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* * *
Taking a long, discouraging look at the bare bones of her new life, Della shuddered as she walked toward her house. It would have been pretty once. She could almost picture it a hundred years ago, all bright and new, with white wicker furniture on the porch, and ferns and begonias hanging from the ceiling. She could see herself sleeping there with Meghan on hot summer nights, or sitting on a porch swing, sipping lemonade with her in the late afternoon. So many wonderful things that could be if only the porch floor hadn’t rotted a decade ago. But now the ravages of time and salty sea air had taken their toll. The house leaned a little, and the rusty tin roof that sloped down to cover the front porch sagged. All in all, it looked worn out, which was the way she’d felt so often lately.
Suddenly she felt sad for her little cottage on the beach. It had so much more potential than meeting this fate.
Della walked around the structure, spotting the chimney on the side of the house. Running her fingers over the brown stones it was made of, she noticed many of them were chopped away now. Even so, the prospect of a warm, toasty fireplace inside where she and Meghan could spend a long, chilly fall evening together, reading stories and toasting marshmallows, was so appealing that the thought of it nearly melted away all her anxieties. Nearly…because she’d have to have the windows put back in first. They were there, and the tiny, colonial panes made her think they were originals. But they had been removed from the house and were stacked in a pile near the chimney. The openings where they should have been were covered with dirty cracked plastic, as if someone had started a restoration, then stopped all too quickly. The last doctor? she wondered. Had he come here with optimism and ambition only to realize there was so much more to overcome than poor-fitting windows?
The yard was amazing, though. Della turned from the house to have a good look, and even with all the odd, deteriorating art on the way in, it was perfect. A place of hopes and dreams once. There were wispy trees along one stretch of her drive, a grassy knoll extending beyond her house and down the side opposite the tree lines, and out front a beautiful, unspoiled beach. Della sighed wistfully. She’d always wanted to live on a beach in Miami. Begged Anthony for it. Just a little cottage for the three of them where she could look out at the water. Instead, Anthony had bought a large, rambling deco home on a canal that was lined with other large deco homes, and docks jammed in together, board to board, for all the recreational boats that accompanied the houses. Then he’d bought the boat—one practically as large as this cottage—and lined up in that ostentatious weekend queue to take it out and show it off. The whole lifestyle there was so close and stifling, with all that togetherness, she would have happily traded it for breathing room with a view.
This was her breathing room with the view. Only problem was, it wasn’t in the condition she needed. “Since you know my secret, that I bought it sight unseen, would you happen to know where the clinic is?” She was hoping it wasn’t the barn she saw sitting back near the trees.
“It might be the barn. Or one of the guest cottages out there somewhere. But I haven’t seen it.”
“Well, wherever it’s hiding, I hope it’s in better shape than the house.” If it wasn’t it would have to be her first priority. Getting her patients into a fit establishment was more important than her own comfort. At least, until the time came when the judge would have a look at what she’d set up for her life with Meghan.
He smiled. “If it’s got the same view as all this, I can understand why the artists came here. It’s a perfect place to do a painting, or even write a novel, if you’re a writer.”
The last he said with a slight sigh, and she wondered if his heart might be in an art—painting or writing. Maybe even having a go at one of those junkyard sculptures. “With a view like this, I’m afraid the best I can ever do is enjoy a painting of it, or sit and read a book where I can take an occasional glance at it.” Turning her attention to a wild guinea hen strutting off the front porch, Della watched it wander around to the back, stopping occasionally to peck at something in the dirt. Then she shut her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again the house would be something with green shrubs, red and yellow tulips in beds along the walkway, and a picket fence. When she opened them, though, everything was the same. Since, apparently, there wasn’t a miracle to be performed, she wondered what came next.
As it turned out, Della didn’t even have time to ponder that question before a pickup truck honked a greeting and came to a stop next to Sam’s SUV. Immediately, half the town of Redcliffe hopped out. At least, to Della, it looked like half the town. It was actually the Brodsky family bringing all their kiddies for a check-up. Four of them plus Mom and Dad— Nola and Matt—both of whom also expressed the desire for a check-up. “Nothing’s really wrong with any of us, except that Bianca has a little bit of a sore throat,” Nola explained. “But since you’re here, we thought we might as well be the first. And it will be so nice not to have to go to the mainland for this.”
Bianca was two, and besides a sore throat she also had a slight fever, Della discovered when she saw the child’s flushed cheeks.
