Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Seriously? Getting off the couch shouldn’t be so hard.
Maybe she could just sleep here tonight…
Nope. That would suck.
Lace had a strict agenda she promised herself she’d follow, and she wasn’t going to start screwing up now.
After completing week seven of her treatments, she still had over four months left to go.
If she let her strict parameters slide now, all bets were off that she wouldn’t just divorce herself from the world soon, and wallow in her living room for the duration.
Lace pictured her couch and floor littered with tissues, containers of half-eaten food, red cups strewn about, dog-eared books, and stray, crumpled clothing tossed willy-nilly.
Not happening.
Lace forced herself into a sitting position, determined to motivate and make something for supper. Even though the thought of food made her gurgling stomach protest, she knew from experience if she didn’t eat, she’d be dead on her feet tomorrow, and the crew might be tempted to throw her overboard.
Octonauts to the rescue.
Not.
The fishing industry certainly didn’t stop or send anthropomorphic animals to the rescue for upset tummies.
It didn’t stop for anything, if it could be helped, especially this time of year.
It was the high season, from August to October, for tuna fishermen.
As long as the weather cooperated without hurricane force winds, and the sea didn’t swallow them up, work could span a full seven-day week, and those days could be long. Sometimes eighteen hours.
Luckily, the boat with which she was currently working was a smaller one, and even though there were no days off for most of the crew, they tended to be out no more than twelve to fourteen hours each day.
The fact that Lace had been able to talk her big bosses in Orono into letting her have a chemo-break once a week was the total extent of any wiggle room she had.
Fish didn’t count themselves.
One fish, two fish…
Laughter bubbled up inside Lace.
Yup. That had been one of her favorite childhood books. Who knew it would become her life?
Lace finally managed to drag her exhausted ass to the kitchen, and the first thing she did was put the kettle on for some tea. That would hit the spot, and hopefully soothe her complaining stomach.
Opening the door to her refrigerator, she spotted all the fixings for a nice garden salad. It didn’t sound all that appealing, but it didn’t make her gorge rise, so there was that. If she rounded out her salad with a ground-chicken burger on a toasted bun, that should more than fill her up.
Done.
Taking a frozen patty from the large stash she kept in the freezer, Lace placed it in a pan on low, then covered it to do its thing while she made her salad.
On automatic pilot while she broke up lettuce, Lace finally let her mind wander back to Vincent Sothard.
Right. A Sothard. She should have figured that.
Even as a clown, the man had been a knockout.
But who knew there was yet another brother coming out of the woodwork?
Not Lace. If she’d gone to Bobbie’s wedding she might have noticed.
But she’d been off on assignment with a large commercial ship out of Portsmouth, and hadn’t been able to take the time off.
If she had…
Wow. Maybe she and Vincent would have noticed each other and begun dating before her diagnosis.
Crap.
That would have sucked.
There was no way Vince would have stuck around. How cringe that he would have had to tell the new girl in his life, after finding out about her big “C”, that as much as he liked her, he wasn’t up for taking that ride.
All aboard, the Chemo Express. Toot, toot.
Lace sighed. Unless he was a saint, or a martyr. And she was not up for a boyfriend like that.
By now, Buck and Bobbie would have filled Vincent in on her particulars; that who he’d seen today was not a doctor nor a clinician. She was a cancer patient.
Not that she’d been trying to hide it, but she was aware that in her scrubs, she might have resembled a hospital worker, and she hadn’t disabused Vince of that idea because…
She’d seen interest in his eyes. Actual interest.
Ah well. Opportunity most likely lost.
Lace reviewed the rest of her conversation with Bobbie.
Once they’d kicked Buck off the line, Bobbie had gone on to grill Lace about how much info she should give Vincent, who, she’d assured Lace, was certain to want the entire scoop.
Scoop.
Lace had immediately giggled, picturing a boob-sized ice cream scoop doing double-duty as a gossip-ladle, and a tumor-remover.
Grim. But what could she say? That’s the way Lace dealt with horrors, and unfortunately, the awfulness in her life seemed to be pretty standard these days.
“Where did that weirdo imagination of yours just go?” Bobbie had asked with an answering and understanding laugh, knowing Lace’s propensity to be amused at even the darkest of stray thoughts.
