Chapter 8

Lee

Reyna hurried my way, cheerful in her pink scrubs, as I came through the door from the parking lot at work. “Oh, good, Lee. I wanted to talk to you.”

I plastered a smile on my face because I had an idea what was coming. “Sure. What’s up?”

“I passed my NCLEX exam. I got my certificate!”

“Congratulations!” I managed to sound as cheerful as she deserved. She’d studied hard, despite having worked as a nurse for years back in the Philippines before coming here.

“Thanks. But.” Her grin faded. “I do need to put in my two-week notice.”

“I figured.” That was the revolving door of nursing home aides, especially the better ones. Foreign nurses came here and had to take jobs as aides while getting their ESL and nursing credentials completed. Then they were off to jobs that actually paid worth a damn and used their skills. “I do have an opening for an RN if you’re interested.” I always had openings.

“Sorry, Lee, but I already took a different job. Better pay. You understand.”

“Yeah, sure. Totally get it.” She had two small kids back overseas with her mother whom she was hoping to bring to America. “Congrats again. I knew you’d pass.”

She sighed. “I do feel bad leaving.”

“No. Seriously. You’re going to be doing awesome work and saving lives wherever you end up. But.” I raised a finger. “If they treat you like crap and don’t appreciate you, think again. My offer’s always open.”

“Thanks. You’re the best.” She hurried off toward the patient rooms, light on her feet.

I trudged to my office. I’d need to mark down Reyna’s end date and let the bosses know we really, really needed to search for more aides. And, like, maybe pay our staff what they were worth so they might choose to stay. And I’d have to go through the staff calendar and figure out how the hell I was going to cover Reyna’s shifts when she was gone.

I was deep in those weeds when Kashira tapped on my doorframe. She grinned when I looked up from my computer. “So, did you get your mom all squared away yesterday?”

“Griffin did.”

“You and him, is there something going on?”

“No.”

“Hah, I’ve seen the way you look at each other.”

“There is no looking.” At her raised eyebrow, I huffed. “Okay, a little looking. He’s still fine.”

“Still?”

“We knew each other twenty years ago,” I admitted.

“I thought there was something going on. ‘Knew him’ as in pined for him across the street or exchanged body fluids?”

“Um. The second one. We dated for about three months.”

“You and Griffin?” She fanned herself with a hand as she perched on the chair across from me. “How was he? I bet he was hot back then. Dish.”

“No, no, no. I am not talking about our past. He left to follow his music, I had other things to do. End of story.”

“That’s sad.” Kashira hadn’t been at Wellhaven when Alice was, but she knew about my sister. That didn’t keep her from saying, “You say he’s still fine and now you got more time. Why aren’t you hitting that? I bet he’s interested. He watches you too.”

“He’s going to leave again, though, right? The rate he’s going, he’ll finish his community service in six or eight months and then he’ll be off again.”

She sobered, eyeing me with her head tilted. “Lee, did that man break your heart?”

I pushed some papers around my desk to avoid meeting her gaze. “Maybe battered my optimism a bit. It was a rough time all the way around. I don’t want to do that again.”

“Doesn’t have to be the same, though. You said twenty years. People change a lot in twenty years. Or just, you know, have some fun. You haven’t mentioned a single date in the last couple of years. You need to get out before you wither like some dead plant.”

“I’ve dated.” I patted my ample belly. “I’m in no danger of withering.”

“Not your body, you dork. Your heart. Maybe your dick.”

“My dick is not withered, thank you.”

I heard a snort from the doorway and looked up to see Griffin grinning. “Good to know,” he said.

“What do you want?” I sighed and toned down the snippiness, embarrassed to have wiped that grin from his face. “Sorry, what can I do for you?”

“I brought my guitar today and I was going to suggest I could do a bit of a show, maybe take requests. If that’s an okay idea? Around ten-thirty?”

“Sure, sounds good. I’ll have the staff pass the word to the residents.”

A little of Griffin’s humor returned. “What about you? Any advance requests?”

“Korn?” I suggested, unable to resist.

“‘Y’all Want a Single’?” Griffin named the Korn song that was thirty percent composed of the word fuck , an eyebrow theatrically raised. “You sure you want that echoing down the halls of your fine establishment?”

