After the Storm (Chambers of the Heart Book 3) Page 2

  “Maybe so but romance is alive and kicking. Even if you don’t believe in it.” Wendy took a sip of coffee.

  “Oh, I believe in it, alright. It’s what the movie industry banks on when they make their movies.” She peered over the top of her cup to Wendy as she waited for her reaction. “They make a killing on women like you.”

  Wendy cut her eyes at Gentry with a glare in them. “Bah humbug, you romantic scrooge, you.” She turned her focus back to Sam’s table. “I’m sure those movie makers would love her. Wouldn’t you kill to look like that?” Her eyes widened. “I mean…not that you’re not cute.”

  Gentry smiled. “Uh huh.”

  “I just mean, look at her. She’s so pretty. Like she spent hours looking that good but she probably woke up, rolled out of bed, put on those ripped-up jeans and boom, look at how gorgeous I am.”

  They both stared at Sam.

  Wendy took in a deep breath. “And did you see her lips? Good God what I wouldn’t do for lips like that. It’s not fair, I tell you.”

  Gentry noticed Sam’s lips right away when she had looked up at her. She thought it ironic that she was wearing a Rolling Stones shirt with a picture of big plump lips on it. She could’ve been a model for that image.

  “And Momma said she was driving some fancy Mercedes. Looks to kill and has money. Color me jealous, fo’ sho’.”

  “She’s staying here?”

  “Yep. She’s in building two.”

  “You two gonna keep on gabbing all day or what?” Lou said through the window of the kitchen. “We’ve got paying customers out there.” Lou’s voice was gruff even when he wasn’t fussing.

  “There’s only that woman and Jeter with his old farts club over there,” Wendy said. “Daddy, if I have to hear one more time how it was in their day, I think I’m going to throw up and then pour coffee all over them.”

  “They are paying, ain’t they?” He laid a plate of freshly made pancakes and sausage on the windowsill. “This is for table four.”

  Gentry reached for the plate and then grabbed a bottle of warmed syrup. “I’ve got it, Lou. Wendy’s still on break. I’ll take this and then check on Jeter’s boys.”

  Wendy stuck her tongue out at Lou which made him laugh. “You two are gonna be the end of me.”

  Wendy laughed, rolled a piece of gum into her mouth, and picked up her magazine. “Love you, Daddy.”

  “Love you too, sugar pie,” Lou said as he cracked an egg onto the griddle.

  “Here you go. Pancakes and sausage.” Gentry placed the plate in front of Sam. “Here’s some warmed syrup if you like.”

  Sam reached for the syrup and began to pour a healthy amount over the stack of pancakes. “Thanks.”

  Gentry smiled but decided not to joke with her again about her apparent affinity for sugar. “Weren’t you in here yesterday morning?”

  Sam looked around the diner as if noticing it for the very first time. She looked over at the counter, at the group of men sitting across the room, and then back at Gentry. Immediately, she noticed the green of her eyes from below her straight, black bangs which were cut just above her eyebrows. Why the hell do they have to be green? “Yeah, I was.”

  “My co-worker over there,” Gentry pointed over her shoulder to Wendy, “thinks you’re some kind of runaway bride and Richard Gere is going to come bursting through that door to win you back.”

  Sam peered around Gentry to see Wendy leaning on the counter on her elbows, watching them with great interest. “Why does she think that?”

  “She said you had some little white box with you yesterday. She thought maybe it was an engagement ring. And well, this morning she doesn’t see it.”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “You’re not much of a talker, are you?” Gentry cringed at the words she had just said. She was actually caught off guard with the fact she had actually said them. She had heard the same phrase directed at her time and time again, each of which irritated the shit out of her. Why it was a requirement to have to explain to someone why she didn’t feel like answering their persistent questioning was unknown to her. She immediately regretted asking it.

  “Not much.” Sam picked up her fork.

  “Okay, so hey, you don’t know me at all. And I don’t know you. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I just got into your business. I swear in this place,” Gentry raised her arm in the air, “I’m the last person I would’ve thought would have.”

