Chapter 130

I had almost made it to my feet but I dropped back on the couch. The fact I was wearing the soft sling didn’t do my arm any favors.

“Wait!” I said. “What?”

“I’m not comfortable with her working out here any longer,” Liz said.

“She’s been on vacation all week!” I said.

“That’s part of the problem,” Liz said. “She’s missed a lot of work recently and I ... I’m not happy with how she’s come to view her job here.”

“First off, she was sick for two days,” I cut in. “The vacation has been planned for seven months and she offered to skip it if things didn’t go well last Friday.”

“She’s been gone more than she’s been here!” Liz protested.

“So have Bobbi and Dayton,” I noted. “Are you going to get rid of them?”

“No,” Liz answered instantly. “They cleared their time with me before they even started. I knew they had to take a week to move things once they found a place in Nashville. Brea’s time is up in two more weeks anyway. I think we should just let her go now.”

“She doesn’t work for you,” I pointed out in a clipped voice.

“I know,” Liz said. “She works for you.”

“No!” I said. “She works for the fucking hospital! Look, I know it pissed you off when she didn’t consult with you before springing the trap on the woman leaking my medical information.”

“And it didn’t piss you off?” Liz asked.

“To a certain extent,” I admitted. “She agreed that she should have gotten my permission beforehand. She apologized for how she handled it and that was that.”

“That is not that,” Liz countered. She had crossed her arms in front of her again and I knew she was brewing for a fight. I was tired, sore and sweaty. I was ready to give her a fight.

“It comes back to who she works for,” I said. “She takes her job as seriously as you take yours. She is as protective of her employer as your people are of you. She saw a way to eliminate something that was casting doubt on every professional in her field and she took it. She protected her profession and her employer ... the same way you protect your profession and your employees. She had no reason to bring this to our attention before it happened. She purposefully kept her charts ... mundane ... and kept all pertinent information restricted to face-to-face conversations with Sondra.

“This is not an offense that deserves dismissal!”

“I think differently,” Liz said.

“Whoopee-fucking-doo,” I said. For good measure, I twirled my index finger in the air. “It’s been easier this week since I got the new sling but I still need somebody here a few times every day. I can’t just ask anybody to come up and dry off my back when you’re on a conference call.”

“I thought we’d just see if the hospital can send out somebody new,” Liz said.

“Ah, hell no,” I said, shaking my head for emphasis. “I am not going to try to get used to having somebody else ... attend to me. It was hard enough getting used to Brea seeing my naked ass. I’m not going to go through the embarrassment for somebody that’s only going to be here 10 fucking days. So, if you want to get rid of her, fine. We’ll make sure the hospital knows it’s simply because her services are no longer needed – and you can make yourself available to handle the shit she normally does.”

It was a trump card and I knew I played it well. There was no way that Liz could make the necessary time to drop what she was doing and help me out of my sling when it came time to exercise, to help me dry myself after my showers and to work with me on the skills I was trying to acquire.

“I know it might not look like she does much but she’s been a big help ... to us both,” I said. “And you know damned well that if we tell the hospital that we want to change, it’s going to land on her hard. That ain’t going to happen on my watch, Liz.”

Liz closed her eyes for a moment.

“Just hole up in the office while she’s here,” I said. “There is enough going on that it should be pretty easy to avoid her if you don’t like her.”

“It just pisses me off that she used you that way,” Liz retorted. “That’s what she did! She used you.”

“Yeah, probably,” I agreed. “I’ve been used for worse purposes. I know that part of you is mad that you weren’t the one to ferret out the source at the hospital. I get that.”

“It’s not about who caught her,” Liz insisted.

“Part of it is,” I asserted. “You devoted a lot of time to the search. Until a little while ago, I thought you’d spent a pretty good chunk of money on it, too.”

“And all I managed to do was tar a bunch of people that weren’t involved,” Liz said with disgust.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But it was a good lesson for them. In their profession they have to watch out for the things they say even to the people they’re closest to. The security guy had already been caught once. He found out that the Titans’ quarterback was going to miss a game and bet against them; both the blog and the newspaper ran stories based off the leaks. So the people involved with them know they have to be careful. You didn’t cost anyone their job. You just got them moved to sections where the temptation was lowered. You can’t take it out on Brea.”

“So you won’t even consider it?” Liz asked.

“I told you what I’d consider,” I countered. “If you want, she and I can just go somewhere else when you’re around.”

“That’s silly,” Liz said. “You’re not the problem and ... I need you here until this situation clears up.”

“Brea is not the problem, either,” I said.

“Fine, I didn’t much like her when you were in the hospital,” Liz admitted. “She rotated onto the floor a day or two after you were admitted. She was ... proprietary ... from the outset.”

“Because I was her patient,” I cut in.

“She’s the same way out here,” Liz declared.

“Oh, bullshit,” I countered. “If anyone else is around and interested, she steps away. Yeah, she’s still a little uptight and she doesn’t really fit in out here. But she’s getting better. I don’t think ... I don’t think there has been a lot of laughter in her life. It takes her a minute to figure out we’re joking. But once she figures it out, she’s fine.”

“What about that thing with Jill and the bikini?” Liz asked. The look on her face told me that she’d thought she’d scored a significant point.

