Secrets of Forever

by Marie Ferrarella

  And then he was finally on the ground.

  No one was more relieved than Ellie was, although she kept that to herself.

  “Okay,” she said breezily, climbing back up into the plane and retrieving the doctor’s suitcase for him. Moving swiftly back out, she put it next to him on the ground. “The rest is easy now.”

  “Oh?” Neil didn’t know whether he should brace himself again or believe her and breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Yes. I’m going to drive you into town now to see Dr. Dan.”

  Ellie led the way over to where she had parked her Jeep this morning. It was still in the field, waiting for her, the way she knew that it would be. She had anticipated having to drive the doctor into town and to the medical clinic once she had flown him in.

  Neil examined the vehicle. It was clean, looked as if it had not only some miles on it but some years, as well.

  He asked her the same question he had earlier, waiting for an honest answer. “Do you drive as well as you fly?”

  Ellie inclined her head. “Almost as well,” she answered, tongue in cheek.

  “Should I be praying?”

  “Only if you want to,” Ellie answered glibly. And then she couldn’t help herself. She laughed as she threw his suitcase into the back and then climbed in on the driver’s side. “I thought all of you New Yorkers were supposed to be fearless.”

  “We are, but there is a definite difference between fearless and foolhardy. I’m trying to decide which you represent.” Neil paused, his eyes washing over her face and accessing what he saw. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  His answer made her grin, not to mention created a tingle that fanned out into every part of her. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “I’m not sure if I meant it that way,” he admitted, “but okay. Whatever works for you.”

  Getting into the Jeep, he buckled up and then looked at his driver. He realized that she was observing him and there was a wide, amused smile on her lips.

  “What?” he asked, braced for a flippant answer.

  “I think this is going to be a really interesting adventure for you during the next few days,” Ellie told him.

  His eyes met hers and, for the first time since it had happened, he was really glad that he and Judith had broken up. “I think it already is,” he agreed.

  “Glad to hear it,” Ellie told him, starting up the Jeep. “Okay, let’s go show Dr. Dan that I brought you in safe and sound.”

  “Well, at least you brought me in,” Neil replied, not altogether certain yet about the “safe and sound” part of her statement.

  Hearing him, Ellie laughed, and he found himself really liking the sound of her laughter. Unbidden, something warm stirred within him.

  * * *

  Heads turned, the way they always did, when the medical clinic’s front door opened. With little to do but read outdated magazines, the patients sitting in the waiting room eagerly looked upon any diversion as a welcome distraction from the tediousness of watching for the minute hand move slowly around the face of the clock.

  So whenever anyone new entered into the clinic, all eyes automatically turned toward the newcomer or newcomers.

  Ellie Montenegro was a familiar sight in Forever, but the tall blond man walking next to her was definitely not. Several of the female patients in the room sat a little straighter. A few consciously pulled in their stomachs and others just stared unabashedly, memorizing the handsome stranger’s every feature—and could, at the very least, recreate his face on paper if anyone were to ask.

  Unless Ellie missed her guess, a bevy of questions seemed to be materializing in their heads.

  “If you’ll just sign in, please,” Debi said, addressing the newcomer next to Ellie with a warm, inviting smile.

  “Oh, he’s not a patient, Debi,” Ellie told the nurse before Neil even got the chance. “Dr. Dan is waiting to see him. He’s the cardiac specialist the doctor sent me to pick up from the Houston airport.”

  The moment Ellie told her that, Debi was instantly on her feet.

  “Wait right here,” Debi told the duo as she quickly went to the back of the clinic.

  Dan was in exam room 2 and she knocked on the door twice in quick succession. “Dr. Dan, Ellie is here and she brought that package you’ve been waiting for.”

  The door opened almost immediately. “Where is he?” Dan asked, looking over Debi’s shoulder as if half expecting his friend to be standing right there. It had been a long time since they had seen one another and, along with wanting Neil to exam Miss Joan, he was also eager to see the man.

