by Dianne Drake
That was an understatement if ever she’d heard one. Coulson was going to be livid. “Maybe I should go talk to Pabla, tell her how important it is that Tadeo keep his hands bandaged and clean.”
“I did. I gave her some clean bandages and she threw them on the floor. She didn’t care, Erin. And if I were you, I wouldn’t be messing with that lady. She was in a bad mood when she took Tadeo. I told you before, she’s mean to the bone.”
Mean to the bone maybe. But someone had to look out for Tadeo and since Coulson wasn’t here, she felt it had to be her. Felt it in her gut, felt it in her heart. “I can be pretty … mean, too,” she said.
Davion laughed at that. “You don’t know how to be mean, Erin. You’ve got a good heart, and right now you’re thinking about how you’re going to go to Pabla Reyes and convince her to make things good for Tadeo. That somehow a miracle will take place and she’ll relate to you in a rational way. Which she will not do. And you’re not going to be mean about it, even though you know how she’s going to act toward you.”
“Am I that transparent?” she asked, on a discouraged sigh.
“Yes.” He grinned. “That transparent.”
Well, that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. First her father was reading a whole host of things into what he could hear over the phone, and now Davion was doing the same … reading her like she was a book. An open book. That was the thought that kept running through her head for the next several hours as the carpenters showed up to start building walls in her hospital, and as one of the locals started to install the first of the pickets in the fence Coulson had suggested. She had plumbers on hand, as well as five of the local women who were eager to earn money painting walls. Her hospital was a mass of activity and her presence there was pretty much unnecessary. In fact, she was in the way. And, as it turned out, Davion didn’t need her at the clinic as no one was there.
So, since nothing in the hospital’s progress needed her supervision, and she wasn’t going to go chasing after Pabla, she had time. Time for the beach, she decided on a whim. Why not take a couple of hours and just go and relax? Tell people where she’d be in case anyone needed her. The day was warm, the sky a perfect blue, the water so inviting. why not?
Twenty minutes later, she spread her beach towel in the sand of a fairly secluded little patch of beach. It was hard to imagine, but this was hers. Actually, it belonged to the hospital, but since the hospital was hers … she had a beach! Or a part of one, as the other half still belonged to Coulson.
She pulled off her robe, looked at her conservative black one-piece suit and was overcome with the desire to buy something flowery and skimpy. She wouldn’t, of course. But wearing something like that for Coulson, and seeing the expression on his face.
“Not a chance,” she quipped, dropping down on her towel. After applying a dab more sunblock to her arms and legs, she lay back and stared up at the sky, trying to empty her mind of everything. No hospital, no worries about her dad or Tadeo. Definitely no Coulson. The harder she tried, though, the more she failed. Especially the part about Coulson. He filled every last nook and cranny, and wouldn’t let go. It was aggravating that even in the couple of hours off she was treating herself to, she couldn’t truly get away. OK, maybe she wasn’t trying hard enough. Maybe it was time to divert her attention, do something other than being idle.
The ocean in front of her took care of that whim. While she wasn’t about to go swimming alone, there was no reason why she couldn’t go wading. Just splashing about in the surf, wandering in just to her knees. It had been a long time since she’d been to a beach. These past few years her water activities had been limited to taking a shower and an occasional workout in the staff lap pool at the hospital where she’d worked. For her, personal time had always come at a premium. There were too many things to do, too many things to accomplish, and squandering precious time on frivolous endeavors was such a waste. The truth was, she didn’t relax very well. Didn’t know how. When she’d been young, and hadn’t known if she had a future ahead of her, she hadn’t been able to relax. Then, when she’d known she was going to have that future, she had been too busy making up for lost time to relax. So it didn’t surprise her that as she waded out, and the wet sand oozed between her toes, she felt almost … decadent.
