by Radclyffe
“Your sister impresses me as someone who doesn’t care for change.”
“Harper cares about this community, and especially this hospital, more than she cares about anything except family. If the change is a good one, she’ll be open to exploring it.”
“Well, I’m delighted to hear that. What about you? Are you flexible as well?”
“I like to think so.”
“Good. Then perhaps, if you are serious about showing me around, we can get together when you’re free. I don’t know much about the area and I’d like to.”
“How about dinner tonight?”
Presley hesitated. Dinner was a little more personal than she wanted to get with Flannery Rivers. She had more than enough experience to recognize interest from another woman, and she didn’t need the complication. “I’ve got a number of things to finish this evening. I’ll have to take a rain check.”
“Some other time, then.”
“Yes.”
“How about tomorrow afternoon, say three?”
“You can call me tomorrow in the medical staff office. I’ll let you know.”
Flannery stepped back as Presley slid into her car. “I’ll do that.”
*
Harper pulled in behind her father’s battered fifteen-year-old Ford Bronco and climbed up onto the back porch. Her father, still in his white shirt and dress trousers, sat in one of the trio of rocking chairs with a glass of iced tea in his hand. Behind him the door was open and the top twenty music countdown floated out through the screen from Margie’s bedroom. Harper sat next to him and for a moment said nothing as they rocked in time, watching the sunset spill over the mountains.
“How long did you know this was coming?” Harper finally asked.
“There’ve been hints of something in the works since the end-of-year financials came out.” Edward sipped his tea and continued to slowly rock, one foot flat on the wood porch, flexing and relaxing, propelling the chair back and forth. “Since I didn’t get a vote, I wasn’t kept up to date. I didn’t expect them to move quite so quickly.”
“And there’s nothing to be done about it?”
“Once the ink is dry, the deal is done, I imagine.”
“What do you think is coming?”
Edward looked at her solemnly. “I honestly don’t know, Harper.”
Harper clenched her jaw. Helplessness wasn’t a feeling she welcomed or was used to. Headlights flashed, and Flann’s Jeep pulled down the drive. A minute later, Flann dropped into the third chair.
“That roast beef I smell?” Flannery asked.
Their father glanced over at her. “It’s Thursday, isn’t it?”
Flannery grinned. “Roast beef or short ribs. Either one works for me.”
“I have to run by the Rivers later,” Harper said. “Do your post-ops need anything?”
Flannery shook her head. “They should both be fine. What do you have going?”
“I had to admit Charlie Carlyle. He’s got a rip-roaring cellulitis in his foot and I want to make sure he’s gotten his first dose of antibiotics tonight.”
“Uh-oh,” Flannery said. “I told you those toes were going to go.”
“If we can get ahead of it, he’ll keep his foot for a while longer,” Harper said.
“Good. Let me know if you want me to look at it.”
“I will.”
“I ran into the lady of the hour this afternoon,” Flannery said casually.
Harper tightened her grip on the arms of her chair. She wasn’t sure what bothered her the most, that Flann and Presley had connected again or just the reminder of what Presley’s presence here meant. “Oh?”
“Mmm-hmm. She mentioned she’d talked with you earlier and that she was in charge of the transition. Whatever that means.”
Edward said, “That appears to be the question of the hour.”
Flann’s grin flickered out. “Is there some kind of problem already?”
Edward shrugged. “It’s hard to say. From what little we know, it would appear that Ms. Worth can do just about anything she wants, and until we know what that is, we don’t have any say at all.”
“It’s just not the right way to do things,” Harper said. “This is our hospital, our patients who will be affected. If they’d let us know what was happening, we could have prepared for it. We could have apprised them of the community needs and shown them how vital the hospital is—not just for healthcare itself, but for jobs.”
“We don’t know that we won’t have an opportunity to do that,” her father said.
“Keeping us in the dark is just another form of showing us who’s the boss,” Harper said.
Flannery got up and poured herself an iced tea from the pitcher that sat on a table nearby. She poured a second glass and handed it to Harper. “I might be showing her around town tomorrow afternoon. Maybe I can work on her a little bit.”
Harper carefully balanced the glass on the flat wooden arm of her rocking chair. “Showing her around? So she took you up on your offer to be a tour guide?”
“Seems so.” Flannery grinned.
“You might be wise to remember she’s not here on a friendly mission.”
Flannery’s eyes darkened. “You don’t know that, Harp.”
“And you don’t know otherwise.” Harper rose, pulled open the screen door, and headed for the sanctuary of the kitchen before she took another poke at Flann. She had no reason to be angry with Flann and didn’t care to ask herself why she was.
Chapter Six
By the time Harper helped her mother and Margie wash up and stow the dishes, it was close to nine. She folded the dish towel, laid it over the towel rack, and opened the cabinet for the broom.
“Go on out to the porch and have a drink with your father and Flannery,” Ida said, taking the broom from her. “You’ve done enough cleaning for one night.”