  “He’s in the waiting room right now, along with Ellie,” Debi replied.

  Dan nodded, pleased that his friend had arrived safely. “Tell him to take a seat and I’ll be right out to get him as soon as I finish examining Miss Albright,” he told his nurse.

  Nodding, Debi promised, “I’ll let him know.” Making her way back to her desk in the waiting area, she approached the specialist as well as Ellie, who was still waiting there with the doctor. “Dr. Dan said for you to take a seat. He’ll be right out to see you as soon as he finishes examining Miss Albright,” she told Dr. Dan’s friend. “You can sit right over here,” she prompted, pointing out two recently vacated seats. “It won’t take long. He was just finishing up.”

  “Thank you,” Neil said.

  He made his way over to the seats and proceeded to make himself comfortable, trying not to notice that everyone seemed to be staring at him.

  At least he was safely on the ground, he thought, trying to take solace in that.

  Chapter Six

  “Well,” Ellie said as she rose even though she had just taken her seat, “I’ve got to be getting back to the ranch.” She was happy to see that Neil’s color had completely returned and he no longer appeared to be the worse for his experience.

  Neil rose to his feet, as well. “You have a ranch?” he asked. He assumed that her claim to fame was flying freight, and occasionally people, in that little plane of hers—which he had found unusual enough. Apparently, people in Western towns wore a great many hats, Neil thought.

  “My grandfather owns the ranch. My sister, Addie, and I live on it and do what we can to help him out,” Ellie explained, supplying a thimbleful of background information. She paused, her hand on the doorknob. “If you should need anything else, Doc, Dr. Dan knows where to find me.”

  “And if he’s not available at the time, everyone else in town knows where to find her, too,” Eva Whitman volunteered.

  Several of the patients in the waiting room nodded their heads, assuring the specialist of that piece of information.

  “Good to know,” Neil replied cryptically. The cardiac surgeon had to admit that he wasn’t exactly accustomed to living in an area where everyone’s business was thought of as community property. He politely kept that to himself and nodded his head. Turning to the departing pilot, he said to Ellie, “Thanks again for the ride.”

  Ellie couldn’t help but laugh in response. When the doctor raised a quizzical eyebrow, questioning her reaction, she told him, “You know you don’t really mean that, but you’re welcome.”

  He saw dimples in her cheeks and was totally charmed by them, but he had no idea how to respond to her statement—because she was right. The plane ride had come perilously close to making him recycle his last meal, but at the same time, the woman had been under no obligation to make the trip to Houston to pick him up.

  Fortunately for him, Neil didn’t have to say anything in response because, at that moment, Dan entered the waiting area.

  “C’mon in, Neil,” he said to his friend.

  “Are you expanding your practice again, Dr. Dan?” Silas McCormick asked, raising his voice to be heard above the ongoing din. “It’s been a while since you brought in anyone new, like that lady doctor who came here
.”

  Joyce Vance, a widow for the last three years, was quick to attempt to convince the new doctor to put down his roots in Forever. “This is a really great, up-and-coming place to move to,” she told Neil. “Am I right?” the woman asked, looking at her closet seatmate as if the answer was a foregone conclusion.

  Dan saw the not-so-subtle plea for help written on his friend’s face and came to his rescue. “Settle down, folks. Don’t scare the man away before he even opens up his suitcase. Dr. Eastwood’s only here to examine Miss Joan.”

  At the mention of Forever’s venerable, beloved-if-cranky matriarch, the people in the waiting room became properly respectful.

  “About time someone finally gave that woman a much needed examination. She can’t expect to just keep going the way she’s been going and pressing her luck.” Jonah Timberlane turned toward one of the women in the room. “I was there when she collapsed, you know,” he said importantly.

  “Almost collapsed,” Vic Allen corrected, clearing his throat. “Miss Joan never hit the ground,” the retired miner pointed out.

