The Doctor's Forever Family

by Marie Ferrarella

  A full moon streamed its light in through the open window, illuminating her path.

  Ordinarily, when her son called for her in the middle of the night, Bobby would be standing up in his crib, sometimes even bouncing in it, depending on whether he was hungry or thirsty—or if he needed to have his diaper changed.

  But this time, mercifully, no pungent odor greeted her nose and Bobby was not the living embodiment of sheer charged energy the way he usually was. Instead, the towheaded toddler was lying down in his crib. This was definitely out of character for her son.

  Tina blinked twice, trying to focus. She didn’t want to turn on the light because she’d learned from experience that that would only wake him up and make him think it was morning. There was no containing him then.

  She really needed to get some sleep and if Bobby wound up being fully awake, Tina knew that she hadn’t a prayer of getting as much as a minute more of shut-eye from now until tomorrow night.

  She was running on empty as it was.

  For a moment, listening and not hearing his typical babble, Tina thought he’d gone back to sleep. But instead of tiptoeing away, she lingered a couple of beats longer. She had no idea what made her touch her son’s forehead. Most likely some motherly instinct that had set in and become part of her makeup ever since the day her son was born.

  As her fingers brushed against Bobby’s forehead, he whimpered.

  The heat she felt on his skin registered at the same time. Real concern took hold of her.

  “Oh, honey, you’re burning up,” she cried. The fever seemed to have come out of nowhere.

  Leaning over Bobby’s crib, she bent over far enough to resort to using what was considered to be every mother’s true thermometer. She brushed her lips against her son’s forehead.

  It wasn’t her imagination.

  Bobby was burning up. He’d seemed a little listless when she’d seen him earlier, before going to help out at the doctor’s place, but at the time Bobby’s forehead had been cool.

  That was the problem with babies. She’d read all about it in one of the half a dozen books she’d picked up on parenting a toddler. Children up to the age of seven had a tendency to run high fevers at what seemed like a moment’s notice. They were just as likely to be fine within an hour’s time but she wasn’t about to be complacent and just wait it out.

  She turned on the lamb-shaped lamp Miss Joan had given her and looked down at Bobby. His small face was flushed, his eyes looked liquid-y and as he whimpered again, his voice sounded scratchy to her.

  He’d had his share of colds, but this was the first time that he’d felt so feverish. Tina took a deep breath. She told herself not to panic, but it wasn’t a piece of self-advice she was about to take.

  She needed to do something to get Bobby’s fever down, but she’d just read an article in the paper about the uncertainty of feeding even a baby aspirin to a child as young as he was.

  Indecision hovered over her as Bobby began to cry. Tina could feel her panic heightening.

  Just then, she heard a knock on her door.

  “Everything all right in there, Tina?” Miss Joan’s voice came in through the door.

  No, no it wasn’t.

  The next moment, Tina was pulling open the door, grateful to have someone to turn to. “Bobby’s burning up,” she cried.

  Miss Joan hurried into the room, her ankle-length pink robe flying open on either side of her. She quickly assessed the situation herself with one brush of her fingertips against the toddler’s sweaty forehead. “Throw something on and wrap him up in a blanket,” Miss Joan instructed. “It looks like Dr. Davenport is about to have his first Forever middle-of-the-night emergency call.”

  Tina had just been thinking the same thing, but hearing the words said out loud made her hesitate for a moment. She didn’t want to come across like one of those hysterical mothers.

  “You don’t think I’m overreacting?”

  Kind hazel eyes met hers. “I’d really be worried about you if you weren’t.” Miss Joan gave her hand a squeeze. “Just remember, it’s better to overreact and be sorry than to ignore the problem and run the risk of being even sorrier,” the older woman told her. “Just give me a second to throw something on so I’m decent,” she told Tina.

  She began to hurry out of the guest room and back to her own, but then Miss Joan paused. She lightly touched Tina’s face, cupping her hand against her cheek. “Don’t worry, honey. Everything’s going to be all right. Babies are very resilient.”

