A Family to Heal His Heart

by Tina Beckett

  But one volunteer? There would be no one to pass the client to if whoever was on duty got in over their head or landed in a dangerous situation.

  No. That wasn’t entirely true. When Lindy had spoken with the person in charge of the service she’d been told they could get on another line and either call 911 or get in touch with one of the agencies that dealt with issues that were more complicated. Or more dangerous. That was a good point to remember when they opened their clinic. The place she used to volunteer at had a panic button that would notify the police in case an irate partner came in. A button she’d never had to push, thank God.

  She glanced at Zeke and said in hushed tones, “Have you been here before?”

  “No, first time, and I have to tell you this isn’t what I had in mind.”

  “Me neither. The place I worked at had multiple lines and a place where people who were in trouble came to get help.”

  She went on. “I do have a line on a building that I want to check out after we leave here.” She’d felt horrible calling Zeke in on his day off, especially for what had turned out to be such a small operation, but Neil had been getting pressure from some of his board who wanted to see them move on this thing quickly.

  Quick didn’t always equal better.

  She moved toward the pair who were working together on the phone and overheard the other volunteer trying to get an address. The phone was on speaker and the woman on the other end seemed angry.

  “I just want to know where I can find a good lawyer to sue my boyfriend. Like I said, he hit me.”

  The caller’s voice sounded belligerent rather than frightened and for Lindy, that sent up an automatic red flag.

  “I can’t do that, but I can get you some help, if you’re in danger. What is your boyfriend’s name?”

  “I’m not saying.” A few choice words came over the speaker, causing the volunteer to glance up at her supervisor with raised brows.

  It was then that Lindy saw what he’d written on the pad.

  Possible hoax.

  It did sound like it and the person’s speech sounded almost slurred, as if she’d been drinking or was taking something that impaired her thinking. “Then can you give me your address so that we can make sure you’re safe?”

  Click.

  The caller had hung up. The volunteer sighed. Young, with long blond hair and baby-blue eyes, she introduced herself as Tara Sanders.

  “Sorry to have called you in here for nothing,” she said to the man, who introduced himself as Todd Grissom. “I’ve just never had a caller like that before. I thought she was suicidal at first. She didn’t ask for a lawyer until just a second ago.”

  Todd glanced at them. “We find it’s better to give people the benefit of the doubt, when possible. But as she hung up, our hands are tied. We can hand the recording over to the police department and see if there’s anything in there they can use, and of course we’ll keep a record of the cellphone number, just like we do with all our calls.”

  Zeke glanced around. “I see another desk and a phone.” He nodded behind the current volunteer.

  “We do have another line. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough volunteers to man it. We’re probably going to throw in the towel if nothing changes in the next couple of months.”

  Lindy didn’t understand. “Were there enough volunteers when your program started up?”

  This time it was Tara who answered. “I’ve been volunteering for three years and we used to have a lot of people. But people get tired, you know? Burned out. It seems like there’s a never-ending stream of people who need help and not enough resources to go around.”

  Which was exactly why Mid Savannah was interested in opening their own center. Neil said they’d had a plea from another organization saying an actual medical-based facility was needed. People could always come to the hospital, but the tangles of insurance and red tape sometimes kept them from trying to get help. They wanted an actual place with an exam room or two, along with a place to conduct group sessions or one-on-one counseling. The phones would be used as a filter and a way to direct folks to the right place on the right day.

  “How many callers would you say you log in an average day?” she asked.

  “You mean on this phone or both of them together?”

  “Let’s say both of them.” Even as she said it the phone behind Tara began to ring. Todd went back to get that one, speaking in low tones as he jotted down what the caller said.

  “I’d say we get around forty calls in a day.”

  “So in an eight-hour period there are around five calls an hour.” Less than fifteen minutes per caller. “And if someone calls while you’re on the line?”

  “They’ll get a busy signal. Todd only answers if there’s no one else available. He knows how hard it can be for some of them to confide in a man. But there are no guarantees the caller will try again later.”

  “They’ll get a busy signal.”

  Lindy had visions of their lobby flooded with people and not enough bodies to handle them “Great. Thanks so much for letting us come and observe.”

  “Do you want to try taking a call? We have a book with prompts that help a lot. You told me you volunteered at Gretchen’s Place, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you do phone work?”

  “Yes. It was pretty busy as well.”

  The difference had been that their volunteers hadn’t petered out.

  Tara reached under her desk and hefted a large three-ring binder, setting it on the desk.

  Okay, wow, that was bigger than anything they’d had at Gretchen’s Place. “How do you find anything in there?”

  “It’s all alphabetized.”

  Todd was still in the background on the phone. It sounded like he was trying to get someone to turn himself in.

  Lindy glanced at Zeke. “We’ll go as soon as I try this, okay? Unless you want a turn as well.”

  Zeke shook his head. “I do better in person than on the phone.”

