Attending Physician

  As the phone rang in her august wood-paneled office, the buzzer went off again. Mickey checked the display. Ellie again.

  Sheila answered the phone and, without so much as a hello, said, “She’s AWOL. I can’t hunt her down anywhere. She’s not on her cell, and neither is Denny.”

  “Who’s Denny?”

  “Mr. Hanrahan’s driver.”

  “Well, you’re in luck,” I said. “I’ve got her. She’s at my door again. I’m calling the cops for the second time, Sheila. They’ll put her in the car. Too bad you can’t take over the steering from your desk.”

  “I’m good, Verity,” she said, “but I’m not that good.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, lady,” I said. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give her three strikes. If this is the last time she makes the attempt, we’re good. If not, it’s got to be a restraining order, and she’ll go to jail, Sheila. I don’t want that but I can’t have her after me like this. She broke the agreement, not me.”

  “I understand, Verity, and I think you’re being more than fair. Way more.”

  “Thanks, my friend. I’ll keep you posted.” We rang off, and I called the SPD—again. I was not the most popular girl in school, but at least some SPD folks had been on the task force so they knew who I was and what I was dealing with.

  So they did their toss into the limousine again, and things were calm.

  Chapter 49

  After the police got rid of Ellie, Hanrahan called me directly, himself. Who knew he knew how to use a phone? Well, he did, yelling, as he usually was when he spoke to me. It’s a miracle the man doesn’t have a heart attack every day.

  He finally used up my long, very long, very, very long, did I say long? fuse. “Mr. Hanrahan,” I shouted, and he shut up. “You cannot control your daughter. Sheila doesn’t know where she is. She can’t get Denny’s cooperation, and Ellie’s not playing nice either. I have a business to run, HIPAA regulations to honor, and patients to care for.

  “I told Sheila I’d give Ellie three strikes like the law says. I will, but then I’m calling my attorney and to hell with your run for the bench. People’s lives and psyches at stake here, not to mention mine, as well as my livelihood, which your daughter put at risk this weekend. So yes, I’m mad, and yes, I’m very close to done. Do you read me, counselor?” My chest heaved with outrage.

  Shockingly, he chilled out and spoke sensibly.

  Beard the bully in his den with his own tactics, unbelievable. Mickey and Sara were slightly spooked. They’d never before heard me so much as raise my voice.

  We had leftover Chinese for lunch and I explained how anger is sometimes required to meet anger, even with patients. Sometimes in order to heal intensity of any kind, it takes ... um, well, intensity. That’s what I’d been giving Mr. Hanrahan. Normally, he bullied with his rage, and I’d called him on it, and raised him.

  The effing buzzer rang as we sat down to our post-leftovers tea, and my belly sank. My two o’clock had arrived, and then the buzzer rang again, and my heart sank that Ellie was with him.

  “Mickey, can you get him upstairs without letting Ellie in?” Code: can you butch it up, sweetie, and use some brawn if necessary?

  “I’m on it.”

  “Sara,” I said. “Clear the therapy room please.” We used a bowl of salt water and sage and I saw that Sara was shaking.

  “Whoa,” I said, “stop everything.”

  Mickey and Sara froze in place.

  “Sara, look at me.” She did. “Are you ... scared?”

  “She’s violent,” she whispered.

  Intuition hit me broadside. “Sara, she is, but she’s desperate, and she’s not your history of violence.”

  Sara blanched. “How did you—?” she began in a whisper.

  “I recognize the symptoms,” I said, “and I’m sorry to out you in front of Mickey but we have no time.”

  “No, no worries,” she said. “Mickey’s cool, and I’ll be alright.”

  I held her by the shoulders, and set my green eyes intently onto her soft brown ones. “You will, and we will deal with this so it doesn’t ambush you again, but we can’t do it this minute,” I said. Then I gave her a fierce hug, and whispered, “Get mad. Right now,” in her ear, and let her go.

  Mickey went for the door.

  Sara went for the office.

  I went for my phone to call Jamie.

