LITMIR.BIZ

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He hadn’t seen real joy in his mother in over five years, long before his brother’s unexpected death. He remembered the lightness in her laughter and happiness on her face when his father would come home and dance her to her seat at the dinner table every night. He’d even witnessed the same dance, the steps slower and more cautious, when he’d returned home from college, months before cancer stole his father and dimmed his mother’s light. Still there’d been moments after the grief had settled and the memories no longer stung. Then came Trent, when love had proved to be a poor antidote to his brother’s inner turmoil and anguish and nothing had slowed his downward spiral. Then not even Wyatt could reignite any sort of happiness in his mother.

      He cracked his knuckles. The pop realigned his bones and his focus. He hadn’t slammed the door to Mia’s room, but he could slam the door on memory lane and lock it.

      Besides, he needed his mother to concentrate on her recovery and talk about her living situation after room 326 on the transitional care floor at Bay Water Medical. After her discharge, all of his mother’s love could return to her flowers. He only cared that she was safe when she left the hospital. That was his duty as her son. He had her love as a child, that was enough. Something scraped across his insides like a dull razor, leaving deep gouges in its wake. He rubbed his chest and discarded the phantom ache. “Your neighbor in the Craftsman brought over his cactus last night. It’s dead.”

      “You didn’t tell Samuel that, I hope.”

      “I suggested that he drop it in the recycle bin on his way back home,” Wyatt said.

      “I raised you with better manners than that.”

      He smiled. He did consider dropping the pathetic plant in the recycle bin himself on his way to work. Even a tempered truth had less cruelty than false hope.

      His mother eyed him. “Where’s the cactus?”

      “Sitting beside the other neighborhood plants begging for resuscitation and prompt care.” His mother had a plant-based ER in her nursery. The neighbors and her so-called friends were obviously taking advantage of his mom’s green thumb skills. Her greenhouse wasn’t the local garden center at the hardware store or inside one of the city’s impressive parks with multiple staff to attend to it. She was one person, living alone, among her plants. In his opinion, her garden and greenhouse had gotten more than a bit out of control. She needed to say no more often.

      “What kind of cactus is it?”

      “The cactus kind.” Wyatt dropped his keys and cell phone on the window ledge and crossed his arms over his chest.

      “Really, Wyatt. If you asked for details about a gunshot victim downstairs, you’d hardly accept bullet wound as an appropriate response.”

      Bullet wounds and his patients were not even in the same stratosphere as a dying cactus. Especially a cactus that could be replaced with a trip to the local home improvement store and a five-minute walk through the garden center. Wyatt sighed, picked up his mother’s tablet and searched cactus images on the internet. “Maybe this one, if its shoots weren’t all shriveled up.”

      “Ask Samuel if this is his great-grandmother’s Christmas cactus that he told me about,” she said.

      “If you get on email, you could ask him yourself,” Wyatt suggested.

      His mother waved her hand. “This is quite personal. You don’t talk to your patients’ family members through email when they come into the ER.”

      He wasn’t adverse to the suggestion, especially given some of the family members who’d confronted him in the past few months. But again, plants and patients hardly belonged in the same sentence. “It’s a cactus.” Wyatt stressed the word because it needed repeating. A replaceable cactus.

      “Yes, but it’s been in his family since his great-grandmother settled in the city. The plant has deep, meaningful roots.”

      He once had meaningful roots in the city, too. But that was the problem with roots—when they died, it hurt all the more. At least the neighbor needed to grieve only the loss of a plant, not his family. What was wrong with him? He blamed Mia Fiore for stirring up the unnecessary emotional pot inside him. “Tell me what to do with Granny’s cactus.”

      “Bring me a stem.” Helen powered off her notepad. “In the meantime, look for the cactus food. It’s on the third shelf to the left of the door of the greenhouse.”

      In the meantime, he’d be working in the ER, looking for nitroglycerin to treat chest pain and injecting alteplase to dissolve blood clots in the brain or giving morphine to decrease crippling kidney stones. “That’s the only neighborhood plant SOS from yesterday.” Wyatt injected lightness into his tone. Still, his mother looked crestfallen at the news, as if rescuing neighborhood plants gave her a reason to live. “Mom, we need to discuss...”

      “Discuss these applications for the foundation,” she finished for him and pulled out a stack of papers from the drawer in her bedside table.

      His level of frustration soared. Two months ago, before her fall, his mom had decided to give away the family money to local charities through her newly formed foundation. They’d already talked about that. Right now, they had to discuss assisted care and her living arrangements after her discharge. Once he knew she was safe, he could return to Africa and the medical aid program he’d started there. The one that depended on his return to expand into more remote locations. “You were going to cancel the ad and put the foundation on hold for now.”

      “You decided that, but I decided differently.” The warning rapped through her voice like marbles striking a tile floor.

      She’d approached helping Trent the very same way, agreeing to Wyatt’s suggestions but then doing exactly what she’d wanted, and look how badly that had turned out. If his mom had only accepted his brother’s addictions and risked revealing the truth of Trent’s condition to friends and family by admitting his brother to an in-patient rehab center, Trent might be alive today. Wyatt straightened, met her gaze and smoothed the boyish plea, as if he was six again and wanted a puppy, out of his voice. “But we already talked about this.”

      “No, you told me that I’d be stopping the foundation funding like you instruct your patients on medicine and follow-up appointments. I doubt you use such an overbearing tone with them.” She smoothed the clear tape over her IV line port. “But I’ve reasons, good ones, for continuing to disperse funds from the foundation.”

      Doing it because he didn’t want her to was not a good reason. Nor was her insistence that her days were limited. Her days hadn’t been limited since they’d cleared the infection from her femur bone and replaced her hip for the second time. “These applicants need to be vetted. You don’t even know if they’re real organizations or not.” He swiped the first application from the pile and scanned the messy handwritten form from Project Save the Leprechauns. “It’s nothing more than a mad money grab.”

      “There’s nothing mad about it.” She patted her hair into place as if her perfectly set updo would keep all the dissenters at bay. “I wish to see the family money put to good use while I’m still alive. It isn’t as if you need it. You can go through the applicants and I can write the checks.”

      Wyatt dropped his chin to his chest and jammed both hands into his hair. That stack contained at least a hundred more pages. He had real work: patients to care for and conference calls to attend with his partners overseas. “You want me to go through all of these?”

      “Yes. I need to concentrate on my therapy.” She pulled her robe tighter across her chest. “I don’t want to disappoint the charities that are relying on my money to keep up their good work.”

      “Yes, I’m sure Project Rescue the Dust Bunny is impacting the needy in the city with its wonderful deeds.” He crumpled the second application from the pile in his fist. One vetted, only ninety-nine to go.

      “I promised to help fund local charities in my ad, and I’ll keep my word. I only need the best twenty from that pile.”

      She

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