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She had been an angel all day. He was frustrated with his irritation. She didn’t deserve to have him be grumpy with her.
One side of him said that he should cut himself some slack because anyone who was in as much pain as what he was should be expected to be a little bit grumpy. His head hurt, his ribs hurt, and his leg throbbed.
All that moving around had made everything hurt again, and the pain meds weren’t touching it.
Regardless, he got his phone out, leaned his head back on the pillow that Sally had just adjusted, and called his brother.
“Hey, bro. You’re alive?” Franklin said as Peter closed his eyes.
“I am. I can tell I’m not dead. There is not this much pain in the afterlife.”
“Depends on which direction you go, or so I understand,” Franklin said, not sounding like he had any pity for his little brother at all.
“Nice,” Peter said. The very least Franklin could do would be to ask him how he was.
“How are you?”
Of course. He just needed to get to the right moment in the conversation. Peter took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. He needed to be patient and stop being such a grump.
“They sent me home, so I guess I’m not going to die today.”
“Unless it’s God’s will.”
“Wow. Thanks. So...encouraging.”
“But it’s probably not.”
“That was not a good save.”
“I tried.”
“Sally said you wanted to talk to me?”
“Yeah. I was thinking that I can do Sally’s job here. There’s not much this time of year, and she can nurse you. I didn’t say anything to her, just in case that wasn’t the way you were going, but it kind of looked like it was at the beach party. I figured, since you’re the reason that I’m happily married, I could do a little bit to nudge you in that direction.” Franklin paused. “All right. My wife is over here with her hands on her hips giving me the evil eye. It was all her idea.”
“Not bad. I believe that,” Peter said, smiling. Franklin didn’t have a clue about anything that related to matters of the heart, and Peter was not believing for one second that he was going to try to play matchmaker with his brother.
“I tried.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t buying it. So confession is good for the soul and all, but your lie was not working.”
“All right, but the rest of it’s true. Things are slow here, and I can easily handle the accounting for a bit. Sally has everything so well organized we probably could go without doing anything until we need to do our taxes in January.”
“She’s that good, huh?” Peter grinned a little. He believed it. She had been patient and kind, but those weren’t her only good traits. She did seem to be well organized. He watched her as she moved around the kitchen, grateful for the open floor plan. She was graceful and had opened a few cupboards, stood in front of them for a bit, and then pulled a few things out, and then went to check the freezer.
“She is. And my wife wants me to give her away. That is ridiculous, but I’ll do anything to keep my happy home.” There was a little bit of scuffling going on from the sounds of things on the other end of the phone, and Peter just rolled his eyes. He wanted to be alone with Sally, wanted to have her as his accountant, wanted to spend time with her, but not like this.
He didn’t want to be laid up, unable to do anything, having her wait on him hand and foot while he was a big grouch and in pain all the time. This wasn’t the way to impress her.
“Well, I guess I appreciate it.”
“You don’t sound like it,” Franklin stated.
“I just wish I wasn’t laid out. I’m not really at my best.”
“Women love that. They love to be the nurse, take care of you, hover around you doing all the nursing things.”
“Whatever. You don’t know anything about what women like. Stop trying to pretend you do. Go back to your numbers business.” He was just joking, mostly. Although, it was true that Franklin didn’t know anything about women. Well, not much. Maybe he learned a little since he got married.
