When You're Expecting Something Else (7 page)

Chapter Eight

Cassandra Turner hung up the phone at San Francisco Geriatric Center and anxiously drummed her fingers on the smudged white countertop while mulling over her thoughts. She pictured Jared Wise the Third hovering over his grandfather, always attentive, calling the nurse for every little wrinkle in the sheet, like a rich watchman at the gate. An idea was taking shape, and she didn’t want to do anything that would shake it loose before it fully gelled. This could be her big opportunity. She rubbed her finger over the pencil smudge one last time, and then paged Thuy Phan to the front desk. Thuy had been working as Grandfather Wise’s primary care nurse for the past three years. If anybody knew about the Wise family, it would be Thuy. The only problem would be getting information out of her because Thuy Phan possessed very poor English skills.

Cassandra was still mulling over her plan when Thuy bustled into the nurses station. “Yes, you call me?” she said, her Vietnamese accent as pronounced as the day she got off the boat, smiling her ever present façade of happiness, oozing a willingness to please, while smoothing her pink nursing scrubs over her middle-aged, stick like frame.

“Thuy, Mr. Wise’s grandson won’t be in this week. Do you know if he has any other relatives who might come?” Cassandra asked.

“Oh, no. No other relative. Only Mr. Jared. He only family left. Everybody dead,” Thuy said, still nervously smoothing her nursing blouse.

“Okay, that all,” Cassandra said, dismissing the nurse to return to her duties. She watched the tiny pink frame bustle down the hallway until she turned the corner out of sight. Only then did she pick up the phone and dial the ICU at Pacific West Hospital.

“I’m calling about Jared Wise,” she said when she was connected to the ICU Nursing Station. “I’m calling from San Francisco Geriatric Center where I work. I understand that you have Jared Wise the Third as your patient. I have instructions from his family to follow up with his care while he’s hospitalized there.” She held her breath hoping that Pacific West Hospital in Mountain View was as loose about security as the other acute care facilities in the Bay Area. If so, she was a cinch to be in the door with her budding plan in no time at all.

“Oh, I’m so happy to hear from you,” the Ward Clerk proclaimed. “Hold on, let me get Jenny for you. We’ve been trying to locate Mr. Wise’s next of kin for several days now. She’ll be so happy to talk with you.”

“In the door,” breathed Cassandra in a whisper, not intending to have said it out loud. She was still breathing relief when Jenny picked up the phone and gushed her greeting, a full medical report tumbling out with it.
 

“Jared Wise is still in a coma with multiple trauma, including head injury, broken bones, and internal injuries. And he’s on a respirator,” she reported in her friendly, professional style. “I hope some family can come to be with him soon. It’s so sad that he’s all alone.”

“His family can’t be there right now,” Cassandra ventured. “His grandfather is very ill and hospitalized here at San Francisco Geriatric. I talked with another relative, an aunt, but she’s in Europe right now. She’s asked that we send one of our own nurses to stay with him until she can return to the states. Private duty, you know, as a companion.” Cassandra scrunched her facial muscles and crossed her fingers, as the blatant lie tumbled out of her mouth. “I can send someone later this evening.”

“Well, we can’t let you send someone for private duty nursing, not while he’s a patient here,” Jenny said. “But, you can send her as a companion-sitter to assist. Our own nurse has to be the primary. You know, hospital rules.”

“Of course, that’s what I meant,” Cassandra said. “I’ll send a nurse named Marta Lewski later today, then. You can expect her.” She gave Jenny the phone number of San Francisco Geriatric Center, and hung up the phone with a smile on her face. “Wait ‘til Kaitleen hears about this,” she mumbled as she sprang from her chair and bolted to find her friend in the administrative office downstairs.

Kaitleen was finishing up an afternoon bagel and café latte, and wiping a slight milk moustache from her upper lip when Cassandra sailed into her office. As Director of Nurses for the Geriatric Center, Kaitleen handled all the administrative and staffing duties for the nursing home. She worked autonomously, reporting only to the owner, whom she’d never actually met. All communication with Mr. Everest, the owner, was done electronically once a month.

“We got a whopper!” Cassandra gushed. “We gotta send Marta to Pacific West in Mountain View for evening shift. Jared Wise the Third is in a coma, just like his grandfather. No other relatives. I got us in the door.” She watched the slow smile spread across Kaitleen’s face.

“I’m on it,” Kaitleen said as she picked up the phone to call Marta Lewski in for her next assignment.

Chapter Nine

Melancholy threatens. My apartment feels so cold and empty. I cried when I hugged Serena good-bye at the airport this morning, but it’s time for her to go. She’s taken good care of me. Now I miss her. Who would have thought that my sister and I would become so close? The ache I feel in her absence reawakens a well of grief deep inside me. I always lose the people I love the most.

Shivering, I pull a sweatshirt on over my sleeveless shirt and put the kettle on for tea. Serena is more like my mom, whereas I’m more like my dad. I miss my parents terribly, just as I miss Serena, our family of four so drastically reduced to half. I’m grieving all over again as if their accident happened just yesterday instead of three years ago.

