Promise Of Forever. Patt Marr
all get settled, then we’ll take a little tour and go over a couple of new procedures.”
Mona swung around. “A tour?” Her shrill voice could have stripped paint from a wall. “I hardly need a tour! I was here in this office, taking your temperature, before you knew how to count, Beth Brennan.”
“You were, weren’t you?” Beth struggled to be cordial when every instinct said her grandfather was right and Mona Fitz should go.
“Dr. Crabtree took good care of all you little Brennans, though a lot of thanks it got him.”
Beth wasn’t sure what that meant, but, trying again to be nice, she said, “It must seem strange that most of us are doctors here now.”
“It isn’t strange at all! Or it wasn’t until today. Your brother and your cousin know how to fit in. They haven’t created an eyesore like that mess outside.”
This disrespect had to end. No one should have to work in unpleasant conditions. “Mona, do our patients and their parents still call you by your first name?”
“Of course! My name hasn’t changed.”
“With respect for your many years on the job, I think it’s time you were called Ms. Fitz.”
Clearly, Vanessa and Noah hadn’t heard Mona called that or thought how the two syllables sounded together. To their credit, neither cracked a smile, though Vanessa rushed to the restroom and Noah checked on a lab report.
“My name is Mona!” the woman said, her voice quivering with rage.
“Are you sure?” Beth said doubtfully. “It’s important to treat everyone with respect, don’t you think?”
Whew! If looks could kill, she’d be dead. Mona’s glare was so piercing that Beth had the urge to check for entry wounds, but Mona turned abruptly to her desk.
Beth took a deep breath and walked down the hall to her office, almost skipping. That had gone better than she’d expected, even though she had prayed it would. There was nothing that the Lord and she couldn’t handle.
Grandpa’d said there was no way she could handle Mona. Ha! Nothing fired Beth’s determination like being told what she couldn’t do. They would get along fine.
Beth opened the door to her office and paused to see if it still felt as if she were trespassing there. Missing were Keith’s books, personal items and diplomas, but everything else was as he’d left it, everything but the flowers she’d intended for Mona.
Noah had placed them on the massive mahogany desk. Beth leaned down and sniffed their lovely fragrance. What a shame that Mona couldn’t have enjoyed them as a sweet reminder of all that was good and pleasant in this world.
Sitting in Keith’s big office chair, Beth swiveled slowly, taking in the view of the clinic’s lush grounds, the empty bookshelves, the armchairs in front of her desk, the monstrous mahogany desk and the credenza behind her. She would feel more at home when her diplomas were on the wall and the furnishings were her own. There’d been so much to do, her office had been her last priority.
Lord, thank you for what I have, and help me do this job right. I don’t want to let Grandpa down.
“Dr. Beth.” Noah stood at the open door, holding two more floral arrangements. “Where would you like these?”
The flowers were extraordinary, but the guy holding them took her breath away. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen her share of good-looking men, but something about Noah McKnight stirred her senses. She gestured toward the credenza behind her. “How about there?”
“Looks like a good spot.”
She watched him, impressed with the easy way he moved and the conscientiousness with which he placed the flowers, turning them to show them off to best advantage. Some guys would have plunked them down any which way. Either he had an artistic flair or he liked things done right.
“Is that okay?” He gestured toward the flowers.
“It’s perfect, but…”
“What?” Instant concern covered his face.
The look on his face seemed so familiar. She had to have seen it before. “I just wondered if you could drop the formality and just call me Beth.”
“The first name is important to you, isn’t it?” he said with a quick smile that deepened faint laugh lines around his eyes.
He hadn’t always been the serious guy Keith Crabtree had described. “I do like first names,” she said. “They seem more…friendly.”
“And you want to be friends?” he said, his eyes narrowed as if he didn’t quite believe it.
“Well, sure. And a friend would sit down for a minute.” She tapped her desktop. “Keith had our morning patients rescheduled. We aren’t seeing anyone until after lunch.”
He sat on the edge of her desktop, balancing himself with one hand, not crowding her space, but close enough that she noticed his tanned muscular arm. And the rest of him, too. Blue scrubs had never looked better on anybody, and she’d seen a lot of blue scrubs.
“Not all doctors are friendly with staff,” he said.
She couldn’t argue that. The older generation of physicians had their hierarchy of propriety, which some of her peer group still valued, but not her. “I think of us as a team—you, Mona, Vanessa and me.”
“Mona? Not Ms. Fitz?”
She bent her head, not wanting him to see her pleasure in winning one tiny battle. “She’s Mona…for now.”
“For the record,” he said, “that’s the first time I’ve seen anyone shut Mona down.”
“Really? I’m not usually known for my great assertiveness, but you’ve been around doctors. You know how we can pull out the sharp comment to get what we want, stat.”
He laughed, showing off those laugh lines again. “You just showed who was the boss. Mona’s not used to that.”
“I don’t really want to be ‘the boss.’ Like I said, we’re a team, and we’ll find a way to get along. Mona’s a fixture here, and she’s a first-rate nurse, or Keith Crabtree wouldn’t have kept her on all these years.”
Noah’s eyes drifted, exactly as a person’s might if he knew something more than he planned to share.
“Noah?” She wouldn’t let him get away with that. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He spoke slowly, as if he were choosing his words carefully. “Keith Crabtree was a very private person. I worked with him for two years and didn’t know what he did in his spare time…other than fish. I didn’t know what his wife was like, how long they’d been married before she died or anything about their baby.”
“What baby?”
“Exactly. On the credenza behind you, there was a picture of a baby who died from SIDS. I caught Mona holding the picture once, and I could tell the child was special to her—maybe because she was the baby’s godmother, or because she felt so bad for Keith. They worked together a long time.”
“I just knew Keith as my pediatrician and Mona as his nurse,” Beth said. “I don’t remember that he, his wife or Mona ever came to our family’s New Year’s Eve parties, though I’m sure they were invited. Everyone at the clinic is. I missed the party last year, being in New York, but I was there the year before. I don’t remember seeing you. Did I miss meeting you then?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Not a party person?”
“My wife was the party person, not me,” he said quietly. “She died the preceding October.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s