Heart Like Mine (9 page)

She poised her pen, ready to take more notes. “So what can you tell me about Millie?”

His eyes skated back up her body, but she couldn't tell whether he'd even noticed they'd gone wandering. She felt suddenly warmer in the tiny office.

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean—I'd like to know more about her. She's obviously a staff leader down here, and if I'm going to be here for a week, I'd love some insight into what makes her tick.”

“And how not to tick her off?”

Delaney laughed, and she saw his eyes go to her lips. “That, too.”

“Um.” He seemed discombobulated, and she got a funny little fluttery feeling in her stomach, kind of enjoying it. “There's only one way to get on Millie's good side.”

“And that is?”

He shook his head. “You have to earn your way there. I could vouch for you from here to kingdom come, but it won't hold water until she decides for herself what she thinks of you.”

Delaney pictured Millie's tight smile and stiff posture. “I think I already have a pretty good feel for what she thinks of me.”

“She doesn't know you yet.”

“Do I have a chance of convincing her I might actually be human, even though I work on the sixth floor?”

He smiled. “Slight one. Can't speak for the rest of the nurses, but if you treat Millie with the respect she's earned, you'll get the same back from her.”

Delaney nodded. That was a relief. “How long has she worked here?”

“Thirty-five years.”

Holy cow.
Delaney mentally calculated the salary-plus-benefits equation on that. Over the weekend, she'd come up with a tick list of things she wanted to dig into while she was down here, and one of those items involved the fact that over a third of Joshua's nurses were at or above the standard retirement age. Her new draft proposal contained a line item for early retirement packages, and Millie looked like a perfect candidate.

“Is she thinking about retiring?”

“No.” Dr. Mackenzie shook his head. “And if you mention the
R
word to her, I can't do anything to save you. Millie will probably die on this floor, and I suspect that won't be for another forty years or so.”

“So—”

“If you string together the words
early retirement package
right now, I
definitely
can't save you.”

“Has someone mentioned those words to her?”

“Yes, and I'll tell you out straight, Delaney. There are people in this hospital who'd be glad to take a shiny retirement package and be on their way. I'd be happy to make one available to them, because they're probably not the people we want still working here. Millie's not one of them. She lives and breathes her patients, and I'm not kidding when I say she'll probably die right here on this floor.”

He drilled her with his eyes. “Do not touch her. I mean it. You lay
me
off before you dare to touch her.”

“Nobody's laying anybody off.” She tried to keep her gaze steady so he wouldn't hear the possible lie in her statement, but she could feel her pulse flipping in her neck as he watched her carefully.

“Yet, right?”

She sighed. “I'll do everything possible to try not to let that happen. Is that better?”

“More honest, maybe.” He shook his head. “Don't touch her, Delaney.”

She put her hands up. “Message received, Dr. Mackenzie.”

“When are you going to start calling me by my first name?”

She shook her head. For some reason, calling him by his first name felt
way
too intimate. Using just his title and last name put an invisible wall between them that she really, really needed.

“Jury's out on that one, doctor.”

 

Chapter 8

An hour later, Delaney poked her head into a patient room where a cystic fibrosis patient was in the far bed. As she'd studied the patient demographics of the pediatric floor, she'd seen the expected convergence of government insurance, chronic illnesses, and lengthier hospital stays, and one of her goals this week was to get a close-up look at some of those patients so she could start figuring out ways to reduce those inpatient days. The unfortunate reality was that private insurance still paid more, so freeing up those beds theoretically made room for more income.

On the sixth floor, it had made complete sense. Looking at the tiny, pale girl in the hospital bed, however, put a face to those numbers.

She took a deep breath and knocked. “Hi, Charlotte. I'm Delaney. Okay if I come in?”

“Sure?” The girl eyed her suspiciously. Her chart said she was twelve, but her stature made her look no more than eight or nine. “Are you the new social worker?”

