“Jazmine? Is Wyatt’s uncle going to be okay?”
Jazmine’s smile faltered. “Oh, Andrea. I’m not—”
A voice called out over the loudspeaker. “Mr. Stampley, please come to the registration desk.”
“C’mon, sweetie. Let’s go up to the front.” Andrea felt Jazmine’s hand slip over hers. It was warm. It was safe. The balloon was full.
* * *
Jazmine held Andrea’s hand tightly as they wove their way through the strange crowd of expectant pet communicators. Again, Andrea almost lost an eye when the lady with the sticks in her hair turned around abruptly. Perhaps the porcupine look wasn’t exactly best in a crowded room.
“My referrals?” Martin demanded with his hand held out as if he were waiting for it to be kissed. Or for someone to genuflect. Which seemed unlikely, considering to whom he was talking. Mrs. Crumpet.
She had to hand it to the guy. She wasn’t sure she’d have the guts to even look crosswise at the organizer, much less confront her.
The organizer seemed to take it in stride, though, with only a subtle tightening of her lips. “Patience, Martin. At the moment we are missing a communicator.”
“Where should we look?” the assistant asked.
“I’m sure somewhere to the left,” Mrs. Crumpet responded with a sigh.
Jazmine shimmied between Martin and the “herbal” brownie lady.
“If you’re talking about Wyatt,” Jazmine said, “he had to head to the hospital.”
All the ire drained out of Mrs. Crumpet as her hand flew to her chest. “Oh, dear. It’s not regarding Bodhi, is it?”
“I’m afraid so.” Jazmine felt rather than saw Andrea sag next to her. “I’m sure everything will be fine, though.” She gave the little girl a quick sideways squeeze. Andrea looked up. Jazmine gave her a nudge with her hip. The corner of Andrea’s mouth turned up in a lopsided grin.
“We can only hope,” Mrs. Crumpet said in a lighter tone. “Right, young lady?”
Andrea nodded, seeming more than a little awed by the organizer.
“Right,” Jazmine answered for the tongue-tied girl.
* * *
All right. It was time for this after-school special to end. Martin once more presented his outstretched hand and politely, if pointedly, cleared his throat.
“My referrals?”
He had been more than patient. It was time for him to start being treated as what he was: a headliner. Really, how much time was he expected to have to wait for these … these minimum-wagers?
Mrs. Crumpet’s nostrils flared. Clearly, the stress of her position was getting to her. She turned to retrieve a rather large stack of cards. Martin glimpsed scribbled writing all over the surface of the uppermost note. This was more like it.
“I was trying to do this in private, Martin. But since you insist.” She ceremoniously deposited the weighty stack into his outstretched hand.
Of course. She would want to wait until the other communicators left. She didn’t want a bunch of green-with-envy pet psychics on her hands. Martin glanced down at the stack, wearing his equally-patent-pending Cheshire grin. Then he scanned the first card. Not only had the woman with the chameleon who wouldn’t change colors not chosen to hire him, she dared to complain that he used “guilt tactics” to get her to hire him.
He riffled through the small mountain of note cards.
“These aren’t for clients,” he said, still trying to understand what was happening. This could not be happening. Not to him. Never to him.
“No. As a matter of fact, Martin,” the organizer stated, his Chesire grin apparently leaping over to her lips, “they are your complaints.”
* * *
From the stunned expression on Martin’s face, Jazmine was pretty confident that he’d never actually heard the word “complaint” before. At least not in connection with himself. And she was fairly sure that she had never seen the exact shade of red Martin’s face was displaying occur in nature before.
Martin sputtered next to her, his dignified demeanor fraying alongside his meticulous diction. “Wh … What? I … I have never—”
“You’ve always been such a big draw before that we turned a blind eye, but we simply cannot ignore all those …” Mrs. Crumpet indicated the rather large stack of complaints that threatened to spill out of Martin’s hand.
