Chapter Fourteen
I ’m not going to no doctor,” Jasper declared between coughs on Friday evening.
His favorite old gray sweater was hanging on the back of a kitchen chair. I grabbed it and draped it around his shoulders, where it hung just about the same. “You’ve been sick for a week, and you’re getting worse. That cough sounds like a freight train engine. Either you will let me drive you or else I’m calling the ambulance. You lose your breath every time you cough, and in between, you are wheezing louder than Aunt Gracie’s snores. Do you realize that whatever you have could go into pneumonia if it hasn’t already? That would mean you would most likely have to stay in the hospital for days. And you know I’m not going to bring you food.”
He folded his frail arms over his chest and glared at me. “Only doctor I ever been to in my life was the one who checked me out to go in the army, and another one when”—he had to stop and cough into the bandanna he’d pulled from the bib pocket on his overalls—“when I fell and hit my head on the sidewalk.” He managed a weak chuckle. “I was pretty drunk that time. Had to have six stitches, but the nurse was right pretty.”
I opened the door and stood beside it. “Me or the ambulance. Your choice.”
“You are as stubborn as Gracie,” he snapped.
“That’s the best compliment I’ve had all day,” I said.
“You can take me, but I’m not stayin’ in that place. There’s sick people in there, and I might catch something. I’ve got to live until my birthday, remember?” He stood up and shuffled outside.
I followed him out onto the porch. “It’s cool out here this evening. Let’s put your sweater on. And yes, Jasper, I remember that your birthday is coming up soon, right after fall strawberry season. If you don’t get well, you might end up having to celebrate it in a nursing home.”
He didn’t argue when I helped him with his sweater, but he stopped before he took a step out into the yard. “Wait a minute! What about Sassy?”
“She’ll be fine until we get back,” I assured him. “And I can call Connor if we’re late.”
“How about we just go to one of them instant-care places?” he asked.
I looped my arm in his. “Do you mean urgent care?”
He grabbed his handkerchief and coughed into it. “Whatever it’s called. They can check me out and give me a prescription I don’t intend to fill. I’ll come home and have my hot toddies until I get well.”
“We are going to the emergency room, not urgent care.” I hoped my tone left no more room for argument.
“I was wrong, Lila,” he said as we headed around the house to where my SUV was parked.
“Oh, yeah.” I walked slowly and made sure I kept him on the gravel driveway, which was more level than the grass. “Want to explain that?”
“You are more stubborn”—he stopped a minute to catch his breath—“and bullheaded than Gracie ever was.”
“I had a good teacher.” I opened the passenger door to my vehicle and settled him inside. “Matter of fact, I had three good teachers when it comes right down to it. You and Aunt Gracie, and Mama.”
“Don’t go layin’ blame on me.” He tried to chuckle, but it made him cough even more. “You are wastin’ your time drivin’ all the way to San Antonio. We got us one of the drive-through places in Poteet—what did you call it? Urgent care? It’s closer than goin’ all that distance.”
I slid in under the steering wheel and started the engine. “San Antonio isn’t that far. If you are good and don’t cry if they have to give you a shot, then we’ll stop for ice cream on the way back home.”
“I’m not a child. You can’t bribe me like that—and I’m not takin’ a shot,” he declared. “I don’t like pills, but I hate needles.”
“Then no ice cream,” I said.
He lifted his chin up and looked down his long, thin nose at me. “I bet I can talk a pretty nurse into giving me a lollipop.”
“You just proved my point.” I backed out of the driveway and headed down the lane.
“What point?”
“That I got my stubborn streak from you,” I answered.
“Hmmph!” he snorted, then coughed again.
Luck was with us that evening. The waiting room at the hospital was empty, and they took us right on back to a cubicle. A nurse that looked to be about Gina Lou’s age pushed the curtain back, told Jasper to have a seat on the narrow bed, and asked him enough questions to exasperate him. She finally asked him to remove his sweater so that she could take his vital signs.
“I don’t need to do that. I’m alive and kickin’. I just need you to give me some medicine so I can go home,” he argued.
“Sorry, sir, but that’s not the way this works.” She winked at me. “We have to do a few tests and diagnose your problem so we know what kind of medicine to give you.”
