Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [145]
“You need me to come get you?”
“No thanks. I’ll call if I run into any snags.”
And just as he was hanging up, here she came.
“Hilarious,” he said, climbing in. “Better let me off a block away. I told Bill you had car trouble.”
“Brilliant. With a Benz.”
“It happens.”
“Hey, Brady, I gotta borrow that phone and charger till I see you next, all right?”
“Sure. It’s yours. What’s up?”
“A girlfriend and I are going on a little trip, and she doesn’t have a phone. It’s just a few days.”
“You still coming for group therapy Thursday?”
“Of course.”
She pulled up to the center right on time, and Bill looked confused as he opened the gate.
“Mercedes responded right away,” Brady said. “Took care of it just like that. I’ll be right back down. I got to give her something.”
Brady wrapped the phone and charger in a shirt and slipped past Bill. “She’s gonna have this cleaned for me at some special shop.” It was lame, but what was he supposed to say?
Brady had a bad feeling as he approached the car. What had this all been about anyway? Did he and Katie not have what he thought they had?
Bill was standing there holding the gate open and watching. Brady opened the passenger-side door and put the stuff on the seat.
“Come around to my side, sweetie,” she said.
He looked at Bill, then back at her. “What?”
“Come on. Just a taste of what’s to come.”
He moved to her window, and she reached for him. He bent, and she grabbed him around the neck with both arms, nearly pulling herself out of the car. She planted a deep, passionate kiss on him and smiled. “I don’t care who’s watching,” she said. “You ought to know that by now.”
50
Adamsville
As much as Thomas longed to see Grace at the end of every day, lately it seemed a weight settled on his shoulders and grew only heavier as he neared home. He had come to know well the six or so women who rotated tending to Grace, which one was her favorite, which she merely tolerated. Both he and she were deeply grateful for all of them, of course, and Thomas wondered how other people in their economic situation coped at all.
Today the caregiver informed Thomas that she had had to call the doctor late in the morning when Grace’s blood pressure dipped alarmingly. “He actually came to the house. And he said something about her blood sugar too.”
“When was this?” Thomas said.
“A little before noon.”
“Did you try to reach me?”
“I mentioned it, but Grace forbade me to interrupt you at work.”
Thomas sighed. He wanted to overrule his wife and set a policy with the caregivers that he was always to be informed of any change in her condition, but how would that look? There was no sense putting these volunteers in the middle of his frustration with his wife. Gracie was only thinking of him, but still he very much wanted to be informed of everything.
Later he said, “Grace, do I have to check in here by phone every few hours?”
“You need to trust me, Thomas. I know my own body and whether I’m really in trouble. The doctor has said for ages that our goal is to get me to at least a temporary state of remission. He thought we were making progress. The blood pressure thing was a setback, and he tested my sugar level just as an afterthought since he was here anyway.”
“Tell me you’re not diabetic or even prediabetic.”
“He doesn’t think so, but he’s asked me to test for a while so he can put me on oral meds if necessary.”
Thomas didn’t like the sound of that. Already it seemed he had to fight with his insurance company over anything new.
“Don’t look so glum. I feel better now. And don’t worry about the house call either. The doctor said it was gratis because he knew our insurance didn’t cover it.”
“Something free from a doctor? Will wonders never cease?”
“Oh, I think he does fine and would even if I were his only patient.”
Not wanting Ravinia to feel as left out of the loop as he did, Thomas called her and brought her up to date.
“How do you explain this, Dad? Why does something like this happen to someone like her?”
“We are not promised tomorrow.”
“I just don’t like it, that’s all.