Chapter 6      

Hospitals sucked.

There were no two ways about it, to Chase’s mind.

Sure, he had never stayed in one before. Honestly, he’d never even visited anyone in a hospital. But one day of incarceration in Dare Valley General was enough for him to blaspheme hospitals everywhere with confidence. 

How did anyone get well in a place like this? Maybe it would be different if he had a VIP suite or something. As it was, he was grateful for his private room. He’d been shocked to hear some patients had to room with strangers. Strangers! What kind of a wellness plan was that? Every hospital administrator in the United States should be embarrassed.

Then there was the crying and the moaning he could hear from a patient down the hall. When he’d asked a nurse about it, she’d told him the man was badly injured. No kidding. It was horrible to listen to someone’s suffering and not be able to do anything about it. Shutting the door hadn’t helped.

The view out of his window was the icing on the cake. He was sure he could still see a faint trail of black smoke from the house that had caught fire the day before.

God, he wanted out of this place.

According to Dr. Andy, he needed another night of observation—just to be sure his head wasn’t going to fall off or something. 

His nurse, a middle-aged woman named Nancy, entered after a brief knock. She had on blue scrubs and her dishwater blond hair was pulled back in a rubber band. “Hello, Chase. Time to take your pill.”

The pain meds made him groggy, and they didn’t take away the pain completely. He could still feel it, as if pressing from another place inside him.

He downed the pill with the water in the plastic cup she handed him. But his gaze was drawn to the window again. “Nancy,” he said. “There was a house that caught fire yesterday on the bench. Just over there.”

When he pointed in that direction, she nodded her head. “Yes, it was terrible.”

“Do you know who the family is? I’d like to help them.”

She took his plastic cup back and looked at him. Really looked at him. “I know who you are,” she said, surprising him. “I’m sure Roger and Cora—their last name is Drepe—would be grateful to you. Their little boy is with us, and I heard they’re really worried about the medical bills.”

His chest tightened. “He was hurt?” God. His mother had told them over and over again after the fire that they were so lucky none of them had been injured.

“Yes,” she said sadly. “He was taking a nap upstairs. I can’t imagine what Cora is going through. He’s their only child so far, just four years old. What would make you want to help them? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I have a sense of what they’re going through,” Chase said. “But it’s important to me that you keep this quiet.”

A smile flickered over her lips, and suddenly she looked less rushed. “Of course. Would you like to meet them? They’re on this floor.”

Part of him cringed. Could he really face these people when their pain was so raw? Did he even want to?

“I’m sure it would mean the world to them,” Nancy added. “I can wheel you down there.”

She was practically beaming. He almost said no, but then he thought of the boy. He’d remembered how desperately he’d needed reassurance after the fire had destroyed his world. “Only briefly.”

After helping him into a wheelchair—a horrible experience—Nancy took him down the hallway. He passed other rooms, hearing the cries of pain from the one man, patients’ conversations with visitors, and the chattering of the medical personnel. When they arrived at Room 222, his insides seemed to roll up in his gut at the faint smell of smoke hovering in the air. A woman was sitting beside the hospital bed, gripping the hand of the little brown-headed boy lying there with an oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth. Pain flashed through Chase’s chest.

“Cora,” Nancy said softly. “I’d like you to meet Chase. He works for Evan Michaels and heard about your troubles. He wants to help you guys.”

The woman finally turned her head, and Chase noted she hadn’t had a shower yet. There was a streak of ash in her brown hair and another across her neck. He gulped. His mother had looked like that after wading into the wreckage to see if anything was recoverable.

“Hello, Cora,” Chase said. “I’m sorry I’m not more presentable, but I had a small accident myself. Nothing like what you and your family have been through. What is your son’s name, and how is he?”

Chase didn’t see any burns, but clearly things were serious if he was in the hospital.

“I’ll just leave you,” Nancy said quietly and stepped out before Chase could ask her to stay.

“His name is Alfie,” Cora said, tears filling her red-rimmed eyes. “He got smoke inhalation. I couldn’t get to him fast enough. The fire…”

“Spreads so fast,” he said, remembering how it had seemed to flash through their house and then the outbuildings with the speed of wild mustangs. “I’m sorry for your loss. I saw the fire yesterday, and I wanted to help you and your family recover. I know it’s an incredibly difficult time.”

The boy made a sound when his mother put her face in her hands and started to sob. Chase sat there in his wheelchair, feeling helpless.

“Hi, Alfie,” he decided to say to the boy. “Your mom is okay. She’s just sad about your house. I’ll bet you are too, huh?”

