Chapter III
TOM
Tom Reilly sat in the surgical waiting room of the small Sanibel hospital and tried, for the fourth time in twenty minutes, to take a sip of coffee that had gone cold sometime around the second hour.
The paper cup was crumpled along one side from where his hand had tightened around it without him realizing.
He set it down carefully on the side table beside him and let out a long, slow breath that did nothing to ease the ache that had settled between his shoulders.
The waiting room was quiet at this hour.
A young couple sat in the corner near the window, the woman holding the man’s hand while he stared at the floor.
An older gentleman a few seats down was working a crossword puzzle with the patient, methodical focus of someone who had been there a while.
The fluorescent lights overhead hummed softly.
It was the kind of sound a person stopped noticing after the first hour and started noticing again after the third.
Tom rested his forearms on his knees and watched the double doors that led back to the operating rooms. They had not opened in nearly forty minutes. He had been watching the clock as the moments ticked by.
Somewhere on the other side of those doors, George Heart was lying on a table while a surgeon and a team of nurses worked to put his hip back together.
George was eighty-five years old and tougher than men half his age, Tom thought, and felt the familiar tightness at the back of his throat that had not really gone anywhere since his wife, Eleanor, had died.
He pictured her then, the way he sometimes still did when he needed steadying.
Eleanor in the bakery’s front window in the early morning light, dusting flour from her apron, calling something over her shoulder to whichever of the staff had just walked in.
Eleanor standing in his kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, telling him she had decided they were going to take George out to dinner whether he liked it or not, because that man spent too much time alone in that hotel and somebody had to do something about it.
George was Eleanor’s late first husband, James Heart’s older brother, and the uncle of Eleanor’s two children, Michael and Linda.
When James had been killed in the line of duty, having been in the military, Michael had been eight and Linda seven.
Tom had known the Hearts all his life, having grown up in Sweet Blossom Bay, where his family owned the Reilly Bakery.
Eleanor, an incredible baker and businesswoman, began working at the bakery two years after James died.
She and her kids had moved into Heart House, which stood beside their family hotel.
She’d been a breath of fresh air to the family bakery and breathed new life into it and him.
Tom had never married after being jilted on his wedding day the year before he returned to Sanibel Island and the small community of Sweet Blossom Bay. He’d vowed never to let anyone do that to him again and had sworn off love until Eleanor and her children found their way into his heart.
Tom’s heart squeezed as he thought that Eleanor would have hated this.
She would have hated it that George had fallen alone in his own home, that no one had been there for him right away.
And he might have lain there for hours longer if not for one quiet, careful woman doing her job.
Eleanor had loved her brother-in-law in the fierce, slightly bossy way of a younger sister.
The thought of her standing here beside him in this waiting room, hands on her hips, telling him exactly what she thought of George’s stubbornness about that hotel, almost made him smile.
Only his lips refused to curl upward as the worry for George bore down on him.
A nurse passed through the room with a clipboard tucked under her arm, and Tom lifted his head.
“Any word?” Tom asked her quietly, the way he had asked her twice already.
“Not yet, Mr. Reilly,” the nurse answered with a kind, practiced gentleness. “Dr. Patel is one of the best orthopedic surgeons we have. He’s been in there a while because he’s being thorough. That’s a good thing.”
“Thank you,” Tom told her.
“You’ll be the first person I find when there’s news,” she promised, and continued on through the room.
Tom watched her go, then looked back at the closed doors.
He had not eaten since breakfast. His back ached from the plastic chair.
Tom glanced at his phone. There was another message from Linda with an update on where she and the kids were.
This was always a ritual with them whenever they traveled to and from Miami.
They would send regular message updates on their trip progress.
Tom messaged back, telling her she was making good time and to keep safe. As soon as the distraction was over, his mind again drifted to the shock of the phone call that had come early that day.
Tom had been at Reilly’s Bakery, his sleeves rolled up, helping Lila, his newest baker, pull the second batch of key lime pies from the oven.
