Robert, page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
World Castle Publishing, LLC
Pensacola, Florida
Copyright © Kathi S. Barton 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 9798356503054
Paperback ISBN: 9781958336748
eBook ISBN: 9781958336755
First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC, October 6, 2022
http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com
Licensing Notes
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.
Cover: Karen Fuller
Editor: Karen Fuller
Prologue
Robert watched the men as they worked on the house he knew Heather and Peter were going to live in. He was hoping he could convince them to let him purchase the other house from them when it was finished.
The workers were doing all sorts of things he’d never thought of before that were needed to bring a house back to life, like hanging drywall. The way they put a strip of some kind of paper tape over the seams to what he assumed was to hide them. He was just about to move to another part of the house to watch more work going on when Mr. Taylor, the foreman, sat down beside him.
“You’re here to make sure we’re doing a good job?” Robert was shocked by the question. “You’re making my people nervous, Mr. Archer. If you’re going to be spying on us, the least you could do was to inform me that you’re doing that.”
“Oh. No. That’s not it at all. I didn’t think that it would— You see, I’m an attorney. Not that it has anything to do with me being here. But I don’t want to do that anymore. Not at all.” Mr. Taylor nodded. “I’ll start from the beginning. I don’t like being an attorney. I don’t know that I ever did. So I’m looking for, I don’t know, something to occupy my mind and body. I was watching your workers because I’ve been thinking I’d like to give something like this a shot. You know, it’s physical. Mentally challenging. I mean, to watch how your people can hang the boards there and not have to second guess if it’s going to stay there or even fit. I was trying to decide if this was something I’d like to try.”
Mr. Taylor took the notebook that he’d offered to him. As he read over the pages he’d been taking notes on from different jobs on the site, he handed it back to him and sat there for several minutes. It was all he could do not to beg him not to turn him away.
“Come with me.” As he walked up the stairs to the third floor, he introduced him to the elderly man working there. “This is Bingo. Don’t ask how he got the name. Bingo, this is Robert. He’s going to be working with you today. He’s a greenhorn, so don’t be making him do all your work while you supervise. He’s got it in his head that he wants to work in renovations like this house.”
Bingo took his hand when he offered it. “He thinks on account of me being old, that I don’t know a thing or two. You’re an Archer. I noticed he didn’t give a last name, but I’ve been around the block a time or two, so I know what’s what more than he does. You’re a lawyer, ain’t you?”
“Yes. I was, I guess you could say. I’ll still work if I’m needed, but I’m bored with it. At least for now. I need something to keep me out of trouble.” Bingo laughed. “My mom said that if I didn’t find something to do soon, she was going to murder me. I doubt it would come to that, but she doesn’t have anything around the house for me to move or to help her clean.”
Bingo laughed again. It was like listening to a braying jackass, as his grandda would say. But it was also a good sound like he really meant the humor of it. When he told him to come with him, he once again found himself following someone. But this time, he was handed a diagram of what the floor was to look like when it was finished.
“That there is called tile rejuvenation. Not thinking you’re stupid or nothing, but that’s what I call it. The design there, it’s what was on the floor before some fool covered it with carpet, it looked like. What I’ve been doing, and you’re going to do now, is take that there scraper thing and peel back all that stuck crap over it and bring out the tile. Not hard, not if you’re a young man such as yourself, but it’s hard on an old man like me. Just be careful, because some of them tiles is broken, and it’ll cut you faster than a sharp blade will. And it’s nasty. Being in a bathroom all this time, it’s bound to have some nasty turd stuff on it.” Robert started to laugh but could see the man was serious. “Now the tricky part of this is going to be when you get there by the terlit. We’ll take it out of here if you’d not mind helping me. We’re going to be real careful like with it on account of it being old, and it’s a good flusher.”
It took Robert a second or two to realize he was talking about the toilet. Terlit? It was a word he’d never heard before, but he got it. Watching Bingo as he showed him around the other things he was going to be working on, Robert realized how excited he was to be doing this. He also had a feeling that tomorrow he was going to be sore. He’d not done real physical work in a long time. And going to the gym three times a week wasn’t going to even be close to the work he was going to be doing today.
Removing the toilet, or terlit as Bingo kept calling it, wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be. It was heavy as hell, weighing about a hundred pounds. But it was slippery and awkward to maneuver out of the room. Robert was proud of himself when he got it into the bedroom that this room was attached to.
After removing the pedestal sink and the leg of it, the entire bathroom looked a good deal larger. However, he wasn’t sure what they were going to do with the claw footed bathtub. He wondered how they were going to get it out because it was cast iron, Bingo said.
“Waiting on word about that from your brother. Don’t suppose you could call him or his missus for me? Sure would be nice to know if we gotta bust out a wall or two to get that sucker out of here. Thing must weight upwards to four hundred pounds or so.” He said he’d call him now. “Tell him it can be redone with new enamel coating for about what it’ll cost for a new tub.”
