Dermott leaned across the table and grabbed her wrist before she stood. “It starts with the big leaps, Jenna. One milkshake is a baby step, two turns it into a big leap.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Trusting yourself. Believing that you can do what you set out to do, have what you set out to have. Taking the leap that’s big enough to make a difference in some way. And it doesn’t matter what kind of leap it is so long as you can prove to yourself that you can do it.”
“You’re assuming I want to leap,” she snapped.
He let go of her wrist, but didn’t say another word. Instead, he folded his arms across his chest and simply stared at Jenna. It was a stare that went right through her, made her feel naked and vulnerable, because it was a stare that told her he knew her so well. In ways, better than she knew herself.
So, the next step was up to her. She could cancel the second milkshake, which was the same old predictable Jenna Lawson, or she could go for it. All the way. “OK, so maybe you’re right about me and my baby steps,” she admitted, sliding back into the booth. “But do you really think I’m going to be able to move, let alone leap, after I drink two milkshakes?”
“You’ve already leaped,” he said, reaching across the table and taking hold of her hand.
She had, hadn’t she? One big leap in such a small, insignificant thing. She felt good. Probably much better than she would feel at the end of the meal, she thought as the waitress plonked two huge milkshakes down in front of her. “Better to leap now than after I drink these,” she said, pulling the chocolate one over to her.
The burgers were perfect, but Dermott hardly noticed because Jenna had his undivided attention. She didn’t have to do anything other than dip her french fry in ketchup to capture him, and he was definitely captured. Body, soul…heart. Totally in love. Oh, he’d been toying with it all along. Admitting it, taking it back, admitting it again, taking it back again. Now, though, there was no more taking it back, and that made his problem even bigger. Protecting Max, trying to hide all the ugly truths from Nancy’s parents, and trying to find out how Jenna fit into all this…it was an insane juggling act, and he hated being a juggler. What he wanted was stability. A calm life.
But he loved Jenna and, in some absurd way, he was pretty sure she loved him too. Or else why would she have stayed here, in the middle of all this uncertainty? For sure, she could have a better professional life just about anywhere. And she really didn’t have any kind of a social life. So something was holding her and he hoped it was her feelings for him, and even for Max. Or maybe he was being sloppy and sentimental over something that simply wasn’t there. Jenna landed, stayed a while, then flew away, and maybe that was in her ticket for what she had in mind to do here.
Damn that uncertainty creeping in again.
Still, he’d loved her at first sight the first time. The hell of it was, he’d loved her at first sight the second time too, that day in the elevator. Even when he’d known better. But no matter how bad it got, Jenna made it better, made it seem like all his other problems weren’t beating him down. So what was wrong with living in the moment…living in Jenna’s moment? “Want to know when I first knew that we were going to get involved?” he asked, trying to push aside his doubts and live in
this
moment.
She shoved aside both milkshakes. “We were putting a halo on that patient with a broken neck.”
He shook his head. “It was that day you stood up to Dr. McNichol.”
“I was a registered nurse, and he wanted me to fetch him coffee. I had ten patients to see, charts to take care of, phone calls to make, doctors’ orders to fulfill, and the man wanted me to stop in the middle of everything, drop what I was doing and go get him a cup of coffee. What was I supposed to have done?”
“He was the chief of service. Most people would have done what he asked.”
“And I was a floor nurse who was doing the work of three. Fetching coffee wasn’t what I got two college degrees to do, it wasn’t in my job description, and he didn’t have the right to make that request of me, not when he was capable of walking across the hall to the lounge and getting his own coffee. And I filed a complaint over it when he yelled at me, in case you never heard about that.”
“He yelled at you because you marched over to the lounge and brought him the whole pot of coffee. It was an industrialsized pot, Jenna. Held fifty cups.”
She laughed. “He got his coffee, didn’t he? And he never asked me for anything outside the job I was paid to do again. No one else did, either.”
“That was the first time I ever saw you, and you were breathing fire, carrying that big coffeemaker down the hall, its cord dragging behind. People were running to get out of your way.” Sexy as hell, determined. He’d known then she was a woman to be reckoned with. Fierce to the bone in defense of something or someone she believed in. That hadn’t changed. She still was, and he wondered what it would have been like for Max to have a mother who so ferociously defended him rather than…No! He wasn’t going to think about that now. He had the dark hours to deal with the bitter recoil of those feelings. Now was for pleasant thoughts.
“Do you think that’s the reason they transferred me to another department the next week?”
“As I recall, you were transferred a few times in the next few weeks.” Her eyes fairly sparked with mischief now, and he loved that. Hadn’t seen it so much since she’d come to live in Fort Dyott and that was a pity.
