Every Time
Page 7
Her long red hair was twisted up into a perfect bun while her light brown eyes slowly danced around my face, my own curiosity drawing me in as I watched her take a seat.
She definitely didn’t fit the type of people I usually dealt with. She didn’t look like she owned any city property to be developed nor did she look as if she was seeking a job. She wasn’t coming to me on behalf of any homeless shelter, and she sure as hell wasn’t homeless herself. She wasn’t a vendor or anyone from any of the warehouses I used nor was she a delivery person here to drop off some shipment. Her nails were perfectly manicured, and her leg effortlessly crossed over her knee, showing the smallest inch of thigh that I was sure she intended to flash me.
Everything about her screamed that she wanted my attention, so I decided to satiate my curiosity. I sat back into my chair and took her in, wondering what in the world could’ve brought a woman like this into my office, a woman with wealth and a glimmer of mischief behind her eye. She was a woman with a predatory stare who couldn’t seem to quite pull her eyes away from my arms.
But the moment she opened her mouth, I knew I’d figure it out in a hurry.
“Ellen St. Claire,” she said.
“Bryan McBride. How can I help you, Mrs. St. Claire?
Her voice was light and silken, breathless but not airy. Her tone was light, but her stare was not, and it wasn’t every day I ran across a woman who intimidated me. Of course, I wasn’t going to allow her to see that. Even though she wore her wealth for all to see, it was obvious she was here on some sort of business.
I wasn’t sure how I wrapped up in that business, but I was hell-bent on finding out.
“Miss,” she corrected. “And I am here on business.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I run a philanthropic foundation, and I have become aware of the work you do in our humble community.” “The work I do,” I said. “Your help with the homeless,” she said. “That’s hardly work.” “Well, what you do within this community has garnered a great deal of interest. A man like you should be proud of something like that.” “It’s never about pride or attention. I do it because I want to,” I said. “Which is why I’m here. Men like yourself, with vision and passion and real solutions to things, are heavily needed to help solve problems like the one you’re tackling. You have tactics that work and principles that guide your understanding of the situation. You know how things like this affect families and how it can rip at the very heart of even the strongest individuals. But, people like you might not always have the money needed to do the outreach work they truly want to on a scale that pleases them.” “Like I said, it’s not about pleasing myself. It’s just about helping,” I said. “People like me don’t understand the problem enough, even if we do have the money to fix it. I grew up in wealth. I grew up with the option to not work. Homelessness was never a thing I had to worry about, and even the drug-addled people I was surrounded with were still fairly put together. I never saw anyone spiral on it nor did I ever see anyone lose everything because of it. I have the money but not the knowledge. You have the knowledge but not the money.” “So, we’re some perfect partnership,” I said. “Oh, how flattering,” she said, giggling. “Any woman would be lucky to take you up on that offer.” “Miss St. Claire, this really isn’t something I’m comfortable discussing. If you’re familiar with the article that was written and that’s how you found me, then you know I did it to advertise my brother’s art showcase and not to try and broaden any sort of outreach. I don’t do what I do for attention.” “I’m not here to garner you more attention, Mr. McBride. You’ve done all of that yourself, and quite wonderfully if I do say so. You garnered yourself the attention you needed to institute change and still somehow managed to find a way to funnel it back into the homeless community. It really is astounding, that mind of yours. However, you were sort of right with the quip about a partnership. What I’m here to do is offer you a job.” “I already have one, thank you,” I said. “Please hear me out. You have a wealth of knowledge and personal experience regarding the homeless community and how rampant drug use is among them. You have witnessed first-hand the stronghold drugs can have on a person and how sometimes their own personal efforts to improve their life circumstances simply isn’t enough. And yes, I did read the article. Hasn’t everyone?” she asked, grinning. “So, what is this job you’re offering?” I asked. “Mr. McBride, it would be an honor to have you as an operations director.” “In your foundation,” I said. “Yes. You would be dealing directly with projects regarding the homelessness that runs rampant in San Diego. You would have a job that requires you to do what you enjoy most, dipping into the homeless community and helping pull them to safety.” “You do realize I do that here within my own company, right?” I asked. “But you could do it on a larger, grander scale. With the money we have and the money I personally funnel into the program, you could have more impact than you could’ve ever dreamed of here.” “I’m actually about to ramp up the homeless men I employ. The attention I seemed to have unwantedly garnered has opened up a vast number of prospects for us with regard to clients,” I said.