  Jamie’s Sheila, who probably wasn’t a Sheila, but you take my point, put me through and I was speaking to Jamie within seconds.

  “It’s here on my desk, Verity. Ready to go,” she said when I asked about a restraining order. “I’ll go see a judge.”

  “Jamie,” I stammered, “how can that be?”

  “Raven’s Beauty,” she said, “do you think we haven’t had eyes on your place since Friday?”

  I stopped cold. “Eyes?” I said.

  “SPD has driven by your house every hour or so since Friday. When you called this morning, SPD called Terry and Terry was on the phone to me in minutes. I had this paperwork sitting on the corner of my desk by 0930.”

  “Jamie,” I stuttered, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You say, `Thank God for butches who care,’” she prompted.

  Dutiful, but an editor at heart, I said, “Thank Goddess for butches who care.”

  Jamie delighted at my revision. “Whoever floats your boat, ma’am. This’ll be filed within the hour, darlin’.”

  “Jamie, how can I thank you?”

  “I don’t need your thanks, Verity. I need your guaranteed safety, and so do my brothers.”

  “Okay,” I said, my voice sounding small to my ears.

  “Call Raven, Verity. She’s going nuts that you haven’t.”

  “Omigod,” I exclaimed. “And here I was trying to protect her from the crazy!”

  Jamie laughed long and hard. “Not a chance, Raven’s Beauty. Call your butch.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said smartly. “Bye, and thanks—you.”

  Jamie was dead air.

  I texted Raven. Milord, can you spare a few minutes for your somewhat crazed femme?

  Always came at once. I knew she’d call me.

  My phone rang. “Baby,” she said cautiously.

  “You’re angry at me,” I countered.

  “At you, maybe a little, but I’ll get over it once I tell you how things need to be. But hell yes, at that asshat Hanrahan and his demented daughter who put you at risk and continues to do so.”

  I whispered, “You know everything, don’t you?”

  “Baby, my guys kept me in the loop. They always do.”

  I was reassured and ashamed at the same time. “I’m sorry, darling,” I said.

  “I know, baby. It’s okay,” her voice softened. “Come here,” she said, and her strong arms slid around me. The tears that had started last night rose again. I felt so very weary. “Sh-sh-sh, it’s okay, sweetheart,” she soothed me.

  “I have a patient,” I said, “but I’d rather take a nap with you.”

  “Hmmm,” she said speculatively, “that sounds like fun.”

  “Dr. Lange!”

  “Dr. Spencer!” she threw back. “It’ll be okay, milady. Go see your patient and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said softly.

  “Yes, milady. Always.”

  My patient, who was a former addict and current biker and covered with ink, was fine at Ellie’s approach to his person. Very little flapped him once we’d uncovered the cause for the hole in his soul, as we called it.

  Two more patients were scheduled for that Tuesday with time in between so that I could supervise Mickey and Sara. Raven’s key hit the lock a few secs after my patient left.

  She walked into my therapy office like she owned the joint, and ignoring Mickey and Sara completely, came directly to me to pull me into a bruising kiss.

  I said, “Sara, this is Dr. Ravenal Lange.”

  She made the adjustm
ent out of private into personal, and faced Sara. “It’s nice to meet you, Sara.”

  “Dr. Lange,” Sara responded politely.

  “Raven,” she corrected.

  “Raven,” Sara repeated. “Cool.”

  “She is,” breathed Mickey to Sara.

  Raven, still holding me in her arms, said to Mickey, “Thanks, man,” she said. Raven had made sure Mickey was with me.

  Chapter 50

  “Sara, let’s make some time tomorrow to work at least a ways through this issue please,” I said as she and Mickey walked down the front stairs.

  “Yes, ma’am,” floated via the stairs.

  “Baby,” said Raven. I admired her handsome face. “We have to go. Lucy’ll go mad otherwise.”

  “Why?” I asked twining my arms around her neck and pressing my body against hers.

  Raven groaned and froze. “I promise I will take you when we get home, milady ...,” she began, her eyes intent on my mouth.