“I was young and foolish.”
“Never foolish, Jenna.” He paused while the waitress cleared away their plates, then scampered away. “You always had some kind of a purpose or mission, and you let people know what it was, but it was never foolish.”
“All I ever wanted to do was give good patient care. People always got in the way of that, paperwork became more important than the patients. Hospital policies impinged on common-sense procedure. It got to be a maze, Dermott. One you couldn’t find your way through, and I got frustrated.” She smiled. “More than once. And with frustration came my transfers, then job changes, because I couldn’t hold my tongue, or I wouldn’t do the paperwork when the patient needed real care. I don’t suppose I was meant to fit into the system.” She laughed. “Or maybe I was meant to devise the system. I don’t know. But however it was, I did sort of have this pattern of behavior, didn’t I?” She signaled for the waitress to take away the milkshakes. She’d tried both, had had as much as she could manage. “I still have it, and I guess it’s probably not going to change. Like my preference for vanilla.”
Which was what scared him. Jenna was Jenna, and expecting her to be anything else was tantamount to a crime. He’d learned that years ago, and had thought about it so much since she’d come here. Jenna, being Jenna, was what he liked. Even with all her complications.
“Well, some of your patterns are very nice,” he admitted, shoving away his vanilla milkshake. “But you’re right. Some things probably won’t change.” No matter how much he wanted them to. And he did want them to.
H
ER
phone was ringing. Or was that the doorbell downstairs?
Jenna turned over in bed and squinted at the clock. Three-fifteen! She’d been sleeping like a baby for hours, pleasant dreams of ice-cream parlors and handsome boyfriends, and the shrill of the phone snapped her out of it as surely as a pail of ice cold water on her face would have. She bolted up in bed and lunged for her phone. “Hello,” she gasped into the receiver.
“Miss Lawson, this is Alisa Charney.” The voice on the other end was frail, wobbly. Crying. “It’s my husband. He’s awfully sick…needs help. I can’t get him out of bed.”
“Symptoms?” Jenna asked, scooting to the edge of the bed, getting ready to toss on the first clothes she could find.
“Short of breath, chest pains…Maybe he’s sick to his stomach. I can’t tell for sure.”
All kinds of things went through her mind, none of them good. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Jenna said. “
Dr. Callahan
and myself. In the meantime, try to get your husband to sit up a little, or at least recline back on his pillows so he’s not lying flat. And keep an eye on his breathing.”
“Please, hurry,” the woman cried, not even protesting that Dermott was going to be making this house call, too. That meant Ron had to be awfully sick. Or dying.
“I couldn’t get a good sense of the symptoms,” she explained to Dermott, who had answered his door still groggy, and looking so sexy in his low-riding pajama bottoms and mussed hair. “But it could be a heart attack, maybe acid indigestion…”
He turned away from the door and ran to dress while she went to Max’s room to rouse him from sleep. Beautiful little boy, she thought as she scooped him up in her arms. He looked like Dermott, only with blond hair.
“We going for a ride?” Max asked, barely opening his eyes at her.
“Your daddy has to go see somebody who’s sick, and—”
“No!” he cried, squirming out of her arms. He hit the floor with a thud, then curled up right where he fell, on the oval crocheted throw rug, and went right back to sleep.
“What’s going on?” Dermott called from the other room.
“Max doesn’t want to get out of bed.” And she couldn’t blame him.
Dermott stepped into the doorway and took a look. “Can you stay here with him while I go? I don’t like disturbing him all the time.”
“I can, but that means you’ll have to go face Alisa alone.” She bent down, picked up the little boy and laid him back in his bed. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
“What I’m sure of is that I don’t want to disturb my son in the middle of the night. If Alisa can’t deal with that she can call someone over in Muledeer.”
Jenna knew he wouldn’t make the woman do that, but she liked hearing Dermott say it. Of course, come morning, Alisa would have a new round of gripes about Dermott, but it warmed her heart that Dermott didn’t pay any attention to the inevitable as he trudged out in the middle of the night. He was a good man, and the more she watched him, the more she understood how good. In the end, that’s what mattered the most, she decided as she lay down in his bed, pulled up his sheets and drifted off, smelling the scent of him all around her.
The alarm was sounding, and she didn’t want to get up, but the sun was streaming in through the blinds, trying to force her eyes open. Which she resisted.
She did turn over to swat the alarm, only to be obstructed by something she didn’t expect. It was Max, curled into her side. Lying there, sucking his thumb, a picture of innocence, he looked like a perfect angel. Yes, he had come in looking for Dermott a little while after his father had gone. She remembered that. He hadn’t been having a scary dream, as he called it, but he was afraid he might, so she’d let him crawl in with her, like that was the natural thing to do.