“Nothing worth mentioning,” Lace had returned, brushing it off. There was a modicum of creepy that friends could handle, then there was the macabre that could get her labeled as a nutcase. Luckily, Lace still knew the difference.
She’d gone on to answer Bobbie’s original question. “You can tell Vincent I’m a breast cancer patient, and that’s all,” she’d dictated. “That, alone, should scare him away. Which means you won’t have to deal with trying to give him my thumbnail bio once you’ve dropped that bomb.”
Boom. Kaboom. Bang.
Explosions, like little detonations, had lit up inside Lace’s brain.
She’d managed to hold back her sigh.
Bobbie had grunted, plowing right over Lace’s misgivings. “I’ll warn you that Buck already spilled the beans that you work for NOAA, which should remind you that Sothard’s forge ahead with things, with or without permission. You do know my husband, right?”
“Uh, huh,” Lace had returned, biting her lower lip.
Buck had gone through both hell and high-water for Bobbie.
“Then that should remind you, Sothard’s will not give up on someone or something, once they’ve got a trajectory in their heads,” Bobbie had told her. “Which means, if Vincent liked what he saw today, he’s not backing down.”
Lace wouldn’t take that to the bank, but Bobbie’s confident tone had given her a modicum of hope.
“Okay,” Lace had finally allowed. “If that’s the case, and he won’t un-sink his teeth, then here’s what you can do.
You can tell him I’ll be at the hospital at the same time and the same place, next week.
If he decides he can handle it, and wants to drop in to see me while I’m vein-sipping my Friday cocktail, he’s welcome. ”
Lace couldn’t imagine that happening, but it hadn’t hurt to make the information available.
Much.
Optimism was a rare, and fragile commodity these days.
“Can I give him your phone number?” Bobbie had asked.
Lace had considered that for about two seconds.
“Nope. I’m not looking for a phone buddy. If this Sothard-paragon can’t conjure the stones to see me face-to-face, I’ll be able to write him off with few regrets.”
Dammit. That was a lie. Lace had already been spinning up her aspirations.
“Gotcha,” Bobbie had replied, seemingly not in the least bit put off, and not sensing Lace’s turmoil.
Bobbie had some pretty overblown faith in the Sothard, do-gooder-genes, which was great for her, but Lace needed there to be at least a modicum of assurances to put herself completely out there.
It had been a hell of a long time since she’d caught anybody’s attention in a boy-meets-girl kind of way.
In high school she’d had a few boyfriends, or fuck-buddies as the kids liked to say these days. But in college, since her grandparents were putting her through on their hard-earned dime, Lace had determined to be all business. She’d hit the books hard.
Still, she hadn’t exactly been a saint, enjoying the occasional hook-up.
What there hadn’t been, was a guy who’d tickled her fancy well enough to take her away from her studies.
And now, because of her health situation, her fancy might remain untickled for eternity.
Fuck.
That hadn’t been on her future-cast.
Maybe she should have tried a little harder after college to find…
Nah. That was a pipe dream that couldn’t have happened.
When she’d joined NOAA, and been assigned to various fishing boats across the eastern seaboard, it had by definition meant she wasn’t exactly a woman the crew liked to chum around with.
Most of them saw her as a nosy “buttinski”, spying on them for the government.
The rest were misogynistic assholes who still believed in the old adage that women at sea were bad luck.
Add to that, the lovely sight she made in her voluminous yellow bibs, and…
Nope.
Not the stuff that fantasies were exactly made of.
Even when she’d tried to talk to a few of the more seasoned guys who were a bit open; telling them that her job actually helped them from overfishing certain areas and pinpointing where the most effective catches could be hauled in, they still didn’t quite trust her.
Those salt-of-the-earth types didn’t like anything that smacked of Big Brother.
The strictures she was used to seeing after fifteen years in the field, however? They were slowly changing.
The younger generation of fishermen coming up were well aware, and not closing their eyes to, their steadily diminishing catches or the rising water temperatures that were changing fish migration patterns.
Some of them took her seriously and actually came of their own volition to pick her brains for information.
Others, unfortunately—the ones who were taught at their family’s knees—tended to keep their blinders firmly in place, rather than make waves within the ranks.
Waves.
Uh, huh. Her brain looped away from that painful subject, and fastened on sea conditions. She hoped the waves tomorrow weren’t killer.
She could use a nice, calm day.