“I’ve got to head back to the hospital in a few minutes,” Harper said. She’d carefully avoided talking about Presley Worth with Flann during dinner, but the subject was bound to come up again if they all started talking hospital business, which they surely would over drinks on the porch. She wasn’t even sure what was bothering her about Flann showing Presley around town. Flann might have a tendency to rush into situations without much thought to the consequences, but somehow things usually ended up all right in the end, mostly because Flann was too good-natured to hold grudges and always knew when to step away before things got too complicated. The trouble was, everything about Presley spelled complicated, right from the beginning. She wore power easily and was clearly used to being in control. No matter how attractive and intriguing she might be, she was someone whose interests might not be in line with theirs. Harper drew up short. Attractive and intriguing? Maybe Flann wasn’t the only one whose judgment was skewed.
“You and Flannery bashing heads over something?” Ida said.
“No,” Harper said too quickly, earning a raised brow from Ida. Harper grinned. “We’re good. Just different speeds, as usual.”
“How are things at the hospital?”
“I’m not sure yet. The new manager has arrived—a woman named Presley Worth.”
“What does she intend to manage?”
Harper braced her arms on the counter behind her and shook her head. “That’s the question I’d like answered.”
Ida patted her cheek. “You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”
“I hope I do before it’s too late.”
Flann rounded the corner and headed for the refrigerator. “Too late for what?”
“Me to have a drink.” Harper pushed away from the counter and grabbed her jacket off the peg. “I’m headed to the Rivers.”
“Get some sleep,” Flann called after her.
Harper waved a hand and jumped into her Chevy pickup and five minutes later was headed up the hill to another place she thought of as home. The Rivers stood like a guardian above the town, its windows glowing golden against the night sky. The reception
desk was empty, and only the echo of her footsteps kept her company as she walked through the deserted halls. She nodded to the night nurse on four as she checked on Charlie first. He was snoring softly, his ailing foot propped on a pillow. She flashed her penlight on the chart hanging at the foot of the bed. His temp was still elevated but hadn’t spiked. Good enough. She left quietly and took the stairs down to the surgical floor. Glenn Archer, a PA who often assisted Flann in the OR and covered the surgical floor at night, was at the desk.
“How’s it going?” Harper asked. She and Glenn, a rangy blue-eyed, sandy-haired ex-high school basketball star, had been in the same graduating class, but Glenn had opted for the Army right out of high school. After her enlistment was over, she’d come back to the village to live, having been trained as a medic.
“All quiet. Flann’s two are doing fine.” Glenn pushed out a rolling chair and Harper sat. “I hear we’re due for a shake-up.”
Harper rubbed her face. “Seems like it.”
“Any details?”
“Not yet.”
Glenn scanned the telemetry monitors as she spoke. “Doesn’t feel right, somehow. Who are these folks?”
“Not sure yet.” She pictured Presley and a myriad of impressions flashed into her mind. Presley’s face—elegant, composed, remote; a quick flash of sharp wit when jousting with Flann; a hard glint of steel when discussing business. Attractive and intriguing. Harper sighed. “We’ll know soon, I think.”
She talked with Glenn a few more moments. Everyone was resting comfortably. No one needed her attention. Finally she gave in and went home. At eleven, she was still restless and wide-awake. Too many things running through her head—change was on the horizon, and change almost always meant losing something. She sat in the rocker on her front porch trying to pick out the constellations in the clear, star-filled night sky. She’d never been very good at it. Kate had been the one to see shapes in the clouds and stars. Harper usually had to be content with finding the Big Dipper and the North Star. There were so many stars up there, scattered it seemed in random, endless patterns, dwarfing the world below. Tonight, though, a face kept forming as her lids lowered and her vision drifted. Presley Worth. Who was she?
The question wouldn’t give her peace. Eventually, she retrieved her laptop and settled back on the porch to search for answers.
*
Presley woke to unnatural quiet, a faint breeze cooling the bare skin of her shoulders. Sunlight slanted through the open window across from her bed. Absent were the rumble of traffic, the humming of mechanicals within the walls and beneath the floors, the distant wail of sirens, the shouts of trash collectors and all-night revelers. Life in the city was all about noise. Now she was surrounded by silence. Not absolute, she realized as she lay thinking about the day to come. The wind made its own humming tune. Birds trilled and chirped and cooed. Beyond that, though, the world was terrifyingly still. Ordinarily when she woke, her first sensation was of energy charging through her—the challenge of a new day, the opportunity to test herself—a fire in her blood. The calm peacefulness of this morning felt as unnatural as if she had suddenly been required to breathe underwater. She was out of sync with this place. Off balance and feeling more alone than she had in a long time.
She’d always been solitary, despite being a twin. She and Preston were not like those stories of twins Hollywood liked to make movies about. They had never been close. Their parents, internationally renowned financiers, had barely enough time in their busy schedule for one child, let alone two at once, and the needs of their offspring had been left to a series of nannies and tutors. Presley had quickly learned that the only way to gain a little bit of notice was to excel at the things her parents valued—academics, athletics, business—all while traveling in the proper social circles. Her greatest competitor for their attention was Preston. Now that her father was divesting himself of the responsibility of the day-to-day running of the corporation, she was in the biggest battle of her life. Sometimes it seemed she had been fighting forever for something just out of reach.
