The M.D. Meets His Match

by Marie Ferrarella

  For a second, as he watched a gaggle of geese cross the road as if it was solely their domain, Jimmy let his mind drift. If time permitted, he would have wanted to get to know April better. There were buttons there that he was itching to push just to see her reaction. The time they had spent together so far just told him that he’d barely scratched the surface. The prospect of getting together with her later today caused anticipation to hum through his body like a latent electrical current.

  He’d be willing to bet his last dime that she was really something when she made love with a man.

  Someone shouted a greeting to him. Momentarily roused, Jimmy looked up and waved before he’d actually focused on the man. It was one of the miners he’d met the second night in town. The man was right in front of the medical clinic and from where he was standing, it looked to Jimmy as if the man was propping up another man.

  The next minute, both had disappeared into the clinic.

  Maybe he’d stop in to pay a visit, Jimmy decided abruptly.

  The next minute he was crossing the wide, uneven street.

  He’d discovered that he genuinely liked the noble, somewhat harried lone doctor of Hades and surrounding parts thereof. Especially after Alison had filled him in on what Shayne Kerrigan faced in a typical day at the clinic. Accustomed to dealing with emergencies at a moment’s notice, Jimmy still marveled at how Shayne could oversee the entire town’s medical needs, from runny noses to embedded fish hooks to accidental gunshot wounds, with only Alison to rely on.

  Granted, Alison was on her way to becoming a nurse practitioner, but even after she got her degree that was still a long way off from having another doctor to turn to when the need arose. At the hospital where he worked, there was always someone for Jimmy to turn to, always another opinion to take into consideration, another physician to consult. Here, barring the use of the telephone and the occasional connection through the Internet—weather permitting—Shayne worked alone, relying on his experience, his insight and his own knowledge of medicine to get him through.

  In all honesty, Jimmy wasn’t sure how he would fare himself, pitted against such odds. On the one hand, it was a supreme challenge and there was something exhilarating about that. But on the other, it was something he didn’t know if he was equal to and he had to admit that he was grateful he wasn’t in a position that would test his mettle.

  The unusually dense press of bodies, even for the clinic, generated heat that slammed into him the instant Jimmy pushed open the door. He looked around, surprised at the number of people he saw. Every available mismatched seat was taken and there were several people sitting on the floor, several more standing and/or leaning against the wall. Many of them looked oblivious to their surroundings, staring off and into a world of their own.

  Though he’d only stopped here twice before, it seemed to Jimmy that there was an unusual number of children in the waiting room, some accompanied by mothers who looked more miserable than the children appeared to be.

  Nodding at a few faces that had become familiar, Jimmy made his way to the front of the office and the desk where Alison doubled as a receptionist. Shayne, she’d told him earlier, had lost another receptionist to the lure of the outer world and she was doing double duty until he found someone else willing to work long hours for not-that-much pay. He figured it would be a long time before the position was filled.

  Alison wasn’t there. About to ask someone where he could find her, Jimmy saw the door to the first tiny examining room open. His sister came out, looking more than a little frazzled as she hurried to her desk to grab the large appointment book.

  He nodded at her, but didn’t get a chance to say a word.

  “Mrs. Svenson?” Reading the first uncrossed-out name on the page, Alison looked around, scanning the packed waiting room for some indication that the woman was still there.

  “Here.”

  Jimmy turned to see an exhausted-looking blond woman of no more than twenty shuffle forward. There were deep, dark circles under her eyes, silent testimony to the battle in which she was currently and unsuccessfully engaged. As she passed him, Jimmy noticed the perspiration on her brow.

  “Room One, Mrs. Svenson.” Alison pointed to the room she’d just exited. “I’ll be right in.”

  “Hi, Alison,” Jimmy finally said as his sister pulled out her chair. “What’s going on?”