  She certainly understood that. Was that true? Or was he quickly realizing this was going to be more involved than simply empathizing with at-risk women and trying to get them help, the way she herself had once needed help?

  “Gretchen’s Place had a log that we entered all calls into.”

  Tara flipped to the first page of the binder. “We have that as well. And you’ll need to record the call and notify the person on the other end that you’re doing so. You’ll assign the recording the next number in the sequence. Doing that will automatically save it to the computer, and we can retrieve it at a later date along with the actual recording and time stamp. It helps us cover ourselves in the event that someone challenges our version of a conversation.”

  She was impressed. From her initial impression and the tiny size of the office, Lindy hadn’t expected the helpline to be as sophisticated as it was, but it sounded like they’d started off well and things had just fizzled out, for whatever reason. It was a good reminder that you couldn’t grow complacent about the mission or it would lose its momentum.

  She’d never known Mid Savannah Medical Center to do things in half-measures. Not that she’d been there all that long, but from everything she’d seen, they liked to stay on top of things. The hospital she’d worked at before her marriage had also paid attention to the little things, but it had been a much smaller facility and it was doubtful they would have had the resources to open up a place even as small as this one.

  And somehow she couldn’t imagine her and Zeke trapped in a tiny cubicle for two or three hours. His lanky figure already ate up a great deal of the available air space. And he was rapidly taking up a great deal of her thoughts as well. He’d once said he couldn’t work with her if she couldn’t maintain that separation of professional and personal. Well, it was hard enough in their huge hospital. In here, it woul
d be impossible.

  Friday night movies hadn’t been quite the same without him, however, and her mom had insisted on keeping a sleeping Daisy for the night yesterday. If only she’d done that the Friday before, maybe she and Zeke would have never had their encounter. Except she had enjoyed her time with him, was glad for it no matter what else happened.

  She glanced at Tara. “Anything of crucial importance inside that book?” Maybe she could treat it like her other hospital’s helpline. Surely it couldn’t be all that different.

  She slid into the chair and looked at the open screen on the desk. Tara grabbed a second chair and sat beside her. “There is, but you won’t have to deal with most of it.” The other woman flipped a couple of tabs and opened the page to a list of phone numbers. “These are the organizations that you’ll want to keep track of. They’re also on one of the screens.”

  She leaned across and clicked an icon labeled “Resource Referrals.” A page identical to the one in the binder popped onto the screen. “It’s here, so the book doesn’t have to be pulled out every time we want to give someone a phone number. And of course 911 is exactly the same.”

  Tara continued. “Mostly you want to listen and make sure the caller isn’t in immediate danger, like we said earlier.”

  “If I suspect someone is in danger, even if the caller claims she isn’t, can I still call and report it?”

  “Absolutely. That’s happened more than once, and we’d much rather be on the safe side than risk someone’s life.”

  “Once you disconnect, the computer will ask you if you want to save or delete. You’ll always want to save. Periodically, one of the other board members will go through calls that were marked non-urgent and cross-reference them to other calls. If it was a one-off and there was a satisfactory resolution, such as finding the appropriate place to send her, then we’ll delete the actual recording to free up space. But the phone number and time stamp will remain to help with writing grant requests.”

  “Okay, got it.”

  She glanced up and caught Zeke’s eyes on her. Damn! How was she going to concentrate on a caller when he was looking at her like that?

  Like what?

  She wasn’t sure. But she liked it.

  Their night together almost seemed like a dream now, a surreal combination of physical and emotional reactions that could have belonged to someone else. Only they didn’t. They belonged to her and she did not want to give them up. Not yet.

  That sexy mouth went up in a half-smile that made her stomach flip.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just anxious to see you in action.”

  She gave him a sharp look, but there was nothing there to indicate the words had any other meaning.

  Was she the only one having trouble wiping those memories from her skull? If only it was as easy to zap them away as it was to erase the call files from the computer. But like Tara said, even if that happened, there would probably still be some kind of record, a mental paper trail that would remain with her forever.

  And that’s probably the way it should be. Every experience in life brought an opportunity to learn and grow. Though she wasn’t quite sure what she’d learned from that night other than to be more careful about letting her sexual urges run amok.

  That made her smile, because it perfectly described what had happened. She’d let them out for the first time in ages and they’d gone a little wild and crazy on her.

  Wild and crazy. Like her toenail polish. She remembered using those words. Remembered him saying them back to her. As if he knew exactly what she was thinking about, his dark eyes dropped to her mouth for a brief second before swiftly returning to her face as a whole.

  Tara cocked her head. “Something funny?”

  Somehow her smile had frozen in place. She wiped it away as quickly as she could. She needed to get control of herself. “No, sorry. What else do I need to know?”

  Instead of Tara answering, it was Zeke. “You already know enough to get you into a whole lot of trouble. I don’t think you need to know any more.”

