She Left Me in Traction, Then the Will Made Me Her Boss novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Her Terms

Hannah gives him her couch and a set of rules; the lawyer tells him to say nothing until the shareholders' meeting; a detective says the van was stolen from Carrow Group's own yard.

Hannah's apartment was on the third floor of an old brick building with no elevator.

It took me twenty minutes to climb the stairs on a walker she pulled out of her trunk.

She carried the boxes up herself and never said a word about the weight.

The place had a couch, a table with two chairs, and a wall of medical journals stacked in milk crates.

She cleared one end of the couch and put a pillow on it.

"You sleep here," she said. "I sleep in there. The bathroom has a rail I installed when my father visited. You're welcome to it."

"Dr. Brooks, I can't pay you for any of this."

"That's not a rule yet," she said. "These are rules."

She counted them on her fingers.

"One. Therapy every morning at seven in my clinic, and you show up whether you want to or not."

"Fine."

"Two. You pay me back at cost when you can, not before. Your insurance isn't my problem, your leg is."

"Fine."

"Three. You don't lie to me about pain. If it's a six, you say six. I don't treat heroes. I treat patients."

"What's four?"

"No pity." She said it flatly. "Not from me, and not from you. About yourself."

I laughed, and my ribs hurt, and she watched me wince without looking away.

"That's a six," I said.

"It's an eight. Next time say eight."

She brought me soup from a can and a glass of water, and she sat on the arm of her chair to watch me eat.

"The woman from the hospital," she said. "The one who left your room this morning. She's the fiancée."

"She was. She texted me she's thirteen weeks pregnant with my brother's baby."

"Your brother."

"Adopted. We grew up in the same house. He was her fiancé once, before me."

Hannah took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"I've been a surgeon for eight years," she said. "I've seen a lot of people get bad news in a bed. I've never seen anyone read the second paragraph."

"You told me to."

"I told you because I saw the pen in your hand." She put the glasses back on. "Eat your soup."

I slept on the couch with my leg on three pillows.

At six she woke me with a banana and a cup of black coffee and drove me to the lawyer's office downtown.

She waited in the parking lot with a journal on the steering wheel.

The lawyer was a gray, tired man in his seventies with a leather folder on his desk.

He didn't offer me a seat for the first minute.

He looked at the cast, the crutches and my face.

"I'm sorry about your leg," he said. "And I'm sorry I couldn't tell you sooner. I was bound by an instruction from your grandfather. Ninety days from his funeral, and not one hour earlier."

"What instruction?"

He laid his hand flat on the folder without opening it.

"Your grandfather left a sealed packet with me and a letter of instruction. The packet is to be opened at the Carrow Group shareholders' meeting, in the boardroom, in front of the whole family and the board. The meeting is in thirty-seven days."

"What's in it?"

"It's not for me to say outside that room."

"Is it debts? The funeral?"

"It's his wishes," the lawyer said. "That's all I'm permitted to say. I'll tell you what he told me to tell you."

He pulled out a sheet of notepaper and read from it.

"Tobias, say nothing. Sign nothing. Do not let Lyle or Celia know you've spoken to anyone. And on the day, be standing."

"Standing?"

"I'll admit I didn't understand that part either." He almost smiled. "Given your leg, I'd say you have thirty-seven days to learn."

I sat there with the crutches across my knees.

For twenty years I had sat beside that old man every Sunday on the dock behind his house.

He had talked about the weather, the tide tables and shipping rates.

He had never once talked about what he planned to leave.

"Why didn't he tell me himself?"

"I asked him that," the lawyer said. "He said you would only have worried about the family's feelings."

That was exactly right.

I took the notepaper and folded it into my shirt pocket.

Out in the lot I got into the Subaru without saying anything, and Hannah closed her journal.

"Well?"

"Thirty-seven days," I said. "I have to learn to stand."

"Then we'd better start tomorrow at seven."

She turned the key.

My phone rang before she reached the street, a number I didn't know.

I put it on speaker without thinking.

"Mr. Carrow? I'm a detective with the Hartford police."

"Yes."

"I'm calling about the van that hit you," he said. "I pulled the registration this morning."

Hannah stopped at the exit and looked at me.

"It's a white cargo van. It was reported stolen the day after your accident."

"Stolen from where?"

"That's why I'm calling, sir." Paper rustled on his end. "It was taken out of the Carrow Group freight yard on Airport Road."

He paused.

"Your employer's yard."

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