The Medicine Man

by Dianne Drake

  “I told him he needed to be seen,” Chay said, after nearly an hour of silence. “Told him yesterday morning, for all the good it did.”

  “You can’t force someone to get help if they don’t want to. I’m sure you did the best you could.”

  “Yeah.” He snorted. “I pushed him in the opposite direction.”

  “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Chay. Not even this little piece of it. Your father made his choice, and it had nothing to do with you. It was a choice he made months, probably even years ago. Without any regard to you, I’m betting. But if you want to sit there and soak up all that guilt, blame yourself for his choices, his mistakes, be my guest. Help yourself to it. Just leave me out of it, OK? Because I’ve got a hundred more just like your dad waiting to happen. And they, Dr Ducheneaux, aren’t your fault, just like your dad isn’t.”

  “And they’re not your fault either,” he said quietly, reaching over to give her hand a squeeze.

  Kind words. Too kind, as it turned out, because they were the words that opened a locked door, one she’d tried so hard to keep locked since she’d realized that no matter what she did on Hawk, no matter how hard she worked, it would never be enough. “But it is my fault,” she said, swiping at the tears that were already beginning to fall. “I’m not enough, Chay, and they all suffer for that. As hard as I try, I can’t do it.” Before the good, hard crying hit, Joanna swerved off the road, hopped out of the Jeep, and headed out into the prairie, no destination in mind other than away from where she was. She would fight it, walk it off, not let it get her. But after only a minute it gripped her anyway, and she tumbled to the ground for the soul-wrenching, gut-wrenching cry she’d wanted since her first day there.

  But she didn’t cry alone. Not as she’d thought she would. She cried in Chay’s arms until there were no more tears and the only thing left was that magnificent rising sun.

  And the man with whom she was falling in love. The man for whom, like the people of Hawk who were entrusted to her care, she could never be enough.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “TELL me exactly what they told you,” Chay said over the phone to Wenona. He’d called the hospital twice today already and had heard the same thing: critical but stable. Which told him nothing. His dad was sick, possibly dying, and holding steadily on that precipice. Chay knew he would have to go back there soon to take care of his mother and Macawi.

  Few words were exchanged between Chay and his mother. She sounded tired, he thought. Tired, but determined to fight the fight for her husband. And she didn’t want to stay away from the waiting room too long for fear one of the doctors or nurses had something to report on Leonard’s condition and she would miss it. So he listened to his mother recount what the doctors had said, then retold it to her in terms a non-medical person would understand.

  “His blood sugar stabilizing means that his diabetes is coming under his control, which is good. Urinary output picking up with Lasix means his kidneys are working better.” That one was a big relief. The little bit of urine he’d seen in the collection bag had worried him more than just about everything else. Kidney failure in an area without services was tantamount to death—the sad truth Phyllis Whirlwind was now dealing with. “And a guarded neurological status doesn’t really say much. They’re waiting to see how badly the stroke has injured him and they won’t know until he wakes up.”

  His dad had been in the coma so many hours now. Chay glanced at the clock on Joanna’s kitchen wall. Almost twenty-four hours, and that wasn’t a good sign. The longer he stayed comatose the more his odds of serious, maybe even permanent impairment increased. So, all told, critical but stable. Something akin to Joanna’s condition, only hers was emotional. She suffered the price each and every one of her patients paid, and holding her all night, as he’d done, had been much, much too little, considering what she needed. He’d thought about that as she slept, thought about it, then resisted the way the answers were starting to line up. This was a fling, for heaven’s sake. By definition a casual affair, a period of self-indulgence. But no matter how he tried reframing it, and he’d tried, nothing about what he had going with Joanna came close to casual or self-indulgent. Which was why he’d spent the night thinking about her needs and not his own.

  “Look, Mom, I’ll talk to you again in a couple of hours, and if you need anything in the meantime, call me. Will you do that, Mom?”

  He hung up when he was convinced his mother would call him, and went back to Joanna’s bed. She’d slept all day, and now, well into the evening, she was still sleeping. Chay debated climbing back in with her, holding her, waking up with her. But he was restless, too restless to confine himself, and the walls were certainly beginning to close in on him. Part of him wanted to go back to Chicago, forget that he’d ever been here, write his mother a check for his dad’s medical care so he could pretend to be the dutiful son without feeling the strain of real involvement. But so much more of him wanted to be here. For his mother and Macawi in the widest sense, maybe even for his dad a little, which was something he needed to figure out. Most of all, he wanted to be here for Joanna, which sure as hell didn’t fit into any kind of plans he had for himself.

  Chay wandered over to his mother’s diner. It was closed now, but he knew how to get in the back window. A trick left over from his childhood. The only reason he’d even gone in after hours had been for a cherry cola. It was like a balm that seemed to cure everything. Funny how in all the years he’d been away he’d never had one. And now he wanted one so badly he was willing to squeeze his man-sized frame through a window that better accommodated a boy just to get it.

