Practice Makes Perfect (Single Father) (11 page)

“Well, good morning to you, too, Matthew,” Carol Kirshman said after she’d listened to him rant for a good ten minutes. “I don’t know whether you’re interested in an explanation, but I’m going to give you one anyway.”

Matthew wasn’t interested in an explanation, but he owed her that. He sat down in the chair by her desk.

“…and the baby was doing fine, so Dr. Josephson left her off the ventilator to see if she would go on doing well if he kept her off. Unfortunately, he didn’t follow up with her. Which meant no blood gasses were ordered. The nurse called him at six this morning to report the baby was having breathing problems, but he didn’t get out of bed to come check her.”

He nodded and they both looked at each other. “I’m sorry,” he said, “for blowing up at you.”

She shrugged. “We’re short staffed, Matt. We’re overworked. Stretched beyond capacity. But thank you for the apology. You did an excellent impersonation of acting like a jerk, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. I was pretty sure I knew you better than that.”

“Thanks.”

“Things getting to you?”

“This whole thing with CMS. One day I think, okay, enough of all this. Let’s just get on board, it can’t be all that bad. And then—”

“New radiology department,” she read from one of the CMS brochures in a stack on her desk. “More staffing, physician-recruitment effort.”

“I’ve heard the sales pitch,” he said.

“But you’re still holding out.”

“Something doesn’t sit right.” He hesitated. “And I’ve met this woman…well, I didn’t just meet her, we grew up together…”

“Sarah Benedict?”

“Yeah. How—”

“One of my nurses lives in the same apartment building and she saw you over there. Plus, Rose mentioned something about her daughter being back. Rose was hoping she’d apply to CMS—”

Matthew shook his head. “Sarah’s too idealistic for that. Joining CMS would be like selling out. I made the mistake of telling her how I’m leaning and she spent thirty minutes lecturing me about medicine as big business. Some of what she says makes sense, a lot of it actually. But Sarah isn’t supporting a family, or making house payments. Although, I’m not sure that would make any difference. You’ve met her, haven’t you?”

“Years ago when she was still in medical school.” She leaned back in her chair. “Wasn’t her husband killed in an accident?”

“Struck by lightning.”

“And she hasn’t remarried?”

“No.” He suddenly realized he’d been led into a trap. “And quit looking at me like that. We’re friends. We always have been.” Now strictly speaking a lie by omission, but Carol didn’t need to know that. “Sarah’s this independent, self-sufficient woman. Determined to do her own thing, if only to prove me wrong.” He smiled. “She hates losing, especially to a man.”

“So you’re good friends and…”

“Good friends.”

“Well, friendship’s a great start,” Carol said. “Let me know if it turns into something serious, though, so the nurses can cross you off the eligibility list.”

Matthew rolled his eyes. “Come on.” And then he thought about the note he’d written on Sarah’s hand. His plan had been to rent kayaks, like old times. “I have a question. Purely hypothetical.” He scratched the back of his neck. “What would be your idea of a romantic evening?”

She laughed. “I can’t, Matt. I’m married.”

He waited.

“Okay, sit down.” She slid a notepad across the desk. “Ready?”

S
ARAH
,
IMMERSED
up to her neck in bubbling thermal water, was thinking about Matthew and their upcoming trip over to Victoria.

He’d called just before she left to pick up Rose—also immersed in water just a few feet away, her head tipped back, steam drifting up around her. After listening to Rose complain about her back, Sarah had suggested a drive up to the Sol Duc hot springs for a therapeutic dip. Located in the middle of an old grove rain forest with the Olympics towering in the background it seemed the perfect spot to do a little contemplating.

A door had opened leading out of the safe familiar place that had been her relationship with Matthew into to one where she didn’t know the rules. He was a man, and she was attracted to him as she’d never been to anyone else before—that part was easy enough to figure out. But the fact that the man was Matthew required some adjustments to her thinking.

Although she’d loved Ted, she’d also known that he needed her more than she’d needed him. Not exciting, but it had been comfortable and nonthreatening. In the new place where she and Matthew seemed to be headed, the reverse could easily happen and it scared her.

“Ah, this is bliss.” Rose paddled over to Sarah’s side. “Thank you, my dear, for taking the time to bring me up here.”

“Glad to,” Sarah said, pleased and touched by Rose’s expression of gratitude. “I’m enjoying it, too.”

“I apologize if I was discouraging about your health-care proposal,” Rose said.

