The Legacy: Making Wishes Come True (3 page)

“What do you think is wrong? Is it the flu?”

“Your lymph nodes are swollen, which indicates an infection of some kind.” He patted her arm and smiled noncommittally. “We need to do some lab work.”

“You mean stick needles in me?”

“We have to draw some blood, yes.”

Jenny gritted her teeth. If there was one thing she hated, it was shots. She’d sobbed through every immunization as a child. “Then can I go home?”

“Actually, I think it wisest to check you in for observation.”

“But I don’t want to stay here!”

“It’ll only be a for a few days—until we figure out what’s going on with you.”

Jenny saw her summer fun evaporating. First, Richard wouldn’t be around, and now this. Why was this happening to her?

A nurse stepped around the curtain that shut Jenny off from others in the emergency care area and prepared her arm to take blood. “Relax,” the nurse said.

Jenny shut her eyes and promised herself she’d be brave, but the sharp sting of the needle into her vein made tears well up. She hated to act like a baby over a needle and hoped the nurse didn’t see them. “All done,” the nurse said, taping a cotton ball to the inside of Jenny’s arm. “Hold it tight, or you’ll get a bad bruise.”

“What’s one more going to matter?” Jenny muttered.

The doctor reappeared with her grandmother in tow. “I’m making arrangements for you to go upstairs,” he told Jenny. “As I’ve told your grandmother,
ours is a small hospital with minimal equipment.”

“How much equipment will I need?”

He smiled and made notations on a clipboard. “Nothing for the night. Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of you.”

“I want Jenny to be comfortable,” Grandmother said. “I want her in your best room.”

“ ‘Grandmother, please, it’s not necessary.”

“I’ll be contacting my personal physician in Boston first thing in the morning.” Marian cast a challenging eye toward the ER doctor. “I want to be certain that Jenny gets special attention. I don’t want anything to be missed or overlooked.”

“If it’s necessary for her to return to Boston, we will recommend it,” the doctor replied.

Return to Boston!
Jenny reacted instantly. “But it’s summer. I always spend summers here. I don’t want to go back to the city.” Then she remembered that Richard also would be in Boston, and her plight didn’t seem so terrible.

“I must do what’s best for you,” her grandmother said. “If you must return, I shall too. I’ll have the staff reopen the house and close up the one here.”

“But it’s your summer too.”

“Why, I wouldn’t dream of sending you back to the city while I remained behind. It’s out of the question.”

Deep down, Jenny was relieved. She wanted her grandmother with her. Marian had been a substitute mother to Jenny for nine years, and Jenny didn’t want to face hospitalization all alone.

“Your room’s ready,” the doctor told her, when a nurse handed him a piece of paper. “You’ve got a
private room on the third floor, one of our largest.” Jenny wondered if he expected her to feel grateful.

“Perhaps I should stay also,” Grandmother offered.

“There aren’t any facilities for guests,” the doctor answered.

“Grandmother, don’t,” Jenny interrupted. “I’m not a baby.” Although Marian was very fit for her age, she was sixty-six, and jenny felt concerned about her. She would be more comfortable in her own home, in her own bed. “You can be here first thing in the morning.”

“We’ve given your granddaughter a little something to help her sleep,” the doctor added. “She’ll sleep through the night, and we’ll begin tests in the morning.”

Grandmother looked skeptical, but agreed. Minutes later, an orderly helped Jenny into a wheelchair and pushed her toward the elevator. In the hallway, Jenny saw the Holloways and Richard. “Oh, you poor dear,” Dorothy Holloway exclaimed.

Jenny hardly heard her, for it was the stricken, frightened expression on Richard’s face that held her attention. “Are you all right?” He dropped to his knees in front of the wheelchair and took her hand.

“I don’t know. They’re running some tests tomorrow.”

“They’re insisting Jenny stay the night,” Marian explained. “I hate for her to be alone.”

“She won’t be,” Richard replied. “I’ll stay with her.”

