Vengeful Seduction

Kaye

Kaye

Morning dew covered the rose bushes that grew along the sidewalk. With a skip in my step, I tried my best to break the melancholy mood that struck me most mornings I went to work.

It always made me just a little bit sad to go to work.

Not because of the patients. I knew I was one of the rare people who didn’t mind working with people who needed Hospice care. Most of the other nurses did it, and did it well because it was their job, but there was always this air of resentment. Hopefully not around the patients, but around each other.

It’s never easy to know every single one of your patients will die under your care. Terminal diseases would take them all, no matter how well you cared for them. It took a particular kind of person to withstand all that comes with facing death head on and helping others accept their fate.

For me, though, I found it fascinating to interact with people in their last days. Not only did I get a chance to help them, to ease their pain and suffering, but I got to hear the stories these people had in their heads. The times they’d lived through, all of the things they’d said and done, it was all there. With just a little bit of patience, these human beings had the most interesting things to say, and insights to give from another time.

Theodore Black, however, had become my favorite patient. By far. It was sort of funny, but I could still remember how terrified I had been to meet him, since he was something of a local legend. He was the epitome of the local boy who succeeded in spite of everything that was stacked against him.

He’d ended up being nothing but a teddy bear. An old, almost deaf teddy bear, to be sure, but one without a mean bone in his body. A sweet, gruff old man who had won my heart almost immediately.

So it wasn’t him. He wasn’t the reason I’d been sad to come to work. Or not the whole reason. I was sad that I was going to lose him, but I knew I’d be richer for having known him.

The reason I was sad was that, in all of the time I’d been going to see Theodore—as he had insisted I call him—I had never, not once, seen anyone with him who wasn’t a health care professional. No friends, not even any family.

This man was the richest person I knew, but that certainly hadn’t made him happy. And that was what really depressed me, made me almost sick to my stomach when I thought about it.

No one should have to die alone, and if I were the only person who could be with him in the end, then I would be. Months ago, I’d made the request to be transferred full time to Theodore, and I had never been given cause to regret it.

“Kaye?”

Theodore had been in a particularly sour mood when I first became his nurse, and it hadn’t taken me long to figure out he mostly wanted to be left alone. Upon entering his home, I often stayed quiet, unobtrusive, until he called for me. To find him calling for me as soon as I walked in was a novelty.

The cancer inside him was eating him alive, and he had become too weak to do most things for himself. Once such a strong man, then cancer had turned him into an invalid who had to be diapered, spoon-fed baby food, and bathed by his caretakers. I blinked at the thought, trying to push back my tears.

The last thing a nurse should do was cry for their patients. Not in front of them, anyway. Though I knew when the inevitable happened, I would cry plenty. I had been doing this since I was twenty-two. Four years ago I started my career as a nurse for Hospice Care. During that time, I had seen far too many incredible people die.

Theodore was something else, though. I knew his death would be even worse than any of the others I’d nursed until they passed. But I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of giving him the best possible care. So I pasted a smile on my face and bustled into the room.

“Hello, Theodore! Are you hungry?” I didn’t really expect the answer to be yes, though I was hoping it would be. In the year I’d been nursing him in his home, he’d never been a huge eater, but it had gotten to the point where he was eating almost nothing.

He looked at me, his dark eyes seeming to burn as they ran me over from head to toe. He was taking my measure, I knew, and I looked at him right back, wanting to seem like I was the sort of person he could trust.

“Kaye,” he repeated my name, and I fought the urge to bite my lip. He clearly wanted to know if he could count on me, and I didn’t want to show any sign of indecision.

“I’m here, Theodore,” I murmured, letting my voice become a soothing balm. “What is it? What can I do to help?”

For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to do it. That his old habits of secrecy would go with him to the grave. I knew who he was. A big deal businessman who had made a fortune and who had had two different wives try to take that fortune from him. I knew that only because it was pretty much common knowledge in Portland, though, not because he had ever spoken such things to me himself.

He had never spoken much about his past. The things I did know mostly came second hand.

His eyes had once been blue, from the photos I’d seen around his opulent home. They’d turned to such a pale color in his old age. Those pale eyes drooped at the outer edges. His lips quivered with the energy it took just for him to speak. “I need you to do something for me.”

I kept my smile firmly in place. I didn’t let it widen, no matter how much I wanted to. He’d finally asked for a favor. Before now, he wouldn’t let himself be vulnerable like that.

“Anything.” I couldn’t think of a single thing he would ask for that I wouldn’t be willing to give him.

One hand pulled up from his side. A long, bone thin finger pointed across the room. I followed the direction and saw he was gesturing to the landline telephone that sat on the dresser. “I need you to dial a number for me.”