  Tina only wished that she could be.

  Giving her a quick, reassuring smile, Miss Joan hurried from the bedroom to her own. For a second, Tina remained frozen in place, struggling not to allow fear to get the better of her.

  The next moment, she snapped out of it and flew to the closet. She quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater. She didn’t bother putting on either a bra or underwear. All she was focused on was Bobby.

  “Don’t cry, Bobby, don’t cry,” she said over and over again, trying to soothe her son. “Dr. Dan’ll make you all better.” She said the words for both their benefits.

  Tina sincerely prayed that she was right.

  Chapter Six

  Dan was completely dead to the world, sleeping the sleep of the severely exhausted, when the sound of urgent pounding woke him.

  Prying open his eyes, at first he thought it was just part of his dream. A throbbing headache in the making, or something along those lines. It took him more than a minute to realize that the pounding existed outside his imagination.

  When he finally did wake up, Dan was completely disoriented. So much so that he didn’t know what day of the week it was or even, for that matter, where he was. Nothing looked familiar.

  Like an array of items raining down on him from a collapsed overhead shelf, awareness took hold and startled thoughts pelted him.

  He remembered.

  Everything.

  The good and the bad.

  He was in a house in the middle of a hopelessly rural area. His home for the next nine months unless some miracle absolved him of guilt and provided a doctor for the town at the same time.

  The pounding was still going on.

  Dan pulled himself up into a sitting position, trying to get his bearings and focus. It wasn’t easy. He felt as if he’d just risen from the dead or, at the very least, woken up from a coma. He dragged his hand through his hair, trying to think.

  What the hell was making all that racket? The pounding wasn’t stopping. If anything, it got more urgent and it came from downstairs, at his front door.

  Some kind of an animal? A grizzly?

  The thought brought a chill down his spine. Promise or no promise, maybe coming out here in Warren’s place wasn’t such a good idea.

  Above the pounding he thought he heard someone calling his name. Okay, not a grizzly. Grizzlies didn’t actually knock, and talking bears only existed in cartoons.

  The relief that it wasn’t an animal was short-lived. Damn it, someone wanted to see him? Now? This was the middle of the night. Didn’t these people sleep?

  Swallowing a few choice words, Dan reached for his jeans only to realize that he still had them on. He’d never taken them off when he fell into bed. He’d just been too tired.

  If possible, the pounding became louder and even more urgent.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he called out, even though he knew that more than likely, his voice wouldn’t carry all the way down the stairs and out to the front door.

  This had better be an emergency, Dan thought, feeling equal parts groggy and angry at the same time.

  Clutching the banister to keep from pitching forward as he made his way down, he still hadn’t managed to pull himself together by the time he got to the bottom of the stairs.

  Unfamiliar with where the light switches were located, Dan half stumbled, half groped his way to the front door. When he walked into a table, more choice words popped up in his head as pain radiated up and
down his shin until it felt as if it had reached the very roots of the hair on his head.

  “What?” he shouted as he yanked open the door.

  The next instant, when he saw Tina on his doorstep, holding a little boy against her, all the anger drained out of him. She looked completely distraught.

  It was Miss Joan who spoke, answering the tersely voiced question as she ushered Tina and her son across the threshold, elbowing him out of the way and forcing him to step back.

  The moonlight illuminated them. The older woman appeared exceedingly tense. “The baby’s running a high fever. He had a fit in the car.”

  “A fit?” Dan repeated. And then he realized what she had to be trying to tell him. “You mean he had a convulsion?”

  Pressing her lips together to keep a sob back, Tina nodded her head. Seeing Bobby like that had frightened her half to death. One moment she was in the backseat, holding Bobby to her, rocking slightly and trying to reassure him with soothing words, the next, she felt him stiffen in her arms and begin to jerk spasmodically no matter how hard she held on to him. It was a struggle to hang on to him. She had no idea what was happening to her baby.

