The Nurse and the Single Dad Read online

  You can do this, she told herself as she got out of the car and checked the rear-view mirror to make sure her hair wasn’t mussed.

  It’s not a social call, she reminded herself. Straightening up, she drew in a deep breath and braced herself for seeing him. “You’re being silly,” she whispered on her way into the hospital. “Silly!” The woman following her through the lane of parked cars cleared her throat, snapping Zoey back into the present. Silly, she repeated, only this time to herself. But, no matter how silly she felt, that didn’t change the purpose of this meeting. Daniel had called her in for a consultation, not a date. To think anything else was a waste of time and good brain space. One professional to another; that was all this was.

  Even so, she still felt daft, having all the telltale anticipation building up inside her the way it was. The question that kept plaguing her was: did she want to date a man who didn’t seem to be over his first wife?

  The answer was simple—it was a resounding no! She couldn’t and wouldn’t get involved, and thinking the unsettling thoughts was as far as she’d let it go.

  The blue elevators she needed were just a hop, skip and a jump off the parking garage and before she knew it she was standing at Daniel’s door, fist clenched and primed to knock. Two times in one month, she thought, cringing at the memory of how close she’d come to doing this last time.

  “Zoey,” he said, opening the door to her.

  She blew out a nervous breath. “Daniel.” Her heart was already fluttering and she was in a fight with herself to make it be still. What in the world was going on with her, anyway? It was a concern—a huge concern.

  “Won’t you come in?” Daniel stepped away from the door and gestured to a chair opposite his desk. It was a small office, not very impressive. Not particularly worthy of someone in Daniel’s position, which surprised her. Maybe he didn’t require much, though. Or maybe he didn’t want the bother. Still, his office was tidy. Well-kept. No papers stacked on the desk. No books unshelved. Daniel was obviously making the best of very little, and she appreciated that understated trait in him.

  “I’d prefer to talk as we go.” The confined space in his office seemed much too intimate to her, as she didn’t want to get that close to him. And behind a closed door? No, this closeness wasn’t anything she’d planned for. “My office emailed the particulars of your patient, so I’m up to date on his medical needs, and I saw that other home-health services will be following him, as well. In particular, a nursing aid.” She felt like she was babbling on about things Daniel had already set into motion, but she couldn’t stop herself, and as they progressed toward the eighth floor she didn’t quit. In fact, she was probably just regurgitating Daniel’s own observations back to him. But, in her defense, she was nervous—not so much about the patient she was going to meet, but about being around Daniel. Even in the wide, open spaces of the hall.

  “I’m glad you were able to schedule me in at the last minute,” he said as he stepped back and allowed Zoey to pass into Mr. Baumgartner’s room ahead of him. “I think Mr. Baumgartner will see that as progress in his favor. Which is something he needs right now.”

  “There’s always a little leeway at the end of my day.” Did that sound like she always hung around waiting for something to do once her workday was over? The truth was, there was always empty time at the end of her day, as she didn’t have anything else to do, no place to go but home with her cat.

  “Must be nice,” he said, following her through the door. “Taking care of Maddie doesn’t give me any leeway in my day. It’s either all work or all daughter—mind you, I’m not complaining about either one, because keeping busy has been my salvation this past year. But I think I’ve forgotten what leisure time feels like.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to take a little time for yourself every now and then,” she conceded, trying not to imagine herself fitting into those empty margins in his life. That was a pipe dream, a wild fantasy that wouldn’t work out. Zoey didn’t like the direction her mind seemed to be taking her in, so she tried blanking out Daniel and refocusing on the frowning man in the bed across the room from her.

  “Time to myself might not hurt,” Daniel went on as they crossed the room together. “But I don’t like the emptiness that comes with it. It’s easy to get lost in it.”

  “Well, I’d like some time alone, at home in my own bed, so I can be away from all the business that goes on around here,” Mr. Baumgartner quipped.

  “I think that can be arranged,” Daniel replied. He and Zoey approached the patient, who was sitting up ramrod-straight, playing solitaire on the bedside tray. Introductions were made and home care options were discussed. It was agreed that Zoey would see him in the mornings, around breakfast time, to fix his first meal of the day, lay out his daily meds and get him bathed and dressed. That would take her about an hour and a half, after which she would turn his routine daily care over to a hospice aid and do a quick call-in check on him later in the afternoon.

  As it turned out, Mr. Baumgartner didn’t want much fuss. In fact, his greatest goal was to maintain his independence for as long as he could. In spite of his seeming grumpiness right then, she was confident he would turn into a pleasant, cooperative patient once he had better control of his surroundings. Going home always made a significant difference.

  “He seems so vital,” she told Daniel a while later as they headed back to his office.

  “He is vital, and while he’s pretty sick right now, like I said to you earlier, I’m holding out some hope that we can actually take him out of hospice care sometime in the future.”

  “That would be amazing. I don’t get to see many people graduate and move back into a normal life.”

  “It does happen, though, doesn’t it?”

  “Occasionally.” She frowned and a sadness set into her eyes. “Not as often as I’d like to see, though.”