“It’s a shallow shoreline here. You can actually go out farther,” Coulson called from the path. He’d been watching her for a few moments, not so much to enjoy the very nice view of Erin as much as he was enjoying the way she went about wading, almost the way a child would. And with so much joy. It was like her life was about firsts. doing so many things for the first time. Maybe she was. Maybe her past hadn’t allowed her the same experiences most people had. He could only imagine how tough it had been … sick for so many years, then going to college and medical school. That was a pretty narrow course, and he doubted she would have ever strayed very far from it. She was too …focused, too determined to accomplish her goals no matter what. Probably the result of so much uncertainty surrounding her leukemia.
But just look at her now! She was beautiful … stunning. The sun catching on glints of her chaotic red hair, her milky-white skin in unsettling contrast to the blue of the ocean waters. Damn, he wanted to fall in love with her. Wanted it badly. And maybe he already had. Another time, another place, he might have been able to act on it. But now it was time to focus on other things. Time to put his own life in order, one way or another. Before Erin, that hadn’t seemed to matter so much. He’d got along. Chased that proverbial impossible dream. Avoided … well, avoided everything he could, pretty much. Now, though, it was changing. She was changing him. Her goals were changing him. Which meant it was time he thought about changing himself. He hadn’t decided how yet. But change was on the horizon as surely as Erin Glover was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen on this beach.
Sucking in a sharp breath and squaring his shoulders, Adam headed toward the surf, not sure what he was going to do once he got there. Not sure that the best course right now wouldn’t be to turn around and walk away. Not sure about anything.
“If I’m not mistaken, this is a private beach,” she said, visoring her eyes with her hand to see him.
Surprisingly, she wasn’t making a scramble for her robe the way he’d expected her to. Thank God for small blessings as his eyes were on feast overload and he didn’t even care that he was staring openly. “And the sales contract gave me privileges here. Actually, more of a right of way through to my section of private beach.” He swallowed hard, deciding it was time to fix his stare somewhere else.
“But you’re not dressed for beachcombing.”
He looked down at his khaki pants and blue button-down shirt, like he’d momentarily forgotten what he was wearing. “Going down to Port Wallace to catch a shift at the hospital. Had about thirty minutes before I needed to leave, and I thought I’d come to the beach and just relax for a few minutes. I, um.” He deliberately fixed his eyes on a sailboat offshore. Stared at it intently. “I have a little cabana set up on the other side of the cove, and—”
“Davion told you about Pabla taking Tadeo?”
“And I kicked a hole in an appropriate door. You’ll see it next time you’re in the clinic. The hell of it is, there’s nothing I can do about Tadeo except kick that damned hole. Pabla has rights to him, I don’t. At this point, I think if we go after him or even approach him, we’re going to get ourselves into trouble, which is only going to make more trouble for Tadeo.”
“I hate this, Coulson. Hate being so helpless.”
He hated it, too. Right now, though, all he could do was wait, worry and hope. And bide his time, because Tadeo would find a way back to him. Of that, he was certain. “Pabla will back off after a while. She’ll get tired of Tadeo again, and quit watching him so closely. It’s happened before.”
“I hope so. Because he’s at such a critical point in his recovery, and it scares me to think about all the things that can go wrong. So, since we can’t fix t
hat situation right now, can I come with you so I can fix someone or something else?” she asked. “Come with you to the hospital, not the cabana.”
That snapped him out of his distraction. “What?”
“To the hospital? Can I go with you? I promised Uncle Serek I’d pick up a shift in Emergency whenever I could, and he told me it’s an open invitation. So.” She stepped out of the water, brushed by him as she went to retrieve her robe. “Let me give him a call, see if he wants me. You go relax in your cabana, and if they’ll let me have a shift, I’ll be ready to go when you leave.”
“You want to work a shift in Emergency on your time off?”
She smiled. “I miss medicine. I mean, it’s great helping you in the clinic, but I’m third in line after you and Davion, so I really haven’t been of much use. And all this work of getting the hospital set up … it’s necessary. But not what I enjoy doing.”
