The Doctor She Always Dreamed Of Read online

  “There’s someone I want you to meet,” Derrick said, bringing Kira’s attention back to her present location.

  She approached the bed. “Good morning, Mrs. Limone,” she said formally, reaching down to squeeze her left hand. “So nice to meet you.”

  Daisy’s eyes shifted from Kira to Derrick then back to Kira. “Day,” she said, looking frustrated. “Dayyyy.”

  “She wants you to call her Daisy,” Mr. Limone said, as if Kira couldn’t figure that out. But she liked that he jumped in to help his wife communicate, although he’d have to stop doing that and let Daisy struggle to get the words out if he wanted her speech to improve. The therapist would go over that with him.

  “Nice to meet you, Daisy.” Kira tried to pull her hand back but Daisy held on tightly, her eyes once again moving from Kira to Derrick, back to Kira then back to Derrick, as if wondering what was going on between the two of them. “I’m a friend,” Kira said, using the loosest definition of the word. “Just a friend.”

  Even without full movement of her facial musculature, Kira could read the disappointment on Daisy’s face.

  Derrick stood up. “Since I’m here, I’ll be the one helping you get washed and dressed this morning.”

  Daisy released Kira, moved her hand with amazing speed, and jerked the bed covers up to her neck. “Noooo,” she said loudly and succinctly.

  Expressive aphasia aside, Daisy Limone made her opinions known.

  “Please, Mom,” Derrick tried to argue. “I want to help.”

  But Daisy wouldn’t budge. “No.” She made an angry face. “Nooooooooo.”

  Mr. Limone let out a weary, exhausted breath. “It’s okay. I’ll do it.”

  He looked drained. So Kira decided to offer up her services. Dropping to her knees beside the bed she said, “In addition to being a friend of your son’s, I’m also a nurse.” Daisy watched her quietly. “I have lots of experience helping women get washed up and dressed. If it’s okay with you, I’m happy to help you today.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Derrick said. “I want to do it.”

  As a nurse, Kira understood both sides. She stood and turned to Derrick, speaking quietly. “I know you do. But there are some things a mother doesn’t want her son to see.”

  Derrick nodded in understanding.

  Kira turned back to the bed. “Your husband has been working hard since you came home.”

  Daisy’s eye filled with tears as she nodded.

  “He deserves a day off, don’t you think?”

  Daisy glanced at her husband with love, then turned back to Kira and nodded.

  “I’m happy to help if you’ll let me.”

  Daisy reached for Kira’s hand and squeezed. “Love,” she said.

  Kira understood that was her way of expressing appreciation. “You’re welcome.”

  The next hour spent with Daisy, helping her to wash up at the sink, washing her hair, then putting on some lipstick after she’d helped her dress, reminded Kira of why she’d become a nurse. To help people and to make a difference in their lives. As much as it pained her to admit it, after years of doing it day in and day out, caring for Mom felt like a chore. She didn’t appreciate all that Kira did, her condition would never improve unless by some miracle of medicine the effects of a severe brain injury could be reversed.

  “What do you think?” Kira stood behind Daisy, supporting her with the gait belt around her waist, as she looked in the full length mirror behind the door.

  “Love,” Daisy said, looking at herself with joy. Then her gaze shifted to Kira’s and her expression changed. “Love,” Daisy said, starting to tear up.

  “You’re very welcome. Now let’s get you—”

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Kira helped Daisy move back. “Come in.”

  Derrick started to walk in then stopped in his tracks the look on his face making her wet clothing and sore back totally worth it. “What do you think?”

  “I think...” He swallowed. “I think you look beautiful, Mom. Like the stroke never happened.”

  But the stroke had happened.

  Daisy reached up to cup his cheek with her left hand.

  “She’s tired,” Kira said to Derrick. “Daisy, do you want Derrick to carry you downstairs now or would you rather nap up here?”

  Daisy took an eager step toward Derrick. He reached out to steady her.

  Kira smiled. “Well, all righty then.”

  “Hold on. I need to talk to Kira for a minute. Grab that chair,” he pointed to a wooden armchair in the corner of the room that had a bunch of male clothing draped over it. “Just throw those on the bed.”

  Kira did just that.

  With Daisy seated, and propped with a pillow to keep her in place, Kira joined Derrick in the hallway.

  “The sheriff’s at the door asking to see you.”

  “Me?” Kira pushed some loose hairs off of her face and behind her ear. “Why?”

  “He wouldn’t say.” Derrick looked at her accusingly.

  “Well I didn’t call him.”

  Why would the sheriff come here looking for her? Kira wondered as she hurried down the hallway and down the stairs. No one knew where she was. Seeing no one in the living room or kitchen, Kira hurried outside, where Derrick’s dad stood, talking with the sheriff—a very large, very serious, very imposing man in full uniform—at the base of the porch steps. When he spotted her he asked, “Are you Kira Peniglatt?”

  “Yes, officer,” she answered as Mr. Limone shook his head unhappily, turned, and walked back into the house without sparing her a glance. Well she couldn’t worry about him right now. “Is there a problem?”