  Sam raised her head to acknowledge she had heard her but she gave no response back.

  “Alrighty then. Enjoy your breakfast. Wendy should be off break any minute.”

  Sam watched the woman walk away. She hadn’t meant to be so rude. She just wasn’t in the mood to talk. It seemed like it took forever to stop crying this morning when she woke up and she sure as hell didn’t want to open up the waterworks here in front of strangers. Sam picked at her pancakes to realize she suddenly wasn’t hungry at all. The thought of taking a bite made her stomach turn. She laid a twenty and a ten on the table and quickly left the diner.

  “What did you say to her?” Wendy asked.

  “Nothing,” Gentry said as she turned around to see Sam leaving. “Well, nearly nothing.”

  “You could’ve fooled me. She ran out of here like she was on fire.”

  “It’s all your fault.”

  “My fault?” Wendy pointed at her chest. “How is it my fault?”

  “Yes. You and your cockamamie, hairbrained idea about romance and little white boxes.” Gentry briskly rubbed at the counter with a dishtowel. “It’s your fault I asked her about that stupid box.”

  “Did she tell you? Does she still have it?”

  “I have no idea. She didn’t answer. Why don’t you chase her down in the parking lot and ask her?”

  Wendy was completely oblivious to the anger-filled frustration of Gentry. Her eyes brightened. “Oooooh, there’s a story there.” She stood up and down on tiptoes like a kid waiting for a piece of candy. “I just know there’s a story there.”

  Gentry didn’t agree to much of what Wendy expressed, but this she did. Deep down, she believed everyone had a story. Yet some stories are meant to be the owners and no one else’s. Not everyone felt the need to share them. If she did see the blonde again, she would make it her business to let her keep hers private.

  Chapter 3

  “Is she still not talking to me?” Sam asked Jazlyn when she answered the phone instead of Violet.

  “No. She is. In fact, she asked me to grab it because she didn’t want you to think she was ignoring your call. She is just now getting home from a night of call and went upstairs to change,” Jazlyn said in her raspy voice. Sam had always thought herself to have what people defined as a raspy voice—that is until she met Jazlyn and realized the true definition.

  “Good to hear because I don’t think I could take it right now if she was still mad at me.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, sister. She’s still pretty pissed but her eruptions have slowed a little. My girl has quite the sonic flares with her temper.”

  Sam sighed as she stretched across the foot of the bed and looked up at the ceiling of her motel room. “I can’t stand when she’s mad at me, Jaz.” She followed the line of small cracks in its ceiling. They were old with evidence of at least two coats of paint covering them.

  “Oh hell, honey. She’s not mad at you. She’s mad at the world that took you away from her. The biggest part is she’s hurting because you’re hurting and because she misses you. It’s a lot easier for her to be pissed than to feel hurt. She’s not sure how to handle the hurt. Being pissed off? She knows exactly how to feel that emotion. But right now, you don’t need to worry about what Vi is feeling or not feeling. You need to focus on healing you. Are you doing that?”

  Sam looked over at the maps strewn across the small, circular tabl
e with two chairs. She caught a scent of the age of the motel room. It’s not that the room wasn’t clean. It was. This was an underlining smell. One from a room left to heat and cool from the outside temperature when a tenant wasn’t using the air conditioning unit. It was the smell she always imagined when she saw old motels in film or photography. “I’m trying.”

  “Hey. Here she comes. I’ll talk to you later, okay? Remember, we’re always here for whatever you need. We love you, sister girl.”

  “Thanks, Jaz. I love y’all too.”

  “Hold on one sec,” Violet said as she took both the phone and a cup of coffee her wife handed her. She kissed her on the cheek. “Baby, I’m going to go upstairs to the roof and talk to Sam, okay?”

  “Okay. No rush. I’ll have some breakfast ready when you’re done,” Jazlyn said. She kissed Violet sweetly on the lips and then said into Violet’s cellphone, “Take care, Sam.”