“No. I work here at the hospital—just not usually with patients. I'm trying to get around and meet some people instead of sitting in my office all day.”

“Oh.” Charlotte's face was cloaked and curious at the same time.

“Okay if I sit?” Delaney pointed to the chair beside her bed. “I love your pajamas.”

Charlotte looked down, fingering the soft purple fabric. “Millie got me these.”

Really?
Millie obviously had a soft side.

“Wow. That was nice of her.”

“Yeah.” Charlotte smiled. “She says I'm her favorite, but she says that to all of us.”

Delaney sat gingerly beside the bed. Before she'd come down to the floor this morning, she'd been
this
close to accepting Megan's proffered Xanax. Her knees were still wobbly as she walked the hallways and took in the sights and sounds she remembered so well. Half of the reason she'd ducked into Charlotte's room was because she needed a break from the chaotic input.

“Millie knows you pretty well, hm?”

“She's known me since I was three, so yeah.” Charlotte coughed, and Delaney felt her eyes widen at the sound. It sounded like the poor girl was about to lose a lung.

When she finally stopped, leaning back on her pillows to catch her breath, Delaney froze when she saw a tinge in her face that reminded her of Parker's, long ago. She swallowed hard, trying to block the memories, but they were stubborn.

“Would you mind getting me some water?” Charlotte's voice was gravelly and shallow at the same time.

“Sure. Of course.” Grateful for something to do, Delaney reached for the plastic pitcher on the bedside table, but it was empty.

“Everybody's busy.” Charlotte shrugged. “They haven't had time to get me any, but it's okay. Usually I get my own. Just not today.” She took a ragged breath. “The respiratory therapists keep beating me up. Now I can't stop coughing.”

“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” Delaney cringed as she stood up to take the pitcher into the hallway and search for water.

“Yeah.” Charlotte sounded defeated. “They're not really beating me up. I just say that to bug them. I don't get good chest PT at home, so all the stuff gets locked in, and then I get infected. Then I end up here.”

She waved her hand around the room. Unlike the anorexia patient's room Delaney had just come from, this one had no pictures, no stuffed animals, no flowers. It was lonely and depressing as hell. She made a mental note to bring the girl something cheerful tomorrow.

Five minutes later, she'd completed a circuit of the west end of the wing, finally landing in a tiny little cubby that had a water dispenser. She'd filled Charlotte's pitcher, wondering how long it might have been before someone else had time to do it for her, and she shook her head. How in the world had she ever thought there were too many nurses on this floor?

When she came back into Charlotte's room, the poor girl had laid her head back on her pillow in exhaustion. Delaney tiptoed over to the bed and poured water in her glass so she'd have it when she woke up, but as she started to tiptoe back out the door, Charlotte's tiny voice stopped her.

“You don't have to go. I'm not really asleep.”

Delaney turned around. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

Charlotte looked so lonely that it broke Delaney's heart. Here she sat, in a hospital room that looked out on more hospital rooms, on a floor where the nurses were too busy to even fill her water pitcher, with no parents in sight.

Delaney had a gazillion things still left on her list just for this morning, but she couldn't go. She sat back down in the chair beside Charlotte.

“So what grade are you going to be in this fall?”

“Seventh.”

“What school do you go to?”

Charlotte frowned. “Probably not one you'd know. I'm from New York.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But I have to come here because there's no CF center any closer.”

Wow. It was at least an hour and a half to anywhere in New York from here. The girl really
was
alone.

“Must be hard for your family to visit you.”

“Yeah.” Charlotte shrugged. “They can't, really.”

She said it in a tone that made it clear this was just the way it was. No drama, no tears. But Delaney couldn't imagine being twelve years old, in a hospital hours away, with no friends or family to visit you.

“How long do you think you'll be here?”

Charlotte shrugged again. “Usually two weeks. It's okay. I'm used to it.” Then she coughed again, and it was all Delaney could do not to hold the poor girl's shoulders and hug her tightly as her body was wracked with the coughing.