And she’d slept very well. Having this child in her arms…it was a feeling she couldn’t describe, didn’t understand. But she liked it. Liked it more than she wanted to. “You ready to get up?” she asked him.
In answer, he bounded off the bed and ran across the room, heading straight for the bedroom door, then the hall, then his own bedroom.
Laughing, Jenna scooted to the edge of the bed wishing she had that same kind of energy in the morning, wishing she didn’t have to leave Dermott’s bed, wishing Dermott was right there with her.
Had he come home yet? She didn’t know, but she was curious, so she trudged out to the living room where Dermott was sprawled out on the couch, sound asleep. He looked like Max when he slept, in the way his hair was mussed, the way he was twisted slightly to his side. Looking almost innocent.
She stood and studied him for a moment, then decided to go back to her apartment. It was still too early for work, but she could grab a quick shower, go outside for a walk and have enough time to stop by the diner for a light breakfast. Her departure from the apartment was stopped, though, when Dermott rolled over and opened his eyes. “Indigestion,” he said, his voice rough and sexy from sleep.
“You’re referring to Ron and not yourself, aren’t you?”
Sitting up, Dermott brushed the hair back from his eyes and indulged in a good, long stretch. His clothes were crumpled, dark stubble on his face emphasized that he hadn’t shaved in twenty-four hours, and his blue eyes were heavy from lack of sleep, all of it making Dermott Callahan just about the sexiest man she’d ever seen in her life. The unkempt look suited him and, to be honest, she liked it better that the polished perfection she’d come to know in the hospital. That had been all for show and image, and she understood that. But this was the essential Dermott, and he was a breath-taker, to be sure.
“Ron has acid reflux, severe case of it. He’s under a lot of stress and it all backed up on him. I gave him a prescription, told him the over-the-counter drugs weren’t strong enough to do the job, and told him I’d like to send him for some tests. And—”
“Let me guess,” Jenna interrupted. “When Alisa found out he wasn’t going to die, your services were no longer needed.”
“Something like that. Alisa kept herself at a distance until I determined the problem, then she disappeared altogether after that. Of course, Ron wasn’t very easy having me there and there’s no good way to tell a man that I suspect his wife is causing him a lot of his problems.” He smiled. “Ron knows it, though. You could tell by that agonized look on his face when Alisa’s around where the biggest source of his stress is coming from, and I have a hunch that the incident with Joshua didn’t help their situation.”
“Well, he’s lucky his stress didn’t cause him a real heart attack. I hope he takes your advice, or goes to another doctor Alisa will approve of.”
“I told him he might not be so lucky next time, that he really should have the tests done right away, but Alisa insisted they’d go to Muledeer in a few days and let the doctors there handle everything. So I did everything I could and left. The rest will be up to them.” He stood, stretched his long frame, a gesture she couldn’t help but admire on a body like his, then plodded to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. “By the way, I wanted to crawl into bed with you when I got back but you had another man there with you. It was awfully cozy.”
She laughed. “It was, wasn’t it?”
“Was it his idea?”
“He was afraid he might have a scary dream.”
“Would that work for me? Suppose I told you I might have a scary dream. Would you let me sleep with you?”
“If that spot’s not already taken, I might.”
“Seriously, is he OK? Because it’s not like him to want to sleep with someone…not even me. He’s pretty independent that way.”
“Well, I was a little worried, but I watched him for a while, and he dozed right off when he crawled into bed. And he has lots of energy this morning, so that’ll prove he had a pretty good night.”
“Better night than I had,” he commented.
Jenna pulled in a tormented breath, weighing her words before she spoke, as what she had to say was so dreadful. So painful. But she couldn’t hold back, couldn’t keep it to herself because she’d seen what she’d seen, and it was Dermott’s right to know. So, finally, she said it. “He flinched, Dermott. When I went to fix the pillow under his head, and reached across him, he flinched.”
A flash of comprehension flickered in Dermott’s eyes, but he didn’t let on. “And…”
“Hands up over his face, a defensive posture. Only for a moment. Then he was fine.”
Dermott nodded, swallowing hard. “This is something Frank and Irene are never to know. Do you understand that, Jenna? I don’t want them finding out.”
Her stomach knotted.
She already knew what he was going to tell her.
She’d recognized it when Max had flinched and pulled up to protect himself, because that’s what she used to do. Still did sometimes, when she was caught off guard. “She abused him,” she whispered, so Max wouldn’t overhear. “His mother abused him.”
