“Yes, Doctor?”
“Call me Stephen.”
“Okay—Stephen—what is it?” Claire didn’t mean to be short, but she wished he’d get on with whatever he had to say.
“Your mole was benign.” He sounded almost as relieved as she felt. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Oh, that’s good.” She sighed and turned the stone over in her hand. “Thank you very much for calling me.”
“Sure. You’re welcome.” He paused.
It was just then that Claire realized that he was calling and not his nurse.
“Claire?”
“Yes, Stephen?”
“Are you busy Saturday night? I mean, would you like to go out to dinner?”
He sounded so nice, so earnest. But Claire was appalled.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. I have…plans.” She hated him for putting her in this position.
“Oh,” he said, sounding hurt. “Okay.”
She hung up the phone, thinking of Maria, who had been so good with Graeme. How could this man be such a jerk? He even recommended Maria. Claire wouldn’t be going back to his clinic.
When Abuelita arrived with Graeme from school, Claire was waiting on the steps in front of the English building. She jumped into the front seat of Abuelita’s white Cadillac and buckled up just as Abuelita sped off.
“Watch out for that speed bump!” Claire hollered, and Abuelita’s car cleared it, airborne.
Graeme bobbed up and down in his booster seat. “Yee haw!”
Abuelita glanced back at him in the rearview mirror. “You’re showing your Arkansas roots, Graeme!” she told him.
Abuelita was wearing a long, gold skirt, a cream-colored blouse, and a matching crocheted shawl. Her hair was swept into a French twist and held in place with tortoise shell combs, which matched her huge sunglasses. A big diamond ring glinted in the sun as she gripped the steering wheel, and she tapped her fingers as though keeping time with some secret music.
Claire reached back to tighten Graeme’s seat belt. “How was your day at school, honey?”
“It was good. Billy Sanford brought this awesome lizard for show-and-tell. It was so cool. I wish I had one.”
“Your mother used to catch them en la casa, on the patio. They would hide from her in the cracks between the bricks and under flower pots. She could show you. She was a great lizard catcher in her time, that one.” Abuelita nodded affectionately toward Claire as she wheeled out onto the main road in front of Adams State.
Claire smoothed her skirt and straightened her shoulders. “That’s right! He just doesn’t know that yet because there’s a shortage of lizards in Arkansas—at least compared to here.” Turning toward the back she asked, “What else happened at school, Graeme? What did you learn today?”
“I learned two plus two, but I already knew that.”
“Did you learn anything new?”
“I learned that Ms. Lopez doesn’t like lizards.”
Abuelita reared back her head and laughed, and Claire couldn’t help but join her.
“I can’t believe how time flies!” Dr. Maria Marquez held her arms out wide when she walked into the exam room, and Graeme leapt into them. She was wearing an earthy brown dress with a turquoise belt and a necklace with huge turquoise beads. Graeme fingered it. Maria shifted him to her left hip and held out her right hand to Abuelita. It was adorned by a dangling turquoise bracelet. “Are you Graeme’s grandmother?”
“Great-grandmother,” Abuelita smiled at Maria and took the younger woman’s hand in both of hers.
“This is my abuelita,” said Claire, inhaling the fresh scent of lavender. “We live with her.”
Maria nodded respectfully at Abuelita.
“Yeah,” said Graeme, as Maria set him down on the exam table. “She’s got a big, big house, and a goldfish pond, and a pool.”
“Well, that sounds neat,” Maria said to Graeme, as she looked into his ears. “I don’t see any monkeys in there today,” she reported. “What’s your favorite thing to eat?”
“Breakfast tacos and hot chocolate. Abuelita makes it for me before school.”
“Really? Well, let me see in your mouth. Open up and say, Ah.” Maria pressed gently on Graeme’s tongue with a grape-flavored stick. “Wait a minute!”
Graeme’s eyes got wide.
“Open a little wider!” Maria ordered. “I think I see a chocolate frog in your throat!”
“Like on Hawwy Pottuh!” Graeme exclaimed, still holding his mouth open wide. “Thosth ah magic!”
“They can also appear when a person drinks lots of hot chocolate. But chocolate frogs are very elusive. Ooh—he disappeared!” Maria feigned disappointment. She moved the stick all around Graeme’s mouth, as though searching for something. “We lost him, Graeme!” she exclaimed and took the stick out of his mouth.
Graeme searched her eyes, smiling. The quizzical look on his face said he wasn’t quite sure if she was kidding or not.
“Are you going to dress up for Halloween?” Maria asked him.
“I’m going to be Peter Pan, and my friend Gabbie’s Tinkerbell,” Graeme explained.
“Super cool. Just watch out for Captain Hook!” Maria curled her index finger like a hook and held it up.”
“If we see him, I’ll slash him with my sword!” Graeme said, pretending to do just that.
After faking her demise as Captain Hook, Maria morphed into the doctor again. “Can you take some deep breaths for me?” She placed her stethoscope on his back. “That’s good—breathe in, then out.” They repeated this several times.
“Everything sounds good. How has the Singulair been working?”
