Read Miss Julia Delivers the Goods for Free Online Page A

engaged.”
    “Well, of course they weren’t. Officially, that is. But after several years of seeing no one else and going off to San Francisco together, to say nothing of Mexico, I don’t know what else you would call it. Be that as it may, though, and whatever it was, she’s ended it. Can you believe that? Sweet, go-along-with-anything Hazel Marie just up and told him she wasn’t going to be a girlfriend all her life.”
    “Well, my goodness,” Sam said. “That’s a pretty come off.”
    “It’s worse than that. Who else is she going to take up with, I ask you. I’m just convinced that Mr. Pickens would have come around eventually, and her being sick could’ve been just the thing to galvanize him into action. But she doesn’t even want him to know she’s sick. She made me promise not to call him.” I grasped Sam’s hand. “And I couldn’t get him anyway because nobody knows where he is. I can’t help but believe if. . . .”
    “Julia,” Sam said. “If she doesn’t want him to know, then we can’t call him. It’s not up to us to go against her wishes.”
    “Well,” I said carefully, “Lloyd could call him, don’t you think? I mean, it wouldn’t be us doing it. And if Mr. Pickens is still out of touch, he could leave a message. That would be a perfectly normal thing to do, if Lloyd would just think of it on his own.”
    “ If he does,” Sam said, “but not if somebody gives him the idea.”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t do that.” But, I thought, Lillian could, and if I just happened to mention the possibility in her hearing . . .
    “Well,” I said, untangling myself from Sam’s arms, “I need to go to bed. I want to be at the hospital early enough in the morning to ask that doctor a few questions. And you know some of them make rounds at the crack of dawn just to avoid being pinned to the wall by family members.”
    Sam laughed. “Okay. I’ll get the lights.”
    A little while later when Sam and I were in bed, drifting off to sleep wrapped around each other, I thought to myself how comforting it was to have this warm and safe place next to him. It was the best part of being well married. Almost.
    The following morning I left Lillian and Sam to get Lloyd off to his tennis clinic and arrived at the hospital a little after seven, only to learn that Dr. McKay had come and gone.
    “You mean he’s already been here?” I looked from one nurse to the other as they stood and sat around a desk midway in the hall. “Well, what did he say about Ms. Puckett’s condition?”
    One of them, probably the head nurse since the others looked to her, said, “You’ll have to speak to him. We can’t give out that information.”
    “Well then, how was her night? Did she sleep well? Is she still throwing up?”
    The nurse stared at me for a minute. “We can’t . . .”
    “I know, I know,” I said, pursing my mouth and doing an about-face. “It’s all classified information.” And walked off.
    I went to Hazel Marie’s room, expecting any moment to be called back and told to wait for visiting hours. But I reached her door without being stopped, tapped on it, and pushed it open. “Hazel Marie?”
    She couldn’t answer because she was leaning over a curved basin on the bed, trying to throw up from an empty stomach.
    I dashed out to the nurses’ desk and broke into the circle around it. “She’s sick again. Come quick.”
    One of the nurses followed me into Hazel Marie’s room. She took a wet washcloth and wiped Hazel Marie’s face, which I could’ve done myself if I hadn’t expected something more therapeutic than that.
    Then the nurse told her to lie back down and not move around so much, giving me the eye as she said it. I wanted to tell her that I’d just gotten there and had not been the cause of an upset stomach. I held my peace, though, when the nurse said she’d bring an injection for the nausea.
    Hazel Marie lay on the bed, looking exhausted, while I drew up a chair. I wanted to talk to