Jenny felt embarrassed. Grandmother’s hint was so broad that a three-year-old could have picked up on it. Of course, Richard had no choice but to offer
to spend the night. She sighed, too tired and achy to argue that it wasn’t necessary.

The group of them entered the elevator, then the quiet hall of the third floor. A nurse led the way to the room, where she helped Jenny change into a hospital gown and get into bed. The sheets felt cool, and Jenny pulled up the covers gratefully. Once she was settled, the others came in to say good-night.

“I’ve made arrangements for a phone to be placed in your room,” Grandmother told Jenny. “If you want anything, call me.”

“I’ll
be fine.” Jenny had never been inside a hospital before, and even though this one was small and homey, she didn’t like it. The smells of disinfectants and antiseptics repelled her.

“I’ll keep checking on her,” Richard insisted. “There’s a visitors’ lounge just down the hall where I can spend the night.”

Grandmother kissed her, and Jenny said good-bye to Richard’s parents, then breathed a sigh of relief when she was finally alone with Richard. “They were making me nervous,” she said.

“They’re just worried.”

She realized that the hospital gown was not very attractive, and suddenly, in spite of how bad she was feeling, she cared about how Richard saw her. “Thanks for catching me out on the patio. I owe you one.”

“You looked very pretty tonight,” he said, touching her cheek.

She caught his hand and pressed it against her skin. “I’m scared, Richard. I don’t like being sick.”

“Maybe it’s just the flu.”

“If it were, they’d have sent me home.”

“You’re Jenny Crawford—they wouldn’t take any chances.”

His explanation didn’t wash, but she was starting to feel numb from the pill they’d given her in ER. “Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Richard watched her eyelids flutter closed and her breathing grow deep and regular, yet he held tightly to her hand even after her grip on his relaxed. She’d scared him when she’d passed out. He was still shaking from the ordeal. Something was wrong with her. Something serious. He felt it in his gut. Perfectly healthy sixteen-year-old girls didn’t sprout bruises on their bodies and keel over for no reason.

Cool it
, he told himself. She didn’t need him going crazy on her. There had to be a reasonable medical explanation. He brushed the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “Jenny …” he whispered. “Be okay.”

He bent forward, smoothed her hair off her forehead, and kissed her tenderly. He stepped backward, his gaze never leaving her sleeping face. He sighed, recalled seeing a coffee machine in the lounge, and headed toward it. It was going to be a long night.

J
ENNY WAS AWAKENED
before dawn by the rattle of glass tubes and syringes carried into her room by a technician. “We need a little blood,” the tech said.

Still groggy, Jenny struggled to remember where she was and why. The memory of the night before returned like a bad dream. “Richard?” She looked around the room, feeling panicked.

He was coming through the door with a cup of coffee. “What’s going on?” he asked the tech sharply.

“The lab needs a blood sample.”

Jenny reached out her hand, and Richard took it. He stepped between Jenny and the tech. “Can you give her a minute? You woke her from a sound sleep.”

“I’ve got to keep on schedule. She’s not the only one I’ve got to see this morning. It’s part of the routine.”

Jenny didn’t like the tone of reprimand she heard
in the older woman’s voice. It may be routine for the tech, but it was far from routine for her. “It’s all right,” she assured Richard, feeling him tense. “Just hold my hand while she sticks me.”

“That’s not customary,” the tech started.

“Today, make it customary,” Richard replied.

The tech sized them both up, pressed her lips together, and shrugged. She sorted through her tubes and prepared Jenny’s arm for the syringe. Jenny stared into the depths of Richard’s green eyes while the needle stuck and stung her arm.

Once the tech had gone, Richard leaned over her bed. “You doing all right?”

“Maybe it’ll get easier over time.”

“Maybe this will be the last time.”

She hoped so. “Thank you for staying the night. Sorry I wasn’t much company.”