“I can tell you what my problem is,” he snapped as he removed his sweater. “And if you wasn’t hard of hearing, you would already know. I’ve got the croup.”
She ran a thermometer over his forehead and behind his ear. “You might have the croup, but we have to be sure.”
“Why did you do that?” Jasper asked.
“You have two degrees of temperature. That means you have a fever and an infection somewhere.” She slipped a blood pressure cuff around his bony upper arm.
“You’re about to cut all the circulation off,” he barked at her when the cuff tightened, sending him into another cough.
“Just for a couple of seconds. See there, it’s already loosening up. Blood pressure is fine. Someone will be in soon from the lab. Just sit tight.”
“Can I put my sweater back on?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Need some help?”
“I been dressin’ myself since I was a little kid.” He proved his independence by slipping his arms back into his sweater and buttoning it.
“What does the lab do?” he asked when she was gone.
“Someone will take blood from your arm,” I answered honestly.
“Oh, no, they are not!” He started to stand up. “We are going home. I will not give my permission for anyone to put a needle in my arm.”
“If you don’t sit down and behave, I’ll sell my place to Derrick, and he will plow under all the strawberries and plant marijuana. Do you want to smell skunk every time you walk outside to get a breath of fresh air? What about Sassy? What would that do to her?”
He sat down on the bed and focused on the wall ahead of him. “They keep it cold in these places to chill an old man’s blood. If it was hot, we’d bleed to death when they stick a needle in us.”
“Probably so.” I shivered and wished I’d brought a jacket with me.
“I bet they don’t put clocks in these places because they charge by the minute. I saw that woman write down the time with my vitals. Granny called that taking my temperature, but she did it with a thermometer under my tongue, like an honest woman,” he whispered, then rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “That thing has a hidden camera in it, and they are watching us. If I get off this bed and start toward the door, they will rush in here with needles to suck my lifeblood right out of me.”
“That ‘thing’ is a smoke detector,” I explained. “You’ve got one in your house. Insurance companies insist that we all have them.”
“It might be, but that blinkin’ red light means the camera is on and keeping watch on us. Maybe so they can see if we open up all of them cabinets over there”—he pointed to his left—“and steal stuff. Why else would they put people in here and trust them not to go snooping?”
“You’ve really never been in an emergency room before?” I asked.
His eyes darted around the room and finally went back to the ceiling. He waved and raised his voice. “No, I have not been in one of these rooms before. But I’m tellin’ whoever is watching me on that camera—if you ain’t here in five minutes, I’m leaving.”
Within a minute, a lab tech arrived with a tote full of tubes and needles. “Hello, Mr. Carlson. I’m here to draw a little blood.”
I glanced up at the smoke detector and wondered if he could be right.
“I ain’t been called by my last name in more’n seventy years. I’m just Jasper,” he told her. “You ain’t old enough to be a nurse or a doctor.”
“I’m not either one,” she told him. “I’m a lab technician.”
“That’s a fancy name for a little bitty thing like you,” he said. “I expect you’ll want me to take off my sweater and roll up my sleeves?”
She lined all her equipment up on the stainless steel table. “Yes, sir.”
I helped him with his sweater, but he rolled up his sleeve. He glared at me while she drew two vials of blood.
“Thank you,” she said as she put the needle in a separate disposal container and the rest of what she’d used in the trash.
“I wish we still had party lines,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because then I could call Gracie and tell her about all this.”
“If she was still with us, you could do that on a landline or a cell phone,” I reminded him.
He grimaced and sighed. “But if it was a party line, someone would be bound to listen in, and they would tell someone else, and pretty soon the news would be all over Ditto and Poteet.”
“Why would you want everyone to know?” I asked.
“Then they’d know not to come here,” he smarted off. “Them ain’t even good nurses. Didn’t neither one offer to give me a lollipop.”
“If you’ve never been to a doctor, how do you know about lollipops?” I asked.
“I heard the kids at school talking about it.”
We walked out of the hospital two hours later, and Jasper was still grumbling. “Are you happy now? I didn’t need no dang doctor to tell me that I have the croup.”
“Upper respiratory infection,” I corrected him as I helped him back into my vehicle.
“Just a fancy new word for croup,” he snapped.