  “Hey, you,” Violet said with reservation as she maneuvered the stairs from their loft to the rooftop patio they had built a few years ago. As much as she had missed talking to Sam, she was nervous to actually be on the phone with her because she had been so ugly to her the last time they had talked. She was floored when Sam told her she had redrawn from her fellowship.

  “Hi,” Sam answered. “I miss you so much, Vi.”

  Violet exhaled deeply as she let her reserve down. “Me too. Sam, I’m so sorry I was such a bitch to you the last time we talked. I have felt like a complete ass. In fact, I tried like hell to trade off this weekend of call but I couldn’t get any of those bastards to do it.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, I did.” Violet slipped off her shoes and stretched out across the patio sofa. “I was going to come find you. Where ever you were…where ever you were going, I was going to be. You wait and see if I take call for them the next time they need.” Vi stopped her ranting and said with a quieted tone. “It’s damn good to hear your voice.”

  “Ditto, my friend, ditto.”

  “I can’t tell you how many times I waited to see you come out of a patient’s room on the floor today. It’s not right that you’re not here.”

  Sam thought about the times when she would bump into Violet. There’s nothing like running into your best friend during rounds and sneaking over to the lounge for a quick visit over coffee. Violet was a fiercely tough and damn talented department head of OB/Gyn at UAB. It was at the encouragement of Rayne that they had become friends. It was Rayne who had suggested she talk to Violet when her father was trying to overpower and manipulate her to end her fellowship in reproductive medicine. Rayne thought Violet was tough enough and respected enough that she would be the one person to stand up to her father against his insistence she be moved to cardiothoracic surgery. Was she ever right. Violet took on the challenge from the moment Sam told her that she wanted to stay in OB. Sam’s dad didn’t know what the hell had hit him. From that moment on, Sam and Violet had been fast friends.

  “After everything we’ve been through to keep you here and that little bitch is the one who gets to stay. She better be glad she’s done her rotation in OB or I’d make her life a living hell.” Violet’s anger was beginning to rise. She looked down at the piece of paper with Rayne’s phone number on it. It was good to have strings in the registrar’s office.

  “Don’t, Vi. Just let it go. It’s done.”

  “She deserves to suffer for what she’s done to you.”

  “She’s marrying a man. I’d say that was suffering enough. Don’t you?” Sam tried to inject a tiny amount of humor into their conversation before it ignited Vi’s anger. She loved everything about her friend, even her temper. It wasn’t so much that she loved it, rather more that she understood it. She knew the ins and outs of Vi’s past—the obstacles she conquered to be where she was in her life. Understanding it and wishing it to be present at the moment, were two different things. She was trying hard to keep the name Rayne from the forefront of her mind. If she let her mind stay there or let it wander into the intense fear of not knowing what to do next it would overwhelm her thoughts, she knew right then and there that was exactly where she would shut down. She had to get it together. She had to eventually leave this motel room. Listening to Violet vent about all that had happened would not in any way help those fears.

  Violet paused for a moment and then let a small laugh escape. “It sure would be for me. My friend, you are too much like me. Hate you’re following down a path I once did.”

  “Yeah. But you got the girl and she’s cooking you breakfast.”

  Violet curled her legs under her and stared out across the Birmingham skyline. The sun setting low in the sky from its recent rise felt good against her skin. She pulled her quarter-length sleeves up to expose as much skin as she could. “True. It wasn’t always this good though. Went through hell to get here.” Violet thought back to the days when she had first fallen in love with the very married Jazlyn. The brown-eyed beauty had stolen her heart the moment she saw her smile. “I wish the same were true for you.”

  Sam sighed. “Me too. But it’s time to move on.”

  “Are you doing that?”

  Sam stood up from the bed, walked to the table, and sat down. She stared down at the maps. “I’m trying.”

  “Where are you anyway?”

