She wasn’t even ruffled. She veritably oozed sophistication. I mean, it leaked out of her like she was made of netting.
“My ex-husband. We’re divorced.”
“Hmm.” Now there’s a pregnant word for Word Power. Leave it to me to come up with such a good one.
Mack finally stepped in. “Kate, this is my sister Jackie.”
Hold the phone! Did he just say? Sister? I’d had no idea. His sister? Ohmigod! That changed everything. The poor woman. And a paraplegic. How wicked of me to have entertained such nasty thoughts about her. And all the while, the poor thing was just trying to get along without her family. Or legs. Just spending some time with her brother. Sibling. Kinsman. Relative. Blood relation. Oh, brother!
Boy, I would clearly need to ask some forgiveness for this one. I’d thought some not very nice things about the poor, unfortunate woman.
I said with way too much enthusiasm, “Nice to meet you.” (What’d you expect? For me to confess right then and there?)
A sudden squalling erupted through the open window. There seemed to be a cat in the back seat of Mack’s car. Mack moved around his sister’s chair and opened the back door and pulled out a Graco car seat with a blanket over it.
Another wail came from beneath the blanket. That was no cat. I tried not to panic. What was Mack doing again with a baby? Had there been another kidnapping?
“Where’d you get that?” I snapped without thinking.
Mack looked at me like I was nuts.
Jackie’s lips formed into her enigmatic smile. “That’s my baby, of course.”
Mack set the car seat in Jackie’s lap and she pulled the blanket back to uncover the wailing infant and wiggled a pacifier into her mouth.
“That’s Nikki’s baby!” exploded from my mouth before I could think.
Mack changed color this time. Jackie stayed as cool as an unflustered chunk of hail.
“She’s my baby, Kate,” she said.
Mack seemed to be struggling to keep his temper.
“You said you knew all about this,” he said in a tight voice.
“I did. At least I thought I did.” I hesitated, trying to figure out what I thought I knew. This baby was a few months older than Nikki’s would be now. “Maybe I don’t know after all.”
“Maybe not.”
He wasn’t very happy with me, I could tell. He started to push Jackie toward his condo. I stood there on the curb, holding my wilted dress in its plastic bag, totally confused and at a loss for what to do.
He stopped before going into the elevator and turned back to me.
“Are you going to stand there all day? Come inside. We need to talk.” In spite of his words, he didn’t sound very inviting.
Once inside his condo, while Jackie pulled a bottle from a diaper bag to give to the baby, Mack turned Mumford & Sons on his audio system then motioned for me to follow him into the kitchen. The swinging door closed behind me and he gestured to the chair opposite of where he sat.
Before I uttered a sound, he started talking in a hushed voice.
“I don’t know what you think you know, so I’ll just tell you how things are. Jackie was married to Carl for thirteen years when she had the accident. Carl…well, he had a drinking problem. The day she told him she would leave him if he didn’t get help, Carl chased after her down a winding mountain highway and forced her off the road. Only neither of them knew Zoe and Jack were in the back of her car. They died in the crash and Jackie’s spine was severed.
“Another thing neither of them knew was that Jackie was pregnant. God only knows how she didn’t lose the pregnancy. But after the kids died, Carl wanted nothing to do with her. Wouldn’t even talk to her. He couldn’t cope with the loss of his children.
“She had to have the baby alone, except for what little I could do to help. I was all she had—or even has now.”
“Why do you need to hide her?”
“She’s afraid that if Carl knew about the baby, he would try to take her. She begged me not to tell him.” He scowled. “You said you knew all this.”
“I thought you had kidnapped a baby and were trying to hide it.”
His eyes popped open on that one.
“You thought my niece was the kidnapped baby?”
“Well…it made sense.” I played with an empty coffee cup I found on the table. I didn’t want to look right at Mack while I revealed my low opinion of him. “You had a baby one day, then it was gone the next, the very same days the kidnapped baby disappeared and reappeared. You tried to hide it from me. What else was I supposed to think?”