  Um, what kind of trouble was he talking about?

  Her mind had swung onto a detour. And he knew it. Knew what he’d done to her with those few simple words.

  Tara smiled. “He’s right. There’s no reason to try to stuff everything in your head for one caller.”

  She was right. About the helpline. And about the other stuff?

  What she would like to do was admit that she wanted his mouth back on hers. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not now. Maybe not ever again.

  The phone suddenly rang, making her jump. Oh, Lord, could she really do this?

  Tara rubbed her hands together. “Okay. It’s showtime. I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t Tara she needed. It was Zeke. And she was very afraid that he already knew exactly how he affected her. And that there was no way in heaven or on earth that she could let him know. Because Zeke wasn’t offering a lifetime. He wasn’t even offering to repeat their last encounter. So she picked up the phone and gave a shaky greeting and waited to see who was on the other end of the line.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SOMEHOW ZEKE GOT through the next two hours of visiting the call center and then a building a few blocks away. It had been one thing to be cramped in a tiny space when there’d been other people around, but to be standing in a large open warehouse with no one but a realtor, who politely waited outside while they looked around, was much worse.

  At the call center he’d been a brave man teasing her when he’d known they could do nothing about it. But he’d sensed her wound so tightly in there that he’d been afraid she might burst.

  Afraid to be back in that world where there was fear and denial. So he’d tried to lighten the atmosphere and had ended up almost setting himself on fire in the process.

  He had a feeling that he and Lindy had something in common besides a single night of sex. And it wasn’t nearly as fun.

  Could she have PTSD from her experience? Of course she could. Just as any of them could from a deep-seated trauma. Including him.

  That sex, though, had blotted out everything for a brief period of time. It had been like an addictive drug that when used once hooked the user for the rest of his life. Zeke already found himself wanting more. Only they’d both agreed that wasn’t happening.

  She finally finished looking at the building. “Well, I think this one’s a possibility.”

  “A lot of money to revamp it to fit our purposes, though.”

  “I think anything will be.”

  They got back into her car and she switched on the ignition.

  Touching her shoulder, he swiveled in his seat to face her. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so. I’m pretty keyed up right now, though. I probably won’t be able to sleep for a while. Do you want me to drop you off at home or at the hospital?”

  Since it was only seven o’clock, he doubted she would go home and hop right into bed. Besides, she had Daisy to deal with, unless she was sleeping over at Rachel and Harold’s tonight.

  “Do you have to pick up Daisy?”

  “No, Mom is keeping her.”

  “Good. It probably would be a good idea for you to unwind.”

  “After sitting for the last two hours? I feel like I need to be up doing something. I need to burn off some energy.”

  It wouldn’t be dark for a while, and he didn’t really feel like going home to an empty house either. But what else could he do? Just then he saw a poster hanging on a street sign. It was the perfect solution. “I don’t know if you’re up for it, but Savannah hosts a jazz festival every year. I just saw a sign for it. I’m pretty sure tonight’s is in Forsythe Park. It’s probably partway over, but it’s free, if you’re interested. Otherwise drop me off at the hospital so I can get my car.”

 
“I remember those, although it’s been ages since I’ve been to one. You’re thinking of going?”

  “I thought I might. Care to join me?”

  Zeke wasn’t quite ready to go home, and the thought of going to the concert by himself was depressing.

  He’d given up on finding Marina’s age progression pictures but, then again, he hadn’t really tried. He kept putting it off. And maybe that’s what asking her to a concert was about as well. But sitting on a blanket listening to live music appealed to him. Like Lindy, it had been ages since he’d gone to one of the events, and tonight seemed like the perfect night. It would give the rapid firing of neurons in his head a chance to slow their pace.

  And music? The perfect stress reliever. Well, almost perfect. The only thing better would have been...

  Nope, not going there. He was going to have to find his endorphin fix in a different place.

  “The jazz festival sounds perfect. I think I have a blanket in the back of my car from when I took Daisy on a picnic after we moved back, if you don’t mind sitting on the ground.”

  With her? That sounded like heaven, and he still wasn’t sure why. Maybe the snatches of memories from their night together were holding him enthralled. Well, that would diminish with time. Maybe if he was with her in a non-sexual way, his body would get used to the idea that he wasn’t going back to visit again, that it was firmly part of his past.

  Like his ex. And Marina.

  A bucket of pain sloshed over him, but he ignored it, pulling out his phone and saying, “I can’t think of a better way to listen to one of those concerts. Let me just check to make sure it’s at the park and not the theater.” The concerts were sometimes split between the two venues. If it was inside, seating was limited. Scrolling down until he found today’s date, he nodded. “It’s at the park.”

  “Great. That settles it, then. Do you want me to drive?”

  He smiled, his heart suddenly light. “How about you provide the seating, and I’ll provide the transportation? Does that sound like a semi-equitable trade?”