One More Second Chance

by Jana Richards

  “Something’s going on with your parents, particularly with your mother. For Ava’s sake, you need to find out what. I can help you—”

  “Thank you for your concern.” She moved her arm out of his grasp. “We’ll be fine. If my father’s test results show he hasn’t had a heart attack, are we free to go?”

  “Yes, but I want you to make a follow-up appointment for him. Have him see Dr. Willson or Dr. Rob Sato as soon as possible. We need to treat his anxiety, or the next time he really could have a heart attack. He may need medication to help him relieve the symptoms.” He knew there was no point asking her to bring her father to see him.

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “All right.”

  An hour later, he returned to Mr. Dawson’s examining room. Tracy had the results of the blood work and the EKG. Just as he thought, Mr. Dawson’s symptoms had not been caused by a heart attack. He watched as Julia helped her father from the examining table. Together they walked slowly down the hall to the exit. As they got to the door, she turned to hold it open for her father, and her gaze met his. In her eyes he read her uncertainty and fear.

  Alex’s gut twisted. He stepped toward her, though what he planned to do or say once he reached her, he had no idea. But Julia and her father left before he could get to her.

  He turned on his heel and headed toward his next patient, disgusted with himself. So much for professional distance.

  Chapter Three

  Julia picked up her ringing phone and heard the school secretary’s voice in her ear.

  “Superintendent Perkins is on line one. Do you want me to tell him you’re out of the office?”

  “No, that’s okay, Beth. I’ll take it.” Rob Perkins was a decent guy, but she had a feeling he had bad news for her. Might as well face the music.

  “Good luck, Boss,” Beth said before disconnecting.

  She punched line one. “Hi, Rob.”

  “Hey, Julia. How’s it going?”

  “Depends on why you’re calling.”

  “Can’t a superintendent call one of his principals just to say hi?”

  “Right. And the tooth fairy left a gold brick under my daughter’s pillow last night. What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to give you a heads-up. The school board is holding a closed meeting tonight to discuss your proposal for the daycare at your high school.”

  “Can I attend, make a presentation?”

  “No. I already asked. They want to discuss the proposal in private.”

  Julia could feel her blood heating. “They want to kill the proposal in private, you mean.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “Call it an educated guess. We need that daycare, Rob. Five girls from this high school had babies this past year, and one more is due this summer. So far only one of them has come back to classes. If they don’t graduate from high school, what kind of chance do they or their babies have for a secure future?”

  The daycare was the first step in her plan to make sure her students had the tools they needed to succeed in life. The second step was to give them the information they needed about sex and birth control so they wouldn’t get pregnant in the first place. She knew that was a long shot, at best.

  “Hey, you don’t have to convince me. I’m behind you, remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember. And I appreciate your support.” Rob had made the initial presentation about the daycare to the school board, and had come up with ways to fund its creation and continued operation. Julia knew she had an ally in him.

  But she also had a powerful enemy on the school board.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Wyatt Stewart called the special meeting.”

  She heard his long sigh. “As a matter of fact, he did.”

  Wyatt Stewart, her former father-in-law and chairman of the school board, hated her and everything she stood for. He blamed her for the divorce from his son and for Russ’s departure to the other side of the world. She closed her eyes and massaged her temple. As if she’d been happy when her husband left her. As if she hadn’t been crushed by his desertion and his determination to sever all ties to his old life, including his ties to his daughter. She took a deep breath. One disaster at a time.

  “What about my proposal to add a sex education component to the health curriculum? Are they going to discuss that, too?”

  “They didn’t mention it, but my guess is that it’s bound to come up in their discussions tonight.”

  “So what can we do?”

  “It’s out of our hands, Julia. We’ll have to abide by their decision.”

  “Great. So all we can do is sit around and wait?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “Thanks for letting me know, Rob. You’ll call me as soon as you hear their decision?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Bye.”

  Julia carefully put down the phone. She’d been fighting with the board, with a few of the parents, and even some of her teachers, over one thing or another ever since she’d been hired as principal of Lobster Cove High School just over three years ago. Sometimes she felt like chucking it all and taking Ava to live someplace else, maybe to a city, where things were a little more progressive and she could put her ideas into action without so much opposition. Or maybe she’d go back to being a plain old high school English literature teacher with fewer responsibilities. Both ideas were appealing on a day like today.

  But then she thought of her students, about girls like Sarah Keyser who were pregnant at sixteen and didn’t know where to turn. And her parents who were aging and needed her. How could she abandon them?

  Thinking of her parents caused a ripple of unease to skitter down her back. Something was going on with them, in particular with her mother, but every time she questioned them about it, she was told everything was fine. She didn’t believe it for a minute, but her father became upset whenever she asked about her mother’s health, so she let it drop. In truth, she was almost too afraid to know.

  She cursed herself for her cowardice.

