The Night Remembers (15 page)

Adam nodded. "Any problems?"

"Not a one, doctor. I gave her the medication you ordered about—" she glanced at her watch
"—exactly
twenty-two minutes ago and she seems to be resting comfortably." Quickly, Peg shuffled through the free-standing file on her desk and handed him a manila folder attached to a metal clipboard. The name, Jenkins, Tiffany, was typed on the label.

Adam flipped it open and began scanning the topmost page. "Was she fussy today? Complaining of pain? Anything?"

Peg shook her head. "She's been her same quiet little self. Either sleeping or just lying in her bed, staring up at the butterfly mural on the ceiling with those big brown eyes of hers. Breaks my heart to see a child so accepting of pain," she commented idly. "I'd almost rather hear them hollering."

"I know what you mean." Adam nodded, acknowledging her observations while he continued to peruse the file. "Tiffany has had more than her share of pain in the past few months." He sighed and another kind of pain, a sadness at his own inability to ease his patient's suffering, flickered across his face. "Unfortunately, there's a lot more to come before she's better."

He closed the file with a snap and handed it back across the counter. "Everything looks fine in here," he said briskly, "but I'll just go have a quick look at her, anyway." He started to turn away from the counter. "Oh, get Mrs.—" he slanted a quick look at Daphne "—Granger a cup of coffee, would you, please? And find her a place to sit where she won't be in anyone's way." Then he was gone, striding down the hall before either of the women could answer him.

The nurse sighed, her crossed arms all but hugging the folder to her chest. "Dr. Forrest is
so
dedicated," she said, with just exactly the inflection another woman might have used to say
"so
handsome."

"Yes, I know," Daphne murmured dryly, amused.

"Well." Peg fit the folder into its correct slot in the file and looked up at Daphne. Her smile was brisk and friendly. Her eyes were curious. "How do you like your coffee?"

"Black. But I'll get it." Daphne motioned down the hall with one hand. "I saw a machine when we came in."

"Oh, no, you don't want that. It'll dissolve your tonsils." She swung open a wooden gate at the end of the counter. "Come on around here and sit down. I'll pour you a cup of my special brew."

"You're sure I won't be in the way here?"

"Not at all." She stepped behind a chest-high partition, talking over her shoulder as she poured the coffee. "Things are a little slow this time of night. Dinner's over, visiting hours haven't really gotten started yet." She handed Daphne a cup of steaming coffee and then perched on the edge of her desk, blowing across the surface of her own cup. "Gets pretty quiet."

Daphne murmured her thanks for the coffee and took a cautious sip. Hot and strong, it burned the tip of her tongue. "What's the matter with the little Jenkins girl?" she asked, more for something to say than anything else.

Hospitals, with their starchy white-clad nurses, medicinal smells, and the pain and sickness that seemed to lurk behind every door had always made her uncomfortable. She had never been in one as a patient and only seldom as a visitor, so the atmosphere was alien and vaguely anxiety-producing. She really would rather have taken Adam's suggestion and gone to his place to wait. But she had wanted to show him, indirectly at least, that she had changed at least as much as he had. And it was only going to be for a few minutes.

"She was badly burned when she pulled an electric skillet full of hot oil down on top of her," Peg said. The statement effectively reclaimed Daphne's wandering attention.

"Oh my Go, that's awful."

"Pretty gruesome," Peg agreed. She took a sip of her coffee. "Luckily, though, it was only her legs. With physical therapy and Dr. Forrest's fine work, they should be almost as good as new in a few years."

"Adam—Dr. Forrest," Daphne corrected herself, "is doing plastic surgery on her legs?"

Peg gave her a rather censuring look. "Plastic surgery isn't only face-lifts and boob jobs," she informed Daphne somewhat sternly. "Dr. Forrest is doing a series of skin grafts on the Jenkins girl."

"Skin grafts?"

"Yes. Basically it involves taking thin strips of skin," she explained, "and applying them to the healed-over burn areas on the child's legs. Dr. Forrest did the first one yesterday afternoon."

