by Ruby Laska
“Yes, I’m here. Sitting in the dark. Do you have any idea why none of the lights in this place seem to be working?”
There was a pause, on his end this time. A long one. Claudia was sure she could hear Andy breathing.
“No idea. Tell you what though, let me come take a look in the morning. I have a key.”
“You...have a key?”
“Yeah. I like to, you know, look in on her once in a while.”
“You and she seem to have gotten pretty chummy.” Claudia regretted the proprietary note in her voice. “Look, what can I do for you, anyway?”
“I don’t suppose she told you, ah, much more after I left.”
“Much more about what? What exactly is it you two are holding out on me?”
“Look, Claudia, I’m no happier to have to discuss this with you than you are to hear it from me, I’m sure—”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it any way at all, it’s just been about the longest day of my life—”
“Why don’t you wait for me there in the morning,” Andy said, cutting her off. “I’ll come over before work. We can talk then.”
Setting the heavy receiver slowly down in the cradle, Claudia thought for a moment.
She knew that tone, could almost picture the way his jaw set when he had his mind made up about something, the way he clenched his teeth together when he was frustrated. He sounded like a man who would rather face a herd of angry buffalo than deal with her in the morning, but who was damn sure going to do it anyway.
Like a man who was hell-bent on walking into disaster.
CHAPTER THREE
Claudia opened the door before Andy decided for certain to raise his hand and knock.
He had been half tempted to climb back in his Blazer and retreat to the safety of his hectic hospital routine. It would have been easy enough to find an excuse, that case of suspected toxemia that had come in the night before, or the food poisoning victims. Two entire families afflicted, parents, children, all of them miserable.
Join the club.
“I saw you drive up,” Claudia said, biting her lip.
She was a mess. Dressed in an ill-fitting flannel shirt and canvas gardening pants, she stood in the door frame with a small but tightly fisted hand perched on one hip, absently pushing stray blonde strands away from her wide eyes with the other. Her makeshift ponytail was in danger of spilling free of its elastic, and her scrubbed face was decorated only by a long charcoal smudge on one cheek.
A smudge that Andy had a sudden urge to reach out and gently wipe away. Even as he pushed the thought down, his fingertips twitched with anticipation at the feel of her creamy skin, a few freckles already dotting her nose and cheeks as if in preparation for the summer to come.
“Can I come in?”
She hesitated, then stood aside, the heavy plank door creaking as it swung open.
“I’d offer you coffee,” Claudia said, her tone flat and tired. “But I have no idea where Bea keeps the coffee maker these days, and there’s no electricity anyway, and even if there was I’m afraid to open the refrigerator, what with the power having been out for who knows how long...”
“I took care of that,” Andy said, slowly surveying the condition of the place. How long had it been since he’d been here? A few weeks? A month, tops. But things had managed to slide even further down hill. “It’ll be back on by noon. It’s only been off since yesterday morning so the fridge shouldn’t be too bad, though we’ll have to throw a lot of the perishable things out, I suppose.”
“It wasn’t a power outage? I don’t understand. You mean Bea had her electricity cut off?”
The confusion in Claudia’s eyes slowed him down a bit. So she genuinely had no idea. Andy let his gaze continue around the room, pausing to take the thick layer of dust covering the furniture.
The faint rotten smell from the kitchen. That, evidently, was where Claudia had spent her morning. The table, counters and cabinets had been scoured clean, and the floor gleamed from a fresh coat of wax.
“She didn’t have it cut off,” he said, sighing. “At least, not on purpose.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. Look, why don’t we drive into town, get a cup of coffee—”
“I’m fine here.” Again those fists, as Claudia backed up to lean against the back of a sofa, fixing her gaze somewhere between his chin and his Adam’s apple.
Determined, she was, and fiercely protective. And maybe just a little bit more frightened than she wanted to admit.
Andy suddenly wanted to reach out for her, pull her into his arms and hold her, tell her everything would be all right.
Not a good idea.
“Fine.” A shrug. Accommodating, but professional. “Can we at least sit down?”
“If you don’t mind the dust,” Claudia said, edging around the sofa without turning away from him, then gingerly patting the cushions as though she expected something unpleasant to spring from their depths. She settled primly in the center of the sofa, and Andy picked an overstuffed chair.
“Bea’s condition is considerably more serious than she apparently wants you to think,” he said.
“But her fractures—”
“It’s not just her fractures.”
A pause, while Claudia waited for him to continue. A tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth betrayed her nervousness. He took a deep breath and dove in.
“Bea’s osteoarthritis is advanced. She has terrible pain in her hips. Debilitating pain. She can no longer walk up stairs or drive her car, and even walking more than a short distance hurts. It amazes me that she didn’t break her hips when she fell, although I suppose she used her arm to cushion the fall and absorbed the shock there.”
He watched Claudia carefully. He knew her range of expression well; she’d never been any good at concealing her thoughts. Her eyes widened and her lips parted slightly as she struggled to understand what he was saying.
This was the part he hated the most, when the bad news was out on the table, and he had nothing more to offer. Some physicians walked away after telling the patients and their families, leaving them to sort through their emotions. Andy had never quite been able to bring himself to do that. He stayed out of obligation or misplaced concern, only adding to their anxiety.