Agony spread across Dermott’s face. “I found out, too late, that she would lock him in his room, then live the life she wanted to that day. Leave the house, take her drugs, see her various men. She’d get home before I did, and let him out. Sometimes she’d just lock him in the house and let him have the run of it when she went out.”
“Did Max tell you?”
“No, he never said a word.”
Like she hadn’t said a word, even when people who’d suspected had asked.
“I had a bad headache one morning. A migraine. I didn’t want to work through it because my patients needed better from me, so I had my nurse cancel my appointments, and I went home to go to bed just shortly after noon. Nancy wasn’t there, but Max was, all alone. Apparently she hadn’t fed him and he’d climbed up on a chair to get to a box of dry cereal. He’d…” He shut his eyes and bit his lip. “He’d poured it on the floor and eaten it off the floor. And he was so scared, Jenna.” Dermott’s voiced trailed off into almost nothing. “My little boy was so scared. I’ll never forget the look on his face when I walked in. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget…”
“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry.” The stark pain in his eyes hurt her heart.
“So was I, especially when I learned that she’d done this other times. Many times. She’d lock him in for the day then go do what she wanted to.”
The way her father had locked her up, then left her. “Did she ever hurt him?” Jenna asked, although she already knew.
“She claimed she didn’t, but Max always had bruises. Nancy would say he fell down, or bumped into something. And maybe he did because he was always alone. She insisted that he was a clumsy little boy, and there was nothing to prove otherwise. But he’s no more clumsy than any other boys his age and after I took him and left her, I never saw as many bruises on him as I did when she took care of him. So, yes, I think there’s a good chance she hit him.”
“But her parents don’t know?”
“They knew about the drugs…that couldn’t be kept quiet after her wreck. And maybe they knew that she was drinking, and seeing other men. But if they’d known she was endangering Max…” He shook his head. “They wouldn’t have allowed it. Not even from their daughter. And whatever else they knew, or didn’t know, I don’t talk about it with them, so I don’t know.”
“You protect them, though.”
“They were good parents, and they’re the best grandparents a little boy could ever have. They do right by Max in the ways that matter, and I love them for that. So, yes, I protect them.”
“You’re a good man, Dermott. I think if people knew…”
“But they won’t, because that would hurt my son. People here already feel bad enough with what they know. It’s like the whole town absorbed some of the guilt for not seeing it.”
“Because she hid it from everybody, not just you. But keep in mind, Dermott, that there was a time you did love her, and as much as you hate everything she did, you need to hang onto some of the good for Max’s sake, because he’ll need that someday.”
“Like he’ll need to know how I didn’t see what was happening to her? How’s he going to react to that, Jenna? His mother was destroying herself by degrees and his father didn’t even see it.”
“I know you want to blame yourself for what happened, but all you did was what you were supposed to do. And, sure, maybe you were too busy working, maybe you didn’t pay enough attention, maybe your marriage was failing for any number of reasons. But we all have blind spots, Dermott. That’s human nature, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up for it, because sometimes it’s good.”
“Good? How can that be good?”
“You fall in love with someone who’s not quite perfect, but you don’t see the imperfections because you’re so much in love. That’s a good blind spot.”
“Well, I’ll concede that point, but that doesn’t make me any less responsible for what happened.”
“With an addiction, no one is responsible except the one who is addicted. You didn’t cause Nancy to become an addict, the way I didn’t cause my father to become an alcoholic. There’s always a lot of blame to go around but an addiction is a very lonely illness. I spent years and years blaming myself for my dad’s addiction because he blamed me for my mother’s death, said she was never healthy after she had me, and that her death was my fault. But it wasn’t. When I was older, I found her death certificate. She died of virulent pneumonia. I was too young to know if she’d seen a doctor, but I think she probably didn’t. With my father’s temper, I doubt he would have allowed that. So after she died, he blamed me, and I believed him because, I suppose, in some way I did feel guilty. It’s an easy thing to take on yourself, especially when you’re so young, and when there are no clear answers why it happened, like with Nancy, or my mother. And people need those answers, Dermott. It’s their resolution.”
“I’m so sorry, JJ. I’m so caught up in my own mess and just look what you went through yourself.”
“My mess is all in the past. Your mess involves a little boy who has some serious things to face in his future.” She wouldn’t turn this into something about her because it was about Max. And it was about helping Dermott. “Does he ever talk about it?”
Dermott shook his head. “Not a word. But he has those nightmares. The child therapist I took him to down in Edmonton said he’ll have memories, but right now they’re repressed except in the nightmares, and at some time in the future when they surface they may cause problems. It’s just a waiting game.”