Secret Santa (16 page)

Opened the door wider.

Let the men in.

Looked out just as furtively as Lige had a few minutes before.

Then slammed the door shut.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

C
HARLI
YANKED
THE
BELT
of her robe tighter around her waist. She surveyed the two men who’d collapsed into her kitchen chairs and whirled around to face Lige Whitaker.

“What exactly do you expect me to do here at my house?”

“Chuck always kept stuff at his house. I’d take sick ones by his—”

“No.” Charli swallowed hard. She didn’t want to hear how she’d been snookered into doing the exact same thing her father had done. “No. These men, if they’re as sick as they look, they need to go to the E.R.”

Lige put one hand on a hip and eyeballed her. “They’re illegals.”

Good grief.

“The hospital can’t turn them down based on their status. You of all people should know that.”

“Sure. But maybe I don’t want some nosy triage nurse to know my business and who I’ve got working for me. All it takes is one busybody do-gooder to put a call in to immigration, and suddenly I’ve got a raid on my hands. Then even the legal ones scatter.”

This man couldn’t be for real. She worked her jaw to keep from yelling at him.

In as even a tone as Charli could manage, she bit out, “Hospital. Now. I’ll treat them in the E.R., like I’m supposed to.”

“You could have already seen to ’em in the time we’ve spent arguing.”

The sickest man made a retching sound. Charli snapped her head in his direction to see him turn a shade greener. He grabbed his abdomen and moaned something in Spanish. Poor fellow. A pawn in Lige’s army. He needed to be on a nice, clean hospital bed, getting pumped full of IV fluids. It angered her that Lige was delaying their care simply to yank her around.

Charli turned back to Lige. “And you could have already had them at the E.R. in the time it’s taking you to attempt—and fail, I might add—to persuade me to treat them.”

“Oh, you’re gonna fix ’em up. You’re bought and paid for. A hundred grand’s worth. You can suck it up, and the hospital won’t have to. Save the taxpayers money. Plus, your mama already thinks the hospital will be named after her hero.” With that, Lige yanked a chair from the table, spun it around and straddled it, resting his arms on the back.

When he mentioned the money, nausea to rival the sick migrant worker’s welled up in Charli’s stomach. “No,” she said. “You paid my father. That has nothing to do with me.”

Lige sneered. “I like the way my money’s getting me a buy-one-get-one-free.”

Charli decided she’d call his bluff. “You can’t reveal anything about that money without revealing why you paid it. I think that’s called a standoff.”

Lige raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything about talking about the money? It’s easier to fire you. Suspend your privileges at the hospital. Evict you from your office. With no privileges, you’re going to find it hard to keep your patients—oh, I mean, your
daddy’s
patients. And I’ll make sure no other hospital around here takes you on.”

She drew herself to her fullest height and wished desperately he had not caught her in her robe. Something about bare legs and the thin pajama shirt she wore under the robe left her feeling defenseless and vulnerable. “On what grounds? I’ve done nothing wrong—”

“Pshaw. I don’t have to go to much trouble. You’re peer-reviewed at the hospital. Somebody won’t mind doing me a favor.”

Charli folded her arms across her chest. The man was a snake. “Then whoever you’d get to do
that
favor? Why don’t you dial him up to help you out of this jam?”

Lige scratched his chin. His tobacco-stained nails made a rasping sound against his salt-and-pepper whiskers. “Who else do I have such prime leverage on? Not just that business with your daddy—and you want to protect his memory, don’t you? You don’t want people asking questions. But I know for a fact you were the one who donated that money. So all I got to do is start a whisper about how you were the one who donated it. Suddenly, people are going to wonder where you got all that cash. People are funny about cash. Especially big piles of it. They tend to jump to conclusions. And then when I say, ‘I had to suspend her privileges for the good of the hospital,’ well, they’ll be ready to believe the worst.”

“Do it.” She made her voice firm, hard. “I won’t repeat my father’s mistakes. I’ll start over somewhere else. Your reach can’t extend that far. I’ll dig ditches to pay my student loans back. Plus, I’ll make sure people know why you really fired me.”

He threw back his head and roared with laughter. The man’s teeth were as yellow as his nails.