“You don’t ever relax, do you?” Suddenly the luscious body in the swimsuit was not anywhere near the front of his thoughts. Even though she hadn’t done it in the literal sense, Erin had figuratively shrouded herself in a white lab coat. All doctor, all the time. Admirable, but unfortunate. He doubted she even knew she was so much more than a doctor or a dutiful daughter.
“Of course I do. What you were standing off the path watching was me relaxing.”
“For how long? Ten minutes?”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Sometimes it does,” he said, heading away from her. His wife had been fixed on a lifestyle that had consumed her. Erin was fixed on work that consumed her. They weren’t the same at all, but in a way they were. So why the hell was he attracted to the obsessive types when he hated obsession so much? Would he ever find the woman who knew how to strike the balance he wanted? Because more than anything else, he needed balance in his life. He desperately needed balance. “See you in thirty,” he called over his shoulder, without looking back.
“Why here?” she asked, after twenty long, silent minutes when the only sound came from the tires on the rutted road.
“What?”
“Jamaica. The less-traveled places. Why did you choose this as where you wanted to practice medicine?”
“Didn’t,” he said. “It chose me. I had an opportunity to come out with some mission doctors, sort of an offset to some of my medical tuition, and I found … home. I liked it. It fit me, I fit it. Decided to stay.”
“And your wife didn’t agree with the decision?” That was probably overstepping the boundary, but she was curious. And even if they couldn’t be involved as anything other than friends or colleagues, friends and colleagues did have some intrusion privileges. So she was intruding a bit. “She wasn’t the island paradise sort?”
He visibly winced over that one. “I thought she was. Stupid me, I forgot to ask. So you can imagine how surprised I was when, after a year or so into our marriage, I opened my eyes to find out she was on the corporate track. She wanted to be an administrator, not a doctor who gave patient care. She wanted position and prestige and I wanted.Jamaica.”
“That’s a big difference?”
“Especially when you embarrass your wife.”
“What did you do to embarrass her?”
“I was me. I worked in a free clinic, came to Jamaica to give free care whenever I could. Used our marital assets to do it and didn’t include her on that decision because I knew what she’d say. One day she told me that I loved the kind of medicine I practiced more than I loved her. And I accused her of the same thing, loving her career more than she loved me. As it turned out, we were both so right, we couldn’t argue it. So, where do you go from there, except to a divorce lawyer? The thing is, in that divorce, they gave her everything but my grandfather’s inheritance and Stella, because the judge figured I’d already spent my fair share of our assets on my various medical pursuits. Which is probably the case. So … that’s it, the story of my pathetic life.”
“Not pathetic. Admirable, Coulson. It’s unfortunate that your marriage didn’t survive, but there’s nothing pathetic about your choices or the way you live your life.”
“Well, whatever way you want to look at it, she’s fine, I’m fine. And we’re both right where we want to be, so it’s not all bad.”
“Most people never get to live the dream. Yours may not be turning out exactly the way you’d planned it, but you’re living it. So rather than saying it’s not all bad, I think you should say it’s pretty much all good.”
“Ah, yes. The optimist.”
“Someone has to be,” she said.
“So, now that you know all my secrets, tell me some of yours. Like why you’ve never made a commitment to anybody. Not in the for ever-after or marriage kind of sense. Or maybe you did, and it didn’t work out.”
“Maybe because the person I am knows the foibles I have. You said it yourself, that I never relax. Earlier, at the beach, ten minutes of playtime and I was ready to go. You saw that. And look! Here I am now, getting ready to work again. It’s what I do. Who I am. All I am, and nothing about that would make it easy for someone else to find their way in.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself. I have an idea if you take a good, hard look at yourself, you’re going to see a woman who wouldn’t let anything she wants stand in her way, work or otherwise. And there’s a whole lot of otherwise in you, Red. You’re just not ready to see it yet. Or maybe you’re too stubborn to see it. But it’s there, when you decide to look.”
