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“Abby says you’re trying to bolt.”
“The longer I sit here, the sillier I feel, ma’am.”
“Tell me what happened to you.”
“Nothing worth frettin’ about.”
Maude took a step closer. “Well, now that you’re already here, I’ll examine you, take a listen to your chest and if need be, we’ll go from there.”
“Is it really necessary?” He swung one leg and tapped the cart’s metal end with a boot heel.
She stared steadily at him and knit her eyebrows as if contemplating a great puzzle. She knew his type. Needed a limb dangling before help seemed necessary. “That’s one of the tricky things about trauma medicine. Sometimes I don’t know if it’s ‘necessary’ until I examine the patient and see if it’s necessary.”
“You’re sure?”
“There is one tried-and-true way to cover the worst-case scenario without examining you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small tag with a string attached to it by way of a reinforced hole. One of the M.D.’s who’d helped her train in rural medicine had given it to her. One of my old tricks, he had said.
Maude had thought she’d never use it, but here she was handing it to her third patient.
Abby laughed out loud and came up to stand beside Jake.
Jake took the small tag and let it dangle from his fingertips. “What’s this?”
“A toe tag.” Abby doubled over as she spoke.
Maude held a steady, serious expression. “Tie it on your big toe. Saves us the trouble if…”
Jake held up a hand to stop her. “You’re very persuasive, Dr. DeVane.”
“It’s how I can afford my yacht.” She took the tag from him and tucked it back into her pocket.
He looked at her briefly and then laughed. “Trying to picture someone tugging a yacht up into these mountains.”
She took the stethoscope from her pocket and held it in her hands. “So, tell me how you feel.”
He settled back as if he might stay for the exam. “Like I was kicked into the dirt by a Boardroom Betty. Mostly a pride injury, I suspect. I was only down for a couple seconds.”
“He has two small impact marks on his chest,” Abby offered.
Maude examined him, read the electrocardiogram and found nothing to make her think he had any serious side effects from the kick or the fall, but harbored her usual suspicion for a posttrauma case.
“Sir, you seem to have pronounced your diagnosis correctly. You are ‘fine’ as far as your exam and tests show.”
He leaped off the cart and grabbed the blue work shirt from the counter.
“We’ll give you privacy to dress, but don’t leave yet.”
“Yes, ma’am. And, please, tell the boss I didn’t just get up and run away. He’s likely not to believe me.” He smiled at them as Maude and Abby stepped into the corridor.
“I’ll tell him, Mr. Hancock.” Maude pulled the door closed.
Now, back to the seminar leader’s problem pupil.
Seminar leader. It’s not that she hated Guy Daley or anything—not really. He was being a big brother looking after Henry. Though he was overbearing and a snob and sometimes…
Maybe she hated him a little. She’d have to work on that one if they were going to live in the same valley. Henry had loved him after all. Maybe he’d mellowed in the years since she’d seen him.
“Excuse me.” Guy stood in the hallway, his hair a bit disheveled. A dark lock fell over his forehead, making him look a little like a cross between a certain superhero and his alter ego.
Feelings shot through her which she banished almost before she acknowledged them.
“The tech has the X-rays finished. They look…Well, they’re ready for you to read,” he said, as he followed her down the hallway.
She stopped and turned. “Dr. Daley.”
“I’ll be waiting down there.” He gestured toward the entrance and walked away.
She smiled a little. He couldn’t stand to be sent to the waiting room instead of doing the sending.
She continued to the small recess that served as the tiny clinic’s supply closet and X-ray viewing room. The tech had kindly moved the mop and pail out of the way so she could get a good close look at the X-ray films.
A few minutes later, she went in to see Ms. Stone and found her patient reclined on the cart with a damp wash-cloth over her eyes. Maude touched the woman’s arm.
“Yes.” Cynthia’s voice was weak and, well, pathetic if Maude was to go there.
“Ms. Stone, I’ve looked at your X-rays.”
The patient removed the cloth from her eyes. A hopeful look spread over her face. Maude liked giving good news. It was one of the best parts of being a doctor.
“There’s no break and no signs of any degenerative joint disease. The bone structure of your foot and ankle looks just fine.”
Ms. Stone’s expression became distorted. But she remained silent.
Not exactly the reaction Maude expected.
“You might have a small muscle tear or a strained ligament which wouldn’t show up on X-ray. The tech will tell you what you need to do for it, give you home-care instructions and wrap it with an elastic bandage. If it hurts too much, use an over-the-counter pain medication. I’ll call—”
Ms. Stone began to squirm and look around the room, to look anywhere except at Maude.
“Is there something wrong?” Maude asked.
“I can’t go with Mr. Daley. You’ll have to keep me here until I’m better.” She still avoided looking at Maude.
“Is there a problem I should know about?” Other than a problem with a hotshot emergency doctor not telling anyone he was a physician? Maude quickly put the thought away. She could examine it when she had no one else’s welfare at stake.
“I can’t go back to that place.” Ms. Stone studied her chipped nail polish intently.
“I’m sorry. We have no overnight facilities at the clinic.”
