Just What the Doctor Ordered

by Leigh Greenwood

  “I doubt that. Owning your own company is even more work.”

  She didn’t understand men. They seemed to think building things—companies, bridges, even writing books—meant they had made a contribution to the world, had left a mark, had done something worthwhile. Couldn’t they see that children were their only real legacies?

  “I’m sure you’ll make it,” she said. “If that’s all you’ve got to tell me, I’ve got to go. I’m in the middle of making a dress for Rebecca. I’ve got to finish it in time for her to wear it to church Sunday.”

  “Wait,” David said. “The children are the reason I called.”

  Liz stiffened with alarm. The only thing she’d wanted from the ashes of their marriage was her children. She’d waived alimony, given David the house and everything else in exchange for sole custody of the children. He’d never shown any interest in them. Why should he develop an interest in them now?

  “What about the children?” she asked.

  “I want you to send them up for a visit.”

  Visions of David kidnapping her children and running off with them to another state exploded in her mind. She told herself not to be foolish. David had given up his family for his company. He wasn’t about to change his mind now.

  “That’s a little hard for me to believe after you’ve ignored their existence for three years.”

  “I am their father.”

  “You’re also the man who left his children alone in a house to go visit his mistress.”

  “I told you I was sorry about that. You can come so there won’t be any question about their being left alone.”

  “The last time we were together, you hit me.”

  “For God’s sake, Liz, must you remember everything?”

  “That’s rather hard to forget.”

  “I was stressed out. You were calling me names. I got mad.”

  “I was mad, too, but I didn’t hit you.”

  “Okay, so maybe you and I were never any good together. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see my kids. Now that the company is doing so well, I’m sending you a check for all the back child support.”

  Liz didn’t understand how David could put his company before his children. She would have supported her children if it had cost her everything she had. She guessed that was the difference between her and David. Now he had his company, and he wanted his children, as well. Well, he wasn’t going to get them that easily.

  “You’ll have to do more than that before I can trust you with the children,” Liz said. “I couldn’t—”

  She broke off. She was certain she heard somebody on the stairs.

  “Rebecca? Ben? What are you doing inside?”

  No answer, but Liz was certain she heard the soft squeak of a stair.

  Matt! My God, he could have heard everything she said. Her face burned just thinking about it.

  “Someone’s here, David. I’ve got to go.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I’ll think about it, but I can’t decide anything now.”

  She hung up. In the silence, she heard the sound of footsteps going into Matt’s room.

  Chapter Six

  Matt came down ten minutes later. Liz examined his face closely, but she could see nothing that would indicate he might have overheard her conversation.

  “Are you ready for breakfast?” she asked, laying the dress aside.

  “I can fix my own,” Matt said. “Go back to your sewing. I wouldn’t want Rebecca to be without her dress.”

  “How did you know I was making it for Rebecca?” Had he heard her after all?

  “You can’t fit into it, and I doubt Ben would let you put it on him.”

  She couldn’t help but smile as she laid the dress aside. “You want your eggs fried or scrambled?”

  “Fried.”

  “I have bacon, grits, toast and orange juice. Is that enough?”

  “It’s more than enough.”

  He had on Top-Siders, an emerald green polo shirt and faded jeans that fit his body with tantalizing snugness. She wondered what he did to keep so trim. There was no place to work out within an hour’s drive. If he jogged through Iron Springs, every woman in town would be hanging out the window. Knowing how he felt about people’s curiosity about him, he’d probably rather get fat.

  “Can I help?”

  “You can fix your coffee.”

  They talked about nothing important while she fixed his breakfast. She took up her sewing again while he ate. By the time he settled back with a second cup of coffee, she was fairly certain he had gone back upstairs as soon as he heard her on the telephone. She didn’t know why she was so anxious he not know about David. Everybody in town knew. He’d find out sooner or later.

  “I realize you’ve only been here three days,” Liz said, “but how do you think things are going at the clinic?”

  “Better than I expected, though I’ll never get used to Salome’s lipstick. Where does she find that stuff? I don’t know how you had any idea she would handle the job so well. I wouldn’t have hired her to direct cars into the parking lot.”

  The casual way he couched his apology enabled Liz to relax enough to laugh. “You’d let yourself be distracted by her nail polish. I knew her before the long nails and tight uniform. I knew there’s nothing that walks on two feet Salome can’t handle. She and Sadie have been best friends since grade school. When you live and work in a place as small as Iron Springs, that’s important.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that. I guess I should consult you when I have any questions about my patients.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of saying a word.” She thought he looked a little embarrassed.

  “Normally I wouldn’t consider such a thing, but I don’t know how to attack it.”

  “Attack what?”

  “Everybody seems to be afraid of me.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Even the artists?”

  His eyes twinkled. “I was talking about the locals. They come into the office, then sit there with their mouths closed.”

  “You’re new. It takes people in a small town a while to accept newcomers.”

