Teardrop Lane (5 page)

“Yeah.” He dreaded that call. Amy had fussed and fretted enough over leaving the kids with him for the long weekend. She wouldn’t take the news well. He might as well get ready to have his butt chewed.

Of course, if she was that worried about it, she shouldn’t have left them with him.

Cicero had been peeved that the Parnells hadn’t canceled their ski trip. He didn’t really care that the couple already had it planned and paid for before Jayne died. It was too soon for them to leave the demons. Too soon to dump them on a babysitter—even if said babysitter was a beloved uncle. These kids needed stability. They needed a routine. They certainly needed to know that their new parents would be there when they were needed.

So far, Cicero had kept his thoughts to himself, but if Amy let him have it once he told her about Galen’s accident, he’d damn well let her have it right back.

“Where is my brother, Uncle Skunk?” Keenan asked, intruding on Cicero’s troubling thoughts. “I want to see him.”

“Let’s go find the doctor or a nurse and see if they’ll let you in his room.” He took hold of Keenan’s hand just as Dr. Anderson appeared in the doorway. Cicero asked her the question.

“If you promise you’ll only stay a minute and not excite him so that he tries to move around, you may all peek in on him,” Dr. Anderson replied. “Okay?”

“We promise, Doctor,” Keenan was quick to say.

“Follow me.”

Dr. Delicious led them back to the treatment room where Galen lay talking to a nurse about superheroes. Upon hearing his brother’s voice, Keenan darted past the doctor and rushed into the room saying, “We’ve come to see that you are alive, Galen, and you can’t move around and we can only stay a minute. Whoa! You have a red cast! How come it’s red?”

“I got to pick the color.”

“Does it hurt?”

As Galen’s siblings surrounded the exam table where the boy lay, Cicero listened with half an ear to the conversation. He was more interested in what the doctor was saying to Gabi.

“—date for the wedding?”

“August seventeenth. It’s the soonest we thought we could pull it off. Flynn made some noise about wanting it to be sooner, but Mom sat him down and told him she’s been waiting to plan her only daughter’s wedding since the day I was born and not to rush her.”

The doctor laughed. “That sounds like Maggie.”

“Flynn can’t say no to her any more than my brothers can. It was a moot point anyway, since he’s planning an extended honeymoon and I won’t leave Whimsies until after tourist season winds down.”

“Whimsies?” Rose’s gaze flicked over to Cicero. “That’s the name you’ve chosen for the glass shop you’re opening?”

Gabi nodded. “Yes. Whimsey glass is work that’s created for no useful purpose. They were popular as souvenirs in the nineteenth century, so I think it’s the perfect name for our retail store.”

“I love it,” Rose said to them both. “Your shop will be a great addition to Eternity Springs.”

The adults’ attention was jerked back to the children
when Rose spied Keenan removing a pencil from a clipboard lying on the counter.

“Hold on, Kevin, is it? You can’t sign his cast yet. It needs time to set.”

“Keenan,” Cicero informed her, moving forward to smoothly intercept the pencil.

“I’m Misty.” The girl waved toward her sister. “That’s Daisy.”

“It’s nice to meet you all, though I wish it had happened in a park rather than the emergency clinic.”

Cicero thought the smile she gave the children was the prettiest thing he’d seen all morning. He needed to draw that smile, too. “Your minute is up, you monsters,” he said abruptly. “Tell your brother you’ll see him later.”

“What’s for lunch, Uncle Skunk?” Keenan asked. “I’m hungry. Can we have McDonald’s?”

“I told you Eternity Springs doesn’t have a McDonald’s.” Cicero reached into his wallet, pulled out a twenty, and handed it to Gabi. “Would you take them somewhere for a burger? I’ve heard Murphy’s has good ones.”

“Sarah Murphy runs a bakery. She doesn’t serve burgers.”

“I’m not talking about your friend’s bakery. I mean Murphy’s Pub.”

“Murphy’s Pub,” Gabi repeated. “You want me to take these kids to a seedy bar?”

“You haven’t been there since you came home from Italy, have you?” Rose Anderson observed. “It’s not the same old Murphy’s. I eat there almost every day for lunch. A newcomer to Eternity Springs runs the bar now. Her name is Shannon O’Toole. Do yourself a favor and order the shepherd’s pie.”