  Her shoulders slumping as she sat at the desk, Alison looked up at him. It occurred to Jimmy that he had never seen her looking quite this bedraggled before, except for perhaps the time she’d crammed for eighteen hours straight for her finals.

  “We’ve got a heavy outbreak of flu.” Alison gestured to the packed waiting room. “It’s like half the town has come down with it at once.”

  Movement outside the window caught his eye. Looking up, Jimmy saw several more people approach the clinic. It looked as if Alison and Shayne were going to be busy well into the night.

  “Need a hand?”

  The door behind him opened and Shayne walked out with a patient. Talking to the man, he’d still been able to hear Jimmy’s offer. “I could use two. And a functioning body in between. You don’t mind?”

  Shayne rallied beneath his mounting exhaustion. This was what he’d been hoping for all along, to have Alison’s brother join in and perhaps see the merits of remaining out here to doctor those who might otherwise do without.

  Jimmy didn’t hesitate. He knew that April wouldn’t be free until an hour from now and he had nothing planned other than a walk to kill the time. This way at least he could be useful. “What do you need?”

  For the first time since he’d walked into the clinic at seven-thirty this morning, Shayne smiled. “Pull up a patient and follow me.”

  “Mrs. Svenson’s in Room One,” Alison prompted.

  “Otherwise known as Broom Closet One,” Shayne commented under his breath to Jimmy as he showed him the way.

  It wasn’t an understatement, Jimmy thought as he took in the surroundings. With little more space than the curtained-off area around a gurney in a hospital’s emergency room, Room One, where a coughing and generally miserable-looking Mrs. Svenson sat waiting for medical attention, looked almost too small to him to even take a deep breath.

  Shayne placed a comforting hand over the woman’s. “Mrs. Svenson, this is Dr. Quintano. If you don’t mind, I’m a little swamped right now. He’s offered to take a look at you.”

  The woman turned watery eyes toward Shayne, then looked at the man standing next to him. “Just do something about the chills,” was all she said.

  “I’m going to do my very best, Mrs. Svenson,” Jimmy promised with a warmth that made the woman smile weakly in return.

  Shayne withdrew. It was going to be all right, he thought.

  April’s innate curiosity refused to allow her to philosophically shrug her shoulders when Jimmy didn’t appear in the post office doorway at one o’clock. He’d been turning up regularly at that time for the past four days, ready to play tourist, and she had to admit that she’d been glancing at the clock steadily for the past half hour in silent anticipation. She’d begun to look forward to the outings. To look forward to his company. Being with the man was exciting, there were no two ways about that. She’d stopped trying to tell herself that it wasn’t. Knowing that he’d be leaving soon harnessed any alarms that might have already gone off by now.

  She’d promised to take him to the Inuit village today and he’d told her that he was looking forward to it. He’d sounded so sincere about it, she’d believed him. But even if he’d decided not to go, he wouldn’t have just not shown up without telling her.

  How do you know? she demanded silently, opening up the last mail pouch and dumping the envelopes onto the table to be sorted. He’s a man, isn’t he? Why should he be any different from the rest? Men promise things and forget the next minute that they ever said a word.

  As far as she was concerned, Max was the only one she could put money on as a different caste of t
he “usual men” mold. Only Max could be counted on to come through in a pinch—no matter what.

  Jimmy had decided to stand her up.

  April looked at the clock again. One-eighteen. The restlessness roaming through her had grown to almost unmanageable proportions.

  Where the hell is he?

  Ursula eyed her from her desk where she sat slowly sorting the last batch of in-coming mail. “Why don’t you ask Alison if something’s happened to him?”

  April didn’t even look up, trying hard to appear preoccupied with her work. “‘Him’?”

  Ursula laughed. “You never could play innocent, April. I always knew when you were lying. You know perfectly well I’m talking about Dr. Jimmy.”

  The familiar title made him seem as if he were one of them, April thought. Jimmy was no more one of them than she was.

  “Go on, ask her.”

  Looking up this time, April snorted. “I don’t care where he is.”