I had to laugh. “Just kidding. Take requests from the residents. They’re the ones who’re bored and not knee-deep in staffing issues.”

“Anything I can do?” Griffin asked. “I mean, I got no skills but willing hands. My back maybe not so much.”

“Nah, this is more of a future problem.” I waved him and Kashira off. “You two go do the fun things you need to do and leave me to my spreadsheets.”

An hour later, I couldn’t help letting the sound of Griffin’s guitar and voice pull me out of my office. The stiffness in my back told me I’d been sitting too long. The admin stuff was what I liked least about being head of nursing. Less hands-on patient time and a lot more headaches.

I peered into the front lobby. As I arrived, Griffin set aside his guitar and swung around to face the piano. “Sure, I can do that one,” he said. The first notes of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” danced out from under his fingertips. I stood there listening as he sang the familiar lyrics. When he came to Paul, who never had time for a wife, he raised his head and winked at me. I remembered one night we’d joked about how you could queer-code the whole bar in that song.

I’d expected to see Harvey and Owen listening front and center, but didn’t spot them at all, while even Prescott was there, propped up in his special chair. I hope nothing’s wrong. I headed for Harvey’s room and found the door wide open. When I peered around the doorframe, Harvey was in bed, his head barely raised, with Owen sitting on the mattress beside his knees.

“You two doing okay?” I asked.

“Not too bad,” Owen said. “Leg cramp day for Harvey and he does better flat on his back.”

“Sorry to be missing the music,” Harvey added. “But we can hear it okay, I guess. Both of us still got most of our hearing.”

“A minor miracle considering the ear-blasting concerts you used to go to,” Owen teased gently.

“It’s not a great concert unless you come out with your whole body vibrating.”

“We could push your bed out there,” I offered. The beds were all wheeled hospital equipment.

“Nah. Don’t really want to show up to a Griffin Marsh show like that. The chair’s bad enough.”

Owen said nothing but he took Harvey’s hand, stroking the back with his thumb.

Harvey offered a crooked grin. “Here we got the room to ourselves for an hour too, and me not in a mood to take advantage of it. Any word on the room front, Lee?”

I had to shake my head. “Management isn’t budging.” I eyed them. “Why don’t you get married? I can get a justice of the peace in to do it, or whatever celebrant you like.”

Owen eyed me. “You think that would help?”

“Hell, yeah. I’d go to bat for you in a hot minute if I could say ‘husbands.’ It’d still be tricky. We’d either have to move someone out of downstairs, although we have one resident who doesn’t really need it. Or we’d have to move Harvey up to your floor and run the sling lift up and down when we needed it for him. But either way. Newlyweds? I’d sneak that story to the media if they said no.”

Harvey gave a hoarse laugh. “Forty-eight years and newlywed.”

“A pity that won’t happen.” Owen raised Harvey’s hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles.

“No regrets,” Harvey said.

I suggested, “I think you can get a judge to certify a common law marriage, if you’re set against heteronormativity. Even that should be enough to force their hand.”

“It’s not the heteronormativity.” Harvey turned to Owen.

The two old men exchanged long looks, then Owen told me, “Shut the door, would you?”

I closed the door and leaned against Prescott’s bed across from them. “What’s up?”

“Can you keep a secret? Like, really secret? Two gay men to another?”

“Unless it endangers someone’s safety, sure.”

“Only ours.” Their eyes met again, then Owen said, “We can’t get married because it’s not legal.”

“Is one of you an undocumented immigrant?” I asked. With our staff, that issue had raised its head more than once regarding spouses and parents.

“Hah. No. US born and bred, both of us.” Owen took a breath. “You’re gay, so you’ll remember what the eighties were like. Or not remember. You probably weren’t even born yet.”

“1984,” I said. “But I didn’t know I was queer until well into the nineties.”

“The eighties were… it was surreal, almost. Gay men were dying and we had this thing bearing down on us, this plague. No one knew for sure how guys caught it, or how long you could have it and not know. Men were rejected by their families, bodies not even claimed. Men were yanked back to their childhood homes to die isolated while their families prayed over them that they’d repent their evil ways.”

