To Begin Anew (Blue Jay Romance) (8 page)

~*~*~

Eric sat in the front seat of his car and stared at the steering wheel for a moment before he brought his hand to the ignition. After talking to his patient’s family, after seeing their faces contort with the looks of first shock and grief, he felt wiped out, blank. It was as if a giant eraser had swept through him.

As the car whirred to life, he noted the time on the dashboard’s clock and sighed deeply - it was all he needed to handle after everything else. It was late, much later than he said he’d be. He hoped Debra would be forgiving of him, but she’d have to understand to a point that there would be certain times when being late would be unavoidable. He pulled out of his parking space and drove off down the street that led away from the hospital. The moon, if he could have stopped to pay attention to it, was beautiful in the inky black sky that surrounded it.

Pulling into her driveway made him nervous and when he got out of his car, the door clicking behind him, he felt the first wisps of dread hit him. He didn’t think she’d yell at him - well, maybe she would - but she might be put out enough to where she wouldn’t watch David and Danny for him again.

Before he could knock on her door, it opened and she greeted him half a step from the porch. She asked, her tone placid, “What kept you?” As her words slipped past her lips, her arms folded to her chest.

Be honest or lie? Eric shook his head inwardly. He replied, “It was a last minute thing - I forgot to tell you that things like this might happen.”

Debra had planned a nice session of a talking to, but when she caught the haggard look Dr. Nelson wore over his entire person, she thought better of it. Instead, she said, “I’ve got dinner on the stove. It’s still quite hot. Come on in and get something to eat.” She turned to walk through the frame of her front door when she added over her shoulder, “And be quiet. The boys passed out about half an hour ago.”

The meal that Debra sat out in front of him looked too good to eat and even before he could get it to his mouth his brain had already started to devour it. Somehow, Debra’s cooking could make a man feel as if he’d never before eaten real food. You hadn’t lived until you’d eaten her food.

“This tastes like heaven,” he said simply as he stuffed a bite of the World’s Best Meatloaf into his mouth.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Debra said as she leaned against her kitchen counter. There was a table, set for people to eat at, but the counter had bar stools and it was just as comfortable to sit at one of those.

Eric took a drink of iced tea, another treat he hadn’t had in a long time, and when he swallowed, he said, “Don’t sell yourself short. I can’t believe that I’m lucky enough to eat this well twice in one day.”

Debra smirked as she put a hand underneath her chin. “David and Danny certainly appreciated it. I thought it was getting kinda late, and when their stomachs started growling, I put something together for them. I figured it was something at work that was keeping you.” In a moment of intuition, she asked, “Was it bad?”

Eric halted midway to putting another bite of food in his mouth. He set his fork down, frowning at the meal in front of him. For a little while at least, he’d been able to forget about the latter part of his day, which turned out to be worse than the first part of his day. The events with Julia and then her appearance on television had been a cakewalk to endure compared to being called down to the emergency room triage. He found that he couldn’t say anything.

Debra took Dr. Nelson’s silence for what it was. She said, “You don’t have to tell me about it - I think it might be better if I didn’t know. Just know I understand.”

Eric glanced up from his plate, letting the moment pass where he didn’t see his patient flat lining on the gurney in front of him, and with a forced smile he said, genuinely, “Thank you.”

~*~*~

After Dr. Nelson finished his meal, Debra ushered him to her living room where she flicked on her battered old television for him. She brewed him a cup of decaffeinated tea and then excused herself to the kitchen where she pulled the dishes together to clean them.

Two minutes into letting the sink fill with water, she noticed that she wasn’t in the kitchen alone. Dr. Nelson’s tea cup was on the far counter and he was standing next to her, rolling up his sleeves.

Debra sighed. “Get your butt back into the living room before I kick you back there.”

Eric laughed. “I don’t think so. Isn’t it rude to just sit back and watch someone do the work that you should be doing yourself? You cooked.”

Debra rolled her eyes. She set the first of the dishes in the sudsy water and said, “Just stand there and look pretty, okay? It’s too late to get into a debate about who should do what.”

Eric waggled his eyebrows at Debra as his lips spread into a genuine grin. “You think I’m pretty?” He put a hand to his chest. “I’m flattered.”

Debra rested her hands on the sink, feeling exacerbated. “Why don’t you play the quiet game, hmm? Or better yet, pretend that you super glued your lips together.”

Eric chuckled. “I’m not that bad.” He waited until she began to wash the dishes again, and as soon as she’d put a few dishes to be rinsed into the other side of the sink, he pulled the faucet to him and began rinsing them.

After they were through washing dishes, Debra insisted that Eric move off to the living room and once he was on the sofa he sighed, looking as if he’d aged twenty years. His face was still handsome, lined with weariness and the moment she found herself staring at him, she looked away and fixed her attention on something that wouldn’t set her thoughts adrift into dangerous waters.

She’d refilled his tea and as they sat there together in silence, Debra wondered why thinking of him as a man instead of a doctor or her employer had to be a bad thing. She glanced at the clock on the wall above the television, saw that it was a quarter until ten and as she opened her mouth to say something, she was cut off by soft snoring.

Dr. Nelson had literally fallen asleep with his tea cup in his hand. Not bothering to see the humor in the situation - which truthfully, she did - she moved from her chair, took the cup from him and, walking silently past him, she reached a small hall closet.

Earlier, when David and Danny had conked out, she’d carried them one by one to her spare room, tucked them into the bed she kept there and left the door cracked open so she’d know if they woke up. In her experience, children were often scared of waking up in new surroundings and she didn’t want them to go through it.

