Lost and Found (23 page)

“Babe, listen, I’m going to go over to your place tonight. I’ll make you dinner, I’ll give you a bath, I’ll rub your neck … we can talk about our future together, it’ll be great, I promise.”

I get a cramp in my chest as panic starts to rush in and take over my body. It’s like I’m living on another planet right now where reality has no place in daily life. “Hilary, you can’t come over. I’ve told the doorman not to let you in anymore.”

“Why would you do that?” she says, her voice going higher. She’s not crying anymore.

“Because, we broke up!” I’m yelling way too loudly, causing people on the sidewalk to stop and look at me, but I don’t care. “You get that, right? You’re not my girlfriend anymore, we aren’t together … it’s a done deal, Hilary. Denial is not going to change anything.”

“But you bought me a ring!” she screams.

I nearly drop the phone with the pain that slices through my brain. Then my heart freezes solid as I realize what she’s said.

“Who told you about a ring?” I ask.

“It doesn’t matter who told me. All that matters is you bought me a ring and you were going to propose and I screwed it up. I want to fix that, James. If you loved me enough to propose, you can love me enough to forgive me.”

I grab my hair and pull it, trying to keep control of my temper. It’s not good for potential patients and colleagues to see me losing my mind outside the clinic before a surgery, and I’m so, so close right now.

My voice goes down to low levels, coming out almost in a growl. “Hilary, listen to me, and listen well, because I’m only going to say this once. I don’t love you. I’m not sure that I ever loved you, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because the second you touched my brother’s dick, it was over.
Over
. Do you hear me? We’re done. Finished. I will never,
ever
forgive you for doing that to him or to us.”

“James…!”

“Don’t call me anymore.” I hang up the phone without another word. My heart is racing, but it feels good.

My next thought is to dial my office and tell Veronica to take a hike because I know she’s the one sharing my secrets, but I don’t. Instead, I walk into the clinic with plans to set up for my surgery. Now is not the time to turn my life inside out.

First thing’s first … do this rhinoplasty, then find my brother and get him into treatment, and finally get the guardianship papers done so my sister can move on with her life as a single mom. After all that is taken care of, I’ll clean up my own life.

I put on my scrubs and leave the locker room, ready to scrub in. Visions of a girl in a gypsy skirt haunt my mind, taking the place of my headache and making it possible for me to get to work.

Chapter Forty-Five

MY HEADACHE THRUMS AWAY, DOWN to a mere whisper of its earlier levels. I pull my tie out of the locker but fold it and slide it into my jacket pocket instead of putting it back on. It’s seven in the evening, and I’m done being a doctor for the day. I leave my collar unbuttoned at my throat.

My phone buzzes on the top shelf in the locker and I take it out to see who’s texting me. If it’s Hilary, I plan to ignore it, but if Jeremy or Jana need me, I’m there, even though there’s nothing I’d rather be doing right now than falling asleep on my couch in front of the television.

Cassie is really sick. Call me.

My phone history says this is the third message from my sister in the space of one hour.

“Shit.” I drop my jacket on the bench behind me and hit the speed dial.

“What’s up?” I ask as soon as the call connects.

“Hi, James, thanks for calling. Sorry to bother you, but Cassie’s got a pretty high fever, and I don’t know what to do. I gave her ibuprofen but it doesn’t seem to be working.” Her stress comes through in her tone loud and clear, transferring right into my veins.

“I know the feeling,” I say, as my mind whirls. My headache ramps right up to previous levels, so I dig around in my coat pocket for the bottle of pain reliever I have in there.

“What?”

“Nothing. Listen, when was the last time you gave her some?”

“An hour ago.”

“And no change?”

“None.”

“Was that her first dose?”

“Yes.”

The reedy cries of a sick baby come over the line, making me feel uncomfortable with worry. I’m a doctor used to emergencies, but having one in the family is different. Babies are so vulnerable…

“Give her another dose. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to overdose her.”

“Jana, I’m a doctor. I went to medical school. Trust me when I tell you I’d never do anything to harm my niece.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t. I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant.”

“Just relax. I’m on my way. Call me if you see anything else alarming.”

