Tommy Gabrini 4: Dapper Tom Begin Again (15 page)

Tommy
was so pleased by the sight of her that a big grin crossed his handsome
face.
 
He expected tubes and machines and
all of the sights and sounds usually associated with hospital rooms housing the
very ill.
 
But she had no such apparatus
around her.
 
She was breathing on her
own.
 
She was, in fact, dressed and
sitting in a chair.
 
To his eternal
relief, she looked fine.
 
Even gorgeous
as she sat there.
 
He was truly happy,
and made his way toward her.
 
“Thought
you’d get rid of me that easily?” he asked her.

Liz
smiled too, and played along.
 
“Darn,”
she said.
 
“I thought for sure I’d seen
the last of you.”

But
the closer he got to her, the less he smiled.
 
She had been in a terrible attack in Iraq.
 
From what Jerome had told him, a horrific
attack that cost lives.
 
She looked fine
physically, but there was an emotional toll in her eyes, a terror still there,
that tugged at his heart.
 
“Are you
alright?” he asked her.

“Oh
sure,” Liz said, smiling that go-to smile of hers that never quite reached her
eyes.
 
“I’m just waiting for my get out
of jail papers.”

But
unlike her, Tommy was not willing to play along.
 
He placed her chin in his hand and lifted her
face upward, at him.
 
His thumb rubbed
the side of her cheek.
 
Her face was
still smooth and unblemished.
 
But her
eyes.
 
Her eyes told the tale.
 
“Terrible, wasn’t it?” he asked her.

Her
eyes fluttered, and there was a moment when he could see how badly she wanted
to unload that pain.
 
But he also knew she
didn’t get to be her own woman, doing her own thing, by weeping on the shoulder
of a man she barely knew.
 
She gently
removed her face from his hand.
 
“What
brings you to Chicago?” she asked.
 
“And
how could you possibly know that I was on vacation in this five-star
joint?
 
I didn’t put it on my Facebook
page.
 
Not this joint.”

Tommy
placed his hands in his pants pockets.
 
Liz looked at him when he did so.
 
He wore yet another expensive suit tailored-made to fit his muscular
frame.
 
His hair was as neat as it had
been the first time she laid eyes on him, and his big, black dress shoes looked
freshly polished.
 
The only sense of
urgency anywhere on his person was on his face: a five o’clock shadow.
 
But even that, Liz thought, looked elegant on
the man. “So what gives?” she asked.
 
“How did you know I was here?”

Yesterday,
he would not have wanted to admit it.
 
But today, after seeing that sadness in her eyes, he didn’t care.
 
“I phoned your office to see how you were
doing.
 
Your assistant told me.”

“Rome?”

“Jerome,
yes.”

Liz
shook her head.
 
“Mister Big Mouth.
 
I should have known.
 
And I know he told it all because he never
tells anything halfway.”

“He
felt I was somebody who should know what was going on with you,” Tommy said,
and stared at her.
 
They both knew she
had been talking about him to her assistant, and it had to be more than the
fact that he had given her a lift to Dubai.
 
He was past the game playing.
 
Liz
was still holding on.

But
she was saved by the nurse.
 
There was a
quick knock and then she entered with clipboard in hand.

“You’re
all set, Miss Logan,” the nurse said as she approached them.
 
“Hi,” she said to Tommy.

“Good
evening.”

The
nurse removed a small sheet from the clipboard and handed it to Liz.
 
“Here’s your prescription,” she said.

“A
 
prescription?
 
For what?”

“It’ll
help you sleep at night,” the nurse said.
 
“It’ll help with the nightmares.”

Liz
glanced at Tommy.
 
It wasn’t something
she wanted broadcast, but what could she do?
 
He was right.
 
She had been
through a terrible ordeal.
 
And those
poor soldiers!
 
She folded the
prescription.

The
nurse smiled and handed her the clipboard.
 
“These are the release papers.
 
Sign there, and there,” she pointed out.

“Gladly,”
Liz said as she took the clipboard and pen from the nurse’s hand.
 

When
she had finished, she handed the clipboard back to the nurse and the nurse
snatched off a copy of the paperwork, and gave it to her.
 
“Now,” the nurse said, “there’s the final
matter of the bill.”

“The
bill?
 
My insurance company---”

“Will
not pay it,” the nurse interrupted her.

Liz
frowned.
 
“Why not?”

“Because
you were on foreign soil, you voluntarily placed yourself in a dangerous war
zone, and you were under the care and control of the military at the time.
 
They feel you or the government should foot
the bill.”

“Why
that’s utter nonsense!” Liz said.

“It’s
not my area,” the nurse declared.
 
“So
don’t take it out on me.
 
I was simply
asked to inform you that, before you leave today, you will need to meet with
the financial officer to arrange payment for this bill.
 
If it wasn’t so big, I wouldn’t even mention
it.
 
But twenty-nine thousand,
eight-hundred and fifty-five dollars is a lot of money, even to a hospital this
size.
 
Arrangements will need to be made
today, and preferably a payment.”

It was
so typical of the way her week had been going that Liz didn’t even bother to
argue with the woman.
 
She had a battle
on her hands all right, but it was going to be with her insurance company, not
this nurse.

