Chapter 9
Nine
Ted rested the garment bag containing his tuxedo on top of Parker’s and slammed the trunk of the Mercedes closed.
Parker locked his Porsche and got into Ted’s car. “Top up or down?”
“Down,” Ted said.
“What time is the ferry again?” Parker asked as he flipped a switch to take the top down.
“Eleven forty-five.”
“I talked to Chip an hour ago. They’re on their way.”
“I need coffee.” Ted was grumpy after pulling an all-nighter at the hospital so he could leave for the weekend.
“Did you get any sleep last night?”
“About three hours, in fits and spurts.”
“Want me to drive?”
“Nah, I’m kind of keyed up.”
After they had stopped for coffee, they headed south on I-93 on their way to I-95. “What a fucking week from hell this has been,” Ted said once he had consumed half of his coffee.
“What happened?”
“It would probably be easier to tell you what didn’t happen.
First of all, we lost a six-year-old with a brain tumor who should’ve died three months ago.
Those poor parents have been through it.
Then we broke our single-week record for new diagnoses.
And the highlight of this suck-ass week would have to be my seventeen-year-old bone marrow transplant patient, Pilar, who’s done exceptionally well for six months.
” He glanced over at Parker. “Keeping them healthy for the first year is critical, so we put them in lock down at home to minimize the risk of viral infection. She was six months away from being able to rejoin society when she snuck out of the house to meet her boyfriend.”
“You can kind of understand that, though, can’t you?”
“Of course I can, but unfortunately for her the boyfriend’s younger brother came down with the chicken pox two days later.”
“What does that have to do with her?”
“The varicella virus, which causes chicken pox, can be lethal for transplant patients. And she’d never had the chicken pox.”
“Oh,” Parker winced.
“Exactly. So she’s back in the ICU fighting for her life. Thus my night without sleep.”
“God, what a bummer. She did what any kid would do, and that’s what she gets for it.”
“She’s not any kid, though, and she knew that.” Ted banged his hand on the steering wheel in frustration. “Her family has already been through so much and now this. The boyfriend was sobbing his head off in the hallway last night.”
“Poor guy. Is she going to make it?”
“I don’t know,” Ted said, dejected. “I shouldn’t even be going this weekend, and if it was any other occasion, I would’ve stayed in Boston. But I’ve got good backup, and if I didn’t get the hell out of there, I might’ve killed someone.”
Parker chuckled. “And of course murder kind of flies in the face of hospital policy, doesn’t it?”
Ted laughed. “Just a bit. Sorry to unload like that. It’s just so damned frustrating sometimes. We’re already fighting a big enough battle without patients doing stupid shit that gives their disease the advantage.”
“Does it happen often?”
“Fortunately, no. Most of them are so terrified of a recurrence they follow our orders to the letter. But it’s harder with kids, especially teenagers.
It’s in their nature to be rebellious. It’s so much harder on their parents than it is on the parents of the little ones.
Bigger kids, bigger issues. Then toss cancer in on top of it, and well, you get the picture. ”
The only good thing about the week from hell was it had left Ted with almost no time to stew about Caroline. Unfortunately, he hadn’t had much time to prepare himself to see her again, either.
“These stories are enough to keep me from ever having kids,” Parker said.
“That’s me, a regular dose of birth control.”
Parker laughed.
“The good news is we’re talking about a very, very small percentage. Most kids are robustly healthy.”
“Do you ever see yourself with kids?”
Ted glanced over at him. “Not really, but then again I feel like I have a hundred kids at any given time. What about you?”
Parker shrugged. “I think about it sometimes. I can’t believe we’re all pushing forty with none of us married and no kids. We won’t be having fortieth anniversary parties at this rate.”
“We’ll be in nursing homes by our twenty-fifth anniversaries.”
“Still, sometimes I wonder if we aren’t missing out on something the rest of the world seems to take for granted.”
“I think we’ve had a lot of fun, and if the right girls come along and we decide to get married we’ll do it with no regrets—unlike all the poor slobs who get married too young and wind up sorry.”
“That’s true.”
“Why so pensive today? Are the divorce wars getting you down?”
Parker shrugged. “I’ve just been thinking about it lately. That’s all.”
“Any particular reason?”
Parker hesitated, as if there was something he wanted to say. “No. Not really. But between my marriages on the rocks and your sick kids, it’s no wonder we’re both still single.”
Ted wasn’t fooled by Parker’s attempt to change the tone of the conversation. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
“Yeah.”
Ted decided not to push. “Got any good divorce stories?”
“The best one recently is the battle over a one-hundred fifty thousand dollar show poodle.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Oh, how I wish I was,” Parker sighed. “I’ve seen people give less consideration to their kids than this stupid dog is getting. Gertrude Givens Allister Von Hinkle is derailing the whole settlement.”
Ted laughed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh.”
“Feel free. Believe me, we’ve laughed our asses off at the pictures of the puff ball in question.”
“What are the people like?”
“Just what you’d imagine the owners of a show poodle to be like. They say people start to look like their dogs after a while, and I can definitely confirm it’s true.”
“Which one’s your client?”
“Mummy.”
“Mummy?”
“That’s what she calls herself when she refers to the dog. I’m not making this up.”
Ted laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes. “For this you suffered through law school.”
“No shit.”
“So what did I miss last weekend?” Ted told himself he was not fishing for information about Caroline. “Anything fun?”
“It was kind of quiet, actually. Just me, Chip, and Elise.”
“Smitty wasn’t there?” Ted asked, shocked.
“No, he stayed in New York because Caroline didn’t feel like going. The ankle was giving her a bad time, I guess.”
Ted’s stomach churned. “I can’t believe Smitty missed a weekend in Newport.”
“I know. Chip was saying he’s never seen him this gone over a girl. She’s really nice, though. Nothing like Cherie, thank God.”
“Yeah,” Ted said softly. “Nothing like Cherie.”
“You liked Caroline, didn’t you?”
Startled, Ted looked over at him. “Of course I did. Why?”
“No reason. I just wondered.”
“I liked her,” Ted said, uttering what had to be the understatement of the century.
Chip, Elise, Smitty, and Caroline were waiting for them when Ted and Parker arrived at the ferry dock in the fishing port of Point Judith on Rhode Island’s southern coast. Throngs of people, cars, bicycles, and dogs on leashes waited in line to board the ferry for the fifty-five minute trip to Block Island.
“Hey,” Chip said. “We thought you guys were going to miss it.”
“We hit traffic in Providence,” Parker said.
“How’s the ankle?” Ted asked Caroline, making a supreme effort to hide the burst of emotion that assailed him the moment he saw her.
“Better. The worst part is the itching inside the cast. It’s making me nuts.”
Parker and Ted added their stuff to the stack of bags in the back of Chip’s Land Rover, which they were taking on the ferry.
Smitty held up the tickets he had bought for everyone. “We’ll meet you up top,” he said to Chip and Elise, who were waiting to drive the car onto the ferry.
Ted watched what seemed to be a well-practiced maneuver as Smitty tucked Caroline’s crutches under his arm and bent to pick her up for a piggyback ride.
“Want me to take the crutches?” Ted asked.
“I’ve got ‘em,” Smitty said. “We’ve got this down to a science. Right, babe?”
“That’s right.” She looked at Ted as she said it.
Smitty and Parker were talking as they walked onto the ferry and didn’t notice that Ted couldn’t take his eyes off her.