  Her thoughts inevitably turned to Alex Campbell, as they had ever since Ava’s broken arm. He’d been pretty hard on her and her family that night. At the time she’d been angry beyond words, but she’d come to understand he was only trying to protect her daughter. And she had her own doubts…

  Every time she closed her eyes, the accusation in his dark eyes haunted her. She remembered their conversation the night she brought her father to the emergency room. He still believed her mother had something to do with Ava’s injury. What hurt the most was that he believed she would knowingly put Ava in harm’s way.

  Why did his opinion matter to her? She barely knew the man.

  Perhaps it was her own sense of guilt. Sometimes the sole responsibility for Ava’s care weighed heavily on her. She wondered if she was doing the right thing by raising her in Lobster Cove. Was she limiting her daughter’s choices because she wanted to live here?

  Once, after a glass of wine—or three, too many—she’d confessed her fears to her friend Edie, herself a mother of three. Edie said every mother worried about messing up her kid’s life. It came with the territory. All she could do was love her daughter, and protect her, and follow her best instincts.

  The hell with Dr. Campbell. What did he know about her family, or her life? She didn’t need some sanctimonious do-gooder from California judging her abilities, or inabilities, as a mother.

  She was already her own harshest critic.

  ****

  Alex dragged his suitcases out of the trunk and slammed the lid. Removing his sunglasses, he took a good look at the house he was going to live in for the next ten months.

  Home, sweet home.

  It wasn’t much to look at: a modest bungalow with white clapboard siding and grey asphalt shingles, a carport attached to the side, and wide concrete steps leading to a red front door. He’d been told it had three bedrooms, that the interior had just
been repainted, and the carpets and furniture were new. The house was similar to the other 1950s-era houses on this block in Lobster Cove. Except that this one was coming to him rent-free, courtesy of the Island Health Board Recruitment and Retention Committee.

  He’d been perfectly happy with the one-bedroom apartment he’d been living in, also rent-free, in Bar Harbor, located a few miles down the highway from Lobster Cove. He’d also been perfectly happy to work full-time in the ER at the Lobster Cove Hospital. But with the departure of one of the physicians from the Lobster Cove Family Health Clinic, his services were now needed there. He’d still work two days a week in the ER, but the rest of his duties would be at the clinic. During his training, he’d completed rotations in family medicine, and he liked it well enough, but emergency medicine was his passion. However, the health board had been adamant, and he wasn’t in much of a position to argue.

  He hauled his suitcases to the front door and pulled the key from his pocket. The door opened to a decent-sized L-shaped living room and dining room, furnished with a new sofa and chair and a dining table with four chairs. He slipped off his shoes, not wanting to drag dirt onto the new carpet, and then carried his suitcases to the biggest of the three small bedrooms. The bathroom and kitchen, while not new, were pristinely clean and perfectly functional.

  “Honey, I’m home,” he said aloud to the four walls.

  At least for now.

  He knew the committee hoped that by giving him bigger accommodations they’d sweeten the pot enough to entice him to stay. It was a nice gesture, but it wasn’t going to work. He’d signed a contract with the health board in which he promised to work a minimum of two years on the island in exchange for them paying off a portion of his massive student debt. Rural hospitals all over America were making similar deals in an effort to bring health professionals into their communities. His contract had a provision stating he could extend his contract for an additional two years. If he did that, another large chunk of his debt would be paid. Though the offer was tempting, Alex had no intention of staying past the two-year mark. He was a California boy, born and bred. He’d kill for his grandmother’s Mexican cooking, sell his soul for sushi from his favorite Japanese restaurant. He missed the heat. He missed his friends. He really missed his grandmother. And though he’d never thought it possible, he actually missed his mother.

  With its ocean vistas, quaint and colorful main street shops, and mountain and forest views, Lobster Cove was a beautiful place to live. But it wasn’t home.

  As he walked back to his car to pick up more boxes, he saw Julia Stewart and her daughter heading toward him on the sidewalk. He knew the instant she recognized him—she hesitated slightly, as if thinking about turning around and walking in the other direction. She might have done so, too, if Ava hadn’t waved and run to him.

  “Dr. Campbell! Hi!” She held up her neon-pink cast. “Isn’t my cast pretty?”

  “The prettiest I’ve ever seen. Seems fitting for a pretty girl.”

  She grinned, revealing a gap-toothed smile. He kneeled in front of her, pretending to inspect her teeth. The bruising on her face and arms was either gone or faded, and her sunny smile told him she bore no ill effects from her ordeal. It was good to see her so happy and healthy, almost fully recovered. It occurred to him that before he came to Maine he rarely, if ever, saw his patients outside of the ER. Now someone he treated in the ER might be the same person who waited on him at one of the restaurants, or was his teller at the bank. His patients were becoming people for him rather than an assortment of maladies.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  “You know, all my special patients call me Alex.”

  She nodded solemnly, as if she were being initiated into an exclusive club. “Okay. I can do that.”

  “I see you lost your two front teeth. I thought you were too little to be losing teeth.”

  She glared at him indignantly. “I’m not little. I’m turning six next week. I’m having a birthday party.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. Happy birthday, Ava.”

