5

Darcy jogged down the sterile hallway. Her heart beat steady in her ears, thumping against the worry circling in her mind. The horror stories of elderly people breaking a hip and never recovering pinged in her memory. Lulu needed to be fine. She wasn’t elderly, at least not mentally. Darcy would do whatever was required to ensure Lulu sat in the front row of her church for Christmas Eve service.

Her rubber boots squeaked against the linoleum as she turned into the waiting room. The Ladies Aid Society was still holding court in the back corner making more noise than she imagined the volunteer greeter would like. Scanning the room, she didn’t see Bennett. Of course, he went to talk to the doctor without her. With a sigh, she pivoted and started to walk from the room.

“Darcy?” A soft, almost melodic voice called after her.

She turned and was greeted by a broad smile stretched across the face of a woman she had met, but wasn’t able to name. “I’m sorry…”

“Harper Jessup.” She stretched out her hand.

Darcy clasped it with a quick, tight grip.

“We met earlier, but I imagine the chaos has thrown you. Your brother asked me to take you to the family room.”

Harper laced her arm through Darcy’s as if they had been friends for decades rather than meeting only hours earlier. “Hospitals can be a maze. But I imagine you already know…what with working at the University Medical Center.”

“Do you work here?”

Harper shook her head. “Nope, I’m a designer. Homes, gardens, that kind of thing. I grew up in Gibson’s Run. Spent a little too much time in this hospital. My mom’s in the Ladies Aid Society with Mrs. Penhearst. I live in Columbus, but my mother keeps dragging me back here every other weekend. I should really set up shop on Main Street, but I don’t think the folks in town are really ready for what I do.”

Darcy nodded, not quite sure what to do with the litany of information Harper shared, but oddly thankful for the chatter as Harper shared about her five siblings’ lives including her brother Ryland’s upcoming nuptials. Her smooth voice and companionable nature set Darcy at ease. Her racing heart slowed and she was able to draw in a deep breath.

“Here we are,” Harper said.

“Thank you.” Darcy squeezed Harper’s arm in thanks.

“No problem. We all love Mrs. Penhearst. And therefore, we must love you and your brother. Gibson’s Run law.”

The door opened with a creak and Darcy was face to face with Bennett.

“I’ll leave you two. But don’t forget to tell the Ladies Aid Society what the doctor says. They’ll be hounding you like a pack of Chihuahuas if you don’t give them an entire play-by-play.” Harper closed the door leaving Darcy and Bennett alone.

“Come and sit.” Bennett waved his hand toward two empty chairs in a room barren of joy.

Darcy shifted to the seat as far from the other chair in the room as she could, but Bennett remained standing. He leaned against the wall and tilted his head toward the ceiling, likely praying. The twins had spoken little in the last half decade, but she couldn’t imagine her devout brother had ever deviated from his passionate love for God.

Crossing her legs, Darcy glanced at the golf magazine resting on the lone table in the room. It was the December issue from three years earlier. A quick snort escaped from her mouth.

Bennett shifted his gaze to her. “How’ve you been, Darc?”

She shrugged and reached for the magazine, flipping through the worn pages with intensity.

“Darc, we have to talk.”

“No, Bennett, we don’t talk. You tell. And the rest of us do.”

“Come on. That’s not true. I listen.”

She twisted in her seat to face him. “Since when? Has there been some miraculous change in you in the last five years?”

“A lot has changed. You’d know if you returned a call, a text, or an email.”

Releasing a shattered sigh, she slumped into the chair. “I can’t. Bennett, I don’t want to fight with you. We both love Lulu. Let’s just listen to what the doctor has to say and figure it out from there.”

He nodded and slid onto the chair beside her. Silence draped the room.

Thick tears filled her vision. She bit the side of her cheek to stave off their unwelcome arrival. The tentative peace with her brother, signaled the floodgates to open. She loved the stupid idiot. She loved him more than her own life. And yet, she couldn’t stand him. She wouldn’t admit it to him, but he was right. She could have ended the separation between them. Ben was always quick to forgive and forget. Darcy was the one who dominated in the elephant memory gene.

Bennett’s thick hand stretched across her shoulders and squeezed. And that was all the tears needed. Sloshing over her cheeks and onto the forgotten magazine in her lap, her body shuddered with the release. Bennett tugged her to his side, giving her a safe space to cry, just as when they were kids. He never teased or joked about her feelings. Until she had learned to hide her heart, she had been the walking embodiment of emotion, and the brutal target of every group of kids they met. But Bennett always protected his sensitive big sister. Today was no different.