“Is she cranky?” she asked, reaching over to take the toddler from her mother’s arms.
“Quite. And nothing’s calming her down.”
“Is she eating?”
“Not much. She gets fussy when we try to feed her. Refuses to take it or spits it out when she does.”
“I’m not really set up here to practice yet,” she said, looking at Sam to see if he had a suggestion. He didn’t, and he indicated as much with a vague shrug of his shoulders.
“I haven’t even had time to go inside my…” She hesitated to call it her house, even though it was. Somehow, the image of a competent doctor didn’t fit here, not on this property, not in this house, and as bad as things were, she really did want to get off to a good start. “My, um, building, here. I haven’t unpacked yet.”
“We’ll be glad to wait,” Nola offered. “And I’m sure Matt could take the other three and go play on your beach for a while, if you don’t mind.” The other three were Ryan, aged four, Keith, aged five, and Shawn, aged six. Brave woman!
For a moment, Della wondered how Nola could divide herself in so many ways, having that many young children to tend. At one time she’d thought about a brother or sister for Meghan, but Anthony had said no more children, then to emphasize his objection, had gone off and had a vasectomy. Another one or two besides Meghan would have been nice, though.
“I’ll tell you what. Let me put Bianca down in the back of my car and have a look at her, then I’ll set up appointments for the rest of you when I have things more settled here.” When, or if.
Nola gave her a pleasant smile. “We didn’t mean to impose, but when we heard you were here, we got so excited…It’s hard raising children when there’s not a doctor handy.”
“What about emergency services?” Della asked, as she cradled the toddler in her arms and walked over to her borrowed SUV.
“Helicopter if it’s urgent. Boat if it’s not.” She laughed. “Pray that the weather is good when you have to go.”
What a tough way to live a life, Della thought. Then she remembered this was the way she was going to live her life for the next five years. Apparently, you could either abide it or you couldn’t. The last two doctors couldn’t, and she was sure hoping she’d be the one who could. “Look, while I examine Bianca, why don’t you go wait…” in the waiting room, except she didn’t have one “…on the beach with your husband and sons? I’ll call you over when I’m finished.” She looked out to the beach as Matt and his boys waded out into the surf, hand in hand. It wasn’t the most orthodox of waiting rooms but, on the bright side, it didn’t require hundreds of dollars’ worth of magazine subscriptions for the adults and toys for the children.
“You’re going to treat that baby in the back of your car?” Sam asked, stepping over to observe once Nola had joined her family.
Sighing, Della said, “I have to treat her someplace, don’t I?”
“You should have told them to take her to a hospital on the mainland until you’re set up to practice here. That’s what they’ve always done before.”
Della kicked a piece of driftwood aside and laid Bianca down in the back of the SUV as Mayor Bruce Vargas pulled up in his truck and got out. “Except now that they have a doctor, they don’t have to.” She understood his concern, but he didn’t understand her urgency. This was the first step. It wasn’t a very big one, but it was a very necessary one. One patient at a time and she’d figure it out as she went. “These people know the condition of this place better than I do, and they’re willing to come here to be treated regardless of it, so I’ll find a way to treat them. It wouldn’t be nice of me to turn them away.” Especially since they had a heavy financial investment in her. “So I’ll do the best I can for now.”
She glanced up at the house on the knoll. Somehow, she would have to figure it out. And soon. “So, I have a medical bag in the back seat. Would you mind handing it to me?”
“You’re really going to do this?”
“I’m really going to do this. Then afterwards I’m going to go have a look at the mayor’s shoulder, like he asked, and if I’m lucky, somebody else might come along later.”
“Oh, they’ll come along all right. A doctor is a precious commodity, and they won’t let her go to waste.”
* * *
“She’s teething,” Della explained as she handed Bianca over to her mother. “Her gums are a little swollen and red, and her fever is elevated, but only a little. Nothing to worry about. Does she have diarrhea?” she asked.
Nola nodded. “My other three never went through this when they teethed.”
Meghan had gone through it, too, frightfully so. She had been fussy off and on, and for weeks Anthony had slept in a hotel, claiming the crying kept him awake and he needed to be fresh for his surgeries. It had been a valid point, but in retrospect Della wondered if he’d been having an affair even back then, and using that as an excuse to sleep with someone else. “Some children do, some don’t. Bianca is going to have a bit of a problem with it, I’m afraid.”
