When You're Expecting Something Else (24 page)

Hopefully, she’d be available for Saturday night dinner. He’d tried to ask her the other night, but she’d just mumbled something about doing a dressing change or something, obviously dreaming about her work.

 
Chapter Twenty-six

I’m so angry I can hardy see straight. Officer Mulligan, the one who kicked us out of Jared’s house saying that Aunt Margaret was calling the shots, is the idiot interrogating me now. It seems he’s forgotten which side of the room he made me sit on then. Now he thinks I’m in with the Marta and her evil cohorts.

“So, you never talked to Marta Lewski before seeing her at Jared’s house that night?” he asks again. I’ve already told him that I’d met her at Pacific West Hospital when Jared was in ICU. He seems to have selective hearing. He only hears what he wants to hear no matter how many different ways I try to answer the same question, always giving him an answer with the same meaning.

“Oh, so you did know her?” He’s trying to slant it against me no matter what I say, so now I think about how to not say anything effectively. At least, I’ve stopped crying because I’m cried out, but also because I’m so busy defending myself that I don’t have time for feeling anything but anger.

At least Maggie Martin came to my defense. She knows I’m not involved with them. Oh, but when I think about how much trouble I caused when I called San Francisco Geriatric Center and asked to speak to Jared’s grandfather, I feel awful. How little did I know of the evil that lurked. I practically told Marta how to play her scheme by telling her about the vacant house and then by leaving the keys on the counter there. It does look suspicious. Maybe I should get a lawyer.

“I want a lawyer,” I finally say. I’m just too exhausted to fight my own battle any more.

Mulligan leaves the room and comes back fifteen minutes later. I expect him to say that I’m under arrest or something. In the time he’s been gone, I’ve been imagining myself locked in a tiny cell all night, worrying about Isabella home alone, crying her meows of abandonment. Instead of arresting me, Mulligan says, “You’re free to go.”

I feel incredulous. I call a cab to take me to my car at Pacific West Hospital where I’d left it this morning. It’s almost midnight. I’m hungry and exhausted. By the time I get home, I’m yawning and practically falling asleep at the wheel. Still, I follow my routine of taking my shoes off at the door, going straight to the bathroom to strip off my work scrubs and shower away the germs. Poor Isabella follows me with her cries and doesn’t settle until I take her and a cold sandwich into bed with me. I have to work bright and early tomorrow morning, hoping they’ll still have me despite my almost being arrested.

By morning I’m feeling surprisingly awake and cheerful despite my raccoon eyes, my sockets dark ringed from lack of sleep and too many shed tears the day before. At work I clock in to learn that I’m somewhat of a celebrity. The nurses are giving me credit for helping rescue Jared Wise, the patient in room 520, from a fraudulent home health agency. Regina holds up the morning paper,
The San Francisco Chronicle,
so I can see the full front-page story about a federal sweep at San Francisco Geriatric Center by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The byline is Stan’s: by Stan Miller.
 
I’m blown away by the complexity of it all. Stan is working with the FBI?

I don’t have time right now to read the whole article because Regina and I have to take report on our patients and then do the morning finger-sticks and insulin administrations before breakfast trays. We hit the floor running again; the usual start to my new job. The difference today is that I have my own hand held computer and work an increment more autonomously than yesterday. I make a mental note to try to reach Stan on my cell phone at break. He’s left several urgent messages, not that I was in a position to receive.

It’s after breakfast trays when Regina and I finally make it in to do Jared’s morning assessment. The nursing assistant, the social worker, Dr. Matthews, and the department manager have all been busy with him, not to mention the phlebotomist from the lab drawing blood, and the x-ray technician filming his bones. It’s Grand Central Station in there. As soon as he sees me, his face lights up. There’s no mistaking it.

I rush to his bedside so happy to see him so clear-headed and awake.

“Connie,” he says, pronouncing my name like it’s a sacred word. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything that’s happened. Thank you so much for helping me. Maggie says you alerted her to all my problems.”

“Thank God, you’re okay,” I can’t help gushing. I feel like sunshine has just burst through a month of clouds. “I have Isabella. I’ve been taking care of her for you.”

“I know, and I can’t thank you enough. I love that crazy cat,” he says.

Regina takes over examining Jared while I go to another patient. It just seems right that someone more anonymous does the touching stuff for now. I’ll play the role of visitor, which feels better to me now, too. When I go back to see him fifteen minutes later to tell him about something else, I find his neighbors, George and Lydia Collins there.

