She was right about one thing: My job was stressful. My last scheduled appointment had been at four thirty—Ava Schaltzi’s chicken pox—but then Kelly Fendt had rushed into the waiting room with her toddler bundled up in a blanket. She’d demanded to see a doctor. Immediately. Christa at the front desk had been so freaked out that she’d called me away from my paperwork to deal with the situation.
“I know she’s a hypochondriac, I know she’s a pain in the butt,” Christa had said nervously. “But she says her son has whooping cough. She says he’s coughing up blood. I put her in exam room B.”
So I’d given up all hope of squeezing in a session at the gym and agreed to assess the situation. Little Carter Fendt had smiled up at me from behind his pacifier.
“He’s been coughing,” Kelly reported. “All night long. He stopped breathing for a minute, Dr. Maye. I swear he did.”
“Mm-hmm.” I scanned his chart, then pressed my stethoscope against his chest to listen to the lungs. No wheezing, no rales, no signs of any distress. “I don’t hear anything to be too alarmed about…let’s take his temperature.”
“Good idea.” Kelly looked vindicated. “My husband says I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but I know my child, Dr. Maye. A mother has a sixth sense about this sort of thing. And I can’t bear to see my little boy—”
“Was it a barking cough?”
She considered this. “No, I’d say it was more of a rattly cough. I could hear it in his chest.”
“Mm-hmm. No fever,” I concluded, glancing at the thermometer. “He was coughing up blood, you said?”
“Well…” She fiddled with the silver chain around her neck. “He was definitely coughing up fluid. Last night.”
I made a note of this in the chart. “What color?”
She hesitated. “What color?”
“What color was the fluid? Green? Yellow? Brown?”
“Oh. It was yellow, I guess. Kind of clear.”
I jotted this down. “Okay. Have you noticed anything else unusual? Diarrhea? Rashes?”
“His face was very pink when we came in from sledding the other day. Oh God, what do you think it is? Whooping cough? Bronchitis? Pneumonia?”
I smiled patiently, no easy feat given the fact that this was her third unscheduled “emergency” this month. “It may just be a cold.”
“Oh no.” She threw up a hand. “You didn’t hear him coughing last night. The poor darling was fit to die.”
“Well, he is a bit congested, but he’s up to date on his shots, and since he’s been immunized against whooping cough—”
She lifted her chin. “Are you saying I don’t know what’s wrong with my own child?”
I kept my expression bland. “Has he been coughing so hard he vomits? Does his face change color?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Okay, then. Try a vaporizer in his room tonight. Maybe some mentholated ointment.”
Her eyes widened in horror. “Aren’t you going to give him antibiotics?”
“Not yet. I’ll call you tomorrow, and if he’s not feeling better, we’ll try a different approach.”
“But he needs a prescription! I know my baby and—”
“Dr. Lowell will be on call tonight,” I said firmly. “You can let us know if he gets worse or has any trouble breathing.”
“He’s having trouble breathing right now!” she cried, gathering up Carter, who was happily blowing spit bubbles and helping himself to a fistful of goldfish crackers from his mother’s pocket. “No offense, Dr. Maye, but you’re fresh out of medical school, aren’t you? I’d like to see someone with a little more experience.”
“Dr. Lowell’s with another patient.”
“I want antibiotics, and I want them now. You obviously don’t understand what it’s like to be a mother.”
No, I didn’t, I reflected as I trudged through the fresh snow to my beat-up old Toyota. Maybe if I did, I could understand the primal urge that drove Kelly Fendt and, for that matter, Renée to intervene even when it might do her children more harm than good.
I climbed into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition, and waited for the engine to warm up. My black loafers were soaked through with melted snow, and the hem of my gray pants was dirty from the parking lot slush. This was my wardrobe now: sturdy shoes, tailored pants. Ugh. When I first met David, I’d been wearing a black sequined tube top and an obscenely short camouflage skirt at a bar in Boston. I’d just finished my first semester med school finals, and my roommate and I had decided to kill our few remaining functioning brain cells with alcohol.
I’d been shimmying on the sticky bartop at the Cat and Canary under a strobe light, blissfully ignorant of the years of Talbot’s and Ann Taylor stretching out ahead of me, when I tripped on a shot glass and stomped on the bartender’s hand as he served up a frosty glass of Guinness.
“Sorry,” I’d breathed, crouching down to examine the damage. “Did I break your proximal phalanges?”
He’d tried to smile through his wince. “Nothing a cast and six months of intensive physical therapy won’t cure.”
I winced and prodded his fingers. “Can you make a fist?”
He’d rolled his eyes. “What, are you a doctor in a red G-string?”
I’d flushed. “Oh my God. You can see up my skirt?”
“Yeah. So can everyone else.”
I’d hopped down behind the bar and tugged my hem down. “You better put some ice on that hand.”
He stood back and watched me fashion a cold compress out of a dish towel and the cubed ice in the cooler. “So are you a doctor, or do you just have a lot of practice dealing with wounded bartenders?”
“I’m a med student,” I’d admitted sheepishly. “First year. Don’t tell my professors I’m administering treatment without a license, okay?”