“Do
you have the bill with you?” Tommy asked the nurse.

“Yes,
sir,” the nurse responded.

“May
I see it?”

The
nurse didn’t bother to ask Liz’s permission.
 
“As her boss, I’m sure you can understand our position,” she said to
Tommy as if she just knew he was Liz’s boss who paid the bulk of her health insurance
premiums anyway.
  
She therefore snatched
a set of papers from the bottom of her clipboard, and freely handed them to
him.

Tommy
pulled out his reading glasses, put them on, and then studied the bill.
  
Liz looked at the forward nurse.
 
“Don’t you think you should have asked if I
wanted him reviewing my personal papers?” she asked.

“Since
he’s your boss,” the nurse said, “he has every right to know.”

Liz
frowned.
 
“My boss?
 
Since when is he my boss?”

The
nurse began to lose her coloring.
  
“I
just assumed---”

“Yes,
I know what you assumed.
 
You are
mistaken.”

The
nurse looked alarmed.
 
“Oh, Miss Logan,”
she suddenly said, “I do apologize, ma’am.
 
I just assumed, I mean, I should not have assumed.
 
He could be your husband for all I know.”

Now
she was fishing, Liz decided.
 
But she
was going to end up with an empty rod if she thought she was going to get that
kind of personal info from Liz.
 
Especially when Liz looked over at Tommy and forgot all about that
nurse’s indiscretion when she saw that he had pulled out his checkbook.
 
Her already big eyes stretched larger.
 
“What are you doing?” she asked him.

“I’m
paying the bill,” Tommy said as he leaned over the tray table at the foot of
the bed, and began writing a check.

“But
stop,” Liz urged him.
 
“You can’t just
pay that bill.
 
That’s almost thirty
thousand dollars.
 
I have every intention
of disputing that bill!”

“You
aren’t disputing the bill,” Tommy said as he wrote.
 
Then he looked at her over his reading
glasses to make sure she confirmed his statement.

“Not
the bill, no,” Liz admitted, “but I’m going to dispute who should pay for the
bill.”

Satisfied,
Tommy continued to write.
 

“Why
are you still writing?
 
I’m going to
dispute it, Tommy.”

“And
while you’re disputing it,” Tommy responded as he carefully removed the check
from his checkbook, and then handed it to the nurse, “this hospital will have
been paid.
 
If you win your dispute, the
insurance company will reimburse you, and then you’ll reimburse me.
 
Everybody will be satisfied.
 
Everybody will go home in a limousine.”

But
the nurse wasn’t feeling Liz.
 
That black
woman had this great looking, obviously rich man willing to just whip out a
check and pay her bill for her, and she was complaining?
 
She should shut up and be grateful.
 
She should count her lucky stars to have a
man like that interested in her.
 
He
wasn’t her boss, but he was doing this for her?
 
The nurse was floored.
 
But happy
too.
 
The ladies in the Finance
department, who often had a time collecting on debts, were going to love
her.
 
“Thank-you, sir,” she said, and
clipped the check to her board.
  
And
then she said her farewells and got out of that room before the girl talked him
out of it.

Liz
looked at Tommy.
 
Her look was a wary
one. “I really do appreciate what you just did.
 
But . . . I don’t have thirty thousand dollars laying around, Tommy,
especially not this year when the magazine has had three consecutive months of
lukewarm sells.
 
If the insurance company
continues to deny the claim, it could take me quite some time to pay all of
that money back.”

Tommy
considered her.
 
“Did I ask you to pay it
back, Liz?”

Liz
frowned.
 
“You don’t have to ask me!
 
Nobody’s giving me thirty thousand dollars
for the hell of it.
 
And yes, by paying
that bill I no longer owe this hospital, and I’m grateful for that.
 
But I owe you now, and that may be
worse.
 
At least the hospital gave me
something for their money.
 
I haven’t
given you a thing.”

Tommy
continued to stare at her. “You think I want something from you?”

Liz
stared at him.
 
“That’s what worries me,
yes.”
 

“Good,”
Tommy said with a nod of his head.
 
“I
would have been very disappointed in you if you would have taken that much
money and not be concerned.
 
Now put on
your shoes and let’s get out of here.”

Liz
was puzzled.
 
“That’s it?
 
That’s all you have to say?”

“What
do you want me to say?
 
If your insurance
company refuses to pay, then that’s my loss, not yours.”

“Like
hell it is!”

Tommy
laughed.
 
“Alright already!
 
If your insurance company refuses to pay,
we’ll arrange something between the two of us.
 
How’s that?”

Liz
smiled.
 
“Better,” she said.
 
Then she reached down for her shoes again and
winced.
 
But she continued to try to put
them on, and buckle her shoes.

Tommy
saw that she was struggling, and he knew she would hate it, but he squatted
down and put the shoes on for her.
 
Liz
didn’t argue with him.
 
She was too
exhausted.
 
She leaned back and let
him.
 
She leaned back and realized that,
with the flick of a pen, Tommy Gabrini was no longer her one-night stand.
 
He came all this way to see her.
 
He paid her hospital bill.
 
This was more than a man just being nice to
her.
 
Way more.