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“Oh yeah.” Other than bloodshot eyes, he had cleaned up well. “Thanks, sweetheart. You’re a lifesaver.”
“Not quite,” she said and took the opening. “Grace and I were in an accident last night. We’re both fine—not a scratch—but we hit a man.”
Her father was a minute taking it in, his face filled with concern, then relief, then uncertainty. “Hit?”
“He was just suddenly there in front of the car. It was out on the rim road. Visibility was really bad.” When her father didn’t seem to follow, she prompted, “The rain? Remember?”
“Yes, I remember. That’s awful, Deborah. Do we know him?”
“He teaches history at the high school. Grace has him.”
“Is he one of ours?”
One of their patients? “No.”
“How badly is he hurt?”
She related what she knew.
“Not life threatening, then,” her father decided as she had.
He sipped his coffee. She was starting to think that she’d gotten off easy, when, with marginal sharpness and a rise in color, he asked, “How fast were you going?”
“Well under the speed limit.”
“But how could you not see him?”
“It was pouring and dark. He wasn’t wearing reflective gear.”
Her father leaned back against the counter. “Not exactly the image of the good doctor. What if someone thought you’d been drinking?” His eyes met hers. “Were you?”
I wasn’t driving, she nearly said, but settled for a quiet, “Please.”
“It’s a fair question, sweetheart. Lord knows, you have cause to drink. Your husband left you with a huge house, huge responsibilities, huge wine cellar.”
“He also left me with a huge bank account, which makes the huge house doable, but that’s not the point. I don’t drink, Daddy. You know that.”
“Did the police issue a citation?”
Her stomach did a little flip-flop—possibly from the word, more likely from the increased edge in her father’s voice. “No. They didn’t see any immediate cause. They’re doing a full report.”
“That’s swell,” Michael remarked dryly. “Does the man have family?”
“A wife, no kids.”
“And if he ends up with a permanent limp, you don’t think he’ll sue?”
Mention of a lawsuit, coming on the heels of the word citation, both evidence of her father’s disappointment, made Deborah’s stomach twist. “I hope not.”
Michael Barr made a dismissive sound. “Lawsuits have little to do with reality and everything to do with greed. Why do you think we pay what we do for malpractice insurance? We may be totally in the right, but the process of proving it can cost thousands of dollars. Naïveté won’t help, Deborah.” He snorted. “This is the kind of discussion I’d expect to have with your sister, not with you.”
And guess what she’s done now? Deborah wanted to cry in a moment of silent panic, but she just said, “She’s doing great.”
“A baker?” he tossed back. “Do you know the kind of hours she works?”
“They’re no worse than ours.” Deborah had hired a nanny. Jill could, too—actually, Jill didn’t have to. She lived above the bakery. She could set up a nursery in the back room and have the baby with her all the time. She could even have one of her employees help out. They had almost become like family.
“She can barely make ends meet,” Michael argued. “She knows nothing about business.”
“Actually, she does,” Deborah said.
But her father had moved on. “You’ve called Hal, haven’t you? He’s the best lawyer around.”
“I don’t need a lawyer. I’ll file a report today, and that’s it.”
“File a report at the police station? Put it in writing, and then have your own words come back to haunt you?” His color heightened. “Please, Deborah. Listen to me here. You hit someone; he didn’t hit you. That makes you the offender. If you’re talking with the police, you need a lawyer with you.”
“Isn’t that a sign of guilt?”
“Guilt? Cripes, no. It’s preventive medicine. Isn’t that what we’re about?”
Deborah made house calls. It wasn’t something she had planned to do when she was in medical school, or even when she started to practice—and when tests were necessary, it was out of the question. Those patients had to be seen either in the office or at the local hospital.
But not all patients needed tests, and one day a few years ago, when a regular patient had called with severe back spasms that prevented her from driving to the office, it seemed absurd not to help. The patient was a single mom, with a new baby and a disabled aunt. Deborah couldn’t bear letting her suffer.
