by Dale Mayer
She gave the documents a quick glance and then signed. After she signed, he asked Katie to witness the signature. And then he said, “Can we send these back, please?”
Just as she dialed the number, the director came to the desk. “What’s going on here?”
Liam turned to look at him. “We’re sending out a fax.”
He frowned, but the paper was already rolling through the machine. “I hope it has nothing to do with our earlier discussion.”
“We deliberately kept you out of it because you didn’t want to be involved in a family dispute, remember?” Liam said with a raised eyebrow.
The director gave a curt nod and left.
When the fax was sent and confirmed, Katie clipped together the cover sheet, the documents, and the confirmation of the fax having been sent and handed it over to Liam. “I hope that does what you need it to do,” she said. “I hate to see families torn apart.”
Lilianna grabbed Katie’s fingers and gave them a squeeze. “You always were a sweetheart.”
Katie shook her head. “So not true. If that was the case, I’d be married with three kids by now.”
Lilianna stopped and looked at her. “I remember you were in a pretty hot and heavy relationship with Larry. What happened to that?”
Katie frowned. “He left me at the altar,” she said. “Took off with my bridesmaid.”
Lilianna gasped.
Katie raised her gaze. “And I know that you know how that feels.”
The two women stared at each other in mutual commiseration.
Liam wrapped an arm around Lilianna’s shoulders and nudged her toward her father’s room. He glanced over at Katie and whispered, “Thanks.”
She gave him a big smile.
As they walked down the hall, Lilianna said, “That’s so not fair. Katie is such a sweetie.”
“Do you trust her?”
Lilianna nodded. “Absolutely. As much as I do anyone.”
Liam had to think about that because she seemed to be way too trusting, very innocent in so many ways. “Do you think she would have taken money to hide or falsify records or done anything to keep your father in that condition?”
“I would hope not,” Lilianna admitted. “She never did like my sister.”
“Sounds like not too many people did.”
“No,” Lilianna said. “I always felt like I had to be overly nice to make up for my sister’s bitchiness.”
“Not your job,” Liam said.
“It doesn’t matter though, does it?” Lilianna said. “Our roles were set a long time ago.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t have to be that way now. You get to change that status quo at any time.”
He opened the door to her father’s room and stepped inside; she walked in and sat down beside her father. “I really don’t want to leave you tonight, Dad.”
But he stared at her without any sign of recognition.
She glanced at North and said, “What do I do now?”
Just then the nurse came in. “Visiting hours are almost over.” The new nurse bustled in with a cheerful smile. “It’s time for his medication.”
“His medication has been discontinued,” Liam said. “We’re letting him sleep off the dosage tonight.”
The nurse looked at him in surprise. “Really?” She shrugged. “I’ll ensure that’s documented. I have to follow orders.”
“Check with the director,” Liam said. He glanced at Lilianna. “Do you want to stay here with him tonight?”
She was torn. “They’ve always taken good care of him. I can’t see that they’re actively trying to hurt him. But I really don’t know anything about this new doctor.”
“New doctor?”
She nodded. “I think it was about four months ago that he was assigned a new doctor.”
“Any particular reason why?”
“Staff changes? Patient changes?” She shook her head. “Does anybody ever really know in a place like this?”
“Give us the name of the new one and the old one.”
“But it’s on the medical records. Why don’t you ask Katie for more insider information,” she said.
North said, “My turn. I’ll ask her.”
“Remember, her name is Katie,” Liam said with a grin.
North’s face broke into a charming smile. “Let me go make Katie’s acquaintance.”
Lilianna watched him go. “I almost feel sorry for her. You guys have lethal smiles. There should be a law against so much sex appeal in small spaces.”
Liam stared at her as if she’d gone off her rocker.
She waved at him. “Don’t even try to give me that look.”
“What look?”
“The one that says you don’t know what I’m talking about,” she said with a laugh. “You use compliments and charm to get what you want.”
“We all do, depending on the circumstances,” he said. “And, in the current situation, we’ll do whatever we need to do to look after your father and you and the property.”
She stared at him, her heart sinking. “It’s a little hard for me to consider that my sister is doing something so destructive.”
“It’s hard to say she is. I mean, if she saw your father attacking somebody, or heard about it from somebody who exaggerated it, it makes full sense she would want him sedated so nobody got hurt. Maybe she felt she had to do it with subterfuge as you’d never believe her or agree.”
At that Lilianna turned to look at her father. “This isn’t even a life.”
“But there’s certainly life left in him.”
“How long before your specialist gets a chance to go through the medical records?”
“He’s already got them,” Liam said quietly. “As for how long to hear back, I don’t know.”
“Who is this man you sent them to?”
He glanced at her with a big grin. “Ice’s father. The records went to him, and then he contacted a specialist.”
She frowned. “An awful lot of people are getting involved.” Her voice was hesitant. “I certainly don’t have money for all that too.”