“This wasn’t supposed to be a house party.” He smiled. “The last time I saw the sun come up, I was in the Bahamas on a sailboat.”

“I wish that’s where we were right now. Was it beautiful?”

“I can’t even describe it.”

His hair was falling over his forehead, and a stubble of beard outlined his chin and jaw. Although he looked rumpled and tired, Jenny thought he looked very sexy. “We never did get to go sailing.”

“When they let you out of here, it’s the first thing we’ll do,” Richard promised.

“How was your night in the lounge?” she asked.

“Green vinyl chairs with metal arms will never replace featherbeds as bedroom furniture.”

She giggled. “That bad, huh?”

He rubbed the small of his back. “I didn’t even
know I had muscles to cramp where that chair found them.”

“It’s all right with me if you go on home now. I’ll be perfectly fine until Grandmother arrives.”

“No way.” He swallowed a last gulp of coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “I told your grandmother I’d stay with you, and I will.”

He stayed because he promised Grandmother
, Jenny told herself.
Not because of me
. “Is there a place for you to eat breakfast?”

“There’s a coffee shop downstairs, a newspaper box, and a hole in the wall that passes for a gift shop.”

“It sounds as if you’ve explored the whole building.”

“There’s not much to explore. The place is small.” He fiddled with the Styrofoam cup, chipping out little pieces and piling them up on her bedside table. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Better now that the blood work’s over. Thanks for holding my hand. I really hate shots.”

“Me too,” he confessed. “What about your other symptoms? How are you feeling from them?”

She took a quick inventory, rotating her ankles and wrists slowly. “I still ache all over, and I’ve got a slight headache, but that might be left over from the sleeping pill. I feel pretty groggy.”

“I think I hear someone bringing breakfast trays,” Richard said, crossing to the door. He looked down the hall and announced, “Here they come.”

Jenny’s stomach revolted as the smell of greasy bacon and eggs drifted into her room. A minute later, an orderly plopped a tray on a table that straddled her bed. She edged up the lid, peeked at the contents,
and heard Richard chuckle. “Are you afraid there’s a live snake under there?”

“I’d rather face one than this stuff.”

He removed the lid, and together they stared at the unappetizing offering. “It looks grim all right. How about some Frosted Flakes?” He indicated a small box of cereal and a carton of milk. “They look sealed. How can you go wrong with cereal?”

“I could try them.” Richard prepared the bowl for her. She took several bites, but shoved it aside before finishing. “That’s all I can eat,” she said. “Do you think Tony the Tiger will forgive me?”

“I’ll speak to him personally.” Richard recovered the tray and took it into the hall. “I’ve got to speak to someone about the room service in this place.”

“Silly.” She offered him a smile. It was good having him with her, even if he was only doing it for her grandmother’s sake. “I wonder when they’re going to start on the tests the doctor mentioned in ER last night.”

“Do you want me to go find out?”

“If you don’t mind.”

He gave a brisk salute. “Private Holloway at your service.” The sound of her laugh followed him down the hall to the nurses’ station, where he asked the nurse behind the desk what was happening with Jenny’s tests.

The nurse rifled through some papers. “There’s a hold order on her case.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that her family has requested that nothing be done until another doctor’s been called in for a consultation.”

Richard pondered the news. Marian Crawford
must be seeking a specialist for Jenny. He thought it was a good idea, but it also made him feel uneasy. What kind of specialist, he wondered. His watch indicated that it was eight
A.M
. He’d half expected Marian to have arrived by now. Something was going on; he wished he knew what.

He had checked on Jenny throughout the long night, sleeping in spurts, and although she had slept soundly, he could tell by looking at her that she wasn’t any better. He was positive that she’d valiantly attempted breakfast only because he’d forced the issue.

When he returned to Jenny’s room, he found that she’d fallen back to sleep. He was relieved, because he didn’t have anything to tell her and he didn’t want her to worry about torturous tests that probably involved needles and unsympathetic lab technicians.