A Christmas to Remember (24 page)

“Would you like to try it on?”

“Oh, can I?” Beth sat up quickly.

Lillian slipped the ring off her finger and slipped it on to Beth’s hand. “It’s so beautiful,” Beth breathed. “It really sparkles.” She twisted her wrist, letting the gem catch the light. “It’s as if he’s given you all these rainbows.”

“It’s a very high-quality stone,” Lillian said, touched by her sister’s reaction. Rainbows, indeed.

Beth took the ring off and handed it back to her. “It suits you, Lily. You sparkle when you’re with Oliver. I never saw you like that before. You probably don’t realize it, but you do.”

Lillian smiled at her. “Thank you, Beth. You’re right, I had no idea.”

She did feel different at Oliver’s side. Was that because she was sparkling?

“That’s what it’s all about, don’t you think?” Beth asked.

“Maybe.” Lillian gazed down at the ring then back up at her sister. “What would I do without you, Beth?”

Her sister shrugged. “Oh, you would get along. Once you marry Oliver, you won’t even think about me.”

“Of course I will. I’ll always want to spend time with you, no matter who I marry.” Lillian smiled bleakly.

If she ever married Oliver, she would be forced to give up a lot of things. She would be forced to make some very big choices.

Southport Hospital, December, Present-day

T
HE FLOOR WAS VERY BUSY WHEN
L
UCY ARRIVED ON
F
RIDAY
morning. She was late, as usual, and rushed to catch up with her supervisor and the other students who were on morning rounds.

Lucy had not been to the hospital since Wednesday, and there were several new patients on the floor. That meant she had to read their charts and quickly learn what was going on with each one and what kind of care they required.

She found Margaret in a room with two patients, behind the drawn curtain that surrounded the bed near the window. From what Lucy could tell, the woman was recovering from abdominal surgery, and Margaret and another student nurse were checking the incision.

Finally Margaret pulled the curtain back and saw Lucy. “We’ve got our hands full this morning.” She indicated the patient in the other bed, who was watching TV. “I need you to give Mrs. Geiger a bed bath, Bates. Then she needs to get out of bed and do some walking in the hall.”

Mrs. Geiger looked alarmed. “I can’t walk around. I just had surgery. I need to rest.”

“A stent, laproscopic,” Margaret said to Lucy, indicating that the woman had surgery to open an artery in her heart, but the surgeon had performed the procedure through a very small incision.

“It’s better if you can get up and move around a little,” Lucy said to the patient quietly. “You can go home sooner. If you lie in bed, you could wind up with complications like bedsores or pneumonia.”

“Pneumonia?” The woman sat up, looking much more energetic. “I don’t need that.”

“Of course you don’t,” Lucy said kindly. “Let me get you cleaned up and I’ll change your gown. And then we’ll take a little stroll.”

The woman smiled at her. “All right. I’ll try.”

Margaret watched as Lucy prepared the bed bath. Then another student nurse came in. She looked worried and the rubber gloves she wore had blood stains on them. That didn’t look right, Lucy thought.

“I’ll be right back, Bates. Keep going,” Margaret said as she went to help the other student.

Lucy nodded and kept going with the bed bath. “I’m not scrubbing too hard for you, am I?” she asked, remembering her last complaint.

“Not at all. Feels good. I’m covered with that iodine stuff on
my chest, see?” Mrs. Geiger pointed to the orange-brown stain that showed around her bandage. “That comes off, right?”

“Of course it does. You can probably take a shower tomorrow. This is just a quick clean up.”

“Well, I appreciate it. My daughter and my grandchildren are coming this afternoon. I don’t want to scare the kids.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll look just fine for them,” Lucy promised.

She knew she would be wildly busy today but made a mental note to come back later and see if Mrs. Geiger needed some help fixing her hair or putting on some makeup. It seemed silly and superficial, but when a patient felt as if they looked more like their “normal” self, they tended to feel better faster.

Mrs. Geiger was soon washed and wearing a clean gown. Lucy wondered if she should wait for Margaret to return before getting the patient out of bed. Margaret was really supposed to be watching everything the students did but, of course, she couldn’t be in six places at once.

Lucy took a look around the bed and cleared some garbage off the bedside table. She noticed two IV bags hanging from the pole. One was very low and needed changing. She checked Mrs. Geiger’s chart. She was a diabetic and taking insulin and also electrolytes for her heart condition.