  Once in, he headed to the soda fountain, stopping to look at the framed pictures on the walls. All pictures of people from Rising Sun enjoying themselves in the diner. So many of the faces he recognized—Ralph Bird from the garage. He was smiling as he was photographed eating what was probably a bowl of ham and beans. And there was Wendy Godenot diving into a banana split. Chay walked slowly along Wenona’s wall of fame until he came to the one where he and Jack Whirlwind were looking like a couple of gawky geeks drinking their cherry cola out of a bucket. They’d been going fishing that day, and instead of a Thermos, which would have been the sensible thing to fill up, they’d dragged in a big old galvanized bucket. What were they? Twelve years old maybe? Back when life was simple, futures were simple. They would grow up and work on the ranch as their fathers and grandfathers had, and go fishing on Saturdays.

  “Yeah, right,” Chay grunted, reaching out to touch the face of his friend. “Back when things were simple, Jack. So what the hell happened to us?” Chay shut his eyes, trying to block out the memories, but they wouldn’t be blocked. He’d been happy here once. But that life had gotten away from him. “So tell me, Jack. If I’d come home after med school, would it have made a difference? Would you still be alive? Would my dad be…?” Chay spun away from the wall of fame and headed to the soda fountain. “Hell,” he muttered, fishing the customary dime out of his pocket and plunking it down on the counter next to the cash register.

  One cherry cola poured, Chay sat down at the counter to drink it, but two sips into it he was interrupted by a tapping on the window. Since everybody knew Wenona’s closed after mid-afternoon, he decided to keep his back to the window, ignore whoever wanted in. But the tapping persisted until he finally glanced back to see the face of Kimimela pressed to the window. She was crying.

  Chay opened the door to let her in, and she flew into his arms. “I can’t find my mommy,” she wailed. “She said she would come home to fix my supper, but she didn’t.”

  “Where’s your daddy?” Chay asked, lifting her to the stool where he’d sat and sliding his cherry cola toward her.

  “Don’t got one.”

  “Was someone looking after you while your mother went out?”

  “I can look after myself,” she said, almost defiantly. “Did you pay a dime for that?” she asked, before she took the drink.

  “I most
certainly did. That’s the rule. So, Little Butterfly, did your mommy tell you where she was going?”

  She shook her head, sniffling back a second round of tears.

  “Do you know any friends she likes to visit in the evening?”

  Kimimela shook her head again. “She has lots of friends but they don’t come to our house.”

  “Well, how about we take that drink with us and go back to your house? I’ll bet your mother’s probably home now, wondering where you are.” As he took Kimimela’s hand and led her out the door, he wondered about a mother who would let such a young child stay home alone. Maybe that was his Chicago ways coming through. He remembered his own freedom at a young age, freedom no child in a big city should ever have because it wasn’t safe there. And certainly there had been many nights such as this when he’d gone out on his own, as Kimimela had done. Of course, he remembered his dad waiting for him at the door on most of those nights. Big, imposing sight, arms folded across his chest, frowning. Just the sight of his dad standing there like that had been enough of a punishment. But Leonard had always had something else in mind: a restriction from something Chay enjoyed—television, a town baseball game, cherry cola. “So you came to the diner looking for your mother?” he asked Kimimela.

  “Looking for you, DocChay. I knew my mother wouldn’t be here. She doesn’t like to come here when she doesn’t have to. She likes to go to that other place where they have music. Sometimes she dances there and gets paid.”

  The roadhouse out by the ranch. Popular place for a lot of the ranch hands. Pool tables, booze, women. A very popular place for the men who didn’t go home to their wives at night. “OK. Why don’t you take me to your house to see if your mom has come home? Maybe she’s there waiting for you right now.” Although somehow he didn’t think so.

  Kimimela’s house was a short walk, about two blocks. It was a small, run-down wood frame house, probably with only two rooms, and Chay knocked several times before he decided that no one was home. “Well, Little Butterfly, it looks like you’re right. No one’s home. So, do you have a grandmother or an aunt who lives here?”

  “Uh-uh. Just Mommy and me.”

  “Then how about we go give DocJo a visit?” After that, what? Go look for Kimimela’s mother, or wait until her mother remembered she had a child at home?

  Joanna had half expected to find Chay in bed with her, but she wasn’t terribly surprised to find him gone. They’d had a tumultuous twenty-four hours, and he’d probably gone off somewhere to think about what they were doing. They’d made love at Fishback Creek—and she was going to call it making love because for her that was what it had been, even if for him it had probably been just sex on a butte with someone who’d been willing. And she had been. Then after the creek, the way he’d held her out on the prairie and on through the night when everything had come apart for her. His arms around her for an hour as she’d cried, then as she’d simply lingered there to search for a bit of calmness and control in her life. And then the way they’d lain spoon-fashion all night. She fit right into him, and it had been a natural thing to do, one that had seemed like they’d done it many times before. With so much crammed into such a short time frame, she wasn’t surprised he wasn’t there, but she was a bit disappointed. Waking up in Chay’s arms would have been so wonderful.

  Joanna climbed out of bed and plodded to the shower, thinking about all the possibilities between them. Realistically, she wasn’t going to keep him there. But Chicago wasn’t that far away, and she was accumulating quite a bit of time off, as she hardly ever took the days off coming to her. And maybe, if his feelings toward her were more than casual, and she prayed they were, he might come back for occasional visits. Especially now that his family needed him.

