Designs on the Doctor Read online

  “I could stay,” Bubby offered. “Nina could take everyone else.”

  “And miss your card games at the center? No, go on. There’s nothing you can do. You know what’s happening with Estelle, and her daughter is here now. She’s going to be okay. I’ll get her back on her feet and she can take over.”

  After assuring Ally that she would check in with her at dinnertime, Bubby and the contingent of elderly ladies filed out of the emergency room just as the nurse brought a wheelchair into the reception area.

  “We can put her in her mother’s room,” Jake told the nurse. “I’ll take her there while you see if you can find the juice and crackers.”

  “I don’t need a wheelchair,” Ally protested. Feeling more embarrassed by the minute, she sat up slowly this time so she could stay up.

  “I’ve kept you from having to see an E.R. doctor, but I’m not going to let you on your feet until I’m sure you can stay there,” the doctor said flatly.

  The nurse put the brake on the chair and left again.

  “Let me do the work,” the doctor ordered Ally.

  His left arm came around her from behind again, he grasped her nearest forearm with his right hand and brought her off the floor and into the chair in one smooth movement as if she weighed nothing.

  For no reason she understood, Ally was very aware of the power and strength in that bracing arm and the warmth of his hand on her bare skin. Aware of it all and feeling for the first time as if she wasn’t in this alone somehow.

  But then she was in the wheelchair and she came to her senses—this was the guy who had read her the riot act and created the stress that had buckled her knees in the first place. Not only was she alone in whatever was happening, but she and Jake were at odds over it, without her even knowing why.

  He didn’t say anything as he released the brake on the wheelchair and pushed her through the doors that separated the reception area and waiting room from the actual emergency-treatment area.

  He took her to one of the small examining rooms that surrounded a central space like satellites. None of the doctors or nurses talking, checking charts or at the computers in the center even looked up, and when they got to Estelle’s room it was empty.

  “My mother isn’t here,” Ally said.

  “She’s probably still in X-ray. I’ll check,” he said, leaving just as the nurse came in with orange juice and crackers.

  Rather than argue, Ally accepted them, taking a few sips of the juice and eating a cracker. Then she tested the sturdiness of her own feet.

  She was still a bit shaky, but she made it to the visitor’s chair without incident and the nurse wheeled the chair out of the small room.

  The nurse met Jake coming back and Ally watched as the two stopped just outside the door to discuss something she couldn’t hear. It gave her the opportunity to study the man who had caused her such torment in the last several hours.

  He was tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, and had long legs that were muscular enough to tease the fabric of the khaki slacks he was wearing with a maroon dress shirt and tie.

  His hair was a dark espresso brown and he wore it longish and slightly unkempt. He had the facial bone structure of a Greek god—all angles and planes and sharp edges. His nose was hawkish, his lips were lush, and if Ally hadn’t disliked him so much from their phone call, she would have been blown away by how good-looking he was.

  But appearance aside, he was still the jerk who had verbally skewered her last night and movie-star handsomeness didn’t change that.

  One thing was for sure, though, he wasn’t her mother’s boyfriend or companion. He was close to Ally’s age—likely in his early thirties—and while it would have surprised her to know her seventy-nine-year-old mother was keeping company with anyone, she knew Estelle wouldn’t do anything as audacious as fool around with a younger man.

  Which begged the question—why was he hanging out with a group of geriatrics? Maybe he was related to Bubby?

  His conversation with the nurse ended just then and he came back into the room.

  Propping a hip on one corner of the examining table, he leveled a charcoal-colored gaze on her and Ally tried not to appreciate the beauty of those thickly lashed eyes. Instead, in her most authoritative voice, she said, “Will you please just tell me what’s going on with my mother?”

  He surprised her with a purely businesslike voice of his own. “I hold groups at the senior center—”

  “Groups?”

  “I’m a psychiatrist.”

  “My mother went for therapy?”

  “Not exactly. The groups deal with general issues of aging.”

  “Ah.” But if he was a shrink, wasn’t that all the more reason that he should have handled things with more tact? Ally thought it was but she didn’t say it and he merely went on.

  “I also walk every morning with the ladies, so I have pretty consistent contact with Estelle.” He paused, sighed slightly and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to get into this on the phone and have you think it wasn’t that big a problem that you’d have to rush to address. But I started noticing problems with your mother’s memory a few months ago. I suggested some supplements, some vitamins that I was hoping might help. But she can be stubborn—and she told me I was crazy, that her memory was as good as ever.”

  “Only you didn’t think that was true?”

  “I’m not the only one who’s been seeing the changes. Bubby—who I’ve known half my life—and the rest of Estelle’s friends have also seen them.”

  So he wasn’t related to Bubby.

  “More than memory changes?” Ally asked rather than get into his personal life.

  Jake sighed again. “There’s been an all-round slip in her mental state. She gets disoriented, confused. Bubby has been with her twice now when your mother has forgotten the way back from the senior center. Two other friends found her at the mall unable to find her car in the lot—they had to have security drive them up and down the rows until her friends spotted Estelle’s car, then one of them drove her home. We’ve been waiting—and hoping—that you would notice something and step in…but that’s never happened.”

