More than a Job by Lynette Endicott
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BLURB:
Paige Hamilton is forced to seek a new life when her consuming, 24/7 job ends at the hands of a new company owner. But Paige is a survivor, and begins to build a new life, one that may even have room for romance. When the handsome stranger is the first to help her through the transition she falls fast and hard for Joshua Robinson.
Then she discovers he is the cruel owner, and that the company she’d loved — the company that cared so much about the adults with disabilities who lived in their homes — is in a downward spiral that puts the life of one of her friends at risk.
Romance, job loss, life coaching, hidden family treasures, and a secret about an uncle she’d never met — Paige learns that life is More Than a Job.
*~*
EXCERPT:
Paige rounded the corner and jogged toward the Elm Street house at a steady pace. She felt great. She was breathing, zoning into the rhythm of her steps, head up, taking in the blue sky, the leaves with their fall colors, the mums bright splashes against the green lawns. The tension from her most recent separation from Josh began to recede.
Suddenly her heart pounded at a more rapid pace. She couldn’t register, couldn’t accept, what her eyes told her was true. Don sat on the porch in his wheelchair. Someone she didn’t recognize stood behind him — as the chair rolled toward the steps. Not the ramp. The steps.
Don waved his arms frantically.
She lengthened her stride and shouted with all her breath, “Wait! Stop!”
I will never make it in time. Pounding faster than she’d known she could run, she closed in on the house. The man in the gray sweat suit behind Don looked up, paused.
Maybe she would make it after all.
The man turned and went back into the house. He must have pushed away from the chair as he moved. He certainly hadn’t set the brakes. The chair rolled forward in slow motion, tottering at the top of the three steps, then turning, tumbling, crashing upside-down at the bottom as she arrived at Don’s side.
I can’t panic. She peered into Don’s startled, pale face while she fished out her cell phone. She knelt beside him, twisting around so he could see her face from his crumpled position on the ground.
“Hey, guy, this is no way to start the day.” She kept her tone light while checking him visually for injuries. No blood except for a scrape on his forehead. Good. She dialed 911. “I’m not going to move you, Don.”
Alert, he looked into her eyes.
“This chair is too heavy for me. Anyway, I want a doctor to check you over. Okay?”
Don blinked twice, his signal for yes. She covered his hand with hers while she talked to the dispatcher, giving the address, stating the nature of the injury, keeping her voice calm and steady.
Where were the staff? She plugged her headset into the phone and dropped it into her pocket.
“I’m going to talk with this man while we wait,” she told the dispatcher. “Yes, I’m trained in first aid, but I don’t think I should move him. He fell on his neck and head, and I don’t want to cause more injury.” She turned her attention back to her friend.
“Don, I know you must hurt.” Several minutes had passed since his fall. Why hadn’t anyone in the home noticed he was gone? “Does your head hurt at all?”
One blink. No.
“How about your neck?”
Don hesitated. Maybe.
“Your legs?”
Two blinks. Yes.
She looked closer. He’d skinned one knee in the fall. At least he’d been buckled into the chair, controlling the injuries some. Maybe.
Sirens blared in the distance, and a female voice emanated from inside the house. “Bert, where’s Donnie?” Without waiting for an answer, the woman commanded, “I told you to wait with him by the front door.”
Suddenly a young woman appeared at the door and screamed out, “Bert, what have you done?”
She stayed on the porch, but turned to Paige. “Is he all right?” She didn’t move from the door, as if afraid of the answer.
Paige kept her voice calm to keep her anger at bay. “I don’t know yet. I called an ambulance.”
She didn’t know the staff person, and the staff person didn’t know her. For all she knew, Paige was a stranger kneeling on the walk with a man the other woman was supposed to assist. Why didn’t she assume some responsibility?
“I need you to page your supervisor — and bring me Don’s medical book,” Paige said, hoping her no-nonsense tone resulted in quick action. “It’s the red one with his name on it, in the medicine cabinet.
“I don’t know how to page my supervisor.” The girl looked young and scared and had to be brand new. Her small, frightened voice confirmed Paige’s fears. “This is my first day alone. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”
The ambulance turned the last corner. Paige stepped out to the curb to signal the driver, but directed her words to the girl. “The list is by the phone. Call the on-call pager. Tell the person on call that Don fell and needs to go to the hospital. Get someone here to help you right away.”
She didn’t have time to worry about the young woman for the next few minutes. She ended the call to the dispatcher with thanks. She briefed the paramedics and showed them how Don communicated. When they finally had him on a stretcher, a neck brace in place, she realized someone needed to go with him, and no one had come. She would have to go.
