Perfect Match (6 page)

She tapped her pen on the notebook, thinking. She looked back
down the hall at D.R. Fallington’s closed door, and then wrote a few more
sentences. Then tap, tap, tap, with her pen, while her young mind filtered
through word choices for her next sentences.

Madison was seated at her desk, shaking her head, gleaning
more bad news from the company reports she’d analyzed for the second and third
time. Fallington Enterprises was a disaster. She felt even more pressure from
that realization.

She wondered how some of the early warning signs had slipped
by Edna, as sharp as she was. But then again the company numbers and
information had been camouflaged so cleverly. Madison could see that only
someone on site, such as herself, could have caught some of the subtleties.

She needed this job. She couldn’t afford to fail. She had to
pull off something close to a miracle. She felt the pressure to be successful
at work, and as a mom. She had a depressing thought; I’ll be so busy I’ll never
have time to find a wonderful man, or for one to find me. She gave a little shake
of her head.

She’d shifted Janice Smithfield from Rodney’s “light typing”
clerk, to be her administrative assistant, and quickly refocused her skills
with expanded responsibilities. Janice blossomed with the additional
challenges. She’d become a quick study just like Madison.

Janice reflected professionalism in her dress and efficient
work habits. Her black hair with fashionable highlights of gray, swinging at
shoulder length gave her an extra touch of maturity that sent vibes to the
younger women, that the office was no longer a giant playpen.

Janice sat across from Madison, waiting patiently.

After gathering her thoughts, Madison reeled off a list of
things for Janice to coordinate, as they projected through the weeks on the
calendar. “For the company staff meeting, send the memo only to the office
managers in New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. I’ll deal with Hong Kong
separately, probably go there myself later. Coordinate their flight plans,
economy seats, no rental cars, reservations for them at Shiloh Mountain View
Inn. Not the cheapest, but certainly not the most expensive.

“Also pull the numbers data on our branch offices. I want to
review the expenses of the managers, leasing contracts, along with other office
expenses.” Madison tapped her finger nail on her desk, thinking. “Search the
files for past communications between D.R. and the office managers. I’d like to
know of any communication threads that are left hanging.”

“Anything else?” asked Janice, smiling.

Madison laughed. “Yes, be sure you take breaks. I know you
must feel like we’re working in an emergency room or a trauma center…and we
are. I appreciate all your help.”

Popular plastic surgeon, Dr. Samantha Sutton, removed the
bandage covering the left side of D.R.’s face. She placed her fingers under his
chin tilting his head. She bent slightly over the hospital bed examining the
six-inch cut.

His eyes grazed over her smooth facial skin. She must be 45
or 50, he thought, but he had sexual images of her without any clothes on. He
recognized the familiar increased heart beats, when an attractive female came
within a couple of feet of him. But not some woman this old, he thought. Maybe
he was just caught at a vulnerable moment, since she was the only female doctor
he had.

She smiled as she straightened up, standing beside his bed.
“Well, I think we can leave the bandage off. Your healing is coming along
nicely and it looks like you’ll have minimal scarring. The ER doctors did some
pretty good work suturing your laceration. However, looks like there might be a
couple places where you’re most likely to have a small scar. In cases like that
a touch of make-up can cover it or later on we can see what we can do along the
lines of a little plastic surgery.”

D.R. grunted his disapproval, shaking his head. “That’s not
good enough. I expect to be fixed good as new, understand?” His voice got loud.

“I understand how you may be feeling, but—”

He cut her off with a loud outburst. “You don’t understand
jack-shit about how I’m feeling. Your perfect little face wasn’t sliced like
mine.”

Dr. Sutton retorted, “And I wasn’t driving over a hundred
miles per hour through Beaucatcher Tunnel.”

Rachel Johnson, head nurse on the hospital unit had heard
the loud voices, and was entering the door when D.R. hurled his plastic pitcher
of ice water against the wall. It splashed near the door.

Rachel glanced at Dr. Sutton, who had backed away from
D.R.’s bed. Rachel approached his bedside, her hulking frame and dark face
glaring at him. She asked over her shoulder, “Are you okay, Dr. Sutton?”