  “I’m so glad you have plans for me, sir,” I sparkled at her, “because I have plans for you as well.”.

  Her eyebrow asked me what they might be.

  “Femme secrets,” I said. I’d been struck hard by a particular fantasy off and on throughout the day. “I’d better fix my mouth.” I slithered my hands from around her neck and down her chest where she nabbed them and brought them to her mouth. My breath caught.

  “That sounds like fun, milady,” she murmured against my fingers as she kissed both hands, her eyes still on my mouth.

  I couldn’t stand it. I threw my arms around her neck again and whimpered for her to kiss me. My need was great enough that she heard me and obliged with a moan.

  She extricated herself from my embrace. “Fix it in the car, baby. And you have to call Lucy when we’re on our way.”

  “I will,” I said as I grabbed my purse. She retrieved my coat and we were out the door. It’s one of the things I pride myself on. I do what I can never to keep a butch waiting because of any beauty routine I might practice.

  By the time Raven settled in on her side of the car, I was speaking to Lucy.

  “Rox or Shake Shack, little one?” asked Raven. I gathered the venue was to be Lucy’s choice.

  “Shake Shack!” she hollered. We winced at her decibel.

  “Tell Nana,” I instructed. “Lucy, Papa has to concentrate so we get there safely. We’ll be there soon. Gotta go.”

  “Concentrate,” she said. “Gotta go.”

  She put the phone down and I pushed End.

  “That was fast,” said Raven.

  “I want you to myself, my darling,” I said by way of explanation.

  A satisfied smirk lit her features. What telling the truth will do. “Do you?”

  “Oh, yes sir,” I crossed my heart. “I want to apologize. I thought it over this afternoon, milord, and I should have called you when Ellie rang the bell the first time.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said measuredly, her eyes on the road. “Go on, baby. Let’s see if you figured this whole thing out all by your lonesome, shall we?”

  I sent her a Look, but continued. “You marked me, good sir, and that means you have a responsibility to care for me. But you can’t take care of me unless I let you know what I need especially if you’re not with me, so I have to call you or text you. In any case, I have to tell you some way.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “And you would have been much angrier today except the Butch Brigade was involved so they kept you informed although I didn’t.” My voice had gotten smaller, and I didn’t like that but I did hear it. “So I’m very sorry, and it won’t happen again.” She raised my hand and kissed it, driving skilfully at the self-same time. “But,” I went on, “in my own defense—”

  “That’s the point, baby,” she said definitively. Period. End. Of. Sentence. “You’re my femme. With me in your life, you shouldn’t have to defend yourself. That’s my job, milady.”

  “But, darling,” I said, “unless you’re going to be with me every last moment of every single day, I have to be able to take care of myself. To some extent.”

  “Ye-es,” she agreed, “but that only goes for emergencies, like Friday, and protocols to get to me or my boys otherwise. So I was glad to hear that you called the SPD twice today rather than taking Ellie on yourself; that was smart.”

  “Thank you,” I said, with more sarcasm than was warranted.

  She glanced at me. “Sorry, baby, but this is what you need whether you know it or not, and I want to give it to you.”

  My defenses started to gather themselves—I was, to be sure, forty-nine and had been on my own—but my defense mechanisms collapsed and I fell into heavy tears. Completely unexpectedly as far as I was concerned.

  Raven immediately pulled Chérie off the road and gathered me into her arms. But not before lifting her hips and extracting her handkerchief from her back pocket, causing my belly to whoosh. Tears never last long for me, so as they abated, and I dabbed at my face so as not to totally ruin my mascara, she leaned back in her seat, and said wonderingly, “You’re even beautiful when you cry, Verity.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why were you crying?”

  My voice cracked as I said, “I haven’t had anyone to take care of me in a long, long time, Raven. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it.”

  “Ah,” she responded sagely, saying nothing further, but she tightened her arms around me. Then she put me into my own seat, put Chérie in gear, and drove to get Gretchen and Lucy.

