Kathleen's Story

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “What’s on your mind, Raina?”

  Raina had been staring into the depths of her postmovie bowl of ice cream. “I’m not being very good company tonight, am I?” They were sitting in a small ice cream parlor at the mall.

  “You’re fine company, but you haven’t said much. The show wasn’t that bad, was it? Not a car chase in it.”

  “The movie was fine. I just get depressed whenever I go to Kathleen’s house. I feel so sorry for her. She really is a slave, you know. Her mother expects Kathleen to wait on her hand and foot. She has no life outside of school and home.”

  “And you think it’s your job to fix things for her? Is that why you dragged her into the volunteer program at the hospital?”

  Raina felt her hackles rise. “Is that what you think I did—fix things for her?”

  “Yes,” he answered without apology.

  “If it was up to her mother, Kathleen would never leave that house. She needs a life.”

  “Listen, I’m not criticizing you. This is who you are and it’s one of the things that makes me crazy about you.”

  She shook her head, instantly disarmed by Hunter’s comeback. How could she growl at a guy who spoke with honesty but also with kindness? “I really think the program will be good for her. It’ll help her think about something besides her duty to her mother.”

  “Like what—her duty to the volunteer program? What if she hates it?”

  Raina flushed in exasperation. She saw his point: Was Kathleen just trading one duty for another? “Then she can quit.”

  “And you’d let her?”

  “Well, of course. How could I stop her? I’m just trying to be her friend.”

  “And her mother is…?” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “Trying to lock her down,” Raina finished with surety. “Holly thinks Kathleen’s mother is suffocating her too—just ask her.”

  “My sister’s so excited to be busy this summer that she’d have done anything you suggested. Kathleen’s home life isn’t even on her radar.”

  Raina didn’t want to get into her feelings about Holly’s life and how rigid and unbending she thought Hunter’s parents were toward his sister. “Do you think it’s a bad idea for Holly to volunteer?”

  “It’s a good idea. She needs to spread her wings.”

  Raina frowned. “And Kathleen doesn’t? I don’t get the difference.”

  Hunter shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but there is a difference. Holly’s trying hard to grow up. Kathleen’s already way too grown up. Don’t treat her like taffy.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Don’t pull too hard. Let her figure her life out for herself.”

  Raina tipped her chin. “And when you go off to college next year, Mr. Harrison, will you major in psychology? You seem to have sized up the lives of me and my friends like a pro.”

  He grinned self-consciously. “I like psychology. I like trying to decide what makes people tick and act the way they do.”

  “And what makes me tick? Have you figured that out yet?”

  He braced his elbows on the table and leaned forward until their faces were just inches apart. “Here’s what I know about you: You have a kind heart. You really care about your friends’ lives. And you’re sexy too. An unbeatable combo.”

  His bright green eyes made Raina’s insides quiver. “Sexy? I didn’t think you noticed stuff like that.”

  He touched his nose to hers in an Eskimo kiss. “Oh, I notice.”

  Her pulse quickened and she teased, “Isn’t this place a little too public for kissing?”

  “I pick public places on purpose. Private places are too dangerous.”

  “Why? Because of the Promise?” She brought up the thing that stood like a shadow between them. When he’d been in ninth grade, before she’d met him, and while attending a church camp, he’d taken a vow to remain chaste until he married. When she first started dating him, she’d respected him for that vow. It was a welcome change to date a guy who wasn’t pressuring her to have sex, but now, after a year of dating, she would have given Hunter anything he asked for—except that he didn’t ask.

  He leaned back in his chair. “You know what they call guys who break their promise, don’t you?”

  “Yes…Daddy.” She answered with the punch line to the old joke.

  He gave her a thumbs-up. “Beautiful, sexy and smart. I’m a lucky guy.”

  I’m the lucky one, Raina thought. “Okay, lucky guy, can you come over tomorrow and hang by the pool with me? Once I become a Pink Angel, I won’t have tons of free time.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “Oh, I forgot. Church.”

  “You could come with me.”

  She shook her head. “You know religion isn’t my thing.” She offered him a smile to soften her refusal. They’d had the same discussion many times. Hunter and his family were big churchgoers, but religion didn’t appeal to Raina. How could God, who was supposed to be good, allow sickness and evil in the world? It made no sense to her. “How about after church?”

  “Family time. My dad wants us together on Sundays.”

  She tried not to feel resentful. Her father had walked out on her and her mother when Raina was born, so Vicki St. James had been both mother and father to Raina. When she saw how Hunter’s father bossed Holly around, it sometimes made her glad she didn’t have a father. “Okay … no pool time tomorrow. What about Tuesday, since I’ll be at the hospital most of Monday.”

  “If I don’t land a job on Monday, I’ll be over Tuesday.”

  “I thought you were cutting grass again this summer.”

  “On weekends, but I need a job that pays more money to help pay my way through college.”

  Her heart squeezed. Because soon he would be a senior, at the end of the upcoming school year he would graduate and while she was a senior stranded in high school, he would go away to college. She could hardly bear to think about it. A year without Hunter would be like a year without oxygen. “Holly told me that once you go, she’s going to take over your old room and paint it purple.”