  This had all the makings of the breakout of a prolonged argument. “Come into my office,” Dan urged his friend, gesturing toward the rear of the clinic. “It’s right this way.”

  “Nice meeting you, Dr. Eastwood,” one of the women called out, raising her voice. “Hope you decide to stay here.”

  Pretending not to hear, Neil didn’t answer. But the moment he and Dan left the reception area, he looked at the man ultimately responsible for convincing him to come here for a consultation.

  “Are they always like that?” he asked Dan a little uneasily.

  “No, they’re usually a lot more vocal and in-your-business,” he told Neil seriously.

  Dan managed to keep a straight face for another thirty seconds then laughed. “Welcome to Forever,” he told his friend, “where everyone doesn’t just know your name, they know absolutely everything about you, your family and about your second cousin, twice removed. Why don’t you take a seat?” Dan gestured to the chair facing his desk.

  Neil sank down onto the chair, shaking his head. “Wow, talk about being nosy.”

  “These people aren’t nosy,” Dan told the heart surgeon. “They care. There is a difference.”

  Neil didn’t appear to be all that convinced. “If you say so.”

  “I do,” Dan insisted. He had learned that fact over the years. “That’s why they were all so concerned about getting Miss Joan to see a specialist—and why Ellie flew out to fetch you and wouldn’t take any money for doing it—outside of being reimbursed for the fuel.”

  “‘Fetch’ me?” Neil repeated, marveling at his friend’s wording. “Wow, you really have changed,” he couldn’t help observing and then pointing out, “That wouldn’t have fit into your vocabulary ten years ago.”

  “A lot of things aren’t what they used to be any more,” Dan told the other doctor. “And I have to say that I kind of like the change.”

  “Seriously?” Neil asked, amazed.

  “Seriously,” Dan assured him. He didn’t want to seem as if he was being Spartan. “Oh, I might occasionally miss having three hundred channels to choose from, but to be very honest, what with my really heavy patient load, my beautiful wife and my very active kids, I don’t really even have the time to go flipping through all those channels any more.”

  “How is your wife?” Neil asked.

  “Getting more and more beautiful every day,” Dan told his friend happily. In his opinion, she had really blossomed in the years they had been together. “You can see for yourself tonight.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Neil told him. “And by the way, when do I finally get to meet this Miss Joan of yours?”

  “Oh, she’s not my Miss Joan,” Dan assured Neil. “She’s everyone’s Miss Joan and, at the same time, she’s her own person.”

  Neil laughed softly under his breath. “Sounds like she’s quite a character.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Dan grinned with appreciation. “That’s the word to describe her, all right,” he agreed. Just then, there was a quick knock on his door. “Come in,” he invited.

  His other nurse opened the door and partially peered into the office. There was an apologetic look on the young woman’s face.

  “Dr. Dan, Ms. Whitman is getting a little rambunctious out there.”

  “Ms. Whitman?” Neil echoed. “Is that the white-haired woman I just met out in your office?”

  Dan stood. It was time to get back to his patients. “One and the same,” he assured his friend.

  “‘Rambunctious,’ huh?” he repeated, amused. “Now that I’d really like to see,” Neil admitted. The woman had looked extremely subdued. Apparently, Ms. Whitman was not.

  Dan laughed. “Stick around long enough and I can practically guarantee it,” he promised his friend as a thought occurred to him and he turned to his nurse. “Trudy, could you call my wife and have her come by so that Neil is able to get settled into the house while he’s staying here?”

  “Sure thing, Doctor,” his nurse replied. “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Dan, I don’t need an escort,” Neil protested. “Just tell me how to get there and I’ll be out of your hair.”

  But Dan just shook his head. He remembered how disorienting everything out here had been for him at first. “You come from the city where half the streets are sequentially numbered. You don’t appreciate that until that’s not the case. Trust me, it’ll be better if I have someone show you the way.”

