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How did he know the places where Andie could bear stress and strain?
She couldn’t explain it, but he lifted her almost effortlessly and rested her in the new bed, with its dented in mattress. His bed.
“There. You alright?”
“That was great. Thank you.”
He pulled the sheet over her once more, and Cat let out a breath. She didn’t know she had been holding it in.
“You’re most welcome. Your mama told you, I’m Mike, and anytime you need anything, I’m going to be right here to help you.”
“Don’t make the child promises you can’t keep, Mike. I’m sure that you have a home and family to go back to.”
Where did that come from? Her pain and hostility all together at once. She cleared her throat. Why did he have to affect her this way?
“No, no I don’t Cat. I live right here in the hospital.”
Andie piped up, “Why do you call my mother a cat?”
“Ahh, little one. Doesn’t she look like one? Her pretty eyes, all tilted up like a cat? And just like she looking at me all mean now, just like a cat would. She look like she would pounce on me if she could.”
Andie’s sheets from around her mouth moved with her giggles and Mike lowered them for her, so that she could be clearly heard. “You’re right. She does. I never saw that before.”
She let out another loose breath and let the tension from her shoulders ease away. “So, you live here in the hospital? They let janitors live in the hospital?”
“I’m not a janitor here. Cat. I’m an orderly and night watchman both. Mr. O think he’s running things up in here, but I know otherwise. Right, chocolate drop?”
“We call her Andie.”
“Why you give your child a boy’s name, Cat?”
“My name is Hannah. Mama just calls me that cause I’m always doing boy stuff. It’s quicker.”
“I think Hannah is a beautiful name. That was my mother’s name, you know. Means grace.”
“It does?” Andie’s eyes got all wide. “I got grace, just like Maria Tallchief.”
“Just in your name.” He stood up. “You need to get some rest. I’m sure your Mama got other stuff to do with herself. Got to go home to your Daddy and fix his meals. Maybe got other children to take care of.”
“No, no. I don’t have no Daddy. She tried to get me one last year, but he was mean to us, so he had to go. There’s no other children. Just the cousins. They’re too little though, and got pulled away from me when I got sick with polio. So they don’t get it.”
Mike grasped onto the edge of the old bed Andie came in on. “That so? I got to take this downstairs back to the ambulance. I’ll let them know you needing some lunch. You can say your goodbyes here.”
He pushed the bed past her, but she couldn’t read his expression at his obvious attempts to get information about her from her daughter. How low could a man get?
She stepped to the side of him and around to the small side of her daughter’s bed, preparing to camp out just because he told her she had to go. How dare he?
“We’ll be fine. Do your…duties.”
“Thank you, Cat. And you need to get home and rest so that you can take good care of your child. Let us take care of her.”
“I’m her mother. I know what’s best for her.”
He pushed the bed out of the room and she heard him retreat down the hall to the rickety elevator. The tiredness entered her body and infused her soul. Even as he left the room, Andie’s long eyelashes, one of her beautiful features, slipped down to her face. She was tired too.
They both were. Tired of putting up a front. Tired of fighting. She slipped down into the chair next to her daughter’s bed and slipped her pumps from her aching feet. She just needed to stop and think for a minute—for a while. What did it mean that Mike should give up his room for her daughter? Why would he bother doing that, when he slipped away from her without pain or regret on that August day and sent no letters, no communications. Nothing.
Her confusion reminded her of the heated panic that had resided in her body over her ten years ago when she knew that her period wasn’t coming and that the man responsible had left her to fight in a world war.