  “Over my dead body!”

  Raina shrugged innocently. “This can be avoided if you go to the University of South Florida and live at home instead of heading off to Florida State, way far away from me.”

  “Are you blackmailing me?”

  “No…just a friendly suggestion.” She flashed him a sunny smile.

  He took her hand. “Come on. I need to spend a few minutes alone with you in a private place after all.”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she kidded, following him out of the parlor.

  In the car, he pulled her close and kissed her. She cuddled against him without speaking, knowing that if she ever told him how much she truly loved him, it might scare him off. And life without Hunter was something she never wanted to face.

  four

  KATHLEEN SPENT HER first two weeks as a volunteer in the admissions office filing paperwork and taking patients to their rooms in wheelchairs once they were admitted. Holly pulled duty delivering gift shop items, flowers and food trays, and garnered a coveted assignment as playroom helper on the pediatric floor. Raina prepared patients for transport to operating rooms or tests. She often ran errands for nurses and residents from floor to floor because she knew her way around so well.

  As junior volunteers, they could work up to three days a week, reporting to the volunteer office on the first floor to check in and receive their assignments. From there they reported to the department head who had requested a volunteer, and worked until the task was finished or the department head no longer needed them. Then they would return to the volunteer office for another assignment, or go home if it was late in the day.

  Kathleen liked the admissions office and wanted to remain working there. The work was easy, and she felt as if she were working in a regular office instead of a hospital. Her supervisor was delighted with her wheelchair skills, and when she asked Kathleen how
she had acquired them, Kathleen only said, “I help out a sick woman in my neighborhood.” Not the total truth, but not a lie either.

  The only thing that gave her pause about the Pink Angels program happened on the first day she reported to the admissions office. She met a girl, Beverly, who was a year older and leaving the program. She was assigned to familiarize Kathleen with her duties. “Can I ask why you’re leaving?” Kathleen inquired over the file drawers in the back room. “Don’t you like it here?”

  Beverly thought for a moment. “It wasn’t what I’d expected it to be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I became a volunteer because I wanted to help people. I thought this would be a good way to do that.”

  “It isn’t?” Wasn’t that why she had allowed Raina to talk her into joining—because she wanted to help?

  “Let me tell you what happened to me. I volunteered last summer and liked it, so I stayed on to work after school and on weekends every now and again. Then last month, I was taking a patient up from the emergency room to be admitted when all you-know-what broke loose.” Beverly paused, the stack of folders she was showing Kathleen how to file forgotten. “An EMS crew came running in, pushing a stretcher with this unconscious man. He was white as a sheet and one of the EMS guys was sitting across the guy’s chest doing CPR. Another was holding IV bags. There was blood everywhere. I was pinned against a wall with my woman in a wheelchair and we couldn’t move, so I had to watch.

  “It was horrible. His leg was broken off and I saw his bone sticking out.” Beverly shuddered. “I thought I was going to be sick.”

  Kathleen’s stomach lurched at the girl’s description.

  “Anyway, I finally got my patient out of there, but I was totally shook up. Later, I went down, you know, just to check on the man, and…and…” Moisture formed in Beverly’s eyes. “And he was dead.”

  Kathleen swallowed hard. “That’s terrible.”

  “The ER was busy and so no one had come up to take him to the morgue, and he was just lying there. He looked asleep, but he was dead.” Beverly swiped under her eyes and sniffed. “I tried to forget about it, but I couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him. That’s when it hit me. Hospitals help people live, but people die here too. I started getting scared that I’d see something like that again and I knew I couldn’t take it. I asked Connie to put me someplace out of the way and this is it.” She gestured at the room full of cabinets and computers. “It worked for a while, but now I just want to be a regular person. I’m not cut out to be a volunteer. So that’s why I’m leaving.”

  Kathleen told Raina and Holly the story and although they were both sympathetic, neither wanted to reconsider her decision to join the program. “We’ll never see anything like that,” Raina said confidently.

  “I agree,” Holly said. “So far, it’s been nothing but fun.”

  Kathleen wasn’t so sure, but from that day forward, she asked to remain in admissions, and except for taking patients up to their rooms, or a pregnant woman to Labor and Delivery, she stayed off the upper floors and away from Emergency. She had a lunch break at noon and another break around three. She met Raina and Holly in the parking garage at five and rode home listening to Raina and Holly chatter about their experiences.

  From time to time, Kathleen looked for Carson’s name on the sign-up sheet in the volunteer office, but she never saw it. She told herself that odds were he didn’t even think of her beyond that first day. Still, she wanted to see him again. He might have made her angry, but he was gorgeous and he had flirted with her. She kept the secret buried, even when Holly asked point-blank if Kathleen had ever talked to “the hunk from orientation.”

  “Too busy with my workload,” she had said.

  It was the middle of June. Kathleen was walking through an underground tunnel used to move quickly between buildings of the giant hospital when she heard someone call, “Wait up!”