Sarah looked at her. “Okay, Mother, I think the steam has softened your brain. Thanks
and
an apology. This isn’t you.”

“It’s never too late to change.” Rose smiled. “Now, tell me some more about this idea of yours.”

“You’re pushing it.”

“Tell me anyway,” Rose said.

Sarah breathed in a lungful of steamy air, then, in the spirit of her mother’s professed attempt at change, decided to choose trust over suspicion. As she went on to explain her plans in more detail she shot a glance at Rose, saw the familiar quizzical expression and heard her own voice, which had started out full of enthusiasm, go flat.

“Makes no sense,” Rose finally said. “You’re going against the tide. And I hope you’re not getting mixed up with that farmer’s-market loony.”

Sarah leaned her head back until her hair floated across the water, lifted her legs off the bottom. So much for the new, accepting Rose. Not that she’d truly expected Rose’s endorsement, but she felt as though she’d been tricked into opening up, lulled into a false sense of security.
Serves you right for being gullible.

“Why do you think I sold to CMS?” Rose was asking. “What if…”

Sarah tuned her out. Bottom line, the idea of relaxing with Rose was an oxymoron. She wondered if Matthew thought that about her. She breathed in steam, tried to make her mind go blank and then, before she knew it, was planning exactly how she would get staff privileges at Port Arthur General and explaining, or justifying, to Matthew that it was just as close for people who lived out on the west end of the peninsula and that serious cases could be airlifted to Seattle, just as they’d always been. When she tuned in sometime later, Rose was yammering on about CMS and the new state-of-the-art E.R. that would replace the existing one.

“That hasn’t happened yet,” Sarah said. “So don’t hold your breath. They’ll say anything at this point.”

“Did you tell Matthew your plans?”

“Of course.” She waited a moment. “He’s not interested.”

“Have you made out with him yet?”

“Mother.”
Sarah stared at Rose, aghast. “I can’t believe you asked me that. Anyway, what does that have to do with anything?”

“Maybe you should. Use a little bargaining power.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

E
LIZABETH
WAS
FEELING
DREAMY
.
George had just called to say he’d made reservations at a hotel on the coast where they could watch the storms crash in from a huge picture window. That sounded too romantic to pass up, even though it would mean calling her mother to look after Lucy. Matt had let it slip, when he’d called her to ask if they could swap weekends to have Lucy, that he was taking Sarah to Victoria.

“Does Lucy know?” she’d asked.

“Not yet. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it to her.”

“Okay, I’ll call my mom.”

“Wait. You mean, you can’t have her?”

“
I
have plans, Matt. I’m entitled to—”

“Forget it. I’ll reschedule. I’m not having Lucy treated like a piece of lost luggage, carted from one place to another…”

“You know what?” Now she was getting angry. “This is ridiculous. We’re talking about Lucy staying with her grandmother, not some stranger.” In fact, Lucy wouldn’t be too thrilled, mostly because Pearl didn’t have cable, but so what? “And, frankly,” she went on, “it might not be a bad thing for Lucy to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around her.”

Half an hour later, Matt called back to say that he’d drop Lucy off at Pearl’s Friday night, so maybe some of what she’d said had sunk in. Then as soon as she’d put the phone down, it rang again.

“I have to buy some clothes,” Sarah said. “I’m going to take a trip into Seattle, but the problem is I need something now. I was wondering if—”

“Sure. Come over, we’ll find something,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve got a whole closet full of clothes that don’t fit me anymore.” And then, very casually, because she knew why Sarah needed something besides jeans and a sweatshirt, she added, “Big date?”

“Oh…actually Matthew and I are going to Victoria. If you do have something that would be great. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

As she hung up the phone, Elizabeth could imagine Sarah blushing like crazy. It was funny really, except Sarah had been very nice to her since she got back and she liked how Sarah seemed to take her seriously and listen to what she had to say. That had surprised her actually. So it wasn’t like she was making fun of Sarah.

Ten minutes later, she was watching Sarah try on clothes and mentally giving her an extreme makeover.

“You should let me cut your hair,” she said, after Sarah had disappeared into the walk-in closet. Elizabeth dug into her dresser drawer for the shears she used to trim her bangs when she didn’t feel like looking at herself in a beauty-shop mirror. “I almost got a cosmetologists’ license, you know.”

She found the shears and looked at Sarah, who had reappeared wearing her off-white dress with the long sleeves.

“I used to love that dress,” she told Sarah. “About fifty pounds ago. It looks good on you.”

Sarah frowned at her reflection. “It does?”