“I’ll be right back,” Lucy said. “I need to find my supervisor, then we’ll get you up.”

Mrs. Geiger nodded and turned on her TV again, flipping through the channels. Lucy soon found Margaret a few doors down. Another student had been changing a bandage and a few of the stitches on the incision had come out. Not a grave matter, but the doctor had to be called, and Margaret and the student were with the patient, applying pressure to the wound while they waited for him.

Margaret glanced up at Lucy. “What is it, Bates?”

“Mrs. Geiger is ready to get out of bed. And her IV is very low,” Lucy added.

“All right. I’ll be right in.”

Lucy nodded. She had noticed fresh IV bags left by the bed, so she went back to the room.

Margaret came in and gave Lucy an impatient look. “Can you do this quickly, or should I?”

“I can do it,” Lucy said. She picked up the IV bag and made sure it was the insulin and not electrolytes, which were not needed yet. She attached the fresh bag, then checked the doctor’s orders for the rate of the flow. She checked the meter on the line and then looked over the catheter on Mrs. Geiger’s arm.

Margaret watched impatiently. “Yes, yes. That looks fine. All right, get her up carefully. First the chair, then see if she can do a few laps in the hallway.”

“A few laps, that’s a good one.” Mrs. Geiger looked at Lucy and rolled her eyes. Lucy helped her over to the chair, and her supervisor disappeared.

Lucy cleaned up from the bed bath. One sheet felt wet, and she went to the linen closet to get a fresh one and a dry blanket.

When she returned she found Mrs. Geiger slumped over in her chair, her head on her chest. Lucy ran over to her, her own pulse racing. “Mrs. Geiger? What’s wrong?”

Lucy leaned over and lifted her chin. Mrs. Geiger’s mouth hung open and her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Oh no! Oh my…” She reached over and hit a button by the bed, signaling a patient emergency.

Within seconds doctors and nurses came running into the room, instantly followed by a huge medical cart. Jack was one of the doctors. Lucy was grateful to see him…and mortified.

He bent over and quickly examined Mrs. Geiger then looked at the IV bags and the meter on the line. Then he pulled the line out of the catheter. “Get her on the bed. She’s gone into shock.”

Margaret came up beside Lucy. “Wait outside, Bates. At my desk.”

Lucy nodded. She felt the tears fill her eyes as she walked out into the hallway. She was such a screw up. Whatever made her think she could be a nurse?

She waited at Margaret’s desk for what seemed like an hour, though when she looked at her watch she realized only ten minutes had passed.

Lucy wanted to leave—just walk out the door and keep going. But first she had to find out what had happened to Mrs. Geiger.

Please, God. Please let her be okay. Please don’t let her die. I couldn’t live with myself if that happened….

At last Margaret emerged from Mrs. Geiger’s room. “Over here, Bates,” she said, steering Lucy to a quiet corner of the nurses’ station.

“Did she come out of it? Is she going to be all right?” Lucy asked anxiously.

“She’s come around. We caught her just in time.”

“Oh, thank God.” Lucy felt so relieved, she thought she was going to collapse. She looked up at her supervisor. “What happened? What did I do to her?”

“The insulin drip, didn’t you check the doctor’s orders? I saw you reading the chart.”

“I set it to ninety, exactly as it said.”

“It said forty, Lucy. You must have read the order wrong.” Margaret rubbed the back her neck wearily. “I should have checked, but I thought you could read a chart by now.”

Lucy took a breath, fighting hard not to cry. “I did read the
chart. It said ninety, as clear as day…well, as clear as I could see. I can’t help it if these doctors have such horrible handwriting!”

Now she was crying and shouting at her supervisor. Margaret touched Lucy’s arm. “Calm down, Lucy. It’s over. The patient will be okay.
I
might get carpal tunnel from all the paperwork I’ll have to do to report this, but
she’ll
be fine.”

Lucy thought of poor Mrs. Geiger, how she had pulled through her heart surgery so well and was looking forward to seeing her grandchildren today.

Meanwhile, I come along and nearly kill her.

Lucy wiped the tears from her cheeks.
Thank you, God, for letting her survive. Don’t worry, I’m taking the hint. I’m not going to push my luck any further
.