  She seemed mollified by his apology. She pointed to her missing front teeth. “The tooth fairy left five dollars for each one.”

  “Really? When I was your age, the tooth fairy only left me a quarter.”

  “I don’t think the tooth fairy liked you very much. Were you bad?”

  Alex hid his grin. “Probably.”

  Julia reached them, pulling Ava close and laying a protective hand over her blonde curls. “Even the tooth fairy has been hit by inflation. There’s not much a kid can buy these days with twenty-five cents.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  He rose and stared into her clear blue eyes. Two spots of pink colored her cheeks in the otherwise alabaster perfection of her complexion. He’d thought about her a lot the last couple of weeks and wondered how she and her family were doing. He’d even gone so far as to speak with Dr. Willson to ask if Julia’s father had visited him. He had, and Dr. Willson had prescribed an anti-depressant. He’d wanted Paul to see a therapist in order to get at the root of the anxiety. But he’d refused, so the doctor had no choice but to try to treat his panic attacks medically.

  “So what brings you to this neighborhood?” Julia asked. “I thought you lived in Bar Harbor.”

  “How did you know that?”

  She lifted one small shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “There’s not much you can keep private in a community this small.”

  She was right. When he first arrived, he’d been shocked by how much people he’d never met knew about his circumstances. They knew he’d gone to med school at UC San Diego, knew he was working in Maine to pay off his student debts, and also knew he was thirty-two and single. He was surprised they didn’t know about the eagle tattooed on his right shoulder. The lack of privacy had been disconcerting for a city boy used to living in anonymity.

  He explained the deal with the house and his new duties at the clinic in town. “So now I’m going to be living here.” He indicated his new abode with a crook of his thumb.

  “My Grandma and Grandpa Dawson live in that house right there,” Ava said. She indicated the two-story house next door, then turned and pointed down the street. “And we live two blocks that way.”

  “We’re practically neighbors.” Turning to Julia, he asked, “How’s your dad?”

  “He’s fine.” She smiled, but it was forced. Julia Stewart didn’t want to share any secrets with him.

  Hell, she didn’t want to be anywhere near him. He understood her reasons; he’d been witness to some unhappy moments for her family, and he’d made her look at some disturbing possibilities. What he didn’t understand was why her distrust and dislike mattered to him so much.

  “We should be going,” Julia said to Ava as she took her hand, the one not in a cast. “Goodbye, Dr. Campbell.”

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Stewart. Bye, Ava.”

  He watched them make their way down the sidewalk. Ava turned in a circle and waved her bright pink cast at him as she skipped alongside her mother. Alex grinned, lifting his hand to wave back. To his surprise, Julia made a half turn, their gazes locking as she stared at him over her shoulder. She raised her hand in goodbye, then quickly turned and walked away. Mother and daughter soon disappeared around a corner.

  He grabbed a couple of boxes from his car and brought them inside. As he placed his few belongings around the house—family photos, some mementos from California—he told himself to keep a safe distance from her and her daughter.

  Julia Stewart didn’t want anything to do with him.

  ****

  Three nights later, Alex pulled into his carport at midnight. The ER had been relatively quiet, and his shift had dragged. He felt more tired than when he was run off his feet.

  As he stepped from his car and walked toward the side door of the house, a figure appeared in the carport, startling him.

  “Is Polly home?” she asked.

  He took in the woma
n’s long, graying hair and her petite stature. She was perhaps sixty or seventy, barefoot, and wearing what appeared to be a sleeveless nightgown.

  What the hell? “Polly?”

  “Yes, Polly,” she said in irritation, as if he should know what she was talking about. “She’s my friend. She lives here.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m the only person who lives here.”

  She shook her head emphatically. “No, Polly lives here.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  Alex took a step closer to her. Did she have some form of dementia? Who was she? He was pretty sure he’d never seen her in the ER or at the family clinic. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

  “Maybe I can call Polly for you. What’s her number?”

  She rattled off a series of meaningless numbers. Alex dialed nine-one-one. A dispatcher picked up immediately.

  “Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

  “This is Dr. Alex Campbell,” he said softly into the phone, turning away so she wouldn’t hear. “There’s a woman on my doorstep who appears to have dementia. I think she may have wandered from her home, and I don’t know who she is.”

  “I’ll send a patrol car by. What’s your address?”

  He told her, and she said there’d be a car at his house within five minutes. He repocketed his phone and approached the woman.

  “There, I’ve called. Someone will be by for you soon.”

  She shivered in the cool, damp night air, wrapping her arms around herself. Alex took off his jacket and placed it gently over her shoulders. Confusion filled her face.

  “What am I doing here?”

  “You said you were looking for your friend Polly.”

  “Polly?”

  The utter bewilderment he saw in her eyes tore at his heart. He couldn’t imagine how terrifying it must be to fall into the rabbit hole of dementia, to lose a sense of what was real and what wasn’t.

  “Don’t worry,” he said gently. “Someone will be by soon to help you find your way home. Can you tell me your name?”