Tersely, she said, “I’m fine.”

Rachel looked back at him. “Apparently you haven’t learned
my rules, Mr. Fallington. Let me explain them to you. It doesn’t matter who
you’ve been, who you are, or who you hope to be, when you’re on Rachel Johnson’s
unit and shift you will do exactly what she says. You will treat everyone with
respect. You will show good manners at all times. You will keep your voice low
and your language respectful at all times to all people. Is that clear?”

He sulked.

Rachel leaned down within a foot of his face. “I asked the
patient a question. Rachel always gets an answer to her questions.” Her look
turned to a hard glare.

He mumbled, “Understand.”

Rachel snapped, with a jerk of her head. “Apologize to the
good doctor here.”

He was boiling with anger, but decided an apology was the
quickest way to get these two bitches out of his room.

He muttered, “Sorry.”

Sutton quickly said, “I’ll check on you later in the week.”
She pressed the hand sanitizer at the door, and hurried from the room, still a
bit shaken from his outburst.

Rachel pushed the intercom system to call for a clean-up
person. She did a quick read of the bedside instruments, letting her eyes roam
over other areas of the room and then stepped to D.R.’s bedside. “If you didn’t
have a banged up foot, I’d make you clean up this mess. What’s going on with
you, Fallington?”

He looked uncomfortable with her question and he took note
that she’d dropped the mister that he’d grown accustomed to through the years.
So now he was just Fallington? He wished he could disappear under the covers.
Hell, he thought, I’d like to hide under the damn bed and get away from
everything.

He took a long breath and sighed, “Probably a little bit of
everything from everybody…including myself.”

She eyed him, and nodded a few times. “I think you nailed
it…that last part. You better do some serious thinking.”

The intercom crackled her name and a garbled message. She
swooshed her heavy frame from the room.

D.R. started thinking in the silent wake. He was left with
anger, after being humiliated by two more women in the past five minutes.
Stewing about it unleashed a waste basket filled with resentment, from hurts
and wounds from years past. His thoughts kept drifting back in time.

He remembered his mother coming to his bedroom about
midnight, when he was 14. Her voice was flat and disinterested. “I just got a
call from the hospital. Your father finally kicked the bucket.” She held a
cocktail in her hand. Her voice slurred a little. “Well, go back to sleep. I
guess we’ll have a funeral in a day or two-o-o.” She left the room, ice
clinking in her glass, as she headed for the bar in their spacious house.

My dad died? I didn’t even know who he was. How could he die
before I got to know him? Aren’t boys supposed to know their dad? But dad never
seemed interested in knowing his two sons.

He always had a drink in his hand and his talk was always
about money, money, money. He seemed happiest with a drink and talking about
money. Why did dad frown when Rodney and I tried to talk to him or be around
him?

Old questions kept washing up from the past, as D.R. thought
about his anger and resentment.

Why didn’t his mother cry at his dad’s funeral? Why did she
keep winking at the guy who sat with her during the funeral? Why didn’t his
mother sit with Rodney and him? What a confusing and miserable day that was.

D.R. remembered shortly following his father’s death how his
mother had an endless string of men friends spending the night. He recalled
arguments between his grandmother Fallington and his mother over her being “a
slut of a mother.” He was a senior in high school, before he realized and
accepted the rumors that his mother had been “fucking everyone in town.”

He recalled coming home late one night, from a ballgame, and
surprising his mother getting nailed on the patio by the guy who cleaned the
swimming pool. Breathing hard she said with drunken emphasis, “Go on to bed,
D.R., we’re just having a little fun out here.” As he stalked off, with a
mixture of embarrassment, he heard his mother chuckle to her lover in the dark,
“He’s just a kid. He doesn’t know what we’re doing.”