Harvey said, “Guys we knew went into the hospital and it was like they vanished. No one was allowed to visit. We weren’t family . Bullshit.”

“Yeah.” Owen pressed a hand to Harvey’s shoulder. “There weren’t a lot of options, and Harvey’s family members were big trouble.”

“The God-hates brigade.” Harvey mouthed the words like they tasted bad. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since, what, Christmas 1987? When my uncle showed up in New York to tell me I was going to die of the plague if I didn’t repent, but if I went straight and narrow, he’d let me work in his feed store back home. I told him my boyfriend could buy his feed store out from under his queer-hating ass.”

“Wasn’t true, sadly,” Owen said. “I never had that kind of money. But it was a good line.” He hesitated. “After that we decided we wanted some kind of legal security. Something really solid, not like when Jack’s mother convinced the hospital her relationship overrode Toby’s power of attorney and they let her bring in her priest and make decisions for Jack. Catholic hospital, that was.”

“Yeah. People were all judgy about ‘Just have the right paperwork’ but there were some haters working hospital admin and law offices too.” Harvey glared off into space.

Owen paused a moment, then said, “So what we did was an adult adoption. Harvey’s legally my son.”

“Ah,” I hadn’t heard of such a thing, and I could see where that would make life complicated now.

Harvey mused, “Had to find the right judge. Lots of them refused to do it back in the day. ’Course, they suspected we weren’t planning any normal father-son relationship. But there were a couple of judges in New York who would formalize adult adoptions, maybe queer or just allies, we never asked. And one of the benefits was that, when an adult is adopted, it cuts their legal ties with their birth parents. The moment Owen and I signed on the dotted line, my mother and her church lost all their claim on me, even if I was ever too out of it to reject them in person.”

“It was a last-ditch option,” Owen said. “But you know, hospital visitation and end-of-life decisions are something a father and son can legitimately do for each other.”

Harvey noted, “Except, as iron-clad as that made our rights, it also meant every day, we were technically committing—”

Owen touched Harvey’s lips. “Don’t say it.” He smiled wryly. “And it wasn’t every day. You wish.”

“Close enough. Those were good times.” They shared a warm look.

Owen continued, “So we got strong protection of our rights to be a family when we needed that safety most, but it’s really hard to annul an adoption. Now, to get married, we’d have to say there’s no legal impediment. I’m not quite ready to commit to that lie.”

Harvey added, “And we don’t want anyone checking our paperwork. Not till one of us is dead. No pearl-clutching.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That would complicate things. Management might actually budge for a real father and son, but they would definitely clutch pearls over the two of you. Maybe worse. There’s a resident morality clause that includes illegal sex acts.”

“You’ll keep our secret?” Owen asked.

“Yes, of course.” I sighed. “I’ll keep you at the top of the list next time rooms get shuffled, but I can’t promise anything.”

“That’s okay. Or as okay as it can be.” Owen patted Harvey’s leg. “At least we’re able to be together every day. And at our age, a bed’s mostly for sleeping anyhow.”

“Speak for yourself,” Harvey murmured.

“I said mostly .” Owen leaned in and kissed him.

I pushed myself upright. “Anything I can do for you two right now? Do warm packs help those cramps, Harvey?”

“I’m okay as long as I lie still, give my back a chance to stop acting up.”

“Leave the door open as you go,” Owen requested. “That man of yours still has a decent voice. A little rougher than he used to be, but awesome control.”

“I’ll tell Griffin you said so. But he’s not mine.”

“Could be, if you wanted him.”

I didn’t say “I don’t” because I was beginning to think that was a lie. But wanting didn’t matter when keeping was a pipe dream. When I opened the door, the sounds of “Mein Herr” from Cabaret , an octave lower than Liza Minelli sang it, floated down the hall.

“Got quite a range, too,” Harvey said. “You know, there’s advantages to a man with great breath control.”

With a wave behind me, I slipped out of the room. Yeah, Griffin sounded awesome but the lines about needing open air and being just an affair slipped a knife into a tender spot. Griffin was no ingénue fucking his way across Europe, but he was a travelling man. I’d do well to remember that.

So even though his voice beckoned me toward the lounge, I turned the other way and headed for my office. There was always more work to do.