Saving Dr. Ryan

by Karen Templeton

  Maddie marched up to the desk, asked how to get to Ned’s room and was on her way before she could think about that, either. Dr. Logan had already told her that Ned would have to be in rehab for his physical therapy for a good four weeks, and that the old man had apparently made it his personal mission to try everybody’s patience in the hospital. Lord, but her heart was pounding so loudly, her teeth were rattling. Not because she was afraid of dealing with a crotchety old man—most people, she’d discovered, just used ill temper as an excuse to cover up their fears, and once you knew that, they weren’t nearly so scary anymore—but because she knew this meeting was likely to be some kind of turning point. Once in the elevator, she practiced her deep breathing, like she was supposed to have used when she gave birth but never seemed to remember until it was too late. It did seem to help, some, because although her heart was still beating pretty loudly, at least her teeth had stopped clacking together.

  The elevator dinged at Ned’s floor; Maddie waited impatiently the few seconds it took for the doors to shoosh open, then stepped out into the quiet hallway.

  This had to work. Had to. Because if she couldn’t stay with Ned, what was she was going to do or where she was going to go once she left Dr. Logan’s?

  She was so engrossed in her worrying that she passed right by Ned’s room. Muttering to herself, she backed up, only to realize she’d worked herself up into such a state, her teeth were rattling again. So she took a moment—okay, several moments—to pray for strength, then opened the door to Ned’s room.

  “Uncle Ned?”

  Starting at the soft voice, he carefully twisted in the chair they made him sit up in. Had to sit up, they insisted, too much of a risk for pneumonia if he laid down all the time. Hogwash. Wasn’t his lungs that was the problem, it was his hip. Which now had a pin in it, holding it together like he was some old patched up babydoll. Except dolls couldn’t feel any pain.

  “Uncle Ned?” the gal said again, taking another step into the room. “It’s Maddie. Maddie Kincaid. Jimmy’s wife?”

  Lord, but she looked scared half to death, those big gray eyes of hers taking up half of her skinny little face. Pretty enough little thing, he supposed, if you liked ’em scrawny.

  Figured she’d come right in the middle of his favorite program.

  “Well, come on in, gal, and sit down,” Ned barked at her. Only fun he got out of life these days was making people jump. Not that many of ’em did around here, but it never hurt to try. “But you can only talk when the commercials is on.”

  “Oh. All right.” She crossed to the other chair in the room—they’d taken Ned’s roommate away for his morning session in the torture chamber, as Ned liked to call it—and sat on its edge, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Ned kept one eye and both ears—nothing wrong with those, either—on his show, the other eye on her. Just had a baby, Doc Ryan had said. And Jimmy was gone, too. Doc hadn’t gone into many details, out of deference to Ned’s being kin to Jimmy, was his guess, but Ned got the feeling that Jimmy’s death hadn’t been quite as “accidental” as Doc was making out.

  Doc had also warned him that the gal wasn’t here just for a visit, that she’d come to Haven because Ned was her only living relative.

  Imagine that.

  Still, what could he possibly do for her? He barely had a pot to pee in himself. And he was a pain in the butt to be around. Just ask anybody.

  When a commercial for some toilet bowl cleaner came on, Ned tore his attention away from the TV, saw the gal had brightened up some.

  “How’re you feeling?” she asked.

  “Lousy,” Ned answered. “Take my advice, gal—don’t grow old. And for God’s sake, don’t break anything if you do. Now I know you didn’t come all the way here to make chitchat, so just come to the point. Whaddya want from me?”

  She looked a little taken aback, but only for a second. “Well, okay, the fact of the matter is…I need someplace to stay, me and the kids. And since we’re kin, I was hoping maybe I could stay at your place. Just until I get on my feet,” she added quickly. “Soon as I can work, I can probably rent a place of my own, but that won’t be for another four weeks yet, and you’ll be here for a while, anyway. And if you like, I could even stay around to help you after you come home. So this could work out really well for both of us, couldn’t it?”

