Page 3 of The Cajun Doctor

They expect us to eat? Now?

“And don’t be such sad sacks,” Aunt Mel added. “Things aren’t hopeless. Your mother and I are still going to Hawaii this summer.” They had been planning that two-week vacation for years. Icing on the cake was the fact that good ol’ Barry would be performing there at the same time for a few days.

Four months away, Daniel thought. Please, God, let her get a chance to wear that lei. Help her and I’ll lobby for Barry Manilow songs, rather than Muzak, in the hospital elevators . . . a penance for all my past sins . . . and any forthcoming ones, too.

Nine months later . . . prayers are answered, but not always the way we expect . . .

Daniel’s eyes burned, and he blinked back tears as he approached the little house on Arctic Lane.

His mother had died two days ago at the far-too-young age of fifty-three, after what had turned into a painful battle with cancer, despite several trips to the Mayo Clinic, and some experimental treatments outside the U.S. Cliché though it was, death had been a blessing. Didn’t make the loss any easier, though.

And now here he was, asking for another dose of heartache. He should have developed thicker skin by now, considering his specialty, but instead he felt like he was at the end of his rope. He had no business coming to this particular house over which the heavy cloud of hospice care hovered. His work as a pediatric oncologist had ended when Deke left the medical center last week, for good. In-home nurses had taken over.

The hospital lawyers would deem it unwise, from a legal standpoint, for a physician to involve himself personally with a patient. Especially off-premises.

Lawyers! They couldn’t know, or care, how close Daniel had gotten to the kid over these past nine months, even with all the time he’d taken off for his mother. There was just something about Deke that touched him, deeply.

He was dragging with him the most pitiful example of mankind. Jamie Lee Watson, once a promising Marine lifer, now a thirty-five-year-old thin-as-a-skeleton, nose-bleeding cocaine addict. Apparently, the man had seen things in Iraq that only drugs helped him forget. Daniel had found the whereabouts of Deke’s father last week, but it had taken him all that time, when he wasn’t at his mother’s bedside, trying to get the man halfway lucid, showered, and dressed in clean clothes. The new, barely improved Jamie Lee was not a happy camper.

“This is a train wreck about to happen,” Jamie Lee complained.

“Not if I can help it.”

“My kid . . .” His words trailed off as he choked up, fully aware of Deke’s rapidly deteriorating condition. “My kid doesn’t need a loser like me.”

“He needs you, all right.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re his father. Simple as that. He doesn’t care if you’re the President of the United States or a circus clown.”

“Bethany is gonna have a fit.”

“She’s the one who asked me to find you.”

Jamie Lee stared at him with the most incredible hope in his bleary eyes before he masked the emotion by rubbing his hands over his face, a face which Daniel had personally shaved for him, removing a year-old beard. Jamie Lee would have probably slit his own throat.

Before Daniel had a chance to knock, the door flew open and Bethany smiled . . . a smile that did not reach her bloodshot eyes. “You came.”

It wasn’t clear if she was referring to Daniel or her long-absent husband.

Daniel stepped aside and shoved Jamie Lee forward. “Go for it, buddy.”

“I am so sorry, Bethany,” Jamie Lee said. That apology covered a whole lot of ground, Daniel suspected.

She nodded, seemed to hesitate, then opened her arms to give Jamie Lee a comforting hug. Almost immediately, she stepped back, putting space between them.

“Deke’s been in and out of a coma for days, but he asks for his daddy when he wakes up.” She laughed, but there was no mirth, just an odd tone of near-hysteria.

With a squeeze to her shoulder, Jamie Lee walked into the dining room which had been converted into a sickroom with a hospital bed and medical equipment. The oxygen machine whooshed away while an obscene number of tubes ran from the child’s frail body, no attempt to hide his bald head under its usual baseball cap. A nurse moved away from the bed to give the stranger room. Daniel and Bethany stood in the open doorway, watching.

It was odd the things you noticed in times of crisis. Birds chirping outside the open window. A Disneyland souvenir glass on the sideboard. A framed photo showing a much younger Deke with his mother and a guy in a buzz cut and military uniform, all of them smiling.

“Hey, slugger,” Jamie Lee said, clearly uncertain what to do, where to put his hands. But then he leaned over and kissed his boy’s cheek. “That’s what I always called him. Slugger,” Jamie Lee nervously told Daniel.

Miraculously, considering his sedation, Deke’s eyes fluttered open. “Dad?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Jamie Lee choked out.