A Hunka Hunka Nursing Love (Women's Fiction) (2 page)

The next morning, Valerie breezed through the front entrance of the Evanston Mother Hubbard Child Care Center, which was the home office for the local chain of nine centers she owned in the northern suburbs. She normally entered the back entrance that went straight to the business offices, but occasionally she ached for the simple joy of spending time with the kids, and it was definitely one of those days.

She waved to the teachers, shed her coat and shoulder bag, and sat in a tiny chair at a table where three kids were coloring. “Hi, guys.”

A boy with russet hair and eyelashes glanced at her but didn’t respond. A girl with blond pigtails said “Hi” without looking up. But the child next to her, a little boy with molasses skin and eyes to rival Bambi’s, peered at her and said, “Who are you?”

“That’s a very good question. My name is Valerie, and I work in the office here.”

“Oh. I’m Isaiah. I’m gonna be a fireman.”

“Well, good for you, Isaiah. What are you drawing?”

He glanced at his artwork. “It’s a picture for my mamaw.” He turned back to Valerie. “She’s in the hop-sital.”

How ironic. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Does that make you sad?”

He nodded. “She can’t make cookies in the hop-sital.”

Valerie stifled a chuckle. “Oh, poor Isaiah. I hope she’ll be out real soon.”

“Me, too. Can you make cookies?”

“Well, not today, honey.” His little face drooped, and Valerie felt like the Grinch. Then it occurred to her she could pick up some refrigerated cookie dough on the way home. “But I could make some tonight and bring them tomorrow. Would that be okay?”

“Yes!” He brought his hands together in a big slap.

“Okay, so I’ll see you tomorrow then. Can I have a hug?”

He wrapped his arms around her neck, and Valerie melted with gratitude as she breathed in his sweet, baby shampoo smell. Her heart never stopped yearning for motherhood. “Mmm, thank you, Isaiah. Well, I better get to work.” She gathered her things. “You have a good day, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, getting back to busily coloring an orange dog.

Her faith in the wonder of small things restored, she walked briskly into the back portion of the building and stopped in the office of her right-hand woman. “Morning, sunshine.”

Pam Goldblatt swiveled from her computer screen, looking healthy and well rested despite her lack of makeup. Her yellow crewneck sweater complemented her espresso-brown eyes. “Morning.”

“How’s it going?”

“We lost another worker at the Skokie center, but what else is new? How’d it go with your mom?”

“Pretty good, I think.” Valerie unbuttoned the jacket of her suit. “The visiting nurse and the physical therapist both came this morning, and Mom hadn’t fired either one by the time I left. Can you come into my office? I have an idea I want to run by you.”

“Sure.” Pam stood and followed Valerie into the larger office. “You don’t look so hot. Did you have trouble sleeping?”

Valerie hung her coat up and closed the door. “Yeah, but it’s not what you might think.” She sat in her office chair and braced her hands on the armrests. “I came up with this idea for a new business, and it’s either brilliant or totally fucking nuts, and I’m counting on you to give me your honest opinion. No”—she popped up and started pacing—“I want you to talk me out of it. That’s it.” She stopped and pointed at Pam. “You talk me out of it.”

Appearing a little shell-shocked, Pam leaned back in her chair. “Oookaaay.”

Valerie began pacing again. “The biggest problem I have with my mom is that she insists on staying in her home even though she and I both know it’s dangerous.” She halted and gestured toward Pam. “You know how it is. You’ve started having some of the same problems with your mom, right?”

Pam frowned and nodded. “Yeah. I stopped by there at about ten the other night, and she’d left the garage door open again,
and
the front door was unlocked.”

“That’s just what I mean. And I’ve had all kinds of women tell me they have the same problem.” She started ticking off names with her fingers: “Colleen, Lydia, Sandy, my hair stylist . . . and just last week, when we met with that toy company rep, remember? How her mom got the milk and bleach bottles mixed up?”

The memory made Pam shudder.

Valerie resumed treading back and forth behind her desk. “We do what we can, but they really need more help than we can give them, especially those of us who work full time. And then there are the women who still have kids at home. My God, they call it the sandwich generation, but it’s more like the vise generation!”

