“So—”
“If you string together the words early retirement package right now, I definitely can’t save you.”
“Has someone mentioned those words to her?”
“Yes, and I’ll tell you out straight, Delaney. There are people in this hospital who’d be glad to take a shiny retirement package and be on their way. I’d be happy to make one available to them, because they’re probably not the people we want still working here. Millie’s not one of them. She lives and breathes her patients, and I’m not kidding when I say she’ll probably die right here on this floor.”
He drilled her with his eyes. “Do not touch her. I mean it. You lay me off before you dare to touch her.”
“Nobody’s laying anybody off.” She tried to keep her gaze steady so he wouldn’t hear the possible lie in her statement, but she could feel her pulse flipping in her neck as he watched her carefully.
“Yet, right?”
She sighed. “I’ll do everything possible to try not to let that happen. Is that better?”
“More honest, maybe.” He shook his head. “Don’t touch her, Delaney.”
She put her hands up. “Message received, Dr. Mackenzie.”
“When are you going to start calling me by my first name?”
She shook her head. For some reason, calling him by his first name felt way too intimate. Using just his title and last name put an invisible wall between them that she really, really needed.
“Jury’s out on that one, doctor.”
Chapter 8
An hour later, Delaney poked her head into a patient room where a cystic fibrosis patient was in the far bed. As she’d studied the patient demographics of the pediatric floor, she’d seen the expected convergence of government insurance, chronic illnesses, and lengthier hospital stays, and one of her goals this week was to get a close-up look at some of those patients so she could start figuring out ways to reduce those inpatient days. The unfortunate reality was that private insurance still paid more, so freeing up those beds theoretically made room for more income.
On the sixth floor, it had made complete sense. Looking at the tiny, pale girl in the hospital bed, however, put a face to those numbers.
She took a deep breath and knocked. “Hi, Charlotte. I’m Delaney. Okay if I come in?”
“Sure?” The girl eyed her suspiciously. Her chart said she was twelve, but her stature made her look no more than eight or nine. “Are you the new social worker?”
“No. I work here at the hospital—just not usually with patients. I’m trying to get around and meet some people instead of sitting in my office all day.”
“Oh.” Charlotte’s face was cloaked and curious at the same time.
“Okay if I sit?” Delaney pointed to the chair beside her bed. “I love your pajamas.”
Charlotte looked down, fingering the soft purple fabric. “Millie got me these.”
Really? Millie obviously had a soft side.
“Wow. That was nice of her.”
“Yeah.” Charlotte smiled. “She says I’m her favorite, but she says that to all of us.”
Delaney sat gingerly beside the bed. Before she’d come down to the floor this morning, she’d been this close to accepting Megan’s proffered Xanax. Her knees were still wobbly as she walked the hallways and took in the sights and sounds she remembered so well. Half of the reason she’d ducked into Charlotte’s room was because she needed a break from the chaotic input.
“Millie knows you pretty well, hm?”
“She’s known me since I was three, so yeah.” Charlotte coughed, and Delaney felt her eyes widen at the sound. It sounded like the poor girl was about to lose a lung.
When she finally stopped, leaning back on her pillows to catch her breath, Delaney froze when she saw a tinge in her face that reminded her of Parker’s, long ago. She swallowed hard, trying to block the memories, but they were stubborn.
“Would you mind getting me some water?” Charlotte’s voice was gravelly and shallow at the same time.
“Sure. Of course.” Grateful for something to do, Delaney reached for the plastic pitcher on the bedside table, but it was empty.
“Everybody’s busy.” Charlotte shrugged. “They haven’t had time to get me any, but it’s okay. Usually I get my own. Just not today.” She took a ragged breath. “The respiratory therapists keep beating me up. Now I can’t stop coughing.”
“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” Delaney cringed as she stood up to take the pitcher into the hallway and search for water.
“Yeah.” Charlotte sounded defeated. “They’re not really beating me up. I just say that to bug them. I don’t get good chest PT at home, so all the stuff gets locked in, and then I get infected. Then I end up here.”
She waved her hand around the room. Unlike the anorexia patient’s room Delaney had just come from, this one had no pictures, no stuffed animals, no flowers. It was lonely and depressing as hell. She made a mental note to bring the girl something cheerful tomorrow.
Five minutes later, she’d completed a circuit of the west end of the wing, finally landing in a tiny little cubby that had a water dispenser. She’d filled Charlotte’s pitcher, wondering how long it might have been before someone else had time to do it for her, and she shook her head. How in the world had she ever thought there were too many nurses on this floor?
When she came back into Charlotte’s room, the poor girl had laid her head back on her pillow in exhaustion. Delaney tiptoed over to the bed and poured water in her glass so she’d have it when she woke up, but as she started to tiptoe back out the door, Charlotte’s tiny voice stopped her.
“You don’t have to go. I’m not really asleep.”
Delaney turned around. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Charlotte looked so lonely that it broke Delaney’s heart. Here she sat, in a hospital room that looked out on more hospital rooms, on a floor where the nurses were too busy to even fill her water pitcher, with no parents in sight.