He was asked to call Heather, as Peter hadn’t any idea what she wanted to do. Robert did know that Peter and Heather were going to be living in this house and was a little jealous that they were having so much fun. Robert wondered briefly if he had someone out there that he could love. When Heather answered the phone, he told her what he was doing and why he was calling her.
“Is this the bathroom on the third floor? The one with the wraparound shower curtain that’s blue?” He told her it was. “Mr. Taylor told me it had tile under the carpet. Please tell me that’s what you’re— Wait, what are you doing there?”
“I’ve decided I need something to do. While I don’t need to work for financial gain, I do need to work to keep me from being arrested for sitting outside the different shops around town to browse around more. I’ve seen about everything there is to see in the shops, just so you’re aware.” She asked him if he was the go-between. “No. I’m working on the job site if they allow it. Bingo is showing me how to clean the tile under the carpet in there, but the tub is the issue. If it were me, I’d save the tub and the tile. From what I can see of it now, it’s beautiful. And the design that was laid here is magnificent. The tile is hexagon-shaped and about an inch and a half across. They alternate between white and blue, with the blue making a kind of hexagon circle around the white. Bingo said there might be a few broken tiles, but I’m betting they can be replaced if necessary.”
“You convinced me. Keep them both. I do love the claw-footed tub, so that was going to stay regardless. So I’ll find someone to go in and fix it up so it will be all right for us to use. I’m so excited. You go ahead and figure out what it will cost to replace tiles if I need to. Thank you, Robert. I think having you there will help me in being able to settle things like that. Mr. Taylor would give me details but not tell me how lovely it’d look or give me the design you described so well. Thank you bunches.” He asked her about the other house. “You want it? I would love to see it go to someone else in the family. It’s a big house. Are you looking to fill it anytime soon?”
“Someday.” He looked at Bingo and told him she wanted the tub. He laughed when the man did a little gig. It was the perfect word for the dance the man did around the room. “I have to go, Heather. I’ll talk to you when I get off work.”
Robert had the floor done before lunch. Well, not finished, but he had all the sticky carpet material taken off. While it had been enjoyable work—being entertained by Bingo fun—it was hard, and the muscles across his shoulders and neck were about as strained as he’d ever felt before. However, he was satisfied about the work he’d done and couldn’t wait to get more of the work finished up.
Setting to work to clean the tile with a scrub brush and detergent, he reached as far beneath the tub as he could reach. Bingo was going to help him move it a little when he got done with this part of the floor so it would be evenly matched in cleanliness.
Robert was so engrossed in what he was doing that he jerked away from someone touching his back and slammed his head against the tub. When he woke up, he thought he’d fallen asleep on his couch. Trying to sit up, he was shoved back to something hard beneath him and realized he was still in the bathroom, on the floor. It occurred to him that someone was talking about him.
“How the hell am I supposed to know, Grandda? All I did was try and get his attention like you told me to. Christ, you should have seen all that blood.” A mumbling sound, then laughter, made him realize that Bingo was who the woman was talking to. He reached up to pull whatever she had on his face down. The woman turned to him. “Look. You take this cloth off your face again, and I’m going to make you hurt worse than you are now. Do I make myself clear? I’m waiting on one of the drywall jockeys to bring me my bag. How would you rate your pain on a scale of one to ten?”
“It’s building up to about a fifty right now. Who are you? And for that matter, what sort of bag are you looking for? You planning on staying the night here?” He was addled, he knew that, but the look she gave him made him think she wasn’t amused by him. “I don’t know who you are or why you were to get in touch with me. I’ve got a headache to end all— Is that my blood?”
“Gee, is it? I don’t know. Let me wipe at your forehead that is going to more than likely need about thirty stitches from you slamming your fool head up against a tub that more than likely weighs more than the two of us together. You moron. Why didn’t you just turn like a normal person?” He told her she’d startled him. “Next time I go into a bathroom that someone is working in with twenty other people around, I’ll try my best to make a great deal of noise so as not to startle you. Leave. The. Fucking. Rag. On. Your. Face.”
If he wasn’t in so much pain at the moment, he would have laughed. However, he might have been in worse shape if he had. The woman wasn’t in the best of humor, so he laid there, thinking of all the things he could be doing right now instead of being—
“My brother, Darrel, is a doctor. Not that you have to call him or anything, but…we might want to call my brother Peter. This is his house.” He started to reach for the cloth but decided he didn’t want to rile her again. “If you could please call my brother, his name is Peter, and it’s in my phone.”
He felt his phone being taken from his pocket. Telling her the passcode to open it up, he waited while she made the call. The pain was making him sick right now, and he wasn’t sure how close he was to begging, literally begging, for something for pain.
“Hey. My name is Doctor Elizabeth Monroe. I’d like to speak to Peter. I didn’t catch his last name, so I hope—” He told her what his last name was. “Peter Archer. I’m here with his brother Robert.”