  “Then you get attached to your patients?”

  “Of course I do. How can you invest part of every day in a person and not get attached?”

  “You were attached to Elizabeth?”

  “Very,” she replied softly. “She was...exceptional.”

  “She was, wasn’t she?”

  Zoey reached over and squeezed Daniel’s hand. “Very.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  It was like a heavy woolen blanket came down over them and stopped them from progressing in that moment. Both Daniel and Zoey stood in the hallway outside the elevator bank, thinking their own private thoughts about Elizabeth. It was a very long moment before Daniel finally spoke. “But not all your patients are as exceptional as Elizabeth was, are they?”

  Zoey shook her head no, and laughed. “Some of them are real stinkers.”

  “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you with one of your stinkers?”

  She didn’t hesitate with her answer. “Bedpan to the chest. He hurled it across the room at me.”

  “It was empty, I hope?” The elevator doors opened and he stepped back to let Zoey enter ahead of him.

  “Let’s just say that, after I washed up, I threw those clothes away.” Stepping into the elevator, she stopped at the button panel and pushed “2” to take them back to the second floor. The doors closed and they were alone for a long, quiet ride down. It was only when the doors opened to let them out that Daniel resumed the conversation.

  “Can’t say that’s ever happened to me.”

  “Because you’re a doctor,” she said, laughing. “You don’t get near bedpans.”

  “I beg to differ with you. I’ve seen my fair share of them.”

  “But how many people have you actually put on or taken off them? See, that’s the real question here.”

  “Doctors aren’t expected to do bedpan duty.”

  “Is that what they teach you in med school these days?”
/>   “Not taught. Just implied.”

  “That’s right. There’s always this division of power, isn’t there?” This was a fun conversation, a pleasant diversion from serious, sorrowful subjects. “Doctors hand out the orders, nurses do all the work.”

  “You’re one of those?” he asked.

  “You bet your life I’m one of those, and I’m proud to be a defender of nurses everywhere. Without us, you doctors would end up doing the bedpan thing, and don’t you forget that!”

  Daniel chuckled. “You’re quite the militant, aren’t you?”

  “Not militant. More like determined.”

  They wandered down the hall, shoulder to shoulder, until they came to his office. “Well, Nurse Determined, this is where I leave you, unless you’d like to come in for a few minutes?”

  She looked over his shoulder at the door, but didn’t take a step forward. “I... Um... Your office is so small. Are you sure I’d fit in there with you?” Such a lame reason for not stepping over his threshold. But she didn’t want to go in, didn’t want to get any more personal with him than she already had. And a tight space like his office, well, that had “togetherness” written all over it.

  “Elizabeth never went in there, either. She’d bring me my lunch and stay ten paces back from the door after she knocked, because just seeing the size of my office almost caused a panic attack in her. But she never said a word about it.”

  “Not even to you?”

  “I think especially not to me. Elizabeth was never good at letting anyone see or know about her weaknesses. People expected her to be strong—I expected her to be strong. And she was afraid that, if anyone perceived anything other than strength in her, she’d be letting them down.”

  “But you were aware enough of her to know her deep, dark secret.”

  Daniel smiled fondly. “I suppose I was. But I never let on.”

  “Because you loved her?”

  “Because I respected her need to keep it to herself.”

  Zoey wondered how it would be to have someone so close to you that he’d simply know and understand all your intimacies without ever being told. That was Daniel and Elizabeth’s marriage, though. A perfect love story. She envied that, and she also pitied the person who ever stepped into Daniel’s life in the future, because he still held Elizabeth in such high esteem; no one could, or would, compare. Bottom line, for Daniel, Elizabeth was an act that probably couldn’t be followed successfully.

  “So you’re sure you won’t come in for a little while?” he asked, interrupting her thoughts.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Is it because of claustrophobia, or me?”

  “What do you mean you?”

  “You’re not comfortable around me. I can see it every time I look at you.”

  “I’ve no reason to be comfortable...or not comfortable.” That wasn’t exactly the truth, as she could see herself becoming very comfortable with Daniel, and very quickly at that. She was fighting it, though. Paddling upstream and struggling against the current every inch of the journey. And it wasn’t because of Daniel as much as it was about her. She was afraid to take the journey. Afraid of being hurt again. Afraid of being so unaware of herself that she would allow herself to get hurt.

  “Is it because of Elizabeth?”

  She preferred not to answer his question, because she didn’t understand why she reacted to Daniel the way she did. She liked him. Liked him a lot. But that didn’t change the fact that her reactions toward him were not natural. Nor were they intended. Rather, they simply happened, and it didn’t seem like she could hold them back. “It’s because I’m just...cautious. That’s my nature, I guess, when something out of the blue approaches me. And I’ve got to tell you, you’re definitely out of the blue.”

  “Out of the blue and, apparently, out of practice, since all I want to do right now is ask you down to the cafeteria for coffee, and I don’t know how to do it to get a positive response.”

  His directness caught her off-guard and she didn’t know what to make of it. “Why?” she asked bluntly.

  “Because you look like you could use a cup right about now.”