Delaney had a gazillion things still left on her list just for this morning, but she couldn’t go. She sat back down in the chair beside Charlotte.
“So what grade are you going to be in this fall?”
“Seventh.”
“What school do you go to?”
Charlotte frowned. “Probably not one you’d know. I’m from New York.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. But I have to come here because there’s no CF center any closer.”
Wow. It was at least an hour and a half to anywhere in New York from here. The girl really was alone.
“Must be hard for your family to visit you.”
“Yeah.” Charlotte shrugged. “They can’t, really.”
She said it in a tone that made it clear this was just the way it was. No drama, no tears. But Delaney couldn’t imagine being twelve years old, in a hospital hours away, with no friends or family to visit you.
“How long do you think you’ll be here?”
Charlotte shrugged again. “Usually two weeks. It’s okay. I’m used to it.” Then she coughed again, and it was all Delaney could do not to hold the poor girl’s shoulders and hug her tightly as her body was wracked with the coughing.
When Charlotte finished the spasm, Delaney felt helpless. Then she noticed Charlotte’s long, stringy hair and had a brainstorm. Surely there had to be a sink they could use. And shampoo. It wouldn’t cure the cough, but it might make the poor girl feel marginally better.
“Hey, Charlotte. If I can get hold of some shampoo, what would you say to a mini spa appointment?”
“What do you mean?” Her eyes narrowed, and her non-IV hand went to her head. “I don’t need a haircut.”
“No, of course not.” The girl desperately needed a haircut. “How about I give you a deluxe shampoo, and then we can fix your hair into a fishtail braid?”
“You know how to do those?”
“I do, and you have the perfect hair for it.”
&n
bsp; “Really?” Charlotte fingered the split ends doubtfully.
“Really. Let’s find your inner gorgeousness before the therapists come back, okay?”
Charlotte’s smile as Delaney ducked out of the room gave her a much-needed boost of confidence. As she hunted down a nurse who could point her to some shampoo, she felt her anxiety crank down a couple of notches. She’s survived two patient rooms without a panic attack, and she’d even made somebody smile.
Maybe mucking in wouldn’t be so bad after all.
* * *
An hour later, Josh took a deep breath, reviewing Charlotte’s chart before entering her room. Yesterday, he’d ordered a psych eval, concerned that despite their best efforts, the preteen was slipping further into depression. She’d been here for a week now, but even the child life specialist hadn’t been able to pull her usual tricks and cheer her up.
Of course, working with a patient who’d just heard the word transplant for the first time made Kenderly’s job a hell of a lot harder.
As he scanned down her vitals and nursing notes, he heard a giggle come from inside her room, and it made him pause. Then he heard another one, and he peeked in, relieved that at least maybe she’d found a television show that made her laugh.
But it wasn’t a TV show at all. It was Delaney, who was sitting on Charlotte’s bed with her, stroking glittery purple eye shadow onto Charlotte’s eyelids. Instead of looking like the stringy mop he’d seen yesterday, her hair was done up in a convoluted braid of some sort, and under the soft makeup, her face looked fresh and clean.
And happy.
As he stood in the doorway, Delaney dashed some lip gloss onto her lips, then put up a hand mirror so Charlotte could see herself.
“What do you think?”
Delaney’s back was to him, so she had no idea he was looking, and Charlotte seemed not to have noticed him yet.
“I think—wow!” Charlotte smiled widely. “I look—”
“Gorgeous?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Charlotte appraised herself in the mirror, tipping her head left and right. “I like it.” Then she reached out and put tentative arms around Delaney.
“Thanks, Delaney.”
Delaney stood up and clicked a little case closed. “You’re welcome. You can keep this.”
“Really?”
“Yup. That makeup looks way better on you than it would on me. Purple makes me look like an alien.”
Josh smiled as Charlotte laughed again.
“Can I come visit you again tomorrow?” Delaney’s voice was, once again, far more tentative than Josh would have expected. Didn’t she realize Charlotte was dying for company? There was no way the girl was going to say no.
“That would be great. Can you maybe do a French braid tomorrow?” Charlotte lay back in her bed, and Josh could tell she was more spent than she wanted to let on to Delaney.
He must have made a move, because both of them turned toward him at the same second, and he raised a hand.
“Ladies? Am I interrupting spa day?”
Delaney smiled softly as she stepped back to let him get closer to Charlotte’s bed. “Twelve-year-olds require regular spa appointments. Could you please make a note of that in her chart?”
Charlotte giggled as he scribbled with his pen. “Absolutely. Anything else?”
“She prefers the coconut shampoo and the spearmint conditioner. Pearl essence for the lips, and purple glitter for her eyes.”
Delaney said it all with a straight face, but her eyes sparkled with amusement as he pretended to write down her orders.
“Oh, and we made a deal. If she’ll eat her entire lunch, I promised I’d take her down to the cafeteria for a sundae, if you say it’s okay.”
Josh raised his eyebrows. They’d been having issues all week getting Charlotte to eat enough calories.
He looked at Charlotte. “You agreed to this deal?”
Charlotte shrugged, but then she smiled sassily. “No one else promised me a sundae.”
