Owen's Day by helen yeomans

Author:helen yeomans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Guards Publishing
Published: 2021-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

On the afternoon of December twentieth, Owen ventured upstairs to his study for the first time in nearly three weeks. Wendy had faxed the January issue for his approval, and he collected the edited made-up pages and dropped them on the desk, glimpsing a flash of blue as he sat down. He found a post-it note stuck to the blotter. The message was short: “Should you be up here?” Sara must have left it, he realized, and he smiled and fell into a reverie.

“I am sure we’re both grateful to Mrs. Newton for her timely assistance,” were Nurse Sheepwash’s first words as she entered his bedroom on the afternoon of the eighth, and Owen had been too feverish to debate the inadequacy of the word “grateful.” In any case, he was given no chance to respond, for she deployed her thermometer and proceeded to define the rules of play. He had expected a rawboned woman with chapped lips and red hands; he was nonplused by this small, trim figure with square shoulders, a square chin and calm, inflexible determination. Nor, he soon discovered, had she left the bedpan on the kitchen counter, and she deployed that, too, with a clinical detachment Owen strove to match until he realized that his feelings were utterly irrelevant to her; thereafter, he relaxed and thought of other things.

He thought about Andrew Byrd, the Bermuda-bound specialist whose investments had turned out all right; and he thought about Spence’s charge that he’d been unprofessional, a comment that still annoyed him. He thought of Mac Drummond and of all the friends who had called to wish him well. Most of all he thought about Sara.

He did much of his thinking in the mornings, while Nurse Sheepwash read to him. She had conceived the idea that hearing from his well-wishers would speed his recovery and once the sacks of mail began arriving she would read a random selection of letters. Owen didn’t want to hear the letters, nor see the bouquets of flowers she brought in, but his wishes were ignored, and so he thought of other things while “Congratulations” and “Get well soon” washed over him. But some residue of this tide of benevolence must have stayed with him, because when he saw the sacks ranged against the wall by the front door, he did not call the courier service; he phoned Wendy instead.

That was on the sixteenth, the day the nurse left. She had whisked him off to the hospital that morning, wrapped up and in a wheelchair, and Spence had expressed restrained approval of his progress and agreed that he could manage on his own provided he stayed indoors, preferably in bed, and did nothing foolish for the next three weeks. Owen said stiffly that he had no intention of doing anything foolish, and the nurse wheeled him home again.

Wendy congratulated him on the Freedom of the City award. “Media hype,” he said dismissively, having had two days to become accustomed to the idea. “They’re always hard up for news at this time of year.

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