animosity toward you is nothing more than an attempt to placate and please her mother. That’s what you’ve always said, and seems to me that her recent behavior reinforces it. I mean, she saved your life. If she hadn’t found you and called an ambulance, shock would have….”
“Finished what her mother started,” Royce muttered. To his chagrin, Dale pounced on that unwise statement.
“I knew it!” He came up out of his chair. “You’d never fall down your own deck stairs. She pushed you. The witch pushed you!” He punctuated the air with the jab of one forefinger, then dropped his hands to his waist. “We need a private investigator.”
“No.”
“We’ll punch holes in her alibi, sink her for good.”
Royce struggled up onto his left elbow to make himself understood. “No.”
“But you said—”
“You misunderstood.” Collapsing back onto his pillow, Royce massaged his temples with thumb and forefinger. “I only meant that Pam’s been punishing me for everything that has ever gone wrong in her life. No doubt she believes that if I died it would serve me right. That’s what she’s been teaching my kids ever since the divorce.”
Deflated, Dale turned the armless, molded plastic chair and straddled it. “And they’re too young to know that you divorced their mother because you caught her naked, humping a client in your own home.”
Royce cut his gaze sideways. “Succinctly put.”
Dale sighed and hunched forward, hanging his sharp chin on the edge of the chair back. “So that leaves us right where we’ve always been. Square one.”
“Not exactly,” Royce said, disciplining a yawn. Blinking, he fought off the drug-induced lethargy. “I want you to find a therapist for Tammy. She has to have been traumatized by all this.”
Dale fixed him with that no-nonsense, lawyer glare of his. “Royce, did Tammy see her mother push you? Is that what this is all about?”
“No. And even if she had, I wouldn’t let anyone badger her about it. She needs to talk to someone she can trust, someone neutral. I mean it, Dale, someone neutral. This isn’t part of the case. This isn’t discovery. This is my daughter. She needs help.”
Dale straightened and nodded. “Right. Sorry. I’ll get on it as soon as I leave here. You know, though, that Pamela’s going to fight us on it.”
Royce nodded wearily. “I’m going to ask my doctor and the kid’s pediatrician to recommend it.”
“That’ll help,” Dale said doubtfully.
The door swung open then, and Nurse Gage walked through bearing a green plastic tray. “Dinner.”
Despite his fatigue, Royce’s stomach rumbled and he smiled. “I think I’m hungry enough even for hospital food.”
“I didn’t know anyone got that hungry,” Dale quipped as the nurse slid the tray onto the bed table.
Apparently unamused, she pointed a finger at Dale and said bluntly, “You have been here long enough. He needs to eat, take his medicine and rest.”
Dale’s thin brows arched. With an amused glance at Royce he stood and threw his shoulders back, emphasizing his height. Executing a smart salute, he winked at the diminutive Nurse Gage. “Aye, aye, sarge.”
She barely spared him a glance as she elbowed him aside, lowered the bedside rail and rolled the table into place, positioning it over Royce’s lap. Royce chuckled. “Thanks for coming by, Dale.”
Defeated, Dale started toward the door, saying cheerily, “I’ll be back this evening.”
“See you then.”
Nurse Gage bent to depress the button that lifted the head of the bed. When his body was adequately contorted, semi-sitting with leg suspended and right arm propped on a stack of pillows, she shook out a thin paper napkin and tucked it into the too-high neck of his hated hospital gown. “Now, then,” she said briskly, “let’s get you fed.”
She lifted the domed cover off his plate, revealing grayish meat and limp, overdone vegetables. Taking knife and fork in hand, she began cutting up the meat. He wondered, with some amusement, right up to the moment she placed the fork in his left hand, if she was actually going to feed him.
Ping, ping, ping, ping.
Glancing at the alarm board, Merrily shrugged into the roomy lab coat she preferred to wear over her simple scrubs. Room 18, Royce Lawler. Lydia Joiner, the charge nurse, groaned.
“Not again.”
“What’s wrong?” Merrily asked, checking her voluminous pockets.
“Eighteen’s on a rampage,” Lydia said, rising from the desk. “Found out he’s got to have surgery again on that leg, and he’s taking it out on the whole nursing staff.”
“I’ll go,” Merrily said, aware that she didn’t have to, since she was early for her shift.
Lydia inclined her head appreciatively. “Thanks, kid.”
Kid. Always the kid. Lydia was no more than three years her senior, but due to her appearance, Merrily was “the kid.” Sighing with resignation, Merrily moved toward Royce’s room. The alarm board ping-ping-pinged again as she pushed through the heavy door.
“Thank God!” Royce Lawler exclaimed, tossing the bell remote into his lap. “It’s about time somebody with some sense showed up around here. Where the hell have you been?”
Merrily tamped down a surge of gratification at his greeting. “I just came on shift.”
“They’ve moved the damned phone again. Every time they come, they shove that table aside and leave it that way, then I can’t reach the phone!”
Merrily pulled the table closer to the left side of the bed and shifted the telephone to the far right edge, within reach. “How’s that?”
He dropped his head back onto his pillow. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“The problem,” she explained, squeezing behind the table to check his IV output, “is that the IV poles are fixed to the head of your bed. I’ll see if I can’t get a rolling pole in here and place it in front of the table.”
“Why didn’t they do that to begin with?” he grumbled.
Merrily bit her lip to quell a smile. “Because you are not ambulatory,” she explained patiently.
“And I’m not likely to be anytime soon,” he complained. “They’re going to put a metal rod in my leg. I won’t even be able to go through the metal detector at the airport!”
She laughed. She just couldn’t help it. He glared at her, but then the furrow in his brow eased and his mouth curved into a wry smile.
“Okay, okay. So it’s not that bad. And don’t you dare say that I did it to myself. My mother has already pointed
