Out of the Shadows (12 page)

Yes, Wade was tall and well muscled, more than capable of taking care of himself. But how was she to explain the way he melted against her, trembling slightly, murmuring softly as his warm breath puffed against her cheek?

She sensed his vulnerability, and it made her feel strong. Strong enough to risk loving him so completely, so thoroughly that the pain of the past would soon become a distant memory. It didn’t seem quite so scary this time, taking that leap of faith….

Tenderly, she wove her fingers through his shining waves and gathered him near, inviting him into her heart, into her soul, into her
life.

G
us stared out the window behind Wade’s desk, while beside him, Patrice fidgeted with her purse strap. “What’s taking him so long?” she wondered aloud. “How long could it possibly take to read a few—”

“Easy, kiddo,” Gus said, laying a hand on her arm. “He put a rush on the test results—something he’ll pay for till this time next year, probably.”

She met his eyes. “What do you mean, he’ll pay for?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “I heard him on the phone, barking orders at some li’l gal down in the lab. He didn’t go too easy on the fella in radiology, either.” He shook his head. “You’ve worked in this place long enough to understand the pecking order isn’t something to mess with.”

True enough. For all its medical miracles, Ellicott General had its share of bureaucratic red tape; she’d learned long ago that if she wanted something done, correctly and quickly, a honeyed attitude beat a sour one any day of the week. “Oh, great,” she complained. “I
can just see us a month from now, cobwebs hanging from our noses, still sitting here waiting to get your test results.”

“Sorry, kiddo, I know how you hate to wait.” Gus patted her hand. “And who can blame you. I guess you’ve done more than your fair share of waiting in your lifetime, haven’t you.”

Patrice hadn’t meant it to sound as though she held Gus responsible for the delay, and started to say so.

Using a bent forefinger, Gus closed her mouth. “If you had a dollar for every hour you sat alone in cold waiting rooms while your mom and I waited for your brother, you’d be a rich young woman.”

“I never minded. I was too worried about Timmy to pay much attention to anything else.”

“I know,” Gus said, smiling. “Which is just one of the thousands of reasons I love you to pieces.”

“I love you, too.” Which was the
only
reason she’d spent a good part of the night on her knees, begging God to make sure there’d be nothing serious wrong with her dad. This morning, though achy and drowsy, she’d faced the day with a smile. And why wouldn’t she? God had promised that with faith the size of a mustard seed, she could move mountains, hadn’t He?

“Okay, out with it,” Gus said.

She looked up quickly. “Out with what?”

“What’s eatin’ you?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that. You’ve been acting…
weird
ever since you sat down there.” He grabbed her hand, gave it an affectionate squeeze. “I’m gonna be fine, just fine.” He leaned forward, forcing her to meet his eyes. “You know that, right?”

Patrice nodded. “Sure, I do.” She smiled. “You’ve
been at the top of my prayer list for…forever. Why
wouldn’t
you be all right!”

He raised one eyebrow, tucked in one corner of his mouth. “Now, why do I get the feeling my leg’s being pulled?”

She was uncomfortable when he made any reference to “feeling” in his lower body. Shifting position in the chair, she fiddled with her purse strap some more.

“Did I ever tell you the story about the carrot, the egg and the coffee bean?”

Patrice grinned. “Only about a thousand times.”

He sat back, pretended to be offended. “Okay, then, smarty-pants. Since you know it so well, you tell it to
me.
”

Smiling gently, Patrice sighed and told the tale she knew so well. “A teary-eyed young woman went to her father and said, ‘Life is horrible! Everything is always going wrong. It seems the harder I try, the worse things get. What’s the point of even trying!”’

Gus nodded approvingly. So far, so good, she thought.

“So her father, a chef, took her by the hand and led her into the kitchen,” Patrice continued, “where he put three pots of water on the stove and started them boiling. After a while, he put raw carrots in one pot, raw eggs into another and coffee beans in the—”

“Don’t forget,” Gus injected, “how he turned on the gas under each pot….”

Patrice put a finger over her lips to silence him, and, laughing, proceeded with the fable.

“Soon, the father took the pots from the stove, cooled them under running water, and asked his daughter to feel the carrots.

“‘They’re all squishy,’ she said.

Gus took the part of the father. “‘And the eggs?”’

Humoring him, Patrice played the daughter. “‘Hard!”’