Elizabeth grinned. Sometimes it amazed her how clueless Sarah was about things that most women didn’t have to think about. Even Lucy at fourteen was lot more savvy than Sarah. It made her feel protective toward Sarah. She needed someone to look out for her. “Seriously, you should let me cut your hair.” She moved over to tug the rubber band from Sarah’s ponytail. “Lucy does mine, it’s no big deal.”

“Yuck.” Sarah frowned as the hair fell around her shoulders. “All I need is a wart on my nose and a broomstick.”

“Stop it.” Elizabeth caught the hair and arranged it around Sarah’s face. “See?” She met Sarah’s eyes in the mirror. “If I cut off about…four or five inches, it would frame your face and look really cute.”

Sarah, still frowning at her reflection, looked doubtful.

“Come
on.
” Elizabeth’s fingers were itching to start. “It would make you look at least ten years younger.”

For a minute Sarah seemed to be wavering, then she shook her head and moved away from the mirror. “You’ll get it looking cute, but once I wash it, I won’t be able to do anything with it.” She grabbed the rubber band, pulled her hair back into a ponytail and grinned. “I need to control my hair,” she said, “not have it controlling me.” Then she disappeared into the closet again and came out with more, including a black dress with spaghetti straps. “This is the other dress,” she held it against herself. “But it seems…out there.”

Elizabeth laughed then as Sarah reached for a hideous green shirt. She grabbed it out of Sarah’s hands.

“No, I was going to take that to Goodwill.”

“Why? I like it.”

“Because it does nothing for you.” She shook her head. “You are so strange sometimes, Sarah. It’s like you ace everything you do, but—”

“Girly stuff. I know.” Sarah sat on the bed. “What can I say? I’m no good at it.”

“But you don’t even try. It’s like you’re scared you’ll fail.”

“Maybe I am.” Sarah looked thoughtful. “That never really occurred to me before.”

Elizabeth picked up the black dress from the bed and held it up to herself, although she’d never fit into it in a million years. “What about Matthew?” she asked, not looking at Sarah because they’d never broached this topic before. “I mean, I know you’re good friends and you have a lot in common, but…have—”

“Have I kissed him?” Sarah was now sitting on the bed. She laughed.
“Yes.”
And then she lay back on the bed and started laughing more. “This is so weird to be having this conversation.”

“No, it’s not,” Elizabeth said. “Women talk about this stuff all the time. It’s not as if I still have something with him.” She turned to look at Sarah. “You never talk to girlfriends about…dating, that kind of thing?”

“Nope.” Sarah sat up. “But you know what? After Ted died, I mean, a couple of years later, just before I came back here, I met this guy who seemed interested in me. He was a reporter and he’d come to do an article on the clinic. We got along really well and then one night, we were solving the world’s problems—”

“Like you and Matt,” Elizabeth said.

“Well, yes, but I wasn’t that attracted to him. It just made me feel better about myself that he seemed attracted to me.” She chewed her lip. “I would have kissed him, I’d already decided, but he had an early appointment and left. And then he went back to the States and I never heard from him again. I sent him a couple of e-mails, he knew my phone number. Nothing.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Men.”

“Has anything like that happened to you?”

“Oh, let me count the times. Show me a woman it hasn’t happened to, and I’ll call her a liar. It’s just the way guys are.”

“But I didn’t know that,” Sarah said. “I mean, it hadn’t happened to me before and…what you were just saying about talking to other women? I don’t do that. So I just carried on, feeling badly about myself.”

“Aw.” Elizabeth put her arm around Sarah’s shoulder. “See, that’s why it’s good to share.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said. “Really.”

“T
HIS
IS
A
GREAT
HOUSE
,” Sarah said after she’d finally selected a dress—the black spaghetti-strap number. Elizabeth had talked her into it, but she was also taking the off-white one, just in case.

She looked around the room—her entire apartment would have fit into one corner. One wall was an arrangement of floor-to-ceiling windows, of varying heights ranging from about ten feet to a soaring panel that reached the highest point of the cathedral ceilings. The design was clearly intended to maximize the panoramic views of water and sky and distant coastline. A massive floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace dominated another wall.

Elizabeth had gone to make cappuccino and Sarah sank into a sand-colored leather sectional which, like everything else about the house, was tasteful and obviously very expensive. Recalling Matthew’s seeming indifference to his physical space—as reflected in the anonymous jumble of his boyhood bedroom—she wondered how involved he had been in the decorating.