  That last part had a tinge of the previous evening’s criticism in it. But since he was allowing her to get her side of the story in, she said, “My mother and I talk on the phone once a week—every Sunday except this last one. But the fact that she doesn’t remember what I’ve told her from one week to the next isn’t unusual. She’s never been interested enough in what I tell her to make any kind of mental note about it. I’ve always had to remind her again and again that I’m referring to something I told her. I haven’t noticed that being any different.”

  “Do you ask how she is? Did she tell you about the mall fiasco? You haven’t seen or heard anything that seems out of the ordinary?”

  Ally thought about it, but she honestly could not come up with a single instance in which Estelle had seemed like anything but herself.

  “No, nothing,” she said, even though she knew this man was going to take it as a strike against her. “Every week I ask how she is and she says she’s fine—never anything else. When I try to question her about what she’s doing, if she’s getting out of the house, what might be going on with her friends or at the senior center, she will only say that she’s keeping busy, and she gets peeved if I press her for any kind of details, as if I’m prying. Then she cuts me off and that’s it for that week’s call.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t think you’re interested.”

  So it’s still my fault… Ally was getting mad. “Look, Dr. Fox. Things between us just aren’t…touchy-feely. On either of our parts. She had gallbladder surgery a few years ago and she only told me about that begrudgingly because she said her doctor was going to make her go into some kind of care facility afterward if she didn’t have help at home. As soon as I knew, I rearranged my schedule so I could be here and I’d planned to stay longer but after two days she told me she was well enough to take care
of herself and that she wanted me to go home.”

  “Estelle is proud of how independent she is. If she felt as if she was infringing on you or on your time—”

  Again it’s my fault…

  Ally stopped him before he could go any further. “So, were some memory lapses the reason you called me the way you did yesterday?” she asked.

  “No,” he said simply. “As I said, the ladies and I do a walk every weekday morning. If someone can’t make it, they either tell us ahead of time or call one of the group to let us know so no one worries. Yesterday Estelle just didn’t show up. I sent the ladies on without me and went to your mother’s house. I found her front door wide open, a burner on her stove blazing hot with nothing on it and no Estelle. After searching the place and calling for her, I spotted her from an upstairs window—she was nearly at the other end of the block, wandering down the middle of the street in her nightgown.”

  That knocked some of the wind out of Ally again.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh. I went after her, got her back home and she was in such a daze she didn’t understand why I was upset. She said she’d just gone out to get her newspaper, as if that was all there was to it. I got her some breakfast, but I still didn’t want her to be alone. Sylvia—I don’t suppose you know her?”

  Ally shook her head.

  “Well, she’s one of your mom’s friends, and kindly agreed to stay with her. But by early last night Estelle insisted that she felt fine, that I’d made a big deal out of nothing, and she convinced Sylvia to leave her alone—”

  “I must have called the house two dozen times last night and there was never an answer.”

  “Sylvia had left by the time I talked to you. Who knows why Estelle didn’t answer the phone—but that’s the point, left to her own devices we don’t know what she’s doing.”

  “If all of this was yesterday, how did she end up here today?”

  “When she didn’t show up for our walk again today the ladies and I all went over there. We can only assume from the way it looked that she’d tripped over a throw rug in the entryway. She’d hit her head, hurt her wrist and she was nearly incoherent.”

  “And that was when you called the ambulance.”

  “It was impossible to tell exactly how badly she might have been hurt, so yes, I called the ambulance. She’s been examined, and beyond some bumps and bruises, her wrist is the primary concern for the moment—that’s why she’s in X-ray now. But there’s a bigger picture here.”

  Ally was trying to absorb everything. “I didn’t know,” she said.

  “You don’t know what’s happening because you’re nowhere around,” he countered as if he couldn’t contain it any longer.

  “No, I’m not. I don’t live here.” The explanation sounded feeble even to her, but it was the best Ally could come up with.

  “As people age, as their physical and mental abilities decline, they need help. If they’re lucky enough to have family, it’s that family that should provide the help.”

  That was a tidy lecture that once again made Ally feel as if he was passing judgment on her. He was just so convinced that he knew the right way. The only way.

  “Well, now that I am here, what do you suggest?” she said, challenging his attitude.

  In a more reasonable tone, he said, “I’ve been trying to get your mother to go to her primary-care physician for a physical but she’s flat-out refused. I’ve tried to get her to let me order a brain CT or an MRI, to order blood tests to see if we can tell what’s behind the memory lapses, but again, she just won’t do it. As her daughter, it’s your job to intervene.”

  “You want me to force my mother to get medical treatment?” Ally said, her own voice taking the opposite turn and becoming louder than it had been.

  “Look,” he said, as if he felt the need to impress upon her the importance of what he was saying, “Some of what Estelle is showing could be considered indications of Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t know what your relationship has been in the past, but like I’ve said already, your mother is in trouble and you’re the only family she has.”

