startle her to death. Many times she imagined a patient suddenly opening his or her eyes or gasping for breath as the darkness of coma released them. Even though she knew it would never happen to her, she nervously anticipated it.

  Swallowing hard and inhaling a deep breath of courage, she opened the jar of lip balm and pressed her finger into the soft, petroleum-based salve.

  “Your lips actually look fine, Mr.…Mr.…” she began in a whisper. Glancing at the name tag in the plastic sleeve on the side of the man’s bed, she continued, “Mr. Booker.” Placing her balmy finger gently to his lips, she said a bit louder, “But the nurse said they were a little dry. This ought to do the trick, and then we can read a bit. Maybe a little Green Eggs and Ham. Everybody knows that one, and my grandpa says simple, familiar books are best for people who…who are resting the way you are.”

  Carefully, she smoothed the balm over the man’s soft lips.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Sayler gasped, her heart leaping into her throat at the deep resonation of the man’s voice, the sudden opening of his eyes, and his strong grip at her wrist.

  “Oh my heck! Oh my heck!” she panted, completely distressed. “You…you’re awake!”

  “Well, I am now,” the man grumbled, glaring at her through groggy, but entirely mesmerizing, blue eyes.

  “Oh my heck! I…I have to call someone!” Sayler said, trying to pull her wrist from the man’s grasp. He was terribly strong for someone reviving from a coma, and he tightened his grip as she said, “I can’t believe you’ve come out of it!”

  “Come out of what?” the man grumbled, running one finger of his free hand over his lips and looking at the lip balm left there.

  “Out…out of your coma,” Sayler stammered. He seemed incr
edibly literate and aware. It usually took days, weeks, or months for people to be able to communicate coherently at all. Sometimes they never regained their speech and understanding.

  “Coma?” the man said, frowning at her. “I broke both my legs in a car crash six weeks ago. I’m here for physical therapy.”

  “But…but the nurse told me…” Sayler stammered, unable to finish her sentence. Realization washed over her. Denay! Denay had set her up! Set her up to humiliate herself. Worse, set her up to dreadfully disturb a patient.

  “And what are you?” the man asked, his face softening. A slight grin captured his alluring mouth as he studied her from head to toe. “A giant candy cane?”

  Sayler used her free hand to smooth her red-and-white vertical-striped apron. “No…no. I…I work here. I’m a…a…”

  “A candy stripper,” he finished, chuckling. The sound of his voice was incredible! His smile was even more astounding. He was undoubtedly the most handsome, good-looking, entirely attractive man Sayler had ever seen in person.

  “Candy striper,” Sayler corrected.

  “Sayler!” Denay exclaimed, suddenly entering the room. Fabiana Hoffman was hot on her heels, both of them struggling to maintain serious expressions. “What have you done? I cannot believe you would disturb Mr. Booker like this!”

  “But you told me—” Sayler began.

  “I told you to check on the new coma patient…in the coma wing, Sayler,” Denay lied. “Forgive me, Mr. Booker,” Denay addressed the man then. “She’s young, the owner’s granddaughter, and not trained for patient care.”

  “Are you all right, Mr. Booker?” Fabiana asked. She smiled at the man, tucking a strand of her ebony hair behind one ear. Taking his free arm, she pressed her fingers to his wrist as she looked at the watch on hers. “Perhaps we should check your blood pressure as well. Although you look just…just fine,” she added, winking flirtatiously at the man.