"First one?" Daphne prompted, fascinated in spite of herself by this glimpse into Adam's world. "She'll have to have more than one operation, then?"

"Oh, yes. Several, in fact. With burns that extensive it can't all be corrected at once."

"Poor little thing."

"Peg—Oh, excuse me, I didn't know you were busy."

"That's all right, Beth." Peg put her cup down and turned to the young Asian nurse who had come rushing up to the counter in her soundless rubber-soled shoes. "What is it?"

"Dr. Forrest wants the Chapel file. That spoiled society bit—" She glanced at Daphne and caught herself. "Mrs. Chapel claims we're ignoring her. And she wants 'the kind Dr. Forrest to check her chart' and make sure we're doing everything we should be doing." She rolled her eyes. "What she really wants is to get Dr. Forrest into her room. Preferably alone."

"Don't we all?" Peg laughed good-naturedly and handed her the file. "Anything else?"

"Well, he hasn't asked for it yet but you'd better give me the Tibbs file, too." She took the folders and tucked them securely under her arm. "Thanks, Peg," she said, dashing off down the hall.

"Looks as if he's going to be a while," Daphne commented, staring into her cup.

"He usually is." Peg picked up her coffee again. "I don't think I've ever seen Dr. Forrest get in and out of here in less than an hour and a half, even when he's only got a couple of patients to see. He always takes the time to talk a bit if they want to. Tries to cheer them. Especially the little ones."

She started to say something more but another doctor came up to the desk, requesting a patient's file, and Peg turned to find it for her. Then a teenage candy striper, her face obscured behind a vase of bright yellow marigolds, stopped to ask directions to a patient's room. Close on her heels came a young black nurse with a chart in her hands and a question in her eyes. Peg moved down to the end of the counter to confer quietly with her.

Daphne began to fidget. She had never been good at just sitting—or waiting. And having to do both, especially in a hospital, made her as antsy as a five-year-old. She wished, for a moment, that she had thought to stuff a sketch pad into her hobo bag. At least it would give her something to do while she waited.

She smiled to herself then, staring into her coffee cup as she thought of the sketches she had done this morning on the back of a paper place mat at the restaurant where Adam had taken her for breakfast.

Early as it was, they had easily found a coveted window table overlooking the Sausalito boat harbor. The sun was still struggling to break up the morning fog, spindly fingers of buttery light sparkling on the placid blue-gray water of the bay and glinting off the touches of brass on the bobbing pleasure craft. Sea gulls circled and dove, screeching stridently as they called to each other. A pelican sat patiently atop an exposed piling, waiting for handouts. But Daphne and Adam saw none of it. They had eyes only for each other.

"But where do you get your ideas?" Adam had wanted to know. He sat with his chin cupped in his hand, his elbow on the table and his eyes nowhere but on her as he waited for her answer.

"Heavens, I don't know. Nowhere. Everywhere." Daphne laughed softly, bemused by the intense expression on his face. He had never seemed to be interested—really interested—in her career before. She couldn't quite believe he was now. "They just... come to me, I guess."

He gave her that slow, sweet smile. "Like visions out of a dream, huh?"

"Sort of," she agreed, unconsciously echoing his posture. Elbow on the table, chin in hand, she smiled back at him. They stared at each other for a few endless seconds.

"And then what happens?" he asked.

"What happens when?"

"After these ideas just 'come to you'?"

"Then I try to get them down on paper, hopefully in my sketchbook." She continued to smile into his eyes. "But I've been known to use whatever's handy."

He pushed his plate out of the way then, the half-eaten eggs Benedict cooling as he ignored it, and flipped over the heavy paper place mat. "Show me."

"What? Right now? But I don't have any ideas right now," Daphne protested.

"Show me something you've already designed then," he urged. "I'd really like to see how a dress like you wore the other night comes into being." The blue of his eyes blazed a little brighter as they both recalled what had happened to that dress. "That was one of your designs, wasn't it?"

"Well, yes," Daphne said hesitantly, still afraid of boring him. "But..."

"Please?" he urged, looking anything but bored.