“She’ll be OK, Darc.”

“But Mom…”

“This is nothing like Mom. Lulu isn’t Mom.”

Darcy nodded, wiping the sopping wetness on her cheeks with the back of her hands. Lulu wasn’t Mom. A broken hip and wrist weren’t lymphoma. But broken bones for the elderly could be a death sentence. She needed to ensure Aunt Lulu would be back to herself as quickly as her body would heal.

The door to the small office creaked open. Darcy tried to suck in the last of her tears but her eyes would betray her emotional outburst. A pretty crier she was not.

Dr. Bernard Stenson, according to the name embroidered on his white jacket, entered the room. He barely crested Darcy’s height, with cropped, mousy brown hair, topping a long narrow face that did little to enhance his pallor. His presence was dwarfed by Bennett as he introduced himself. Dr. Stenson was the complete antithesis of every orthopedic she’d ever encountered.

“Well, your aunt’s case was pretty routine. We pinned her hip and wrist. She’ll need some physical therapy once she’s out of the rehab facility.”

“She won’t be in a rehab facility.” Darcy interrupted. “I’m taking Aunt Lulu home.”

“Ms. Penhearst…”

“Langston. Dr. Langston.” Darcy corrected.

“Yes, well, Dr. Langston your aunt will need twenty-four-hour nursing care. She’ll need to be lifted and moved for basic functions for weeks. She’ll need to have her pain medication monitored and administered correctly. Even for a medical professional, treating a family member with this kind of delicate recovery can be overwhelming.”

“We’re taking Lulu home,” Bennett said.

Darcy twisted in her chair. “You don’t need to stay. I can take care of her. You don’t need to fix this.”

“I’m staying, Darc.”

And that was that.

She turned back to Dr. Stinson. “We’re taking her home. What do we need to get for Lulu’s house?”

With a sigh, Lulu’s doctor scrubbed his face and began to rundown a high-level list of what they needed. The doctor emphasized meeting with a social worker to arrange for the in-home nurse visits and a hospital coordinator to arrange for a special bed and other outpatient equipment required to care for Lulu.

Darcy felt a sense of “rightness” settle into her soul. A plan with details, lists, and a need for extensive organization. She loved and excelled with a project. “Rehab Lulu” would be the perfect focus to avoid trying to figure out what she would do with the rest of her life.

“If you’re sure you want to take on her care, I’ll send a social worker to help with the details.”

She glanced at Bennett. His jaw was set.

Turning to the doctor, she said, “We’re certain.”

~*~

Two hours later, Darcy clutched the paperwork to her chest, confident she would be able to study all the details before their follow up appointment the next day with an at-home nurse and a revisit with the social worker. She and Bennett would make everything better. Maybe even their relationship, she thought.

They walked into Lulu’s hospital room.

The room was dark, except for a single light shining above Lulu’s bed. Her less than five-foot-even frame appeared smaller under the thin blanket and hospital bedding. Her pinned−in−two−places left wrist was nestled in the confines of a gray and white sling, resting against her chest. Despite the limitations of the dank hospital, her cropped white hair was perfectly coiffed, her cheeks held a slight tint of pink and her lips were shaded a color somewhere on the purple end of the rainbow. She looked photo-shoot ready, in spite of a fall from a ladder, an ambulance trip, a multi-hour surgery, and a stiff hospital pillow. Only Lulu.

Darcy scanned the room for Aunt Lulu’s black and white cosmetic bag and caught the corner of it peeking out from under the pillow. How had she managed to smuggle it into the room?

In Darcy’s life she’d never seen her aunt without perfect hair and make-up. Not at breakfast, during bedtime stories or after a five-mile walk. Lulu was never less than her expectation of perfect.

Darcy squeezed Lulu’s right hand and her eyes fluttered open. A soft smile stretched across her recently painted lips. “My dear-hearts. You didn’t need to come.” She shifted her gaze from Darcy to Bennett and back to Darcy. “But I’m so thankful you did.”

“You gave us quite a scare.” Bennett said. He lowered onto the chair directly to Aunt Lulu’s left.