  Sam turned in her chair to pull the curtains back. She looked out the window at the large, red, boomerang-shaped motel sign attached to two white posts. “Some place called The Pelican Motel in Eunice, Louisiana.”

  “Where the hell is that?” Violet ran her hand along the back of her head to ruffle up her short, cropped hair. She took a sip of coffee. “I mean, is it even a city?”

  “I think town would be a better description, or at least I think it is. I’ve not been in to it really. This motel was right off the interstate before getting into Eunice.”

  “Please tell me you’re not planning on staying there.”

  Sam watched as Gentry walked from the diner to the sign carrying a large bag. She bent over the brick planter box at its base. Sam wondered what on earth kept Gentry here. It was nothing more than four buildings of six rooms each, an office, a diner, and a dirt parking lot. What could possibly fill your day in a place like this? “Nope. Not at all.” She turned back and shuffled the maps. “But where I go from here, is your guess as good as mine.”

  “How about Birmingham?” Vi tried her hand at humor.

  “Ha. Good one.”

  “I try. Really though, how long do you think you’ll be there?”

  “I don’t know, really. Right now, I get utterly exhausted every time I think of getting in my car. All I want to do is curl up in this bed and sleep.”

  “Do that then. Sam, your heart was broken. You need time to heal. That bitch was bored with her life so she came into yours and manipulated the hell out of you to sow some wild oats. Just because her feelings for you weren’t real doesn’t mean yours for her weren’t. You fell in love. It was a beautiful gift you gave her. That’s on her, not you. Take your time to grieve but yes, then get up and move the hell on. You are a brilliant physician—don’t let her take that from you too. It would be a disservice not only to you but also to your future patients.”

  Never did Sam see Rayne as Violet did. Not even when standing in front of her at her engagement party did she think she had been manipulated. There was a part of her that believed Rayne at some point truly did love her. Maybe she was only fooling herself but for now, she needed to believe that part. Although at this moment, she didn’t have it in her to argue with Violet over it. “I’m not. I won’t. I’m going to still practice. But I don’t know if I’ll finish my fellowship or not.” Sam walked back to the bed and laid down. She tucked the pillow behind her head. “Did I tell you dear old Dad was footing the bill for my runaway?”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way.”

  “After all
he did to force you into CT surgery…he’s okay with you quitting?”

  “Damn straight. See, he’s smarter than your average bear.” Sam thought of her dad speaking in a Yogi Bear voice. “He thinks if he supports me, then he’ll get what he wants and I’ll come back to go into CT. To him, this trip is to clear my mind to see he knows what’s best for me.”

  “I see where you get your hard-headedness from.” Violet tried to stifle back a yawn.

  “You’re tired. I need to let you get some sleep.”

  “I’ll stay on if you need me.”

  “Nah, I’m good,” Sam said and yawned herself. “Think I’ll get some sleep too.”

  “Check in with me later, okay? I worry about you when I don’t hear from you.”

  “Will do.”

  “Hey, Sam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m serious about what I said. I’ve got two more nights of call and then I could come to you. I’ll get an attending to cover my patients and come to you.”

  “I love you, you know that? I truly do. I’m good. Or at least I will be. I need to do this alone. But know that you offering means the world to me.”

  “Okay. I’ll support you from afar. If you change your mind, just call.” Vi yawned again. “I love you too. Talk to you later.”

  Sam put the phone on the table, tucked the other pillow against her chest, and let the tears fall as she drifted off to sleep.

  Gentry pulled the weeds from the soil of the planter’s box at the base of the Pelican Motel sign. She ran her fingers deep in the soil and let the loose dirt flow through them as she pulled the balls of old root free. How? How was she pregnant? She had tried her best to live her adult life based off of what she believed was the universal sign. This most recent shock was one she could not wrap her head around. She picked up the bag of potting soil and mixed it in with the old dirt. What was she going to do? Nothing about her plans for the next journey in her life could fit a pregnancy, much less an actual baby. A sudden cast over the sun caused her to look up into the cloudless sky.