“Like what? Like what would I see?” She’s gone into panic mode, something I was hoping to avoid.

Instead of telling her to watch for seizures, I opt for giving her something to do. “You need to get her temperature down. Take her clothes off and use a cool, wet rag on her. Don’t cover her in thick blankets, just a sheet if anything at all.”

“Are you serious? She’s burning up. When I have a fever, the last thing I want to do is get undressed.”

“Do it. I don’t have time to discuss this. I’ve gotta go or I’ll never get out there.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll do what you said, but I’m not going to like it.”

“No one said you had to like it. See you in an hour, less if I can help it.”

I hang up the phone and head out of the locker room, grabbing my things indiscriminately with plans to finish getting put together on my way to Brooklyn.

As I reach the street, a car pulls up to the curb. It’s the BMW I bought Hilary for our one-year anniversary. The door opens and she gets out, her face lighting up when she sees me standing there next to her car.

“James! Perfect timing. Can I give you a ride?”

I can’t believe she’s showing up here now. It’s either monumentally bad luck or good; at this point I can’t tell the difference. Every cab I see going by is full.

“Hilary, I talked to you about this already.” I’m looking for a cab with its light on, knowing that getting into her car would be a big mistake. I can be firm with her over the phone, but if she puts her hand in my dick it’s going to be harder, and she can be a very determined woman when she sets her mind to something.

“We can’t have a discussion like that over the phone,” she says, using her cajoling voice. “It’s too impersonal. I needed to see you, to talk to you face-to-face.”

“There’s nothing left to say.” Hope soars when I see a cab pull over across the street to drop off its passengers. Ignoring Hilary, I step in front of her car and hold out my hand, letting out the loudest whistle I know how to make.

“I have plenty to say,” she insists, her temper flaring.

I know this tone of voice well; it usually precedes things getting broken like plates or glasses.

“But I’m not interested in hearing it,” I say. Relief floods through me as I see the cabbie turning to come in my direction. He has to wait for the traffic to subside, so I put my arm down and step into the street, anticipating his arrival and my escape from Hilary’s clutches.

“You’re a bastard, James. A fucking bastard!”

I ignore her, knowing that anything I say at this point will only make things worse.

She gets back in her car at the same time the cab pulls into traffic.

I take another step out and farther down the street, giving him room to move around Hilary.

The next thing I hear over the noise of horns honking is the distinct sound of a revving BMW engine. There is no whine quite like the high performance motors under those hoods. I never feared that sound before, but as Hilary’s expression turns murderous and I catch a glimpse of it through her windshield, I do now.

Leaping back to the curb, I barely avoid being run over by the crazy bitch I almost proposed marriage to.

Horns blare and people start shouting. My cabbie is pissed she almost made him wreck his car. Bystanders are yelling that she almost hit me. For two seconds the world stops turning and everything else falls away as I stare at the woman I almost tied myself to for a lifetime. She smirks, flips me off, and then slams on the gas pedal, driving like a bat out of hell down the street, swerving to avoid hitting other cars.

The cab driver pulls in to the space she vacated. Leaning over as he opens his passenger side window, he says, “That lady almost hit you, man!”

I get into his cab and sigh heavily as I drop my head to the seat back behind me. “Williamsburg Brooklyn. Bedford Ave.”

“You know that lady?” he asks me as he pulls into traffic.

“I thought I did. Once.”

“My advice? Stay far away from that one. She’s a crazy lady.”

“You’re telling me.”

“You gotta find yourself a nice girl. A good girl. That’s what I did. Now we got three kids, all of them on the honor roll at school.”

“Good for you,” I say only half listening. My mind is swirling with sick babies, surgeries, disloyal secretaries, and nut bag ex-girlfriends.

“Used to drive my ma crazy, though. I dated all kinda bad girls. None of them tried to run me over, but I’ll bet some of them wanted to.” He chuckles at his memories. “My ma would say, ‘When are you going to settle down with a nice girl?’, and I’d say, ‘When I’m ready to settle down.’” He looks up at me in his rearview mirror briefly. “Mothers don’t get it, do they?” He goes back to watching the road. “There’s the dating kinda girl and there’s a marrying kinda girl. You don’t fool around with the marrying kind. You commit to those girls, right off the bat. Like they said in
Jerry McGuire
… you don’t shoplift the pootie.”