“As long as you don’t tell my professors about the bartending gig.” He laughed at my expression. “I’m in the pharmacology program at Northeastern.”
“Then why are you…?”
“My fellowship doesn’t exactly cover rent prices in Boston. It’s either bartend or take a monthly allowance from my mother, so here I am.” He grinned. “You’d understand if you knew my mom.”
“And I just mangled the hands you use to do research.”
“Consider it karmic payback for all the jokes I’ve made about physicians’ handwriting.” He flinched as I pressed the makeshift ice pack against his swelling hand. “With any luck, I’ll be able to hold a beer again someday.”
“Is there anything I can do to ease your pain and suffering?”
He leaned forward, just inside the perimeters of what I considered my personal space. “You could give me your phone number. Just in case I need my lawyers to track you down for the huge malpractice suit.”
I scribbled down my name and number on a cocktail napkin.
He squinted at the writing. “I’m not even going to say anything about the penmanship.”
“Wise.” I struck a pose. “’Cause I have three-inch heels and I’m not afraid to use them.”
“No kidding.” He laughed again. “I’m David. I’d shake your hand, but I’m kind of scarred for life.”
And that was that. We’d been inseparable since that night, growing closer as we swapped the bar scene for nights at the opera, camouflage skirts for preppy blazers, torrid sex in our drafty Boston apartment for lukewarm cuddling in our fixer-upper starter home in Alden.
We were fated to be together, clearly. I mean, an ass-shaking pediatrician and a martini-shaking pharmacologist? What were the odds?
As the Toyota’s vents started coughing out heat, I dug my cell phone out of my purse and dialed our home number. One of us had to swallow our pride and take the first step. The situation with Renée could be worked out. David loved me, he would understand that we couldn’t let his mother invade our—
“Hello?” A familiar voice picked up on the other end of the line.
I grimaced.
“Hello?”
“Renée?” I strangled out.
“Erin.” From the tone of her voice, I knew she’d heard about yesterday’s fight.
“Yes, hi. Listen…is David there?”
She took a moment to let the full force of her disapproval sink in. “He’s still at the hospital.”
Then why are you in our house, answering our phone?
“I dropped by to make sure he got a decent meal,” she continued as if reading my mind. “Since you’re swamped with work. Again.”
“How thoughtful,” I oozed. “But as it happens, I’m actually on my way home from the office, so—”
“Perfect,” she oozed right back. “There’s plenty to go around. I’m making a chicken stir-fry. With peanut sauce.”
11
STELLA
You have to help me,” I begged Casey, reaching across her pet supply shop’s counter to tug the sleeve of her flannel shirt. “Please. This dog—he’s wrecking my house. The chewing, the shedding, and drool…I had to clean off the ceiling in the mudroom the other day!”
She flashed a totally insincere smile and handed me a flyer advertising the dog trainer who held obedience classes at the store twice a week.
I let go of her sleeve and hung my head while the dog sat by my side doing his docile Best in Show routine. “Listen, I get it, adopting a pet is a lifelong commitment and I can’t take him back to the shelter. And honestly, I could handle it if he was just wrecking my house. But it’s more than that. He’s wrecking my marriage!”
Her eyebrows shot up. “This dog?”
I nodded.
“This dog sitting right here is ruining your marriage?”
We both regarded the giant black mutt, who looked back at us with his tail wagging and his eyes sparkling.
“This is just an act!” I cried. “He’s not like this at home. He’s like…like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!”
“Really.” She didn’t even bother trying to hide her disdain.
“Swear to God! He chewed half the arm off our new leather sofa. He shredded my husband’s first edition of Great Expectations. He ripped open all the down pillows in the linen closet. We still don’t know how he opened the door. My husband says I have to choose: him or the dog.”
“Well, may I give you some advice?”
“Please.” I craned forward, desperate for some words of wisdom.
“Choose the dog.” Then she gave me the same look that Taylor and Marissa had given me when Mark and I had announced our engagement. The look that said, You’re a fluffy little bimbo with a bra size bigger than your IQ and I’d feel sorry for you if I didn’t hate you so much.
Well, maybe I had to take that from Taylor and Marissa, but I didn’t have to take it from Casey Keating. I put both hands on my hips and demanded, “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Her head snapped back in surprise.
“I mean it. I come in here looking for some friendly advice, and this is how you treat me? Nice customer service!”
“You didn’t come in for advice, you came in to dump your dog on me.”
“You’re desperate for any excuse to look down on me. Yes, okay, I’m new in town. And yes, I’m a little bit younger than my husband—”
“A little bit?” Casey muttered.
“Hey! Let me finish. If you really cared about animals, you would help me find solutions to my problems. But you don’t; you just want to feel superior and haze me because you think I’m the kind of girl you would have hated in high school.”
From the look on her face, I could tell I’d hit a nerve.
“You don’t know anything about me, and you don’t know anything about my marriage. So you just…you just shut up!”
She blinked. “Are you done?”
I nodded, gathering up the dog’s leash.
“Okay. First of all, I do care about animals.”
“Well, so do I,” I countered. “I love my new dog very much.”