The ride to the hospital lasted just long enough for her to make three important phone calls. She called Don’s mom first.
“Meg, it’s me. Paige.” Before Meg could chitchat, she hurried on. “Don fell at the house. I’m taking him to the hospital to make sure he’s okay. He’s conscious and giving me a hard time as usual, so I’m sure he’ll be fine. He has a couple of scrapes. But I knew you’d want to have him checked over.” She didn’t explain how she happened to be at the house. Meg didn’t ask.
“Oh, Paige, I’m in St. Louis. It will take me three hours to get there. Tell him I’m on my way, okay?”
“I’ll tell him, and I’ll stay with him until you get here. We’re going to Community Hospital, so you can check at the ER there.”
“Let me talk to Don before I leave, okay?”
“Sure.” Paige held the cell to Don’s ear. “It’s your mom,” she told him, and was reward with a smile as he listened to Meg’s encouraging words.
When Paige couldn’t hear the rumble of a voice, she took back the phone.
“Anything else, Meg?”
“No, I’m on my way. I’ll see you as soon as I can get there. I know he’s in good hands until I can be there in person.” Meg sounded rushed but not panicked. Good.
“Drive safe, then. We’ll be waiting as patiently as we can.”
Paige’s next call was to the on-call pager. “This is P.J. Fields. Hopefully by now your staff person’s told you Don’s wheelchair rolled down the front steps at Elm Street.” She wondered if her frustration came through her voice. Part of her hoped so. Maybe she could stimulate some action. “Since no one else was available to do it, I got his mom’s permission and I’m taking him to Community. Someone needs to meet us there.”
Finally, she called the Day Program, explaining that Don would not be in today and that they would have to check with his case manager for more information….
Then they were at the hospital. Paige climbed from the ambulance and walked beside the cart on the way to an examining room. A paramedic described the injuries to the ER doctor while she made small talk with Don. The EMT had dressed his scrapes, but he’d had no other treatment. The doctor listened, made some notes, and turned to leave the room.
Paige put her hand on the doctor’s sleeve to get her attention. “Wait, please. What are you going to do next?”
The doctor frowned, tapped her foot, seemed uninterested and in a hurry to leave. “We’ll observe him for awhile, see if anything becomes apparent.” Paige had seen such disinterest, heard the bored tone, far too often when seeking medical care for people who couldn’t speak for themselves.
She’d learned to be persistent. “It was a nasty fall. I saw it happen. The risk of both head trauma and neck injury are there, don’t you think? He’s at very high risk for osteoporosis. Anyone who can’t bear their own weight is at risk. Any bone could be broken.”
“Yes, either is possible. We’ll watch him for signs of head trauma.” The doctor looked at her with a little more attention, but said nothing about a possible neck injury or broken bones. Paige bit back her anger. The doctor probably didn’t think a spinal cord injury would make much difference in Don’s quality of life. His chart said he was quadriplegic already, so the doctor probably had no idea he had full sensation. He wasn’t paralyzed; he just didn’t have full control of his muscles.
“He can’t respond easily,” Paige persisted. “Probably only a CT scan will tell you want you want to know. Won’t you consider it?”
The doctor really looked at her now. “Dr. Curtis,” she said, extending her hand, “and you are…?”
“I’m Paige Hamilton, a friend of Don’s.” Time to bluff if he was going to get any attention. “I’ve been on the phone with his guardian and mother. She’s on her way, but she wanted me to tell you she hopes you will do a scan.” Well, if she knew the details, Meg would certainly require a scan.
“His guardian has requested it?”
“I’m worried, too,” Paige pressed on. “He seems less responsive than usual, and I’ve known him for ten years. Aren’t you concerned?”
“How is he less responsive?” Finally she had some attention.
“He keeps dozing off, and he doesn’t open his eyes to answer my questions until I’ve asked two or three times. He could be in pain, of course, but it could be caused by something more.”
Dr. Curtis sat down and wrote the order, and within minutes Paige sat in the waiting room outside the x-ray area, where they would check Don for broken bones and other injuries.
Paige sat back to relax, to close her eyes for a moment. Only a moment, because suddenly everyone around her moved very fast. First the technician told her the doctor needed to talk with her right away. Then the doctor who came wasn’t the first one, but a neurosurgeon.
“He has a bleed on his brain,” he told her. “We are going to do emergency surgery to evacuate the blood. If we don’t, the pressure can cause serious injury or even death. We are taking him to prep him now.”
