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“I’m going to be pretty busy with the project I’m working on, but I’ll try to get out there,” Drew said noncommittally.
“Do more than try,” his uncle said. “You know Doreen would never want her house to just sit there like some kind of museum. Stop avoiding this.”
Drew’s phone dinged with a calendar reminder.Saved by the fucking bell.
“E, I need to get going.”
“Working on a Sunday?”
“It’s just a short meeting,” he said. Drew wasn’t in the mood for his uncle’s harassment over his work schedule. “Give me a couple of days’ notice before your fishing trip so that I can schedule the time off. Maybe we can hang out for a bit. Come back to this playground and shoot some hoops.”
“Oh yeah, your ass is feeling nostalgic. I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up back in Austin permanently,” Elias said.
Not a chance in hell.
“I don’t know about that,” Drew said.
“You should consider it. You told me yourself that New York has never felt like home. You need to plant some roots, Drew.”
He wasnothaving this conversation right now.
“I have to go. I’ll catch up with you later, E.”
He ended the call and clicked into his text messages to share the address of the building where he would be staying with Elias. After sending the text, he spotted the one he’d sent to London earlier today, letting her know that she’d left her purse in his hotel room.
Drew closed his eyes and forced himself to take a cleansing breath.
He should give her a heads-up about tomorrow. He was only making it worse by not telling her that he was the one who would assist County’s governing board in deciding whether to sell the hospital to a private company.
But instead of writing the text message he knew he damn well should write, Drew switched to the Uber app and ordered a car to come pick him up.
He would deal with London tomorrow.
6
London marched at a brisk clip up the hospital’s bright corridor. She dodged a phlebotomist wheeling a cart into a patient’s room and made her way to the nurses’ station. The square-shaped area—dubbed “The Hub”—sat in the center of the four arms of the pediatric care ward at Travis County Hospital. It was empty, save for this shift’s board nurse, Kia Jackson.
“Have you seen my SpongeBob SquarePants stethoscope sleeve?” London asked as she approached the chest-high counter. “I can’t find it anywhere.”
“Have you checked in a pineapple under the sea?” Kia asked.
“You’re a better nurse than comedian,” London said to the twentysomething who’d started at County around the same time she had. She gestured at the tray of cookies to Kia’s right. “How much for a white chocolate macadamia?”
“Sorry, but those are Carmen’s favorites. I love you, Doc, but no one messes with the charge nurse’s cookies unless they want to get got.”
London looked over both shoulders. “Yeah, well, I’m not afraid of Carmen,” she lied, reaching over the counter and snagging a cookie. “If you see my stethoscope sleeve hanging around anywhere, please let me know. It’s Jason Milner’s favorite. I want to make sure I’m wearing it when he wakes up from his surgery.”
The earliest lesson she’d learned about working in the pediatric ward: Do whatever you can to disguise medical equipment and help kids forget they’re in a hospital.
“Will do,” Kia said. She arched a brow as she looked past London. “You’d better finish that cookie.”
A gruff voice called out, “I’m short two CNAs and someone needs to answer for it.”
London stuffed the entire half of the cookie in her mouth just as Carmen Francis, the charge nurse who had been at this hospital since Moses was a toddler, came stomping up to the nurses’ station.
“It’s a good thing I work in a hospital, because I swear these people are trying to give me a heart attack,” Carmen said. She wore a barrette with tiny gardenias at the part in her salt-and-pepper ’fro today. London speculated that her various hair ornaments were an attempt to soften her brusqueness, but it didn’t work. The woman was terrifying.
London gave both nurses a wave, intending to haul ass before Carmen took an account of the white chocolate macadamia cookies, but the charge nurse stopped her with a terse “Dr. Kelley, one minute.”
