Whiskey Lullaby(11)
“Well, I’m eighty-eight years old, Noah. I’m goin’ sooner than later.”
“What are you talking about? I thought your goal was a hundred.”
“My goal ain’t nothing if I can’t play Bunko!” She fiddled with her IV line before tossing her head back on the pillow. I placed my hand on hers and squeezed. She’s all I had—all I’d ever had. If it weren’t for her, God knows where I’d be.
The heart monitor beeped, and I glanced at it. The little green line kept making peaks and valleys. “Can you go get me some ice?” she asked.
I stood up and shot a skeptical glare at her. “I don’t trust you.”
“For Pete’s sake, boy. My mouth is as parched as the Gobi Desert.”
“Alright.” I pointed at her. “Don’t take your IVs out!”
She threw her one hand in the air. “Cross my heart.”
I left the room with one more warning glare before I walked across to the nurses’ station and asked if they could get some ice. One of the women behind the desk grinned, her eyelashes batting. “You’re Noah Greyson, aren’t you?” she asked.
I rubbed my hand over the back of my neck. “Yeah.” I had no idea who she was, and I was worried it may be one of those situations where I should remember her, but…alcohol. She motioned for me to follow her to a doorway at the side of the desk, propping the door open with her foot while she grabbed a Styrofoam cup.
“I come watch you sing all the time at Tipsy’s.” She glanced over her shoulder while she placed the cup under the ice dispenser. “You’ve got the best voice.”
“Thanks. Appreciate that.”
“You’re gonna be famous one day.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that now.” I laughed.
“You will.” She handed me the cup and stepped out of the room. “Watch.”
“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, but I’m not really into the whole fame thing.”
“Sexy and humble, huh?” She bit down on her lip. “Next time I see you out, I’m gonna say hey.”
“You do that,” I said, winking before I crossed the hall and went back into Grandma’s room.
There was a different nurse than the one who started her line standing at the whiteboard. Her back was to me, her dark hair was piled in a messy bun, and her baby blue scrubs fit her just right. She erased the old nurse’s name and started to write hers in green marker as I handed Grandma her ice.
She set it on the table, and I glared at her. “I thought your mouth was parched,” I said.
“You’re just lucky this one came in,” she grumbled. “Foiled my escape plan.”
“My name’s Hannah,” the nurse said, and my ears perked up. “I’ll be taking care of you for the rest of the shift.” She capped the marker and spun around, and I was already smiling.
“Hey, you,” I said.
Her eyes widened, and damn she was adorable. “Hey,” she said abruptly.
“Just can’t seem to get away from you.”
“You two know each other?” Grandma asked.
“Kinda.” I shrugged a shoulder. “Sorta.”
“Well,” Grandma started, “depending on what his kinda sorta means, I may have to apologize for his actions.”
Hannah laughed. “He’s working for my father.”
“Oh,” Grandma said glancing at me and winking. “I see.”
There was a quick knock at the door before it swung open and some tall guy in scrubs poked his head into the room. “Hey, I’m supposed to take her down for a CT, but I’ve got one giving me some issues in three, can you take her down for me?”
“No Problem, Mike,” Hannah said, disconnecting the lines from the heart monitor. “We’re going to do a quick CT on you, Ms. Greyson.” She kicked at something on the hospital bed. “Standard procedure.” She grabbed the bed rail and started to push. I took the other side, and Hannah stopped rolling the bed. “You can’t do that.”
“Why not?” I shrugged. “It’s my grandma.”
“Hospital policy.” She hit the door open button on the wall and smiled before she wheeled the bed through the doorway. “I’ll be back in just a minute.” And with that, the door closed behind her.
I fell back onto the uncomfortable hospital chair, pulled my phone from my pocket, and scrolled Facebook. A smirk crossed my face when I typed in: Hannah Blake. We had exactly one hundred friends in common, and in a small town like Rockford, I have no idea how I’d never run into her before. Her page was nothing but pictures of her family. Pictures of the beach. Inspirational quotes from Marilyn Monroe and Mother Theresa. Her college graduation. Ahhh… I see why. Because she’s a good girl—at least compared to the Britney Swinsons I was used to. She had aim and purpose and she came from a good family.
