by Radclyffe
“Is he taking hormones?”
“Yes, for about six months.” Abby realized Flann was the first person other than her mother and parents in the support group with whom she’d discussed any of the details of Blake’s transition. Talking about it with someone she trusted helped make all the changes feel less foreign. “I keep looking for changes. There are some, but he still looks baby-faced to me.”
“A lot of boys do at that age.” Flann smiled. “Is it hard, watching him change?”
Abby wanted to say no. Part of her thought she should. Slowly, she nodded. “Sometimes. I think back and remember Blake as a child, trying to see what I missed, trying to pick out the moment when he knew and I should have. I can’t. I feel guilty.”
“You’re amazing,” Flann said softly. “Blake is so fucking lucky.”
Abby grimaced. “I don’t feel amazing. Sometimes I feel completely inadequate. A couple of the friends I told you about shut him out, hurt him. I can’t tell you how much I want to shake every single person who hurts him or might hurt him. And I can’t and I don’t know how to keep it from happening again.”
“Blake seems like a pretty strong, together kid. He’ll be okay. He’ll get some bumps, and it’s got to be damn scary. But he’s got you. That’s probably the single most important thing he needs.”
“I hope so. I hope he and Margie get to be good friends. She’s the kind of friend he needs.”
Flann grinned. “Margie? She’s a freaking Amazon.”
“From what I can tell, all the Rivers siblings are Amazons.”
“You should meet my mother.”
Abby laughed. “Oh, now there’s a line I didn’t expect to hear from you.” As soon as she said it, she flushed. Flann might think she was flirting.
Flann didn’t laugh. “You know what? I think that’s a great idea.” She pulled out her phone, punched in a number, and waited. “Mama? Where are you?…Have you heard from Dad and Harper?…Uh-huh. If everything stays quiet, maybe an hour or two…Uh-huh. Hold on.” Flann held up the phone. “Here’s Blake.”
“What?” Abby took the phone. “Blake? Are you okay? Where—?”
“I’m great. Everything’s cool. Margie’s mom is here. Are you coming home soon?”
Abby hesitated. “I don’t know, honey. I can’t leave until some other doctors show up. Maybe.”
“Hold on.”
Abby frowned. Now what?
“Dr. Remy, this is Ida Rivers.”
Abby sat up straight and released Flann’s hand. Ida Rivers’s voice was kissed with a hint of the South that did nothing to make it any less commanding.
“Hello, Mrs. Rivers. This is Abby Remy.”
“Nobody can work around the clock without food. You’re ten minutes from the house. I can have breakfast ready for you and the rest of the family by the time you get here.”
“Um.” Abby glanced at Flann, who was grinning slightly maniacally. She shot her a glare. “Well, I…”
“I’m tracking down my husband and the rest of my children now. Seven o’clock. You can go back to work after that if needed.”
“If at all possible, of course.”
“That will be just fine. See you at seven.”
Abby held the phone out to Flann. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Makes sense. Cafeteria is probably not going to open for a while. And it doesn’t take much longer to get to Presley’s than it does to chase down food in town.”
“I suppose we could all use a break and some food. If it’s quiet.”
“I’ll check on the postop patients, and you can get the ER sorted.”
Abby knew when she’d been beaten. “You should let me change the dressing before we leave.”
“Good enough. I’ll meet you down here as soon as I’m finished upstairs.”
Abby stood. “I’ll round up Presley and Carrie.” She paused. “What about Glenn? She’s been up all night.”
Glenn was practically part of the family. Flann would have mentioned inviting her herself in another minute. “Sure.”
“Great.” Abby jumped up and hurried for the door. “I’ll find her.”
