The Time of Her Life

by Jeanie London

  Jay would be leaving, too.

  Northstar had been pushing to get the acquisition date on the calendar, so they had a date in writing only eight weeks away. Gerald and VIPs from the partners would be flying in to sign the final papers.

  So, in self-defense, she sent her kids back to school, packed her bags and told Jay it was time to go home.

  He hadn’t asked her to stay.

  Something had changed between them during the holidays, something that had her clinging to whatever distance she could keep between them, which wasn’t much. Not when they returned to doing everything together—working, eating, making love, sleeping then awakening to start the cycle all over again.

  That something had the opposite effect on Jay. He possessed their every second together as if afraid to miss even one.

  After work, anyway.

  At work, he’d become even more of a handful.

  Such as the day during the second week of the quarantine to contain an airborne virus making the rounds through all three floors and turning an active facility into a ghost town.

  Jay encountered Nancy, a PCT scheduled in the north wing, maneuvering Mr. Parrish from bed to wheelchair in the Hoyer lift. He showed up in Susanna’s office, as handsome as always with his crisp shirt and tie at odds with his scowl.

  “Kimberly told me you sent Ryan home,” he said.

  “I did.”

  “He was scheduled seven to three today.”

  She nodded. “He wanted to take his motorcycle to the dealer.”

  “That’s what days off the schedule are for.”

  Susanna leaned back in her chair and steepled her hands before her, racking her brain for the most diplomatic way to phrase an admission Jay wouldn’t want to hear. She settled on, “The numbers were off on the profit-and-loss report. Ryan was willing to work less than eight hours which helped me shave a bit off the payroll variance.”

  Jay stared, long and hard enough to give Susanna ample opportunity to brace herself for the coming argument. And the way he bristled in his neat sports jacket broadcasted loud and clear that an argument was coming.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said. “I don’t have a PCT on first shift to help move Mr. Parrish so we can balance the profit-and-loss report?”

  “Cost overrun.”

  “That’s only because we had extra expenditures with Christmas and Mrs. Harper’s new wheelchair.”

  Susanna spread her hands in entreaty. “I understand, but the numbers were off. I have to rein them in the way I see best, otherwise Northstar will dictate what to cut.”

  “Christmas is over and Mrs. Harper won’t need another wheelchair. The numbers will be on again this report.”

  Susanna wished the resolution were so simple. Jay took a liberal perspective on profit and loss. What didn’t balance one quarter would balance the next. Northstar tended toward a more controlled perspective because they reported to many partners.

  “All three floors are quarantined with the virus. Ryan appreciated the time, Jay. I made sure I wasn’t depriving him of hours. Apparently the dealer isn’t open for service on Saturdays, and he has classes at night so it’s almost impossible for him to get in for service after a shift.”

  “We schedule a man specifically to insure we have help with the Hoyer lift.”

  “Women can work it.”

  “But the bigger men like Mr. Parrish and Mr. Wells don’t feel comfortable with a woman. They don’t understand how the transfer equipment works. All they see is the floor underneath them. They don’t want to break anything. You understand that.”

  “Of course I do.” No arguing Jay’s perspective with his focus on individual residents. “But that’s what we’re here for—to help them understand and reassure them. As I’m sure you did.”

  His expression set in granite, which told her he had indeed explained and reassured but didn’t want to admit it. He wasn’t backing down. “What happens when I’m not here?”

  Her heart would break all over again. That’s what would happen, and Susanna had no one but herself to blame. Because she couldn’t enjoy a fling like a normal person.

  She’d given in to her attraction to this younger man, knowing he was going off to sow his oats, and her one wild and crazy attempt to savor the moment setting her up for heartbreak.

  And failure. Because at the rate they were going, the final acquisition may never happen. And if the acquisition didn’t happen, this man she cared so deeply for would be miserable.

  “Jay.” Susanna injected every shred of patience she possessed into her voice. “I understand your concern. Ryan would have been best-case scenario. But we have the proper equipment, the properly trained staff. When you’re not here, I will be.”

  But judging by his reaction, as if the top of his head might blow off, he didn’t need the reminder. She kept her mouth shut and waited for him to make the next move, for him to back down or to explode or to work through whatever his issue was.

  God, Susanna hated this. She’d been killing herself to control the budget variance. Even Walter had complimented her in front of Jay for her ingenuity in controlling the internal supplies variance. She gotten a local church’s shawl club to contribute colored lap robes to match the flowers Mrs. Selmon wore in her hair.

  And the coffee...Jay himself admitted even the best blend tasted terrible brewed in bulk, so coffee was a great place to trim more excess so the effect wasn’t as noticeable.

  Nothing she did was good enough. Not because of her efforts but because Jay didn’t know what he wanted.