“Oh, you’re the one I talked to on the phone,” Lydia exclaims. “I’m so glad to meet you. I wish we’d been in town with all this going on. We could have helped.” She explains how they just got home yesterday afternoon just in time to see the commotion at Jared’s house with the police and the ambulance. They watched Marta, Julius, and Fred being led away in handcuffs. “I never imagined anything like this could ever be going on right next door!”

Shannon Tanner is next to visit while I have to run off to work with Regina. Thank God it’s my third day, and end of my work week. Tomorrow, my day off, will feel heaven sent after all this hectic activity.

During our last afternoon break, Regina reminds me of my Saturday night date with her brother-in-law. “Are you still up for it?” she asks.

I waver for a few minutes, thinking about Stan and how much I want to see him. “Would you mind if I beg off. It’s been so crazy these past few days, and I really just find myself thinking about Stan. I don’t have anything set up with him, but maybe I’ll ask him out for Saturday night. Would you mind terribly much?”

Regina smiles, her eyes tired but pretty. “I’m fine with it. To tell you the truth, I’m tired, too, and staying home will suit me just fine. Guess why? Never mind, I’ll just tell you. I’m pregnant!” We squeal together with her exciting news.

“We’ve been trying for so long,” she confesses. “Now, it’s finally going to happen. I guess I’m going to be tired for a while, but we can still double date with my husband and brother-in-law another time if things don’t work out with Stan.”

“I hope it works out with Stan,” I confess. Then, we’re up and running again.

Chapter Twenty-seven

I’m six months living in San Jose when Alex calls to say that he and Sandy have broken up. I haven’t thought about him for months, but I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t do a little kick-start when I first heard his voice. He says he wants to come to see me in San Jose.

“What happened with Sandy?” I want to know.

“She was never important to me, Connie. I told you that. We had a little flirtatious fling. After you left, we even tried to make it into something more than that. We got engaged,” he says, and I can hear the guilt he feels as he tells me.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you two,” I say generously, but we both know it’s a lie.

“Without you, Connie, we couldn’t even sustain a friendship,” he admits to me. I get it. I really do get because that’s something I’ve realized about Alex. He needs an audience. His relationship with me was only as good the audience that came with me, and that audience included Sandy. Serena saw it before I did, and she explained it to me in one of our chats. She said she was inadvertently drawn in as part of the audience, too.

My mind flashes back to that god-awful time in my life. Was it really only six months ago? I made that desperate drive across the country trying to erase my pain. How much I missed my dream babies! It wasn’t just the shattered dream of the wedding or the pain of betrayal, I’d felt like my life, my heart, had been wrenched out of my chest cavity leaving a vacant emptiness I couldn’t bear. All I could do was run from it. How much I grieved my parents. All of life as I understood it ended with Alex’s and Sandy’s betrayal.

When did I heal? I wonder now, because I am healed.

Alex is still talking. I try to focus on what he’s been saying, something about still loving me, picking up where we left off….

Not a chance, I think. What I say is, “It’s nice of you to call Alex, but that’s not possible. I’ve made a life here and I’m seeing someone else now. I’m so sorry.” I hang up feeling like all I need to do is sign the sympathy card on the dotted line. I’m that sincere.

I mull around my apartment feeling melancholy, but I know it won’t last long. Funny, but it’s Isabella I miss, not Alex.

Jared is back home now, walking with a walker, with a prognosis for a full recovery. We’ve become close friends. Isabella is back in his loving care, but I have visitation privileges. When Jared and Shannon Tanner go on their honeymoon next year, I’ll be Isabella’s babysitter.

I think it’s great how Jared and Shannon realized their deep love for each other. Nothing like a little adversity to stir up the romance in people. I’m thrilled for them both. Since I’ve gotten to know Shannon, my life feels so much richer. In some ways, she’s like Anne in that she bucks tradition. I think it’s more than that though. She knows how to be honest with herself. They both do. I’m learning from them.

I feel the lingering melancholy lift just by glancing at my watch. Stan will be here soon. We’re going to Lake Tahoe for Thanksgiving. There’s not enough snow for skiing yet, but we plan to visit the casinos and take some cold weather walks. Whatever we do, it’ll be great just being together. I love Stan and he loves me.