  She turned to see Carson jogging toward her. Her heartbeat accelerated, but she tried for an air of indifference.

  “I thought that was you,” he said, stopping in front of her. “It’s Kathy, isn’t it?”

  “Kathleen,” she corrected, feeling oddly let down. He didn’t even remember her name.

  He shrugged and tossed her a disarming smile. “Where you headed?”

  “I’m delivering a file to a doctor in building two.”

  “I’m just starting the program today. Have you missed me?”

  “I hadn’t noticed you weren’t working.” She hoped he wouldn’t see through her white lie.

  “I’m wounded. Aren’t you ever going to be nice to me?”

  She felt color creep up her neck. “I—I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay. How about we call a truce?” A lazy, sexy smile crossed Carson’s lips.

  “I’m not at war with you.”

  “Still, I’d like to start over.”

  Kathleen hugged the folder to her chest, wishing he didn’t affect her the way he did. “Um—all right, where have you been?”

  “I’ve been catching up on schoolwork.”

  “School’s been out for weeks.”

  “Private tutor. It seems I skipped a few too many classes, and the headmaster was holding my grades and free pass to my junior year until I made up some tests.”

  Privileged, Kathleen thought. In her school, he probably would have flunked. “Glad you made it,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound cynical.

  He bowed from the waist. Straightening, he asked, “Where did Connie assign you?”

  “I’ve been in the admissions office since my first day. How about you?”

  “I’m stuck with files and paperwork in my parents’ office.” He leaned forward and in a mock whisper added, “I think they want to keep tabs on me for a while. You know, before turning me out on the general hospital population where I might do damage.”

  “I can’t imagine why they’d want to keep tabs on you.” The remark was out of her mouth before she thought about it. And it sounded sarcastic. She could have bitten her tongue.

  Carson laughed. “I don’t think you have a very good impression of me, Kathleen.”

  “I—I don’t know you at all.” She hugged the folder tighter.

  “That’s true. Maybe we should fix that.”

  Her mouth went dry and her heart thudded.

  “Look, I’m having a party at my place Saturday night. It’s my birthday party, but no presents. A lot of my friends will be there. There’ll be food, pool water—all the trimmings.” He grinned. “Why don’t you come?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I saw you with two girls at orientation…”

  “Raina and Holly,” she supplied.

  “Bring them too.”

  “Raina’s got a boyfriend.”

  “He’s welcome to come.”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to mingle with kids she didn’t know. Her mouth was so dry that she didn’t trust her voice not to crack, so she simply nodded.

  Carson reached into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper and the stub of a pencil. “Here’s my address. Come around eight.” He wrote quickly, jammed the paper into her hand, which was still locked around the folder and turned and jogged back through the tunnel the way he’d come.

  By the time Kathleen found her voice, he had disappeared through a set of double doors. “I’ll have to see if my friends can come with me,” she said into the empty air. “I won’t come unless they do. And there’s no way I’m wearing a bathing suit,” she added under her breath. She looked down at the piece of paper and at Carson’s address on Davis Island, one of Tampa’s most prestigious neighborhoods. She turned the paper over and saw that he’d written on the back of a week-old parking ticket. It figured.

  “Whoa, missy. Where are you going?”

  With her hand on the doorknob, Holly froze at the sound of her father’s voice. She’d almost made it out of the house without his seeing her. She took a deep brea
th, pasted on a cheerful smile and turned. “To wait for Hunter on the front porch. He’s driving me and Raina and Kathleen to a party. I told you about it at dinner last night. Remember?”

  Mike Harrison scrutinized her. “You’re not leaving the house dressed like that.”

  She glanced down at herself. “What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?”

  “Your navel’s hanging out and your top’s too low. Your shorts are also too short.”

  “Dad, it’s a pool party.” She held up her bag. “My suit’s in here.”

  “I don’t care if it’s a party on the Riviera. No daughter of mine is going out in public half naked.”

  “All my friends wear clothes like this and their parents never say anything! It’s just fashion!” Her voice had risen.

  “Thanks for the enlightenment, because I’ve never heard that argument before—‘all my friends get to do it.’”

  Holly clenched her teeth, willing Hunter to come down the stairs and rescue her. Where was he, anyway? “I’ll put on my suit as soon as I get to the party.”

  “Let me see your suit.”

  Too late she realized she’d backed herself into a corner. She’d packed a bikini, a suit he didn’t even know she owned, instead of her one-piece tank suit. “It’s a new one,” she hedged.

  He took the bag, opened it and extracted a tiny white string bikini. His face went livid. “You’re grounded, Holly.”

  “But Dad—”

  “Go to your room.”

  “I—I’ll get my other suit.”

  “Too late. If you don’t have sense enough to pick the right suit the first time, how can I trust you to pick another?”

  “I only own one other suit!”

  “But you picked this one to wear. Where’s your sense of modesty? You told me that you’ve never met these kids before. What are you trying to prove?”

  She stamped her foot. “I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m modest. I know how to act. I’m not going to embarrass you and Mom, if that’s what you’re thinking.”