Chapter Twenty-Eight Maya #2
“My daughter has been fretting around my home, trying to get everything ready for my return, and insists a nurse still come in daily to check on me.” She pushed down her glasses and gazed at me from over the top of the frames. “Do you think I need that, Maya?”
“Do I think you need a nurse? No. Your mobility is fantastic. So is your balance. And you’re in excellent health. But do I think you should have one?” I set my free hand on top of hers. “Yes.”
“Did Melinda convince you to say that?” Her eyes bored through mine. “Never mind, I know she didn’t. When it comes to anything medical, you would never let anyone influence what you believe is right. If you tell me it’s something I need, then that’s how you feel in your heart.”
“When you say things like that, Bettie, I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”
I could hear Melinda upstairs, the ceiling creaking as she moved around. Because we’d spoken before Bettie’s discharge, I knew she was making sure Bettie’s personal things had been brought down to the first-floor guest room since Bettie’s bedroom was on the second story.
“Oh, my girl, I think our paths have crossed in many lives. I also believe we’re sent the people we’re supposed to meet.” She paused. “There’s a reason you’re on my couch right now, and it has nothing to do with my grandson.”
“About that . . .” I hadn’t said a word about the news Melinda had told me at the groundbreaking ceremony. I wasn’t sure if I was going to, but the timing suddenly felt right. “Why did you request me to be your nurse?”
She gave me a coy look. “My daughter told you?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “I’m going to tell you a story.
” She turned toward me, and I readjusted the pillow behind her back.
“A few years ago, a couple of my friends and I were eating at a restaurant. Several tables down from us, an elderly woman got sick. She was vomiting at the table, complaining of chest pain and a slew of other symptoms as well. A patron at the restaurant noticed the commotion, who just so happened to be wearing a nursing uniform, and she began to tend to the woman. She called 911, she monitored her vitals, and she didn’t leave her side until the paramedics took the woman away on a stretcher. ”
My heart began to patter even harder as I whispered, “Bettie . . .”
“Ironically, one of the friends I was eating with is a doctor. A retired orthopedic surgeon. Not the cardiologist that was probably needed in that moment, but an MD nevertheless. That man stayed in his seat and ate his tuna fish sandwich and never took more than a quick glance toward that woman.”
“Nurses are sometimes a different breed.” I winked.
She licked the corners of her mouth. “As I was walking out of the restaurant, I passed the table where the woman had been eating and noticed something on the floor. It was—”
“My name tag.”
“Yes, darling. During all the commotion, it had dropped from your breast pocket. So I picked it up and brought it home, and I kept it in my kitchen drawer. You never know when things like that come in handy—and look, two years later, it did.”
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. I remembered the day as though it were yesterday and the way I’d flung out of my chair, mid-bite, to help the woman. That wasn’t the first time I’d been in a situation like that, and I didn’t think it would be the last.
“Bettie, what if I didn’t work at the rehab center anymore?”
“Then I would have gone where you moved to. But I knew that if something happened to me and I needed to be cared for, I wanted you to be my nurse. So I got your boss on the phone and I asked him what it would take. All the while, my daughter was hiring every Tom, Dick, and Harry to come here and care for me, and I was firing everyone who walked through the door. They weren’t you, my dear. ”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the name tag I’d dropped that day, not realizing it until I got home, assuming it had fallen off at work or walking to and from the restaurant or anywhere in between.
She set the name tag in my hand. “I won’t be needing this anymore. I have your number now, and you’re so ingrained in my heart, I know if I need you, you’d be here in a second.”
“Before you even blink.” I hugged her. “You can be sure of that.”
Melinda poked her head into the living room, gazing between the two of us. “Mom, you just told her the restaurant story, didn’t you.”
As I pulled back, I wiped the corners of my eyes. “She did. What a coincidence.”
“Did she tell you that she no longer speaks to the orthopedic surgeon?” Melinda grinned while she shook her head.
“She left that part out.” I laughed.
“That luncheon was the end of their friendship,” Melinda added. “Mom wouldn’t even return his calls.”
“You’re quite the stickler, Bettie.”