“‘What about the coffee beans?”’

“The daughter peeked into that pot and said, ‘They’ve turned the water a rich, dark brown, and it smells delicious.”’

“‘So which are you?”’

“‘I don’t know, Father.”’

“‘If the boiling water represents life’s hardships,”’ Gus said in a voice two octaves deeper than his own, “‘something in one of the pots represents you. Are you the carrot, who goes into adversity hard…and comes out weak and soft? Or are you like the egg, starting out with a fluid center that turns brittle and rigid when tested by trouble?”’

Sandwiching her hand between his own, Gus said, “I’ll tell you which you are, Treecie….”

Patrice knew what he’d say, because he’d said it every time she helped him through a physical trial.

“You’re the coffee bean, who takes disaster and makes something useful of it.”

In her mind, there had been no nobility in what she’d done for him. If not for her own immaturity and self-centeredness, he’d be the hale and hearty man he had been before the accident. A sob ached in her throat at the memory of that night….

“Softie,” Gus said, thinking his words had caused her tears.

Patrice shook her forefinger at him. “Dad, you know what that story does to me.” Not the truth, exactly, but not a lie, either.

He gave her a playful shove as she poked around in her purse for a tissue. She laughed. “I’m depending on
you to explain to Wade why I’m blubbering like a baby.”

Pacing just outside the door, Wade tried to screw up the courage to face them. After all these years, shouldn’t it be easier to deliver bad news to patients and their families? he wondered. If not easier, then less awkward, at least. Overhearing that fable and being witness to the closeness of this father and daughter sure hadn’t helped matters.

He took a deep breath and, tucking Gus’s file under his arm, walked into the room. “Sorry it took so long,” he said, settling into the high-backed black chair. He laid the folder on his desk, patted it with the palm of his hand.

Gus shrugged. “Hey, you can’t expect miracles from mere mortals.”

Almost from the moment he’d finished Gus’s exam, Wade had been doing verbal battle with four hospital departments. But neither calm pleas nor irate shouts had inspired their cooperation, and he knew little more about Gus’s condition now than before he’d arrived. “Maybe not,” he blurted, “but we should be able to expect—” Wade cut himself off mid-sentence. It was important for patients to believe their medical professionals were always operating at the top of their game; to show anger and frustration only proved the opposite.

“So how soon till we hear something?” Gus asked.

Stifling a sigh of frustration, Wade ran a hand through his hair. “Two days, three at most, I expect.” He tried a smile.

“What do we do in the meantime,” Patrice interjected, “about Dad’s fever, his loss of appetite, his insomnia…?”

“Lots of liquids and NSAIDs,” Wade said. He extended his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Afraid that’s the best I can do until I have a little more concrete evidence.”

“Evidence of what?” she asked. “Surely you have some idea what’s causing Dad’s problems.”

Yeah. He did. But to admit it now would only worry them. He tried a wider smile. “It’s really too early to speculate.”

She held his gaze, her eyes boring hotly into his, as if she expected to find answers to all her questions imprinted on his pupils. Wade looked away—feigned busyness by tidying a stack of papers on his blotter, adjusting the cord, paging through his calendar—because he wasn’t at all sure he could hide his concern from her.

From his very first patient ever to the one sitting before him, he’d had to work harder than his contemporaries to keep a safe, professional distance. Being driven by emotions instead of cold, hard facts, Wade feared, would cost him the “edge” that allowed him to make choices, state hard facts, do the right thing by those under his care.

Like it or not, he’d crossed that invisible line on this one, big time. And if he didn’t do something about it, fast, who knew how things would turn out?

He’d invited them to dinner. He could only hope they’d forgotten, or that Gus would rather head home to catch that TV show he’d been raving about during the examination.

Gus furrowed his brow. “You said I should take NSAIDs…?”

Grateful for even the slight change of subject, Wade said, “Aspirin, ibuprofen—anti-inflammatory and fever-reducing products.”

“Doctors,” Gus said on a laugh. “You guys could save us all a lot of time, y’know, if you’d just speak English to start with.”

The man had a point, and Wade admitted it.

“So what’s this I hear about dinner in Little Italy?”

Patrice’s response was to wrap both hands around the strap of her purse, flexing her fingers on its buckle. “You sure you’re up for it, Dad?”

