by Gina Wilkins
“I asked for a trumpet,” Ron mumbled.
“…and then I got him an electric guitar when he was in high school, but he didn’t stick with that, either.”
She didn’t add that she’d forbidden him to play the guitar in the house because it made too much noise.
“Yeah. Hard to see Ron hanging in for another five or six years of schooling,” Mick said with a skeptical grin. “What’s the next plan, bro? Going to try fighting fires?”
“I just might. Or maybe I’ll be a mortician. I’ve been keeping that as a Plan B in case I wash out of med school. You know, if I can’t save ’em, might as well bury ’em.”
The others laughed again, but Haley was notably un-amused.
“I think you’re all underestimating the commitment it has taken for Ron to get as far as he has,” she said firmly, unable to keep quiet any longer.
Ron gave a slightly muffled groan, which he knew she heard, but she swept on.
“Ron had to finish college with a grade point average in the top ten percent of his entire class. He had to study for and take the six-hour-long MCAT, and earn a score high enough to get him an interview for medical school—which he did. He had to make a good enough impression on his college professors so that they would write excellent recommendation letters for him—which they did. And then he had to do well in his medical school interviews to be accepted over quite a few who were turned away.”
“He was an alternate, wasn’t he?” Deb asked with a slight shrug.
Ron saw the rare temper leap into Haley’s amber eyes, but she appeared to make an effort to bank it.
“He was still one of the select students chosen to start medical school immediately after earning his bachelor’s degree. Since then, he’s made it through two and a half grueling, relentless, horribly difficult years of lectures and memorization and exams and evaluations. He did well in his classes, he passed Step 1 of the licensure process on his first attempt, and he has excelled in clinical rotations. He even saved another child from choking at the ballpark a few months ago. I don’t know how close your little Kenny was to choking, but that other little boy was already turning blue by the time Ron took over.”
“Kenny was turning blue, too, remember, Deb?” Carolyn looked at her youngest son as if seeing him in a slightly different light. He didn’t delude himself that Haley was actually changing the way his family viewed him, but he appreciated her words, anyway.
“He was, a little,” Deb conceded. “I thanked you at the time for what you did for him, if you’ll remember, Ron.”
Ron shrugged self-consciously. “He’s my nephew, Deb. Of course I was going to do whatever I could to help him.”
Grinning behind his scruffy five-o’clock shadow, Mick nodded toward Haley. “This one’s got your back, bro. Better hang on to her.”
“I’m doing my best,” Ron replied as Haley fell quiet beside him again.
He didn’t add that hanging on to Haley was probably another challenge that would prove to be too much for him.
A few minutes later, Ron stood and walked to the window, looking out at the sky. The rain had subsided some, and the winds were calmer. A low rumble of thunder sounded occasionally, following distant flashes of lightning, but he thought maybe the storm was easing. There were still tornado watches between here and Little Rock, but most of the really bad weather seemed to be west of them. TV forecasters predicted another round of storms to hit central Arkansas during the night, but Ron thought they had just enough time to get home before it all began again.
“We’d better leave while we’ve got a break in the weather,” he said, glancing toward the moving radar on the television screen. Green bands of rain striped the western half of the state, all moving this way, but there were no active tornado warnings at the moment. They were probably going to hit some downpours on the way home, but his all-wheel-drive car was dependable on wet roads, despite his dad’s derision of the model.
His mother protested, of course.
“Let ’em go, Carolyn,” her husband ordered. “They don’t need to be out too late in this weather.”
Conceding the point, she bit back any further arguments.
Mick helped Ron carry his gifts out to the car. They came back in shaking off water droplets and earning another reprimand from their mother.
“Thanks, Mick.”
His brother nodded. “I’ll see you when I see you, bro. Good luck with your cabinet exam.”
“Shelf exam.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Ron shook his brother’s hand. “Take care of yourself.”
He turned to hug his sister. “Kiss the boys for me when they wake up. Sorry I can’t stay to visit them longer, but I’d like to get Haley home before those storms fire up again, if I can.”
While his brother and sister told Haley how much they’d enjoyed meeting her, and bade her to join them again sometime, Ron shook Luis’s hand. “Hope you know what you’re getting yourself into, Luis.”
The older man smiled. “I’ve got a pretty good idea. Deb’s worth it.”
“Take care of her and my nephews.”
“I will.”
Ron felt the familiar tension in the back of his neck when he turned to his father. He’d spent his entire life trying to please his dad, and always feeling as if he fell short. “See you, Dad. Thanks for the gifts.”
“Your mama did all the shopping. But, uh, thanks for the hunting jacket. That’s a nice one.”
“Mom said she thought you could use another one.”
“She shouldn’t be telling y’all anything to get for me. Need to save your money for yourselves.”
“I’m doing okay, Dad.”
His father nodded shortly. “I know you are, son. You keep at that doctoring, you hear? Sounds like you’re doing pretty good with it.”
So maybe Dad had listened to Haley, after all. At least for now. “Yeah, I’ll stick with it. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Yeah. Get a move on now, and call your mama when you get home safe. She’ll be worried.”
“I will.”