My eyebrows wanted to rise, but I kept them schooled carefully. This was a big deal. He’d never asked me to make a phone call before, but I couldn’t act like it was strange, or it could alienate him.

Though a knot had formed in my throat as emotion threatened to take me over, I managed a smooth tone. “Of course.”

Just treat it as routine.

When I went to the phone, I found it had a very long cord. I took it over to sit by his bed. It was one of those old kinds, with the curled cord that always ended up tangled. Picking it up, I half listened to the dial tone. I stayed silent, somehow sensing that, whatever happened, it was going to be a big deal. I was going to find out something about this man’s life, and I didn’t want to do anything to derail it. I didn’t want him to change his mind about letting me help him this little bit he was finally allowing.

I waited. The silence stretched on, and I turned my gaze toward Theodore. He didn’t look back at me, apparently too fixated on his own wasted hands resting on his comforter, which was far thicker than most people would need with the heat of the summer lingering on into September. He was always cold, though.

Gently, I dropped the phone back into the cradle, and he turned his eyes on me. “What are you doing? I need you to call someone.”

He had always been courteous to me, even when he was in massive pain from the cancer that was eating at him. The fact that he wasn’t now meant this was even more serious than I’d thought.

All in a rush, the digits of the phone number burst out of him. “Five, five, five, six, three, one, twenty-four hundred.”

It might actually have been one of the more courageous things I had ever seen, watching this scared, sick old man trust me enough to share his life with me. It wasn’t something he’d done much of in his life, I knew that very well.

It was a good thing I had been paying attention. I was able to pick the phone up again and dial the numbers before I forgot them all. Breathless, I handed the phone to him and then tried to give him some space. I tried to act as if I wasn’t eavesdropping, though to be honest, I totally was.

Theodore didn’t ask me to leave, though, and that meant a lot to me, too. It was all more trust than I thought I deserved, but I couldn’t help but be deeply honored by the whole thing.

I could hear the phone as he clasped it in his shaking hand. I heard it ring, once, twice, a third time, and then the line abruptly went to voicemail. I heard a strong, confident, deeply masculine voice pick up, but there was a canned quality to it that let me know it was a recording.

I couldn’t hear the exact words, but I could tell from Theodore’s expression—too carefully neutral to be anything but artificial—that he was deeply hurt.

His hand shook as he placed the phone back into the cradle. “He never answers.” No one who wasn’t looking right into his eyes would be able to tell how much this had hurt him.

“Who?” I dared to ask. It was rude, and I was probably pushing the bonds of our friendship just a little bit too much. But there was no way I could keep that one word to myself. It was more than I had in me.

Maybe he’d been waiting for me to ask, though. He certainly showed no signs of hesitation in answering me. “My grandson. My only grandson.” His voice did a strange thing. It didn’t quite break, he was too strong for that, but it dipped down a little lower. Subtle. Not the sort of thing that I would have noticed if I hadn’t been paying strict attention.

My heart clenched in my chest, and I had this sudden feeling like I’d been drenched with ice water. Not on the outside, though. On the inside, so that it froze me more surely and deeply. My heart broke for this poor, strong man, so alone and still so brave.

I started to dislike this grandson immediately. I didn’t know what had happened between them, and I didn’t really care, honestly. Nothing could excuse this man, whoever he was, from ignoring his dying grandfather.

I had to do something to curtail the hurt the poor man was enduring. “Maybe he just wasn’t home.” I had to try to cheer the poor guy up but also wanted to be fair to this grandson. I didn’t know the man, after all. I was tempted to judge him, but what did I know?

“That’s his cell phone. He never answers it.” Theodore let out a soft sigh, one I was sure I wasn’t supposed to hear. “Not for me, anyway.”

Just like that, the dislike was back. Or something like dislike, anyway. The situation must be pretty grim when a man could ignore his grandfather like this. I couldn’t even imagine doing such a thing.

“I’ve tried calling so many times,” he murmured, his voice even smaller than it had been before. There was a brief moment of silence between us, and when he spoke again, his voice was stronger.

“I’d like some water, Kaye, if you don’t mind,” he said, and I smiled a little though my heart was breaking for the man. He was always so polite, even though he didn’t have to be. A bit cold and remote, but always a gentleman.

“Of course,” I kept my voice as cheerful as I could as I went off to get him his water.

Damn that grandson of his. The fool better wake up and smell the coffee.

He was Theodore’s only heir. Theodore might decide to leave it all to charities or something if his grandson didn’t eventually contact him.

Seeing as how the man never saw fit to make a visit to his dying grandfather, maybe the riches should go to charity. At least then, the money would be appreciated.