Mac’s Bedside Manner

by Marie Ferrarella

  He placed the phone next to his ear. “MacKenzie.”

  “Dr. Mac?”

  The uncertain, childish voice on the other end of the receiver sounded as if it was just an inch away from dissolving into sobs. He took a guess. “Tommy?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Immediately alert, Mac sat up. “What’s wrong? Where are you?” Visions of a Doberman foaming at the mouth popped into his head. Was the boy cornered? He’d gotten to a telephone, which meant he had to be relatively safe. For the moment at any rate. He thought of the boy’s stepfather. Mac’s heart went cold. “You sound like you’re upset.”

  A sniffing noise met his observation. “I’m home, Dr. Mac.” The boy lowered his voice so no one else could hear. “My dad says the surgery’s gonna cost too much, that I can’t have it.” There was silence for a moment. “Am I gonna be a freak forever?”

  Mac could feel his heart constricting and struggled with the overwhelming desire to punch Allen’s face in for playing games with the boy’s head. But that wouldn’t help Tommy any.

  “No, and you’re not a freak now. You just have a scar, that’s all,” he said firmly. “And don’t worry about the cost, Tommy. Something can be arranged.”

  Blair Memorial was first and foremost a nonprofit facility that prided itself on giving back to the community. That was one of the primary reasons Mac had joined the staff in the first place. He could have never been associated with a hospital whose first allegiance was to its board. Mac was confident that he could talk to Blair’s chief administration officer and make arrangements for Tommy’s surgery.

  The boy didn’t need this extra weight to carry around with him, he thought angrily. What the hell was wrong with Allen?

  “Just tell your stepdad to make sure to bring you in for your appointment and we’ll iron out everything then.” It irked him to add, “Tell him not to worry about paying,” not because he cared about the money, but because he knew that he was saying exactly what Tommy’s stepfather wanted to hear. It definitely wasn’t his intent to make the man happy, but there was no way around it if Mac wanted to help the boy.

  He could almost hear the boy struggling with his thoughts. “My stepdad says people don’t do nice things for other people without a reason.”

  Mac didn’t doubt that the dark philosophy was something Allen was trying to force upon the boy. “I’ve got a reason, Tommy. I want to see you smile. Big-time. That’s my fee, Tommy, a great big, wide grin. Think you can muster a big grin for me?”

  This time, there was no hesitation. He’d gotten through to the boy. “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay.” Mac didn’t believe in putting off unpleasantries. He might as well get this over with now. “Tell you what, let me talk to your dad now.”

  “Can’t,” Tommy told him solemnly. “He went out.”

  “Are you by yourself?” If Tommy was alone, he was going to go over and wait until the boy’s stepfather returned—to have him hauled in for child negligence the way he should have last week.

  “No, Mrs. Peabody’s here. She’s the lady down the block,” Tommy explained, then added, “My stepdad pays her to watch me when he goes out.”

  Well, at least the man had some decency, Mac thought. Either that, or, more likely, he was worried about running afoul of the law.

  There was no sense in trying to get a hold of him tonight. He had no way of knowing when the man would return home. “Do you know what time your stepdad usually gets home from work?”

  The answer was prompt. Tommy had already struck him as an intelligent little boy. “Five.”

  “Great, tell him I’ll be calling him tomorrow after five. We’ll working things out about your surgery. I promise.”

  This time, the small voice on the other end sounded eager and hopeful. “Okay.”

  Mac spent several more minutes on the phone with the boy, reinforcing that hopefulness. By the time Mac said goodbye, Tommy seemed relatively calm.

  Hell of a thing for a little boy to be going through by himself, Mac thought as he flipped the phone shut and tucked it back into his pocket.

  “Once more with feeling,” he murmured under his breath as he buckled up again.

  This time, there were no further interruptions as he started his car. Moving carefully, he pulled his vehicle out of the near-flooded parking lot.

  No danger of a drought this year. Now the county was on the alert for mud slides. Mac shook his head. Always something. Still, he wouldn’t want to live any other place.