  One moment at a time—that was the way it was going to be. Take one moment, be glad for it, and not anticipate the next.

  Well, one thing was for sure. It wasn’t the kind of relationship she’d expected to step into. After her marriage had fallen apart, she hadn’t even thought in terms of a relationship of any sort. But right now that was all she was thinking about, even if she couldn’t define it in any specific terms other than difficult. “So take it for what it is,” she said, stepping into the shower. A light, easy sentiment. Unfortunately, her growing feelings for Chay were anything but light and easy. And that was the problem. A very big problem.

  “Joanna?”

  She heard the voice over the spray of the shower. “Care to join me?” she called. Probably not appropriate, considering his father’s condition. But she’d rung before she’d climbed out of bed and Leonard was still holding his own. Not better, but not worse.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  She poked her head between the shower curtains and was greeted by a scowl she was beginning to know all too well. “Your dad?” she gasped, wondering if something had happened since she’d called.

  Chay shook his head. “Kimimela’s mother. She’s not home and Kimimela’s out wandering the streets.”

  “Give me a minute.” Joanna ducked back into the shower, took about a minute to wash, then wrapped herself in a large towel and stepped out. Chay was still standing there, waiting. For just a second she saw a look of appreciation flash across his eyes, but then it was gone and the scowl returned.

  “Do you know anything about the woman?” he asked.

  “Her name’s Donna. She’s single, and I don’t know anything about Kimi’s father. Occasionally Donna dances down at the roadhouse and your mother watches Kimi for the night when she does.” Joanna thought about kicking him out of the bathroom while she dried off and dressed, or at the very least asking him to do the gentlemanly thing and turn his back. But instead, amazed by the boldness he inspired in her, she let the towel drop to the floor at his feet.

  “Damn,” Chay muttered, reaching out to stroke her breasts. “This isn’t fair. I’ve got a kid sitting downstairs, waiting for me, and as much as I’d love to, I can’t—”

  “Kimi’s here?” she sputtered. That changed Joanna’s mood abruptly, and she quickly pulled on her bra and panties, the nice, cheeky ones he liked, then grabbed some khaki shorts. “Why didn’t you tell me she’s here? You can’t be in here with me, Chay. Not in the bathroom. Not with Kimi down there.”

  He didn’t budge. Not a step. “I brought her here because where else was I supposed to take her? I left her playing with your stethoscope.”

  After she pulled on her T-shirt, Joanna shoved around Chay and headed to the bathroom door. Before she opened it, she turned back to him and whispered, “Kimi’s mother isn’t around much for her. Your mother has been doing most of Kimi’s raising since I’ve been here, and I probably should have reported Donna to child protection services a long time ago, but I haven’t because it would break Wenona’s heart not to have Kimi around. I guess I never thought that Donna would go off and leave Kimi alone when she knew Wenona wasn’t here, but I’m not sure Donna would ever think that far outside herself.”

  “I think you’re right about that,” he said softly.

  Kimimela was on the examining table in room one, listening through the stethoscope for her brain when Joanna entered. “You can’t hear your brain, sweetie,” she said, laughing.

  “Yes, you can,” Kimimela replied in all earnestness. “I hear things going on in it all the time.”

  “Can’t argue with logic like that,” Chay said, scooping the little girl up in his arms. “How about we go upstairs and fix you something to eat? By the time your mommy gets home she’ll probably be awfully tired.”

  “Grilled cheese? Mrs Wenona always fixes me grilled cheese.”

  Chay glanced over at Joanna to make sure she had the ingredients handy in her tiny kitchenette, and when she nodded, he charged at the stairs with Kimimela squealing in his arms. He could have been a pediatrician, Joanna thought. A good one, judging from the way he was with Kimi. A good pediatrician and…a wonderful father.

  Just as Joanna turned to follow them up, some
one knocked at her door with such a force it almost rattled the frosted inset glass right out of it. She knew that knock, and her heart lurched with the sure recognition of what would come after she opened up. That familiar knock from Emil Chamberlain, one of Hawk’s six reservation police officers, never brought good news.

  “It’s a bad one,” he said to Joanna even before the door was fully open. He was winded, overwrought. He also had high blood pressure and Joanna doubted he ever took the medicine she prescribed for him to treat it. “On the way out to the roadhouse, car overturned.”

  “How many injuries?” she asked.

  “Just the one. I sent Joseph Stonehorse over to get her little girl.”

  Joanna’s heart clutched again. “Donna Rousseau?”

  Emil nodded. “She’d been drinking, doing some dancing. Some of the guys offered to drive her home but she said she was just going outside for a smoke. Ronnie Fontenoy saw her go off the road. He said she was swerving all over the place, way over the speed limit. Some of the boys are with her, but I told them not to touch her until we talked to you first.”

  “Give me a minute. Oh, and Chay Ducheneaux’s upstairs with Kimi.”

  “I heard he’s back in town. Been meaning to drop by and see him. Look, I’ll have someone take Kimi over to Sandy…” He called the words to thin air, because Joanna was already halfway up the stairs.