“I need to stay here until I can travel,” she said after a few more moments of polish-studying.
“There are motels nearby.”
The woman looked away, and when she looked back, there were tears in her eyes.
“Then I’d—” She paused.
“Yes?” Maude placed a hand on her patient’s shoulder.
“I’d be alone.”
Maude wondered if Cynthia Stone had ever been alone. She’d met the type, always had nannies, traveling companions, live-in servants. Never alone.
“You wouldn’t be by yourself at the ranch. It’s such a pretty place.”
“You know it? You know that place and about that thing he has strung across the canyon?”
Maude smiled. She hadn’t seen Henry’s contraptions, but he had an uncanny respect for the land; she trusted him to somehow make Mountain High fit in to the natural surroundings.
She realized Ms. Stone was waiting for a response.
“You chose to participate in the program, didn’t you?”
“Well—um—yes.”
“And you paid for it?”
“Of course.” She looked at her fingernails again. “Well, my father did.”
Maude stepped back and folded her arms over her chest. “Then you’re the boss. Choose to participate or choose not to. They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. You can discuss options with the people from Mountain High.”
Cynthia Stone crossed her arms over her chest, mimicking Maude’s stance, but said nothing.
“I’ll send in D—um—Mr. Daley.” Mr. Daley. Dr. Daley, whatever. It wasn’t her place to rat him out.
Cynthia huffed out a derisive sound. “It won’t do any good. I don’t trust any of them. I don’t know what they think they’re doing out there in the middle of the wilderness on that horrible ranch.”
“I’ll send him in.”
Maude left the door slightly ajar as she exited the room. Horrible ranch. She thought many things of the ranch where she grew up, but horrible was never one of them. Not even when its isolation helped cause great harm to her sister.
She remembered the ever-present smile on the face of her beautiful sister. A sister who had once been so smart and capable.
“You can go in and see Ms. Stone now,” Maude said as she approached Guy Daley. “She’s convinced she needs to stay.”
He nodded and disappeared into the treatment room.
If he didn’t talk the woman into leaving, there was always Sheriff Potts. The imposing man with the badge had little trouble in a face-to-face confrontation. Though law enforcement was rarely needed in the small rural valley’s only clinic, the sheriff was always glad to help out—at least that’s what Doc Avery told her. He had told her a lot of things during the short two weeks she had to get acquainted with his, and now her, practice.
Not much later, Maude looked up from the office desk where she was finishing paperwork to see Guy coming down the hallway toward her. So soon. She wondered if she’d need the sheriff after all.
“The tech is helping her learn how to use crutches and then I’ll take her back to the ranch.”
Maude swallowed a startled “What?” She couldn’t believe the woman in the treatment room would consent to going anywhere with him, let alone back to the ranch, and so quickly.
“She said she’d leave because—” He paused.
She checked to see if he was gloating.
Holding his expression emotionless, he said, “I told her you’d make a house call.”
She pushed up from her chair to face him. “You what? A house call? For a minor ankle injury?” She thought of the old and the infirm patients Doc Avery used to visit at home. She would gladly see those people, but Cynthia Stone didn’t fit any category of patient who might need a house call.
“Having you come by to check up on her was the only thing that got her interested in leaving.”
The ranch. The place she had managed, with one excuse or another, not to go back to for over ten years.
“Tell her I won’t be there.”
“She’s your patient,” he stated matter-of-factly, and walked out the door.
Even after Henry most generously bought the ranch from her parents to save them from bankruptcy and to fund their retirement and her sister’s care—Maude could not make herself return.
Soon, Mountain High’s blue van pulled up to the door.
Yes, she did hate Guy Daley. She did so want to be bigger than that, but he made it too easy.
Worse—
He was forcing her hand. She should visit the ranch for her own sake. She hadn’t had the moral fortitude to go back there since she left for medical school, and had even less courage after her parents sold the ranch to Henry. Making a house call would keep her from chickening out.
She stepped into the warm afternoon sunlight and walked over to where Guy stood looking tall and Western, not at all like a Chicago doctor, and leaning on the van’s driver’s side door with his arms crossed.
“I’ll come,” she said as she stopped in front of him.
He unfolded his arms and looked at her to continue.
“Please keep an eye on Mr. Hancock. My confidence is low that he’d report any problems if he had them.”
Guy frowned and Maude knew he wanted to ask for confidential patient information, but he didn’t, always the utmost professional. Recalling the earlier promise she’d made, she said, “He asked that I tell you he ‘didn’t just get up and run away.’ That I released him.”
“That would be Jake.” One corner of his mouth turned up into the beginnings of what she knew to be a beguiling smile.
Oh, yes. This was Henry Daley’s brother. Charm had poured from Henry at every turn. From his brother it had to be coaxed and, if given, was hard fought for. The only people she ever saw charm the great Dr. Daley were his brother Henry and Henry’s daughter, Lexie. For Maude, the charm had never been there.
“I’ll come tomorrow morning.” “Solo practice” popped into her head. “Make that afternoon. Tuesday morning is office hours, there are patients for me to see.”
“Tomorrow afternoon then.”