“We used to have so many fights over the money when we were building this place,” Elizabeth said, coming back in and setting two oversized black cappuccino cups on the glass coffee table. “When he found out what those windows cost, we didn’t speak for a week.”

Sarah sipped at the coffee beneath the froth. “Did you live here the whole time you were married?”

“No. We had it built after Lucy was born. We’d been living in a house on Peabody. I was always complaining that we needed something bigger, but Matthew was busy at the hospital and it was as if he didn’t really hear me until Lucy arrived.” She grinned. “I could pretty much buy anything as long as I could somehow make it seem it was what Lucy needed.”

Sarah thought of Matthew’s defense of Lucy on the fossil trip.
I wanted my daughter to have the things I never had.
Most parents felt that way, she guessed, but it saddened her to think that Matthew could be so easily manipulated and that he apparently couldn’t see that he was doing his daughter no favors.
But then I don’t have kids.
“He moved out after the divorce?”

“Yeah. I suggested we sell this and look for a smaller place. Lucy and I didn’t need all this room, but it was the same old story. Sometimes, even now, I walk through the rooms and instead of seeing how beautiful everything is, I can almost hear all the arguments we used to have about money.”

Sarah looked at her. “So you’d spend the money, Matthew would worry about it, but then justify it because of Lucy?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Go figure.” She got up from the couch and returned with a slip of paper. “Before I forget, I was talking to this girl who came into the restaurant. I was telling her that I have this friend who’s an incredible doctor and she’s going to start making house calls.”

Sarah smiled. “You don’t know how much I appreciate hearing that. Actually, you’re the only one I’ve told who doesn’t think I’m out of my mind.”

“Don’t feel bad about Matthew’s attitude,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe if it was just him, but it’s Lucy and—” she waved at the living room “—all this. I mean, Lucy could live in a house half this size and be happy, but—”

“It’s the way he grew up,” Sarah said. “His dad never had anything.”

“Tell me. I remember when we first started dating, his clothes were so horrible. Polyester shirts that had been washed so many times they had these little bumpy things all over them. Wal-Mart sneakers.”

Sarah laughed. “I never even noticed.”

“It’s the same with Compassionate Medical Systems,” Elizabeth said. “He’s been dragging his feet about joining because he doesn’t really believe in it, but if I say it would give him more time to spend with Lucy, or if Lucy wants something he can’t afford now, that’s when he starts thinking it might not be a bad idea.”

Below them, on the street level, she heard a door slam, then the sound of feet on the wooden staircase leading up to the living room.

Elizabeth smiled. “Lucy’s home.”

Sarah arranged her features into a smile.

“Mom…” Lucy stood in the doorway, her face, as she spotted Sarah, darkening dramatically.

“Hi, sweetie,” Elizabeth said.

“Hi, Lucy,” Sarah added.

Lucy ignored them both, then left the room. “Mom, can I talk to you for a minute?” she called from the kitchen.

“Sure, go ahead,” Elizabeth replied.

“Can you come here, please?”

Elizabeth glanced at Sarah. “Be right back.”

Sarah tipped her head back against the sofa’s upholstery. From the kitchen, she heard Elizabeth’s low voice and then, loud and shrill enough that it might have been intended for her to hear, “Daddy’s going to Victoria with…her. And I have to stay with Grandma. It’s not fair, I hate everything.”

O
N
THE
AFTERNOON
of his trip with Sarah, Matthew left the hospital two hours earlier than usual with the intent of helping Lucy understand that Sarah in no way posed a threat to the love he felt for her. He’d rehearsed the words so many times he worried that by the time he actually said them, they’d sound rehearsed and insincere. It was ridiculous, of course, that Lucy could doubt him in any way.

On the way over to Pearl’s, she refused to speak to him.

When Pearl opened the front door, Lucy burst into tears and retreated to the room she’d be using. Pearl took his face between both her hands.

“Go.”

“I hate leaving her like this,” he said as they stood in the hallway of Pearl’s little cottage. From the bedroom, he could hear Lucy sobbing as though her heart would break. “Maybe—”

“You do that, Matthew Cameron, and I’ll throttle you with my bare hands.”

Despite himself, Matthew grinned. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

Pearl took him by the arm and steered him toward the front door. “You just go and have a good time. She’ll be fine.”

Matthew nodded. That she was right didn’t make him feel any better. Didn’t change the fact that he alone had the power to make his daughter happy again.

“I want you to promise me you won’t think about her for the next two days,” Pearl said.