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The least he could do was understand she had a job to do. An important one. Maybe he didn’t like the idea that he must be involved in the campaign but he had grudgingly agreed to help. Now he at least had some marginally professional-looking clothes and a hairstyle that both showed the real him yet made him look like a qualified surgeon. However, he’d skillfully manipulated those decisions to his advantage. Fighting with him at every turn was getting old. She sighed. It was like her entire life was built on difficult men. Her father, her ex and now Rex Maxwell.
Entering the extensive one-floor brick building, she walked down the wide hallway. Her father’s room was close to the back. She wasn’t sure if it had been his or the staff’s choice to place him there. He could be difficult, but she loved him. She was old enough to remember well when he’d been in the car accident. Her mother had cried for days, driving them back and forth to the hospital to visit him. Her brother and sister, being younger than she, hadn’t understood the tragedy as she did. It had been a long time before her father had come home. While he’d been gone, all kinds of people had come and gone at their house. First it had been friends, then workers, who’d made the doors bigger, rebuilt the bathroom and replaced the front stairs with a ramp.
Nothing had been the same again. Her father hadn’t been home long before her mother had taken a job to help support them. That had left Tiffani alone to care for her father and her siblings. She’d learned to change her father’s bandages, give him his medicines and assist him in any way he’d needed. He’d depended on her and she had been there for him.
Despite the loss of his legs he’d remained the commanding force in the family. Being with him, she’d heard daily how the doctors had taken his legs rather than save them. Had ruined his life. She had been taught to mistrust and second-guess anyone even remotely connected to the medical field. He was her father and she’d believed him without question.
She hadn’t recognized it at the time but her father had begun growing more demanding and miserable. He drank regularly. Years had gone by before she’d discovered he’d taken too much of his prescription pain medicine too soon. He had been good with computers and electronics before the accident, but had made little effort to hold down a job afterward and had refused any vocational training. Their home life had deteriorated to the point that her mom had announced she was moving out, taking Tiffani’s sister and brother with her.
Devastated, Tiffani had cried but couldn’t go with them and leave her father alone. He’d needed her. Who would take care of him?
It had taken work on her part when she had grown up, but she’d continued to visit him. She was the only one of her siblings who did and she saw him regularly. She even helped pay the difference between what it cost to live in the home and what he could afford.
Reaching the last room at the end of the hall, she knocked lightly on the door.
“Come in,” came a gruff response.
To her amazement, her father sat in his wheelchair instead of being in bed. On more than one occasion she’d begged him to try the chair. Sadly, he had never made any real effort to use his prosthetic legs. His statement had always been, “If those damn doctors hadn’t taken my legs, I wouldn’t need those.”
“Hello, Daddy.” She pushed the door open. “How’re you doing today? It’s nice to see you out of bed.”
“Hey, baby girl. Where have you been? I expected you thirty minutes ago.”
As usual her father wasn’t pleased she was there but was equally concerned about her being late.
“I was busy. I have a new client and a new campaign I’m working on.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask about her job because she didn’t want to reveal her new PR project was a hospital and, worse, one of its doctors.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come so you can change the bandage on my hand.”
He lifted it so she could see. There was white gauze wrapped around it, with tape holding it in place.
She looked at it with concern. “What happened?”
“I’ve been trying to use this wheelchair, like you wanted. Because of you, I have blisters,” he accused. As if she were the cause of the pain. Nothing was ever his fault.
But at least he was trying. “You know there’re people here who can change a bandage for you.”
“They don’t do it right,” he growled.
He’d become so dependent on her in those early days that he still demanded her care whenever he could get it. It wasn’t unusual to have him call at any time of the day or night, begging her to come and do something for him. “Well, let me see what I can do.”
“Baby girl. You’re the only one that cares about me.” His voice softened.
Tiffani sighed and kissed him on the forehead. “I love you, Dad.” She gathered the supplies she needed from a drawer nearby, pulled a chair close to him and went to work. From years of practice she efficiently wrapped his hand. Seconds later she secured the bandage. “There you go. All done.”
Her father raised his hand and waved it around. “It’ll do.”
That was all the praise she would get.
“You are having dinner with me,” he said, wheeling backward one roll.
It was a demand, not a question.
In her most apologetic tone she informed him, “I’ve already had an early dinner so I’m not staying tonight.”
“Why did you do that? You knew I’d want you to stay.” The whiny tone had returned.
“I was with a client. We needed to talk over some things.” This was a subject she did not need to go into detail on.
Yet he was watching her closely. “Like what?”
It was odd timing, but this was the most interest he’d ever shown in what she did for a living. Mostly she told him about what she was doing to distract him from complaining about something. Reluctantly she answered, “About what I needed him to do.”
“Him? You’re not back with that jerk you were seeing, are you?”
Her father had at least been concerned and supportive when she had told him about what Lou had done. For once the topic of conversation hadn’t been her father. So why the interest this time? “I said he’s my client.”
“I hear something in your voice. What’re you not telling me?” He wheeled closer, squinting at her suspiciously.
Her father had always been good at reading people. Even when he was drinking heavily he could catch a lie when she or one of her siblings told it.
“Nothing really.” She put the bandaging supplies back in the drawer.
“Then why’re you avoiding the question?”
She turned and looked directly at him. “Because I’m doing an image campaign for Metro Hospital.”
Tiffani watched the shock, disbelief and then anger flow across his face. He flushed red. His hands went to the arms of the chair as if he were going to lift himself up. He barked, “You are what? That’s where they took my legs. How could you do that to me?”
“Daddy, I’m not doing anything to you. All I’m doing is my job.”
“But you’re helping the hospital look all wonderful. Covering up what they really do to people there,” he snarled.
“When your boss tells you to do something, you do it.” She needed to calm him down or someone would come and check on them. She didn’t want him to be thrown out of the center.
His voice rose with each word. “But you know what doctors do. You know how they treated me. You’re helping the enemy.”
Tiffani reached out to him. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I knew you wouldn’t be happy but this campaign is important to my career.”
He rolled away from her as much as the tiny space would allow. “I bet you’re having to make doctors look and sound good. You know you can’t believe what they say.”
“I’m working with just one.”
“Do I know him?” He gave her a pointed look.
It had been so long since her father’s accident that most of the doctors he was familiar with were probably retired so she felt comfortable saying, “Dr. Rex Maxwell.”
Her father pursed his mouth in thought before he blurted out, “Isn’t that the name of the doctor involved in the malpractice suit that was all over the nightly news?”
Great, her father had been watching the news. She didn’t look at him. “Yes. That’s him.”
“How could you, Tiffani? After what they did to me. My legs, my life.” He waved his arms around, trying to express his furious frustration with her.
There was a knock on the door and one of the staff members stuck his head into the room. “Is everything all right down here?”
“Nothing’s wrong except my daughter is a traitor,” her father snapped.
* * *