  “Dr. Dan, why don’t I ask Ellie to take your friend over to your house?” the nurse suggested.

  “Ellie?” Dan questioned. He thought she’d left. “Is she still here?”

  “Not ‘still,’” the nurse corrected. “She came back, but she just left,” Trudy told him. “It seems she forgot to pick up a prescription for her grandfather. I can still catch her for you if you want.”

  Dan nodded. That seemed to be the best way to proceed. “Please,” he urged his nurse. “If you don’t mind?”

  “That’s really not necessary, Dan.” Neil was attempting to talk his friend out of doing this.

  But Dan was not about to be talked out of it. “Yes,” he insisted, “it is.” Turning, he looked at his nurse. “Trudy?”

  “I’m on it,” the woman affirmed, hurrying out the door.

  For his part, Neil looked far from happy about this turn of events as he walked out into the reception area.

  By the time he had reached it, the woman who had taught him the true concept of “flying by the seat of her pants” had just reentered the clinic. Their eyes met and Ellie grinned at him.

  “You know, Doc, we’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she quipped.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Neil told her without the least bit of a hint of a smile to underscore his words.

  “Ellie, Dr. Dan said he hoped you wouldn’t mind doing him this one more favor...” Trudy began.

  Ellie shook her head. “Not a bit,” she assured the nurse.

  Neil hated imposing and this felt like a huge imposition. “I thought you said that you had to get back to your grandfather,” he reminded Ellie as they walked out the front door.

  “Oh, I do,” she replied. “But there’s no emergency—and Pop will be happy to know that I’m late because of a good cause.”

  In an odd sort of way, her words rang a familiar bell for Neil. “My father would have never thought that being late for any reason was because of a good cause,” Neil told her, thinking back to his childhood. His father had been a parent who had ruled with an iron fist—and refused to put up with anything.

  “That’s probably because your father didn’t grow up in Forever,” Ellie told him, leading the way back to her Jeep. “Out here, everyone multitasks.”

  There seemed to be something wrong with th
at, Neil couldn’t help thinking. “Don’t you people wind up burning out early?”

  She rolled over his question in her mind. “Another way to look at it is that multitasking invigorates us and helps to inspire us,” she told him. She pointed to a far corner of the clinic’s parking area. “My Jeep’s right there.”

  “I remember,” he told her, his tone slightly dismissive because he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was talking down to him.

  “I just meant that I hadn’t had a chance to move the Jeep yet. I remembered about my grandfather’s prescription just when I got to the Jeep and did an about-face to go get it.”

  Neil realized that the woman was apologizing, when he was the one who owed her an apology.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you like that,” he told her. “I suppose that I’m being a little testy right now.”

  Ellie didn’t want him dwelling on the apology. To her, it was just a waste of energy. “You’re entitled,” the pilot told him. “This is all kind of new to you.”

  “It’s not that new,” he insisted. It’s not as if he had never apologized for anything before. And then, thinking about his mindset back in New York, he lowered his defenses just a little. “I thought I wanted something new and different, but I’m beginning to realize that I’m not all that crazy about change, after all,” he confessed.

  Ellie understood perfectly. “Don’t feel bad about it. Most people aren’t,” she told him. “At least, not to begin with. Change means having to give up the familiar, to give up something you’re comfortable with. When that happens, there’s a part of you that feels as if maybe you’re making a mistake—until you find, to your surprise, that you like the change, after all.”

  That sounded pretty deep, he couldn’t help thinking—and totally out of character for this part of the country. “What makes you such an expert on change?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m not,” she told him. “I’m just speculating. I like to daydream that I’m going to all these exotic places, but I never have. Maybe that’s the real reason why I like flying so much. It gives me the opportunity to pretend I’m going to all these different places but I actually never really have to take off anywhere.” She flashed a smile at the doctor as she began to drive over to the Davenport house. “Does that make any sense to you?”