I looked up and he was threading his fingers through his hair in what looked like exasperation.
“I wish you’d told me what you were thinking.”
“I tried. You basically told me to mind my own business.”
“I thought you were telling me I should tell Carl about the baby. I’ve worked hard to keep my promise to Jackie.”
“How do you work with him, knowing what a schmuck he really is?”
“He has a disease. The booze made him different. It’s under control now. You’ve got to try to understand. I’ve loved them all…Jack, Zoe, and even Carl. But my first priority is my sister, and I’d do anything for her. She’s been through so much. When she needs me, I help. It’s that simple.”
“She’s lucky to have you.”
“It’s the other way around.”
I knew he was underestimating himself, but he wasn’t taking any arguments on the subject.
I realized what a jerk I’d been to think so little of him when in fact he’d been so unselfish and loving the whole time.
It was a new thing for me, but I knew I had to do it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, having trouble raising my eyes to meet his. “I was—wrong to think what I did. Please. Forgive me?”
Was that so bad? It didn’t even hurt. Much. Now all I needed was a you’re forgiven and everything would be okay.
After he took a deep breath, he reached over and took my hand that was trying to rub a hole through the ceramic on the side of the cup. “Kate,” he said, “I don’t blame you. You’ve been through a lot.”
I wondered if that meant he forgave me. But if he didn’t blame me in the first place, did that mean there was nothing to forgive?
He let go of my hand and rose from his chair, giving me the cue that we were finished talking for the time. I guess I was forgiven. Or at least not blamed.
“I’m looking forward to taking you to the hospital dinner,” he said out of the blue.
“Me too.” Great conversationalist, I am. I was still trying to figure out if I’d been pardoned or just exonerated.
He opened the kitchen door to let me go out first. Jackie was sitting in the middle of the living room, staring at the kitchen door. The baby lay on the couch, drinking her formula from a bottle propped on a pillow. Jackie watched me with an unreadable gaze as I crossed the room to the front door. The music Mack had turned on was off.
“Bye,” I said as I picked up my bag with the gown. “Nice to meet you.” I wasn’t sure how to take her.
She stared at me.
Mack stepped outside long enough to give me a quick kiss and say he’d see me later.
I took me and my new dress home, having lost the thrill I’d enjoyed when I first headed toward Mack’s. When I got home, I didn’t even show Ollie the gown. I was depressed. Ollie wanted to know what had happened, but I couldn’t answer. It was all too embarrassing anyway. I couldn’t believe I’d thought Jackie was Mack’s girlfriend. Or that he’d kidnapped babies. Or that he didn’t blame me.
Chapter 26
Rent was due and I’d already spent my quarter collection on laundry. And I really didn’t want to sell Curious George. I owed him an apology for even considering it, which I was fully ready to offer him now that I’d practiced asking for forgiveness from Mack. But with rent needed, and selling Curious George off the bargaining table, I had to get my job back. I didn’t
know why I’d been sacked, but I had my suspicions Carl was behind it.
First thing next morning, I got on the horn to Schroeder’s office. I’d awoken mad and nasty. I was ready to play rough, tired of being pushed around by people who thought they were more important than everyone else.
Plus, I was the safe distance of a few miles of fiber optics and several telephone poles away from him.
Nazi put me on hold for the longest time before Carl finally came on. It gave me enough time to gather my courage—or at least abandon all reason and judgment.
“Schroeder.”
“This is Kate Johnston.”
“Hello, Ms. Johnston.”
“I want my job back.”
“You have me at a disadvantage here, Kate. I didn’t know you’d lost it, or anything about it.”
“Yeah, right. Don’t give me that. I didn’t do what you wanted, and then I got suspended. You know you threatened to fire me.”
“If I remember correctly, when the question arose of your probation, we were discussing the matter of disciplining Ms. Langley inappropriately. It had nothing to do with anything else.”