When Charlotte finished the spasm, Delaney felt helpless. Then she noticed Charlotte's long, stringy hair and had a brainstorm. Surely there had to be a sink they could use. And shampoo. It wouldn't cure the cough, but it might make the poor girl feel marginally better.

“Hey, Charlotte. If I can get hold of some shampoo, what would you say to a mini spa appointment?”

“What do you mean?” Her eyes narrowed, and her non-IV hand went to her head. “I don't need a haircut.”

“No, of course not.” The girl
desperately
needed a haircut. “How about I give you a deluxe shampoo, and then we can fix your hair into a fishtail braid?”

“You know how to do those?”

“I do, and you have the perfect hair for it.”

“Really?” Charlotte fingered the split ends doubtfully.

“Really. Let's find your inner gorgeousness before the therapists come back, okay?”

Charlotte's smile as Delaney ducked out of the room gave her a much-needed boost of confidence. As she hunted down a nurse who could point her to some shampoo, she felt her anxiety crank down a couple of notches. She's survived two patient rooms without a panic attack, and she'd even made somebody smile.

Maybe mucking in wouldn't be so bad after all.

*   *   *

An hour later, Josh took a deep breath, reviewing Charlotte's chart before entering her room. Yesterday, he'd ordered a psych eval, concerned that despite their best efforts, the preteen was slipping further into depression. She'd been here for a week now, but even the child life specialist hadn't been able to pull her usual tricks and cheer her up.

Of course, working with a patient who'd just heard the word
transplant
for the first time made Kenderly's job a hell of a lot harder.

As he scanned down her vitals and nursing notes, he heard a giggle come from inside her room, and it made him pause. Then he heard another one, and he peeked in, relieved that at least maybe she'd found a television show that made her laugh.

But it wasn't a TV show at all. It was Delaney, who was sitting on Charlotte's bed with her, stroking glittery purple eye shadow onto Charlotte's eyelids. Instead of looking like the stringy mop he'd seen yesterday, her hair was done up in a convoluted braid of some sort, and under the soft makeup, her face looked fresh and clean.

And happy.

As he stood in the doorway, Delaney dashed some lip gloss onto her lips, then put up a hand mirror so Charlotte could see herself.

“What do you think?”

Delaney's back was to him, so she had no idea he was looking, and Charlotte seemed not to have noticed him yet.

“I think—wow!” Charlotte smiled widely. “I look—”

“Gorgeous?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Charlotte appraised herself in the mirror, tipping her head left and right. “I like it.” Then she reached out and put tentative arms around Delaney.

“Thanks, Delaney.”

Delaney stood up and clicked a little case closed. “You're welcome. You can keep this.”

“Really?”

“Yup. That makeup looks way better on you than it would on me. Purple makes me look like an alien.”

Josh smiled as Charlotte laughed again.

“Can I come visit you again tomorrow?” Delaney's voice was, once again, far more tentative than Josh would have expected. Didn't she realize Charlotte was dying for company? There was no way the girl was going to say no.

“That would be great. Can you maybe do a French braid tomorrow?” Charlotte lay back in her bed, and Josh could tell she was more spent than she wanted to let on to Delaney.

He must have made a move, because both of them turned toward him at the same second, and he raised a hand.

“Ladies? Am I interrupting spa day?”

Delaney smiled softly as she stepped back to let him get closer to Charlotte's bed. “Twelve-year-olds require regular spa appointments. Could you please make a note of that in her chart?”

Charlotte giggled as he scribbled with his pen. “Absolutely. Anything else?”

“She prefers the coconut shampoo and the spearmint conditioner. Pearl essence for the lips, and purple glitter for her eyes.”

Delaney said it all with a straight face, but her eyes sparkled with amusement as he pretended to write down her orders.

“Oh, and we made a deal. If she'll eat her entire lunch, I promised I'd take her down to the cafeteria for a sundae, if you say it's okay.”