“Now I’m hungry,” Cicero said. “I love shepherd’s pie. Get a couple of servings for me, to go, would you?”

“Will do. You know, I’d heard that Murphy’s had reopened,
but I didn’t realize it had upgraded. Now I’m anxious to check it out.”

Gabi and the kids said their good-byes and left—after Cicero threatened to feed Keenan peas for supper if he wasn’t good for Gabi until Cicero and Galen got home. When the good doctor also turned to leave, he said, “Wait a minute.”

She paused and gave him a polite, professional smile. He propped a hip on the exam table.

“Are you seeing anyone?”

Her smile froze and she blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I’d like to take you to dinner.”

“Why?”

Why?
A corner of Cicero’s mouth lifted in a crooked smile. That wasn’t the usual response he received when he invited a woman on a date, and that fact only made her more intriguing. “I actually have quite a number of reasons for asking. Start with the fact that I find you fascinating.”

Her brow furrowed and she stared at him like a bug. A particularly unpleasant bug.

“Your nephew is on my exam table.”

Yes. I’d like to find my way there, myself
.

“I don’t date patients.”

“In that case, it’s a good thing I’m not your patient, isn’t it?”

Now her lips thinned.

“Listen, Mr. Cicero, I—”

“Hunt. Call me Hunt, please.” Hardly anybody used his first name, especially now that Jayne was gone. Damned if he didn’t want to hear his name on Rose Anderson’s lips.

“Mr. Cicero,” she repeated. “Thank you for the invitation, but I’m not interested.”

Whoa. Zing. He let his smile go wide. He’d always loved a challenge. Besides, she might claim to be disinterested,
but her eyes said something else. He hadn’t missed that flicker of attraction, and she’d dodged his question about seeing someone else. Judging by past experience, he could infer that she probably wasn’t dating anyone at the moment.

But before he could say more, an electronic bell sounded from above, ringing three times. She turned on her heel and left the room without another word, crossing directly to a phone on the wall in the hallway. “Yes?”

Cicero glanced at sleeping Galen, then shifted his position to allow himself a line of sight into the hall.

The doctor was listening intently. “We’ll be ready,” she said. She hung up the phone and spoke to the nurse now waiting beside her. “We have penetrating abdominal trauma two minutes out. I need all hands on deck. And call my sister in.”

“Sage left for Denver this morning,” said the nurse who had tended to Galen.

Rose muttered a soft curse. In a clipped, professional voice, she fired off her orders. “Call Pete. We want the air ambulance ready to go. Chances are we will be transferring this one ASAP.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

In an instant, the sleepy clinic went into action. Soon Cicero heard the crash of doors and the rattle of wheels on a stretcher as the trauma patient arrived. Over the next twenty minutes, he listened with interest as Rose Anderson and her small medical team fought to save a young man’s life. The action took place in a room some thirty feet away from where he waited with Galen, and the atmosphere in the hallway swirled with tension. From what he could gather, the patient was a teenaged boy who’d been thrown from a snowmobile and had the horrible luck to land on the sharp point of a dead tree branch lying on the ground.

“Grade five liver laceration” never sounded good.

The nurse rushed past his doorway carrying bags of blood. Her gaze flickered toward him, and the look in her eyes told him she’d forgotten about their pint-sized patient who now appeared to be awakening from his nap. Cicero turned his attention away from the drama down the hall and onto Galen.

“How you feeling, Robin?” he asked. It was a familiar tease, one sure to distract the boy from his obvious discomfort.

“I’m Batman.”

“That’s not what Keenan says.”

“He’s the Joker. My arm hurts, Uncle Skunk.”

“I know, Buddy.” Cicero gently brushed the boy’s hair out of his eyes. “Good thing Batman is such a badass.”

“Aunt Amy says we can’t say that word. You say a lot of bad words.”

Cicero winced. “Yeah, I know. I’m trying to stop.”

“That’s okay. I won’t tell. Mom said a lot of bad words, too. Sometimes she drank too much, too. Can we go home now?”

“Not yet, buddy. We have to wait for the doctor to come check your cast.”

His voice got small. “I don’t like waiting on doctors. It’s never good.”

Pretty profound statement coming from a little mouth, Cicero observed. Over the past year, they’d done a lot of waiting where doctors were concerned. Waiting for appointments. Waiting for test results. Waiting for treatment. Waiting for news.