“Of course not. A place like this can’t be cheap.”
She shook her head. “It’s not. That’s where my personal money has gone.”
“So the sanctuary isn’t paying for this?”
She shook her head. “Oh, goodness no. That wouldn’t be fair. Father does have medical insurance, and that’s covering eighty percent of it, but we’re covering the other twenty.”
He looked at her, his lips quirking. “Who’s we?”
She sighed, her shoulders sagging. “Make that me.”
“Well, it’s not coming from the $500 you’re getting from the charity,” he said quietly. “So where else is it coming from?”
She frowned. “My brother’s life insurance.”
He stared at her in horror. “We’re back to your brother and his accident again.”
She nodded. “He left me a $75,000 life insurance policy. He left my sister a $50,000 one.”
“Why the difference?”
“That’s what Brianna has always asked me. But honestly the answer is simple. He didn’t get along with her. She wasn’t the nicest person in the family, and he knew it. He also knew I had spent a lot of my time letting her get away with shit and getting more out of basically everyone, but it was a surprise that he had life insurance at all.”
“Does your father have a policy?”
She nodded. “He’s got a $100,000 policy.”
“Where is that?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Among the paperwork regarding his other legal assets, I presume. I never thought to ask.”
“So there’s a $100,000 life insurance policy that’ll pay out upon Jim’s death, plus the sanctuary property and whatever other assets your father might have, for whoever gets a general power of attorney?”
“But that general power of attorney doesn’t mean you get to just grab whatever you want,” she said. “My f
ather needs care, and he’s young. The sanctuary needs assistance too. I give it all the time I can for marketing and all the free labor I can for working onsite. Any general POA is to do what needs to be done.”
Liam nodded. “Upon Jim’s death, that sum won’t last more than a few years.”
She frowned. “I’m not talking about that. That’s many years down the line. I’m talking about what’s needed now. What’s available now to care for Dad. My thinking was we were clear for ten years between my brother’s $75,000 life insurance and Dad’s pension and his medical insurance”
“And why are you giving all your brother’s inheritance toward Jim’s medical care?”
She shrugged irritably. But she stayed silent.
“Because you felt guilty, right?”
She glared at him. “Well, it wasn’t a very nice thing to realize your brother left one sister more than the other.”
“It’s your brother’s life insurance. He can do whatever the hell he wants,” Liam said forcibly.
“Fine, okay. So it’s guilt. But I still can’t keep my father like this forever.”
Liam nodded. “Did the health insurance say anything about a time frame?”
She shook her head. “No, he always had very good health insurance. He was an engineer for a big telecommunications company. He had a very good pension with that. It was being paid directly into the sanctuary account. He wanted to make sure the elephants were fine no matter what. His health insurance was for the rest of his life.”
“Good thing,” Liam said. “Because this could end up being a long-term thing.”
“You’re kidding me, right? It is a long-term thing.”
Just then Liam’s phone rang. He looked at the Caller ID and walked to the other side of the room to talk. “Levi, what’s up?”
And that’s all she could hear. Lilianna sat here, thinking about how off her world was. She didn’t have anything against her sister, but Brianna wasn’t anybody who necessarily cared beyond what she could see in front of her.
Brianna had been looking after the place since her brother’s death. But, if Lilianna thought about all the things they had discussed that needed to be done that weren’t getting done, she wondered just how much effort her sister had put into it. If any. And that was fairly disruptive too.
North walked in. He sat beside her. “Now I have the two doctors’ names,” he said cheerfully.
She looked at him suspiciously. “You were nice to Katie, right?”
He gave her a bland look. “Of course I was. She looks like a sweetheart.”
There was enough truth in his voice that she relaxed. “She is, but, as I found out, nice girls don’t always end up getting what they want or deserve.”
“What do you want?”
She stared at him in surprise. “I want my father back on his feet—the same strong, healthy, robust man he was before my brother’s death. I want the sanctuary to stay safe so those elephants have everything they need for the rest of their natural lives.”
“That’s great and all, but that has nothing to do with what you need for you.”
“I really don’t think about me. I’m all about everybody else.”
He nodded. “I get that. But that’s not always enough. You have needs too.”
“Funny. After Carlos switched to my sister, I can’t say I felt like I had very many needs. I went pretty numb for a while. With my brother, my father, and then my fiancé …” She shook her head. “At the time I didn’t think I’d trust another man again.”
“But obviously you trusted Gunner,” he said.
She nodded. “Gunner has always been good to me. He trusted my father, and my father trusted him. So, when trouble was brewing, I didn’t know who else to go to.”
She glanced at Liam in the corner of the room, still on the phone, and back to North. “You do realize none of this has to do with the website, the bad-mouthing, the ugly news reports, the loss of donations?”
“That’s not true,” North said. “We’ll probably find it’s a big smear campaign. At least it would appear so at one level. Yet it’s almost always about power, money or sex behind it all.”
“It seems so sad to think that everything in life boils down to those few elements.”