“Great,” Flann muttered, ignoring the quick spurt of jealousy. “Terrific.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Call me if you need me, Angie,” Flann said, clipping the postop order sheet to the front of the patient’s chart. The computer network was iffy with the power outages, and she didn’t want to chance the orders being lost. She’d never really given up the habit of writing notes by hand anyhow. She’d watched her father do it when she’d followed him around as a kid, and the mystique of pulling charts from their racks and delving into the mysteries within still lingered. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
The recovery room nurse, who usually covered the ICU, nodded. “I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t gotten in last night, Flann.”
Flann grinned. “Where else would I be?”
Angie laughed. “I can’t imagine.”
“Besides, Franklin got in and really made a difference.”
“Like old times.” Angie, a fifty-year-old who’d trained at the Rivers’s nursing school before it had shut down, shook her head sadly. “Sometimes I wish we could turn back the clock. I miss the old days.”
“Maybe with the new administration, we can bring back a little of the old too.”
Angie snorted. “You think? Now there’s a new head in the ER. More change.”
“Abby’s great. She’s not going to hurt us.” Flann had seen Abby in action enough to believe what she was saying. And she’d gotten to know her now, believed in her commitment to the Rivers.
“I hope you’re right.”
A patient’s IV machine beeped, and Angie went off to check it. Flann took the stairs down to the ER, eager to see Abby again. She was nowhere in sight but Glenn was at the nurses’ station, filling out a chart. She looked as alert and unfazed as she did at six in the morning at the start of a routine day. Her sandy hair was unruffled, her shoulders straight, her blue eyes crystal clear. Now that Flann thought of it, Glenn was damned good-looking. Just the kind of steady, solid woman who’d appeal to someone looking for a relationship.
“Have you seen Abby?” Flann asked abruptly.
Glenn looked up. “Hey, Flann. She’s in ten, giving discharge instructions to a woman with a fractured wrist.”
“How’s it going down here?”
“Everything’s pretty much cleared out. Abby just checked with fire rescue, and they’ve only got one in the bus. Mrs. Wilcox—shortness of breath again. Andy is set to handle that.”
“Can we sneak out for a little while?”
Glenn nodded. “Sorry I didn’t get up to the OR, but Abby was swamped. I figured it would be more efficient for me to get the pre-ops ready down here so you could just keep them rolling through.”
“It was a good call. Better to get them triaged down here as fast as possible.”
“That’s what Abby thought too. She had things working like clockwork. She’s got a way of getting everybody to put out a hundred and ten percent without even trying.” Glenn grinned. “Abby’s like a general directing troops, but she leads from the front. I’ve never seen the ER click so well.”
Abby, Abby, Abby. Flann bristled a little. “I don’t know, I thought we always did pretty well.”
“Hey, it wasn’t a comment about you. I didn’t mean to suggest—”
“I know. Forget it.” Flann waved her off. Her ego wasn’t so sensitive she couldn’t hear something good about someone else. No doubt Abby was great at her job. She wouldn’t have risen to the top at a competitive program as she’d done without being excellent. Besides, she’d seen for herself how good Abby was. Glenn was obviously taken with her, and that bothered her more than the commentary on how well Flann ran the ER, and that was just plain ridiculous.
“Abby said if you got down here before she was free, to take a look at your leg,” Glenn said. “Three is op
en.”
“It’s fine. It can wait.”
“That’s not what I heard.” Glenn closed the chart and regarded her with a steady, unwavering gaze.
Flann recalled Glenn had been a ranking officer in the military. She never talked about it, but it showed in her demeanor. She wasn’t going to budge, and Flann had to admit a dressing change was probably a good idea. She blew out a breath. She was being an ass on just about every level. “You’re right. Thanks.”
Glenn was halfway through the dressing change when Abby poked her head in through the curtain. “How’s it looking?”
“Fine,” Flann said from her perch on the treatment table. Glenn sat on a stool in front of her, cleaning the incision with sterile saline.
Abby stepped up behind Glenn, rested a hand lightly on her back for balance, and leaned forward to study Flann’s leg. “It looks pretty good. Some swelling. If you can manage to keep off it for the rest of the day, it would help.”
“I will if I can,” Flann said.