She shrugged. “I don’t need friends who don’t have the courage to stand up and help those in need. Heroes come in every size and shape, and help can differ greatly depending on the circumstance. That day, my girl, you certainly were wearing a cape.”
I gave her a smile.
And deep down, I knew her comment extended beyond the medical care I’d offered that day. If I’d learned anything about this family, it was that for the things they had taken, they had given back so much more.
Melinda sat in the chair across from us.
“You know, it’s funny—when I met you about a week ago, and I told you that Mom had fallen in love with your care and had some strings pulled to have you as her nurse, it dawned on me that I never asked Mom how she knew you.
” She crossed her legs, holding her knee.
“Mom had told me the restaurant story when it happened, but I didn’t know the nurse was you.
I couldn’t believe it—the chances of Mom finding you two years later, and my Jordan falling for you too. ”
I rubbed Bettie’s hand on both sides. “I’m not sure what to say either. I came in from every angle, I suppose.”
“Things have a way of working out just the way they’re meant to.” Bettie put her hand on my face. “And you, my dear, were just meant to be in this family.”
“Sorry I’m running late, Mom,” I said as I rushed through her front door, tossing my set of keys back into my purse.
She sat on the couch with a laptop on her legs, and looked up from the screen when I walked into the living room.
“I helped take Bettie home from the hospital, and it took a little longer than I expected.”
“Melinda’s mom, right?”
“Yes.” I sat next to her and peeked at the computer screen, rubbing my arms to warm them up. Where Bettie’s town house had been almost too hot, Mom’s apartment was cold, always matching the temperature it was outside. “Are you working?”
“I just wanted to get caught up on some things and respond to emails I didn’t get a chance to while I was at the office.”
I’d never seen my mom use a computer. We didn’t have one when I was growing up, and she’d never brought one home from any of her jobs.
I pulled the elastic out of my hair and let my locks fall around my face. “What is it that you wanted to talk to me about?”
She closed the laptop and set it on the coffee table. “See my purse on the counter over there?” She pointed toward the kitchen. “All of my bills are stacked inside. I wanted to go over them with you and see if you can help me consolidate my credit cards so I can start paying down my debt.”
I stared at her for a moment, comparing the three mothers I had been around today and the differences between them.
My mother hadn’t even reached out to hug me when I sat beside her, something I probably wouldn’t have even acknowledged if I hadn’t just been with Bettie, who held my hand more than she didn’t.
I got up from the couch, and when I reached her purse, I pulled it open to grab the thick stack of envelopes, and in the process, the tips of my fingers hit something hard.
Something that felt like stone. I couldn’t imagine what it was, and I pulled out the paper to get a better look.
On the bottom, sitting next to her wallet, was a rock.
One that was familiar because I’d given it to her.
I held it up in the air. “I can’t believe you still have this.”
Her eyes narrowed as if she was squinting to see what I had. “The paperweight? I could never throw that darn thing away.”
With the bills in one hand and the rock in the other, I returned to the couch, turning the stone to view each side.
I’d painted it in kindergarten in splashes of jewel tones that all blended together, and I’d brought it home after it dried, so excited to show Mom what I’d created.
Even though that felt like a lifetime ago, I could still remember it.
How she had teased me that the yellow and green, where they overlapped, looked like mud and how the oblong shape made it look like a big teardrop.
The rock had sat on one of our counters, exactly where I’d put it, for several weeks until we got evicted, and I never saw it again.
“Mom, we moved a dozen times since I gave you this rock, and you’ve moved just as many after I left for college. How has it survived all that?”
Her exhale came from her nose, sounding like a little puff. “I’ve never taken it out of my purse.”
“You mean, even when we were living in your car it was in there? And it has been this whole time? That’s twenty-five-ish years of carrying this around.”
“I know.” She nodded. “I was proud of it. I still am, and . . .” Her head slanted to the side.
“I’m proud of you. That’s something I probably haven’t said enough.
” She took it out of my hand and turned it around, looking at the sides like I’d done.
“This is the first present you ever gave me.” She glanced at me again.
“You could have given it to anyone. Shit, you could have kept it for yourself. But you didn’t.
I’ll never forget that.” She put the rock back in my hand, and when her fingers grazed my skin, she smiled.