“Th … These? These … cards …” Martin slapped the notes into his other hand with a resounding smack. Andrea took shelter behind Jazmine’s right thigh as the pet psychic ranted on. “These cards represent tiny, closed-minded, unenlightened—”
“They are pet owners who felt you were reaching out more to their pockets,” Mrs. Crumpet said with a ring of finality in her voice, “than to their animals.”
Wow, Jazmine thought. Mrs. Crumpet knew how to shut a full-of-himself guy down. You could just see the wheels turning in Martin’s head. He was going over and over the best comeback, but how could he? Mrs. Crumpet had taken him to school, and she hadn’t even needed a ruler for it.
“Resolve them, Martin, or we won’t be inviting you back next year.”
“Well, I never … I mean that …” Martin sputtered and fumed until it appeared that he gave up on verbal language and very dramatically knocked the trash can lid open and hurled the cards into the garbage.
Andrea tugged on Jazmine’s sleeve. She was loath to take her eyes away from Martin’s imminent implosion, but she knew it had to be important if Andrea was reaching out. Jazmine looked down to find the little girl holding up a card. Written across it in a first grader’s handwriting were the words …
“You Are A Meany.”
Jazmine chuckled. That he was. As he turned around, Jazmine handed him Andrea’s card.
“There ya go,” she said with a far more satisfying feeling than she would have thought possible.
* * *
The girl with the clown-colored hair cut him off in mid-rant and handed him yet another complaint. Would the humiliation not end?
This was unconscionable. He would have her hide. And not in the way he had been implying earlier. She would rue the day she decided to lock horns with Martin. He mustered all the venom he had at his disposal.
“Oh, if I did not have a rabbit healing to get to …”
Perhaps that would have sounded better if it had been some sort of poisonous reptile, but one must work with what one had. Filled with righteous indignation that he hoped poured through his every movement, Martin turned in a slow circle, fastening his maleficent gaze on each set of eyes as he passed.
He made note of each suppressed smirk for the purposes of future retribution. As he completed the circuit, he gave one last haughty look to the crone and the frizz-head while raising his index finger to the heavens.
“You have not heard the last of me!”
Martin turned on his heel and marched out of the hall, suitably satisfied with his last dramatic moment. Still, success would be his revenge. And he would have it. They would all rue the day.
Rue it.
* * *
Mary Marjorie Crumpet suppressed a sigh as she watched Martin stalk off. If only he would stay gone. But if he was half as arrogant as she thought he was, he would be back with carefully chiseled words dripping with honey.
She turned to find the rest of the communicators staring at her as if she had just killed the wicked witch. The entire room burst into applause. Blushing, Mary Marjorie waved them off, but had to admit it was difficult to suppress the urge to shout out “ding dong” in response.
The only person not clapping her hands together was the little girl who had recently lost her dog. Andrea, she believed her name was. While the child looked like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, there was still a tinge of sadness about her. No one so young should carry such burdens.
For not the first time today, she missed Bodhi Stampley. If there was one person in the world who could reach a child like that, it was Bodhi.
“Well,” the child’s ca
regiver said, “On that unpleasant note, I think we will be heading out, too.”
“Wait, dear,” Mary called out, digging around under the desk. “Would you be so kind as to take these to Wyatt?”
The woman did not look 100 percent convinced, but Mary Marjorie urged the cards toward her. After a day like today, if Mary Marjorie could avoid tracking down that little rapscallion, what was the harm in it?
Jazmine eyed the two piles. “Two stacks, huh?”
“Yes,” she said, letting a bit of mystery perhaps goad the young woman into taking on the assignment.
Finally, the woman accepted the cards. “I’ll drop Andrea off, then swing by the hospital.”
The hospital. Yes.
“Tell Bodhi,” Mary Marjorie stopped herself. How many years had it been since she’d spoken his name so casually? “I mean, tell Mr. Stampley …” What would she tell him? If she could? But none of that could be spoken in a room full of impatient pet psychics. “My Corgi misses him already.”
Jazmine smiled as she tucked the cards into her purse. “I will.”