She threw back the covers and swung her legs to the floor. Self-analysis was a waste of time. She was in charge of her life, her future. What mattered was what she did. Actions produced results, and results were all that counted at the end of the day. With a wave of anticipation, she reminded herself that at the end of this day, Carrie would be here, they’d have the beginnings of their team in place, and she could get started on wrapping up this assignment. Preston was very wrong if he thought he could bury her somewhere while he moved a step closer to taking their father’s seat at the table.
She took a quick shower and, since she wasn’t due to meet Harper Rivers until eight and it was barely five thirty, pulled on loose workout pants and a T-shirt and shuffled down to the kitchen. Lila had left the coffeepot plugged in ready to go and, according to the thoughtful note next to the coffeemaker, all she had to do was push the button. Even more thoughtful was the small wicker basket with three fat blueberry corn muffins nestled under a hand-embroidered cotton napkin in the middle of the table. She chose a golden muffin and put it on a ceramic saucer she found in the glass-fronted cabinet above the sink. Within a matter of minutes she had a cup of coffee and the muffin and, after grabbing her iPad, was headed out to the back porch to have breakfast in the astonishingly cool morning air. Sitting down on the top step, she balanced her iPad on her knees, sipped her coffee, and absently broke off pieces of the muffin and popped them into her mouth as she scanned the morning news.
After a few minutes, she felt the prickly sensation on the back of her neck she often got when someone was watching her. She checked the time on her tablet—Lila was due soon but she hadn’t heard a car drive in. Who in the world would be walking around out here at this time of day? Slowly, she searched the expanse of the backyard down to where the drive curved around to the barn and saw no one. Of course she saw no one. There was no one there. She went back to reading and then she heard it. An ear-splitting screech that ended abruptly on a choking rattle. Gripping her tablet, she raised her eyes, prepared to jump up and run for the house.
It was standing about ten feet in front of her, one foot held up in the air, its head cocked to the left, blinking slowly. Its tail feathers were ragged but brilliantly colored: red and blue and golden brown. Its wings looked just as scruffy as its tail, with a few short feathers poking out at odd angles and looking as if they were about to fall out. It made another sound, a crowing croak, and bobbed its head.
“Go away.” Presley waved a hand. “Shoo.”
It put its foot down gingerly and hobbled a step closer.
“No, not this way.” She pointed in the general direction of the driveway. “Go that way. Go back to…wherever.” It hop-walked several more steps closer.
She drew her legs up onto the stair below where she sat. She didn’t think chickens—or whatever it was, exactly—attacked people, but she wasn’t leaving her bare feet exposed as an enticement. “No, no, no. Go back wherever you came from.”
“Could be that’s one of old Mrs. White’s brood,” Lila said from inside the kitchen door. “I bet they couldn’t catch him, and they just left him behind.”
“Well, he needs to go back to wherever he’s been staying. He’s getting poop all over the lawn.”
Lila chuckled. “Good fertilizer.”
“Not when it’s on the bottom of my shoe.”
“Hmm. Looks like he’s got a bum leg. If you want, I’ll have one of my sons come out and take care of him for you.”
“Good,” Presley said, returning to the news. The crowing resumed, the short caws rising at the end as if he was asking a question. She ignored it and he stopped. After another minute or two of silence, she peeked up. He was three feet in front of her, studying her with a disconcerting stare.
“You’re not very smart, are you?”
“Caw?”
“Lila? What is this thing?”
“A rooster, last time I looked.”
>
“What’s it good for?”
“Not much, not without the hens. Roosters are handy for protecting the chickens—keeping the predators away. And of course, if you want baby chicks—”
“God forbid.”
“Well then, he doesn’t really have much to do now.”
Presley hesitated. “What do you mean, your son will take care of him?”
“He’s lame. Probably no one’s been feeding him, and he doesn’t have a flock to look after. He doesn’t look too old to make a decent stew, though.”
“Oh.” Presley looked back down at the news and couldn’t find her place. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the rooster peck at the bare ground as if searching for some morsel. She broke off a corner of her muffin and tossed it toward him. His head bobbed as he studied it.
“Go ahead. It’s better than the dirt you’ve been picking up.”
The feathers on his neck gleamed in the sunlight, flashes of iridescent purple and blue as subtle as jewels. The sounds he made changed, the pitch rising as he pecked apart the small bit of corn muffin with obvious enthusiasm.
“Lila.”
Lila peered out the screen door again. “Yes?”
“Don’t bother your sons with him. He’ll probably just go on back to wherever he came from.”
“All right, if you’re sure.”
She wasn’t. “I’m sure.”
She went back to the news with the soft clucks of the busy rooster keeping her company. When she rose to get ready for work, he was still scratching about in the yard. “Lila,” she called as she walked inside, “what do these things like to eat?”
Chapter Seven
Harper parked in the staff lot behind the hospital and let herself in through the employee entrance with her ID card. She hadn’t slept much and had decided to start rounds early. At six thirty, a half hour before shift change, the halls were still quiet. She’d always loved the hospital at night, when a hushed stillness fell over the dimly lit halls, a serene quiet that seemed to promise hope for those who saw the new day and peace for those who did not.