The hall closet had blankets in it and, pulling one out, she then went back to the living room where the doctor was good and well and in a coma. She set the blanket around his shoulders and made sure that it covered his feet. He would probably have a stiff back in the morning, judging by the way he was sleeping, but Debra didn’t have the heart to wake him up. Someday, she’d have to work on that.

~*~*~

David was the first to open his eyes, but as soon as he stirred from the bed, Danny followed right behind him. It was a bond they possessed as twins and though they never planned to do everything together, it just seemed that it worked out better when they did. Danny yawned and was about to say something when David grinned and put a finger to his lips.

“Shhh, okay? We gotta be quiet.”

Danny eyed his brother, not sure if David was the smarter of the two of them, but after a moment of thinking about it, he figured it made enough sense that he would go along with it for the time being. The blanket that Miss Brown had set over him was fluffy and smelled like the muffins she kept giving them and while he willingly followed his brother out of bed, he wasn’t quite so willing to give up the blanket.

“Come on, Danny, you slow poke.” David waved at him, his face contorted as his body passed through the door jamb of the bedroom. Danny hesitated for a moment while he rolled his eyes, then shuffled up to the door and stepped out into the hallway.

As he emerged from the room he was seized and before he could scream, which he was absolutely about to do, there was a whisper in his ear, “Your dad is sleeping, so we’re gonna eat breakfast and be quiet until he wakes up. Okay?”

All Danny could do was nod, even as he felt his body being lifted and carried down the hall that led from the bedroom and then into the kitchen. David, the previous victim and now captive, was already seated at Miss Brown’s kitchen counter, face deep in Cheerios.

Debra sat Danny down next to his brother and while she fixed him a bowl of cereal and sliced him some fruit, she had to chuckle at her cleverness. She’d set her clock so far ahead that she knew no matter how early those little buggers decided to rise, she would beat them to their routine of jumping on the less fortunate.

David swallowed a bite of a peach that Miss Brown cut for him, leaned in on his little elbows and asked, “Why is Daddy still sleeping? Won’t he be late for work?”

Debra shook her head as she scruffled David’s head. After the first time she’d seen Dr. Nelson do it she couldn’t keep herself from doing it and now, every time she got the chance, she was ruffling their heads almost as if she wanted to shake the hair from their scalps.

She’d done the kids one better and called ahead to the hospital to check and see if a certain doctor had to be in at a certain time and discovered that it was one of his days off. Since it was a Saturday, the day of all days where sleeping in and doing nothing was sort of welcomed after a long week of hard work, she wasn’t about to disrupt the quiet.

The ring, then the knock at her front door begged to differ.

Giving the boys a look, a stern but soft look, Debra moved to her front door and before whoever it was on the other end could ring her door bell again, she opened it and stepped outside, preferring to handle the caller on the steps rather than taking it inside.

It was a wise choice, since almost instantly after stepping outside she was assaulted by flashing lights and the whirr as a camera flared.

“Hello!”

Debra blinked in the direction of the bright, too-cheerful voice. The recognition of who it was, the sound of it through a hundred eye rolls and changes of the television station sent a spike of panic to the very bottom of her stomach. What in the world was going on?

Debra imagined herself when she was younger, on a stage, lights flashing as people cheered her on. She was famous and everyone loved her. As Debra frowned at the woman standing in front of her, she was glad that one particular dream never came true.

Instead of greeting the woman, perhaps inviting her into her home, Debra folded her arms across her chest and tilted her chin a degree upwards. It was her mess-with-me-and-I’ll-make-you-sorry expression.

“I was just hoping to catch the good doctor on his way out,” Cathy Fields said, the woman otherwise known as ‘Chatty Cathy’ to everyone in town who owned a television and a pair of ears.

It wasn’t the way she’d said the words, Debra thought to herself, but the expression on her face when she said them. It was as if she hoped to catch a glimpse of Dr. Nelson in his underwear or with his hair dyed pink. Debra wasn’t born yesterday - it took her all of three seconds to understand what Cathy thought was going on. What would take her longer would be to find out why she’d come now, and who told her where to go.

“If you’ll leave nicely, I won’t have to call the police.”

Debra got a good look at Cathy now, the flash from the camera wearing off, and saw that she was dressed in a light sweater/skirt combination, the colors the light hues of painted Easter eggs, and as Debra glared at her she smiled as if the sun rose because she asked it to every morning.

“You go ahead and call the police Miss Brown if you think we’re breaking the law,” Cathy said pleasantly, almost sweetly. Her face was arranged like a bouquet of flowers, with even the upturn to her mouth carefully set into place.

Very calmly, using measured words, Debra said, “The police ain’t for you, they’re for me. I’ll give you ’till the count of five to get your rears off ma’ porch ‘fore I start doing things I have to pray fo’giveness for laytuh.”

Debra knew she was close to losing her temper when her accent started slipping away from her. She’d tried hard to erase the small town out of her speech, but at times when there was a real irk to her ire, she had a strength she didn’t know she possessed.

“You all right over there, Debra?”

Debra recognized the elderly voice of her widowed neighbor, Mr. Lewis, and heard as the front screen to his door closed behind him as he moved at a hobbled pace on his cane to the end of his porch. He had a cordless phone in his hand - a gift from his son that she’d suggested would be easier for him to use - and the expression on his face appeared as if he was moments from putting it to good use.