Robert wanted to peek at her. She most certainly was nicer than she’d been to him. And he was hurt. He heard her also say thanks to someone else in the room with them. Then the sound of a zipper being used.
“You allergic to anything?” He took a second to realize she was talking to him, and that earned him a poke in the ribs. “Are you allergic to anything?”
“No. And if that is something for pain, I will gladly take as much as you can give me. I’m cross-eyed with pain right now.” His T-shirt was pulled up over his arm, and he felt the coolness of something wiping over his skin. As soon as she told him he was going to feel a pinch, the needle entered him, along with some nice drugs. “Thank goodness.”
The next time he was aware, Robert could hear people talking around him—his mom, then his sister-in-law. He didn’t know which one it was right now, but he knew it was one of them. Reaching up slowly to pull away whatever was on his face this time, someone touched their hand to his.
“Don’t do that. If you do, that doctor is going to come back in here and rip you a new ass. Again.” He asked Peter where he was. “Emergency room. You’ve been here about an hour. Darrel is talking to Elizabeth now on what happened and how they’re going to treat you. When you hit your head on that tub, you did some serious damage to your pretty face. Like you have an eruption on your forehead that is going to need some serious stitches in it. Let me describe it for you. It’s like you hit the hard surface in the middle. But then the wound split off in about four or five directions from there. Also, you have a concussion, which anyone would figure out. You can have something more for pain should you want it.”
“Seriously? Just, I don’t know. Don’t describe things to me so graphically. I’m all right with the pain right now, but I can feel it building up again. Peter, I’m so sorry about this.” He asked him why he was sorry. “I think I might have gotten blood all over your tile. I don’t know enough about it to tell you if there is a lot or not, but I’m reasonably sure it’s going to stain it.”
“I’m just happy you’re awake and seem to know what’s going on, little brother. And that you’re going to heal. You could have really hurt yourself.” He thought he had but let it go. “The doctor is coming in again. Just behave and don’t piss her off again. She is delightful to watch trying to deal with her anger, but I don’t want her to kill you. She’s intense.”
That was an understatement if he’d ever heard one. While he tried not to sob like a little baby with the pain, he realized he was going into surgery. After asking a couple of questions about it, he asked for pain meds.
“You’ll be out in about ten minutes. Will you be able to wait that long?” He told Elizabeth he wasn’t sure he could. “I can give you a little of what I’m going to have you put under with, and that won’t hurt you during surgery. Just hang on a moment while I get it for you. Robert, I’m really sorry I hurt you.”
He said her name to tell her it hadn’t been her fault when Peter told him she’d gone. Then seconds later, he felt the pain being dulled, and he let himself ride on that. Christ, he was going to be a mess when he woke up. He knew it.
~*~
Elizabeth was used to stitching people up. She’d been an ER doctor for the last five years. However, she’d caused this wound to this man, and his family had been nothing but nice to her. She, however, felt like shit about it. Darrel, who was assisting her so that he could vouch for her abilities to work in the hospital, asked her if she was all right to begin.
“I’m responsible for this. He was working, and I startled him to the point where he jumped. I feel just horrible.” Darrel told her Robert wouldn’t feel that way. “No. Then after he woke up, I was nasty to him again. I’m not sure I can see him again after this.”
“You mean after the surgery or just in general?” She wasn’t sure what he meant, so she asked him. “I mean, would you like to see him on a personal level, or just as follow up after this? He’s a great man, if you mean personally. As for the follow-up? Well, I can do that, but I think you’re going to regret it. Robert will as well. I mean, it could go nowhere, but if you were to ask me, I think you’ll miss someone great in your life as a friend if you forgo seeing him in either capacity.”
“He’ll make me feel bad about hurting him.” Darrel just laughed. “I don’t think this is the least bit funny. Even if there was to be something romantic—I’m not saying that’s what I want—but even if there was, I’m sure he’d hold what I did to him over my head for decades to come.”
“Nor do I think this is funny. As for him holding it over your head, you’d never allow that. You’d be all over his ass, or you’d leave. You strike me as a woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone. However, I can almost bet that not only will Robert never blame you for anything that happened to him at work, but you can bet he’ll take you to task if you were to tell him you hurt him.” She asked him how he could be so sure. “He’s my brother, for one thing. I’m as sure about his reaction to you and your ideas as I am about you being a good doctor. Secondly, my mom would beat his ass if he even thought about hurting you. Now, how about we get this show on the road and get him fixed up?”
The surgery went well. The reason they had opted to go into the surgical room was so they could make sure nothing had gotten into the wound. The tub, while hard as stone, was old and hadn’t been cleaned in some time. After cleaning the wound several times, finding a small piece of enamel in the wound, Elizabeth put tape over it to help with the probable scarring. They’d have to wait a couple of more days to stitch him up, as the swelling was more than it had been before they’d brought him in here.