I blink a few times, not sure I heard correctly. “Shoplift what?”

“You don’t shoplift the pootie. You’re with a nice girl who loves you, you treat her right. You don’t play around. Otherwise, you’re shoplifting the pootie, and that ain’t cool.” He nods, giving me a serious look, as if he’s dispensing life lessons from the front of his cab.

“Yeah, sure.” I’m just trying to get him to shut up at this point. I’ll destroy my kidneys if I take another Advil.

“You got yourself a nice girl?” he asks.

Visions of a crazy woman in a gypsy skirt dance in my mind. “No.”

“I’ll bet you’ve never had a nice girl before. Am I right?” He grins at me.

I close my eyes and try to forget where I am for a little while. “Maybe,” I finally say. Honestly, I can’t remember ever begin attracted to a woman and thinking to myself what a nice girl she is. I’ve always admired the way her ass filled out a pair of jeans or thought about how much I wanted to dive into her cleavage. Any woman who seemed interesting from the neck up always felt like trouble to me.

Maybe Hilary was right when she accused me of being bad at commitment. Before I could have cared less, but as I race to the aid of my sister and our sick niece, I’m starting to wonder if I should care more. Or even a lot.

Chapter Forty-Six

TWO DAYS LATER I’M IN my office with decisions to make. Big ones. After taking a day off to help Jana with the baby and realizing that neither of us is in a position to be making major decisions for Cassie without something legal to back us up, it’s become clear that being the nice guy is only going to hurt us more in the long run.

“I hate the idea of just taking her away from Jeremy so … legally. So in your face,” Jana says.

I’m in my office, talking to her using my landline, expecting Veronica to come in at any moment to let me know about my next patient. I see her name on my list as the next appointment, but I don’t recognize it.
Shay Dee? Who is that? Is that even a person?

“I know you do, and so do I, but we don’t have a choice at this point. We’re lucky Cassie didn’t need to be hospitalized. If she had been, I’m not sure my credentials would have been enough to help us.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that while I’m allowed a certain amount of leeway, I’m not a pediatrician. I can’t be her treating doctor and that means I can’t be given access to her records or her treatment. And since you aren’t her legal guardian, neither can you. If she got seriously ill or injured, it would be … complicated. And not in a good way.”

Jana sighs. “Okay, fine. I understand everything you’re saying and I agree, but only because it’s what Cassie needs.” She pauses. “Jeremy’s going to be pissed.”

“Then Jeremy can get off his drunk ass and start being a father,” I say, angry that we’re both feeling guilty about a problem he’s caused.

“I’m going to hang up before you say something you’ll regret,” she says. There is no censure in her voice, just extreme fatigue. And after seeing what she goes through with Cassie for twenty-four hours, I can fully understand why.

“Get some sleep. I’ll email Robinson and get him moving forward on that paperwork.”

“But don’t we need Jeremy’s signature?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get it.” I’m picturing a private detective following his drunk trail around Manhattan.

“Okay. Love you. Thanks for all your help.”

“Love you too. Thank
you
for everything you’re doing for Jeremy and Cassie.”

She hangs up without another word and as soon as the line goes dead, my door opens.

“Your next appointment is here,” Veronica says. She looks nervous.

I motion for her to close the door. Once we’re alone, I frown. “Who is this person, Shay Dee?”

Veronica comes in and leans over, whispering even though no one can hear us outside this room. “She’s a rap star. Her manager called on Monday and set up the appointment.”

“Have you ever heard of her before?”

Veronica shakes her head. “No. And I googled her and there’s nothing about her online either. I think she’s a new star, about to hit it big.” She looks excited about this fact.

“Do we know who referred her?”

“No.”

I’m not happy with that answer because I’ve specifically instructed Veronica to gather that data with every new patient. “I’ll be out in a minute. Please make sure she has something to drink if she wants it.”

“Already taken care of,” she says, smiling before she leaves me.