Heath

by Dale Mayer

  She saw very few people at night. If she ever saw even three in her entire shift, she’d have been surprised. But now that she had this daytime job, dozens of people were coming and going all the time. The other job had had a sense of privacy, something she’d been happy to have at the time. Yet now, she felt like she was part of something. She was involved in the hustle and bustle of daily life here at Hathaway House.

  She’d been included. Maybe that was what was different. This kind of felt like she belonged.

  Cleaning in the nights almost felt like she was whispering silently through the halls, not letting anybody know she was here. And now it was a completely different thing. She was slowly getting to know more of the staff, and, of course, some of the patients came up with headaches of their own. Usually about paperwork or phone calls or connections and appointments that they needed to make and couldn’t get made on their own without some help or maybe needed to go into town. So patients were continually talking to the women at the front desk if not with Dani and Hailee.

  It was interesting. Hailee had her own office and a door that she could close, if and when she needed the privacy to get the work done. And yet, with it open, she was still part of the inner circle of how everything operated. A very different feeling than she’d had at night. However, one thing was missing.

  And she didn’t even know his name.

  She’d gone past his door several times and hesitated, wanting to go in and to say hi but had struggled with that. She felt like she’d be interfering, an interloper in some ways, or maybe he didn’t want to see who she was. If their positions were reversed, she’d be feeling bereft and deserted if the cleaning lady had abandoned her. Abandoned. And that just made her wince because was there any worse feeling in the world? She didn’t think so. She’d been there and had experienced the same thing herself, and it was crippling in a way.

  A couple conversations happened outside her office that were low-key, and she hadn’t been invited to join in, so she hadn’t a clue what was going on. But it was odd. She kept her ear perked out of curiosity but never really heard too much. She heard the name Heath, which made her think of moors and long walks with dogs and walking sticks. The broody type of male. But she didn’t have any real basis for that kind of an intuitive image.

  As she kept working away through the accounts and cleaning up matters, checking things out and making sure everything was up to date, Dani stopped in and looked at her with half a smile, then asked, “Have you got a moment?”

  Hailee smiled and said, “For you, always.” Dani came in and closed the door and sat down. The fact that she’d closed the door immediately put Hailee on edge. “Is there a problem?” she asked lightly. But inside, her stomach screamed. Dear God, she so didn’t want to lose this job.

  “No, no, no,” Dani said, immediately shaking her head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it seem like this was a big deal.” She turned to glance at the door, then frowned. “But I guess, by shutting the door, that would be an immediate assumption, wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t know enough about how this place works yet to know if it’s a problem or not,” Hailee said, “but almost every instance where the boss comes in and shuts the door tends to make employees cringe.”

  “Well,” Dani said with a half smile, “this is something different.”

  Hailee sat back. “What’s up?”

  “First,” Dani said, “how do you fit in?”

  “Well,” Hailee said. “Surprisingly well.”

  “Good,” Dani said with a self-satisfied smile. “I knew you’d be perfect for here.”

  “And how would you know that?” Hailee smiled. “We’ve been friends for a long time, but I don’t know that we’ve ever really worked together.”

  “No, but I understand who you are inside,” she said. “And I’m so sorry for all the trauma you’ve been through.”

  Hailee’s smile fell away. She stared at the papers in front of her, but she nodded. “Thank you. It’s one of those things that life throws at you that you have to walk through alone, and nobody can really help you emotionally. Even if hands reach out to give you some assistance, they can’t walk in your shoes with you,” she said, raising her gaze. “It took me a long time to realize that and to just buckle in and ride through it.”

  “You might not have anybody who can walk in your shoes,” Dani said gently, “but it doesn’t mean having people walking beside you can’t make the journey easier.”

  “Very true,” Hailee said with a half smile. “Unfortunately the person who should have been there for me wasn’t.”

  Dani nodded again. “Sometimes I think we’re destined to go through really crappy relationships so that, when we do find something special, we recognize it.”

  Hailee looked at her in surprise. “Well, that’s a different take on it. Here I thought we were supposed to find something special right off the bat and set ourselves up for life. Isn’t that what we’re taught? To get an education, get married, have kids, and be the perfect wife?”

  “There’s no such thing as perfection,” Dani said. “And I don’t think our mothers knew a whole lot more than we did at our age either.” She sighed. “The generations aren’t getting more stupid. I think they’re getting smarter,” she admitted. “But people are changing, expectations on relationships are changing, and the role models and what each brings to the table are changing. So it’s a case of finding what works for you and only you.”

  “And have you found it?” Hailee asked quietly. She’d heard an awful lot of good things about Aaron but hadn’t actually met the man.

  Dani beamed. “Yes,” she said. “Finally. But, like you, I went through a rough time first. But I’m pretty confident that what Aaron and I have will go the distance. Anyway, that’s not why I came here.”

  “Okay,” Hailee said, slowly crossing her hands as she placed them on top of her desk, so she could sit tall and focus on Dani. “What’s up?

  “One of our patients,” Dani said, “and I’m just hearing about this now, was wondering who the cleaning lady was who’s disappeared.”