  “You tell me,” he answered, studying her. “My office received a panicked phone call from a woman named,” he pulled a pad out of his breast pocket and flipped to a page, “Connie, who’s worried you were kidnapped and you’re being held here against your will.”

  Kira smiled. Gotta love Connie. “I’m fine, Officer.”

  He looked over Kira’s shoulder. She turned to see Derrick standing on the porch.

  “So you weren’t kidnapped?” the sheriff asked.

  “No. I wasn’t kidnapped.” Not technically. “If Connie was worried, why didn’t she just call my cell?” Kira pulled it out of the waistband of her leggings to check the screen. Almost fully charged. No messages.

  “That’s not going to do you any good around here,” the sheriff said.

  What? “Why not?”

  Derrick came to stand beside her. “No cell service,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Wait. “What?” Kira’s chest went tight and her heart started to pound. No, no, no. Her hand drifted up to her sternum. “No cell service?” She looked at the phone again. Closer this time. “That can’t be. This is New York State. Everyone has cell service.” But it could, in fact, be. And it was.

  Kira’s throat felt clogged with something big and uncomfortable.

  “Welcome to the north country,” Derrick said. “Hey.” He bent to catch her gaze. “No worries. Use the phone in the kitchen to call her.”

  “No worries?” she asked, panic rising, pressure building in her head. “No worries?!” she yelled. “I’m on call this weekend. Being out of the city is no big deal, but I am required to be accessible by phone.”

  “On call? Why didn’t you tell me?” Derrick asked.

  “Why should I have to tell you? I charged my phone in your bedroom while we ate breakfast. I’ve been carrying it around with me all morning.” She looked at the screen again. This could not be happening, not now, not after Mr. Jeffries had put her on probation yesterday afternoon.

  “If you would have told me I would have told you we don’t get cell service in this area.”

  The sheriff offered
, “Some people can get a signal over in the library parking lot.”

  A lot of good that did Kira. “I need to make a call.” She turned and ran up the porch steps.

  “Your friend’s waiting. Said to call her first,” the sheriff called out. “Some big problem with one of your patients at work.”

  Of course there was. Of course the one weekend Kira didn’t have cell service there would be a problem with one of her patients. When she reached the porch she stopped long enough to glance back and say, “Thank you for coming out, Sheriff. I’m sorry to have wasted your time. As you can see, I’m fine.” Except for the fact she’d likely be unemployed come Monday. Mr. Jeffries had been looking for a reason to fire her for months. Unbeknownst to her, she’d just given him one.

  Back inside the house Kira ran to the kitchen.

  “Everything okay, Miz Peniglatt?” Derrick’s dad asked.

  Kira did not like his tone and she stopped long enough to tell him so. “Look, if you have a problem with my being here, take it up with your son. I assure you, while I am here of my own free will...now,” she glared at Derrick who’d followed her in, “it was not my idea to bring me up here, and had I been included in the decision making, I would not have come. Now, I need to use your phone.” She turned, added, “Please,” and hurried into the kitchen, picked up the black wall-mounted phone and dialed Connie’s cell phone number from memory.

  She answered on the first ring. “Did you find her? Is she okay? Did you arrest that scum-sucking sonofabitch and throw him in jail?”

  “I’m fine,” Kira said, smiling. Only Connie could get her to smile at a time like this.

  “Kira!” Connie screamed. “It’s you! Oh, thank God, it’s you! And you’re fine! I have been scared out of my mind! When I couldn’t find you on my Find My Friends App this morning I figured no biggie. You were probably too busy having spectacular sex to charge your phone last night, which hey, yay for you. But how would you do on call with a dead phone? So I figured maybe you’d gone home and were using your landline.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t call my sister.” This was getting worse by the second.

  “What did you expect me to do? My best friend left the bar with a man neither of us knew, at least at the time I didn’t know I knew him. Well, kind of knew him. When I couldn’t reach you on your cell phone, I brought up the picture I took of Derrick’s driver’s license to get his address so I could look up his home phone number. That’s when I recognized his full name. Do you know who he is?”

  “Yes.”

  “No friggin’ way! Did you know who he was last night when you were hanging all over him?”

  Don’t remind me. “No. He told me this morning. How did you figure out he brought me up to his parents’ house?”

  “Uh...”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know for sure so I sent police to his home address in White Plains first.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Sure did. His old neighbor said he didn’t live there anymore but he’d talked to Derrick and he’d mentioned visiting his parents this weekend. So I logged into your work computer remotely to get Daisy Limone’s address.”

  “Connie! You’re not supposed to have that log in!”

  “Well I do.” Kira could almost see the stubborn look on her assistant’s face. “A good assistant needs to be prepared for anything.”

  Couldn’t argue with that logic. Kira let out a breath. “Thank you for tracking me down.”

  “So,” Connie said. “Did you...?”

  “No. You need to call my sister and tell her you found me and I’m okay.”

  “No? All this trouble and you didn’t—”

  “No.”

  “Well, damn.”

  Yeah.

  “Did you hear me?” Kira asked.

  “Yes I heard you. But honestly, Krissy didn’t sound all that worried. Said something like, “Kira can take care of herself,” that was it.”