Seeing her at home made a difference in Deborah’s diagnosis. The apartment—five rooms on the second floor of a two-family house—was in chaos. Clothes were everywhere; baby gear was everywhere; dirty dishes were everywhere. When Deborah talked with her on the phone, the women claimed that the spasms came from lifting the baby. In fact, Deborah saw a woman who was simply overwhelmed with her life. There were social services that could help, but Deborah wouldn’t have known to give them a call if she hadn’t visited the house.
Treating patients was like solving a puzzle. There were times when an office visit yielded enough clues, other times when more was needed. Since Deborah was drawn to this puzzle-solving, and liked being out and about more than her father did, she did all the home visits. This also gave her a lighter patient load and more flexibility, both of which were especially welcome after Greg left.
Today, desperate to busy herself, she set off shortly before nine to visit an elderly woman who had fallen out of bed the week before and hit her head. The concussion was mild compared to her fear of falling again. A pair of bed rails and a cane, both of which she showed Deborah now with pride, had restored some of her confidence.
Deborah’s second stop was just down the road, at the home of a family with six children, the youngest three of whom had high fevers. The parents could have brought the kids in. But to risk infecting other patients in the waiting room? Deborah didn’t see the point, particularly when she was going to be nearby anyway.
Ear infections. All three. Easily diagnosed, with a minimum of risk.
Her next patient lived one town over. Darcy LeMay was a woman whose husband, a business consultant, was on the road three weeks out of every four, leaving her alone in a beautiful home with a severe case of osteoarthritis. She was seeing a specialist, from whom Deborah received regular reports. The woman’s current complaint had to do with such intense ankle pain that she wondered if she had broken a bone.
Deborah rang the bell and let herself in when she found the door ajar. “In the kitchen,” Darcy called unnecessarily. She was always in the kitchen, and why not? It was a beautiful kitchen, complete with exquisite cherry cabinets, carved granite counters, a state-of-the-art cooktop, and appliances so neatly built-in that they were almost invisible. A baker’s rack held earthenware plates in gold, olive, and rust, all hand-painted in Tuscany, Darcy had explained when Deborah had admired them on an earlier visit.
Darcy sat at a hexagonal table built into the breakfast nook. She wore a large cotton sweater over a pair of tights, and had her bad foot resting on the seat of the adjacent chair. The table was strewn with papers.
“How’s the book coming?” Deborah asked, regarding the papers with a smile as she set her bag on the table.
“Slow,” Darcy said and proceeded to blame her ankle for distraction, her arthritis specialist for unresponsiveness, and her absent husband for disinterest.
Deborah knew scapegoating when she heard it. Moreover, she didn’t have to look at Darcy’s ankle to see the immediate problem, though she did an appropriate amount of prodding. “No break,” she concluded, as she had known she would. “Just your arthritis kicking up.”
“So bad?”
Gently, Deborah said, “You’ve gained more weight.”
Darcy gave a dismissive headshake. “I’m holding steady.”
Denial was right up there with scapegoating. Taking a direct approach, Deborah peered under the table. “Is that a bag of chips on the floor behind you?”
“They’re low fat.”
“They’re still chips,” Deborah said. “We’ve talked about this. You’re a beautiful woman who is carrying around fifty pounds too much weight.”
“Not fifty. Maybe thirty.”
Deborah didn’t argue. Darcy had been thirty pounds overweight when she had last been to the office, but that was two years ago. Seeing a specialist was a convenient excuse not to have to face one’s own doctor’s unforgiving scale.
“Here’s the thing,” Deborah said, gentle again. “Arthritis is a real disease. We know you have it. The medication you take helps, but you have to do your part, too. Think of carrying a fifty-pound weight around in your arms all day. Think of the extra stress that puts on your ankles.”
“I really don’t eat very much,” Darcy said with feeling.
“Maybe not, but what you do eat is bad for you, and you don’t exercise.”
“How can I exercise, if I can’t walk?”
“Take some of the weight off, and you will be able to walk. Set yourself up in the den, Darcy. Working here in the kitchen is too convenient for snacking. Start slowly. Walk up and down stairs three times a day, or to the mailbox and back. I’m not asking you to run a marathon.”