  All the years in medical school and at the hospital came to the foreground and took over. He wasn’t groggy anymore.

  “Bring your son into the exam room,” Dan instructed as he lead the way.

  This time, he managed to locate the light switch on the wall. It didn’t occur to him until later to question why there was power running through the wires. After all, the house had stood empty all this time. Days later, he discovered that once Warren had answered Miss Joan’s letter requesting for a physician to come to Forever, the woman had had the electricity, gas and phone all turned on so that there would be a minimum of inconvenience to deal with when the doctor came to open up his practice.

  Tina lay Bobby down on the exam table. She and Rick’s sister, Mona, had cleaned this room earlier, little did she realize that she would be back here within hours and that Bobby would wind up being the doctor’s first patient.

  The knots in her stomach tightened even harder as she watched the new doctor peel back Bobby’s pajamas and examine him.

  Bobby cried pitifully throughout the entire checkup. His cries turned into a shriek of protest when Dan attempted to insert a rectal thermometer into its targeted area in order to take his temperature.

  “Hold him down,” Dan ordered Tina sternly.

  “I’m trying,” Tina cried, frustrated.

  Observing, Miss Joan felt she knew the makings of a disaster when she saw it. “You think that’s wise, doing it that way, Doc?”

  He knew what the woman was saying. If the little boy moved around too much or made any sudden moves, there was the very real risk of snapping the thermometer. If a piece of it lodged itself in the boy’s rectum, extraction would be difficult.

  “Probably not,” he conceded, stopping. “But that still remains the most accurate way to get a reading of a child’s temperature.”

  “My guess is a ballpark figure would do. Bobby’s burning up,” Miss Joan said.

  Yes, he was, Dan thought. Setting the thermometer aside, he had Tina turned the boy over on his back. With quick, efficient fingers, Dan quickly examined the boy’s small, lean body. There was no sign of a rash or any skin eruptions.

  “Has he had his shots?” he asked Tina, then elaborated in case she wasn’t following him. “You know, MMR. For measles, mumps and rubella. Also the one for whooping cough?”

  Tina nodded in response to each injection. She’d been very diligent about that, seeing that Bobby received all of his immunizations. She even kept a log as to when each had been given to him.

  “Good.” The boy was still crying and looked utterly miserable, as well as flushed. “Is he allergic to any medication?”

  She wanted to urge the doctor on, to make him do something to make her son better, not sit here and play twenty questions. But she knew Dan was just doing his best. She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

  Nodding as he took the information in, Dan knew what his next course of action would be. “Stay with your son. I’ll be right back.”

  Leaving the exam room, Dan hurried to the tiny room that was to act as his office. He’d locked up the medical bag he’d brought with him from New York, placing it into the only closet that appeared to have a working lock. Opening the closet now, he took out the stereotypical black bag and rummaged through it until he found what he needed.

  Moving quickly, he returned to the exam room.

  “Is he going to be all right?” Tina asked, her voice cracking under the strain of emotions.

  Taking a syringe, Dan drew the proper amount for what he needed. “Your son should be fine in a few hours,” he assured her, raising his voice to be heard above the pitiful crying.

  Tina didn’t take her eyes off the syringe in his hands. “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to give him a shot,” he said needlessly. “Tylenol,” he added. “To bring his fever down.”

  There weren’t many over-the-counter medicines in her medicine cabinet, but she was familiar with this one. Or so she thought. “Doesn’t that usually come in a pill bottle?”

  “This is a much bigger dosage,” he told her. “And it’s a lot faster. It’ll go directly into his bloodstream. It’s the fastest way to start getting his fever down.” He took a breath as he looked down at the toddler who seemed to be all arms and legs. “Now this is going to sting him and I need him to remain very still so you’ll have to hold on to Bobby very tightly.” There wasn’t a trace of humor in his face as he asked, “Think you can do that?”