  Hailee’s eyebrows rose. “Interesting,” she said. She turned slightly to look out the window on her left. “Is his room down that short hallway that leads to one of the fire exits? On the left-hand side?” she said, closing her eyes. “I think it’s the first of three doors?”

  Dani, her voice rich with laughter, said, “Exactly. That’s him.”

  Hailee smiled. “I wondered if he’d miss me.”

  At that, Dani’s eyebrows shot up. “So tell me more,” she said. “What’s going on between the two of you?”

  Hailee shook her head. “Nothing, honestly. But I used to mop that hallway last every night that I cleaned,” she said with a small deprecating smile. “And he used to wake up about that time.” She laughed, then sobered. “One time I thought I heard him cry out. I knocked on the door and poked my head around the corner to see if he needed some assistance. After that, we spoke several times. Not too often.”

  “Well, his name is Heath,” she said. “Heath Hankerson. He was asking about you, and now I understand why. He’s struggling to sleep.”

  “He said that he had a hard time sleeping. The drugs weren’t agreeing with him, and they left him groggy and brain foggy, so he hated taking them because of the way they made him feel.”

  Dani nodded. “It’s amazing just how many of the drugs these men react to,” she said sadly. “They come out of the hospitals—often heavily drugged on pain pills, sleeping aids, antibiotics, and any number of medications required to survive their surgeries—and then they go one way or the other. They develop a supersensitivity to some of them, or they find they can’t survive without them. And they need stronger and stronger drugs.”

  “Well, I definitely got the impression that Heath went the other way,” Hailee said.

  “Yes,” Dani said with a nod. “That’s exactly right. So he struggles with taking any sleeping medication.”

&nbs
p; “I’ve never seen who he is,” Hailee said with a chuckle. “His room was always dark, and I only had more or less ambient lighting in the hallway, just from the night-lights while I was mopping. I tried to keep the lights turned down. A little harder to see that way, but, as long as you’re methodical, you know you’ve reached every corner anyway.”

  Dani nodded. “Now that I know who he’s talking about and why he wants to know what happened to you,” Dani said rising, “I’ll go talk to him myself.”

  “Are you short a cleaner?”

  “Yes,” Dani said, “but you’re not going back to that.”

  “What difference does it make?” Hailee said with a smile. “I mean, I worked a full-time job and then came here and worked too.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But a lot of laws regulate something like that within the same company, and you don’t need to do both jobs now. Remember? That was the reason for pulling those two wages together to give you this job.”

  Hailee bit her lip and nodded. “I understand,” she said. “I just feel bad for him.”

  “I’ll talk to his therapist and see if we can come up with something else to help him sleep through the night.” And with that, she opened the door and left it wide open and disappeared down the hallway.

  All Hailee could think about was the name Heath and the man himself, wondering if she should dare visit him and say hi. Yet, after Dani’s visit, Hailee felt it would be much better to keep her distance.

  Heath sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing his eyes. He’d just woken up from a short power nap. He hated the damn sleeping pills he was forced to take, but, without sleep, he couldn’t function at all. So it had been a painful compromise. But not one he liked. It didn’t seem fair that he should have to use drugs to get the rest his body needed. He was exhausted inside and out, so why the heck couldn’t this work out better for him?

  When he heard a knock on his door, he called out, “Come in.” He looked up to see Dani standing in the doorway. He glared at her. “Is there a problem?”

  She laughed. “Nope, not at all,” she said. “But I hear you’ve been asking about one of my staff.”

  His frown deepened. “And?”

  She took several more steps into the room. “Are you always this grumpy or just when you don’t get sleep?”

  He glanced at the bed behind him. “I just woke up from a nap,” he said, “so I should be getting sleep.”

  “But apparently you’re not,” she said quietly.

  He didn’t look at her this time. Instead he twisted and gently collapsed on the bed, wincing at the unnatural movement. “I keep trying to,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “But I don’t seem able to.”

  “You’re having trouble sleeping, or, when you wake up, you’re having trouble going back to sleep?”

  “Going back to sleep,” he said. “I figured it’s exhaustion that gets me under in the first place. It wears off, and my body sleeps enough that it’s looking to wake up and do something else.”

  “Is there a connection to this cleaning lady?”

  He stiffened and then glared at Dani. “I didn’t say that,” he growled.

  “Okay,” she said, “then tell me why you want to know anything about her.”

  He just shrugged.

  “Well, I’ll hardly give you any information,” she said, as she walked a little closer, “unless you tell me something too.”

  He gave her a small wave of his hand. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “She’s probably gone anyway.”

  “Yes, and no,” Dani said.

  He rolled his head to the side and stared at her. “That sounds very evasive.”

  “Actually it’s not,” she said. “She’s still here but in a different capacity.”

  “Why? Did she not like cleaning?”

  “She had other skills that we needed a little more,” Dani admitted.

  “Of course,” he said. “Everybody else is important.” What he left unsaid was everybody except for him. And then realized he was being a petulant child. “Well, hopefully she’s happy.” If she had another job, then she wasn’t coming back, and that meant he would have to find a solution to his sleepless problem one way or the other. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, and exhaustion was dragging him down and affecting his performance in all aspects. He couldn’t even eat properly. His stomach was continually churning up in knots.