I turned my phone back on when I was behind the wheel and wasn’t surprised to find several missed calls from my mother and one from Connor. I laid the phone on the console between me and Jasper and called Mama first on speaker.
When she answered, I said, “Sorry, I missed your calls. I’m on the way home from San Antonio. I had to turn my phone off in the emergency room, but don’t panic. Jasper just has an upper respiratory infection, not pneumonia, and we’re on the way to the pharmacy to get his prescriptions.”
“Which I am not taking,” he protested loudly.
“Yes, you will!” Mama declared in her best no-nonsense tone. “I won’t leave Texas on Monday if you aren’t feeling better.”
A rattly cough was all that kept Jasper from snorting. “One bossy woman is a cross to bear. Two is enough to drive a good man to drinking.”
“Which reminds me,” I said, “the doctor said no alcohol with your meds. That means two weeks at the least.”
“What he don’t know won’t hurt him,” Jasper groused.
“Quit your bellyachin’ and listen to me,” Mama said. “If I have to come stay with you every day until you are well, I’ll do it. This vacation can come later.”
He threw up his hands. “Okay, okay! I’ll take the medicine.”
“I’ll see to it that he does, Mama. I’ll take it all home with me and be sure he gets whatever he needs at the right times. And I’ll steal all his liquor.”
“Going to see Gracie and Davis is looking better by the minute,” he fussed. “And you will not steal my whiskey. I promise to leave it alone until I’m well, but I trust hot toddies more than I do pills. Besides, that man wasn’t old enough to be a real doctor. There wasn’t no gray in his beard or his hair.”
“If you don’t do what you are supposed to do for the next two weeks and you die, I’m going to take Sassy to the pound,” I threatened.
“And I’ll drive her,” Mama added.
He turned and stared out the side window. That’s when I knew he was really sick, because he always wanted to get in the last word.
“Hey.” Connor startled me when he called out from my back porch. “Anyone want to go into Poteet for a burger?”
Jasper shook his head. “Not me. I just ate a double dip of chocolate-almond ice cream, one for each time they stuck me with a needle the size of a tenpenny nail. I’m going to make myself a cup of good strong coffee and call it a night.”
“Not until you get your first dose of medicine,” I told him.
“Let’s start that in the morning,” he said as he carefully made it up the steps to his porch.
“We will start it as soon as I get in the house and read all the instructions,” I fired back at him.
“If you’d had some ice cream, you might not be so bossy,” he complained. “Don’t take all night. I’m ready to settle back in my recliner and sleep through a Western movie or two.”
“Is he sick?” Connor whispered when I was on the porch.
“Very.” I opened the back door. “Come on in. I’ll sort his medicine and take his first dose out to him. He’s got that upper respiratory stuff that seems to be going around right now. At his age, it can be pretty bad. He’s got to go to his primary in two weeks when he finishes all this stuff.” I held up a paper bag. “And he says the only time he was ever at a doctor was when he went into the army and then when he had to get his head stitched. That would have been in”—I stopped and did the math in my head—“around 1947, and he hasn’t seen a doctor since then.”
Connor followed me inside. “I can ask Grandpa what local doctor he uses. He fussed going when Granny was alive, and he still does. But Granny made him go every six months for blood work and a visit, and he hates needles, too.”
I pulled out a chair, sat down at the table, and poured out several bottles of pills and an inhaler with a sigh. “The next two weeks are not going to be fun.”
“Nope, but I can help any way you need me to,” Connor offered. “Did Gracie have any of those pill things that has the day of the week printed on them?”
“Yes, she did, and I almost threw them away.” I got up and rustled through the junk drawer to the left of the sink, found a couple of pill organizers, and took them back to the table. “This one holds a week’s worth of pills, four times a day.”
“Looks like that’s what you need, from what I’m reading on these labels,” Connor said. “Are you going to let him be responsible for taking—”
I butted in before he could finish. “Nope. He’ll throw this thing in a drawer and put the inhaler in the trash. I’ll go out there four times a day to make sure he’s doing what he’s supposed to do.” I popped open all the lids and started loading the sections with pills. Maybe I’d keep the pill stash at my house, just in case.