  “I can’t help them if they won’t talk to me. I had a woman in yesterday asking me about something that was wrong with her sister. It took me nearly ten minutes to figure out she was talking about a female problem. I still don’t know her sister’s name.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Idabelle Ray.”

  “She doesn’t have a sister. You sure she didn’t say sisterin-law? She has six.”

  “I’m positive.”

  “Then it was Idabelle herself.”

  “Well, I can’t really help her if she won’t talk to me.”

  “Have you ever had a woman give you a complete exam?”

  The look on Matt’s face was priceless. She wished she had a camera.

  “No.”

  “Do some time. Then you’ll understand. You’ve got to meet people outside the office, let them get to know you as a person.”

  “How do I do that? Hang out in Hannah’s store, sit on the front porch and stop everybody who walks by?”

  “That’s one way. Another would be to go to church with them. We have only one church. Everybody would be there.” “I’m going to Charlottesville this afternoon. I won’t be back until late Sunday.”

  “Then you could accept some of the dinner invitations you’ve already gotten.”

  “I don’t believe in doctors mixing socially with their patients. I don’t think it makes for good medicine.”

  For a moment, Liz couldn’t think of anything to say. She’d never heard anything more ridiculous in her life, but she could tell that Matt Dennis was the kind of man who, once he made up his mind, wasn’t likely to change it.

  “I don’t agree with you,” she said. “In fact, I think the best medicine comes from doctors who have known their patients and their families over a number of years. People aren’t automatons. Th
ey respond to feelings and emotions.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” Matt said. He leaned across the table toward her, his expression completely serious. “Emotion has no place in medicine. It’s a science. A doctor needs to have complete objectivity so he can consider problems without being confused by having to consider the patient, as well.”

  “How can you possibly look at a broken toe and not see the boy who’s going to miss his championship game?”

  “I was thinking of something a little more important than that.”

  “Okay, how about the man with a young family who has cancer? Or the old woman without any family who is an invalid?”

  “There are people whose job it is to deal with those things. The doctor shouldn’t have to be concerned with anything but the illness and how best to treat it.”

  “You sound like you’d rather not have to see a patient at all.”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said we’d have better medicine if we could eliminate emotion.”

  “But how can you look at a child in pain and not feel compassion for it?”

  “I can’t. Nobody could. But if half of your mind is taken up with sympathizing with the patient, that’s half of your brain that’s not concentrating on the medical problem. If you’re too concerned about the patient’s feelings, you might start making decisions based on those feelings and not on sound medical practice.”

  “That’s the most inhuman thing I’ve ever heard.”

  He looked shocked, like he really didn’t believe what he’d heard.

  “How can you say that? All I’m talking about is delivering the best possible medical care so the patient can go home sooner, recover faster, lead the fullest possible life.”

  “I have no argument with that. I just can’t see how anybody can look at patients and not feel anything for them.”

  “I didn’t say I could, only that I thought it would be ideal.”

  “I can’t see how you’d even want to do such a thing. It’s inhuman.”

  “You said that already.”

  “I’m sorry, but I think your attitude is appalling. I sincerely hope that’s not what they’re teaching in medical schools these days.”

  “Actually it’s a widely held belief, but I reached that conclusion long before I reached medical school.”

  Liz knew Matt was a private person who didn’t want to be in Iron Springs a minute longer than necessary. She had assumed that was the reason for his standoffishness. She didn’t want to believe he really felt this way about people. She had to convince him that knowing people, caring for them would enable him to be the best possible doctor. But she’d no sooner marshaled her argument and prepared for battle than she heard a knock at the back door.

  “Good morning,” Ethan Woodhouse said, not waiting for her invitation to let himself in. “Can a lonely bachelor get a cup of coffee?”

  Matt backed out of the driveway, headed his station wagon toward the mountain and breathed a sign of relief. He was headed to Charlottesville, civilization and a liberating degree of anonymity. Even the prospect of crossing the mountain ridge again didn’t dampen his excitement. He felt like he’d just been let out of prison. He had only a little more than twenty-four hours, and he meant to enjoy every minute of it.

  He was also relieved to have escaped an argument with Liz. He could tell she was winding up to try to convince him his ideas about doctor-patient relationships were wrong. He didn’t care that she thought he was wrong, but he did care that she felt she had to convert him. What did she know about doctors and medicine? She wasn’t even a nurse. She was an office manager. Important, yes, but it didn’t qualify her to know how doctors worked.

  It certainly didn’t qualify her to know anything about him. He doubted they would ever be able to see things the same way. It was a good thing her boyfriend had come in when he did.

  Thirty minutes later, he had crossed the mountain, was headed south on 1-81 and he was still thinking about Liz. He couldn’t understand that. He had a little black book with names and addresses of young women who appreciated the same kind of no-strings-attached relationship he enjoyed.