“At the beginning, she thought we were serious,” I said. “You know how our conversations go. We jump from something important to a joke without a pause. That’s what we did that day. We were talking about ... jobs. Jill said she’d have some good jobs in her life but this was the best place she’d ever worked. She said she even agreed to wear a bikini for washing the cars.”

“And Brea had her tender sensibilities hurt,” Liz determined.

“No,” I said. I rarely used my “you’re an idiot” voice on Liz – for obvious reasons. But I broke it out for this one. “I added that you liked to show your employees where they stood in the hierarchy from time to time. We were acting like it was normal conversation. Brea is ... a stranger. She didn’t get it. Once we explained the concept and told her about Jill’s gambling habits, she was fine. She even made a wisecrack, too.”

I stopped and shook my head. My tone of voice had gone over about as well as I’d expected.

“Look, it’s a moot point,” I said. “I’m not going to ask the hospital to send anybody else out. But I’m also not willing to invite somebody you don’t want here into your home.”

“You live here, too,” Liz said through gritted teeth.

“You’re right,” I said. “Let me amend that statement to ‘this’ home. So we’re left with you working your schedule around mine. Are you good with that?”

“On the surface, I’m fine with that,” Liz said. “In practical application, it doesn’t work.”

“So where are we?” I asked.

“Nowhere,” Liz said.

“So we pissed each other off for no reason?” I wondered.

“So it seems,” Liz replied. She had returned her arms to their defensive positions.

“Let’s find a compromise,” I suggested.

“We can see if the first guy can come back,” Liz said.

“I will agree to that if you agree to my suggestion,” I answered.

“What is your suggestion?” Liz asked.

“Ask the others what they think of Brea,” I said. “If you can get ... two ... people to agree with you, we’ll see if Alan is available.”

“So I have to get both Jill and Skye to agree?” Liz asked. She threw her hands into the air in exasperation.

“Call my mom, talk to Conny and Melissa, ask Kim and Ben,” I said. “Talk to Melinda and the rest of the staff. Hell, call the people that we’ve interviewed for the cook’s job. Any two people that have seen Brea in her professional capacity will do. You do that and we’ll call the hospital and switch back to Alan if he is available.”

“What if he’s not?” Liz asked.

“Then you, my dear, are shit out of luck,” I replied.

I waited until I was out of the shower before I called my old professor.

Like a stubborn child, I didn’t ask for help in drying my back. I hung the towel over the holder and moved my torso over it until it was close to dry. I longed for the day when I would have the freedom to take care of my hygiene (successfully) without assistance.

“What took you so long to call, Grasshopper?” the man from San Diego asked in lieu of a greeting.

“Oh, this and that,” I said.

“You seem to be doing pretty well in managing the narrative,” he told me.

“It’s actually coming from out your way,” I told him. “We’ve put together a really solid team.”

“You did,” he agreed. “But I detect your hand in this. I could always tell when you were spearheading an initiative at the hospital. You have a panache that the others lack. They are more likely to resort to tried and true methods. You tend to ... shoot from the hip more frequently.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I wondered.

“That always depends on whether you hit where you were aiming,” he said with a chuckle.

To hear the man speaking on the phone, a person would picture a tall, urbane gentleman with just a hint of grey at this temples dressed in an impeccably cut suit of the highest standard.

The reality was far different. The professor’s almost bald pate had a fringe of unruly salt-and-pepper hair on the back and sides. The 230 pounds he had packed onto his five-feet, six-inch frame put his sartorial choices to a minimum but it wouldn’t have mattered if he had a plethora of selections.

The professor had the fashion sense of a colorblind six-year-old, frequently wearing mismatched socks and color combinations straight out of the 1970s.

He routinely had ketchup, mustard or coffee stains on his tie and his teeth and fingernails were yellowed from years of smoking cigarettes. But he had a voice that was made for audiobooks.

“You’ve been following the situation?” I wondered.

“Religiously,” the man said. “It’s summer break and I’m at loose ends. I have nothing better to do than to hang on every word uttered by the lovely people at ‘Entertainment This Evening.’”

I never knew when the man was joking. Part of it was because his sense of humor was as shady as his ethics. He had no filter ... and no regard for social niceties. He would make a joke at anybody’s expense and those jokes often revolved around skin tone, ethnicity or physical deformities. But he was brilliant in his own way.

“I noticed you’ve shied away from having your party issue any direct statements,” he said when the silence stretched a bit too long for his tastes.

“Why draw her into the fray when you can get some other idiot to say what needs to be said?” I asked. It was a paraphrased quotation from one of the first classes I’d taken from the man.

“Outstanding!” he said. “You know, Travis, this is why I wanted to groom you for politics. You would have been perfect!”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” I exploded. “Can you honestly see me trying to deal with some of the fucktards you put up with for all those years?”

“Except for that, you would have been perfect,” the man said when his laughter had subsided. “The procession of fools and megalomaniacs that I have dealt with in my career could fill a dozen novels if I were so inclined. I’m a bit surprised that nobody has put a hit out on me yet. I suppose once my usefulness dwindles a bit more, I should start checking my Audi for bombs every morning.”

“Before I forget, thank you for helping Liz track down the suspects at the hospital,” I told him.

“Think nothing of it,” he said. “I was pleased that she thought to contact me. It ... I felt flattered that you had told her of me and she thought enough of my skills to seek my assistance. I only wish my information had borne fruit. There were quite a few more erroneous stories leaked to the media. I’m thankful that those appear to have ceased.”