  He had no idea what he was asking of her.

  The nurse who had been in before reappeared in the doorway now. “Excuse me, Dr. Fox, but your secretary just called to remind you that you have a patient and the patient’s family waiting in your office. There’s some volatility…”

  Ally looked on as Jake checked his watch. “I completely forgot. Tell Eugenia that I’m on my way.”

  He glanced at Ally again, his slightly bushy eyebrows coming together in a frown. “How are you feeling? Any more light-headedness? Nausea? Dizziness?”

  He got points for seeming to care that she’d recovered from her faint and for putting that before whatever volatile situation awaited him.

  “I’m fine. I’d just worked myself into such a state of terror on the way over here—that’s all it was.”

  He blushed again. “Look, I’m sorry I scared you.”

  “It’s okay.” But Ally was surprised by how small her voice had become.

  “Your mother will be back here soon,” Jake continued anyway. “They’ll probably splint her wrist, give her some pain meds and send her home. You’re going to have to take it from there.”

  Basically what he’d told Bubby.

  But Ally had had no idea to what extent he’d meant that when he’d said it earlier. Now that she knew what problems her mother was having and that he expected her to confront Estelle, she felt completely overwhelmed.

  Jake was waiting expectantly for some kind of answer, so she nodded her head as if taking it from there was exactly what she was agreeing to do—even though she had no idea how she was going to do it.

  Apparently he didn’t feel reassured. “I mean it. You can’t turn a blind eye to this. It has to be dealt with.”

  “I heard you the first time,” she said, managing a little spunk in defense against his once again demanding directive.

  He stared at her as if he still wasn’t convinced he could leave this in her hands. But after a moment he seemed to concede to the other demands on his time. “I have to go. I’ll check with you later, though probably not until tonight.”

  Ally didn’t say anything at all to that, but after another moment, he pushed off the examining table and headed out of the room.

  He paused at the door and turned those striking dark gray eyes on her again.

  “I’m sorry, Ally,” he apologized a third time. “I know this is a lot to handle and none of it is what anyone wants to have to face. But it’s in your mom’s best interests that you do face it,” he said, showing the first hint of compassion since they’d met.

  “I’ll see you later.”

  Part of Ally would have preferred she never see the man again as long as she lived. Yet another part felt a tiny bit intrigued—and safer—at the idea.

  Because as abrasive as the handsome doctor could be, there was also something strong and solid about him that made it seem as if he could handle anything.

  And when it came to her mother, Ally wasn’t too sure she could.

  Chapter Two

  It was after eight o’clock Thursday evening. Jake’s last session had ended at ten minutes before the hour and he was sitting at his desk in the office that adjoined the hospital trying to make his case notes before he left.

  Trying unsuccessfully.

  He just couldn’t seem to concentrate. Since leaving Ally Rogers at the E.R. he’d done his damnedest to keep his mind on the patients he’d seen. But his thoughts kept wandering back to Ally.

  On the few occasions when Estelle had spoken of her daughter, Jake had imagined Ally to be considerably older. After all, he was the age of most of his walking companions’ grandchildren, not their children, so he’d never figured that Estelle’s daughter would be closer to his age.

  Young and beautiful…

  Yeah, okay, so not only her age had thrown him off.

  Ally Rogers was someone any man
would have taken a second look at. Which was what he’d been doing from the emergency-room waiting area before he’d even known who she was.

  Not too tall—about five-four—she was well proportioned with curves enough for his gaze to linger where it shouldn’t have when he’d first seen her from a distance.

  She also had gleaming wavy blond hair that was nearly the color of summer sunshine, cascading around a face that could have been made of fine bone china.

  But it was her eyes that had stuck with him most. Bright, rich green, the color of rolling Irish hillsides, sparkling even when she was just coming out of her faint…

  Not that it mattered, he reminded himself, fighting off the image. It didn’t matter how beautiful she was. It didn’t matter that she was younger than he’d expected. Neither of those things could excuse neglecting her mother. Or at least what had seemed to him like neglect.

  It was a personal sore spot with him and he knew it had roots in his own background. Growing up as he had, without a family of his own, shuffled from stranger to stranger in foster care, had bred in him the conviction that families shouldn’t be taken for granted. If a person was lucky enough to have one, they damn well should appreciate it and be willing to do whatever it took to maintain it.

  Jake threw his pen onto his case file and pushed back into his leather chair with a vengeance.

  A tough old bird—that was how he’d always thought of Estelle Rogers. She was a woman who didn’t invite closeness, who didn’t exude the kind of warmth that Bubby did. But he tended to take people the way they were, to look for the good in them, and he liked Estelle.

  Once he’d gotten to know her he’d found that she had a dry sense of humor, an admirable determination and a generous spirit. She was also always ready to lend a hand to anyone at the senior center who needed it, and until recently, she’d played an unbeatable game of cribbage.

  But he felt bad for her—lately because of whatever health issues might be looming, and before because she’d seemed as alone as he was, despite the fact that, unlike him, she did have family. A daughter.