Dating Daddy's Best Friend novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Cardiac Unit

At the hospital Britt meets her father's best friend Cullen, learns the yard is drowning, and promises to bend the frames herself, until her husband sends a photo of his work wife in her apron.

I made it to Holland in thirty-eight minutes.

The drive is fifty.

Before I left I texted Jarrod.

"Dad had a heart attack. I'm going to Holland. Coby is alone. Go home to him."

He didn't answer.

The cardiac unit was on the third floor, and at a quarter past midnight it was all humming machines and squeaking shoes.

Cullen Bray was folded into a plastic chair outside room 312.

He stood up when he saw me, and kept standing up for a while.

I had forgotten how tall he was.

He had sawdust on the knees of his jeans and a pencil behind his ear.

"You drove," he said.

"I flew. I flapped my arms the whole way."

"You look it."

"Thanks. You look like you slept in that chair."

"Three nights. It's a good chair. Very firm. Great for the spine."

I almost laughed, and then I remembered where I was.

"Is he alive?"

"He's alive. He's mad. Mostly mad."

He told me in about six sentences.

Tuesday morning, Dad had been steaming a frame for the Wilhelmina.

He set it on the form, said his arm felt funny, and sat down on a sawhorse.

Cullen drove him to the emergency room in the yard truck with the flashers on.

They put a stent in by lunch.

"And he told you not to call me."

"He made me swear on the Wren."

The Wren was Cullen's boat. Even I knew that.

"You broke a promise on your own boat?"

"I keep the boat. I break the promise." He shrugged. "She'll forgive me. She's very understanding."

"Why did he do that?"

Cullen looked at the door, not at me.

"You'll have to ask him. I'm not getting in the middle of that."

I pushed the door open.

My father was propped up in the bed with wires on his chest and his reading glasses on their cord.

He looked smaller than I had ever seen him.

Then he saw me, and he got bigger again.

"Cullen."

"She called your phone, Arie. I answered it. That's the whole crime."

"I said not to."

"You said not to call her. I didn't call anybody."

My father glared at him over the glasses.

Then he glared at me.

"What are you doing here? It's the middle of the night. Your husband will worry."

"He won't."

Dad stopped.

He knew me.

He watched my face for a long second, and something in his mustache moved.

"What happened?"

"I packed his bags tonight. He went to stay with someone from work."

Nobody said anything.

"Good," my father said.

Just that.

Then he looked at the ceiling, and I saw his eyes were wet, and I looked away so he could have it.

I sat down in the chair by the bed and took his hand.

His hand was rough as a rasp.

"Why didn't you want me to know?"

"Because you'd come."

"That's the point of calling, Dad."

"You'd come and see me like this." He waved at the wires. "I didn't want that."

"Well, too bad. I'm here and I'm seeing it."

Cullen stood in the doorway with his arms folded and a look on his face.

At two in the morning, Dad's nurse sent us both out to let him sleep.

We sat side by side on the firm, great-for-the-spine chairs.

Cullen bought me a cocoa from the machine. It tasted like hot tin.

"Tell me about the yard," I said.

"You don't want to hear about the yard tonight."

"I asked."

He turned a silver ring on his finger.

He had a lot of rings, I noticed. Silver and dull bronze.

"There's a note at Lakeshore Community Bank," he said. "A hundred and eighty thousand. Due September first."

"Can you pay it?"

"We can pay it if the Wilhelmina goes out the door on August twenty-second. The collector pays two-twenty on delivery."

"So deliver her."

"She needs twenty-two new frames. White oak, steamed and bent. Your dad was doing them. I can plank, I can caulk, I can fair a hull. I can't bend like him."

"Nobody can."

"That's the problem."

I looked at my left wrist.

The burn scar from the steam box was a pale, shiny coin.

I got it at fifteen, the summer after my mother died, because I was crying and not watching the lid.

"I'll bend them," I said.

Cullen looked at me sideways.

"You'll bend them."

"I bent half the ribs on that old Lyman when I was seventeen. Ask him."

"I don't doubt you."

"You do a little."

"I doubt everybody a little. I'm a rescue swimmer. Was. It's a habit."

At six they let us back in.

Dad was awake and grumpy and asking for real coffee.

I told him.

"I'll bend the Wilhelmina's frames. All twenty-two."

He took his glasses off and let them fall on the cord.

"You haven't touched a steam box in ten years."

"Then it's about time."

"Britt."

"I'm not asking, Dad."

He looked at Cullen. Cullen held up both hands.

I spent Friday in that room, and Friday night in my old bedroom over the shop.

The quilt still smelled like cedar and varnish.

On Saturday morning my phone buzzed on the nightstand at seven.

Jarrod.

A photo, no greeting.

Kiersten Draper, in my kitchen, at my stove, flipping pancakes in my apron.

The blue one with the small white handprints.

Coby made it for me in third grade.

Under the photo, one line.

"Coby needed breakfast. Somebody had to."

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