  Ursula clucked. “Like I said, I always knew.” She gave her granddaughter a knowing look. “Still do.”

  “All right.” April gave in. “Just to appease you.”

  “Appease yourself while you’re at it,” Ursula chuckled before turning her attention to what was written on the back of a postcard Irene Masterson’s son had sent from Hawaii.

  “You’re not supposed to read the postcards, Gran,” she told her as she took her jacket off the hook and pushed her arms through the sleeves.

  “Not reading,” Ursula replied. “Just making sure of the address.”

  April smiled to herself. As if Irene hadn’t lived in the same place since forever.

  The usual bright spring sun was absent, hiding itself behind a miniwall of clouds that threw a pall on the day.

  Maybe Jimmy had decided the weather wasn’t right for sight-seeing.

  He still would have called, she thought.

  Rounding the corner, she hurried down the block to the clinic, trying to look as if she wasn’t.

  The moment she opened the door, she debated turning back. It seemed silly to bother Alison about the whereabouts of her brother when the nurse so obviously had her hands full. The clinic looked as if it was filled to capacity.

  But just as April was about to turn around and leave, Alison looked up. “Are you looking for Jimmy?”

  So much for discretion, April thought, then nearly laughed at herself. As if anything happened in this town without everyone else knowing about it.

  “Just wondering where he was,” she said casually. “We were supposed to meet at one and he didn’t show up.” Did that sound as if she cared? she wondered. She didn’t want it to.

  “He’s inside.” Alison nodded toward the door on her left. “You might not want to hang around here too long—” A thought struck her. “Unless you’re starting to feel sick, too?”

  April shook her head. That would have been a novelty for her. She’d never been sick, not a single day that she could remember. Not a cold, not a bellyache, nothing. Healthiest child in Hades, her grandmother loved to brag. April hadn’t seen it as much of an accomplishment. It wasn’t as if she had any say in the matter. But the people in these parts, she’d felt, were easily entertained and anything the least bit out of the ordinary was news to be digested and rehashed. Over and over again.

  These people desperately needed cable TV, she thought.

  “No, I’m not sick,” she assured Alison. “But I’ll just slip out. You might tell Jimmy I was here when you get the chance.” Not that it mattered, she added silently, about to make her getaway.

  The door directly to Alison’s left opened and Jimmy, following a barrel-chested miner twice his size who looked the epitome of misery, walked out.

  “And don’t forget to drink at least eight glasses of water a day,” Jimmy was saying.

  The miner looked even more miserable. “Water, huh? Ain’t had water since I was a kid.” A hopeful look entered the watery green eyes. “You sure it can’t be whiskey, now?”

  Jimmy laughed at the feeble attempt. “Not unless you want to be really dehydrated.” The miner looked at him blankly in response. Jimmy smiled. Simplicity was obviously in order here. “No whiskey.”

  The man nodded a round, clean-shaven head and trudged out, resigned to his fate.

  Turning, Jimmy’s eyes met April’s. He immediately looked at his watch, then realized he’d taken it off in the other room when the band had come loose. “Oh, God, April. What time is it?”

  At least he looked contrite. And he’d stood her up for a very good reason. “It’s after one, but I can see you’re busy—”

  She had no idea where the disappointment came from, only that she didn’t like the feel of it as it all but smothered her. Backing away, her retreat was abruptly halted as the door behind her swung open and a young, dark-haired man of about eighteen hurried in as if being pursued.

  “Where’s Doc Shayne?” he asked Alison, looking frantically around the room.

  Afraid of what this new problem was about, Alison rounded her desk to approach the young Inuit. She couldn’t recall ever seeing him without a huge grin on his face. “What’s wrong, Jack?”

  “It’s the village. Dr. Shayne’s got to come out. Almost everyone’s sick. I’m practically the only one left standing on his feet. My mother said I had to bring him before my grandfather—” Jack’s voice broke and he couldn’t make himself finish the sentence.