  “How do I look?”

  “Apprehensive, distressed, maybe nervous.”

  Well, he’d nailed that description dead on. She was all three because Daniel signaled a moving forward in her that she wasn’t sure she was ready for. “Or maybe I’m anxious to get on with my day.”

  “But, by your own admission, this was the last stop of your day.”

  “I could have plans for the evening.” If only that were only true.

  “Do you?”

  “I’ve got a lot of paperwork to catch up on.” A dull, unimaginative excuse to be away from him. But away was where she had to be, lest she got herself more involved than she already was. The problem was, Daniel was such a big conflict for her. He represented something she longed for, but couldn’t have in him as he was still married to Elizabeth emotionally and spiritually. That was a warning sign if ever there was one. She couldn’t go past a certain point with Daniel because he was still committed to what he’d had, which meant there was no reason to go forward with anything, because in the end she’d be going forward alone.

  Alone was where she lived her life now, and she was used to it. So why take the risk to change things?

  “Paperwork? That’s all?” he asked.

  She nodded slowly. “My workday usually carries over into my evening. It’s part of what I do.”

  “You don’t mind that?”

  “I’m used to it, so it’s not really a matter of liking or disliking. And I knew that’s what I was letting myself in for when I took the job, like you knew the kind of hours you would put in when you became a doctor.”

  “So how do I rescue you from a few of those minutes of that paperwork?”

  She looked at the broad smile crossing his face and caught herself falling victim to those amazing dimples that accented either side of his mouth. “I suppose all you have to do is ask.” The words tumbled out before she could stop them, and she immediately regretted that she’d sounded too easy. But she’d practically led him on, hadn’t she? Maybe even led herself on, as well.

  “And you’d say yes?”

  “Truthfully, I’m not sure what I’d say.”

  “Then how about I ask you out for a pizza instead of coffee? We can go grab Maddie away from her grandmother, since I already promised her pizza tonight, then go down to Papa Giovanni’s. They’ve got a great thin crust that practically melts in your mouth. And they give Maddie and me extra toppings.”

  “Sounds...tempting.” Too tempting...and she didn’t mean the pizza. So what was she doing, getting ready to accept his offer? Was she being foolish? Giving in to something she knew couldn’t really happen?

  “Tempting, but not convincing?”

  “Is this a date, Daniel? I need to clarify that, because I don’t date families of patients, or former patients. That’s a hard-and-fast rule in my life.”

  “A convenient one, too, I expect.”

  “What do you mean by that?” What was he seeing in her that caused him to think that?

  “What I mean is, you intentionally keep yourself at a distance. You say it’s a professional rule, but I wonder if it extends beyond that.”

  It did, but she had no reason to confess that to him. Daniel wasn’t a friend. He was merely someone she knew, the extension of one of her former patients. And her rules applied to him. Or, at least, she was struggling to make them apply. “My rule extends to wherever I want to apply it.”

  “And you never make exceptions?”

  “Exceptions lead to more exceptions, and pretty soon the rules go by the wayside. It can turn into a slippery slope if you let it.”

  “So, what happens if
that slope does get too slippery? What does it do to you?”

  “It disappoints me. Disillusions me. Hurts me. I think it’s easier to stay away from that slope than risk getting on it and falling down.”

  “Well, I’m asking you out to dinner, not a slippery slope. That’s all. And the evening comes only with a couple of slices of pizza and some very enthusiastic chattering from a three-year-old.”

  “It would be nice to see Maddie again,” she conceded.

  “Then you’ll come?”

  Zoey sighed. She was about to give in to something she didn’t want, and there was no stopping her now. She was far past that point, as the word yes was already pushing its way out. “I suppose two slices and some chatter won’t be such a big deal.” She shook her head as he once more invited her into his office. “Instead, how about I meet you at Giovanni’s in a little while?”

  “Sounds good to me.” Daniel glanced at his watch. “It’s six thirty now. I think it’ll take me about an hour to get out of here and get Maddie rounded up, so let’s say we meet up at seven thirty. Will that work for you?”

  This was a mistake, a big, big mistake. She knew it, but that wasn’t stopping her. She wanted to go, wanted to spend a little more time with him. Wanted to take him out of the medical atmosphere and, well, maybe even relate to him as a friend.

  Daniel...a friend? It was something to consider.

  Of course, it had been a full year since he’d been a family member of one of her patients. So why not let up a little this one time? “That’ll give me enough time to run home and feed my cat.”

  “You have a cat?” Daniel grinned at her. “I didn’t figure you’d go in for that kind of commitment.”

  “I commit beautifully to cats. Just not to people.”

  “Why?”

  “Cats don’t let me down. People do. I find a certain safety in cats.”

  He laughed. “Then you’re not on your way to being the eccentric cat lady who has thirty cats living in her apartment?”

  “One cat is companionship. Thirty is a retreat from the real world. And, believe it or not, I like the real world, even though it scares me sometimes.” She turned and headed back toward the elevators, but stopped a few feet down the hall and spun back to face him. “Tell Maddie I’m looking forward to seeing her again.”