“Is that a compliment?” she asked. It was nice being perceived as substantial when so much of her life she’d been thought of as weak or languishing. But Coulson had never seen her during those days and he was basing his impression on what he saw now. It pleased her, actually. “It could be.”
“Well, then, I think I’ll take it as a compliment.” A compliment with lingering good feelings that lasted all the rest of the way to the hospital and on through the first few patients she saw.
“You doing OK?” Coulson asked, on a fast pass through the corridor on his way to have a look at a broken leg.
“Busy. Nothing complicated.”
“Well, I have complicated for you. Down in the first exam room. She wants to see you, insists on it, won’t let me anywhere near her. She said she knew there was a lady doctor working tonight, and—”
“I’ll get it,” Erin said, snapping off her pair of gloves and grabbing a fresh pair from the box on the shelf next to the sink. So far, she’d treated abrasions, stomach aches, headaches, menstrual cramps … not a bad night. But she was ready for a challenge. And as it turned out, her complicated patient was just that. Complicated. She was a tiny, old lady, somewhere north of seventy, Erin guessed. Flawless ebony skin, pure white hair, sharp brown eyes. Arms folded tight across her chest. Very precise about what she wanted.
“I won’t take my clothes off, young lady. That’s not fitting.” She was dressed well, in a nice flowered dress of red and yellow, white gloves, dressy hat, enormous red beads to match her bright red lipstick.
“But to examine you—”
“You’ll listen to my symptoms, that’s how you’ll examine me.” Miss Francelle Henry proceeded to pull a list from her black patent-leather purse … one that matched her black patent leather shoes. “Then we’ll discuss how you will proceed to treat me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Erin said, impressed with the woman. “But you’ve got to understand, Miss Henry, that in order to treat you, I may have to examine you. We’ll discuss it first, though, to see what’s appropriate.”
Miss Henry mulled it over for a moment then nodded. “As long as you don’t treat me like that other doctor who came in here and insisted, right off, that I open my dress so he could listen to my heart. Brash young man.” She shook her head in clear disapproval. “Rough manners.”
Erin could see Coulson as brash. But rough manners? That brought a smile to her face, because she liked the roughness. It was tempered with an odd gentleness that came out in the strangest
ways and places, however. Part of his charm, which, it seemed, had escaped Miss Henry. “So, please tell me your symptoms.”
She cleared her throat, as if preparing to recite. “Feeling tired and sleeping more than usual. Feeling the cold more than normal. Dry skin, thinning hair. Brittle nails. Sore muscles. Slow movements. General weakness. A hoarse or croaky voice. A change in my facial expression. Depression. Problems with my memory and concentration. Weight gain. Fertility problems. Slowed heart rate.”
Fertility problems? That brought a smile to Erin’s face. “Are you currently receiving treatment for any of these symptoms, Miss Henry?”
“I’ve been here three times, and every time I have, that young man has been the one to see me, and he refuses to give me any medication.”
“Would you excuse me while I step out of the room for a moment and ask him about it?”
“You tell him for me that I’m having a real doctor take care of me now.”
“I will, Miss Henry,” she promised.
Coulson was waiting for her in the hall. Smiling. “Diagnosis? ”
“She’s either got a fairly good medical textbook or access to the internet. So what am I supposed to do with a woman her age who’s making up symptoms? In my pediatric practice, I tell them why doing that is a bad thing and tell their parents.”
“She’s alone, never married. Needs attention. This is the best she gets, I suppose.”
“But she’s healthy?”
“As the proverbial horse. Although she won’t let me touch her. I think she’s afraid I’ll discover her little scam.”
Erin swatted him on the arm. “It’s not a scam. Like you said, she just needs attention.”
“She and her sister spent a lifetime together, but her sister died a few months ago, and Miss Henry comes here now because there are people around.”
It didn’t take but a split second for an idea to form.
“Didn’t you say the bus from Regina comes here three times a week?”