His Other Life

Chapter 19

NINETEEN

ISLA

Present day

“Someone get a chair,” the guy said as he unzipped Mav’s coat and reached for the top button of his shirt.

“You?” Isla sputtered.

He glanced at her, an expression of regret skimming across his face. His mouth opened, but before he could speak, a college kid appeared at Mav’s feet with a chair.

“Where do you want it?”

The guy looked away from Isla. “Right there is fine. Let’s get his legs up.”

Together they lifted Mav’s feet up onto the seat.

“Maverick.” The guy fitted a mask to Mav’s mouth and nose then patted his jaw. “You all right there?” He clipped a small device to one of Mav’s fingertips.

Someone standing above Isla informed them that an ambulance was on its way.

Isla’s eyes were locked on Mav’s pale face. It was all she could do. Too many questions warred in her mind, but blanketing them all was worry so intense she couldn’t formulate more than a two-word sentence. Come on. She should have insisted he stay back and rest. This was on her.

Mav’s eyelids fluttered.

“That’s it.” The guy cradled a gentle hand against the side of Mav’s head. “Wakey, wakey.”

They know each other, Isla thought with sudden clarity. The realization startled her out of her self-pity, and she studied the guy more closely. He was about her age, with brown hair, slate-blue eyes, and an intentionally scruffy jaw. Underneath his dark parka, he wore jeans and a knitted cream sweater.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Rowan,” he said. “I’m Maverick’s nurse.”

“Nurse?” Isla blinked at him.

“Let us through please.” Two paramedics entered and joined their little grouping on the floor.

“He’s anemic,” Rowan told them. “From MDS. I got his oxygen up, but we should probably get him looked at.”

“His name?” one paramedic asked.

“Maverick Zuft,” Rowan and Isla said as one.

“Is one of you next of kin?”

Rowan raised his hand. “I have power of attorney.”

“I thought you were his nurse,” Isla said.

“Also an honorary nephew of sorts.” Rowan leaned over Mav. “He’s waking up. Maverick, there you are. You had a stumble. Everything will be okay.”

At the sight of Mav opening his eyes, Isla took his hand and squeezed. Honorary nephew? What was that supposed to mean, and why hadn’t Mav told her about Rowan before?

Rowan turned to her again. “Look—I’m happy to explain more later, but maybe we can focus on getting him into the ambulance now?”

She nodded.

“You ride with him. I’ll follow,” Rowan said.

And even though she didn’t know this man, in that moment, she could have kissed him for taking charge.

Once the doctor had examined Mav, Rowan came to get Isla from the waiting room where she’d paced a track in the carpet in front of the vending machines.

“He’s fine,” Rowan said. “They’ll keep him overnight for observation, but there shouldn’t be a cause for worry.”

“No cause for worry?” Isla stared at him. “He’s clearly not well, and I had no idea.”

A slight color spread across Rowan’s cheeks. Then he nodded. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. I told him it was a bad idea.”

“To travel or to lie?”

“Both.” He nodded to the elevator bank. “Come on—I’ll take you upstairs, and he can tell you himself. If it’s any consolation, I think he feels pretty sheepish about it.”

“As he should.” Isla allowed herself to be herded into the elevator. There was something about Rowan that disarmed her. She’d planned on calling him out for stalking them, but he was so obviously on Mav’s side that she couldn’t muster the energy. “I’m Isla by the way,” she said instead.

Rowan chuckled, his eyes glinting as the door slid closed. “Yes, I know.”

Mav was resting when they reached his room. He had a small tube in his nose and a heartrate monitor connected to a machine next to the bed, but other than that, he looked normal. He opened his eyes when Isla took his hand.

“Hi there,” he said, his lips turning up.

Rowan pulled a chair up to the bed for her, and she sat. “Hey.”

“Much ado about nothing, I’m afraid,” Mav said. “Sorry for making a fuss.”

“Hardly nothing.” She leaned closer. “Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?”

“Barely sick,” Mav said. “Mostly I’m just old.”