Abby squeezed Glenn’s shoulder. “Thanks for taking care of that, Glenn.”
Glenn glanced up, giving Abby a smile. “No problem.”
“When you’re done, I think we’re clear to sneak out of here for a while. Glenn, can you give me a ride?”
“Sure.”
“We should probably take two cars,” Flann said quickly. “In case we have to come back at separate times. Why don’t you take Presley and Carrie back in Carrie’s car, Glenn? I’ll ride with Abby.”
Abby’s brows rose. “Glenn?”
“Sure.” Glenn rose, wrapped a fresh gauze quickly and efficiently around Flann’s thigh, stripped off her gloves, and washed her hands. “I’ll tell them to meet us in the parking lot.”
“Great.” Flann carefully climbed down from the treatment table and pulled on her scrub pants. She was aware of Abby watching her, and the tingle in her belly that started every time Abby was near ratcheted up a notch. She took her time tying her scrubs, and when she looked up, Abby’s gaze was still on her. Flann couldn’t read what was behind her pensive look, but she knew she liked it. “Ready?”
Abby nodded, still thinking about Flann’s long, agile fingers sliding the green ties through her hands. Clever, sensuous fingers. She turned away. “We should go. We might not have much time.”
Presley met them in the parking lot and gave Abby her keys. “See you there!”
Abby pulled out first, hoping the drive back to Presley’s would be less adventurous than the trip in to the hospital had been. In daylight, everything looked both less forbidding and more devastated than the night before. The road crews must’ve been working around the clock too. Downed trees had been cut and dragged to the side to clear the roads. Uprooted trees and fields smashed flat by the high winds punctuated the countryside. They passed a white farmhouse and red barn looking bucolic in the bright sunlight, tall stalks of corn waving in the fields. A quarter mile farther on, bent and broken cornstalks lay strewn across pastures surrounding a tumbled-down barn and a house with portions of the roof missing.
“This is terrible,” Abby said. “It’s not just property damage. These fields are people’s livelihoods.”
“I know,” Flann said. “It’s still early enough in the season that some of these fields can be replanted, though. Everyone who lives out here is a survivor. Nature has been trying to drive us out for a couple hundred years, but it hasn’t won yet.”
“Have you ever thought about leaving?”
“Oh,” Flann said lightly, “for a while. When I first got to the city for medical school, I was pretty seduced by the…life.”
Abby grinned and shot her a look. “Don’t you mean nightlife?”
Flann grinned back. “Well, it’s not as if there’s an abundance of available females in this area. So, yeah, I was a little taken with the increase in the dating pool.”
Abby laughed. “I don’t doubt it. Where did you go to school?”
“My father’s alma mater. Vanderbilt.”
“Southern girls at that. That must have been a change.”
“It worked out pretty well for my father.”
“But neither you nor Harper came back with a bride.”
“I wasn’t looking for one, and Harper…well, I guess Harper was waiting for Presley.”
Abby smiled, taken aback by the seriousness in Flann’s voice. “That’s a terribly romantic thing to say, Dr. Rivers.”
“What, you don’t think I have any romantic tendencies?”
“I think I’d better not comment on that.”
“Is that what you’re looking for? A romantic?” Flann asked. For some strange reason, Abby’s assumption she wasn’t capable of romance bothered her. Not that she’d ever considered herself romantic or had been looking for romance. Far from it. But Abby’s quick dismissal rankled.
Abby frowned. “How did we get from your love of the city life to my love life?”
“Natural progression.”
“This is my turn, isn’t it?” Abby frowned, feeling oddly displaced. The countryside looked practically foreign despite the bright sunshine and clear skies. She’d traveled the road barely twenty-four hours before, but subtle changes in the landscape, as if someone had rearranged familiar pieces on a chessboard while she hadn’t been looking, left her uneasy and wary. Even the discussion with Flann had started out innocently and veered into areas she’d rather not discuss, areas she’d rather not even think about.