“Does she need antibiotics?” Matt Brodsky asked.
“She doesn’t appear to have an infection so, no. Antibiotics can be rough on young children, and taking them can start an immunity, which isn’t good.” Bianca wasn’t congested in either lung, her eyes were bright and responsive, her respirations and pulse normal. Her tummy didn’t hurt, her legs and arms moved normally. And the only time she whimpered was when Della ran a finger over her gums. In her opinion, the course of fewer medications was always the best when it could be managed. “Make sure you keep her off of dairy products for a week. Also, try to keep her quiet as much as you can keep a two-year-old quiet, and think about freezing some fruit juice and letting her suck on it. She’ll love the taste and the cold will feel pleasant against her gums. The fluid will help keep her fever down, too. Just make sure the sharp edges of the frozen cube are rounded off.”
She was good. Sam had to admit she was very good at this, and she had quite a way with the child. A natural. More than that, she loved it. That was so plain on her face, the way her eyes lit up, the way she smiled. For those moments when she’d been examining the little girl, Della had had the look of a woman who wasn’t carrying the weight of so many troubles with her.
“How much do we owe you, Doc?” Matt asked, pulling his wallet from his pocket.
“One beach call?” She thought about it for a moment, then settled on an amount, quickly pocketing the bills when they were offered.
“That wasn’t bad,” she said to Sam as the Brodskys drove off. “And, believe it or not, that’s the first time I’ve ever been paid for my services. Back in Miami, in the clinic, I received a weekly stipend. It’s kind of fun, earning something for myself.”
Such a simple thing, Sam thought. A small amount of money and she was thrilled over it. What kind of life was she coming from? And what in the world was he going to do about helping her in this new life? Helping her without losing his job?
Somehow, he couldn’t fit the two together.
CHAPTER THREE
“WITHOUT tests I can’t tell for sure, but I don’t feel anything out of place—no tumors, no significant swelling,” Della said as Mayor Vargas sat shirtless in the opened back of her SUV while she prodded and twisted his arm. Besides being tall, he had an extraordinary muscle mass, the evidence of a rigid, disciplined workout routine. “You’ve got full range of motion, which is good, and I’m not even feeling any popping, which is good, too. If you had an injury like a torn rotator cuff, you’d be experiencing some limited range.”
“It comes and goes,” he conceded. “Has been for months now, and just when I think it’s bad enough to have it looked at, it gets better and it seems like a waste of time.”
“Both shoulders?” she asked, switching her exam to his left shoulder. Manipulating her fingers along the shoulder line from his neck out to the furthest part of his shoulder, Della kneaded hard enough to assess the muscle, then she worked his entire arm up and down, back and forth, and at last in a wide circle.
“Not usually, but sometimes I get a twinge.”
Next she went in for the final diagnosis and did a deep, pinpointed probe to the joint, one so hard that the mayor flinched. “Hurt a lot?” she asked.
“Like you knew exactly where the worst spot was and dug right in.”
“I did.” Della smiled. “Takes practice, and years of poking and prodding,” she said as she returned to his right shoulder for the same pinpointed probe, which elicited both a flinch and a gasp from him. The mayor actually pulled away from her. “But along with the pain comes a diagnosis and a treatment plan.”
“One that’s good, I hope,” he said, rubbing his sorest shoulder.
Della glanced over at Sam, who was sitting casually on a tree stump. This had been a simple exam, yet he was watching it very intently. Did he want to be back in practice again? On impulse, she asked, “Would you take a look, Sam?” She really didn’t need his opinion. With or without tests, the mayor had bursitis. The symptoms fit, the pain response fit, and to be sure she’d send the mayor over to Connaught for a blood test and X-rays. But something was compelling her to include Sam in this, and she wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe only a hunch that he wanted to be in practice, or a little wistfulness in his eyes.
“Um, sure,” Sam responded quickly, then hurried through the knee-deep grass to the car. “I used to be an internist, so I think I can handle a second opinion.”
He did much the same exam as she had, poking and prodding, and amazingly she caught herself almost transfixed, watching him work. Sam was so intense about it, so serious and methodical. And the wistfulness she’d seen in his eyes earlier turned to…was it passion? He might be a doctor she would trust Meghan’s care to, and that was the highest praise she could give.
“Well, the bad news is…” he started.
Both Mayor Vargas and Della blinked in surprise.