  “Would it help if she came and talked to you?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said harshly. “She’s already moved on, so whatever.”

  Dani hesitated.

  He glared at her. “If there’s nothing else …”

  She nodded quietly. “I’ll talk to you about it later then.” And she turned and walked out, closing the door quietly behind her.

  He wanted to say, Don’t bother. Absolutely nothing to talk about. Because obviously the woman wouldn’t be cleaning at two in the morning anymore, so what difference did it make? He groaned and scrubbed his face. “You’ll have to deal with this one way or the other,” he said to himself. Sleep and nightmares went hand in hand. He had tried a lot of different things, but nothing seemed to work. And now that he’d had enough sleep to make it through the rest of the day, he knew there was no point in trying right now.

  When someone knocked again, he groaned and called out, “Come in.”

  A petite woman entered. She smiled at him and said, “I’m setting up yoga classes. Does that hold any interest for you?”

  He shook his head. “I doubt Shane would even allow me to go to the class, at least not yet. I don’t bend like a pretzel very well.”

  “Well, the idea of a yoga class,” she said, “would be to start at whatever level you’re capable of moving at and then stretching and moving toward improving that range of motion.”

  “If it requires anything more than lying in bed or sitting in a wheelchair,” he said quietly, “you’ve already maxed out my range of motion.”

  She gave him a bright smile. “Not quite,” she said. “I’ve seen you in the pool, so I know you can do some stuff.”

  He glared at her, but her smile stayed in place. Finally he groaned and said, “At nighttime, I have a hard time sleeping, so that’ll probably just rev me up.”

  “No,” she said. “One of the reasons that we do yoga is to help people sleep, so they don’t need sleep aids.”

  At that, he snapped, “Did Dani set you up for this?”

  “Well, Dani is my boss,” she said with a laugh. “We thought maybe there would be enough interest in yoga classes to run a couple.”

  “Well, let me know how it goes,” he said. And then he slowly shifted and rolled over toward the window. “Close the door on your way out, please.” He waited to listen for her footsteps as she exited his room and heard the door slowly closing. With that snick of the door, he allowed himself to relax.

  “And now what the hell am I supposed to do?” he muttered. “You’re miserable inside and out.” And that just made him feel worse.

  Chapter 11

  After several more days Hailee finally decided that she couldn’t stand not knowing for sure if they were talking about the same patient. She knew they were, … but that niggling doubt remained. She got up and walked down the hallway and got the room number. She should have done this a long time ago. Then she came back, and, as she did so, she asked Caitlin, “Heath’s in Room 221, correct?”

  Caitlin quickly glanced through her files and nodded. “Yes, that’s correct.” She looked over at her and said, “Problem?”

  Hailee smiled and shook her head. “No, I just needed to check it for our records.” She walked back into her office and sat down, wondering if she should set up a meeting with him. She was bound to see him sometime but didn’t want to come face-to-face with him unexpectedly. But every time she’d been in that area when mopping, she couldn’t see his face. So, whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, she didn’t know.

  It had put him in the mystery-man catego
ry. And the mystery man was almost perfect for her. Yet she didn’t want to deal with any more men who wouldn’t be real—that had been her husband. Unfortunately now she was sitting here, thinking that mystery men were probably perfect precisely because they weren’t real. She had had enough of reality. At the same time, her mystery man was also a fantasy, and she didn’t need that. But it was nice to have, and it stopped her from feeling lonely.

  She still needed to recognize who he was, so she didn’t come upon him unexpectedly and not realize it was him. But she wasn’t sure how to do it. She could ask Dani, but that felt wrong now, after Heath had been asking about her. Hailee wouldn’t sit there and haunt his hallway either because that felt worse. So how else was she supposed to know? There would be photos in their patient files, but that felt intrusive, like she shouldn’t be looking there without good reason. All in all, that thought made it a little creepy. She had to do something about it, but she just didn’t know what. She put it off yet again.

  As she headed into dinner that night, she was once again amazed at how much her life had simplified by being here. With Dani giving her residency here, that meant Hailee’s food and board was free, freeing up more of her paychecks. Although she hadn’t had one yet, it would be automatically deposited into her bank account. And, maybe for the first time, since she could eat enough now, she could reduce her own stress levels.

  As she walked up to the cafeteria line, she was happy to see that she’d timed it just about right. She’d been working later these last few days to get caught up and to get Dani’s books all ready for the big meeting she had coming up. In the meantime, Hailee had allowed most of the dinnertime crowd to go through first, and she left afterward to have hers. It was after six now, and about eight people were in front of her with various forms of mobility. She loved that here too. Nobody was in a rush, and everybody was entitled to take as much time as they needed to get from point A to point B.

  Sometimes people helped. Yet sometimes they didn’t, and it was a case of just watch and hope that the patients made it without crashing. Other times though, multiple people all moved as a large group. And she loved that too. Loved the camaraderie and the friendships she’d witnessed here. She never heard any grumbling in the line. Everybody was joking or teasing others. Dani worked hard to keep the positive atmosphere here.