Mary waved to little Andrea as they left. And to her surprise, the girl waved back. Perhaps there was some hope for the world.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 5
Wyatt hated hospitals. Nothing about them was ever pleasant. Harsh cleaners and antiseptic sprays, mingled with the aura of desperation, covered the smell of sickness. Not cool. Not cool at all. His feet moved even faster.
White walls broken only by a drab, slate-blue stripe surrounded him, twisting him around, until he had no idea which way was which. Wyatt stopped at a nurses’ station.
“Room 502?”
The nurse nodded, indicating to her right. “Down that hallway, take your first left, and it’s the second door on the left.”
Wyatt gave her a distracted nod and headed out. Of course, he was pretty darn sure that he had been down this hallway and taken the first left, but hey, maybe the second time was the charm. It wasn’t until he had rounded the corner that it dawned on him that the brunette nurse had curves in all the right places, yet he hadn’t given her the time of day.
Once Bodhi was feeling better, Wyatt was going to make sure that he knew exactly everything he’d sacrificed for him.
Wyatt raced past rooms and partitions, catching glimpses of blue hospital gowns and flashing machines as he counted down the rooms. 504, 503, … 502.
He slowed to a halt. He couldn’t go in. He couldn’t not go in. He felt like he had back in grade school. Perched on the edge of the high-dive back wall, with all of his friends looking up from the public pool’s edge. Unable to go back down, and incapable of taking the step off the edge.
But here, it wasn’t just humiliation he faced. Instead, it was …
Well, he didn’t quite know. All he knew was that he needed to get through that door. Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the gray, drab door. It was far worse than anything he could have imagined.
Tubes and wires obscured his uncle’s face and torso. Every machine seemed to be either beeping furiously or flashing a dire warning in red LED lights. Diablo was there on the bed, but seemed a different animal, subdued and sad-eyed. The little dog burrowed even closer to his master’s side, shivering.
Wyatt hovered at the door, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. He met gazes with the tiny Chihuahua. Diablo stared up at him, whined once, and then nudged Bodhi’s hand. Darn it, if that little dog was going to stand strong in the face of all of this, so was Wyatt. Allowing the door to close behind him, he made his way to the side of the bed.
He sat down on the lone stool and took Bodhi’s hand.
“Guess you weren’t playing hooky after all.” Wyatt’s voice hitched as he finished the phrase, so he fell silent, looking at the age spots dotting the back of his uncle’s hand. When had Bodhi gotten so old? He had always seemed more granite than flesh. Solid. Unmovable. Unchanging. But now, he seemed so small and frail. The hoses and wires threatened to crush him under their weight.
Bodhi had always been there for Wyatt. After his father’s death. After that “misunderstanding” with the police. Bodhi would always be there. The beeping intensified, mocking Wyatt, giving the lie to his hopes.
“You know that field you told me about after Dad died?” Wyatt’s vision blurred, his eyes swimming in a pool of tears. “And the big oak tree?”
Diablo lifted his head and gave a warning growl.
“I mean, pine, sorry, pine.”
Diablo sniffed and looked away, apparently mollified.
“You always were an evergreen kind of guy.” His uncle was. Bodhi was a mountain. A mountain covered with pine.
“Anyway,” Wyatt coughed a bit, swallowed hard and started again. “I know Dad’s there, and Grandma Eleanor and Grandpa Bucky, and heck, you must have a pack of dogs the size of Texas waiting for you, but …” A sob broke free, but Wyatt wrested it back in.
“You’re not done yet …” Wyatt choked out. “At least, not with me.” God, how he wished Bodhi would wake up. Squeeze his hand. Anything. “I don’t know if you noticed,” he said with a sniffle, “But I’m pretty messed up.”
Diablo barked in agreement. For once, they were on the same page.
Wyatt bowed his head until his forehead touched the withered skin of Bodhi’s hand. He whispered, hoping that somehow Bodhi could hear him. “And I’m not sure how I’m going to un-mess-up without you.”
Tears flowed down his nose and splattered on the metal frame of the bed.