“What would you like to see life boil down to?” North asked.
She stared at him for a long moment, then smiled. “How about love? Honesty? Truth? Honor?” She kept tossing them out, and he kept nodding. “Is it really so hard to have that?” she asked.
“No, not at all,” he said. “And sometimes I think that we’re a minority because both Liam and I think the same way you do. But a lot of the world doesn’t.”
“My brother was like me,” she said softly. “He was gentle. The elephants were his life. My father was very much like that. My mother not so much.”
“How often do you see your mother?”
She shook her head. “Not often. At my sister’s wedding, then about five months ago.”
“Sounds like that was enough.”
She gave him a lopsided grin. “My mother told me how it was my fault I lost my fiancé. If I had been better in bed, he wouldn’t have had to go to my sister. And that my sister was obviously a way better woman than I was.”
He stared at her.
Her lips twisted. “Right? So do I need that again?” She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
“What does your mother do?”
“Marries well,” she said, and then a laugh burst free. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“Well, you did,” North said. “And it’s an interesting statement. Do you want to elaborate?”
She shrugged. “What I mean is, she marries well, gets wealth from her marriages and moves up.”
“How many times has she been married?”
“Three times. My father was the first.”
“Is she’s still married?”
“No. She’s currently looking for number four.”
“Divorces?”
“With my father, yes. Husband number two, no. He died in a car accident. Husband number three”—she frowned—“I don’t remember. I think she caught him in an affair, and they divorced, but I’m not sure. It’s unclear. I think she got a huge payout because he was this big business name, and she got hush money to not make a scene.”
“That would make sense,” he said. “She’s looking for number four, now that she’s done with the last two.”
“Oh, she’s done well out of all three,” she said. “My father had lots of money. She made sure she got a decent portion of it.”
“And of course she’s not pitching in for his health care now, right?” His tone said he knew what the answer was.
“Does any ex ever help the person they supposedly loved at one time?”
“I’ve seen it happen,” North said. “But not very often.”
Just then Liam joined them and said, “Ice has been talking to her father. He’s brought in a neurosurgeon and their psychiatrist. They’ve all had an online conference discussing treatment for your father.” He sat down hard beside them. “How do you feel about handing him over to Ice’s father for a few weeks to see if they can do something with him?”
“Did they say what’s brought this on?”
“They said it does happen sometimes. People get so caught up in grief that they shrink inside, but, until the drugs are out of his system, we won’t know what his true mental state is like.”
She said, “Will I get him there, or will that be a legal fight?”
“Nothing in the medical records says you can’t pull him out,” Liam said. “But, if you’re interested, you would have to go to California. That’s where Ice’s father is.”
“He can’t travel that distance,” Lilianna said softly. “Is there anybody here who can treat him?”
“That was the next option,” Liam said. “They are looking for another colleague who might take it on. They’ll get back to us by morning.”
Sh
e sighed. “But we can still stop his medication now, right?”
“Absolutely. All three doctors agreed on that. They said it could take forty-eight hours for the drugs to completely withdraw from his system, but there’d be an improvement within eight hours. And, if you’re at all concerned that he might turn aggressive, then it’s suggested we stay here.”
“All of us?” she asked, astonished.
“No,” Liam said. He looked over at North. “Levi and Gunner want to make sure one of us goes back to the cabin.”
“Why?” she demanded. She hopped to her feet, pacing. “This is bizarre, all of it.”
“True enough, but you left your laptop and paperwork there. We’ve got gear there. We just want to make sure everything is safe.”
North shrugged. “I can run back up, strip out the cabin if you want? You stay here with Lilianna. Let’s get Jim into bed, considering the lateness of the hour. Make sure he’s not given any more medications, and you two can stand watch over him. I’ll be back early in the morning to see what the plan is, how Jim is then.”
“Stay and sleep at the cabin,” Liam said. “We can call you in the morning if and when we find out anything, or you can call us.”
Lilianna looked at her watch. “It’s almost ten o’clock. What if they try to kick us out?”
“Not likely. Ice’s father just contacted the director. It’s been agreed we should stay here with him.”
“And if something happens, and he reacts in an odd way?”
“There will be night staff and doctors on call,” Liam said. “What we want to make sure is that whatever is keeping him in this stupor drains from his system so we have a chance to evaluate what his condition really is.”
“Are we suggesting somebody might come in during the night and drug him with more or try to wait for us to leave?”
“The thing is, we don’t know,” Liam said. “We don’t know anything. Yet.”
North hopped to his feet. “It’s already ten past ten.” He turned to look at Lilianna. “Is there anything else I should collect for you? Do you have documentation, a purse, money, weapons?”
It took her a long moment to really understand what he was asking. “Yes,” she said, suddenly very weary. “There’s a handgun under my pillow. There is money underneath the bottom mattress. I have electronics. And documentation, like my passport, bank account information are in my file drawer.”