“Whatever you say. Second, you’re right. I don’t know anything about your marriage.”
I pounded the counter. “Damn straight!”
“But when a guy asks you to decide between him and a pet, you’re almost always better off with the pet.”
I yanked on the leash as the dog inched closer to the treat display. “You’re a newlywed, right? Would you choose a dog over your husband?”
“My husband would never give me an ultimatum like that.” Her expression was suddenly unreadable. “I’m more of the ultimatum giver in our relationship.”
“But if he did,” I pressed. “If he said, ‘It’s me or the mutt that ate the sofa’? Who would you pick?”
She tucked a strand of her reddish-brown hair back behind her ear. “Ask me again on a different day.”
The bell on the door jangled as Erin Maye strolled in. “Hey! Look who’s here!” She crouched down and started loving on the dog. “Hey, buddy! How ya doing?”
“Not good,” Casey reported before I had a chance to say anything. “Her husband’s making her get rid of him.”
“Really?” Erin scrunched up her face. Her cheeks and nose were bright red from the cold. “I guess I could see that—Dr. Porter doesn’t strike me as much of an animal person.”
I nodded. “Well, if you know anyone who wants a hyper, hundred-pound puppy…”
“I’d take him, but my mother-in-law’s allergic.”
“But it’s not like your mother-in-law lives with you,” Casey said.
Erin arched one eyebrow.
“No.” Casey gasped. “What happened?”
Erin cleared her throat to indicate that these subjects should not be discussed in front of outsiders like me. “We’ll talk. Want to go grab dinner?”
Casey shook her head. “Can’t. Nick had to order a pizza last night.”
“So?”
“So I want to make him a real meal to make up for it tonight. We had this stupid argument…” She trailed off, staring at me.
“What?” I stared back. “You might as well go ahead and talk. So what if you had some little spat with your husband? At least he’s not making you get rid of your dog.”
Casey brightened. “True.” She turned back to Erin. “Well, we had this ridiculous fight because he replaced our shower faucet handle with a pipe wrench—don’t ask—and I ended up going to the movies by myself while he had to order a pizza. So I’m whipping up a culinary feast to patch things up. Rosemary potatoes, free-range chicken, the whole shebang.”
“You are so June Cleaver,” Erin teased. “You’re the only person I know who actually mills her own guest soaps.”
“I just like to keep a clean house,” Casey said.
“It’s a sickness, I tell you.” Erin laughed. “Drop by the office—I’ll slip you some meds. The good stuff.”
“Promises, promises.” Casey waved her off as the phone next to the register rang.
As Casey tucked the receiver between her shoulder and ear, Erin started patting the dog again. This time, she actually bothered to make eye contact with me. “I’ll ask around the office, see if anyone’s looking for a dog. What’s his name?”
“No name yet,” I admitted.
“What should we name you?” Erin asked the dog, flapping his ears. “What’s a good name for a big, black dog? Hmm. Voodoo? No, too scary. Enzo? No, too sophisticated.”
“What about Cash?” I surprised myself by speaking up. “Like Johnny Cash. Wasn’t he supposed to be the man in black?”
Erin looked up, surprised.
“Yes, I know who the man in black is. You don’t have to be so shocked. I have three years of college, believe it or not. I’m not an idiot.”
“I never said you were.”
“But you think it,” I challenged. “You and Casey both do. You think anyone who married a man twice her age and looks the way I look has to be a dumbass.”
Erin smirked. “Who ‘looks the way you look’? And what way is that, exactly?”
“
Like trophy wife material.” There was no point denying the truth.
For a second, I thought she’d go back to pretending I didn’t exist, but she threw back her head and laughed. “A trophy wife with a smart mouth.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not as ditzy as I look. That’s what my mom always says.”
“Nice mom!”
I sighed. “She means it as a compliment. I think.”
“She should have coffee with my mother-in-law. They’d have a lot to talk about.”
Our little meet-and-greet was interrupted as Casey’s voice got sharper and louder. “Nick, I said I was sorry about last night…and then I told you about…well, I wish you wouldn’t do that—I’ve already bought all the ingredients and defrosted the chicken.”
“Uh-oh,” Erin whispered. “He’s doing it again.”
“Who’s doing what?” I whispered back.
“Her husband. The man can’t commit to anything. Not law school, not an apartment lease, nothing. He goes through about five cell phone providers a year.”
“He managed to get married,” I pointed out. “’Til death do them part.”
Erin looked like she had a lot to say but wasn’t going to say it.
“…well, if that’s what you really want.” Casey glowered as she wrapped up her phone conversation with Mr. Commitment. “Do what you want. I’m not your warden…uh-huh…uh-huh…no, whatever. I’m not mad. Nope. Promise. I’m not mad. See you later. Kiss, kiss.”
She slammed down the receiver with a force that startled the dog. “Son of a bitch! I’m going to kill him!”
Erin winced. “Trouble on the western front?”
“He’s going to the Y to play basketball with his friends!” Casey could not have looked more distraught if her husband had just confessed to cheating on her with STD-riddled porn stars. “He knew I was planning a reconciliation dinner, and he blows me off to go shoot hoops with his buddies?”
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