“You shouldn’t,” Darcy advised. “Fast is not always good. I heard about your accident.”
Deborah was taken off guard. “My accident?”
“Speed does it every time.”
Deborah might have informed her that speed had not been involved, but it was the wrong direction to take. “We were talking about your weight, Darcy. You can blame arthritis, or your husband, or Dr. Habib, or me. But you’re the only one who can change your life.”
“I can’t cure arthritis.”
“No, but you can make it easier to live with. Have you given more thought to taking a job outside your home?” They had talked about that at length last time Deborah had visited.
“If I do that, I’ll never finish my book.”
“You could work part-time.”
“Dean earns more than enough.”
“I know that. But you need to be busier than you are, particularly when he’s gone.”
“How can I work if I can’t walk?” Darcy asked, and Deborah grew impatient. Taking a pad from her bag, she wrote down a name and number.
“This woman is a physical therapist. She’s the best. Give her a call.” She returned the pad to her bag.
“Does she come to the house?”
“I don’t think so. You may just have to go there,” Deborah said with a perverse satisfaction that had vanished by the time she left the house. Like so many of her patients, Darcy LeMay had issues that went beyond the physical. Loneliness was one; boredom, denial, and low self-esteem were others. On a normal day, Deborah might have spent more time addressing them. But there was nothing normal about today.
She had barely returned to the office when the school nurse called to say that Grace had thrown up in the girls’ bathroom and needed to be picked up. How could Deborah refuse? She knew that Grace would have already taken the biology exam, and yes, she would miss the rest of the day’s classes, plus track, but if Deborah’s own stomach lurched at the thought of the accident, she could imagine how Grace felt.
The girl’s face was pale, her forehead warm. Deborah was helping her off the cot in the nurse’s office when the woman said, “We heard about the accident. I’m sure the talk didn’t help Grace.”
Deborah nodded, but didn’t want to discuss it in front of her daughter. Once in the car, Grace put her head back and closed her eyes.
Deborah started driving. “Was the test bad?”
“The test wasn’t the problem.”
“How’d they find out about the accident?”
“There was an announcement in homeroom.”
“Saying that it was our car that hit him?”
Grace said nothing, but Deborah could piece together the answer. The school wouldn’t have said it, but Mack Tully would have told Marty Stevens, who told his kids, who told the kids on their school bus, who told all the kids on the steps of the school. And that wasn’t counting the phone calls Shelley Wyeth would have made en route from the bakery to work. Even Darcy LeMay, who lived in another town, had heard about the accident. Gossip was that way, spreading with the frightening speed of a virulent flu.
“Are they asking you questions?”
“They don’t have to. I hear them anyway.”
“It was an accident,” Deborah said, as much to herself as to Grace.
The girl opened her eyes. “What if they take your license away?”
“They won’t.”
“What if they charge you with something?”
“They won’t.”
“Did they tell you that at the police station?”
“I haven’t been yet. I’m going there after I drop you home.” Her daughter’s expression flickered. “And no, you can’t come.”
Grace closed her eyes again. This time, Deborah let her be.
The Leyland police department was housed next to Town Hall in a small brick structure that held three large offices and a single cell. There were twelve men on the force, eight of them full-time, which was all that the town of ten thousand needed. Domestic quarrels, drunk driving, the occasional petty theft—that was the extent of its crime.
As she came in, Deborah was greeted warmly by people she had known most of her life. There were brief mentions of kids, aging parents, and a ballot initiative concerning the sale of wine in supermarkets, but there was also an averted look or two.
John Colby led her to his office. Bright as he was, physically imposing as he could be, John was a shy man, more prone to seeking insight than to attacking investigations head-on. He was also modest, happier to be taping off an accident scene than to be hanging official commendations on his wall. Other than a large clock and some framed photographs of police outings, the office was unadorned.
John closed the door, took some forms from the desk, and passed them to her. “It’s pretty straightforward,” he said. “Take it home, fill it out, return it when you’re done.”
“I don’t have to do it here?”
