Chapter Six

As the sound of his voice registered, Lila felt as if everything had suddenly ground to a standstill all around her.

But maybe her imagination was playing tricks on her, or she had just heard incorrectly and thought it was Everett calling her. Someone else might have said that wishful thinking was to blame, but she refused to call it that.

Rousing herself, Lila asked in a small, stilted voice, “Everett?”

“Yes.”

She exhaled a shaky breath before saying his name, as if to make certain that it really was him calling. “Everett.”

Had he gotten her message? Lila wondered. Or was this just a coincidence and he was calling because she hadn’t acknowledged the roses he’d sent her? Taking nothing for granted, Lila replied, “I called you earlier today—”

“Yes, I know,” he responded. “About a flu epidemic you’re having in Austin. That’s the reason I’m calling back. If you still need me, I can be there by tomorrow morning.”

Relief swept over her, drenching her like a huge tidal wave and stealing her breath. Lila was certain she now understood how lottery winners felt.

“Oh, I need you,” she said with feeling, and then she realized how that must have sounded to him. Mortified, Lila immediately backtracked. “That is... I mean—”

She heard Everett laugh softly. That same old laugh that used to make her skin tingle and had warm thoughts flowing all through her, fast and heavy.

“That’s okay, I know what you meant,” Everett assured her. “Are you really that short-handed out there?”

Looking at the mounting stack of calls on her desk, almost all requesting help, she stifled a groan. “You have no idea.”

“Well, you can give me a tour and let me see what you’re up against when I get there tomorrow,” he told her.

She knew that Everett had his own practice and that he was going to have to make arrangements on his end in order to accommodate her, even for one day. It didn’t take a genius to know that that he was really going out of his way for her.

“I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate this, Everett,” Lila began.

Everett cut her short. “I’m a doctor,” he replied simply. “This is what I do.” She heard papers being moved around on his end. “I should be able to get in by eight. Where should I meet you?”

This was really happening, she thought. Everett was actually coming to her rescue, despite the way everything had ended between them the last time they saw one another. Relief and gratitude mingled with a sharp twinge of guilt within her.

“Why don’t we meet at the Fortune Foundation?” she suggested to him. “And we can go from there.”

Lila went on to give him the address of the building, although that would have been easy enough for him to look up if he wanted to. She told him which floor she was on as well as the number of her office.

“I can wait outside the building for you if that’ll be easier,” Lila added.

“That won’t be necessary,” Everett assured her. “They taught me how to count in medical school.”

Had she just insulted him somehow? Afraid of saying something wrong, Lila felt as if she was stumbling over her own tongue. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Lila,” Everett raised his voice as he cut into her words. When she abruptly stopped talking, he told her, “Stop apologizing.”

She took a deep breath, trying to center herself and regroup. None of this was easy for her. Not when it came to Everett. “Um, I guess I’m just not used to asking for favors.”

Everett read between the lines. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you for a favor back if that’s what you’re thinking,” he assured her. There was another moment of awkward silence on her end and then he said, “All right, if I’m going to be there tomorrow morning, I’ve got a few things to see about between now and then. See you tomorrow,” he told her.

Everett hung up before she had a chance to thank him again.

Lila slowly returned the receiver back to its cradle. “Well,” she murmured, still feeling somewhat numb as she continued to look at the receiver, “that at least solves some of my problem.”

She was still one doctor down, but one out of two was a lot better in her opinion than none out of two, she told herself. She could definitely work with one.

In the meanwhile, she needed to get the list of patients prepared for the doctors who were coming in so that they could start making those house calls.

Lila looked down at the various names and addresses she’d already jotted down. The number of people who were just too ill to get to a local clinic on their own was astounding, and growing rapidly. Some of the people, she thought, were probably exaggerating their conditions, but she couldn’t really blame them. The free clinics were always positively jammed from the moment they opened their doors in the morning. Waiting to be seen by a doctor was exceedingly challenging when you weren’t running a fever. Sitting there with a fever of a hundred or more and feeling too weak to win a wrestling match against a flea was a whole different story. If she were in that position, she’d ask to have the doctor come to the house, too.