“You have a nurse who travels with you. Apparently.” She raised an eyebrow.

Mav eyed her, his lips pressed together. “Are you very cross?”

“You made me think I was imagining things. That’s not nice. I truly thought we were being followed.” She glanced at Rowan, who was leaning against the windowsill.

Mav wiggled his head sideways a few times. “Technically, I suppose we were. But there was nothing nefarious about it.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“He asked me to stay out of sight,” Rowan said. “It’s my bad that I didn’t do a very good job of it.”

“And do you always follow his orders?” Isla’s words sounded snarkier than she’d intended.

“Hey.” Mav squeezed her hand. “Don’t be mad at Rowan.”

“Then tell me. What’s going on? Why all the secrets?”

“Because if I’d told you about my little health issue, we’d still be in Port Townsend.” He leveraged the full force of his cool blue gaze on her. “You know that’s true, and you needed to do this.”

“I could have found someone else to help.”

“Could, yes. Would, doubtful. Besides, I wanted to help you. Your story… It connects.” He moved one hand over his heart.

“So…” Isla hesitated. “What’s going on with you?”

Mav glanced at Rowan. “I have something called myelodysplastic syndrome. It affects my blood—the production of healthy blood cells.”

“It makes him anemic, which leads to fatigue and dizziness,” Rowan filled in. “It can also lead to?—”

“It’s mild,” Mav cut in. “I’m fine.”

Isla gestured around the room. “Evidently.”

“I’m not used to all the exercise.” He patted her hand. “Like I said—I’m old. But I refuse to be committed to some home where I’ll fade away into the night. I fainted. Big whoop.”

Isla smiled at him. “Do you really feel okay?”

“Really, really.”

She nodded then looked at Rowan. “And you have an ‘honorary nephew,’ whatever that means.”

“Technically, he’s the son of Lorraine’s best friend. I’ve known him since he was little.”

“Ah. And how did this arrangement come to be?” She pointed a finger between the two of them.

“When I received my diagnosis last year, I knew I didn’t want to be in a nursing home. So I called Rowan, who I knew to be a reliable and pleasant sort of chap with the right training. And I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

“Wasn’t that great of an offer.” Rowan kicked off the wall and joined them at the bed, an affectionate smile softening his expression.

Mav grinned. “Oh hush.”

“But it was good enough. And I’d been wanting out of the city.” Rowan shrugged. “I’m a writer—or trying to be. Working for Mav allows me to do more of that than when I worked at the hospital.”

“He runs a tight ship,” Mav said. “Insisted on coming along on the trip. But I couldn’t very well have him in the car with us because?—”

“That would give away your illness.”

Mav touched his nose to indicate Isla had strung things together.

“But what I still don’t understand is why you weren’t upfront about your condition when we first met. Before you knew about Jonah.”

Mav peered at her. “Hello, I’m Maverick Zuft, and I have MDS? That’s what you wanted me to say? Are you in the habit of starting new acquaintances announcing your afflictions?”

Isla shrank. “No.”

“Right. Because if you do, that’s all people see. And I already have ‘old’ and ‘odd-looking’ going for me.” Mav had raised his head off the pillow while he spoke, but now he sank back down again. “I’m very sorry I was untruthful.” He peered up at her from beneath heavy eyelids. “But now that you know, I hope you won’t treat me differently. This is just a small bump in the road.”

A bump? He didn’t think they were going to continue the trip, did he? “But shouldn’t we?—”

“I’m tired now,” Mav said, interrupting. “I need sleep. We’ll talk when they release me in the morning.”

His voice invited no recourse, so all Isla could do was nod. He was emotional about the whole situation; she could understand that. Surely he’d come to his senses after a night’s rest?

“Rowan.” Mav reached for him. “You see to it that Isla gets back to the hotel and take care of the charge for the additional night.”

Rowan dipped his chin. “Will do.”

That settled it.

As they walked back to the garage, Isla struggling to keep up with Rowan’s long strides, she tried to decide what question to ask first. There were so many to choose from. Finally, she settled on, “Do you always let him boss you around like that?”