Daphne smiled and reached into her own bag to rummage for a pen. In a moment she had pushed her own breakfast away and was sketching a few of the garments from her new line of lingerie on the elongated bodies that she had learned to draw in fashion school, explaining the fabrics and colors she planned to use as she did so. Adam had seemed fascinated.

"Excuse me." A soft voice broke into her thoughts and Daphne looked up from the contemplation of her coffee cup, startled. A young woman in her mid-twenties was standing at the nurse's station. "Are you..." she began, seeing that she had Daphne's attention. "Oh, no," she said before she had even finished her question. "I can see you're not. I'm sorry. I thought for a minute that you were a nurse."

Daphne smiled and shook her head but before she could reply, Peg had already taken the situation in hand. "Mrs. Jenkins," she said, turning from the nurse she had been talking with to greet the young woman. "What good timing. Dr. Forrest has just finished going over Tiffany's chart. I'm sure he'll want to talk to you about her progress as soon as he's finished with his other patients."

"How is she?" the young woman asked anxiously.

"She's doing just fine," Peg said, reaching across the counter to pat Mrs. Jenkins's hand. "Why don't you go on to her room," she suggested. "I'll let Dr. Forrest know where you are as soon as he's free. Oh, wait a minute." Peg's voice stopped her as she turned in the direction of her daughter's hospital room. "Here he comes now."

Adam approached the nurses' station from the opposite direction, hurrying his steps a little as he caught sight of the young woman standing in front of the counter. He had pulled a white lab coat on over his sweater and jeans and a stethoscope hung loosely around his neck. Two metal-backed folders rested in the crook of one arm. He looked, Daphne thought, peering over the counter from her seat at one end, every inch the caring, concerned physician.

"Mrs. Jenkins," he greeted the obviously worried young mother with a brief touch on her shoulder. "I've already seen Tiffany and she's doing fine. Exactly as we expected," he told her, answering her unspoken question in a calm, assured manner. "And seeing you will make her even better."

"I have to work Saturdays," Mrs. Jenkins said apologetically, head down as if she feared his last statement had been a jab at her absence. "But my mother was here nearly all day. I—"

Adam smiled encouragingly and patted her shoulder again. "I doubt Tiffany even knew the difference," he reassured her quickly. "She slept most of the day. In fact, she had a sedative a little while ago," he warned. "So don't be alarmed if she seems a little listless to you. That's perfectly normal. Now, I still have a few things to do here." A subtle movement of his shoulder indicated the folders he carried. "But I'll stop by Tiffany's room again before I leave, to answer any questions you may have after you see her. Okay?"

"Yes, fine. Thank you, Dr. Forrest." The woman turned away and hurried down the hall to her daughter's room.

Adam dropped the folders on the counter, his eyes catching Daphne's. There was a wry twist to his lips. "I'm sorry about this," he said, dragging a hand through his hair. "But it seems like I'm going to be here a while longer than I thought."

"There's nothing to be sorry about," Daphne interjected quickly. She stood up, placing her half-empty coffee cup on the desk behind her, and came up to the counter. Peg backed away, unobtrusively busying herself at a file cabinet. "But I do think I'll take your suggestion now. About waiting for you at your place," Daphne added when he lifted an inquiring eyebrow.

"Great." Relief was evident in his tone. "That's what I came up here to talk to you about before I got sidetracked by Mrs. Jenkins." He pushed his lab coat aside as he spoke, and dug into his front pocket for his car keys. "Here." He dangled the keys over the counter, deftly capturing her hand as she reached for them to draw her down the length of the counter. "You take these and I'll grab a taxi when I'm ready to leave."

"But—"

"My place is easy to find," he said, silencing her protests before she could suggest she should be the one to take a taxi. "And you'll need the keys to get in, anyway." He walked her down the hall as he spoke, toward the double glass doors that led out into the parking lot. "There's a list of takeout places that deliver next to the telephone in the kitchen. Call one of them and have them deliver whatever you feel like eating at, say, eight—" he glanced at his watch "—no, better make that nine just to be on the safe side. Okay?"