A few minutes later, the door opened, and she stepped back inside. “You’re Grandma’s something,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s the truth.”
“She tried to bribe me to let her go, said something about whiskey and that you need to eat.”
I laughed. “She thinks whiskey cures everything. She keeps it in her medicine cabinet.”
Hannah smiled before pulling something from the front pocket of her scrubs. “I snagged you an energy bar from the staff lounge. Hopefully, that’ll hold you over until they get her situated.”
Something so simple, yet so sweet. Thoughtful. Outside of Grandma, I wasn’t really used to people like that. I pushed up from the chair and took a step toward her, taking the bar. There was something like gravity pulling me in. Something familiar. Something about her that felt right even though I knew I’d ruin her.
A tendril of her hair slipped free and I brushed it behind her ear, purposefully letting my fingers trail along her jaw. Small touches like that only made me want more.
She timidly glanced down, the softest blush staining her cheeks. And it was that innocence that got to me, that made my stomach anxious. Most girls I’d met—most girls that were interested in me—they were edgy. Sexual—
“It shouldn’t take long for them to figure out what’s going on. Does she live with you?” she asked, pulling a pen from her pocket.
“No…”
“You take care of her?”
“Well, we kinda take care of each other.”
A soft smile crossed her lips, and for some reason, I felt like she was trying to prove something to herself. She clicked the pen open and closed while her gaze dragged over my face, landing on my lips. “See, I knew you weren’t that bad.”
“Now, even bad boys can love their grandmas.”
She laughed, still clicking that pen. “I guess.”
It fell quiet, and while she shifted anxiously on her feet all I could think about was how soft her lips would be underneath mine.
“Well, I should go check on some of my other patients…” she shoved the pen into her pocket and walked to the door, glancing back once more before she slipped through the crack.
Shit. I scrubbed my hand over my face. That’s the kind of girl I’d always imagined I could love—and I was pretty sure that was terrible news for me and her both.
_
Grandma was discharged at ten the next morning with directions to follow up with a neurologist on the following Monday. She said she wasn’t going back, but all I had to do was threaten not to take her to church anymore and she agreed.
“Don’t waste the power,” she grumbled when I flipped the light on in the living room. “And I’m not an invalid, Noah.” She shuffled past me straight into the kitchen. I took a breath before flopping back on the couch. I was tired from being at the hospital all night. I heard the pantry open and the clink of dishes.
When she came out, she sat down in the recliner with a glass of whiskey in her hand. She lifted one gray brow and held the glass up in a toast. “Those doctors are still wet behind the ears.” Then she downed the whiskey. “Whiskey and prayers. That’s all I need.”
All I could do was shake my head.
Nodding, she set the glass on the side table before kicking the footrest up with a groan. “Now, leave me be so I can get some rest. Those hospital beds sleep like lumpy potatoes.” She closed her eyes and folded her hands over her round stomach. “Go on.”
Groaning, I pushed up from the couch and made my way to the door. “I’ll leave you alone, but I’m staying here tonight.”
“Fine,” she grumbled, nestling down into the recliner.
The sun heated my skin the second I stepped onto the old porch. I breathed in the fragrant sweet shrub. There was something tranquil and lazy about Alabama summers. No matter how old I got, standing out on her porch and staring across the fields made me feel like a kid. The sounds and smells offered a sense of nostalgia. When you’re a kid you still have something called hope, you have dreams. You think you can do anything. And that’s a train of thought I’d pay good money for these days.
12
Hannah
The chorus of “Living on a Prayer” woke me up, and while I loved Jon Bon Jovi’s voice, it’s not what I wanted to hear at—I glanced at the blue block numbers on the clock—one AM.