It came out more judgmental than she’d intended, but Rowan didn’t seem fazed by it.

“He pays the wages, so he calls the shots,” he said, unlocking his blue Corolla with a beep of the key fob. “Within reason of course.” He opened the door for Isla and waited until she got in to close it.

She buckled her seatbelt and watched him fold his tall frame into the driver’s seat. “You’ve known him your whole life?”

Rowan waited to respond until he’d backed out of the parking spot and made it up the ramp. “More or less. We moved to the Seattle area from out of state when I was six. My grandma and Lorraine were very close and lived on the same street, so I’d see Uncle Mav and Aunt Rainie, as I called them, almost every time I visited my grandparents.”

“That’s nice.”

“Oh no—he absolutely terrified me until I was about fifteen. Are you kidding? That face?” Rowan chuckled. “But then I had a school assignment where you had to interview a grandparent or someone of that generation, and since my grandpa had recently passed away, Mav offered. He showed me souvenirs from all over the world, told me stories from the seven seas that topped any book I’d ever read, demonstrated his knot-tying skills.”

“He hasn’t showed me that.”

“I’d recommend you don’t let him try it on you. It took me an hour to get out of the chair at the time. Always up to something.”

“I’m starting to see that.”

They made a right turn, then a left, with Rowan consulting the map app on his phone to navigate through the city. It didn’t pass Isla by that he hadn’t asked her which hotel. He was probably staying there too.

“So I interviewed him,” Rowan continued after merging with the traffic on the expressway, “and ever since, we’ve been close. He may think of me as an honorary nephew, but to me he’s always been a bonus grandpa.”

“I’m sure he liked that, especially since he never had kids of his own.”

“Right.” Rowan checked his mirrors. It was rush hour, and traffic crawled bumper to bumper, but fortunately their exit was only a mile away.

“And then eventually you became a nurse, he hired you, end of story?”

He glanced at her, that friendly smile from the first time they’d met in the doorway to Mav’s building blooming across his face. “Yup that’s it. That’s all there is to my life.”

Isla’s cheeks tugged up to match his. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know.” He smirked at the road ahead.

Little bit of a wise-ass. Like his bonus grandpa.

They were approaching their exit, and while Rowan focused on not getting into any pileups, Isla sank deeper into her seat. She half expected him to ask something about her, hoped he would, so she could probe further, but when he didn’t, she tucked her lingering curiosity away. No one liked a Nosy Nellie.

Finally, Rowan flipped the turn signal on and turned into the garage beneath the hotel.

They came to a squeaky stop against the smooth concrete.

Isla unbuckled and faced him in the dim light. “Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem at all.”

He got out of the car first, and she followed, falling into step next to him on their way to the elevator.

“Floor?” he asked as they got on.

“Five.”

He hit both number five and number seven, and when the door opened on her floor, he held it open after she stepped out.

“Hey,” he said, “if I didn’t say so before—I’m sorry if I scared you with my inadequate stalker skills. I should have told him no.” His face was half in shadow, but his gaze was clear and steady and filled with nothing but genuine remorse.

“It’s okay,” she said. “He is pretty darn hard to say no to.” She took a step back, getting ready to turn. The need for silence and time to process was becoming more urgent as the sky outside darkened. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Rowan raised his hand. “Have a good night.”

Once in the solitude of her room, Isla sank down on the end of her bed and rested her face in her hands a long while. She didn’t cry—Mav would be okay after all—but she focused on her breathing until the bedlam in her head quietened down. Then she took off her shoes, scooted backward on the comforter, and collapsed against the pillows. The lamp on the desk by the TV cast an intricate yellow halo against the wall and ceiling that allowed her something to focus on while her muscles shrugged off the events of the day. Outside, the rain had started, icy droplets pattering against the window and the traffic below.

She pulled out her phone and started typing a text to her mom but erased it halfway. The trip was over, that was the logical conclusion of today, but she couldn’t yet bring herself to type the words. Instead, she opened her email, more out of habit than anything else, and there it was.

The accident report.