He remembered well the anger that surged through him at the
put down his mother had delivered, ‘just a kid.’ He felt like he’d never had a
mother either, just some woman that lived in the same house, but blank as hell.
Aren’t mothers supposed to be nurturing, safe, secure, stable, and take care of
you, helping you grow up? Don’t mothers bake cookies and read you innocent
stories and tuck you in bed at night, rather than overload you with
store-bought cookies and you catch them in bed with strangers?

Chaotic memories swirled from D.R.’s past as he recalled the
month before high school graduation when his grandmother Fallington was waiting
for him at home one afternoon. Most days he was met by a nanny and a tutor. His
mother’s health had been failing sharply for the past year, and had been
admitted to a private end-of-life care facility in Tennessee, just across the
state line. He’d grown accustomed to not having parents.

Although his grandmother exuded a steely resilience, there
was a kindness that peeped through from time to time. He had to admit his
grandmother was the only relative that seemed to care for him, but she could be
demanding.

“D.R., let’s have a glass of tea and talk a little,” she
said that dreary afternoon.

“Okay, let me put my books down.”

They sat talking on the screened back porch. Edna Fallington
looked kindly at her grandson. “D.R., I had a call from your mother’s doctor
about an hour ago. She passed away about one o’clock. They did all they could,
but as you know your mother did not cooperate. She waited too long to have her
health checked and after she was diagnosed with HIV, she continued her
drinking, drugging, and whatever she could get away with.”

His jaw tightened.

She studied him. “I’m sorry both your parents tried their
best to kill themselves…and succeeded.”

He looked out across the manicured backyard, watching
intently a male bird trying to mate with a stubborn female bird.

“Grandmother, may I go out and be with some of my friends
tonight?”

Edna finally convinced herself that being around young
friends might be the best thing for him. “Yes, I think that’d be a good idea.
Get your mind on pleasant things. Even though it’s a Friday night, remember to
be home by midnight.”

“Yes ma’am.”

D.R. remembered going out that night, screwing Lisa Wyndhome
until she was crying for him to stop. He thought of her as stubborn and
reluctant as that damn female bird in the backyard. He never dated her again,
and he was glad when she went to some fancy college for women on the west
coast.

Thinking about how he treated Lisa that night made him feel
worse. What was I trying to prove that night? Was I trying to get even with my
mother? Was I trying to break her record of screwing everyone in town, like
I’ve been doing ever since? Where are all these crazy questions coming from?
Not a good idea thinking about this crap. I need a drink…I need a party…I need…

The intercom warbled with unintelligible squawks and static,
and then went silent. D.R. blinked his eyes, looking around the stark hospital
room, focusing on the digital readout of his vitals, from the bedside medical
monitor that stared back at him like some science fiction monster.

He sighed heavily, thinking, I’ve got to get out of here. He
shifted in bed, felt around for the remote dangling from the bed rail. He
pushed a button and the foot of the bed jerked, sending a shot of pain through
his right ankle, but nothing like the agony he felt two weeks ago. Maybe he was
mending.

He poked another button and the head of the bed started to
grind upward. The world looks different sitting up, he thought, and it’ll look
a whole lot different when I get out of this lousy hospital. He braced himself
as he dragged both legs to his left, letting them drift off the side of the
bed. The injured right foot suddenly felt heavy and thick. Damn circulation, he
thought, perspiration breaking out on his forehead.

He reached around trying to untangle a mesh of wiring and
sheets, jerking them frantically. The medical monitor protested with flashing
lights and coded beeps and chirps, setting off a distorted intercom voice from
the nurses’ desk. How can I answer questions I don’t understand, he thought, so
he said nothing.

In a flash Rachel Johnson breezed into the room, eyeing him
sitting on the bedside. “What now, Fallington, trying to make a run for it?”
She chuckled.

He slumped in silence, thinking, his biggest nightmare has
arrived again. More humiliation.

Rachel, with a few adjustments, made the medical monitor
happy again. She checked his vitals again, pulled up a small chair and sat,
like she was going to visit with an old friend for a spell. Her wide face
smiled. A few crow’s feet appeared. “If you’ll cooperate with me, I’ll help you
get out of the hospital, Fallington. You interested?”