  Heavens to Betsy. Now he remembered why he’d never had much use for women. They could talk a man to death.

  The commercial over, he turned back to the TV. From a few feet away, he heard an exasperated huff. Women did that a lot, too, as he recalled.

  But he’d no sooner had this thought when she reached over, big as you please, and grabbed the remote from his hand, shutting off the TV.

  “Hey—!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and he saw tears glittering in her eyes. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you obviously do, and I don’t care if you have lived alone all your life, this is an emergency and it took a lot for me to come here ask this of you. Now, if you don’t want me to stay with you, well, that’s your choice, it’s your house after all, but the least you could do is put me out of my misery now instead of making me wait another—” she glanced up at the clock “—twelve minutes.”

  The silence when she was finally through—though a blessed relief—rang in his ears just the same. Ned tried to lean forward, but his hip let him hear about it, boy, good and loud, so he stayed put. They’d come and make him move soon enough. “What I don’t get is, why you’d want to live with me. I’m not a nice man, Maddie. Don’t have much use for people. Even less for little kids. We don’t even know each other, for pity’s sake—”

  “I know all that,” she said. “Well, not the part about you not having any use for people, but…” She sucked in a breath, let it out in a rush. “But I’m desperate. I don’t have any other place to go—”

  “You’re already staying with Doc, though, right?”

  “Because I had the baby in his house, he feels responsible. But I can’t stay there forever. Please, Uncle Ned…”

  “No.”

  He saw what little color she had drain right out of her face. “But—”

  “I said no, gal. My place is mine. Got it arranged just the way I like it. Don’t need no woman coming in, rearrangin’ it to suit her, don’t need kids gettin’ into my things—”

  “I wouldn’t let them do that.”

  He turned back to the TV, before the hurt in those big gray eyes got to him. “This discussion is over. Now if you don’t mind, would you please turn the TV back on before you leave?”

  She stood, tossing the remote onto the bed where she knew he couldn’t reach it. “Get it yourself, you horrible old man.”

  Then she stormed from the room, that little chin of hers stuck out clear to Texas. Only, once she was gone, Ned didn’t feel all that satisfied about the way things had turned out.

  After Ryan finished checking up on a couple of patients, he found Maddie sitting stiffly in the Rehab waiting room, her arms crossed so tightly over her midsection he wondered how she was breathing. Judging from the expression on her face, things had gone about the way he’d feared they would.

  Which meant they were back at square one.

  She glanced at him, said, “Can we go now?” and sprang up, taking off down the hall. Ryan had been about to check on Ned, but figured there wasn’t much use, anyway, seeing as the old cuss was doing as well as could be expected. So he followed in the wake of Maddie’s brittle silence, weighing his options.

  Wasn’t until they got all the way back to the truck that she finally let loose.

  “I’ve never in my life met anybody as cold and mean as that old man! He wouldn’t even discuss it! Just said ‘no’ without even thinking it over! Some dumb TV show was more important than what happened to his own kin!”

  She whapped her palm but good on the truck’s front bumper, hard enough that Ryan feared for the fragile bones in her small hand. Not to mention the bumper. Ryan grabbed her
wrist before she could get in a second blow, jerking her away from the truck with enough force to spin her around so they were face to face. Her eyes got all big, for a split-second, before she launched herself against his chest, sobbing her heart out.

  Well, what else could he do but wrap his arms around her and tuck her head underneath his chin, letting her know she was safe? For the moment, at least. Of course, she only sobbed harder, all that pride and stubbornness just melting away, right in his arms.

  Unfortunately he melted right back. Oh, he tried not to, but it was a lost cause and he knew it. His heart just ached all to hell for this scrappy little thing who had so much on her narrow shoulders right now. And even though he’d known all along what Ned’s reaction was likely to be, it still chapped his hide that the old man could be so deliberately cruel that he couldn’t even try to help his niece—even if only by marriage—find a solution to her dilemma.

  So he let her cling to him, if that’s what she needed right now. And if his hand found its way to that soft, sweet-smelling hair, cradling her head against him where she could likely hear his heart thumping inside his chest, she’d understand he was just comforting her, right?