“Yes—turn right.”
Abby signaled and turned in to the drive leading to Presley’s, hoping to derail the strange turn in the conversation. Her personal life was barely existent, and romance had never been on the horizon. She’d been a mother before she’d barely had a chance to date other women. Oh, she’d been tempted now and then during medical school and after to do more than casually date, but there’d just never been time. She’d hardly had the energy to maintain the grueling training schedule while helping to raise Blake. Personal relationships weren’t even a consideration. “I’m not in the market for romance.”
“Is there someone back in the city, then?” Flann asked, a tightness in her voice that sounded almost like anger. “A trail of broken hearts?”
“No,” Abby said, “nothing dramatic at all. I’ve been a little busy the past few years, so…nothing serious.” She wasn’t about to admit to nothing at all. Really, how pathetic would that seem?
“Blake is fifteen, isn’t he?”
“Almost sixteen,” Abby said.
“So in sixteen years, nothing serious?”
Abby looked away from the road long enough to meet Flann’s questioning gaze. “That’s a little personal.”
“I know.” Flann didn’t sound the least bit apologetic.
Clearly, Flannery Rivers would not be put off when she wanted something. Abby had never run into anyone who probed beneath the surface of her personal shields with such unabashed arrogance and persistence. She ought to be irritated. She was irritated, but more with herself than Flann. Irritated because she didn’t want to keep her shields up. Protecting herself, protecting her privacy, protecting Blake’s privacy, was exhausting. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d let anyone see the needs and hopes and desires she harbored beneath the surface. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d thought of them herself. Maybe the last time she and Presley had talked, really talked, before Abby had gone off to medical school and Presley had left to pursue the life her family had raised her to live.
“You first,” Abby said, thinking a reversal might dissuade Flann from probing any further. “What are you looking for?”
“That’s easy. Someone smart, adventurous, with her life together, and no serious aspirations.”
Abby nodded wryly. Why was she disappointed? “A good-time girl.”
“More or less. I’d prefer she’d only be having a good time with me.”
Abby raised a brow as she pulled up in front of Presley’s house. “Fun for how long?”
>
Flann grinned. “Until we aren’t having fun anymore.”
“For how long?” Abby shut off the engine and turned to face her. “For how long will it be just fun?”
Flann’s grin disappeared and a muscle jumped along her jaw. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m cut out for anything else.”
“I’m not sure I believe that,” Abby said quietly.
“You should. Your turn,” Flann said just as quietly.
Abby shrugged. “I used to think, a long time ago, I’d have a traditional family—spouse, couple of kids, a comfortable house, a few animals. And my career, of course.”
“2.5 kids, station wagon, and a house in the suburbs?”
“Not exactly. I grew up in the suburbs, but my grandparents had a place in the Adirondacks. Ten acres on a lake. I’m not looking for a lake, but I’d like to have a place where the neighbors aren’t too close, where my children…where Blake can have a dog and we wouldn’t have to worry about traffic.” Abby laughed. “Maybe even a few chickens.”
Flann laughed too. “You said you used to think that. You don’t anymore?”
“Tell me about your mother,” Abby said. She didn’t want to talk about herself anymore. She didn’t want to think about a relationship, and even if she did, Flann wasn’t the person she wanted to share her dreams with.
“My mother?” Flann’s voice held a note of surprise and affection. “She’s…she’s amazing. If it weren’t for her, I don’t know how any of us would’ve turned out, really.”
“What about your dad? From what I understand, everyone at the hospital thinks he’s close to God.”
“My father is a remarkable physician, and a good father. I love him, but like most doctors in his situation, he wasn’t around a lot when we were growing up. When we were hurt, when we were scared, when Kate…” Flann blew out a breath. “Well, anyhow, my mother is the rock our family rests on.”
“Kate?” Abby couldn’t remember anyone mentioning Kate.
“Our sister between Carson and Margie. She died of leukemia when she was eleven.”
