One More Dance by Roxanne Rustand (best ebook reader for pc txt) 📗

Kate watched through the window of the waiting room as a nurse walked to the far end where Jared lay, pulled back the white curtain and hovered over his bed to check his IV lines.

She adjusted his pillow and checked the heavy bandaged dressing on his head, then rejoined the other two nurses who were working at the computers in the central nursing station. Illuminated by the blue glow of their computer screens and the banks of monitors relaying every breath, every heartbeat of their patients, they seemed totally efficient and impersonal, until one of them turned to the others and said something to make them laugh.

It was comforting, seeing human emotion break free amidst the tension of this place. Perhaps it was just that this was a quiet night. Only two patients, with the other four curtained bays empty, prepped and waiting for the next critical care situation.

Who knew when that might happen? A twist of fate—one wrong step—a millisecond of hesitation...

If Jared had left his office a second sooner, would he be here, fighting for his life? Or would he be sleeping soundly at home?

The chaplain arrived, spoke quietly to the nurses and moved to the patient in the bay next to Jared’s, communion tray in hand.

Kate had to look away from that intimate moment of faith, the preparation for a final journey home.

The chaplain had already been to see Jared, and it gave her a somber sense of peace, but even now she wanted to defy the rules and stride to his bedside. Urge him to fight for his life...to open his eyes and see how much his family still needed him. You can’t leave us, sweetheart...not now. Not with so many years left.

But she’d had the last visit, and in thirteen minutes Sylvia would have her own turn to sit with him for those five precious minutes every hour. And Kate would have to wait—she looked at her watch—until 6:05 a.m.

Seventy-eight minutes to pray that no alarms would go off. That the nurses wouldn’t need to rush to Jared’s side and sound a code blue.

Seventy-eight minutes to hope and pray that he would still be here on earth at the end of them.

Sylvia sat behind her in a leather chair, stiffly erect after all this time. She’d declined the offer of a pillow and blanket, choosing to sit silently by herself, lost in her own thoughts.

Did she ever have any regrets over the things she’d said and done? Her cold rejection of Kate these many years?

Kate turned to offer her a cup of coffee from the fresh pot brewing at the back of the lounge. Sylvia’s eyes had finally closed, her head lolling slightly to one side, though she still held her old-fashioned handbag firmly in her lap with both hands.

You need your rest whether you’ll admit it or not, Kate thought, with a rush of compassion. It’s been a long, hard night for all of us.

OLD BONES AND HOSPITAL chairs were a combination surely devised by the devil himself.

Sylvia stirred, winced at the pain shooting through her bad hip and forced herself to ignore it.

Mind over matter. Weak people whined and complained and expected people to fawn. She didn’t need that. Wouldn’t accept it.

Everything was a choice in this life.

A choice to live, a choice to wither and die.

A choice to let anger and bitterness corrode the soul or to let past wrongs drift away like refuse on a cold, dark sea. She’d been letting it all drift lately...and the sea surrounding her was toxic with it. All the wrongs that had been done to her over the years suffocating her.

She’d held on to her anger and resentment like a lifeline, meting out judgment and punishment with stony silence. She’d felt self-righteous in her solitude.

But now her only son...her estranged only son...lay on a hospital bed, quite possibly dying, and there was no way she could make things right. The weight of her guilt settled around her heart like an iron fist, threatening to crush it.

She sucked in a sharp breath as another pain shot through her and sent dizzying stars spinning through her head. The bum hip, or was it somewhere...higher?

A wave of cold sweat and nausea rolled through her and she clenched the arms of the chair, willing it to recede. She had no time for this.

It was her son that mattered now. Only her son.

She would hang on and make sure he didn’t give up. She didn’t tolerate quitters. She had the strength, the iron will, to make sure he didn’t let go. Not like Ellsworth, who’d so easily given up.

She gritted her teeth until her jaw ached, and fixed her eyes on the clock.

Three minutes to go and then she could march to Jared’s bedside and will him to fight for his life.

He wouldn’t dare defy her.

She wasn’t weak, not like the woman he’d rebelliously taken for his wife. Sylvia’s old anger and disappointment threatened to surface but she held it at bay. Kate meant nothing. It was Jared who mattered now. He needed her.

And this time, she wouldn’t fail him.

THE PAST

Sylvia adjusted her smart little hat and took another close look at her lipstick in the entryway mirror of her home. There would be many old friends at the country club this afternoon, all there in celebration of Jared’s engagement to the youngest Hastings girl.

Sheila was a prime catch, with her boarding school education and her recent graduation from Northwestern. Her new position as assistant buyer for her father’s chain of upscale department stores was icing on the proverbial cake.

What could be better than an alliance such as this?

Smiling at herself in the mirror, Sylvia straightened her pearls, then glanced back into the cavernous front hall and breathed a sigh of pure relief.

The past few years had been a desperate struggle to keep the place going. Taxes and repairs and the abominable groundskeeper who charged far too much had drained her investments, but keeping