Lace shrugged. Vincent could see she was trying to let it go.
“Have you heard of theWater Wrestler?” she asked. “That’s the sixty foot longliner I’m currently serving aboard that he captains.”
“Can’t say that I have,” Vince admitted. “But I’ve been away from Maine for twenty years, so that’s no surprise.”
“Well, the man is an asshole. And a misogynist,” she added as a bitter afterthought.
“He treats you poorly?” Vincent’s back was instantly up again.
“Phht. You think? He barely tolerates me. Any chance he gets, he either tries to undermine what I’m assigned to do, or denigrate me to his crew.”
“And the crew allows it?” Vincent was incredulous.
In this day and age—and even when he was growing up—a lot of women worked on commercial fishing boats, so this captain and his mates were some kind of dinosaurs.
“All except for a couple youngsters,” Lace explained. “The two have made it their job to hang close to me so the prick doesn’t do me bodily harm.” She grunted.
Vincent’s blood chilled. “Has he…? Is there areasonfor the young mens’ overprotectiveness?”
“Up until late last week? No,” she told him. “But the day after I saw you, he not only dumped a batch of cookies I’d baked over the rail, he proceeded to hip-check me so hard I almost tumbled into one of the refrigerated seawater wells.”
“What?” Vincent was instantly incensed. “That’s completely unacceptable,” he strangled out, trying not to let his ire take control. Here in the hospital, it would do neither of them any good if he blew his stack.
Vince’s first inclination, however, once he left, would be to head to the docks and confront the arrogant moron, but that wouldn’t help Lace at all. It might even put her in more jeopardy if Vince couldn’t keep her name out of things. So that was off the table. Unfortunately.
But, oh, he wassogoing to be looking into that guy. The minute he left the hospital, he was calling Mason and Kyle to see if the asshole was on either Bangor or Orono Police departments’ radar.
“How did you save yourself?” Vince switched gears, biting back all kinds of retorts.
Who picked on a woman who looked like she weighed no more than a feather?
“Not my first rodeo,” she actually chuckled wryly. “I cut my teeth on fishing boats, so my sea-legs did their job. Lucky, too, I saw him coming, so I was able to plan my trajectory.”
What she wasn’t saying, was that if the prick had blindsided her, she might not have been so fortunate.
If Vincent had anything to say about it, the douchebag wouldn’t get another opportunity.
Lace falsely brightened. “But let’s not talk about my week, Vincent. I’m so over that. Let’s talk about Inez, instead. Do you know much about her other than her foster-status, and the care she’snotreceiving from the grown-ups in charge?”
Vincent couldn’t have put the situation more succinctly.
“Not much. I’ve been given her infusion schedule, which I think pretty much matches yours.”
“What is it?” Lace asked.
“Every Friday she has to arrive by ten in the morning, and depending on how busy things are, she’s normally given her preliminary blood draws within fifteen minutes. If her labs are okay, she’s then hooked up for her infusion, and is normally ready to leave by twelve thirty or one-ish. What I haven’t been given details on, is someothertreatment she receives every one or two weeks. And I’d like to see if I can be with her during those, too.”
“That first bit is very close to my agenda,” Lace concurred, tapping her lip and obviously pondering. “Do you… Do you know what kind of cancer she has?”
“Not a clue,” he answered. “I’m just the clown on duty. But maybe…?” Vince grew hopeful.
“MaybeIcan finagle it out of the nurses,” Lace finished for him, then gave his upper arm a light punch. “Just one cancer patient advocating for another, huh?”
Vincent wanted to groan. “No. I… Geezus, that comes off as me sounding like some callous opportunist. I’m so frigging sorry, Lace.”
Lacegrabbedhis arm this time, stopping him in his tracks. She shook a finger in his face like an old-fashioned schoolmarm.
“Nope. Donotbe sorry. If you start apologizing for everything you say about cancer and its associated fucked-up-ed-ness, you might as well hang things up right here and now,” she told him with another tsk. “There’s nothing pretty about cancer. At all. But it needs to be discussed. Hiding all mention of it under a bushel only makes the subject seem even more taboo to most people than it already is. It needs airing, not a head-in-the-sand, ostrich treatment.”