Echoes of the Heart, Casey, L.A. [reader novel .txt] 📗

experienced what I felt was my stepfather, Michael O’Rourke. He and my mum married three months after her diagnosis and while I called him by his first name now, he was, in many ways, my dad. I bonded with him during a very dark and lonely time in my life and I knew with great certainty that I wouldn’t have been able to get through the past nine years without him by my side.

“Frankie?”

I looked up and smiled, the very man I was thinking of called out my name but as I neared him, I saw the look of concern on his face and felt my stomach flip. I removed my earphones, and tucked them and my iPhone into my bag as I approached Michael.

“What’s wrong?”

He placed his hand on my shoulder when I came to a stop before him.

“Bad day,” was his response.

My shoulders slumped. So much for manifesting my good day into reality.

“Crap,” I pushed hair out of my face. “What happened?”

“She got violent with a nurse earlier. Luckily she didn’t injure the woman.”

I felt my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.

“Violent?” I was astounded. “Mum was violent?”

“I know, honey. She’s the sweetest lady we know, but ye know how this disease progresses. Things about the person change with time, she’s reactin’ differently the past two days. She’s angrier, more prone to snappin’ and cursin’ at the nurses.”

I lifted my hand to my neck and rubbed.

“How is she now?”

“Sleepin’,” Michael answered. “She was very agitated when I got here at nine, but she’s just fallen asleep not too long ago. She was given a sedative to help her relax.”

I nodded. “How is her chest?”

“Still the same, I was hopin’ it would have cleared a little, but nothin’ has changed.”

We went inside Mum’s room and sat on either side of her bed. She was a heavy sleeper, even more so when she was sedated, so we didn’t have to worry about every little sound waking her up. While Michael went to fill her pitcher up with fresh water, I adjusted her blanket around her body and tucked it back into place. My eyes moved to her face and my heart hurt. She was fifty-five years of age, but she looked like she could have been in her late sixties. Her disease had taken its toll on not only her mind, but her body too.

I sat down just as Michael re-entered the room.

We celebrated his sixtieth birthday last week and the week before that we celebrated his partial retirement. He didn’t have his usual lengthy client list at the doctor’s surgery he owned, he filtered those patients to two new doctors he had recently hired. He only went into work on days when things were very busy and, luckily for him, those days were few. This meant he got to spend a great deal of time taking care of my mum, which put my mind at ease for the times when I could not be there.

“Was she bathed today?” I asked Michael. “It doesn’t look like her hair has been washed.”

“She was going to be but that’s when the episode happened with the nurses,” he explained. “They’ll try again later, she’s much more mellow in the evenings and lets them take care of her without much of a fuss.”

I was about to speak when my phone rang from inside of my bag. I hurriedly took it out, saw the call was from my boss, Joe, and sighed before I answered it.

“Hi, Joe.”

“Kid, I’m sorry to call you on your day off, but is there any way you could come in and help us? Tiffany finishes at lunch to go and take her kid to the dentist, Deena is here but I don’t know what’s going on, we have more people in for lunch than she can handle.”

I lifted my hand to the bridge of my nose.

“The twins aren’t around?”

“Their phones are off.”

Typical.

“Okay,” I relented. “I’ll be there in thirty, forty minutes at most. I’m visiting Mum.”

“I’m sorry, kid. I wouldn’t call if I had someone else to cover the shift.”

“Don’t worry about it, Joe. See you soon.”

I hung up and looked at Michael.

“Joe’s run off his feet at the diner, he needs another waitress.”

“Go,” Michael said. “She’ll be sleepin’ for a couple of hours yet.”

I nodded, leaned over and kissed Mum’s cheek, then rounded the bed and did the same to Michael. “I’ll call you later. Love you.”

“Love you to, little.”

I smiled as I left the room.

I spent the next thirty-five minutes rushing home so I could change into my uniform and get into work as soon as I could. When I showed up at the diner, Joe wasn’t lying. The place was packed with people. I didn’t have a chance to properly greet Deena, or Joe, as I jumped straight into taking orders, serving orders, then making milkshakes and desserts for those who requested them. Hours ticked by until the storm of customers had died down enough so Deena could clock off early to pick up her kids from her parents and visit her husband who’d had foot surgery the day before. It was near closing time by the time I felt like I could think straight.

“Frankie, order’s up!”

I sat back on my heels, placed my hands on my hips and, with a tired puff of air, I blew strands of auburn hair that had escaped my hair tie out of my face. I wasn’t sure what ached worse, my feet or my back. I grabbed the bucket beside me and tossed the rags I’d been using to clean the base of one of the corner booths into it. Not too long ago, some kid had been running with a chocolate milkshake in his hands and when he tripped the shake went everywhere.

I had been the sorry sucker charged with cleaning it up.

I stood up and softly groaned when my back clicked in protest. I rubbed the base of my spine before I grabbed the bucket and