“And I congratulate you on that, Mr. McBride. I really do. But I get the feeling construction isn’t really where your heart is.” “So now you’re an expert on how I feel?” I asked. “Are you a psychologist on the side?” “No, but I am well-versed in reading others, and the fact that you’re bristling at my words only confirms the statement I made prior to the bristling. Mr. McBride, can I callyou Bryan?” “No,” I said. I was dubious of the idea, but she wasn’t wrong. This conversation was reminiscent of the one I’d just had with Drew, and I couldn’t help the question that flew out of my mouth. “Do you know a man by the name of Drew Carmichael?” I asked. “Who?” “Drew Carmichael?” “Any relation to Carmichael Vineyards?” she asked. “Not even close. Okay. I appreciate you coming all this way to offer me this position, but I can’t say I’m interested right now.” “Mr. McBride, let me tell you a little bit about myself before I go.” “All right,” I said. “Shoot.” “About a year ago, I was married to a technological executive who had the same heart I do for philanthropy. It’s what I’ve done my entire life. My parents started an overall philanthropic foundation, and after I graduated from Yale, I started an offshoot that deals specifically with the poverty and homelessness on the West Coast. I married a man who had the same heart I did for this issue, and we started our foundation shortly after we married. But last year, he died of a heart attack.” “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said. “He was our main operations director, and for a time, I attempted to fill his shoes. I sat on the board, I helped fundraise. I went to all the dinners and charity balls and garnered money from those who simply want to toss their millions around without ever educating themselves on the issue at hand.”
“I’m familiar with their kind,” I said. “But I can’t run this thing by myself anymore. I need an overall operations director. I need someone who has a heart for this like I do, someone who enjoys getting out there and being hands-on with the projects we take on. My late husband not only had a heart for it, but he was an incredible multitasker. I have a feeling your construction business has helped you gain the same talent,” she said. “It has,” I said, nodding. “If you aren’t interested now, then all I ask is you keep me in mind. I know you would be the right fit for the position I can no longer fill. A foundation is only as successful as the heart of the people you entrust it to. I hope you’ll keep us in mind?” she asked. I had to admit, her story tugged at my heart. I would obviously have to do some digging into her and figure out if the story she was feeding me was true. Usually, I took women at their word, but there was something in her eye and the way she first approached me that had me on the dubious side. “I will, Miss St. Claire.” I saw her eyes dancing along my arms, and when I looked down, I realized she was taking in my tattoos. Her face reminded me of the way Hailey first looked when her eyes had taken them in up close. I settled my arms onto my work chair and clear
ed my throat, which ripped the woman's eyes from my skin to my face. “I’m so sorry. Tattoos are simply fascinating to me,” she said, smiling. “Do you have any?” I asked. “Oh, no. I’m far too squeamish with needles.” “It really isn’t as bad as people think. They equate getting a tattoo to getting a shot, but it’s not at all like that.” “It just gives me goosebumps thinking about it is all,” she said. “Are those the only ones you have?” “Nope. I’ve got one on my back and one across my chest,” I said.
“Could I see them?” What the hell did this woman expect me to do? Just stand up and take my shirt off for her to see? She was pretentious, I’d give her that. I bet she expected me to just drop to my knees and give her whatever she wanted. She was probably very used to younger men falling at her feet. Even with the Botox she obviously had done and the painstaking lengths she went to in order to do her makeup, the lines in her hand gave her age away. She was easily in her mid-forties, and there was something lustfully predatory about the way she was staring at me. “No, ma’am, you can’t see,” I said. “Oh, you don’t have to call me ma’am. That’s a term used for older women.” Igrinned at her comment but kept my racing jokes to myself. “Well, they really are appealing to the eye. I’m sure they fit as nicely along your skin as the ones on your arms do,” she said. “They do. I promise,” I said. “Well, here’s my card,” she said as she dug through her purse. “Should you ever change your mind or need someone to talk to, please don’t hesitate to call me.” “Uh-huh. Will do,” I said as I slid her card into my desk. She eyed me carefully one last time, no longer concealing the fact that she was studying my body. I shook my head and chuckled before she got up and left, turning to look back at me one last time. She reached her hand out and closed my door behind her, sauntering down the hallway while she flickered her gaze through the window at me one last time. The woman was relentless. But even so, I couldn't help wondering if Drew might’ve been right. I had to say, the idea of working at a foundation doing nothing but work for the homeless sounded wonderful. I wondered if I should’ve
been working alongside someone like Ellen. Someone who had the money to make some serious change and who would listen to someone who had serious knowledge about the problem. I could affect more people than those I employed. In the grand scheme of things, I helped maybe fifteen homeless people a year. And even with the new funding coming in and the prospect of new projects, that number would probably only rise to twenty. By the way Miss St. Claire made it sound, I’d be helping that many people in one project, with multiple projects in a year going at the same time. I’d have more of an impact, and I could reach more people than I ever thought possible. I could clean them up and get them off the streets, maybe even pair the foundation with this company and start a partnership that way. I started wondering if she would consider taking me on part-time, so I had the time to try and work something like that. I started daydreaming about what that would be like to partner with a foundation like the one Miss St. Claire said she had. Having her money and the manpower she probably used would give me the ability to expand further into new cities without having to exhaust myself so much. Foreman Duke could take over the corporate operations like I was doing right now, which would free up more time for me to work alongside the foundation as well as on the jobsites. I found myself getting excited about it before I realized that I’d turned that woman down for now. But my excitement at the mere idea of it told me more than I was willing to admit to myself at the time. Maybe Drew was right. Maybe I wasn’t meant to do construction for the rest of my life.
