False Hope

Chapter 7: "You've got yourself a cowboy!"

Lily parked her truck in the employee's parking lot when she arrived at the hospital. After a brief breakfast with Daniel and Tami, she excused herself and began to get ready for work. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck and she was wearing bootcut blue jeans with a plain pink T-shirt. On her feet were white sneakers with the Nike check mark on the sides of them.

After she had applied a bit of mascara and foundation to her face, she decided she was ready and grabbed her handbag with her wallet and headed downstairs to find Daniel and Tami still eating breakfast. The look that crossed Daniel's face when he had seen her made her blush. He had looked at her like she had contained all the oxygen in the world and he needed to kiss her to live off of it. She remembered feeling color rise to her cheeks and seeing Tami looking at Daniel for fear that he might really kiss Lily right then and there. Embarrassed, Lily had turned away and headed outside to leave wondering what kind of conflict she left behind between Daniel and Tami.

Looking in her rearview mirror, she brushed a few flyaways from her face and grabbed her handbag from the passenger seat. She hopped out of her truck, locked the door with her keyfob, and headed inside to be met by her favorite nurse.

Lucinda Ryrie was a short stout woman with a hearty laugh and demanding temper. She'd wanted to be a nurse since she was in 2nd grade. Nearing her sixties Lucinda had three children all out of the house. Two were out of college, one of them, her oldest son, was married and in a matter of months a bouncing baby boy had been born into Lucinda's family. The other boy, a tall, fair haired "wastrel", as Lucinda called him, worked at a plant at least twenty-five miles north of where Lily lived and spent his time drinking away his money. Lucinda's oldest, a dark haired nymph with plenty of suitors, graduated high school at sixteen and at eighteen graduated college. She was a dietician in Salt Lake City now.

Lucinda was happily married and had been for thirty-five years. Her husband, Dave, was a milk truck driver with a big round belly and great sense of humor. At times, Lucinda could be so serious, Dave was good for her that way. Lucinda hardly laughed, she often smiled and teased. The only time Lily had really seen Lucinda laugh was when a patient, who had been laying on his stomach, farted in the doctor's face when he was operating on the patient's lower back. After that, Lucinda wouldn't stop talking about it, and she still laughed whenever the subject came up.

"What's got you grinning up a storm?" Lucinda said when Lily walked in through the sliding doors. Lucinda had been filling out a piece of paperwork on a clipboard by the receptionists' desk when Lily walked in.

"What?" Lily asked completely caught off guard as she signed in on a piece of paper one of the receptionists pulled out for her. Since when had she been grinning?

Lucinda gave her a smirk that said I think you know what. "Kat," Lucinda said beckoning a receptionist from behind the desk, "what would you say she looks like?"

Kat, Katherine, looked up at the sound of her name. She was a skinny woman in her forties with a pixie haircut of dark chestnut hair. She turned her head to look at Lily. Who Lucinda was gesturing at with her hand. "Like she's in love," Kat said after Lily had shot her a look that said Don't say anything.

Lucinda smiled in approval, "Well Lily, don't leave us hanging. Who is it?" Lily could feel herself turning bright pink. She wasn't in love with Daniel! Wait a second, what made her think it was Daniel who she was in love with? What was going on with her head? Did she have dementia? What other brain diseases were there? Did she have a stroke that morning that she didn't know about?

"I'm just not going to talk to you right now and—"

"A cowboy! You've got yourself a cowboy!" Lucinda announced basically to the world.