“The bad news is that I’ll never have your build, no matter how hard I work out. How many hours a day do you train?”
“Two, sometimes three. Weights, mostly. Some boxing, a little basketball, swimming.”
“Like I said, that’s the bad news…for me. The good news for you is that I’m going to concur with Dr Riordan’s diagnosis.”
“Which I haven’t made,” she reminded him.
“But you were going to say bursitis, weren’t you?”
“Bursitis?” the mayor asked.
“Bursitis,” she confirmed. “An inflammation of the bursa.” Which he didn’t know about, judging by the puzzled look on his face. “We all have hundreds of bursae throughout our bodies. They decrease the friction between two surfaces that move together, most commonly in areas such as where muscles and tendons glide over your bones. Think about a small plastic bag filled with a little oil. You can rub it between your hands and there’s a smooth glide to it, but if you remove the oil it’s a rather rough rub. Constricted. That’s basically the function of the bursa, to provide that smooth rub, and if it becomes inflamed, it loses its glide. Hence, bursitis.”
“And how did I cause that?”
“Repetitive motion over a long period of time is one way. Or an injury. I’m guessing it’s from your workouts, though.”
“Is it curable?”
“Not curable as much as it’s manageable, but it does have a tendency to flare up from time to time, which means you may have to, at some point, adjust your workout routines to favor your condition. But we’ll deal with that after I see the X-ray report. For now, I want you to massage your shoulder for about fifteen minutes with an ice pack, three or four times a day, and make sure you don’t leave the ice on any spot for more than a few seconds or you can actually get frostbite in your muscle.”
“Instead of an ice pack with regular ice cubes, freeze some water in a paper cup then roll that over your shoulder in a massage,” Sam added. “Feels a lot better than ice cubes.”
Della gave him an appreciative stare. “Voice of experience?”
“I fancied myself as a writer once. Sadly, I was one inflamed bursa away from writing a best-selling novel.” He rubbed his elbow, then grinned. “Struck down in the middle of my prologue.”
“You couldn’t be a writer so you became a doctor? Aren’t you quite the multi-faceted man?” Like the doctor who’d gone off to Paris to be an artist. So where was Sam’s real heart? she wondered briefly. “Anyway,” she said, turning back to the mayor, “take ibuprofen for a week. Go by the recommended dosage on the label, then come back and see me in a couple of days and we’ll take a look at how you’re getting along and figure out what to do from there. Also, by then I’ll have found my prescription pad, and I’ll write you a script for lab work and X-rays.”
Her second appointment for the day now over with, Della received her pay with almost as much glee as she’d received her first. Glancing up at the gray clouds rolling in as she tucked it away in her pocket, she was hoping against hope her roof wasn’t going to leak, because a patch was not the place she wanted her first earnings to go. Most of it would go for the clinic, but a little would buy Meghan a gift.
“Are you sure you’re going to stay here with the storm coming in?” Sam asked. “I’m not sure about the condition of your house. It might leak.”
“It looks like I’ll be finding out in another few minutes,” she said, heading up to the porch.
“Like I said before, I think that agent who sold you this practice should have been more honest about it. There may still be room to get out of the contract.”
She stopped on the first step and looked at Sam. “He was honest. I simply didn’t ask enough questions. And I should have come here first to have a look. But I didn’t so it’s all water under the bridge now.” She glanced upward at the gray sky again, hoping there wasn’t soon to be water in her kitchen, living room and bedroom, too. “Besides, I have real patients now, and it appears my practice has officially opened.” All that was true, but it didn’t make the situation any easier. Still, something could be worked out. It had to. That’s the mindset she had to keep about her. For Meghan, she would make it work, or she’d be forced to return to Miami, contenting herself with a visit from her daughter on alternating weekends and holidays, while Anthony’s parents raised her. With that in mind, there simply wasn’t another choice here. “So, I’ll stay and see how it goes.”
Della reached into her pocket to feel the money folded in there. It was silly of her, but it felt good to be on her own. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, it might have been laughable—the wife of Dr Anthony Riordan going almost giddy over a few dollars. She hoped that wherever he was now, heaven—which she doubted—or hell—which was likely the case—he had a lot more to fret over than money. “Guess it’s time to take a look at the rest of my bad news.” As she said that, a jagged streak of lightning split the sky, followed by an earsplitting roll of thunder. “It just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?”