Hailey “W ait, we’re doing IV chemotherapy now?” I asked. “Yes. The chemotherapy shots right now aren’t enough. The immunotherapy you’ve already gone through has helped a great deal, and with the strengthening of your immune system, I think you’re going to be able to handle it,” Doctor Osmunt said. “You think?” Anna asked. “We’re doing all this because you think it’ll help?” “Miss Ryan, it’s better than the odds we’re looking at,” the doctor said. “I thought we weren’t going to try IV chemotherapy for another month,” I said. “If we want to go into surgery soon and carve out as much of this stuff as we can, then it only makes sense to put in the catheter port. Doing that awake is pretty painful, which is why we try to combine it with surgery.” “So, surgery means the roots of the cancer are shriveling up or something, right?” I asked. “I mean, that’s what you said. We’d do surgery once the roots shriveled up.” “What’s she talking about, doctor?” Anna asked. “The original plan we had laid out went something like this. We would do the chemo shots and the immunotherapy techniques to see if we could shrink the size of the tumors to decent sizes. When tumors grow, they sprout roots and really attach themselves to the organs they’re thriving on. Shrinking them down destroys those roots, which means less chance of individual tumors growing back at those root points. Plus, with one of the tumors being on her kidney, surgery could swing the cancerous cells into action and cause a tumor to develop on the other kidney.” “So that’s why you aren’t just removing her kidney. Got it. So, why the change in plan? What’s happened?” Anna asked. “Well, her bloodwork is actually looking pretty good. Her scans have been wonderful. There are no other tumors metastasizing in other places, which means the chemo shots have halted that process in its tracks. And we have seen a bit of shrinkage with the tumor on her kidney.” “But not the one in my brain,” I said. “Not really, no. But, the one on your kidney was what I was worried about. I’m more comfortable now with removing the kidney altogether and setting a port for regular chemotherapy treatments along with doing the immunotherapy techniques we’ve been discussing.” “I don’t know, Doctor Osmunt. What if my kidney isn’t quite what you think? You remove it and another tumor grows like you were saying?” I asked. “Hailey, you have the option to get one of these things completely out of your body,” Anna said. “Take it.” “Miss Ryan, let me be clear like I was with Hailey. The kidney tumor isn’t the issue. The one in her brain is. That’s the one putting us on an urgent time frame. Removing the tumor on the kidney gives us a chance to be more aggressive with this treatment to try and shrink this as much as possible before we even attempt brain surgery,” the doctor said. As I sat there while the doctor and Anna spoke, I simply stared out the window at the cold that had permeated across San Diego. The wind was howling, and dead leaves and grass were swirling, and for a little while, I felt I was in my element. I was surrounded by things that were
dying and decaying, and I felt a sort of morbid kinship with the elements growing. The weather was cold like my skin. The leaves were dead like my future. The trees were decrepit and withering like my body. Just like my brain. Just like my existence. “Hailey, you have to get this surgery,” Anna said. “Please. We still don’t have good odds, but they’re better with the surgery and the port.” “I just don’t know,” I said breathlessly. I felt Anna take my hand, and it prompted me to turn toward her. If I had the surgery and got the port, it would be almost impossible to conceal this from Bryan. I wouldn’t be able to stay over at his place anymore or feel his body against mine. I would no longer be able to touch his bare skin without him wanting to see mine. I wouldn’t be able to make love to him anymore or press my skin against him while I was sleeping at night. That surgery would rob me of the little bit I had left of him, and I wasn’t sure I was willing to risk all that. “Hailey, the immunotherapy and chemo combination you’re using now will most likely be insufficient. The odds are already long, and we need to do anything we can to get you on full-service chemo treatments,” the doctor said. And that’s when I heard the sobs coming from my sister’s lips. See, this is what I didn’t want to happen. This was what I was avoiding with Bryan. Here my sister was, sitting here holding my hand while she sobbed over my eventual death. Now, she’d have to watch me wither away like the leaves of autumn before my body finally gave up. She’d have to watch my slow, torturous death with tears in her eyes and pain in her heart that would never go away. Instead of just coping wi