“You know and I know the truth of it. Couch it all you want in protocol mumbo-jumbo, but you canned me because you didn’t get Trent. And I’m thinking someone else might want to know more about your clinic patients, certain precious DNA, car accidents, alcoholism, and yes, oh yes, cloning.”
There was no sound from the other side.
“You have nothing to say?” I asked.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. But I’ll see what I can do.” He hung up.
Well, wasn’t I something? Got him shaking in his boots.
Or else he got off the line so he could put out a contract on my life.
Either way, it would take care of my employment dilemma.
My heart was pounding, my throat was tight and dry, and my heartburn was heating up. I popped a Tums. I looked down at Ollie and said, “I can’t believe I just did that.”
He couldn’t believe it either. He hoped it wouldn’t interfere with his consistency. Then he went off to bathe in a puddle of warm sunshine streaming in on my hardwood bedroom floor.
In less than an hour, I got a phone call from the hospital. The head of nursing said she had been trying to get me for a few days. They’d looked into the allegations against me and were able to clear my name.
I asked, “Just what were those allegations anyway? No one has ever told me.”
“If you’d like to request a copy of the report, you may fill out a requisi—”
“No! I wouldn’t like to request a copy of the report. I want to know now what this was all about. Unless you prefer to have my lawyer look into unfair labor practices or violation of employee’s rights or—
“Now listen here, Kathleen. None of that will be necessary. All right. I will tell you the gist of the complaint. A report was filed alleging that certain controlled substances were improperly handled by you. It’s a very serious accusation and we couldn’t take it lightly.”
“But you could have told me about it. I could have told you from the start it was ridiculous. Who filed the report?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You won’t let me face my accuser?” I asked sardonically. “My lawyer—”
“That’s not what I mean. It was reported anonymously.”
“You’re telling me I’ve been suspended because some stranger—who could have been anyone—suggested I was stealing drugs?”
“We had to take something like that seriously. We would have been remiss to ignore it.”
“But any moron could have called up—it could have been the paper boy miffed for not getting a big enough plate of Christmas cookies,” I snapped out. (She didn’t need to know that I didn’t have a paper boy.)
“It was nothing like that. It was someone who knew the details of your unit. She knew too much for this to be your paper boy.”
“She?”
“We’ve tracked all the drugs and tested the stock for dilutions or substitutions and none were found altered, so it appears it was all a hoax. Please accept my apologies on behalf of everyone here. I’ll see to it you get the lost wages from the days you missed in the next paycheck.”
Accept her apologies? There it was again. Forgiveness. It was supposed to be freeing. So I guess I could forgive her. It would be easier. Especially since my lawyer was on a fishing trip far away, and I needed the money.
“When should I come in?”
“You can start back tonight at seven.”
“I’ll need to be off Saturday. For the hospital’s anniversary dinner.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
I put the phone down and wondered if I’d just been real stupid to let all that go. It sounded like maybe Carl wasn’t behind it after all. The suspension, anyway. He might very well have had something to do with me receiving the call to come back.
I didn’t want to think about Carl helping me out. It didn’t fit my perception of him—lady-beater, drunk, illegal-cloner. It was easier to just assume he was all schmuck.
So I didn’t think about him. I put my mind on other things. I remembered my doctor’s office call. I needed to give them a call back.
It took all morning to get through, and when I did, their answering service picked up, telling me in a recorded voice that they were out for lunch till one.
Their office returned my call when I was asleep, napping to get ready for my twelve-hour shift. Ollie had apparently refused to answer the phone when it rang, so we did another round of phone tag. By the time I awoke and found their message, it was after hours and time for me to get ready to go to work.
The prospect of reappearing at work was daunting. Who knew what rumors had circulated during my absence to explain my sudden disappearance?
I didn’t have to wonder long. Sheila was on duty.
I encountered her at the front desk as she was looking at the assignment chart.
