Chapter 24
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On that note, Doreen got a lift home, dropped off the animals, then headed down to the hospital in her car.
As she walked inside, the receptionist opened her gaze wider and muttered, “Oh. It’s you.”
Doreen frowned. “Is that a problem?”
She shook her head. “Birdie did request that you come see her.”
“Well, that’s good to hear. How is she doing?”
“Not as well as she could be,” she replied, rolling her eyes dramatically. “But then again, her age is not exactly helpful in a situation like this.”
“Thanks for that heads-up.” Doreen headed to Birdie’s room, then figured she would likely be in pretty-rough shape. So she picked up her phone and called Mack.
When he answered, his voice was distracted.
“Look. I stopped in at the hospital to say hi to Birdie. Apparently she’s not doing great.”
“In what way?” he asked, his tone sharp.
“The usual way,” she replied in exasperation. “She’s not bouncing back as well as they would like, but her age is definitely an issue.”
“Right,” he agreed. “Have you spoken with her yet?”
“No, I’m just outside her room right now.”
“Don’t say anything to her,” he warned. “I need to speak to her first, and, if you say anything that’ll bring on stress or any other kind of issue, we won’t get the answers we need.”
“What if she wants to talk to me? The receptionist told me that Birdie wanted to see me.”
“Look. … Wait for me. I’m coming to the hospital.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “Doreen, I mean it.”
“I know. I know,” she muttered, “and I would never deliberately hurt Birdie.”
“Maybe not, but an awful lot of issues are going on right now. If she isn’t recovering, we can’t afford to have anything send her further down that path. We need answers first.” He continued. “Just stay in the hallway. I’ll be there in ten.”
She ended the call, looked around, and frowned. “I hardly want to just stand here in the hallway.”
At that came a voice from a nearby hospital room, calling out, “Doreen, is that you?”
She winced, poked her head around the corner, put a smile on her face, and stepped inside. “Hey, Birdie. How are you?” Birdie looked frail and almost translucent, her veins showing through her skin, alarming Doreen even more.
She shrugged. “I’m fine, but not exactly where I expected to find myself.”
“No, of course not,” Doreen said.
As she wandered in closer, Birdie eyed her critically and asked, “Did you get any answers?”
“We’re certainly working on answers right now,” she replied.
Birdie nodded. “And I presume you found out about my gambling problem?”
“I did,” Doreen confirmed.
Birdie sighed. “I am good with that. It was bound to come out at some point. Plus, I won’t get the answers I want if I don’t speak up.”
“Mack is on his way to come say hi.”
Birdie dismissively waved her hand. “I’m not waiting for Mack,” she declared, with a sniff. “I’ve been in the position of waiting for men a lot in my life, and I quit doing that years ago.”
Doreen’s lips twitched, and she nodded. “I understand what you’re saying.”
“Yeah, that’s the point. You do understand,” Birdie declared, trying to sit up.
“And when you get older like I am, you just stop caring about following the norms and doing what everybody expects you to do,” she muttered.
She pleated the sheets anxiously with her fingers, looked over at Doreen, and admitted, “I may not have always been a good person.”
Doreen just nodded and waited for her to share more on her own.
Birdie frowned and asked, “No comment?”
“I don’t think any of us have been the person we may have wanted to be, particularly when we look back over our life,” Doreen replied. “I can’t imagine that that would be any different for you now.”
Birdie snorted. “See? I knew I liked you. You don’t come off as judgmental. You’re not telling me that I should, you know, become religious all of a sudden for the first time in my life,” she muttered. “I see a lot of good in you. You do know that about yourself, right?”
Doreen eyed her in surprise and then half smiled. “Let’s just say I’m working on the good part.”
At that, she burst into laughter. “No,” Birdie argued. “I know people like you. You’re good so much of the time, and it’s often enough to make other people sick.”
“I hope not,” Doreen muttered, “because that’s not the response I want from people.”
“Maybe not, but I bet it’s the response you get from a lot of them.”
“Sometimes, … yes,” she admitted, still wearing a smile. “A lot of people don’t like the fact that I butt my head into places where it doesn’t belong, … as they would say.”
“No, I don’t imagine they would,” Birdie agreed. “Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll make it out of here.” As she turned and stared around the room, she continued. “Not exactly the last sight I thought I would be looking at before I passed away.”
“It’s a hospital bed,” Doreen noted, with a shrug. “Pretty sure a lot of people see that at the end of the day.”
“Maybe,” Birtie conceded, “but I always thought I would be out there, … partying and living the high life, or at least gambling one last time.”
