Just What the Doctor Ordered

by Leigh Greenwood

  He decided on a walk. He’d talked to more people this afternoon, divulged more about himself than in any year of his life. He paused on the front porch. The quiet reminded him of the mind-numbing monotony of Gull’s Landing. Hell, he could even hear the bees buzzing around the tiny pink flowers on the shrubs growing on either side of the porch steps. The thick grass of Liz Rawlins’s yard merged into the yards on either side with no more interruption than a couple of rock-bordered flower beds filled with the green foliage of daisies not yet in bloom.

  The gray-painted boards of the steps bent under his weight. A narrow strip of concrete walk cut through a small yard bounded at the street by a white picket fence. He reached the sidewalk and paused. He’d seen everything beyond Hannah’s Drugs, so he decided to have a look at the rest of town, if a place this small could be called a town.

  Hannah Coleman emerged from the store as he passed. “You find Liz’s house?” she shouted at him.

  “Yes.”

  She waved at a passing car. It stopped. “That’s the new doctor.” She pointed at Matt. “Handsome enough to start a fight in a henhouse, ain’t he?”

  The people inside—a couple and three children—craned their necks to get a good look. Matt kept walking. People waved and spoke as he passed, but no one else shouted at him or pointed.

  Lawns were green and thick. Late tulips and baby’s breath obscured the browning foliage and dead heads of daffodils and narcissus. The heavy blooms of white peonies sagged from their own weight. A climbing rose, thick with deep red blossoms, scented the air. Matt recognized the blue iris. They had bloomed in the yard of one of his foster homes. Lilac and mock orange formed hedges between gardens and barriers to hide abandoned barns and chicken houses. Towering oaks covered the street for almost its entire length. Here and there, an enormous stump provided evidence that the canopy had once been unbroken.

  He reached the hotel and stopped to stare at the huge building that rose higher than the massive oaks. It looked at least a hundred years old. He passed a small lake and an open common before reaching the entrance to a camp. More than a dozen large, white, rambling summer homes clustered around a circular driveway. The camp had its own nurse, but they depended on the clinic for anything serious.

  He turned back and looked down the length of the street. He could see all of Iron Springs at a glance. Twenty-seven houses, two stores, a church, a fire station and the clinic. He thought of Charlottesville and the enormous hospital where he had expected to spend the next three years. Things had been going so well, and now this. It was like starting all over again.

  Just as Matt started back to the house, he saw Ben and Rebecca emerge from their driveway on bikes with training wheels. They made a beeline for him.

  “I’ll beat you,” Rebecca called to her brother.

  Ben didn’t answer, just pedaled faster. He was younger, but his better coordination enabled him to keep up with his sister. Matt could tell Their competition was so fierce they wouldn’t give a thought to the possibility of running into him.

  He jumped off the sidewalk just in time.

  “I win!” Ben shouted.

  “No, you didn’t! I won!”

  Matt couldn’t help laughing. “It was a tie.”

  “Mama said it’s time to eat,” Rebecca said, breathing hard.

  “She said come get you,” Ben added.

  “Did she tell you to run over me if I wouldn’t come?”

  Rebecca giggled. “We weren’t going to hit you.”

  “You could have fooled me.” Matt helped Ben turn his bicycle around. “Looked like you were going to smash me flat.”

  “We can’t smash you,” Ben chirped. “You’re too big. Mama says you’re bigger than granddaddy.” Ben looked up at Matt. “Will I grow as big as you?”

  “Bigger,” Matt said, giving the bicycle a push. “Especially if you eat all your vegetables.”

  “Do I have to eat asparagus?”

  “You’ll have to ask your mother.”

  “Mama says it’s good for me. Do you like asparagus?”

  “Mama just cut it,” Rebecca said. “She says it’s fresh as a daisy.”

  “What’s a daisy?” Ben asked.

  “It’s a flower, dummy,” Rebecca said. “Everybody knows that.”

