Healing Tides Read Online Free

of GloryAnn making funny faces. “Dr. Cranbrook?”
    “I heard you.” She straightened.
    “May I ask what you were doing?”
    “Taking his mind off what you were doing.” She pulled a small plastic disk from her pocket, showed the boy how to move it so the steel ball inside would follow the path. “You try it, Tony,” she encouraged.
    Tony did and giggled at his success. GloryAnn turned to Jared, lifted one eyebrow and inquired, “Shall we see Joseph?”
    “If you’ve finished playing.”
    “For now.” She said, tongue in cheek.
    Jared fought his impatience down. Her heels clicked on the marble floor. She hummed a little song about sunshine and flowers. Normally, extraneous noise irritated him, but Jared found himself relaxing as the soft melody carried down the hall.
    Joseph was in pain. Jared checked him over quickly before increasing his meds. GloryAnn’s attention focused on the boy.
    “Do you have anything he could listen to?” Her hand grasped the small fingers and cradled them when he moaned.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “A radio? A CD player, perhaps? Something to take his mind off his pain when his family isn’t here with him?” She paid him little heed, her focus on the boy. “He’s going to have to lie still for quite a while. We could make that easier if we gave him something else to think about.”
    “Such as?”
    “Is there someone who could read to him in his language?”
    “Dr. Cranbrook, we don’t have the staff or the time to entertain—” He stopped midsentence, a rap on the glass window interrupting him. His mother-in-law stood outside, beckoning.
    “Not again.” She’d already called him twice this morning.
    “Dr. Steele?” GloryAnn glanced from him to the woman.
    “I’ll be a moment. Excuse me.” Jared strode to the door, stepped into the hall so Dr. Cranbrook wouldn’t overhear.
    “Aloha, Jared, ku’u lei. ” My child .
    At least Kahlia had remembered his request not to enter the room without gowning up. She grasped his shoulders, enveloped him in a hearty hug, something he’d never grown used to from Diana’s big Hawaiian family.
    “You don’t return my calls. How are you?”
    “I’m fine. Busy,” he added, hoping she got the message.
    “You’re always busy. Too busy for family.” She shook her gray head. “Pono and I are holding a birthday party for Grandma tomorrow evening. You will be there?”
    There was no point in arguing with Kahlia, she would only keep nagging him. Diana and Nicholas had been her whole life. She and Pono had doted on their daughter and lavished affection on their tiny grandson. Jared couldn’t blame her for needing someone to fill the gap in her heart. He just wished she’d chosen someone else so he didn’t have to keep struggling through the reminders of what they’d all lost.
    “Grandma’s birthday, Jared?” she prodded.
    “I’ll try.”
    “Who’s that?” Kahlia inclined her head toward the woman now bent over the bed playing some kind of finger game that coaxed a smile from Joseph’s parched lips.
    “Our new doctor. GloryAnn Cranbrook. She arrived yesterday.”
    “Lovely. Will you bring her along?”
    “I don’t think so, Kahlia. She has work to do.” Jared took another tack. “Or she could go in my place.”
    Kahlia’s dark eyes scolded. “Always you try to avoid us. We are your family, Jared. We are here for you.”
    I lost my family .
    He clamped his teeth together to stifle the words. Kahlia had mourned enough. They all had. Sooner or later she would accept that he had to get on with his life. Away from here.
    “Excuse me, I’ve been paged.” GloryAnn eased past, strode down the hall, hair flying behind her like a silken kite.
    “She looks so young, a mere child.”
    “She’s extremely well qualified.” Jared barely recalled the list of credentials he’d scanned earlier. “Elizabeth Wisdom sent her to fill in for six months.”
    “Elizabeth is a good friend to Agapé. Where does this woman go