“Oh, well, it’s my own fault. I thought a star would look quite nice for the cookie sale. I never thought the ladder would betray me. Being in the house of the Lord and doing His work should keep one safe.”

Darcy swallowed against the protest threatening to spill through her lips. She couldn’t imagine the Lord thinking a star in the window for the Ladies Aid Society’s annual cookie sale was ‘His work,’ but who was she to argue? Lulu had known the Lord since “He was a boy,” as she liked to say.

“Dr. Bernie said I could go home the day after tomorrow.” She shifted her focus from Bennett to Darcy. “He seems to believe the two of you will be taking care of me. Together.”

Stretching the best smile she could muster across her lips, Darcy nodded. “Ben and I will stay until you get back on your feet.” She lifted her gaze to her brother who nodded in confirmation.

“But Darcy, Dr. Bernie said my recovery could take up to three months. Maybe longer. You, neither of you, have that kind of time to give to me. You have your research.” She shifted her gaze to Bennett. “And you have the clinic. What will the people do if you aren’t there to help them?”

Clinic? The last she’d talked to her brother he was deciding between several different offers, none of which included ‘clinic’ in the title. Of course, she hadn’t talked to her brother in five years. He could be married with children by now for all she knew.

“Don’t worry.” He said, “Lavina’s able to run the clinic. I’ll call the medical school to see if they have a few students who can start on rotation. And Melanie will be happy to fill in. Most of the patients like her better than me anyway.”

“I highly doubt that…but if you are sure, you can stay…” Lulu tilted her head toward Darcy and locked her dark golden gaze with Darcy’s vision. “And your research? I won’t be the reason you’re behind.”

Darcy pressed a long breath through her lips. Her heart twisted as she willed her tears to stay trapped behind her eyes. “My funding was cut. Just yesterday.”

“Oh, no. Darcy, I’m so sorry.” Lulu’s face softened with the compassion and twist of pity Darcy had been trying to avoid.

Bennett’s focus burned a hole in Darcy’s being. Her stomach rolled, but she widened her smile. “I see it as a good thing, Aunt Lulu. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have time to help you. And if your recovery takes longer and Bennett can’t stay, I will. I’ll do anything for you, Aunt Lulu.”

“We should let you rest.” Bennett said with a kiss to Lulu’s forehead. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe we can sneak you some contraband food.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

Her brother stood and moved to the door. The tug of his unanswered questions ripped at her. “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay until you fall asleep?” she asked, embarrassed by her own cowardice at facing her brother’s waiting interrogation.

Lulu nodded to Bennett waiting outside the doorway. “No, my dear. Bennett’s right. I need my rest. You two go home and catch up. It does my heart worlds of good to see the two of you in the same room and getting along. If all it took was a couple broken bones, I’d have fallen off a ladder years ago.” She squeezed Darcy’s hand with her uninjured grip. “Now. You go and settle things with your brother. You can tell me all about it later. I love you.”

Darcy stood, clutched the paperwork to her chest, and kissed Lulu’s cheek. “I love you, too. See you tomorrow.”

“I’m counting on it.”

With a sigh, Darcy shuffled from the room, her rubber boots squeaking against the floor. Glancing over her shoulder, she took in Lulu’s already closed eyelids and serene posture. No more delays. No more escape.

She stepped into the hallway. Her brother leaned against the wall. His arms were laced across his ridiculously thin linen shirt. He appeared to be a man of leisure. She knew better. Her ears were already burning.

“You lost your funding?” His voice burned a new line of censure through her entire being. Nothing like being reprimanded by one’s womb-mate.

She refused to meet his steady gaze. The mix of sympathy and disappointment would be worse than when she’d told her mother she was going into research instead of practicing medicine. The guilt from that conversation shrank Darcy nearly two inches.

“Not now, Ben,” she said and walked toward the elevators. “There are still concerned visitors waiting downstairs.” Pressing the button to call the elevator, she caught sight of his reflection in the smudged steel doors. “We need to send them home and figure out how we’ll make Lulu’s nineteenth century Victorian into a rehab facility in forty-eight hours.” With a bing and a swoosh, the doors opened and she stepped inside. “You can berate me about my lack of employment later. And you can tell me what you’ve been up to for the last five years…like what is this clinic that needs you so much? And are you married? Do you have kids? Where are you living? It has been five years. There’s lots of catch-up twinning that needs to be done.”