Connor pulled his phone from his pocket, then shook his head and put it back. “Is there a restaurant that delivers around here? I’m starving. Grandpa is having a steak dinner with some of his old cronies.”
“I have no idea, and I’m not a gourmet,” I said as I finished my job. “But I can make a mean omelet and the fluffiest pancakes you’ll ever eat. Give me five minutes to take these out to Jasper, and I’ll make both of us some supper.”
“I thought you ate ice cream,” Connor said.
“Jasper did, but it’s way too messy for me to try to eat when I’m driving, so I’m pretty hungry, too.”
The corners of Connor’s mouth turned up, and his eyes sparkled. “I usually get breakfast the morning after, not the night before.”
I put on my most innocent expression. “After what?”
“More than kisses,” he said without hesitation.
“And how many after-breakfasts have you had?”
“More than four, less than a dozen,” he answered. “How many guys have made you breakfast the morning after?”
“More than one, less than three.” I poured that evening’s pills into a small glass so all Jasper would have to do was throw them back. “I’m going out to Jasper’s. Be back in a few minutes. Are you interested in just breakfast, not before or after more-than-kisses but merely food?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a wide grin.
As I crossed the lawn out to Jasper’s house, I could almost hear Aunt Gracie saying she was glad I had come back to Ditto. “You are welcome,” I said under my breath. “I love him like a grandpa, but you sure put up with a lot out of that old codger.”
I rapped on the door and went inside without waiting for Jasper to invite me in. He was sitting in his recliner with a cup of black coffee in his hands. “Run, Sassy, run. The bossy woman is here. Women like her are the reason this smart man never married. They take over your life whether you like it or not.”
Sassy looked up at me with her crystal-clear blue eyes, and I swear the pup smiled.
“And we keep you alive,” I smarted off. “Gracie left the job to me, so blame her for all this, not me.”
He shot a dirty sideways look at me and then peeked into the glass, shook it around, and declared, “What are you giving me? I ain’t takin’ no green pills.”
“Nothing green here. Mostly white ones, but I do see a yellow one. What have you got against green ones?”
“My granny’s grandmother said poison is green. She would never give me anything that was that color.” He threw back all the pills like a shot of bad whiskey.
“That’s silly. It’s probably just green dye.”
“Then green dye is poison.” He took another sip of his coffee. “Is that all?”
“You’ve got to use this inhaler three times a day for a week.” I handed it to him and told him what to do with it. “I promise what comes out of it is not green.”
He did what I asked, and immediately the wheezing stopped. “What was that stuff? Magic?” he asked.
“Yep. Looks like you won’t have to smell skunk in your backyard after all, if you just use this magic thing three times a day and then when you need it after you get well.”
He narrowed his old eyes until they were little more than slits. “Can I have my hot toddies with it?”
“We can ask the doctor when we go see him in two weeks,” I replied.
He groaned. “Don’t make me go back to that hospital.”
“I’m not going to unless you get really sick again,” I promised. “But we will find a primary doctor in Poteet to take care of you. You’ll only have to go every six months if you stay well.”
“I guess I can live with that,” he said. “Reckon you could find one that makes house calls?”
“Not in this day and age.” I wasn’t about to tell him that some doctors did video appointments. Jasper was pushing a hundred years. It was way past time he got checked out twice a year.
“Man can walk on the moon, put machines up in space, and talk on a phone no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, and yet doctors can’t make house calls. I’d like to go back to the good ol’ days.”
“So would I,” I agreed, “but we can take comfort in knowing that we still grow and pick and sell strawberries the same way we have for years.”
“God bless the strawberries,” he said. “Now, get on back out there with your new boyfriend. Are you making breakfast in the morning, or is he?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I protested. “I’m making omelets and pancakes for supper, and he won’t be staying all night. Would you like for me to bring you a plate?”
“Nope. I just want to finish my coffee and watch John Wayne teach them boys how to handle cattle.”
I took a step toward the door. “I can come out here and make breakfast for you or make it at my house and bring it to you. Which one do you think will work better?”
“I usually just have a cup of coffee.”
“Your medicine has to be taken with food.”
“Then you can bring it to me. Not nothing big,” he said. “You don’t need to try to fatten me up.”
“That ain’t likely to ever happen. Good night, Jasper.”
“’Night,” he said.