His mother walked them to the door. She looked out with a worried eye. “I don’t like the looks of those clouds. I wish you’d just stay the night.”
“We’ll be okay, Mom.” He leaned over to kiss her lined cheek. “You outdid yourself today. I know it was a lot of trouble, but everything was perfect.”
“It was a lot of trouble,” she agreed, then smiled faintly. “But it was worth it. Felt good to have my kids home.”
He saw the sadness darken her eyes, and he knew what she was thinking. “Tommy will be out soon, Mom. Maybe he’ll turn his life around for the better this time.”
She sighed heavily, glancing quickly at Haley, her embarrassment plain. His mother took her oldest son’s failings very personally, and refused to accept that Tommy’s demons—and his choices—were his own. “Your dad and I are going to see him next weekend. Want me to tell him anything from you?”
“Tell him I said hello.” He almost added a Merry Christmas for his brother, but decided that sentiment might not be quite appropriate.
Haley thanked his mother prettily for welcoming her to the family holiday celebration, expressing her gratitude one more time for the hand-knit scarf.
“We hope to see you here again soon,” Ron’s mother replied, and he could tell she was sincere in the invitation. She slanted a look his way. “Assuming you two don’t think you’re too good for the likes of us once you’re fancy doctors and all.”
Ron frowned. “Don’t even think that, Mom. Whatever issues we might have among us, this is still my family. Nothing’s ever going to change that. Maybe someday we’ll even figure out how to just love each other without the other stuff.”
She patted his arm. “I do love you, Ronnie.”
“I love you, too, Mom. I’ll call you Christmas, if not before, okay?”
Blinking rapidly, she nodded and motioned toward the door. “Get on now. You drive carefully, you h
ear? If it starts storming, pull over.”
“We will. ’Bye, Mom.”
She closed the door behind them when they ran out into the gray drizzle.
The windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm against the glass as Ron drove south, away from his family home. It was just after 4:00 p.m., and darkness was already falling, partly because of the short days of early winter, partly because of the thick cloud cover.
Haley didn’t immediately reach for her netbook as they got underway. She just wasn’t up to studying right then. Judging from the slight weariness in the set of Ron’s shoulders, he wasn’t, either.
“Well?” he said without looking at her, when he’d been driving for almost twenty minutes in silence. “Were they what you expected?”
She turned her head against the back of the seat to study him in the gloomy gray light. “I’ve seen much worse families.”
“So have I, for that matter, but they’re still difficult. I will say that everyone was on their best behavior pretty much today. Maybe because you and Luis were there. Dad only had a couple of beers, he and Mick only got into two or three arguments, Deb didn’t burst into tears once and Mom didn’t complain nearly as much as usual.”
Haley found it hard to imagine the woman complaining any more, but she supposed Ron knew best. “Maybe they’re just trying harder to get along. And maybe Deb was in a better mood because she’s happier. She looked crazy about Luis.”
Ron nodded. “Seems like a decent guy. Mom made a few comments behind his back about his Hispanic heritage, but she’s not really a bigot. She’s an equal opportunity criticizer.”
Haley wondered what Carolyn might be saying about her, but she wasn’t going to worry about it. “Sorry I lectured them when they were making fun of you. I tried to keep quiet, but they were starting to annoy me, ganging up on you that way.”
“It’s okay. I appreciated you taking up for me. But I’m used to it.”
“They were out of line.”
He shrugged. “They had some justification for the things they said. I did start and stop a lot of things in the past. Even college, the first time. You can’t really blame them for expecting me to quit this, too.”
“After four years of college and two and a half years of med school? I’d say you’ve proven you’re sticking with it this time.”
He shrugged. “That’s the plan. Unless something goes wrong, of course.”
She sighed. “You want to hear some armchair psychoanalysis?”
He chuckled in response to her wording, though he kept his eyes focused on the wet road ahead. “Sure. Go ahead.”
“I think one reason you kept quitting things is because you never thought you could do them well enough. Your parents are so critical that you could be forgiven for thinking you could never please them. It wouldn’t take much to expand that mind-set to thinking you might as well not invest too much of yourself if you couldn’t win, anyway.”
“Hmm.”
She couldn’t tell if he agreed, disagreed, or was just humoring her. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Could my theory be at least somewhat credible?”
“There’s some truth in it.”
“Your mother probably has OCD, you know.”
“My mother definitely has OCD. I’ve known that for years.”
“Oh.” Only a little deflated, she said, “You didn’t mention it.”
“I told you she’s impossible to please.”
“Well, yes, but not that it’s partially because she can’t really help herself.”
“Took me a few years to figure that out.”
A hard gust of wind buffeted the car. She saw Ron’s hands tighten on the wheel.
“Why don’t you turn on the radio?” he suggested. “We really should be listening to the weather reports.”
Rain swept in curtains across the road ahead as she reached for the knob. “It seems to be getting worse again, doesn’t it?”
“Picking up some.”
A somber male voice read weather updates on the airways. Haley frowned a little. It sounded as though the system was moving quickly in from the west. The western half of the state was under a new tornado watch. “Hope we get home before that gets to Little Rock.”