Pam continued nodding, but her eyebrows crinkled together.

“Okay, so here’s my idea.” Valerie sat and placed her palms on the top of her desk. “My mom had this really hot male nurse at the hospital yesterday—she just had the best time with this guy—and she makes this comment about how if I could get someone like him to take care of her, she’d go for it. So I get to thinking: What if there was a business that employed handsome young guys to take care of old ladies? They’d love it! I’m telling you, my mom may be as old as the hills, but she still flirts like a teenager. And why not? What has she got to lose? She knows they won’t take her seriously, so they both get a kick out of it.” She paused. “So what’s your first impression?”

Pam guffawed. “You
are
fucking nuts. But I have to admit, it’s an intriguing idea.”

Valerie couldn’t contain her grin. She jumped up and started moving again. “Okay, good. No, I mean, talk me out of it. Why
shouldn’t
we do it? What could go wrong?”

“Well . . .” Pam’s brow creased again. “Let me make sure I understand you right. You’re talking about a business that offers attractive male nurses, right?”

“Right, but not just nurses. It would be like that place I just hired for my mom, Compassion Home Health Care. They have everything from nurses to physical therapists to people who just do light housekeeping.”

“Okay. So one problem could be finding enough males with those skills.”

Valerie shot the index finger at Pam again. “Right! But we’ve got the entire Chicagoland area to recruit from. Plus, we would target the wealthy northern suburbs for our clientele, which means we could charge more and then pay more. And they wouldn’t necessarily have to be super young. Even a guy in his forties would be far younger than most of our clients.”

Pam’s eyes widened. “Okay,” she said with a nod.

“What else?” Valerie fluttered her fingers in a give-it-to-me motion.

“Uh . . . Oh! I know. What if you get sued by female workers claiming discrimination?”

Valerie gave a nonchalant shrug. “What about Hooters? How do they get away with it? There must be a way around it. Besides, we’d be a woman-owned firm, and we could have mostly women in the administrative positions. What else?”

“Hmm.” Pam shook her hands as if trying to get her mind going faster. “You don’t know anything about running a health care business.”

“That’s true. But I do own and operate one of the largest child-care chains in the Chicago suburbs. How different can it be? You hire good, properly trained employees, you treat them right—the basics are still the same. I suspect the insurance costs would be higher, but that’s just another business expense we’d have to factor in. Come on, give me something I haven’t thought of.” She removed a bottle of water from her shoulder bag and took a swig.

“Bathing!” Pam said.

“Bathing?”

“Yeah. Those aid workers help them bathe, and old ladies aren’t going to want to let those young guys see their pruny old bodies.”

“Hmm. Good point. I’ll have to ask my mom about that. But I assume the male nurses at the hospitals do all the same things the female nurses do. In fact, that nurse my mom had yesterday helped her use a bed pan.”

“Oh.” Pam appeared surprised.

“But that was a good one. Give me another.”

“Well . . .” Pam twisted one of her dark curls thoughtfully.

Valerie knew that meant Pam was about to say something she might not want to hear, so she stopped pacing.

“I can see you’re all fired up about this, and it is a pretty cool idea. But it’s just so unlike you to want to do something this, well, wacky.”

Detecting the concern in Pam’s voice, Valerie smiled. “That’s exactly why I have you, Tonto. To keep me from going off the deep end. And I’ll tell you the truth.” She returned to her chair, sat, and took a deep breath. “Ever since my birthday, I’ve been thinking about all the
safe
choices I’ve made in my life. In forty-four years, I’ve never worked in any business but child care; I’ve never traveled outside the U.S.; I married my college sweetheart. And now that we’re separated, that’s got me thinking, too.” She leaned forward. “I feel like I’m ready to take some risks. But I do want them to be calculated risks. That’s why, if you think my idea has any merit, I’d like to proceed. But cautiously. We’d have to do a lot of research, have focus groups, and then we’d write up a business plan. And that would have to pass muster with investors or the idea would be dead in the water.”

“Oh, good.” Pam’s body relaxed. “I was afraid you were planning to use your own savings.”