Oh, who are you kidding? You could be at death’s door and you’d drag yourself in to see the doctor because you wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone.

Lila smiled to herself as she gathered her things together to meet with the physicians who were volunteering their time today.

The silent assessment rang true. She’d rather die than to surrender to her own weakness, Lila thought, going out the door.

Lila was exhausted.

Having stayed late, reorganizing supplies and hustling all over the city to beg, borrow or threaten to steal more vaccine serum as well as arranging for more lab tests to be done, she had finally dragged herself home after midnight.

Too tired to eat, she still hadn’t been able to get right to sleep—most likely because part of her kept thinking about having to interact with Everett after she had summarily rejected him the last time they had been together.

But she had finally dropped off to sleep somewhere around 1:00 a.m., only to wake up at 4:30 a.m., half an hour before her alarm was set to go off.

She lay there for several minutes, staring at the ceiling, telling herself that she had half an hour before she needed to get up, which meant that she could grab a few more minutes of sleep.

She gave up after a couple more minutes, feeling that there was no point in trying to get back to sleep. She was wired and that meant she was up for the day.

With a sigh, she got up, showered and dressed. A piece of toast accompanied her to her car, along with a cup of coffee that would have been rejected by everyone except a person who felt they had no extra time to make a second, better cup of coffee.

Sticking the thick-sludge-contained-in-a-cup into a cup holder, Lila started the car.

There had to be a better way to achieve sainthood, she thought cryptically to herself as she drove to the Foundation in the dark.

The streets were fairly empty at that time in the morning. The lack of light just intensified the pervasive loneliness that seemed to be invading every space in her head.

Snap out of it, damn it, she ordered. He’s a doctor and you need a doctor in order to help out. And that’s all you need.

However, ambivalent feelings about seeing Everett again refused to leave her alone. They continued to ricochet through her with an intensity that was almost numbing.

He’s not Everett, she silently insisted. He’s just an available doctor who’s willing to help you. That’s what you have to focus on, not anything else, understand? Don’t you dare focus on anything else. She all but threatened herself.

It helped.

A little.

Arriving in the parking lot located behind the Fortune Foundation building, she found that there were only a few vehicles that pockmarked the area at this hour. Apparently the Foundation had a few early birds who liked to come in and get a jumpstart on the day and the work they had to do.

As she made her way toward the entrance, she saw that one of the cars, a navy blue high-end sedan, had someone sitting inside it in the driver’s seat.

As she passed the vehicle, the driver’s side door opened and Everett stepped out. A very casual-looking Everett wearing boots, jeans and a zippered sweatshirt with a hood.

She almost hadn’t recognized him.

Her heart suddenly began to hammer very hard when she did.

“I got here early,” he told her, nodding at Lila by way of a greeting. “Traffic from Houston wasn’t too bad this time,” he explained. He saw the way she was looking at what he was wearing. He looked down at his attire himself, just to be sure that he hadn’t put anything on inside out. “I didn’t want to look intimidating,” he explained. “Someone told me that three-piece suits make some people nervous.”

The way he said it, she felt as if he was implying she was the nervous person.

You’ve got to stop reading into things, she upbraided herself. Out loud she told him, “You look fine. We need to go in,” she said, changing the subject as she turned toward the building. “I need to get a few things before we head out.”

Everett nodded, gesturing toward the main doors. “You’re the boss,” he told her.

That almost made her wince. “This’ll work better if you just think of me as your tour guide,” she said, avoiding looking at him.

Holding the door open for her, Everett followed her into the building. “You told me that you manage the department,” he recalled.

“I do,” she answered cautiously, wondering where he was going with this.

“Then that would make you my boss for this,” Everett concluded. “At least for now.”

This had all the signs of degenerating into a dispute. But Everett was doing her a favor by coming in today and he was getting no compensation for it. She didn’t want to pay him back by arguing with him.

“Whatever works for you is fine with me,” Lila told him loftily.