  He half sat on her desk, folded his arms over his chest and glanced down at her, clearly managing to rein in his reaction. “You saw an opportunity to cut the numbers and took it. You weren’t invasive, so I should be reassured, right?”

  He was asking her? Crazy man. “Yes, you should.”

  “All right. I should trust that you’re looking after the best interests of this place and let you do your job.”

  There was another question in there, a problem, too, but Susanna wouldn’t point out what Jay was missing.

  No, she tipped her face to his and stole a kiss before he headed to therapy to insure everyone was making good use of the downtime during the quarantine. The man was a complete control freak.

  Therein lay the problem.

  Jay was The Arbors. Susanna worked for Northstar. There would always be a disconnect, a potential conflict, much in the way there was conflict now.

  Professionally, she needed to transform The Arbors into a Northstar property.

  Personally, she wanted to live up to Jay’s vision of the personalized care for his residents.

  Sometimes the two came hand in hand. Sometimes not.

  Swinging her chair around with a sigh, she stared out into the crisp wintry morning, so many winter branches bare, such a marked difference from the explosion of autumn colors that had surrounded the lake when she’d arrived.

  She wished they could go back to that companionable working relationship they’d had in the beginning. Jay had been so pleased with the skill set she displayed before discovering her lack of memory-care experience. Before they’d complicated everything by breaching professionalism and becoming involved.

  But Susanna also knew she hadn’t been implementing changes back then. She’d been conducting performance evaluations of the staff and monitoring variance information. Jay would have to know that she’d get to budget justification. Wa
lter had.

  Yes, their relationship may have complicated the issues, but their closeness had also given Susanna insight. The conflict originated with the changes no matter how minute they were.

  So why was Jay selling this property again?

  There was much more to the answer than Jay had shared. So much more than he knew, she suspected. But she hated watching him struggle this hard. What he said about the sale and the way he behaved weren’t related. She didn’t know why and would never get the chance to help.

  Tearing her gaze from the window, she took action to tackle her anxiety and keep his imminent departure a reality. The time had come to file her official recommendation for his house.

  The quarantine provided the perfect opportunity. The therapy schedule and activities calendar had come to an abrupt stop as residents were confined to their rooms to keep those who didn’t already have the virus from contracting it.

  Tessa and Shirley seized the opportunity to remove the last of the holiday decorations. Maintenance and engineering were painting and rewiring the dining rooms that normally couldn’t be out of commission for more than a few hours between common meals. Susanna would complete this report without all the usual distractions.

  After staying in the house, she was recommending providing another level of service of limited support for couples where one spouse was demonstrating the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. Northstar could staff the house minimally and provide access to the ALF when the residents needed step-up care. Of course, that option would mean significant renovations to bring the house up to code, combining charming bedrooms with their whimsical mantels into suites and eliminating the glorious winding staircase to provide elevator access.

  And that would be such a loss.

  But that was only personal reluctance from the woman who’d brought her family into Jay’s home to share a wonderful holiday.

  The professional businesswoman couldn’t be concerned with antique mantels or staircases from another era. Not when there would be underutilized square footage on the property.

  Her problem was a division of loyalties.

  She would do everything in her power to uphold Jay’s ideal, but when push came to shove, her loyalties must be to the company that paid her salary and provided health-care coverage for herself and her kids.

  Not to the man who held her during the night.

  * * *

  WHEN MRS. HARPER’S family asked Jay to arrange for a local priest to visit, he wasn’t surprised. Mrs. Harper hadn’t gotten out of bed for the past few days. She wasn’t sick, just winding down, as his grandmother used to say. Another of those euphemisms to sugarcoat reality.

  The active woman who’d been acquainted with every duck on the property looked so tiny in her bed. Jay went to kneel beside her, gently awakened her to announce her visitor.

  “Father’s here to visit,” Jay said, not knowing if Mrs. Harper would comprehend. She was weak and her memory was hit or miss on a good day. The progression of Alzheimer’s hadn’t outpaced her declining health. She’d been lucky in that regard.

  She opened her eyes with effort and when her lips moved dryly, he reached for the moistener on the side table. But Susanna was already there, tearing open the packaging, extracting the swab to moisten Mrs. Harper’s lips.

  Jay had to lean close when she asked, “My rosary beads.”

  A good day.

  He reached for the top drawer of the nightstand, where he knew she kept the case, but again Susanna was there, handing him the strand of blue glass beads.

  Pressing them into Mrs. Harper’s fragile hands, Jay gave a reassuring squeeze then stood and stepped aside.

  The priest took things from there, providing the Sacrament of the Sick then praying with Mrs. Harper while Jay and Susanna stood behind him, joining in the prayers they knew, sharing in the “Amen” when they didn’t.