  Coming down the steep hill that led from the hospital onto the main road, Mac saw something pulled over to the side. At first, all he could make out were the flashing taillights. Coming closer, he recognized the make as one that was similar to Jolene’s.

  And then he saw someone getting out. The umbrella that preceded her instantly became fair game for the wind that had picked up. The umbrella was turned inside out and then back again before the driver had a chance to fully emerge out of the vehicle.

  Jolene.

  Stopping his car beside hers, Mac pressed the button that rolled down his front passenger window and leaned over the seat to look out. “Jolene?”

  Under any other conditions, she probably would have simply ignored him, or sent him on his way, opting to wait by the side of the road until someone else came along. After all, it wasn’t as if this was a deserted part of town. But the wind had already shown her who was boss by rendering her umbrella useless. She was getting soaked. Besides, she was already late.

  Thinking that somewhere along the line, she must have crossed some invisible line she wasn’t aware of, offending a deity with a strange sense of humor, Jolene sighed and made her way over to the car. She pushed her wet hair out of her face.

  “What?” she snapped.

  The woman certainly wasn’t friendlier wet than she was dry, Mac thought. He gestured toward the car. “What’s wrong?”

  “My car decided to take a nap—what does it look like?” Jolene could feel her temper becoming precariously frayed.

  He addressed her in terms he’d heard his sister use when any of her kids were particularly acting up. “It looks like someone needs a time-out.”

  Jolene’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to utter a retort that bordered on scathing. But then she shut it again. She despised being criticized—especially when she knew the criticism was warranted. She didn’t need anyone to point out that she was being waspish, but she’d had a rough day tacked on top of a rough night. She was close to running on empty.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” In her present mood, it cost her to admit this.

  Mac cocked his head, as if honing in on a strange surprise. “Wow, did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” All she heard was the howl of the wind as another gust came in, plastering her skirt against her legs.

  “I swear that’s the sound of frost forming in hell.” Mac grinned broadly at her from the confines of his warm vehicle. “Boy, talk about a long reach—”

  Her eyes blazed as if someone had set a fire within her. Mac could feel himself getting singed…and intrigued.

  She didn’t know why she was wasting her time talking to him. “Look, my baby’s sick, my car’s sick and I think I’m getting sick. I don’t need this.”

  Leaning over as far as he could, Mac twisted the latch on the passenger door and pushed it open. “No, you don’t. Get in.”

  She looked back at her offending vehicle. It had been giving her trouble in one way or another since the day she’d bought it, but she wasn’t in a position to buy a new one right now. “I can’t just leave my car.”

  “Nobody’s telling you to.” He looked at her meaningfully. “You do have enough sense to get in out of the rain, don’t you?”

  More than anything, she wanted to give this hotshot surgeon a piece of her mind. But since discretion was the better part of valor, she held her tongue. If she was being fair, Jolene figured she had that one coming. But only that one. “Yes.”

 
Mac looked at her expectantly. She wasn’t moving. “Well?”

  Blowing out a breath, Jolene opened the door farther and got in. And began dripping all over her side of the vehicle.

  “Boy, you are wet, aren’t you?” Pressing the control panel on his armrest, Mac rolled up the window on her side quickly. He reached behind him and got the towel he’d forgotten to take out of the back seat the last time he’d been to the gym. He offered it to her. “It’s really coming down, isn’t it?”

  Jolene used the towel to rub the water from her hair and then her face. Stopping abruptly, she sniffed the towel and gave him a curious look.

  “I used it at the gym.” He saw her drop the towel as if it was contaminated. “Don’t worry, I just had it draped around my neck when I finished my workout. This doesn’t mean our sweat glands are bonding or anything.”

  Still, she folded the towel, finished, then sighed. “I think I shrank an inch just standing there.”

  Belated, he turned off the engine. The windows were beginning to fog up, creating an impression that they were sealed off from the rest of the world. He forced his mind back on the topic at hand before he let it drift with that image.