How could I have ever thought he was my father’s friend?

Lige’s raucous laughter dribbled to a chuckle. He wiped a tear from one eye and shook his head. “Oh-ho, aren’t you high and mighty on those fine principles of yours. First off, who are people going to believe? You’ve got an honest face, I’ll grant you that. But I have a lot of credibility in this town, and a lot of people owe me favors. Plus, you’ll be trashing your daddy’s memory and stressing out that mother of yours. And you still won’t have a job.”

Charli was on the brink of telling him she’d take her chances and dialing 9-1-1 when he smiled.

In the blandest of tones, he asked, “Why not think about it like this? If you won’t do it to protect your own backside, then think about your mama. How much trouble would the IRS make for her if I just happened to anonymously report all that income?”

The sickest Hispanic man dashed for Charli’s kitchen sink and retched into it. She gagged at the smell, but went over to him, patted him on the back. The man looked at her with desperate eyes. He muttered something in Spanish in a pleading tone.

Poor guy. He’s caught in the middle of this, and all he wants is someone to help him feel better.

Charli rinsed out the sink, walked him back to his chair. The man settled and gave her a grateful look; she turned and pulled a gallon jug of bleach out from under her sink cabinet. A generous glug of chlorine cut the odor and began the disinfecting work.

“Don’t bring my mother into this—” she began.

“Yeah, well. She’s got other fish to fry besides the IRS. She’s already come to me, asking me for a quiet little loan. I guess she’s run up some credit card debt, and that Jed Cannady, your dad’s attorney, he’s not letting loose any of your dad’s money.” He chuckled. “I do like a predictable woman. Too bad you gave away all the money you could have used to solve her little problem. So, what’s it gonna be?”

Hot anger boiled up inside Charli. How dare her mother put her in this position? There was no money. Jed had been crystal clear that the terms of the will specified that the annuity would come in regular payments, that he would pay the household bills out of the annuity, and then whatever was left was her mother’s allowance.

And Charli? With her own student loans and bills, there was no way she could help her mother out of a jam.

Charli had asked her mom if she was having trouble—and she’d smiled and told her she was just rebuilding her credit. How could Charli have been taken in by her mother’s reassuring lies?

But Charli’s anger was tempered with a flash of pain and guilt. She knew exactly what had happened. Her mother had wanted to give the perfect gifts for Christmas—just like she always had—and she’d spent all of her allowance. And then she’d done what she’d always done—found a way to buy something right now, and left it to her family to figure out how to pay for it later.

I hate Christmas.

Charli steadied herself against the doorframe, stared at the tableau before her and came to the decision that seemed all but inevitable.

Is this how her father had felt twenty years ago? Had her mother put him in a similar position?

Lige regarded her with complacent satisfaction, and a tad of impatience. “Well, okay, then. You getting with the program, or what?”

“We’ll have to go to the office,” Charli told him in a low voice.

Lige cupped his hand around his ear. “What’s that? I don’t think I quite heard you.”

He’d heard her. Sadist that he was, he wanted to twist the knife.

She grimaced, bit back bile that had risen in her throat. “I said, we’ll have to go to my office. I don’t have anything here but my first aid kit. You drive them. I’ll follow in my car. When did they get sick? And do they speak any English?”

* * *

C
HARLI
HEARD
A
TAP
on the front door of the office. She ignored it, rolling over and burying her head under her father’s pillow. She breathed in the last vestige of her father’s cologne from his couch.

You did it to save Mom, didn’t you, Dad? That was the only reason someone with your integrity would have gone along with a cover-up. You did it for the same reason I did. For Mom. But then once Lige had you he wouldn’t cut you loose. You couldn’t bear to spend the money—except maybe to help people out.

The two migrant workers were gone now. She’d patched them up and pumped them full of IV fluids, exactly what she would have done at the hospital.

Well, no. At the hospital, she would have had access to a full lab that would have given her quicker results. Drawing blood here and using the stool samples they’d given her, she’d have to wait for send-out lab results.