“She’s never mentioned any pain,” Bea finally said brokenly.
“When did she last visit?”
“Two...no, a little over two years ago. In the summer, for Dad’s birthday.”
“And you didn’t think it was strange that she hasn’t come back again?”
“I...she...” He could see the thoughts tumbling across Claudia’s face, read the growing upset and the seeds of guilt forming in her eyes. “She always had things come up. Last summer she said she didn’t want to miss any of the summer theater series. And then she said she didn’t want to travel with the crowds over the holidays. I mean, we were surprised, but...Damn it, I should have come out here.” Claudia’s mouth tugged down at the corners and her brows knit together.
Guilt. Andy knew it well.
“Don’t beat yourself up over this,” Andy said. He knew that Claudia never came out to Lake Tahoe anymore to visit Bea. And he thought he knew why. That was a subject best left untouched. “Back to her pain, though,” he said, “You say she never mentioned it?”
Claudia shrugged, impatience Andy would wager she was directing at herself. “She said she was stiff. Made it sound like just another little annoying part of old age.”
“She’s a tough woman,” Andy said softly. He’d had patients complain of agonizing pain whose condition had not progressed nearly as far as Bea’s. “She wouldn’t admit to me how bad it had gotten, but I saw things. She’d adjusted her gait, and when she thinks no one is looking...”
“She’s always been so independent,” Claudia said wistfully. “Always managed everything on her own, especially after Grandpa died.”
/> “Look around.” Andy arced a hand around the dusty, musty room, not taking his eyes from her face. “You can see she really hasn’t been up to the task for some time. Have you been upstairs?”
Another storm cloud passed her eyes. “Yes...it didn’t look so bad.”
“Yes, because she can’t get up there. She’s been sleeping in the guest room down here. I think she’s behind in her bills because she can’t focus on anything but the pain in her hip.”
“She never said anything,” Claudia repeated, her eyes losing their focus, her hands tightening on her knees. “If I had known—If Dad knew—”
“Look, Claudia, you really can’t afford to be too hard on yourself about this,” Andy said. “Bea’s a stubborn person, as you well know. And smart. She didn’t want you to know about her growing disability and so she made sure you didn’t. The important thing now is to take care of her hip.”
“What do you mean?”
“Replace it. Total hip arthroplasty. Give her a new hip joint.”
“A new hip,” Claudia repeated slowly. “Andy, forgive me but I’m having a little trouble absorbing all of this. You have a cast on her arm, her leg in traction. Now you tell me she needs to have her hip replaced.”
“And she’ll get through this surgery just fine,” Andy said, sensing his opening. “If we can talk her into it.”
“We?” Claudia said sharply. “You haven’t discussed it with her yet?”
“Of course I have. Come on, Claudia, I consider Bea to be a friend. I’ve talked to her about it as often as she’ll listen. In fact I first brought it up when I noticed a change in her gait last year. But she denied having any pain. When she began to lose function, she became more and more adamant that she could handle it.”
“She hates hospitals,” Claudia said slowly.
Andy nodded. “I can understand. Losing her husband to lung cancer with a long hospital stay...well, that would turn anybody against the place.”
“It’s not just that. Bea’s always been into, you know, alternative treatments. I think she might be the original hippy. She was brewing herbal teas for our sniffles when I was just a kid.”
“Yeah, I know. Healing through crystals and all that. She’s given me an earful of what she thinks of science. Well, this is one time when Bea really needs to capitulate to modern medicine. Somehow, we have to get around her fear—”
“Fear!” Claudia interrupted sharply. “My grandmother is the most fearless woman I’ve ever met.”
Andy held his hands up, palms out. “I know,” he said. “And if I ever had to fight off a band of muggers, she’s the person I’d want at my side. But this is a different kind of fear. You know how it is. Isn’t there anything you’ve ever had to face that frightened you into making a wrong decision? A time when you’ve given in to your fears?”
The change in Claudia was sudden and remarkable. She ducked her chin and turned her head slightly away, but not before Andy saw the slight trembling of her jaw.
She didn’t answer.
“I’ll do everything I can to help,” Andy finally said. He didn’t like seeing Claudia lost in a trance like this. It was a side of her he’d never seen before. Tentatively, he reached out a hand and let it glance off her knee. A small touch, insignificant really, but it brought Claudia’s attention back around.
“All right.” A trace of determination showed in Claudia’s subtle shifting of her weight forward in the old sofa. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow. You can do the surgery soon?”
Andy nodded. “I’ve already got a friend of mine, an orthopedist, ready to take this on. I’ve taken the radiographs and the diagnosis is textbook. Her right hip needs attention right now. The left is in a lot better shape, and we can treat it with a program of exercise and drug therapy.”
“How long is the recovery?”
“She’ll be up in a day or two...then there’s intense physical therapy for several months.”
“And she’ll be good as new when it’s done?”