  “I didn’t,” Matt said. He figured a little white lie wouldn’t hurt.

  “We’ve got lots of them,” Rebecca assured him.

  “You’ll have to show me. Ben, too.”

  “He knows. He just forgot.”

  “Boys do that when it comes to flowers.”

  They had reached the front porch. “What do you do with your bicycles?”

  “Just leave them,” Rebecca said.

  The kids scrambled up the steps and through the door. Matt started to call them back. Then he realized nobody in Iron Springs would steal a bike.

  “It’s too much for a man who’s used to salads or a quick steak,” Matt said, refusing the chocolate layer cake.

  Liz was so relieved that dinner had gone well she didn’t mind his refusal.

  He seemed a little more relaxed. He had been smiling when he came in with the children. They had chattered away to him during the meal, telling him all the things they usually told her. She was amazed at the change in him. She didn’t understand why he was far more open with them than with her.

  Liz helped Ben down from his chair. “You two run and get ready to go to Aunt Marian’s.”

  “Can the man go with us?” Ben asked.

  “Yes, please,” Rebecca entreated, dancing up and down. “Aunt Marian gives us ice cream.”

  Liz saw the sparkle disappear from Matt’s deep brown eyes.

  “I imagine the doctor’s tired,” she said. “He’s had a long trip and a busy day. He can go with us another evening.”

  “Will you?” Rebecca asked.

  “Sure. I need to go over to the clinic,” Matt told Liz. “I’d like to get familiar with the office before I start seeing patients.”

  “Sadie would love to show you around. I’ll give her a call. It won’t take her a minute to get there.”

  “I’d rather do it by myself,” he said.

  Liz got the impression he liked doing everything by himself. She wondered what had made him want to be so alone.

  She watched him walk down the hallway, Ben chattering on to him about ice cream. A shiver of excitement raced through her. There was no way she could look at that man and not feel his attraction.

  As she put away the food and washed the dishes, she listened to the muffled sounds coming from upstairs and realized Matt was in Ben’s room. When Ben came tumbling down the staircase a little while later, he had changed clothes. Matt must have helped him. Ben couldn’t tie his shoes yet, and he wouldn’t let Rebecca do it for him.

  “Where’s your sister?” she asked.

  “The man’s brushing her hair. He said she looked like she’d been out in a hurricane. What’s a hurricane?”

  “A big storm with lots of wind and rain,” Liz replied. “Run up and tell your sister we need to hurry,” she told Ben as she closed the dishwasher and turned it on. “If we don’t, your cousins will eat up all the ice cream.”

  Matt Dennis was becoming more of an enigma by the minute. It irritated her he liked her children more than he liked her.

  Don’t be stupid, she told herself. With his looks and being a doctor, probably every female he meets makes a grab for him. Most likely he’s perpetually poised for flight. That made her all the more determined to get to know what made him shy away from her. After all, she wasn’t exactly burned toast herself.

  Chapter Three

  “Do you think the new doctor’s going to be happy in Iron Springs?” Marian, Liz’s aunt, asked.

  Liz watched the five children playing on the lawn while she, her aunt, uncle, cousin and her cousin’s husband relaxed on the screened porch. “No, I don’t,” she answered, “but it won’t matter. He doesn’t expect to be here more than two week
s. He said there was a mix-up in the assignments.”

  “Salome is delighted with him,” Marian said. “She dropped by the camp office on her way home. She couldn’t stop talking about him.”

  “He’s a man. Have you ever known Salome to talk about anything else?”

  Her aunt laughed. “Not for long.”

  “Everybody’s dying to see him,” her cousin Naomi said. “Hannah has told everybody who set foot in her store about him.”

  “They’ll be disappointed.”

  “You know something?” Naomi asked.

  “No, except he seems wary of adults. I don’t know what he’s afraid of, unless it’s women grabbing at him his whole life.”

  “Is he as good-looking as Hannah says?” Naomi asked.

  Liz nodded.

