Lori awakened, startled. Where was she? She looked around at the brightly lit, pleasant room she was in, saw her son sleeping soundly in a crib next to her bed, and remembered. She was at her boss, Ted Davis's house. He insisted she and Donnie stay with him when she was released from the hospital after her suicide attempt.
She remembered how embarrassed she'd been when she woke up in the hospital:
A pleasant-looking nurse was standing next to the bed, smiling down at her.
"Am...am I...in...in the hospital?" Lori stammered.
"You sure are," the nurse replied.
"How...how did I...I get here?" Lori asked.
The nurse shrugged. "Couldn't tell you that, hon," she said. "All I know is you came up here from the E.R. sometime during the night. How are you feeling?"
"Terrible," Lori replied.
"I'm not surprised," the nurse said. "For a while there, we weren't sure you were going to make it." The nurse nodded to her right. "He's been real worried about you. He's been here ever since you came in."
Lori looked to the side of her bed and was shocked to see her boss, Ted Davis, his clothes rumpled, sitting in a chair next to her bed. He was sound asleep. "He...he has?" she stammered.
The nurse nodded. "You bet, honey," the nurse said. "We been bringing him food. He wouldn't leave. He your dad?"
Lori shook her head. "N...no. He...he's my boss," she said. She vaguely remembered talking to her boss after she took the pills and realized he must have been the one who called the ambulance. She felt ashamed that she'd put Ted out this way.
Ted's eyes opened, then he looked around and stretched. When he saw that Lori was awake, he smiled. "You're awake," he said.
Lori nodded. "Ted...I...I'm sorry. I..." Then it hit her. Donnie! What had happened to her son? "Where's Donnie?" she asked. "My baby!"
"Don't worry. He's at my house," Ted said. "My daughter Linda is taking care of him. He's quite a boy."
"The doctor says you can go home tomorrow," the nurse said, interrupting. "But you can't be discharged until you have an appointment with a therapist."
"That won't be a problem," Ted said. "I know an excellent therapist and I'm sure she'll be happy to have Lori as a client."
Ted used the phone in the hospital room to call his therapist friend and get Lori an appointment. He stayed with her the rest of the day, and only went home that night because Lori begged him to.
During the time they spent together that day, they talked about a lot of things. Lori told Ted what had happened that led to her overdose attempt and, in turn, she learned a lot about the man she worked for, things she'd never known.
She had no idea how lonely Ted was, or how powerfully his wife's death had hit him. He'd been devastated when his wife died, and even the loving attention of his daughter hadn't helped much to ease his pain.
"What...what did you do?" Lori asked. "How...how did you go on?"
"I finally got over it," he said, "mostly. But it took a lot of work. The therapist you'll be seeing helped me, and so did having Linda's love."
"Maybe there's hope for me, too," Lori mused.
Ted arrived bright and early the next morning, signed Lori out, and drove her to his house. She protested that she could do fine in her own place, but he wouldn't accept anything less than having Donnie and her stay with him for a while, until she felt safe going back to her own place.
Lori didn't argue with him for long. She didn't want to. During the time they were together in the hospital, she had come to like Ted a lot and, despite her protests to the contrary, she really didn't want to go home and be alone.
Lori got up, took a quick shower, and got dressed. After she finished, heard her son, Donnie fussing. She picked the infant out of the crib and headed downstairs. Ted's daughter, Linda, was in the kitchen and had breakfast ready.
"Let me feed Donnie," Linda, an attractive young woman a few years older than Lori, said. "He likes it when Aunt Linda feeds him." As if to prove her right, Donnie smiled and reached for her. "Yeah, you sure do, don't you little guy," Linda laughed.
Lori had seen pictures of Ted's late wife and knew Linda looked a lot like her mother. She was also starting to feel a little guilty about the way Ted and his daughter had been fussing over her.
And she was surprised how well Ted related to Donnie and how much the little boy had come to love him in the short time they'd been staying in the Davis home. Her son had once been fearful of men, probably because of the way his father had treated him, but Ted, showing a silly side Lori never knew existed, charmed his way into Donnie's heart.
A couple of times, she'd even heard Donnie saying, "Da-da," to Ted, who quickly corrected him, but she did see that Ted had a glow of pride on his face when Donnie said that to him.
Lori insisted on helping Linda with household chores. Between doing that and taking care of Donnie, the day passed quickly.
Ted came home from work, they ate dinner, and then it was time to put Donnie to bed. Lori laid her son in the crib and, exhausted from playing with Ted, the little guy fell asleep almost immediately. Lori stood next to the crib, watching him sleep, for a long time.
"I...I was so stupid!" she thought as she stood there. "What would have happened to Donnie if...if I'd..." She shuddered. She undressed, put on a frilly white nightgown Linda loaned her, and laid down in her bed. After lying on the bed, unable to sleep for a while, she got up, and started down the hall to the bathroom.
The door to Ted's room was open, and he was lying in bed with a light on, reading. Lori stopped in his bedroom doorway and he looked at her and smiled. "Are you all right, Lori?" he asked, looking concerned.