The door opened behind him. Wyatt wiped his eyes with his sleeve as he turned to see who had entered.
“Oh, you must be Wyatt. The nephew?” the doctor said as she offered Wyatt her hand. “I’m Dr. Leighton.”
He didn’t know why, but he was comforted that Bodhi’s doc was a woman. She just seemed to ooze compassion, even with that smarty-pants stethoscope around her neck.
“Yeah.” Wyatt finished wiping off his face. “Hey, when they called, they said he was up and talking.”
Dr. Leighton nodded, frowning. “Unfortunately, right after that assessment, he had another, larger stroke which has left him like …”
They both turned to gaze down at Bodhi’s motionless form.
“But he can still recover, right?” Wyatt asked, or maybe more like pleaded. “I mean, he’s not tough like a pit bull. He is a pit bull.”
The doctor didn’t even grin, though. “I’m sorry, but the MRI shows significant global swelling. It’ll be a minor miracle if he lasts the night.”
Wyatt sat back down hard. While the doctor’s voice was kind, it left no room for false hope. This might be Bodhi’s last night on earth. It didn’t feel right. But Wyatt guessed that everyone visiting all the other patients felt the same way.
“Does your uncle have any family in the area?” Dr. Leighton asked.
“Yeah,” Wyatt said, snapping back to the situation at hand. “But nobody’s going to come. It’s just me.”
Wyatt wasn’t even sure what had happened all those years ago that had cast Bodhi from the family’s bosom. Wyatt just knew that not even his mom would come to her brother-in-law’s deathbed. Guess Bodhi did know a thing or two about being a mess-up.
“Ah. I see …” Dr. Leighton seemed hesitant to speak. “Well, then … the bad news isn’t over.”
Wyatt looked up from Bodhi to the doctor. “What do you mean?”
“Your uncle’s insurance card was … rejected.”
“How could they—?”
Dr. Leighton put a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder, urging him back down onto the stool. Okay, yelling probably wasn’t allowed in a hospital, but none of this was making any sense.
“With all of his doctor’s care this year,” the doctor explained, “Bodhi has exceeded his yearly—”
“What doctor’s care?” Wyatt asked, certain that she was talking about the wrong patient. “Bodhi’s as hardy as a horse. I mean a Clydesdale. The big one in front. Pulling the beer wagon.”
�
��He didn’t tell you, then?” she asked.
Wyatt harrumphed. “Tell me what? Pick up my socks? Never feed Diablo scrambled eggs and salsa? What?”
The hand was back on his arm, both comforting and confining. “Your uncle has been struggling with kidney issues that caused extremely high blood pressure and optical migraines that left him very susceptible to … this …”
Diablo snarled at the doctor as she turned to look at the prostrate form of a once-hale man.
Wyatt rubbed his hand across his face, trying to take it all in.
“No. He didn’t.” Then the dominoes started knocking into one another. He didn’t know, but he should have known. “That’s what the timer was for. Why he wouldn’t let me use his medicine cabinet.”
“I’m afraid he wasn’t taking very good care of himself,” the doctor said as she dropped her hand from his shoulder.
“Neither of us were.”
“If he didn’t tell you, you couldn’t have known.”
But Wyatt shook his head. Bodhi knew everything about him. His favorite breakfast cereal. How he liked to eat off of Toy Story paper plates. Even keeping Mad magazines in the bathroom. And Wyatt hadn’t noticed that his uncle was dying of bum kidneys? That was about as lame as it could get.
“It’s not your fault,” the doctor tried to reassure him. Even though she failed miserably, Wyatt nodded. They both didn’t need to be bummed out to the max.
“There’s just one other little problem left,” the doctor said as she gave a sideways glance at Diablo, who promptly raised his hackles, glowered, then gave a snarl from the back of his tiny throat. “You see, even though the pooch—”
“Diablo,” Wyatt supplied.
“Yes, even though Diablo saved your uncle’s life by hitting his emergency response device, and he is certified as a service dog, which means, in theory, that he can stay in the hospital … He’s just a little …”
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