“Me, too. If we have to, we’ll pull over somewhere. Have a leisurely dinner while we wait for it to blow over.”
She nodded. “Not that I’m hungry yet. Your mom made so much food.”
“She’ll complain for days about how tired she is from all that work. But she seemed to enjoy having us there.”
“I think she did.”
“She liked you, Haley. I could tell.”
“That’s nice. I hope you don’t think I dislike your family. I don’t, you know.”
He slanted her a quick smile. “I know. You don’t really dislike anyone, do you?”
“Well, not many people,” she admitted, thinking of a few. “But everyone was very nice to me today.”
He took his right hand from the wheel long enough to squeeze her knee. “You’re easy to be nice to.”
Unexpectedly, she felt her cheeks flood with warmth. How far gone was she that a simple squeeze and an offhanded compliment could make her hands suddenly tremble?
Careful, Haley.
He placed his hand on the wheel again, fighting the gusts of wind. He drove doggedly on, and she didn’t want to distract him with conversation. She didn’t even try to study during this ride; Ron needed to keep his attention on the wet road. Darkness was falling quickly, though it was hard to distinguish from the already-cloud-darkened skies. Rain fell steadily on the roof and washed across the windows. The radio kept them informed about watches and warnings, informing them that the worst of the storm was still headed their way. Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot of traffic on the roads and most of the other drivers were also using caution, though there were the occasional idiots who drove as recklessly as if the weather was completely clear and dry.
The silence had extended for quite some time before Ron spoke again, his voice somber, raised a little above the noise from outside. “What you said to my family? About me being more capable of commitment than they give me credit for?”
Drawn from her own thoughts, she nodded. “Of course you’re capable of commitment. There’s no way anyone would survive the first two years of med school without being completely dedicated to it.”
“I would have thought you’d have agreed with them. As often as we’ve argued about that very sort of thing, I mean.”
She sighed. “The reason we argued in the past was because I hated hearing you sell yourself short. All that talk of quitting and falling back on Plan B, all those doubts about whether you belonged in medical school or whether you would be able to see it through—well, hearing those things just annoyed me because I knew it was all foolishness.”
“So you do think I’m capable of making a total commitment, despite what you said to Lydia and Kristie at the party.”
Rain hammered harder against the top of the car, sounding even louder than before in the awkward pause that followed his comment. The wipers weren’t having much effect against the downpour. She cleared her throat, staring hard out the windshield rather than at him. “Of course you’re capable, Ron. You just don’t always choose to do so.”
She craned her neck to look ahead for a safe place to stop for a while. They were pretty much surrounded by farm and pastureland. There weren’t a lot of cars on the road with them; maybe other people had the sense to stay inside during weather like this. But it really hadn’t been this bad when they’d left his parents’ house, she reminded herself.
“I am going to finish medical school, Haley,” Ron said.
“Of course you will. Can you see the road?”
“Yeah, I can see pretty well. You don’t have to worry, you know.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m trying not to worry. But this weather is really getting ugly. I don’t know whether it would be better to ke
ep moving toward home or pull over somewhere and hope we get another break in the rain.”
“I’m still hoping we can get home before that next front line moves into the central part of the state. I’ll pull over if I think it’s getting too risky to keep driving, but right now it’s just a heavy rain. I can drive in that as long as I watch my speed—and the morons don’t run us off the road.”
He spoke just as a big truck with oversize tires sped past them, throwing up fountains of water from the road, blowing the smaller car slightly sideways on the wet pavement.
“Jerk,” Haley muttered.
“That’s one word for him,” Ron agreed grimly, peering through the semicircular swaths carved by the wipers.
Once he’d steadied the car again, he glanced at her. “I wasn’t actually talking about the weather.”
She drew her attention from the dark skies ahead. Between the rain on the roof and the droning of the weather reporter on the radio, she was having a little trouble hearing him clearly. “Hmm?”
“When I said you don’t have to be nervous, I meant you don’t have to worry that I’ll hold you back in your career. I know how exclusive those triple-board programs are, but I have no doubt you’ll get into one if you want.”
Forgetting the weather for the moment, she turned in her seat to stare at him. “What are you talking about?”
He sighed loudly, looking both frustrated and self-conscious. “It’s just—well, I know several people lately have warned you that it’s hard sometimes for a couple to find residencies in the same hospitals. I know a few have hinted that I could be a liability to you. And then Deb made that comment today that left you looking so nervous, so I thought maybe you should know…never mind. Forget I said anything. Stupid time to bring this up.”
She bit her lip. Was he really trying to convince her that he wouldn’t interfere in her career plans? Or was he implying he wasn’t expecting them to still be together when the time came for applying to residency programs?
A flicker of anger sparked beneath the dull pain his clumsy assurances had left in her chest, and she spoke without bothering to guard her words. “Let me make something clear to you. If I wanted to find a residency program at a hospital that was also a good match for you, I wouldn’t care what anyone else said about it. Not our classmates, not our families, not our friends…no one. I make my own decisions. Nor do I think that being with you would ever hold me back in my career, for that matter. I’ve told you before that I believe you can get into any residency program you want. I was being completely honest.”