“We should make a run for it,” Sam urged, grabbing Della’s hand to pull her along with him toward the house, “before we get drenched. These storms pop up out of nowhere like that, and they can be pretty bad.”
Della couldn’t help herself. She yanked herself away from Sam and turned her face to the heavens. As the sky opened up and it began to pour, she stood in the middle of her falling-down-you’d-have-to-be-crazy-to-own-it calamity of a new life and laughed. It was either that or cry, and crying wasn’t going to help her accomplish what she needed to here, because she needed to do so much in so little time.
* * *
Inside, in the kitchen, Sam opened and slammed shut every door and drawer, looking for matches. “You don’t happen to smoke, do you?” he called to Della, who was huddled, soaking wet and shivering, on a stool in front of the unlit fireplace in the living room.
Too dumbfounded to comprehend everything around her, Della stared blankly at the room. It was empty and cold, and pelting raindrops on the roof sounded like gunshots exploding in rapid bursts, over and over. Outside, the dreary, late afternoon sky was turning darker by the minute, and since there was no electricity going, it was as dark inside as it was out.
Overall, it was dismal and Della simply sat in the middle of it, staring into the empty fireplace. “No matches,” she called back. He knew she was trying hard to mask the discouragement in her voice, but he could hear it almost as well as he could hear his supervisor telling him not to get himself involved. But the sadness and near-desperation that slipped into her voice when her guard was down involved him.
“I don’t smoke, but maybe we could use the lighter in the car,” she continued. Adjusting her position on the stool, the floorboards creaked and groaned under the shift. “Want me to go get it?”
“What I want is for you to come to your senses. Go back with me to Mrs Hawkins’s for the night and sort this thing out. You can take a shower, put on dry clothes, eat a fit meal, get a good night’s sleep and have a fresh look at your options in the morning.” She was so vulnerable, and yet so stubborn. He’d known her all of three hours and already he was feeling responsible and protective. Bad for his job, even worse for his personal life.
Once was enough. He’d learned that lesson well enough, and he sure wasn’t willing to put himself through anything like that again. If he were being smart about this, he’d be on his way back to Mrs Hawkins’s right now, to settle in for the evening. Alone! Without Della on his mind.
But it seemed he wasn’t as smart as he’d thought he was, inasmuch as he wasn’t heading out the door. More than that, he wasn’t even thinking about heading out the door. Instead, he was already regretting the cold, hard floor on which he was about to spend the night if he couldn’t convince her to return with him. Della wasn’t about to be convinced, though. Deep down he knew that.
“No need to,” she replied. “The roof doesn’t leak, so I’ll be fine.”
“On the floor, in the dark. That’s not fine, Della.” It was more like insane. “What were you planning, anyway? To come here and find a quaint little seaside cottage all neat and tidy with everything you needed?”
“There’s only one thing I need, and the rest of it doesn’t matter. I’ve got furniture coming in a few days, I think I can be handy with some of the repairs and I’ve got a medical practice to organize. Sleeping on the floor in the dark isn’t important.” She stood up and walked over to the wall, then ran her fingers lightly over its covering. Layer upon layer of peeling wallpaper, highlighted by splotches of yellowed newsprint and dabs of peeling paint here and there. Solid, but ugly. “And I’ll go have the electricity turned on tomorrow morning. So it’s only for one night.”
Sam stepped into the living room, holding up the matches he’d found in the back of one of the kitchen cabinets. “You’re a stubborn woman, aren’t you?”
She smiled. “I prefer to call it optimistic. Although my husband always accused me of being too stubborn for my own good. I think, though, I was too stubborn for his good. He wanted something I was too stubborn to be.”
“Which was?”
She smiled at him. “Anything I wasn’t.”
“Divorced?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Widowed. Going on to four months now.”
That took him off his guard. “I’m…um…I’m sorry, Della,” he murmured, even though he didn’t see much sadness on her face. He looked for it, too, but her expression seemed more relieved than sorry. The sadness he would have expected wasn’t in her voice, either. Her pronouncement that she was a widow had come out as a rather flat statement, much the way he might make the same pronouncement of his divorce— sorry for the circumstance, but not totally consumed by it. So, had Della’s marriage been as bad as his? “Is that why you’re here, to get away from the memories?” Which was why he was there. That, and the fact that Massachusetts was almost as far away from California as you could get—California, where his ex-wife still roosted. That expanse of geography between them didn’t hurt matters, either.