  Sounded like Krissy. She didn’t worry about much, mostly because Kira took care of herself and everything having to do with their mother which allowed Krissy to live the carefree life she’d enjoyed since they were kids, only worrying about herself. Maybe she should tell Connie not to call Krissy, leave her to wonder, give her the opportunity to picture life without Kira in it.

  “What’s going on at work?” Kira asked.

  Talkative Connie stayed quiet.

  Not good. “Tell me.”

  “Sheila freaked when she found out you reassigned Daisy Limone to another case manager.”

  Kira squeezed the bridge of her nose. She’d hoped she could wait until Monday to deal with that. “How did she find out?”

  “The agency she’d referred the case to initially left a message that you’d taken back the referral.”

  “There’s something shady going on there, Con.” Kira planned to get to work very early on Monday morning to review all of Sheila’s cases.

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Is there really a problem with one of our patients or is Sheila just making trouble?”

  “I don’t know. For whatever reason, she said she’s been trying to get in touch with you and couldn’t reach you. So of course she called—”

  “Mr. Jeffries,” Kira finished, the mere mention of the man’s name causing a twinge of discomfort in her chest.

  “Her boyfriend.”

  “We don’t know that for certain.” But most everyone in the office suspected. If the last CEO, the one who’d promoted Kira, hadn’t been in his seventies and happily married, Sheila would have probably tried to seduce him for a promotion, too. She was just that type of person.

  “How do you think she knows how to get in touch with him outside of work?” Connie asked. “Do all the case managers have his private phone number?”

  No. They didn’t. “How did you find out what’s going on?”

  “Mr. Jeffries called Alison to cover your on call for the rest of the weekend. She called me to see if everything was okay.”

  Alison, the Director of Utilization Review, a nice enough woman, but rigid and by the book. Also a nurse, she and Kira split administrative night and weekend call duty. Since Alison had a husband and two young children, the split was around Kira: eighty percent of the time and Alison: the leftover twenty percent, which wasn’t such a big deal because usually on call duty was very quiet, more of a formality than a necessity.

  Kira leaned her shoulder against the wall and twisted the curly black phone cord around her fingers. “This is bad.”

  “Yup.”

  “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For making you worry,” Kira said. “For giving Mr. Jeffries a reason to fire me so he can finally promote Sheila, which means come next week you’ll likely be working for her.”

  “No way in hell that is going to happen. I’ll quit.”

  Connie needed her job just as much as Kira did. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.”

  “Right,” Connie said, trying to sound positive, unconvincingly so. “He can’t fire you for one mistake.”

  No, technically he couldn’t. But according to Mr. Jeffries, she’d been making lots of ‘mistakes’ lately. In his mind a ‘mistake’ consisted of any course of action he did not agree with. And he’d been sure to document each infraction. Forget the fact he wasn’t a registered nurse and had no training in case management. “I’m going to have to call him.”

  “Or,” Connie countered. “I won’t tell anyone I tracked you down and you can show up to work Monday morning like nothing happened. What? You couldn’t reach me? Why in the world not? I had my cell phone with me the whole time.”

  Kira smiled again. “Nice try.”

  “Wa
iting might give him a chance to cool down.”

  Probably not. “You really believe that?”

  Connie didn’t answer right away. “Look, he’s going to yell at you either way, so why not enjoy a weekend completely off duty and deal with all this on Monday?” Connie said. “I have this number in my phone now in case I need you. When are you coming home?”

  Kira glanced into the living room to see Derrick standing by Daisy’s hospital bed, holding her hand, talking quietly. He was so gentle with her, so caring, such a good son. Kira felt kind of bad for being so hard on him.

  “Probably tonight.” Although with Krissy home and on call no longer her responsibility, Kira saw no reason to rush. Seeing how much Derrick’s mom and dad were enjoying his company, she hated to be the reason he cut his visit short. “Maybe tomorrow.” If she could find a local motel, since Mr. Limone would likely kick her out of the house now that he knew who she was. And if Krissy was willing to stay with Mom, two days in a row was asking a lot. “Don’t bother calling Krissy. I’ll give her a call now.”

  Then she’d call Mr. Jeffries.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AFTER HER CONVERSATION with Connie, Kira called her sister, Krissy.

  Derrick tried not to eavesdrop, really he did. But Mom and Dad lived in a small house, the living room, where the three of them were, opened into the kitchen which held the only house phone on this level, and Kira was yelling.

  “And you thought now would be a good time to tell me? Over the phone?” He could hear the frustration in her voice. “On Monday? So soon?” She went quiet for a few seconds. “So that’s why you came home.” The frustration in her voice turned to disappointment. “I should have known it wasn’t to see me or Mom.” After another few seconds she said, “Tomorrow...yes, tomorrow,” she added. “I’m sorry if that means you can’t hang out with your friends.” She didn’t sound at all sorry. “Welcome to my world.” Then she lowered her voice and said a few things he couldn’t make out before hanging up the phone.

  “You hungry?” Derrick asked his mom, looking for an excuse to go into the kitchen to check on Kira, to start making amends.