“Well, look who’s here,” she said in a loud taunt. “It’s our very own pusher. Lock up the Demerol. Kate’s back.”
Miss Clairol thought she was so clever.
“So nice of you to miss me, Sheila. So you’ve been letting your natural color grow out while I’ve been gone.”
She looked confused.
“Roots, Sheila. Roots. All those roots are showing below the blond. Don’t you ever get tired of having more fun and want to go back to down-to-earth brown?”
She threw her nose into the air and stormed off. Guess she’d meant to continue playing at platinum for a time yet.
Charge Sarge welcomed me back with a bone crunching hug. Sandi was on and she whispered as she passed me that she knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.
The night went smoothly enough, as did the rest of the week. It passed quickly. By day I slept, waking in time to fix Ollie a gourmet meal of Happy Cat and myself some eggs or cereal. My appetite was still a little off, but I could stomach most things. By about three a.m. every morning I got a touch of nausea, but that wasn’t unusual, with the fatigue that comes with messing with one’s internal clock the way we graveyard-shifters do.
Friday afternoon I finally connected with my doctor. She called after her last patient and I was already up.
“Kate, I’ve got some test results for you.”
“Hi. Yeah, I’ve been trying to connect with you. Go ahead. I’m all ears.”
“Your potassium is low, not dangerous by any means. But you might increase your potassium-rich foods—you know, bananas, melons, avocados, spinach. And your hematocrit was down too. You’ll need to start on vitamins. But more on that later. Most important of all was your hCG. It was positive.”
I swallowed hard. This was not good news. Not good at all. “I’ve got a tumor?”
“You know what hCG is?”
“Yeah. If you’ve got it, it means one of two things. It can’t mean the first for me, so it has to be some hCG-secreting tumor. Do you think
it’s malignant?”
“No Kate, you’re pregnant. That’s all it means.”
“It can’t mean that. I know I’m not. We better do an MRI or something.”
“I know this might not be what you expected, but it’s not cancer. It might be hard to let sink in right now. I understand.”
“Listen, Dr. Chen. I know for a fact I can’t be pregnant.”
“Contraception isn’t full-proof, Kate.”
“I don’t use contraception. Because I haven’t had sex. I’ve had a couple of nice goodnight kisses, maybe a hand thinking of roaming a little, but believe me, if there had been any chance of a Mr. Sperm even thinking of coming my way, he got thwarted long before he ever got anywhere near blastoff.”
“Okay, Kate. Calm down.”
“It’s a mistake. Believe me. Vials get mixed up, labels mismarked. I know I’m not pregnant.”
“All right. It’s true. The lab isn’t infallible. Since you’re so certain, I’ll write orders to rerun the tests. Can you come in on Monday?”
“Sure. That big Eskimo guy in the draw room didn’t do much to win my confidence.”
“He’s no longer in the lab. We encountered a few problems.”
“See?” I said with certitude.
“Okay. We’ll redo the electrolytes and CBC too. Just in case those weren’t accurate either.”
“Thanks. And you’re probably right about the bananas either way. I’ll have one for dinner.”
“See you here Monday.”
I laughed nervously as I replaced the receiver. “Ollie, you won’t believe what happened.”
I told him a brief summary of the mix-up. He yawned and stretched and didn’t even laugh. He’s never had much confidence in organized medicine, even though that’s what puts his food on the table. So little respect.
I got through the shift pretty well. It didn’t start for me till eleven, so the eight hours seemed like a breeze after so many twelves. It seemed the incident of my suspension was put aside by everyone. Sheila wasn’t on this weekend, so I didn’t have to deal with her snide remarks or her condescending glares again. She seemed to have relished the thought of me doing something illegal and getting caught. I couldn’t help but think that she might have had something to do with the trumped-up charges. I had never thought she’d go that far before, but now I had to wonder. Not that I could do anything about it, but it would be wise to be wary of her.
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