  Mrs. Harper clung to the priest’s hands and seemed strengthened when she whispered loud enough for them to hear, “Thank you, Father. God has been so good to me.”

  A miracle that she remembered God. Susanna apparently thought so, too, because Jay glanced down to find her expression cast in marble, her blue eyes glinting suspiciously as she fought back tears.

  He wanted to slip his arm around her, to comfort her from this rare display of emotion. But he had no right to touch her in the one place they spent more time than any other.

  Theirs was not a public relationship, but a private one, and as such he had to curb his need and allow the priest to be the one to gently touch Susanna’s shoulder and say, “She’ll be in good hands. I promise.”

  * * *

  SUSANNA AWOKE IN THE dark of late night and instinctively bolted across the bedroom before sleep cleared and her brain finally caught up.

  Nausea. Big-time.

  She made it to the bathroom, and by the time she was curled up in a fetal ball on the bathroom rug, she knew she’d rather die than have to drag herself up and be sick one more time.

  She lay there shivering, too weak to reach up and grab a towel to cover her, would rather freeze than move. Some vague place in her memory remembered what it felt like to be alone and miserable. She’d had a life before Skip had gotten sick, before every minute of every day had become urgent, a lesson in not letting a precious moment pass unlived while surviving on one income, with one car, with one parent trying to be in three places at once with two children who needed two parents.

  Even through her sick haze, she knew life hadn’t always been that way. She hadn’t always been alone. Once upon a time she’d been part of a happy family, when the kids had been little and their days full of caring for each other, enjoying each other, living and loving and living...

  Susanna didn’t know what had driven her from sleep. One moment she’d been curled up around Skip in bed. The next moment she was on her knees, heaving up her guts in the commode.

  When she finally sank down onto the bathroom rug, a puddle of weakness, grateful she’d thrown in that last load of laundry the other night because the rug still smelled fresh.

  She must have dozed, because she startled awake, every inch of her aching, her stomach rebelling again... Just when she thought there couldn’t possibly be anything left, she was forced to drag herself up again.

  She was burning up, pressing her cheek to the cold tile.

  She was shivering so hard her rattling teeth echoed in the quiet. And it was so quiet. Not a creature was stirring....

  Funny how every minute of her every day was filled with family life. Meeting everyone’s needs. Organizing play groups and cooking and reading stories and laundry and Christmas shopping and cleaning and listening to Skip deliver a blow-by-blow about contracting a huge firm and Karan’s meltdown about her unraveling marriage, all while squeezing in a full-time career around what was really important—her loved ones.

  She’d spent thirty minutes tracking down Lambie tonight after dinner because Brooke couldn’t possibly sleep without him. While Skip regaled them with his success story and they both took turns helping Brandon with his vocabulary sheet....

  Yet here she was, alone, while her family slept peacefully. Not even Skip to care for her in this hour of need.

  He’d be here if she woke him. But she didn’t have the strength to call out or the heart to interrupt his sleep when he had an important meeting with the vice president of sales and their newest, and now biggest, client tomorrow.

&n
bsp; So she just lay there trying to draw warmth from the woolly bath rug, teeth chattering, until forced to reach for the toilet seat and drag herself up yet again.

  Only this time when she sank back to the bathroom rug, she sensed a presence in the doorway. Even turning her head took a monumental effort. Two glinting eyes surveyed her from a furry golden face.

  Hershel.

  He didn’t take long to assess the situation before maneuvering the tight passage into the bathroom, tail thumping the wooden hamper as he did. He flopped down beside her with his big warm body, solid and safe, a gesture that said louder than any words that she wasn’t alone anymore.

  Warmth finally chased away the cold. Not the feverish sort of burning up, but a gentle warmth that finally lulled her from sleep. A blanket.

  Jay, not Hershel.

  It took a moment to make sense of him, sitting with his back against the bathroom wall, his arm hooked over his knee.

  “I’m dying.” That hoarse voice wasn’t hers, was it?

  “You’re not dying.” Jay’s chuckle was an assault on her weakened senses, an offense to her misery. “You probably just picked up the virus everyone else had. Remember?”

  No, she didn’t. She was dying.

  “I won’t let you die,” he said softly. “I promise.”

  And he seemed determined to make good. When she was forced to drag herself up, he was there to support her, pull her hair back with gentle fingers. He pressed a cool washcloth to her face and neck.

  He didn’t rebel at the sheer grossness of the situation—not that she cared, she was that sick. But she would care. If she ever felt better, she’d die of embarrassment. But right now he took the situation in stride and cared for her.

  And she wasn’t alone.

  Not yet, anyway.