He turned to Delaney, but she put up a hand before he could remind her not to make promises without first running things by him. She wasn’t a medical person, after all. Next thing he knew, she’d be promising candy to a diabetic.
She raised her eyebrows in challenge. “I checked with Millie before I offered.”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “Oh.”
Delaney tipped her head and waved at Charlotte. “I’ll be back after lunch, beautiful. Start thinking about what toppings you want.”
After she’d left the room, Josh took a look at Charlotte’s records, then sat down in the chair beside her bed.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Pretty okay. Just can’t stop coughing. I hate chest PT.”
“I know. But it’s more important than ever to keep those lungs as clear as we can.”
She looked down at her blanket, picking at a thread. “So I can have a transplant, you mean?”
“Well … that, yes. But also so you can feel better. I imagine you’ve got friends waiting for you at home, and we want you swimming and hanging out with them, not staying here.”
“I know.” She still didn’t look up, and Josh cocked his head to try to look at her eyes.
“Keep getting all dolled up like this, and I’m going to have to make sure any guys who come onto the floor get the rooms on the way other side.”
Charlotte let her eyes flit up to meet his as a tiny giggle escaped her mouth.
“Delaney’s nice.”
Josh felt his eyebrows hike upward at her words. He’d attached a lot of adjectives to Delaney Blair in the past few days—smart, sexy, ballsy, and shy at the same time—but nice might work, if he could convince her not to leave him beached without funding.
Looking at Charlotte, who was smiling for the first time in days, he realized maybe there was a lot more to Delaney Blair than met the eye.
* * *
At eight o’clock that night, Delaney pushed back from her desk and rubbed her neck, spinning her chair to look out at the sun setting over Echo Lake in the distance. She’d stayed on the pediatric floor until four, and since then had been back up on the sixth floor trying to peck away at her own job’s normal to-do list. Despite Gregory’s promise to move some things to Megan’s plate, she wasn’t even half-done with what she needed to finish before she could leave tonight.
It was going to be a long week.
A knock on the door startled her, and she whipped her chair around, embarrassed to be caught with her shoes off, staring out the window like a zombie.
“I took a chance that you’d still be here.” Joshua smiled as he held up two salads from the downstairs cafeteria. “I also took a chance that you hadn’t stopped to eat dinner yet, so I brought you something. Hopefully you like chicken Caesar salad.”
In answer, her stomach growled, making him laugh.
“Thank you.” She reached out for the salad as he handed it to her, along with a plastic fork. “I thought you were probably annoyed with me for bribing your patient with ice cream. I didn’t expect—dinner.”
“Well, you’ll be happy to know outright bribery worked. She ate her lunch like a champ.”
“That’s good, right?”
He sat down and opened his salad. Apparently he was staying for dinner. “Depends on your ice-cream-sundae budget, I guess. It worked this time, but we can’t let her make a habit of it.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I should have thought further ahead. I just thought maybe—it would help. That was probably a total first-year-resident move, wasn’t it?”
He laughed. “I’m not correcting you. It worked for today, and bonus points for the hair.”
“What’s the story with her, anyway? She said her family lives over in New York?”
Joshua nodded as he swallowed a bite of chicken. “They do. Dad has an auto body garage, and Mom’s a waitress. They can’t get down here to visit when she’s admitted because neither of t
hem can afford to take a day off.”
Delaney nodded slowly, a sad feeling gnawing in her gut.
“So she’s down here for two weeks, and nobody comes?”
“Right.” He shook his head. “That’s why Millie has kind of taken her under her wing. She and Kenderly, actually—the child life specialist.”
Delaney took a bite of her salad, anxious to switch gears and get some questions answered, since he was here. “So have Charlotte’s parents ever been adequately trained for home care?”
“Depends on how you define adequately. They’ve been trained, but they’ve got full-time jobs and four other kids. It’s easy to let stuff go when somebody doesn’t seem all that sick.”
“But by letting that stuff go, doesn’t that make her sicker?”
“Yes. But it’s also a progressive disease, so depending on the family, sometimes it’s hard to convince them that their efforts will have any worthwhile effect.”
“Oh, God. That’s terrible.”
“Charlotte’s also really good at hiding her symptoms until she’s really sick, and she doesn’t always do a great job with her own self-care, so it’s kind of an endless circle of neglect that ends up landing her in here more and more.”
“That’s so sad.”
He nodded. “But while she’s here, we hit her with all barrels. She gets good medicine, good therapy, good nutrition, and every single time, we teach her all of the stuff we taught her the previous time. One of these admissions, it’ll finally stick.”
“Is this common? Patients not really taking care of themselves? Or—parents not doing the care their kids need?”
Dr. Mackenzie looked at the floor, silent for a long moment. “It’s not really that simple. There’s a lot none of us know about what goes on in these families once we release the kids back home.”
“Is that why your stay rates are higher than the average? Do you try to keep some of them longer than—maybe you need to?”
He raised his eyebrows, pausing his fork on the way to his mouth. “I try to keep them as long as they need to be here. Sometimes that’s longer than—the national average.”
Heart Like Mine Page 7