There was the slightest of a nod from Alfie, and Chase heard Cora sniff repeatedly, trying to pull herself together.

“I was a little older than you when my house burned down,” he found himself saying. “We’re going to make sure you’re okay. You’re going to have another beautiful house, and all your toys and then some will be returned to you. Okay?”

Tears were pouring down Cora’s face, and Chase found his throat growing thick.

“Thank you,” she whispered and reached for his hand, squeezing it like he was a lifeline.

He understood. How different might his life had been if someone had been his family’s lifeline? Would his dad have had the will to rebuild if he’d had the necessary funds? Well, they’d never know.

“Can you tell me how to get something to you? I’m going to call my financial manager now and have him send you a check to get you up and going.”

He didn’t know about their personal circumstances or whether her husband would accept it, but he was going to give them a million dollars, he decided. That should be enough. He would ask Nancy to give him their temporary address if they had one. Either that or he’d have the check sent to the hospital.

“You’re…you’re…”

He waited while she let out another sob. “It will be fine,” he said. “I’m happy to help, Cora. Truly.”

“I’ll…tell…tell…Roger,” she said, fiddling with her pocket and pulling out a tissue to wipe her runny nose. “He’s off doing… God, there are so many people to meet with. Things to see to. It’s…”

“I know,” he said when she couldn’t finish the sentence. “The next few months are going to be hard, but you’re going to get through this. You have support, Cora, you and Roger. You just focus on your little boy.”

Her face crumbled again. “We’re lucky, really. Alfie is going to be okay. It could have been so much worse.”

He gripped her hand, not wanting to utter any pathetic clichés. He’d said what he wanted to say. That was all he could offer beyond helping financially. The rest would be up to them.

When Nancy came back for him, Cora let go of Alfie’s hand—a monumental move, Chase knew—and turned to face him. She leaned in and gently kissed him on the cheek. He found his throat growing tight again.

“Mister, I don’t know how we got so lucky to have you as our guardian angel, but I’m really grateful. You can’t know how much. I’ll have Roger come to your room when he gets back to say thank you.”

Chase didn’t want to see the man, didn’t want him to have to suffer any of the indignities that had broken his own father. “No need. Roger has plenty to do right now, and so do you. Plus, I’ll be out of the hospital soon and focused on my own recovery. You don’t have to say thank you beyond what we’ve said today, Cora. And I’m not your guardian angel. I’m just someone who understands what you’re going through and is in a position to help. My privacy is important to me, though, so please don’t tell anyone. Make up a story that works for you.”

She wiped her nose again and nodded. “Of course. Thank you, Chase.”

He took one last look at the boy. “Hang in there, Alfie. You’re lucky to have a mom who loves you so much. All right, Nancy. Let’s go.”

Turning him around, his nurse wheeled him back to his room and helped him into his infernal hospital bed, smiling the whole time. Once she’d fluffed the pillows behind his back and under his casts, he settled back with a sigh. 

“Would you be able to dial this number for me?” he asked, frustrated that the phone was out of reach. “I want to arrange things for Cora and her family.”

“This is so kind of you,” Nancy said, her hand on her heart. “It’s a miracle.”

He’d had enough of all this miracle and guardian angel nonsense. “No, it’s just one person helping a family who needs it right now.”

Taking the receiver she gave him, he suffered through his wealth manager’s initial concerns about his condition—apparently Evan had already spread the news—and then he shared his plan to help Roger and Cora and their son. Victor assured him he would handle everything.

When Chase hung up, he looked over at Nancy. “All right, since I’m on a roll, I’d like to donate some money to a few organizations that support people with disabilities. Being impaired like this has given me a new outlook on what they go through daily.” Plus, he needed to do something rather than lie here all day. God!

“You’re invoking a lot of good karma today,” Nancy said.

That was the last thing on his mind. “Can you help me with that? Do you have a laptop handy?” 

Her grin was conspiratorial. “Be right back.”

Chase looked out the window. The trail of black smoke that had haunted him all day could no longer be seen. Granted, his vision was a little blurry, so he couldn’t trust that his reprieve would be permanent.

He settled back deeper against the pillows, suddenly exhausted. Must have been the exertion of getting in and out of the wheelchair. Then he thought about Cora and her sorrow and that little boy lying in the hospital bed, lucky to be alive.

Chase realized that maybe he was a little lucky too. If he hadn’t seen the fire yesterday or been in this hospital, he might never have found out about the Drepes’ troubles. He wouldn’t have known to help them.