She’d gotten straight to the point. That was Claudia’s way. She’d always had an economy about her, a talent for plowing right through to the heart of the matter, an impatience with any clouding of issues. At first Andy had thought it was the result of a child getting her way since birth, a sense of entitlement.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
With someone else, a stranger, a patient’s family member in a clean hospital office somewhere, Andy would have put her question off. Evaded it with a quick escape into terminology, statistics. Left the truth for someone else to deliver.
But this was Claudia he was talking to.
“I can’t answer that.”
Saw the fear rise in her eyes.
“Look, Claudia, Bea’s in debilitating pain, much as she tries to convince herself and the rest of the world that it’s manageable. Hip replacement will address that, I can almost guarantee it. But as far as returning to full functioning...Bea has already lost so much range of motion that it’s impossible to say.”
“How bad could it be?”
“90 per cent of patients coming out of this surgery recover a good range of function. But in Bea’s case, she’s suffered a progressive limitation in motion of her right hip and groin as she has lost nearly all the cushioning around the hip joint. That’s the osteoarthritis I was referring to. With such extensive damage, there is a chance that she won’t be able to...” Andy swallowed, looking for the wherewithal to continue. He knew he was doing the very best he could, taking advantage of all his skills, which were considerable. But even so, he was about to add to Claudia’s pain, and he hated like hell to do it.
The urge was there, under his carefully delivered opinion, under his rigid posture in the uncomfortable chair. He wanted to comfort. To use touch to express what he was to clumsy to say with words...
“What?” Claudia’s demand teamed with a fierce expression.
“To...put on socks. To tie her shoes. To bathe herself. To climb stairs. To pick up a laundry basket or walk without a cane. Or a wheelchair.”
Claudia’s face drained slowly of color.
“If she’d addressed this sooner...”
Andy waved her question away. “It doesn’t pay to think that way, but no, I don’t think that it would have made a difference.”
Claudia bit her lower lip, hard enough that the skin went white. She pulled herself inward, hunching over her crossed arms. That was her way of girding herself for a fight, he remembered; her way of protecting her vulnerability while she prepared for a challenge she wasn’t sure she was up to.
“I’ll...Dad and I will hire a housekeeper. A skilled companion.”
“Claudia,” Andy said gently, and without thinking reached forward to place two fingers under her chin, tilting her face so her eyes met his again. “Bea needs to move. Somewhere with no stairs, with an easy layout. Somewhere where she can get help caring for herself.”
“What are you saying?”
“There are a lot of options, a lot of possibilities. Continuing care facility, residential care home, sheltered housing...we need to see where she is following surgery to make that determination.”
A few more degrees of color drained from Claudia’s face.
“Those all sound like fancy ways of saying nursing home.”
“That’s not my intention at all,” Andy said. “There are a lot of new approaches to assisting the elderly live with as much independence as possible. And some really fine facilities have been built in the last few years, many close by.”
“I don’t see why she can’t continue to live here,” Claudia said, her voice rising. “This is her home. So she can’t get upstairs—obviously she doesn’t need the room.”
Andy sighed. “Claudia, for God’s sake, look around you.”
“It’s just dirty.” Defiance flashed in Claudia’s wide gold eyes, the same look he’d seen a thousand times in Bea. “A little elbow grease is all it’ll take. Once it’s back in shape, I can arrange for someone to com
e in and clean every week. Or as often as necessary.”
“Elbow grease isn’t going to help her pay the bills,” Andy said sharply.
“What do you mean? She’s sitting on a good chunk of the Canfield family fortune.”
“I don’t mean money. I mean sitting down, taking a pen in hand, and writing the checks. The electricity—”
“You’re telling me that she...what, forgot?”
The pitiful expression on Claudia’s face, her innocent shock, her reluctance to believe what she didn’t want to hear—these were familiar territory. For a moment Andy was even able to forget it was Claudia in front of him. After all, he had seen it dozens, hundreds of times before in his professional life. Run the gamut of human emotion through his patients and their loved ones, their despair and denial when the news wasn’t good. He’d learned the hard way how to cushion himself, how to deflect all that pain before it seeped into his own body. How to delegate the task of dealing with the families altogether, if possible.
All in all, he’d become pretty effective at shielding himself from the personal side of his work. He focused on the illnesses and injuries, deliberately not learning patients’ first names, studying his clipboard when taking histories so he didn’t have to look into their eyes.
But then again, he’d never had to deal with Claudia before. Not like this.
His fingers still tingled from their contact with her chin, that little patch of soft skin that had once tucked itself so securely over his arms circling her as they drifted to sleep.
Step back. Deep breath. Focus.
“I believe Bea may be suffering from depression,” he said carefully, looking slightly past Claudia out the window behind her, off to the mountains in the distance, a curl of smoke rising from a chimney at a neighbor’s house down the road. “It’s common enough in the elderly, especially those who are facing health problems, the loss of a spouse or friends, isolation due to decreased mobility. It can result in forgetfulness, listlessness, a whole range of symptoms.”
He gradually slipped into the doctor voice, his protection from patients and their loved ones, from their emotions and fears. It wasn’t that he was indifferent to their pain; on the contrary, he felt it as deeply sometimes as though the families clustered in the waiting room were his own.