  We parked in front of the house and Raven pulled me into her arms tenderly. Then she said, “I’m so sorry you were neglected for so long, baby.” Through a whisper-gentle kiss, she said, “Not anymore.”

  I nodded because I couldn’t speak, then jumped as a thud rocked the car..

  Raven opened the door and said, “Lucy, didn’t I ask you not to slam into Chérie?”

  Lucy glanced at my posture and morphed into a laser beam. “Lady okay?”

  “Yes, Lady is okay,” assured Raven.

  “Lady like Lucy,” she gestured to me in Raven’s arms.

  “A little different,” Raven chuckled.

  Lucy said, “Bigger.”

  “Yes, bigger,” agreed Raven. “Lucy, where’s Nana?”

  “In the cah,” said Lucy in Bostonese.

  I whispered to Raven, “Her Nana taught her how to say that, didn’t she?”

  “Right,” said Raven, righting me. “I’ll be right there, milady. C’mon, Luce, let’s get Lady out of the cah.”

  “Right,” copied Lucy. She was a regular parrot.

  Raven came round the front of the Mustang and opened my door. I’d repaired my face, but Lucy was observation itself. Sherlock Holmes had nothing on this one. “Lady cwying,” she announced to Raven with unmistakable accusation.

  “Lucy,” I said, “listen. Raven helped me. She didn’t make me cry.”

  “Okay,” she said, “c’mon, Lady. Sit with me!”

  Nana sat in the back waiting when we got to the garage.

  “Nana, Lady sit in back!” announced Lucy.

  “No, Lucy,” said her nana, “Lady sit in front with Papa where she belongs.”

  “Gretchen, do you prefer the front?” I asked.

  “Not important.”

  Raven overrode her, “Yes, she gets car sick otherwise.”

  “Nana,” I said sternly, “into the front with you!” She braced herself to argue with me. “Do we have to drag you out? I’ve already cried twice today. I could probably manage another jag if you need it!”

  Gretchen laughed. “Alright, alright, I’m going.”

  Raven strapped Lucy into her car seat, and then handed me into the back, pinching my bottom as she did, to which I could not react or I’d give her away.

  “You cwied twice?” asked our resident investigator.

  “Yep,” I said. “I had a wet day.”

  “Sorry, Lady,” said Lucy.

  “It’s okay, baby g
irl. Sometimes you have to cry to feel better.”

  “Yeah,” said Lucy, nodding her head sagely. “I know.”

  Chapter 51

  Shake Shack is a chain restaurant but a good one. Totally kid-friendly which was what we needed. Burgers, fries, shakes. Once Raven had gotten our food, and we’d settled to it with the various accoutrements we needed, Lucy centered on me.

  “Cwied twice?” she said again. “Why?”

  Raven’s hand danced in my lap. I was close to gasping from her antics.

  “Yes, milady,” she added her two cents, “do tell. Why?”

  I didn’t know how far to reveal what had happened so I decided to speak at Lucy’s level. “Luce, that bad man from Friday?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, his friend came today and tried to hurt me some more.”

  “Unca Terry help you?” She had a mind like a steel trap, this little one.

  “Sort of,” I said, “Unca Terry’s friends.”

  “And Unca Jamie,” said Gretchen.

  “Unca Jamie,” said Lucy, “yay!”

  “How did you know that, Gretchen?” I asked.

  “Oh, you were on everybody’s radar today, Verity,” she spoke blithely. “The emails and texts flew! I’m copied on both group lists so I stay in the loop. You ask me,” she leaned over the table and peered around like a cartoon detective, “you might want to insist that you be added to the lists, too.”

  “Gretchen, my friend,” I smiled at her, “what a good idea!” I addressed Raven. “So, darling, how does a girl get her name on these lists?”

  “Um,” Raven hemmed, “ Jamie’s, uh ..., girl keeps them.”

  “Jamie’s girl?” I asked. “Girl ... friend?”

  “No, office girl.”

  “Raven, does the office girl have a name?” She heard the irked sound in my voice, and she knew damn well why.

  “Probably, but I don’t know it,” she mumbled.