  “Maybe I’ll walk you home this evening.” They laughed together.

  “Leave the man alone,” Naomi’s husband, Amos, said. “You women start plaguing him, and he’s liable to head back to where he came from.”

  “His being all that good-looking could be a problem,” her aunt said, turning serious. “It’s a shame he’s not married.”

  “Being married wouldn’t make any difference,” Liz said.

  Aunt Marian directed a searching glance in her niece’s direction. Liz hoped no one could see her heightened color in the darkness of the porch.

  “You’ll understand when you see him,” Liz explained. “But I doubt he’ll be here long enough for anybody to catch him, even if he wanted to be caught, which he clearly doesn’t.”

  Liz took a deep breath. Her aunt wouldn’t be fooled if she kept talking like this. She would have to show better control in the future.

  “Ethan told me he’d invited you to the firemen’s picnic,” Aunt Marian said.

  “He invited the whole family,” Liz replied.

  “That’s sensible,” Amos said. “He’ll be marrying a whole family.”

  “I wish you’d stop talking like that,” Liz complained. “Ethan Woodhouse hasn’t asked me to marry him.”

  “He would if you’d give him half a chance,” Naomi countered. “Everybody knows he’s been in love with you since high school. Why do you think he never married?”

  “He’s had plenty of chances,” Amos said. “With his business going great guns, near ’bout every female in three counties has had a go at him.”

  “But he never got over you,” Naomi added. “He says he always knew you’d come back to Iron Springs.”

  “I’m not ready to think about getting married,” Liz said.

  “You can’t still be getting over David,” her aunt said. “You’ve been divorced two years.”

  “Leave Liz alone,” her uncle ordered. “If she wants to marry Ethan, she’ll do it in her own good time.”

  “I know that,” Naomi said, “but there aren’t many men around here, certainly not who love Liz like Ethan does. Besides, he can afford to send her kids to college, along with any others they might have.”

  Liz got to her feet. “I can take care of my own children, thank you. I most certainly won’t marry a man just so he can send them to college.” She kissed her aunt and uncle. “I’d better get the kids in bed. Me, too.”

  But as Liz walked back to her house, she had to admit it would be difficult to send Rebecca and Ben to college, even with a full-time job. Rent from her boarders hadn’t added up to much yet. She didn’t know what she would do if she had to buy a new car or make repairs to the house. She wanted to go back to college when Ben started school, but the nearest college was an hour away. She didn’t know how she could commute and still work.

  She could sue her ex-husband for the child support he’d never paid, but she didn’t think she could stand the strain of a court battle. She wanted to keep as far away from him as possible.

  What she needed was a boarder who could help with the children in exchange for reduced rent Then she wouldn’t have to wait until Ben started school to go back to college. As soon as Matt Dennis left, she’d put an ad in the papers.

  Matt virtually tumbled down the stairs, his coat over his arm, his tie thrown around his neck. He had overslept his first day on the job. He didn’t want to know what Liz would think of him, but it couldn’t be worse than what he thought of himself. He prided himself on being professional, and a professional was never late.

  The house was silent, the kitchen empty. Everybody had gone.

  He spied a note on the table anchored between the salt and pepper shakers, stepped closer and saw his name on it. He opened it.

  I knew you’d be tired after your trip so I let you sleep. The cereal is in the cabinet above the mixer. Milk in the refrigerator. Fruit is in a basket next to the sink. Coffee is in the pot. All you have to do is heat it.

  Matt didn’t even consider taking time to eat. He hurried into the front hall, tied his tie in front of the mirror and ran out the front door. He could walk to the clinic, but driving would be quicker. He backed into the road, carefully looking both ways before he realized there was no traffic in Iron Springs. He didn’t know why he was hurrying. Most likely nothing more serious than a cold or chronic allergies awaited him. He pulled into the gravel-strewed parking lot, parked behind the sign that read Doctor.

  “Morning, Beefcake.”