  Tina nodded vigorously. Gathering the boy to her, she pressed the child to her chest. “I can hold him steady,” she assured him.

  His eyes met hers for a moment. “Good.” Tina felt as if he was infusing her with his strength.

  Very carefully, Dan inserted the needle into the fatty portion of the boy’s thigh. Bobby’s screams intensified, but Dan didn’t allow it to distract him.

  Finished, he removed the needle quickly and stepped back, inserting that part of the syringe into a hazardous waste disposal container that he’d packed along with his bag for just such an occasion.

  Finally, utterly exhausted, Bobby’s cries transformed into whimpers, which in turn hitched and became hic-cups. Before long, the boy finally fell into an uneasy silence. Within moments, drained, Tina’s son curled up in her arms and went to sleep.

  Only then did Tina let out a ragged breath. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she began, amazed at the remarkable difference in her son. Her ears were still ringing from Bobby’s cries even though he wasn’t crying anymore.

  “It’s not over yet,” Dan warned her. He saw apprehension come into her eyes. “I’d like to watch him for at least the next half hour to make sure that he doesn’t relapse.”

  She wasn’t planning on getting any sleep tonight anyway so she was more than prepared to monitor Bobby. “I don’t want to put you out any more than I already have.”

  Silent for the past few minutes, Miss Joan spoke up. “Man’s a doctor, Tina. This is what he does. Let him do his job.” She flashed a smile at Dan. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

  When last he looked, there’d been nothing in the pantry. He didn’t even have a clue where the grocery store was. He’d planned on making a pit stop at the woman’s diner in the morning for some breakfast, leaving the last two sandwiches for his lunch.

  “I don’t have any coffee,” he told Miss Joan.

  “Didn’t say I was going to make your coffee, now did I?” Miss Joan responded with a laugh. With that, she left the room.

  There was no doubt about it, this was a very unique group of people. “She’s not going to pass her hand over a cup of water and turn it into coffee, is she?” Dan asked Tina. He was only half kidding.

  Normally, the very idea was laughable, but there was something a little unnerving about the diner owner. He had the feeling that “Miss
Joan” couldn’t be rationally explained.

  As far as Tina was concerned, the doctor had just given her back her son. Tina took pity on him and demystified the older woman. “Miss Joan usually has things in the trunk of her car for ‘emergencies’ such as this,” Tina told him. “Said that where she came from, she learned that she needed to always be prepared.”

  Wasn’t that the mantra of the Boy Scouts? “Where did she come from?”

  Tina shook her head. “Nobody really knows for sure,” she admitted.

  That didn’t make any sense to him. Didn’t these people have any curiosity? “And nobody ever asked her about it?”

  “They did, but supposedly she always changed the subject.” Tina shrugged ever so slightly, taking care not to disturb the sleeping cherub in her arms. “They figure if she wants to keep it a secret, it’s her right. They weren’t going to pry.”

  Dan supposed that the young mother had a point, although his curiosity had been aroused.

  For now, he let the subject go. “How does he feel?” he asked, nodding at the boy in her arms.

  Ever so lightly, she kissed Bobby’s forehead. Her face dissolved into a wreath of smiles as relief flooded through her veins. “Cooler,” she answered him. “See for yourself,” she offered, straightening so that the sleeping boy was more accessible to him.

  Dan touched the boy’s forehead. In doing so, he also inadvertently brushed the back of his hand against the swell of Tina’s breasts. He immediately pulled his hand away, but for all intents and purposes, the “damage” had been done. Contact had registered and they were both very much aware of it.

  If he’d had any doubt—or hope—that she hadn’t realized what had just happened, Tina’s sharp intake of breath told him that she was utterly aware that the back of his hand had touched an intimately sensitive part of her body.

  “Sorry,” he apologized in a hushed voice.

  “Nothing to apologize for,” she responded in the same low tone. She lifted one shoulder in a deliberately careless shrug. “Wasn’t your fault. I should have held him out to you a little better.”