The Chance (Thunder Point #4)(71)

“Wouldn’t your brother know?”

“Not necessarily. His specialty is children and what you have to know about specialists—they concentrate on that one thing. I’ve heard my dad say he barely knows what to do for a heart attack—not his part of the body. Of course he was being flip—he knows what to do, but he isn’t the right person to treat it. They all went to medical school, basic training, but then they studied in one area in residency and in that, learned how to refer patients. But...” She paused as she poured the wine. “But our paternal grandmother had Alzheimer’s. My dad was always so afraid of that. Going to the kitchen and forgetting what you were there for—that’s normal. Going to the kitchen and forgetting it’s a kitchen, that’s dementia. Forgetting names, that’s a natural thing for aging people. Forgetting what words like add and subtract mean and still not remembering them in five minutes—that can be dementia.” She took a sip. “This is a complete waste of good wine. I don’t think anything short of an injection is going to relax me right now.”

“Maybe you should just call Pax,” he suggested.

“I was in grade school when my grandmother started getting dangerous—running stop signs, forgetting the way home, leaving the stove burner on. And the final straw was when she went for a walk one night at about 1:00 a.m., barefoot and in her nightgown, in Boston, in January. That’s when she had to move in with us for a while and with two working doctors in the family, that was impossible. She was moved to a special facility. I thought it was pretty nice. Of course I was a kid. My dad was horrified. I remember him saying if that ever happened to him, he’d want to die. But my grandmother—she thought she was on the farm. What farm we never did figure out since she grew up in the city. But she was pretty passive. She stopped remembering who people were, but she talked a lot about the farm. Wonder what farm she was on?”

“Tell me what I can do,” he said.

She just shook her head. “I need a little computer time. I’m grounded in facts—I investigate for a living. Then I have to call my brother back. This is one of those times I have to wake him. I’m sorry, Eric. I know you didn’t sign on for this.”

“Laine, some things just come with the territory. We’ll work this out. Just tell me what you need.”

“Right now I need to think and talk to Pax.”

He gave her a brief kiss on the forehead. Then he went out onto the deck to check out the sky.

Sixteen

It had been a long night for Laine. She’d barely slept. She was listening for any disturbance from her father’s room. They hadn’t slept under the same roof since her mother had died so she was completely unaware of his after-dark habits. Was he going to be sun-downing, a common Alzheimer’s symptom of becoming active and agitated after dark?

Eric was concerned and offered to go open the station, leave everything in the hands of Manny or Norm and come right back to make sure she was all right on her own with her father, but she told him to go. The station was probably far less stressful. And she needed time alone with Senior.

Eric had the coffee on at 5:00 a.m. and she was sitting at her kitchen table by six, making a list for herself. There were questions for her dad and Pax, decisions about what to do next. She was definitely not sending him back to Boston alone.

Before she had many items on that list, Senior came into the kitchen. He was wearing last night’s clothing, of course. “I guess I didn’t get my bag inside last night. I couldn’t find my shaving kit.”

“Sit down. Let me get you a cup of coffee.” She got his coffee. She sat down at the table, too, waiting while he dressed it. It was impossible not to notice he was possessed of the very thing that always set her on edge, warned of a potential storm—his puffed-up chest, his lifted chin, his confidence. This morning it gave her some relief. But she knew it was going to be temporary. She pulled the pill pack out of her pocket and slid it toward him. It sat next to his coffee cup.

“How long have you known?” she asked. And his chin immediately lowered.

“I suspected not long after your mother died....”

“Oh, my God! Dad!”

“At first I thought it was grief. And I’ve had great success with medication, with vitamin therapy. In fact, I’ve wondered for years if maybe I had been wrong. It could’ve been the normal aging process. A little forgetfulness... Who doesn’t put the milk in the cupboard or the cereal in the refrigerator sometimes?”

“You self-diagnosed? You self-medicated?”

“It’s not as if I’m some amateur.... I’m capable of research.”

“You’ve been operating!”

“I’ve been reducing my O.R. schedule since your mother got sick. I haven’t been operating very often the past five years and never without an excellent team. There’s always a qualified surgeon scrubbed in with me. And my nurse—she could do it if she had to. Hell, she’s as good as I am any day.”

“But now you’re done! You’re absolutely done!”

“Laine! I have managed this for five—”

She reached over and touched his hand but she spoke with a low and threatening voice. “Don’t even start with me. I’ve talked to Pax. The past six months to a year there were issues. We didn’t put two and two together, but now we know. You had a flood at the house and we thought it was an accident, but it wasn’t—the water was left running. You left a patient on the table and went to the golf course. You were a no-show in San Francisco and they’re still trying to reach you to find out what happened but you haven’t called them back because you don’t know what happened. You have to write yourself notes and set your phone alarm to take medicine. You know what’s going on and you need a neurologist.”