He smiled at her as they headed toward the elevators. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Was he just being agreeable, or was that some sort of a veiled warning, she wondered. This was all very exhausting and they hadn’t even gotten started, Lila thought.

The next moment, as she got into the elevator, Lila told herself that any way she looked at it, this was going to be one hell of a long day.

But then, she had her doubts that Everett was going to be able to keep up. Making house calls to all the people on her list was going to turn into a marathon as well as an endurance test, at least for Everett.

And maybe her, too.

Getting what she needed from her office, Lila led the way back out of the building. “We’ll use my car,” she told him.

“Fair enough,” Everett answered agreeably. “You know your way around here a lot better than I do.”

“At least in the poor sections,” she answered. They had barely gotten out on the road when she said, “Be sure to let me know when you’ve had enough.”

He thought that was rather an odd thing to say, seeing as how they hadn’t even been to see one patient yet. “And then what?” he wanted to know.

She spared him a glance as she drove through a green light. The answer, she thought, was rather obvious. “And then we’ll stop.”

“For the day?” he questioned.

“Well, yes.” What else did he think she meant? They weren’t talking about taking breaks.

“You made it sound like you needed me for the long haul,” he said. And to him, that meant the entire day—with the possibility of more after that.

“I do.” However, she didn’t want to seem presumptuous and she definitely didn’t want to totally wear him out. “But—”

“Well, then that’s what you’ve got me for,” Everett said, interrupting. “The long haul,” he repeated.

Was he saying that to impress her, or did he really mean it, she wondered.

“I just wanted to warn you,” she said as they drove to a run-down neighborhood. “This isn’t going to be what you’re used to.”

He looked at her then. “No offense, Lila, but we haven’t seen each other for a very long time,” he reminded her. “You have no idea what I’m used to.”

Everett was right, she thought, chagrined. She had no idea what he been doing in the years since they had seen one another. She knew, obviously, that he had achieved his dream and become a doctor. She had just assumed that he had set up a practice where he tended to the needs of the richer people in Houston. It never occurred to her that he might concern himself with even middle-class patients, much less those who belonged to the lower classes: the needy and the poor. And she had no idea that he ever volunteered his time to those less fortunate.

“You’re right,” she admitted quietly. “I don’t. I just know that your parents had high hopes for you and that you weren’t the rebellious type.”

Everett was only half listening to her. For the most part, he was taking note of the area they were now driving through. It appeared seedy and dilapidated. It was light out now, which made the streets only a tad safer looking.

He tried to imagine what it was like, driving through here at night. “How often do you come out here?” he wanted to know.

“As often as I need to. I usually accompany the doctors who volunteer at the Foundation. It wouldn’t be right to ask them to come here and not be their go-between.”

“Go-between?”

She nodded. “Some of the doctors have never been to places like this before. They’re uneasy, the patients they’ve come to treat are uneasy when they see the doctor. I’m kind of a human tranquilizer,” she told him. “It’s my job to keep them all calm and get them to trust each other enough so they can interact with one another,” she explained.

“A human tranquilizer, huh?” he repeated with a grin, trying to envision that. “I kind of like that.”

She laughed as she brought her small compact car to a stop in front of a ramshackle house that looked as if it was entering its second century.

“I had a feeling you would.” Pulling up the hand brake, she turned off the ignition. “We’re here,” she announced needlessly. “You ready for this?” she asked, feeling somewhat uneasy for him.

Everett looked completely unfazed. “Let’s do it,” he told her, getting out on his side.

Lila climbed out on the driver’s side, rounded the hood of her car and then led the way up a set of wooden stairs that creaked rather loudly with each step she took. Like the house, the stairs had seen better years and were desperately in need of repair.

Reaching the top step, she approached the front door with its peeling paint and knocked.

“The doorbell’s out,” she explained in case Everett was wondering why she hadn’t rung it. “I’ve been here before,” she added.

“That was my guess,” Everett responded.

A moment later, the front door opened rather slowly. Instead of an adult standing on the other side, there was a small, wide-eyed little boy looking up at them. He was holding on to the doorknob with both hands.

In Everett’s estimation, the boy couldn’t have been any older than four.