  Salome’s color of the day was a bright apple green, but the fit of her uniform hadn’t changed. Matt didn’t know how she breathed.

  “Please address me by my title,” Matt said, determined to start on the right foot with his staff.

  “Sure, Dr. Beefcake. You got a roomful of patients waiting, but no need to rush. It’s mostly colds and curiosity.”

  Matt had never encountered a receptionist who showed such a lack of respect for his professional standing. But as he opened his mouth to tell her she would cease calling him Beefcake or look for new employment, Liz came around the corner.

  “Is one of the children sick?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I work here. I’m the office manager.”

  He didn’t know why he was so surprised. Somebody had to manage the office. It just never occurred to him it might be Liz.

  “You weren’t here yesterday.”

  “I’d taken the afternoon off to help the new doctor settle in.”

  Dressed in a blue suit with a cream-colored blouse open at the throat, she didn’t look at all like she had yesterday. Heels, stockings and small gold earrings completed her outfit. Only her ponytail, a concession to the inadequate air-conditioning, prevented her from looking as businesslike as Georgia Allen, an old friend who’d gone on to great success in the corporate world.

  “She’s a wiz,” Salome assured him. “Dr. Evans would have screwed up everything without her.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Matt said. “Now I’d better start seeing patients. I wouldn’t want them to die of curiosity.”

  “They’re more likely to die of frustration from not being able to wrestle you down right there in your office,” Salome said.

  Matt decided the only way to control what Salome said would be to cut out her tongue. Since that wasn’t a viable option, he admitted defeat and retreated to his office.

  The room smelled of mildew, strong soap and Dr. Evans’s cigarettes, but it was a haven from Salome. And Liz. It wouldn’t be easy, but he could put up with Salome for the short time he would be here. He wasn’t so sure about Liz. There was something about seeing her in that suit that told him she was a lady he hadn’t even begun to know. It told him just as clearly that he wanted to change that.

  As the morning progressed, his suspicions were confirmed; he hadn’t seen anyone who couldn’t just as easily have consulted the nurse. Or their grandmother, for that matter. Even the woman wearing a dashiki and giant hoop earrings who’d declared that no modern artist painted with anything but acrylics, and who’d invited him to make a thorough examination of her chest, couldn’t summon up more than a few shallow coughs.
/>   He got up and walked over to the filing cabinet. This was a good time to start studying patient records. He’d be much better able to help his patients if he knew something of their medical history, even if it consisted of nothing but mumps, measles and an occasional bout with bronchitis. He’d no sooner opened the first chart when the door flew open.

  “Lunchtime,” a pair of green lips announced.

  “I know.”

  “Well, come on.”

  “Come on where?”

  “To Sadie’s office. We always eat in there.”

  “I don’t have a lunch,” Matt said. “Besides, I intend to spend the time studying charts.”

  “Liz packed your lunch,” Salome said in a stern voice.

  “Then I’ll eat it in my office.”

  Salome marched over, took the open file from his hands, closed it and put in on the pile with the others. “You’re having lunch with us. I have a thousand questions I want answered.”

  Matt fully intended to tell her he would do no such thing, but she clamped her hand around his wrist and pulled. Maybe it was the sight of apple green fingernails encircling his wrist. Maybe it was the hypnotic effect of seeing words emerge from between apple green lips. Whatever the reason, Matt found himself following Salome down the hall.

  “People are going to expect me to know everything there is to know about you,” Salome said.

  “I can’t imagine why anybody would be interested in hearing about medical school,” Matt protested, wondering why he didn’t give up and go AWOL.

  “Nobody gives a hoot about that stuff,” Salome said, shoving him into a room where an obviously embarrassed Sadie and a serene Liz waited.

  Liz had said she went home for lunch, but she seemed to be waiting for something before she left.

  “I want to know about your love life,” Salome continued. “You seeing anybody serious? You a great kisser? Are you any good in bed?” She patted him on the behind. “You may be a dud, but you’d sure look mighty good spread out on a sheet.”