The Chance (Thunder Point #4)(58)

Justin gave a short, bitter laugh. “Not for too f**king long!” he barked.

“I give you my word, I’ll do everything I can to help DHS find you boys a place together. I know right now you think it’s the end of the world, but this can work out. You can’t take on any more.”

“Six months, that’s all I need! Six months and I’m eighteen and—”

“Just being eighteen doesn’t guarantee you’ll get parental custody of the boys.”

“There isn’t any other family,” Justin said. “It has to be me!”

“We’ve talked about this. I’m going to step outside and wait for the ambulance while you talk to your brothers. You have to stay calm now, son. Don’t get your mom upset with a lot of emotion. Remember what I told you—you’ll have a little time. This isn’t going to happen overnight.”

Scott Grant draped the stethoscope around his neck, picked up his bag and stepped past Eric and Al and outside. Eric and Al followed him.

“What the hell?” Eric said.

“Justin’s mother is sick,” Scott said. “She has MS. She’s had it for a long time and she’s not going to get better. She’s been virtually bedridden for over a year now.”

“And Justin takes care of her?” Eric asked.

“He takes care of her days and the younger boys keep an eye on her when Justin works, but there’s also home health care. There’s a visiting nurse who looks in on them regularly and I check on her all the time. Justin wants to do the right thing for the family but I think the strain of what this is doing to her sons is also showing on her.”

“He takes care of her days,” Eric said. It was not a question.

Scott nodded.

“He dropped out of school. I should’ve known.”

“He just wants to keep the family together, but I think his decision to do that was as hard on Sally as anything. I found him a laptop and we got the GED information downloaded, if he ever has time to concentrate. He wanted to make it to eighteen, gainfully employed, so he could take on the house and his brothers. So they could be together.”

Eric frowned and shook his head. “How’s he going to manage all that on a service station attendant’s salary?”

“The family gets help from the Department of Human Services. Food stamps, health care and supplemental income, that sort of thing. It’s not a lot but it keeps body and soul together. But DHS is going to want to take over, get those younger boys placed in foster care. I can stall for a while—Justin and his brothers have been running that house for a long time, they’re capable. If I don’t place Sally in a facility right away, and in fact I might not be able to—it’s all about available space—DHS will have to be patient. But they’ve been ready to pounce for a long time now.”

“Are you telling me that three young boys are able to stay on their own with an invalid in the house, but they can’t stay alone without all that responsibility and stress?” Al asked Scott.

“The invalid mother is not only over twenty-one with a sound mind and their biological parent, there is also a doctor and home health-care nurse on the scene regularly.”

“What about Justin?” Eric asked.

Scott shrugged. “They might give him six months of foster care, but at eighteen, that program closes for him.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?” Eric asked. “I asked him if his mother was sick and he said she was tough. I saw him buying groceries in Bandon and he said he’d taken a day off from school to take her to the doctor. He said she was in a wheelchair and I thought maybe an accident or... Why didn’t he tell me the situation?”

“For the same reason he uses his food stamps in Bandon, Eric. He doesn’t want anyone’s pity. He doesn’t even shop for food in town. He’s a proud, strong, devoted young man.”

Al was scowling. “Where’s their father?”

Scott shook his head. “I have no idea. Maybe Justin knows, but he’s pretty bitter about his dad leaving them when his mother was sick. I haven’t had any luck getting that information out of him. And I couldn’t tell you if finding the father would be good for the family or only make things worse.”

They chatted for a while longer and finally a county ambulance pulled up to the house followed by Mac in the sheriff’s department SUV.

“No lights or siren,” Eric observed.

“It’s medical transport not an emergency. If you call 911 you get the fire department’s rescue squad.”

“I heard Justin tell his brother to call 911.”

“He called me first—I got here fast. He didn’t need rescue. Sally was having trouble breathing but didn’t need resuscitation.”

Just as he said that a couple of ambulance EMTs with a gurney passed them on the way to the front door. “Hey, Doc,” one of them said.

“Hey,” he returned. “I’ll follow you to the hospital, get Sally admitted. She’s stable at the moment but she needs the oxygen. She’s recovering from pneumonia—a complication of her MS. She shouldn’t need an IV until we get her to the hospital.”

“Thanks. We’ll see you over there.”

Mac joined them. They all kind of stood around, saying nothing, until the EMTs emerged from the house with a woman still wearing the oxygen cannulas, sitting upright on the gurney.