  So why was he still thinking about Liz? He’d known her less than a week.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about that heart-attack patient. She thought what she did was nothing out of the ordinary, but he’d seen experienced medical personnel freeze when faced with an emergency they weren’t equipped to handle. She’d just dug in and done what she could, all the while calmly telling his wife whom to call and where to find the telephone numbers. He had to admire that kind of courage no matter how much he might disagree with her on other matters.

  Also, despite their differences, he could identify with her. She had no parents, no brothers or sisters, no husband. She might have a few relatives close by, but Matt knew from firsthand experience nothing replaced a family.

  At least she had children.

  But they were a worry, as well as a blessing. She was fighting for the kind of life she wanted for them and herself, knowing all the while she probably couldn’t earn the kind of money necessary to educate them and still stay in Iron Springs.

  She wasn’t asking anybody to solve her problems. It would have been easy to blame her husband, to make him pay through the nose. But if the little scrap of conversation Matt had overheard meant what he thought it did, she had even refused that. Liz had made mistakes. But she had accepted responsibility for them and settled into the job of doing something about them.

  He didn’t know anything about the situation, but he thought Liz ought to do everything in her power to see that her children had as much of a normal relationship with their father as possible. Nothing in the world was more important than having parents, than belonging. Without it, all the success in the world didn’t mean much.

  Matt cursed. Thinking about Liz made him start feeling sorry for himself. He turned onto the approach ramp for I-64 east. He’d spend the rest of the trip planning his weekend. It had to be a good one. He wouldn’t get to leave Iron Springs for another seven days.

  “Ride over to Timberville with me,” Ethan said to Liz. “A man over there’s got a ’67 Mustang I want to look at.”

  “There’s nobody to keep the children,” she said. “Besides, I’ve got to finish this dress for Rebecca.”

  She wished Ethan hadn’t come over. She was still irritated at Matt’s attitude. She was also upset over David’s telephone call. She needed time to herself.

  “Naomi will keep the kids,” Ethan said. “Or they could go up to the camp with your aunt. You can do your sewing in the car.”

  “Naomi keeps them all week, and Aunt Marian has her hands full with the camp. If I tried to sew this dress in the car bouncing all over that mountain, there wouldn’t be a straight seam in it”

  “Then bring the kids along, and I’ll buy Rebecca a dress.”

  That was Ethan all over, generous to a fault. He had adored her since high school. Ten years, a broken marriage and two kids hadn’t changed anything. She was certain he would make a good husband and be a kind father to her children. With his thriving business, there wouldn’t be any worry about their education. But no matter how hard she tried, Liz couldn’t feel any passion for him.

  When she’d first returned to Iron Springs, she had been desperate for friendship and support. Ethan had taken her and the kids to dinner, brought them treats and often dropped by unannounced wanting her to join him on some spur-of-the-moment trip. It had been so wonderful to have someone so attentive to her needs, ready to do anything he could to make things easier for her, to make her happy, that she had hoped her fondness for him would turn into love. It never had. Now she found herself wanting to pull back and not knowing how to do it.

  Liz let her sewing drop in her lap and looked up. “I can’t let you give Rebecca a dress. You’ve given the children too much already.”

  Ethan pulled out a chair and sat down at the table next to her. “Many me, and it won’t matter how much
I give them.” He reached out and took her hands in his. “You know I want to take care of you and your children.”

  Liz carefully disengaged her hand. “I know, Ethan, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I can’t think about remarrying yet.”

  Ethan got to his feet and swung away from the table. “Hell, Liz, it’s been two years since you divorced that bastard.” He stopped at the sink and turned to face her. “When are you going to forget him?”

  “It’s not that easy. He called this morning. He wants me to send them for a visit.”

  Ethan dropped in the chair and gripped both her hands in his. “Marry me. I’ll send him packing in short order.”

  Liz disengaged her hands, picked up her sewing again. “You’ve been a wonderful friend, Ethan, but this is something I have to do myself.”

  “To hell with this friend business. I want to be your husband.”

  “I’ve already told you I’m not ready to fall in love again.”

  “You will be. And sooner than you think. Now how about that ride to Timberville?”

  Liz sighed. There was absolutely no way she was going to get out of this without hurting his feelings. Besides, the kids would enjoy the drive. With Matt in Charlottesville, she had no responsibilities here.

  She wondered what Matt was doing. She hadn’t dared ask, not after telling him his patient approach was inhuman. She wondered whom he planned to see? An old girlfriend, she was certain. A man like Matt Dennis would have girlfriends wherever he went. Beautiful women without ex-husbands or children, women who wanted to have fun with no promises about tomorrow. Women a lot more beautiful than she was.

  What he did was none of her business. She should stop thinking about him and concentrate on what she was going to do about David and Ethan.

  What a mess. She had two men in her life and she was spending all her time thinking about a third. She needed to see a psychiatrist.