th my eventual death, Anna would have to watch me suffer. At least Bryan didn’t have to watch John suffer. It was selfish, telling Anna. As I glared at the doctor, trying to communicate to him how angry I was for him even suggesting this bull
shit idea, I couldn’t help thinking of how my body would change, how I would lose weight as well as my hair, how my skin would pale and my appetite would change. I’d no longer have the energy to run the gallery because I’d be sleeping all the damn time. I’d be running poison through my body trying to mutilate the fucking thing growing in my head, the fucking thing that was now pounding my head and shaking my vision. “Hailey, are you all right?” the doctor asked. “No, Doctor Osmunt. I’m not all right. I have a tumor on my kidney and a tumor in my brain that’s killing me. I’ve got a sister who will now watch me suffer instead of only coping with when I die, and I’ve got a doctor who doesn’t seem to understand that this is why I didn’t want to tell anyone in the first place.” “Hailey, I know you’re upset, and I know you’re—” “No, doctor. You no longer get to tell me how I am. You no longer get to sit here and tell me that I’m going to route poison into my body and then tell me how I should feel about that. You’re no longer going to sit here and tell me who I should be informing of this when you’re staring at the exact reason why I’m not telling anyone. You’re not going to sit here and tell me to get my fucking affairs in order and then thrust me into a world of surgery and ports and give me hope. Either I’m dying or I’m savable. Pick a fucking battle, doc.” Anna’s eyes were wild with shock while my chest panted for breath. Tears were streaming down my neck that I didn’t even realize I was shedding. And that’s when I pulled my hand from Anna’s grasp and settled back into my chair. “I’ll have to think about the surgery,” I said. “Hailey, please,” Anna said, begging. “I’ll let you know my answer when I have one.” I grabbed my purse and stepped out of Doctor Osmunt’s office before he could protest otherwise. The room was spinning, and my vision was blurring, but I no longer cared. The ache in my joints was more prevalent than ever, and all I wanted to do was get home. I didn’t want to reopen the gallery for today. I didn’t want to see Bryan. I didn’t even want to eat. I just wanted to go home and sleep until this waking nightmare was over and done with. I slid into my sister’s car and waited for her to come out there. She was carrying shit the doctor must’ve given her, papers or whatever on treatments and how the surgical procedures will go. We rode silently back to my place while her hands white-knuckled the steering wheel, but all I could think about was Bryan and about how I didn’t want him to know and didn’t want him to cry over me. I didn’t want him to watch me wither away after losing John the way he did. I kept turning over my feelings of Ramon’s proposal in my head. More than ever, it sounded appealing and wonderful. I could get away from Anna, so she didn’t have to see me die, and I could travel Europe and sell my paintings. I could paint and sell and travel and eat until my body eventually gave out, and then I could leave a note for Ramon. A note telling him that my gallery and the proceeds from my pictures needed to be handled by Bryan. So he could donate it to the homeless community and do more than he’d ever dreamed of with them. Apparently, my death would place millions of dollars into his hands. Setting aside all of it, though, I had to make sure Bryan was happy. I needed to make sure he found happiness with another woman. I needed to make sure my death wouldn’t do him in. He was such a wonderful man, and he had so much love to give, and there was a woman out there who needed that love more than she needed life itself. “I hate you so much sometimes,” Anna said breathlessly. “What’d I do now?” I asked. “You’ve just given up,” she said. “You’ve given up on saving yourself because you’re wallowing in some sort of self-pity, and that’s why you’re not getting these surgeries.”