Melancholy isn’t new to me. It always feels drafty. Cold and drafty, it slips into my life and fills all my empty, hollow places with misery. I fix my tea and wrap my fingers around the hot mug for warmth. Fighting the misery, I walk aimlessly around my small apartment, looking out the window and then going out onto the deck, thinking about my life. The sun is bright, and I welcome its healing heat. The warm up begins as I sip from my steaming mug.

I met Alex three weeks before my parents died. He seemed so strong. I let him become the hard rock I leaned on, wrapping my sadness around him like desert roots begging to anchor on something more solid than sand. Loving him cushioned the blow. As I got to know him, I turned to him in the same way Serena turned to her husband and babies for comfort. Serena and I talked about it last night. I wondered if it was my weakness that Alex fell in love with because he never really got to know me in strength. Even when time passed and I grew emotionally stronger; Alex always seemed to like me vulnerable.

“I noticed it too,” Serena had said, validating my insight.
 
“You and I drifted in different directions then, too. You had Alex, and I had Justin. The boys were such little babies, and they needed me. I should have been there for you, too.
 
Please forgive me.”

I remember responding to her, my heartbeat picking up as if wanting to make up for lost time. “I was so lost then. I should have reached out to you, too. I know how close you and Mom were, and how much she loved Alan and Kirk. She loved being a grandmother. It seemed my eyes could only see Alex then. My own pain felt like more than I could bear. I didn’t want to feel yours, too. I’m so sorry, Serena.” We both cried then, and she wrapped her arms around me, hugging me, her warm touch feeling a lot like my mother’s, a reassurance reaching out from the grave to comfort me.

“At least she went with Daddy. I can’t imagine one of them living on without the other. Let’s promise we’ll never let that kind of distance separate us again,” Serena said. “We’ll talk every week, and email, and I’ll send you pictures of the boys. Promise me, we’ll stay close.”

I promised, and we dried our tears, a half box of Kleenex gone between us.
 

Now, I mope around my tiny apartment, remembering my childhood and the good years from the past, missing those carefree days of being loved and cared for. Isabella follows me around, rubbing against my ankles, meowing softly, sharing empathy for my sadness.

“You’re sad, too, aren’t you, Izzy? You miss your family, don’t you? You miss, Jared. I’m so sorry, Isabella. I wish I could make him well for you.” I pull her plump, warm body into my arms and nestle my fingers into her downy black coat, scratching behind her ears, kissing her, and petting her along the grain of her spine, until she begins to purr, and burrows her face into my neck, her affection comforting me. “I love you, Isabella,” I say, my heart swelling with the thought that I’d brought her some comfort, too.

All at once, I want to see Jared. I want to see how he’s doing, see if there is anything at all I can do to help, see if his family has been notified, and if they’ve come to the hospital to see him. It’s the least I can do for sweet, sweet Isabella, who misses her Daddy as much as I miss mine.

Thinking about Daddy, I miss him almost more than I can bear. I miss the woodsy smell of him after an afternoon spent chopping up logs in the forest. Hot or cold, he’d come in all grizzly looking and red faced with woodchip dust on his blue jeans and fire crackling in his eyes.
 
How we all loved our rustic old cabin in the woods, the vacation retreat we’d all scramble off to the first day of summer vacation from school, and once even for Thanksgiving. Oh, how I’d almost forgotten about his favorite spicy fried eggs, always smothered in ketchup, and the way he called me Constance when he wanted me to pay attention to something special.

I put Isabella down, my fingers weaving a final path through her furry softness, and make sure her food and water bowls are full. Warmer now, I shed the extra sweatshirt and change out of my shorts and tee shirt into a simple, colorful dress. I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed into the ICU or not. I’m not Jared’s immediately family; I’m no relation at all for that matter, not even a close friend, but I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to go to the hospital anyway. I have some completed paperwork I need to drop off to Mrs. Ianovich in the personnel office.
 
Maybe I’ll be able to peek in on Jared afterwards.

“I’ll try, Isabella. At the very least, I can make sure Jared’s relatives know that you’re safe here with me, and that you can stay as long as they wish. I’ve already paid my landlord the extra hundred dollars to keep you, so you can stay forever, if that’s what they want.”

Isabella meows making me realize my blunder. “No, no, don’t worry. I didn’t mean it that way. Jared will be fine in no time and he’ll want you home with him. Don’t worry, little kitty. I didn’t mean it, only that I love having you here, that’s all.”

At the hospital, I have a nice chat with Sara Ianovich, the nurse recruiter in the personnel office. She takes my completed paperwork, looks it over, staples the corners together and puts it aside.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, turning her full attention to me now, with a look of satisfaction, making me feel that I must look happy despite my earlier melancholy. I remind myself that people here at Pacific West Hospital don’t know about my recent breakup with Alex.