  Drawn by the commotion in the front office, Shayne came out of the second examining room. One look at the doctor’s face told April that he had been at this all day and was on the verge of near collapse himself. How could he stand it? she wondered. She’d heard that his first wife had had her father set him up as a partner within his own prestigious medical practice on Park Avenue in New York. Shayne had had money, time, respect and he’d turned his back on all of it to return here to practice medicine. Why? It didn’t make sense to her.

  “The village?” Shayne echoed. The lines around his mouth deepened. “Damn, this thing is spreading fast.” He looked at his nurse. “Alison, I want you to call Max and tell him to close the school. Send the kids home and tell them to stay there. I want to try to put a lid on this as fast as possible—although it’s probably like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.”

  Hands on his hips, Shayne looked around the waiting room. For each patient he treated, it seemed as if two more appeared. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep up at this rate. It would have been worse if Jimmy hadn’t offered his services.

  Looking at the waiting room, he tried to gauge how much longer it would take him to make a dent in the crowd. “Jack, tell your mother I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “But my grandfather needs you now.”

  Shayne sighed, frustrated. No one knew just how old Jack’s grandfather was, but it was the very young and the very old who were most at risk from this strain of influenza.

  “I’ll go,” Jimmy volunteered. “But I need someone to show me the way.”

  “Jack’ll take you,” Shayne told him.

  April bit her lower lip. Jimmy was going to need help. Well, if he could be noble, she supposed she could, too. “I’ll come.”

  The relief and gratitude in Shayne’s eyes were unmistakable when he looked at her.

  “Are you sure? This is a highly contagious strain,” he warned.

  “I’ll have a doctor with me. What can go wrong? Besides, he’s going to need an extra pair of hands and I can take instruction—when necessary,” she added just in case Jimmy got the wrong idea.

  “All right, then, thank you. Both of you. Now let me get you some supplies.” Shayne was already leading them back into the storage area at the rear of the single-story building just beyond the small operating room. “Thank God, I made a pickup at Anchorage on Monday.” He didn’t want to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t.

  Borrowing the all-terrain vehicle Luc had bought for Alison to celebrate their six-month anniversary, J
immy let April drive since she was more familiar with the area. They followed Jack’s weather-beaten, secondhand Jeep out of town.

  Jack drove as if there were a squadron of devils after him. Jimmy thought of his own wild youth and the mishap he’d had with Kevin’s first cab. After giving him a thorough dressing down about how he might have been killed, Kevin had made the best of it, never saying a word about the damage to the cab itself, or what that had cost him. That was when Jimmy had finally made up his mind to straighten up and fly right.

  “Where’s a kid like that get a Jeep?”

  She thought of what her grandmother had told her. “Doing odd jobs any chance he gets and hanging around Shayne, waiting for him to fly to Anchorage so that he can roam around the car dealerships. According to Gran, Jack knows how to hustle, but he’s a decent kid, really.”

  Kid. There couldn’t have been that many years between them, Jimmy thought with a smile. “You know, for someone who’s supposedly been out of touch with Hades, you seem to know an awful lot of small details about the people who live here.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was just making a comment, or if there was something more behind the observation. Maneuvering the car through a narrow pass, she shrugged. “Gran sees fit to keep me informed whether I want her to or not. She thinks if she tells me things it’ll maintain my ties to this place. She doesn’t realize that my only ties to Alaska are her, Max and June.”

  They’d stopped at June’s place just before leaving town. April had asked her sister to look in on Gran later in the day, in case they were late returning from the village. June had told her not to worry and sent her on her way with a large box of canned goods in case the people in the village were running low on supplies and too weak to get any.

  Jimmy smiled, wondering if April realized just how hard she was protesting. “I don’t think they’re your only ties.”

  April shrugged, pretending to watch the road ahead intently. “If you’re referring to my initial roots, those were transplanted long ago.”