  It had been a long time since he’d held a woman in his arms.

  A long time without a little softness in his life.

  After a minute or two, the storm passed, so he could finally peel her off of him without feeling bad about it, get some space between them before he started thinking about things he didn’t need to be thinking about.

  But once he had her at arm’s length, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, while he stood there, rubbing her frail shoulders while she blew her nose on a tissue and apologized for getting his jacket wet and hiccuped once or twice, he got his bearings again. She was his patient, after all. If his shoulder had been the only one to cry on in the immediate vicinity, that couldn’t be helped.

  Nothing more to it than that.

  Then she let out this shaky, rattly sigh, and it hit him how much he’d grown to care about Maddie Kincaid, just in a few days. About her, and her kids. About what happened to them. Maybe he couldn’t take them on as a permanent responsibility—nor would she want him to, he didn’t imagine—but he’d do what he could for this gal and her babies, just because…well, because apparently that’s the lot that had fallen to him.

  He guessed he’d figure out the “whys” at some point down the road.

  “Feel better?” he asked, unable to stop himself from brushing a piece of hair out of her eyes.

  She nodded, sighed…and set her mouth in that way that Ryan had already learned meant trouble. Her eyes might have been all red and puffy, but he could practically hear all those cogs and gears whirring away in her head.

  “You ready to go back?”

  A breeze toyed with her hair. Like a little kid, she swiped at first one cheek, then the other, with the back of her hand. “Guess so. Don’t want to keep you from whatever you have to do.”

  Ryan angled his head at her, one hand planted on the truck’s roof. “What you don’t seem to realize is that helping you figure all this out is part of what I have to do. So you’re not keeping me from anything, okay?”

  A second passed before she nodded. “Okay.”

  Then a thought struck him. “I’ve got some housecalls to make. Wanna come along? Might take your mind off things for a bit.”

  She appeared to think on this a minute, then said, “Long as we make it back within two hours, so I can feed Amy Rose.”

  “We probably could, but didn’t you leave a bottle with Ivy?”

  “Well, that would take care of Amy Rose’s problem,” she said with a smirk, “but it sure wouldn’t do anything for me.”

  Naturally Ryan’s gaze shot right to Maddie’s chest.

  Oh, Lord.

  He opened the truck door on Maddie’s side, gestured for her to get in. “We’ll be back in plenty of time,” he muttered.

  They’d made two stops before this one, the first time to check up on a four-year-old named Howie who’d been through a bad bout of ear infections, the second to decide whether or not Todd Andrews, the boy whose mother had called Dr. Logan away that first night, was really ready to go back to school yet. Both kids had been given clean bills of health, much to their mothers’ relief, and now Maddie and the doctor were pulling up next to a single-wide trailer nestled in a grove of evergreens and maples about a quarter mile off the main road.

  “Who lives out here?” Maddie asked when Dr. Logan cut the engine. In the resulting silence, you could hear the wind teasing the reddening leaves.

  “Mildred Rafferty. Seventy-four. Widowed nearly twenty-five years ago.” The doctor linked his hands on top of the steering wheel, leaning forward a little to contemplate the dingy white trailer, the dusty blue trim a mite dustier than it probably should be. There’d been a fire going in one of the other houses; his jacket smelled like wood smoke.

  She could still feel the sensation of the worn denim against her cheek when he’d wrapped his arms around her, back in the parking lot, the muted thumping of his heartbeat in her ear. The way he held her, not all awkward the way most men do when they find a hysterical woman in their arms and don’t know what to do with them, but like he really cared.

  Foolishness, she told herself. Plain, good-for-nothin’ foolishness.

  “Her arthritis acts up now and again,” the doctor was saying, “making it hard for her to do much of anything. She’s got one daughter, who’s stuck in Phoenix because of her husband’s job, and it drives poor Justine nuts that her mother won’t either go into a retirement home, or at least move back into town where people could look after her more.”

  “Why won’t she move?”