  “Do you know what’s wrong with your car?”

  Yes, she knew what was wrong with it. It was a lemon. It happened even with the most reliable of makes. Just her luck.

  “Same thing that’s been wrong with it the last three times. The distributor cap malfunctioned.”

  She didn’t look like a woman who would know a distributor cap from a baseball cap. The woman was one surprise after another.

  Mac looked at her with renewed respect. “I’m impressed, Nurse DeLuca. All I know how to do is jump-start.” The startled, wary look that came into her eyes had him biting his tongue not to laugh. He figured that wouldn’t go over very well right now. “A car,” he added. “Jump-start a car.”

  The smile on his lips was nothing short of sensual, she thought, and it was telegraphing strange electrical impulses all through her. God, she really was coming down with Amanda’s fever, wasn’t she? Jolene squelched the urge to feel her forehead.

  “Since you probably don’t carry a spare distributor cap in your purse,” he began jokingly, although if she’d pulled one out, at this point he wouldn’t have been all that surprised, “have you called a tow truck?”

  Jolene shook her head. Several drops went flying, one hitting him in the eye. “My battery’s dead.”

  Taking out a handkerchief, Mac dabbed his eye. He gave her the once-over with his good one and commented, “Not from where I’m sitting.”

  Jolene realized she was clenching her teeth. “My cell phone battery. I forgot to charge it last night.” She’d started to, but then Amanda had started crying again and she’d left the charger connected to the cell phone, but unplugged.

  “Ah.” Nodding his head, he unbuckled his seat belt and leaned forward, digging into his back pocket. He noticed that Jolene was watching his every move as if she expected him to either jump on her bones, or turn into a vampire—possibly both. “Relax, there’s no need to be so tense. I’m just getting my cell phone out.”

  “I am not tense,” she informed him indignantly, even though it was a lie.

  The look he gave her fairly shouted, “Yeah, right.”

  “I’ve seen ironing boards that were more relaxed,” Mac quipped, handing her the cell phone. “Maybe nobody told you yet, but I’m not the enemy, Nurse DeLuca. I’m one of the good guys.”

  She flipped open his phone. The latest model, it had all the bells and whistles. She wasn’t surprised. The man probably used the Internet to check up on his stock portfolio, the way Matt used to. “I like deciding those kind of things for myself.”

  He had no idea why he was as attracted to her as he was. Looks had never been everything in his book. He needed someone to talk to beneath the trappings, even though he had no desire for a permanent relationship with anyone. This thing he felt had to be something like being fascinated with a train wreck—you just couldn’t believe it was happening right before your eyes.

  “I could have driven right by you,” Mac pointed out.

  She’d already come up with a theory about that. “Do you have a date tonight?”

  “No.” Tonight he just wanted to have an early dinner, answer a few letters, call his nephew to wish him luck on his big test tomorrow and call it a night.

  The smile she gave him was smug and nothing short of triumphant. “That explains why you stopped.”

  She had a nice smile, even if it was a little smug for his tastes, he thought. It irked him that she was so convinced he was the anti-Christ.

  He mustered an innocent look. “Why, are you volunteering to be my date?”

  “No!” How the hell had he come to that conclusion?

  Mac pinned her with a look that told her he was getting tired of her attitude. “Then other than your paranoia, what are we talking about?”

  Properly chastised, at a loss for an answer, Jolene said nothing.

  Instead she punched out the numbers on the keypad of the towing service her mechanic favored. She held her breath as the phone on the other end rang several times, praying that all the trucks weren’t out on calls. Finally someone came on the line. She kept her eyes averted from Mac as she gave the particulars to the man who answered. The man turned out to be one of the drivers who’d come out to tow her before. He was properly sympathetic and friendly.

  Finished, she raised her eyes to Mac and saw that he was looking at her. “What?”

  “Nothing, just surprised that you can sound friendly when you’re talking to a man—unless Pete’s a girl.”