Valerie grinned. “I’m only partially fucking nuts. Of course, I will invest some of my own money, but certainly not all of it. And I wouldn’t ask you to invest any.”

“What if I want to invest?” Pam smiled coyly.

“You’re not that reckless.”

A spark flashed in Pam’s eyes. “Have you thought of the publicity this would get?”

“Oh, yeah,” Valerie drawled. “We wouldn’t even have to advertise.”

Pam sat forward. “What about a name? We’d want something catchy.”

Valerie stood and resumed wearing down the carpet. “I know. I thought about something that implied Chippendales, but that seemed way too . . .”

“Tawdry.”

“Yeah.”

“I know!” Pam raised her hands. “How about: Home Health Hotties?”

“Yes! That’s good. Except that I’m not sure the old ladies are familiar with the term ‘hotty.’”

“Hmm.” Pam scrunched her mouth to one side. “Maybe not.”

“I’ve got it!” Valerie stopped. “Home Health Hunks!”

Pam looked skeptical. “Nobody uses that word anymore.”

“Nobody
young
uses it anymore, but my mom used it just yesterday to describe that male nurse. If our target market thinks it’s hip, that’s all that counts.”

Pam paused. “Home Health Hunks. It does have a nice ring to it.”

“Yeah. Let’s just hope we can find some investors who will give us hunks of money.”

Valerie went straight to her mom’s after work that evening. She found Mom sitting on the sofa with her legs extended and eager to recount the day’s events with a level of drama generally reserved for national crises.

Sitting on the opposite end of the sofa, Valerie wished Mom had sprained her tongue rather than her ankle. But she listened patiently, because Mom’s eyes bore the red roadmaps of exhaustion.

“I realize you can’t expect them to send one of their top nurses out for a case like mine, but this girl couldn’t even figure out how to operate the ice maker! And I’m supposed to entrust my life to her? Saints preserve us.”

“So where did that come from?” Valerie asked, pointing to the bag of ice on her mom’s ankle.

“What? Oh, well, she finally figured it out. After I gave her instructions about twenty times.”

Only twenty? “All right, let me ask you this. What if ‘she’ was a ‘he’?”

“What do you mean? Did you hire Keith?” She sat up like a marionette lifted by strings.

“No, no,” Valerie said, though she wanted to say, ‘I wish.’ “I mean, what if there was a home health care agency that employed men instead of women? Attractive,
younger
men?”

Mom squinted. “Why are you asking me this?”

Valerie explained her business concept, closely watching her mom’s reaction.

Mom’s mouth, which had hung slightly ajar as she’d listened to Valerie, slowly formed into a smile. “That’s preposterous.”

“Yes, but do you like it?”

She shrugged. “What’s not to like?”

“Would you be . . . uncomfortable having a man help you with personal things, like bathing?”

Mom considered a moment. “Hmm. Yes, that might bother me.”

Damn
.

“But,” Mom continued, “it didn’t really bug me when Keith helped me with the bed pan yesterday. So I guess if the young man is polite and respects my modesty, I might be okay with it.”

Valerie smiled.
And if he happens to be as handsome as Keith
. “Pam and I are seriously thinking about starting such a business.”

Mom’s eyes widened in surprise. “You mean yourself? What about Mother Hubbard?”

“We’d still run that, too. After all these years, we can practically do that in our sleep.”

“But that would be awfully demanding, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, but that’s what being an entrepreneur is all about. You know I thrive on it, just like Dad loved all the hours he put in at his stores.” Valerie leaned forward. “This could be great, Mom. Imagine the publicity we’d get. We’re even thinking about—”

Her mom raised her hand like a traffic cop. “Valerie,” she began, her expression somewhere between concern and irritation, “what about Greg?”

Oh, Christ
. Why did every conversation have to lead back to her marriage? “What about Greg?”

Now Mom looked exasperated. “How do you expect to save your marriage when you’re running two businesses?”

“I didn’t realize saving my marriage was my job alone.”

Mom frowned. “Oh, honey, of course it isn’t. But you know how he feels about your career.”

“What about how
I
feel about my career? Doesn’t anybody give a damn about that?”