  The doctor smiled just enough to crinkle the corners of his eyes. “Thirty years ago, Mildred and her husband, J.T., bought this land, intending to build on it. The mobile home was only supposed to have been temporary. Except J.T. had a heart attack and died while he was framing the house. He wasn’t even fifty yet.” He nodded straight ahead. “You can see what’s left of the half-finished house through the trees. Would’ve been a nice one, too,” he said, almost wistfully. “Mildred has refused to sell, or even leave, insisting this is the only way she has of still feeling close to her husband. In fact, I’ve come out here on more than one occasion to find her out by the unfinished house, talking to J.T. as if he was standing right there in front her.”

  Maddie thought on this a second, then said, “Maybe he was.”

  She felt the doctor’s gaze on the side of her face for a long moment. Then he said, “Well, I suppose we best be getting a move on.”

  Her white hair cut almost as short as a man’s, her tiny body nearly lost in layers of sweatshirts and sweaters over droopy, brown polyester pants, Mildred Rafferty answered her door with a big smile for the doctor, and almost as big a one for Maddie, who Dr. Logan introduced to her. Behind her, either dozing or milling about, were at least four cats. Which probably accounted for the pungent, room-freshener-trying-to-mask-the-cat-pan aroma. Wasn’t too bad, though. Lord knows, Maddie had smelled worse in her life.

  “C’n I get you somethin’ to drink? A snack, maybe? I just opened a new bag of Pecan Sandies yesterday, so they’re still fresh.”

  “Well, now that you mention it,” the doctor said with a slow, almost lazy smile, “that sounds pretty good. Maddie?” He looked over at her, his wink so fast she barely caught it. “How about you?”

  She gave him a puzzled look for a second or two, until his slightly raised eyebrows made her snap to.

  “Oh…okay, that’d be real nice,” she said to the old woman, unable to keep from smiling herself. “It’s been a long time since I had a Pecan Sandie. Do you need any help?” she called after Mildred, who was already making slow, steady tracks back to the kitchen.

  “Oh, no, you two just sit right down, make yourselves comfortable.”

  Maddie perched on the edge of an arm chair that’d seen better days, while the doctor sat on a woe
begone couch the color of baby poop, his legs spread, his cowboy hat propped on one knee, neither of which prevented one of the cats from jumping up and trying to find a place to roost. Chuckling, he teased the cat with his hat until it finally got bored and left, then called back into the kitchen, “I see you’re on the prowl today, Miss Mildred. You must be feeling pretty good.”

  “I am at that,” the old woman said, shuffling back into the living area with a plate of cookies, which she set on the coffee table in front of them. “Praise the Lord, I truly am. Take a look at these, would you?”

  She lifted her hands to the doctor for his inspection. The knuckles were swollen almost to the point of being deformed, but she slowly flexed them for him, beaming like a child at her accomplishment. “You know I’m not one for takin’ lots of medicine just because I’m old, but I have to say, that new stuff you gave me sure seems to be doin’ the trick. I haven’t had a really bad spell in some time, not even when it rained a couple weeks ago.”

  Gently—so gently—the doctor took the small, knobby hands in his big ones, then nodded in approval. “Swelling even seems to be down some.”

  “That’s what I thought, too, but I thought maybe it was just wishful thinkin’.”

  “No, ma’am, from the looks of things, I’d definitely say we finally hit on the right thing.” Ryan took a cookie, bit into it. “Any side effects?”

  “Nary a one.” She reached up and rapped on her own head. “Knock on wood.”

  He laughed, then got her to talking about, oh, ordinary stuff, like the weather and her cats and what she heard from Justine, her daughter. As she had on the other two calls, Maddie sat quietly and observed him in action. No wonder his patients adored him. Even though they hadn’t spent more than ten or fifteen minutes at each house, Dr. Ryan—which Maddie noticed was what most folks called him—never made anybody feel rushed, or like there was anything more pressing on his agenda at that moment than tending to them. And the man knew how to listen, a quality that few men—in her admittedly limited experience—took the time or trouble to cultivate.