“Yeah, Gus,” Wade said, “it’s been a long, hard day. We can take a rain check if you’re—”

“You guys are kiddin’, right?” He looked from his daughter to Wade and back again.

Patrice and Wade exchanged an uncomfortable glance.

“Who knows when I’ll get another chance to wolf down some of Chiaparelli’s gnocchi?”

“What does
that
mean?” Patrice said, laughing. “It isn’t like this is our last chance to have dinner in Little Italy. It’s only a twenty-minute drive from our house, so—”

“Yeah, well, there’s a lot riding on those test results.”

She stood abruptly and raised her hands, like someone being held up at gunpoint. “I won’t listen to that kind of talk. You’re going to be fine. You
have
to be fine—” she sat again, looking embarrassed at her outburst “—because I am
not
training another chess partner!”

Nice save,
Wade told her mentally.

Sort of. She might have fooled Gus with that whole giggle-and-tease routine of hers,
but you’re not foolin’ me.
Wade had heard the tremor in her voice, had seen the way her hands trembled, too. The rapid rise and fall of her chest told him her pulse and heart rates had increased at the mere thought of losing her dad.

If he had it in his power, Wade would snap his fingers
and fix everything that was wrong in her life, starting with Gus. But since he didn’t, the least he could do was try to steer the conversation in a more positive direction. “So, how do you guys want to work this?”

“Work what?” she asked him.

“The trip to Chiaparelli’s—who’s driving?”

Wade wondered how much longer the purse strap would hold up under all that nervous fidgeting; he knew why
he
didn’t want to go to dinner, but what was Patrice’s reason?

“Need the van—” Gus slapped the arms of his chair “—for Ol’ Bessie, so I guess you’d better ride with us.”

“That’d be great if I didn’t have surgery first thing in the morning. How ’bout I just follow you over there?”

“Sounds good to me,” Patrice said, smiling stiffly.

She’d been so relaxed, completely at ease with him during dinner at her house. Could Gus’s uncertain condition be the cause of her jitters? Or had she been thinking what
he’d
been thinking—that this…whatever it was, developing between them, wasn’t such a good idea?

He hoped not. And that made no sense. No sense at all.

Wade stood, hung his lab coat on the tree behind his desk and shrugged into his sports jacket. “Ready?” he said, holding the door.

Gus rolled toward the door. “I was born ready, so let’s blow this pop stand!”

As Patrice walked beside her father to the elevator, Wade followed close behind, telling himself this had to be the last time he saw her on a personal basis.
Had
to be. Once he had his—what had he called it?—nyawkee, Patrice would drive him home. And that would be it. Period. End of story. Because it wouldn’t be fair to
string out this…this
whatever
it was, any longer than necessary.

Wouldn’t be fair?

Fair to whom?

Gus grumbled about the weather, asked Patrice about her day; she told him about a kid who’d nearly pulled Mort’s leg off, then said something about a puppet show for the kids. Before Wade knew it, he heard Gus say, “Well, this is our floor.”

Wade had been so deep in thought, he barely noticed they’d entered the parking garage, let alone that they were standing at the first-floor elevator. “I’m on three,” he said, hitting the up button. “I’ll meet you over there, okay?”

Gus nodded. “Park out front. I’ll spring for valet parking.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Hey, it’s only fair, since you’re paying for dinner.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Besides,” he added, straight-faced, “I have a favor to ask you.”

Wade waited to hear what it was.

“You up for hoistin’ an old cripple into the restaurant?”

Patrice gasped. “Dad, really!”

“What,” he said, laughing, “you think maybe the Politically Correct Police will slap cuffs on me for saying ‘cripple’?” He spread his arms as if to say
look at me!
“If I don’t have a problem with the word, why should anybody else?”

“Chiaparelli’s doesn’t have wheelchair access,” Patrice explained to Wade.

He squeezed Gus’s shoulder as half a dozen clichés flitted through his mind: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade; make the best of a bad situation; don’t
cry over spilt milk…. He had to give the guy credit, because self-pity was the last thing Gus wanted.

“Okay,” Wade said, “but I think it’s only fair to warn you…I had Caesar salad for lunch.”

Smirking mischievously, Gus made a rolling motion with his hands. “And that’s relevant because…?”

“Well,” he said, looking around conspiratorially, “you might not get arrested for saying ‘cripple,’ but I’ll bet my garlic breath violates
some
kind of law.” He fanned a hand in front of his face.