  “Pete’s six-three, has a permanent five-o’clock shadow and weighs over three hundred pounds. He’s a man all right. And for your information, I don’t male-bash—I doctor-bash. There’s a difference.” She looked at the phone in her hand. “Can I make another call?”

  He gestured to the phone in her hand. “Be my guest. I’m not charging by the call.”

  She couldn’t help the suspicion that entered her eyes. It was a leading line. “What do you charge by?”

  “I’m not charging at all,” he told her. “I’m returning a favor.” When she looked at him quizzically, he added, “You drove me to my car, remember?”

  Jolene responded with a half shrug, unconvinced that he wasn’t going to extract payment somewhere along the line—or think he could. With dread, she started to dial her mother. She loved her mother but the woman’s main hobby was playing 20 Questions.

  “You know, I’ve been watching you,” Mac said.

  Okay, here it came. Bracing herself, she raised her eyes to his face, “Oh?”

  “And you have the makings of a pretty good nurse—”

  “The ‘makings’ of a ‘pretty good’ nurse?” she echoed. “I’ll have you know I love my job and I’m a damn good nurse.”

  “Okay,” he allowed easily, feeling he had absolutely nothing to lose and possibly something to gain, “you’re a damn good nurse. So just when did you become a lousy human being?”

  Jolene slapped the phone cover shut. He had a hell of a nerve asking her such a question. She had no idea why she even bothered to acknowledge it. Or answer it. The man had no business in her private life.

  But the words came before she could think to stop them. “When I saw my husband, the doctor, who I put through school at no small expense to me, performing a tonsillectomy on his receptionist without benefit of surgical tools. That’s when.”

  It was an old scenario. Mac’s father had cheated on his mother with fair regularity. Which was why Mac had found the term “sanctity of marriage” laughable. The way you honored the contract of marriage was by not entering into it.

  In Jolene’s case, she’d probably driven her husband away with that shrewish tongue of hers. “So your husband cheated on you with the receptionist—”

  If only. Had there been one transgression, she would have forgiven Matt. Even two. She’d been t
hat in love with him. But there hadn’t been just one or two, there had been myriad incidents once she took the blinders off and took a hard look at the evidence. Matt’s idea of marriage was to have someone at home to take care of things while he played doctor with every available female body in town.

  “And the baby-sitter and the bookstore clerk and our insurance agent—” She stopped before she really got going. “Pretty nearly half the female population under sixty in San Francisco sums it up rather neatly.”

  There was hurt in her eyes and he didn’t know how to deal with it. He knew how to respond to a child’s pain, but a woman’s was another matter. So he used humor because it seemed like the best way to cover them both. “Busy man. When did he have time to practice?”

  She shot him an annoyed look. “It wasn’t funny.”

  “No,” he agreed quietly, “I don’t imagine it was. But just because your husband was a lowlife, that doesn’t mean that you should try to castrate every man you meet.”

  Her eyes met his. She ignored the slight unsettled feeling that rose up. “Not every man, just the doctors,” she reminded him.

  So she’d said earlier. “Nice to know you’re discerning.” His eyes indicated the cell phone she still held in her hand. “You said something about making another call.”

  “Right.” Taking a deep breath, she called her mother’s number. The phone was picked up on the second ring. “Hi, Mom, it’s me. I’m going to be a little late.” She paused, listening. “All right, a lot late,” she corrected after her mother had done the same. “But it can’t be helped. My car died.” She sighed, struggling for her patience. “Yes, again. No, no, don’t cancel your date on my account. I’ll be there, I promise. I’m getting a ride. From one of the doctors,” she replied in response to the question that her mother immediately asked her. “Yes, Mother, the enemy. You know, sarcasm doesn’t become you.” Jolene deliberately avoided looking in Mac’s direction. But even so, she could feel the grin that was on his face. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” After flipping the cell phone closed, she handed it back to Mac.

  His fingers brushed against hers as he took it. “Your mother’s got a date?”