He still loved that part of the day, the way the bakery filled with the sharp, bright scent of lime and the warm undertone of butter pastry.
Lila had been telling him about a new pastry she wanted to try, something with mango and vanilla bean cream, and he had been listening with one ear and watching the way she moved through the kitchen as if she had been born to it.
Eleanor had moved like that, too. He had been thinking about that, in the small, distracted way a person thought about a wife who was gone, when his phone had rung.
The number had not been one he recognized.
“Reilly’s Bakery, this is Tom,” he had answered, and had heard, on the other end, the slightly breathless voice of Rosa Mendez, who had been cleaning rooms at Hearts Hotel since long before Eleanor died.
Rosa had told him, in her soft, careful way, that she had found Mr. Heart at the bottom of the back stairs that ran from the penthouse down to the staff hallway.
He had fallen trying to fix a lightbulb above the stairs.
Mr. Hale, a live-in guest at the hotel, was out of town, and Tom was the only other person she knew that Mr. Heart would listen to.
Tom had set down the tray of pies very carefully on the workbench and asked Rosa if George was breathing all right.
“Yes, Mr. Reilly,” Rosa had told him. “He’s talking. He told me not to fuss. He told me he was just embarrassed. But, Mr. Reilly, I think his hip is broken. I have a blanket over him, and the ambulance is on the way.”
“You did the right thing, Rosa,” Tom had told her, already pulling off his apron with one hand. “I’m coming. You stay with him until they get there. You hear me? Don’t you leave him alone.”
“I won’t,” Rosa had promised, and her voice had wobbled just enough that Tom had heard the fear underneath the steadiness.
Tom had told Lila what was happening in three sentences, grabbed his keys, and driven the short stretch from Shell Street over to Bay View Drive faster than he probably should have.
The ambulance had been pulling up to the back of the hotel as he had arrived.
Tom had taken the back stairs two at a time despite his seventy-five-year-old knees, which he had paid for in the hours since.
George had been right where Rosa had said.
Lying on his side at the bottom of the small private staircase that connected the penthouse to the staff hallway, his right leg twisted in a way that no leg should ever twist. Buddy had been pressed against George’s chest, whining low in his throat, his big golden head tucked under George’s arm.
Rosa had been kneeling beside George, a folded blanket over him and one hand on his shoulder, talking to him in soft, encouraging Spanish that had clearly kept him calm.
Tom had crouched down on George’s other side, his knees protesting loudly, and placed his hand over George’s.
“You old fool,” Tom had said, his voice catching. “What have you gone and done?”
“Tom,” George had managed, and even in his pain, he had tried for that crooked smile of his. “I appear to have misjudged the top step.”
“You appear to have done worse than that,” Tom had told him gently.
“Please don’t worry Linda and Michael with this,” George had said, and there had been the first true note of distress in his voice. “It’s probably just a bruise. They both have enough on their plate without me ruining their summer.”
“George,” Tom had said quietly, “Linda and Michael are going to be told. They would kill me if I kept this a secret.”
Before George could protest, the paramedics arrived.
Tom had stepped back and let them work. He had ridden in the ambulance with George.
Rosa had taken Buddy with her, promising George the dog could walk with her while she finished her duties.
George was happy with that. Buddy was George’s constant companion these days.
Tom had made a mental note to speak to Michael and Linda about getting George a nurse in the guise of an assistant. He needed both anyway.
In the ambulance, Tom had sat beside George and talked about mundane topics to keep George’s mind off the pain or worry, as the man hated hospitals. Like Tom, they came with bad memories. Especially the hospital George was being taken to.
His thought came back to the present as Tom looked at the doors again. They were still closed.
Tom sighed, leaned back in the chair, and reached for his phone.
He had meant to call Lila an hour ago. The afternoon batch would be coming out of the oven about now, and she would be wondering where he was, and he had not wanted to leave her to handle the close-up alone. Tom thumbed through to her number and pressed the call button.
Lila answered before the second ring.
“Tom?” Lila’s voice came through warm and immediately concerned. “How is George? What happened?”