“It really is an addiction for you, isn’t it?”
Birdie frowned, then eventually nodded. “I guess some people would call it that.”
“Some people?” Doreen asked, feeling like it was important for Birdie to at least acknowledge where she was at on this particular issue.
Birdie considered that and shook her head. “Maybe, … I guess many people would call it an addiction.”
“I think many people would,” Doreen whispered. She motioned to the chair and asked, “May I?”
“Of course.” Birdie snorted. “Again, you’re way too nice.”
Doreen winced. “A lot of people have called me a lot of things, but way too nice is not generally one of them. They call me a busybody, a goodie-two-shoes, and any number of other insults,” she shared, “but never way too nice.”
“That’s because you are way too nice,” Birdie repeated. “And you don’t even tell people half the things you do, do you?”
Doreen’s gaze widened. “I don’t know that I do all that much,” she began. “I mean, … I’m planning to do more, but at the moment I haven’t been doing much.”
Birdie nodded. “See? I haven’t been doing very well in that department at all,” she admitted. “I should have. I should have handed off money and helped with all kinds of things,” she whispered, “and what I shouldn’t have done was drag my grandson into gambling.”
“And that’s why you wouldn’t give him the money in the end, isn’t it?”
She frowned and then nodded. “Yes, I was kind of in the middle of a binge myself, and I wanted the money because I was trying to recoup some losses. So, I told him to go do what I was doing.”
“And do you think that’s what he did?”
“I don’t know, but, if he did, … it didn’t turn out well.”
Doreen smiled at her, and, seeing the tears in Birdie’s eyes, Doreen added, “I don’t think there’s anything quite like the word if in life when it comes with such dire consequences.”
Birdie sniffled several times and nodded. “I didn’t have the relationship with him that I had with my daughter.”
“Of course not,” she noted.
“I mean, … she was the apple of my eye, and I absolutely adored her.”
“And, like you, she had an addictive personality.”
Birdie’s gaze widened and then narrowed. “Wow, it didn’t take you long to figure that out.”
“No, it didn’t,” she agreed, now holding Birdie’s hand.
Birdie glanced at Doreen, then at her hand holding hers. Birdie sighed. “Cassandra had a rough life. Maybe she needed a father’s influence, but that wasn’t meant to be. She treated a lot of people badly. So, I really just couldn’t deal with much more at the time.”
Doreen didn’t say anything, but something about Birdie letting something like that slide that just didn’t ring true. She waited and then heard footsteps in the hallway, adding, “Mack will be here soon.”
Birdie frowned. “You know he’s really not the same as you.”
“No, he’s not,” Doreen agreed immediately. “I wouldn’t want him to be either.”
“Can you really be happy with somebody like that?” Birdie asked in astonishment. “I mean, he’s just going to order you around.”
Doreen stared at her in surprise. “I don’t think Mack orders me around at all,” she stated, “and, if he were to do something like that, it would be because he was afraid that I was getting myself into trouble.”
“Yeah, but they always think you’re getting into trouble, and they don’t give you the opportunity to get yourself out of trouble.”
“Honestly, I get into trouble just fine, and I’ve been getting out of trouble a lot on my own. However, there are definitely times when it helps to have somebody like him pitch in when the trouble is a little deeper than I expected.”
Birdie snorted at that. “But there’s always a price.”
“Yes,” Doreen replied. “I’m not sure the price is all that bad when it comes to Mack.”
“Are you kidding? Of course it is.” Birdie stared at her. “Oh Lord, you don’t want to get married, do you?”
“I am engaged to him,” she declared, with a laugh. “So, the answer to that question is, yes.”
“But you just got out of an ugly marriage.”
Doreen stared at her in surprise and then nodded. “Sounds like you’ve been doing your homework too.”
“I never do business with anybody if I don’t know them ahead of time,” Birdie muttered. “So, I do know some things.”
“Everybody knows some things,” Doreen replied. “And just like you don’t know everything about my crazy first marriage, you really don’t know anything about the second one I’m heading into.”
“I suppose,” Birdie quipped, with a smirk, “but you need to think twice before you hook yourself up with somebody like him.”
“And why is that?” Mack asked from the doorway, his tone stony, his gaze hard.
“Because you’re the kind of person who will take control and will leave her with nothing,” Birdie declared immediately. “We don’t need men. At least we don’t need men to solve our problems. That’s always the death of a marriage.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied, as he studied her face. “How are you feeling, Birdie?”
“I feel awful,” she snapped. “Pretty sure that’s obvious too.”