“Lucy, why don’t you take a break and compose yourself?” Margaret suggested.

Lucy shook her head. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s just not working out for me.”

She pulled away and started walking quickly toward the elevators.

“Lucy? Where are you going?” Margaret called after her.

Lucy turned and looked at her briefly over her shoulder. “Back to the diner. I didn’t quit my day job.”

“I
T
’
S ALL FOR THE BEST
, T
UCKER
.
T
HE BOYS NEED HER AT HOME
, and I need her here. Sure, I know she had her heart set on being a nurse, but she was never cut out for that type of work. Better she learned it now than later.” Charlie leaned over the counter and spoke to Tucker Tulley in a near whisper, his eyes fixed on Lucy who was on the other side of the diner, taking an order.

Tucker, one of the village’s finest, was also Charlie’s best
friend since childhood. He stopped in the diner every morning on his way to the police station, or for a coffee break if he was walking the beat.

He poured sugar into his coffee and stirred it. “That might all be true, Charlie. But it’s a bitter pill to swallow, don’t you think?”

“Sure, she’s upset. It’s only been, what, three or four days? She’ll get over it, you’ll see. Lucy never broods very long over things.” Charlie flipped a burger onto one half of a roll and covered it with the other. “I bet she forgets all about this nursing school business by New Year’s.”

He set the plate on the shelf for outgoing orders but was careful to ring the bell lightly. It was late afternoon, the lunch rush was over, and the Clam Box was practically empty. There wouldn’t be much action until dinnertime. Charlie wasn’t sure if he was going to stay open that night with more snow predicted.

“So she’s quit for good after all that school work.” Tucker sipped his coffee. “That’s a shame.”

“That’s what she says. I heard her on the phone this morning, talking to her school advisor. The woman wanted Lucy to come back after the holidays and start over. But Lucy said, no, don’t bother, she wasn’t coming back.” Charlie wiped the counter with a damp cloth. “I’m not pleased about her wasting all that tuition money but the truth is, I was glad to hear her say she was giving up.”

Tucker frowned. “Poor thing. She must have had some scare.”

“She read something wrong off a chart, and the patient went into a coma. Well, not a coma exactly. It was more like a fainting spell, I think. I bet it happens all the time, you just never hear about it.”

“Doctors are only human. Nurses, too…even cops. I could tell you stories, believe me.”

“Tell them to Lucy. Maybe it will cheer her up.”

“Maybe she’ll brood about it a while and change her mind.” Tucker had always liked Lucy. He admired her for putting up with Charlie all these years and for having the guts to go for what she really wanted.

“Maybe,” Charlie replied slowly. “But not if I can help it.”

Lucy walked over and picked up the hamburger. “This had fries on the side, Charlie, lettuce and tomato on top.” She handed the dish through the shelf to him, and he took it back to the grill.

“Hello, Tucker, how are you today?”

“I’m good, Lucy. How’s it going?”

Lucy tilted her head to one side. “You must have heard from my husband that I dropped out of my training.”

Tucker licked his lips. “Yes, I have. Sounds rough. Maybe you need a break.”

“It’s not as simple as that, Tucker. I wish it were.”

“It’s not that easy to give up your dream, Lucy. Not after all the work you’ve put into it.”

“It is when you’re a flop at it,” she said bluntly. She glanced at him, her expression softer. “Thanks, Tucker. Nice try, but…” She shrugged and took the plate back from Charlie. “I’ll see you later.”

Tucker turned to Charlie. “I don’t think I helped her very much.”

Charlie scowled at him. “You didn’t have to encourage her, Tucker. Just treat her normal, like good old Lucy. Like she never even tried to be a nurse, okay?”

“Okay, okay. You don’t have to bite my head off. I was just trying to say something nice to her, that’s all.”

Charlie shook his head. “This is hard for me. Lucy is always the one bucking me up, you know? I’m not used to things being the opposite. It makes me nervous,” he confided.

“That’s marriage for you. You think you got it figured, and one day you get home and all the furniture’s rearranged. You don’t know what’s what anymore.”

Charlie looked out at Lucy, delivering the order, grabbing a pot of coffee and hurrying back to fill the customer’s cup. The familiar sight should have been comforting to him. He’d gotten what he wanted. Everything was back to normal.