Once the waiting was over, they would have given anything for more time to wait.

The potent cocktail of anger, frustration, and grief stirred inside him again. He really hated doctors’ offices—and he despised hospitals. Frankly, he didn’t feel all that kindly toward doctors as a rule, either. Cold fish, most of them. Delivered hard news with either a flat, detached
manner or a false compassion you could see right through. He understood that doctors weren’t miracle workers, but when their “cures” were more dangerous than the disease, shouldn’t somebody be held accountable for that?

Cancer hadn’t killed Jayne. No, she’d been whipping cancer’s ass. Infection had killed her. From a bug she’d most likely picked up in a freaking hospital, one that her weakened immune system had been unable to fend off.

His gaze shifted to Galen. The cast was dry. Maybe they should beat feet and come back to have it checked later when things weren’t so busy. One of the pluses of living in a small town, right?

He checked his watch and decided to wait five more minutes. Some might label his concern as paranoia. He didn’t care. Recent experience had proved just how dangerous medical care could be. Jayne had been fine on Monday, dead on Thursday. That fact haunted him. What if Galen …

He was just about to slip his arms beneath the boy to lift him from the exam table when he realized something had changed. Sound had ceased. The clinic had gone quiet as the grave. He closed his eyes.

Well, splendid. Modern medicine loses another one
.

His stomach did a slow, sick flip, and he shoved his fingers through his hair. A teenaged boy. He thought about a set of parents somewhere about to get the phone call every parent prayed they’d never receive. He thought about siblings and grandparents and cousins. What heartbreak they had facing them.

He absolutely wanted to get out of here now. Thank God that Galen was too young to realize what had happened down the hall. Had it been Keenan wearing a brand new cast, the questions would be coming at him like bullets.

Just as he opened his mouth to tell Galen they were
going, he heard the approaching
squeak squeak squeak
of rubber soles against tile. Rose Anderson swept into the room wearing a fresh physician’s coat over blue scrubs and a smile identical to the one she’d worn when she’d greeted them on their arrival.

“Sorry for the delay,” she said briskly. “Now, let’s take a look at that cast.”

Cicero watched her tuck and trim, and listened to her chatter with a growing resentment. A boy in her care just died. Couldn’t she bother herself to care just a little? His disdainful gaze swept over her, not missing the bloodstains on the tops of her sneakers. He only halfway listened as she explained how to take proper care of the cast because he was busy getting downright pissed. They must teach them this flat-eyed poker face in medical school.

Good thing she’d turned down his dinner invitation. Like one of his foster mothers used to say, pretty is as pretty does. The doctor wasn’t nearly as delicious as he’d initially perceived.

The brunette from the business office rapped on the door. “Excuse me, Dr. Rose. The Oldhams just drove up.”

A grimace flashed across the physician’s face, there and gone so quickly that Cicero would have missed it had he not been looking directly at her. The boy’s family, Cicero surmised. Maybe she possessed a smidgen of humanity, after all.

“Thank you. I’ll wait for them in my office. Please show them there.” She smiled kindly at Galen. “How do you feel, young man?”

“My arm hurts, but it’s not too bad. I want to go home and finish the snowball fight.”

“Maybe tomorrow. You need to stay quiet today.”

“Oh, man!”

To Cicero, she said, “Give him another dose of pain
reliever before bed. If you have any questions, feel free to call.”

She turned to leave, then hesitated at the doorway. “When you’re ready to leave, it would be better if you used the side entrance.”

In order to avoid the grieving family. Okay, so maybe she had slightly more than a smidgen of humanity. Slightly.

“Will do.”

The sooner, the better. Cicero wrapped the blanket Gabi had given him around Galen’s shoulders and led him out of the clinic just as anxious voices became audible.

A bank of clouds had rolled in while they’d been indoors, and the gray pall they cast over the valley matched his mood. He had a project list a mile long waiting for him and had the rug rats not been around, he would have lost himself in the work. Under the circumstances, he simply didn’t have the heart for it. Instead, he called the Parnells, got a thorough ass-chewing, then loaded up the kids and drove to the nearest movie theater. Cicero brooded through the drive and movie, an animated fantasy that kept the little monsters entranced. Memories of those interminable minutes when he stood listening to the teenager die floated through his mind and made him literally sick to his stomach. A bad landing. What craptastic luck that poor kid had.