Tonight, she had been flying by the seat of her pants. Vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps...sounded like a garden-variety stomach bug, albeit one on steroids. From what she could understand in their broken English, they were the sickest of their families. Bad meat? Poor refrigeration? Could be anything.

At least they were gone―asleep, presumably, in their beds.

But most importantly, Lige was gone, too.

Man, she wanted a shower, both a literal one and a figurative one.

The tapping came again, louder, more insistent. It had to be the security guard who patrolled both the hospital and the offices across the street. Charli shoved back her shirtsleeve and saw that it was half past two. Great. Four hours and she’d be due at the hospital for morning rounds. Should she even bother going home to bed?

Straightening up, she stuck her feet into the flats she’d shoved on earlier. Might as well tell the security guard she was alive and well and then she could at least head home to grab that shower and change clothes.

The man at the door, however, wasn’t a security guard.

It was Neil. And he didn’t look happy.

Perfect. Coming up with explanations on the fly during the wee hours of the morning was exactly what she wanted to do. This day had gone from a zero to a negative five on the jubilation scale.

Charli unlocked the door and waved him in.

“Well, why on earth not come on in? Arm hurting? Stomach cramps? Coughing? Or maybe a sore throat? I think I got more sleep during residency than I have the past month.”

Neil stood just inside the door, his back ramrod straight, his arms by his side. “I saw you leave. And when you didn’t come back...”

She averted her eyes to the floor. The poor philodendron plant in the corner drooped as badly as she felt.

How much had Neil seen? How much had he understood of what he’d seen?

“Welcome to my world. Doctors’ hours, you know.”

Neil crossed through the vestibule to a chair and sat down. “I don’t want to keep you long, because you look dead on your feet. So we can make this quick. But I’m not leaving until I know what Lige wanted tonight.”

Charli pushed the inner door back open. “You might as well have saved yourself the trouble. Because I’m sorry, but no can do. Patient confidentiality.”

“Those guys should have been at the E.R. There’s no reason you had to treat them here in your office. If it’s an emergency, people go to the emergency room.”

Neil had a keen grasp of the obvious, she had to give him that.

“Guess Lige wanted the best,” Charli ground out bitterly.

“No. Lige wanted something else. Secrecy. Charli...” Neil leaned forward with an imploring expression on his face. His eyes were dark and serious. “Charli, why go to this trouble for him? You didn’t want to. I saw that tonight.”

“You saw a lot tonight, didn’t you.” It was a statement, not a question. Charli felt the restraint on her temper loosen. She made an effort to pull it back, hold her tongue from saying anything that could cut.

“I saw enough. He was... I’ve never seen him like that, Charli. You can’t let him bully you. You have to stand up to him. Does he expect you to provide concierge medical service for him 24/7? In exchange for him naming the hospital after your dad? Or...is it something more?” Neil’s tone was laden with judgment.

What did he know? Then her fear gave way to anger. She didn’t have time for this—not when she had to clean up her mother’s mess. “This is the last conversation I want to have at almost three in the morning. It is what it is. I’m a doctor. Those guys were sick. They came to me for help. I helped them. End of story.”

“Yeah, but in the morning they could have gone to the community clinic.”

Yeah. Because I gave the clinic the money I could have used to bail my mom out of debt.
She twisted her attention back to evading Neil’s questions and logic.

“In the morning,”
Charli said, “those two guys would have needed a hospital. So I saved the taxpayers some money on indigent care. That a crime?” Charli folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the door to keep it propped open. “Out, Bailey. I need sleep in the worst way.”

“It’s not simply that you’re the new man on the totem pole, is it, Charli?” Neil’s voice was heavy with sorrow. “He’s got something on you, doesn’t he? It has to do with that donation, doesn’t it?”

Charli winced, remembering in Technicolor detail Christmases past, when her father and her mother would have raging fights over debt—lots and lots of debt that her mom had racked up in a seriously short period of time.

If I could wring my mother’s neck right now, I would.

She tried to cover it as best she could. “You obviously don’t know much about the politics of small-town medicine if you go all conspiracy theorist on me after just one night call. This is my life, Neil. This is what I do. Tell me you haven’t gotten up at two in the morning to go cover...I don’t know. A fire, maybe. Or a break-in.”