“He hasn’t had any problems, but then again, he really wasn’t having obvious problems before. The other episode was sudden,” Claire explained.
“What about the sighing?” Maria probed. “Is he doing that as much?”
“No. I’m not noticing it near as much.”
“Me neither,” Abuelita agreed.
“Well, that’s great. I’d say the Singulair is working. Let’s stay on that until winter; then we might be able to take a break until spring.”
“Do you think he’s going to have to take it routinely? Always?” Claire asked Maria.
“My guess is that he’ll need it for a while—but let’s take one step at a time, okay?” She smiled her perfect smile at Claire, who observed that Maria’s eyes were the same color as her beads.
Abuelita interjected, “You know the other doctor, Dr. Reyes? He removed a mole from my granddaughter’s leg.”
“Really?” Maria seemed taken aback by this sudden shift in the conversation.
“Yes. You can understand my concern.” Abuelita tilted her head regally, holding out her hand in an inviting gesture. “I would like to know your outlook. He says it’s benign, but should we get a second opinion on this?”
Claire turned crimson, then scarlet, then ruby-red. She looked out the window, longing to disappear.
Maria smiled warmly at Abuelita, and her eyes were as lovely as the Caribbean Sea. “Well, I may be prejudiced when it comes to my brother, but I’d trust him with my life.”
When Abuelita heard this, she dropped her purse, spilling its contents onto the floor. Claire was grateful for the distraction, as she was suddenly overcome by a coughing fit.
“Water,” she sputtered in Maria’s direction. “Can I have a glass of water?”
Chapter Twelve
Stephen would never understand women. Claire had rejected him, just when he thought he was being a gentleman. Wasn’t that what they were supposed to like? It was downright confusing! He couldn’t pity himself too much, though, when he thought of the Evans family who had lost their daughter. No.
After his abysmal week, Stephen was looking forward to a quiet weekend. He wrapped things up at the clinic, changed into his farm clothes, and walked out to his truck. There was a note on the windshield, lodged under the left windshield wiper. It was on hospital letterhead.
Stephen rolled his eyes. He remembered a former colleague from Colorado Springs. Pete had willingly perpetuated a myth about himself, started by spurned nurses, that he was gay.
“You’re crazy,” Stephen had told him in the cafeteria one day over coffee.
“You’d understand better if you weren’t married,” Pete had countered.
Pete had turned out to be right.
Wadding the piece of paper into a ball and tossing it into the passenger’s seat beside him, Stephen sat down in his truck and sighed.
After he dropped off a bundle of his scrubs at the cleaner’s in La Jara, he drove through McDonald’s. Ordering a Big Mac Combo made him feel slightly like a rebel. Neither Joe nor Maria would believe it, if he told them. He hadn’t been to McDonald’s since he read Fast Food Nation, which further impressed upon his psyche the ills of a drive-through society. In fact, he’d spent considerable energy avoiding McDonald’s as well as other fast-food joints. He frequently counseled his patients to do the same.
But today he didn’t care. He didn’t care about corporate deception, exploited workers, mistreated animals, or even his own clogging arteries. He ate his burger and fries in silent dissent as he drove down the road listening to Johnny Cash.
“Stephen? Stephen Reyes? This is your long lost neighbor, Nell Patrick.”
The clock on his nightstand read six o’clock. Stephen stumbled out of bed in his boxers and walked into the other room, where Nell’s voice was practically yelling out of his answering machine. He could hear Gene in the background saying, “He’s probably out feeding.”
“Hello?” Stephen picked up the phone.
“Hey, stranger, are you ready to work some cows?”
Stephen had forgotten their plans.
“Nell! Oh—this is embarrassing. I forgot to pick up the extra stuff at the Co-op.” He opened the door to let out Duchess and Regina.
“That’s all right. I think we have enough anyway. If not we’ll run to the feed store. Do you want to start here or at your place?”
“I guess it doesn’t matter. What’s best for you guys?”
“Well, come on down here. I’ve got breakfast ready. We can do ours first, come in and eat lunch, and then go do yours. That be okay?” Nell sounded excited.
“Sounds good. I’ll be down there in a few minutes.” He hung up the phone, marveling at how well she administrated the business of both of their farms.
Fifteen minutes later, Stephen stood at the Patricks’ back door.
“Come in here, stranger!” Gene opened the door for Stephen, who immediately smelled coffee and bacon. He shook hands with Gene.
“How are you, my friend?”
“If I felt any better, I’d be in heaven.”
Stephen laughed. “That’s a new one.”
“A guy at my church says that. I thought I’d try it out on you.” Gene smiled at him. He pointed towards the kitchen table. “Sit down, sit down.”
Stephen obeyed as Nell set a steaming mug of coffee in front of him.
“Thanks, Nell.” He sniffed appreciatively. “That smells good.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. Her curlers scratched him a little, and Stephen could smell lemon verbena.
“How you doing, hon?” Nell padded back over to the stove in fuzzy house shoes. She brought them a bowl of sausage gravy and a plate of flaky homemade biscuits and then returned to the kitchen.
“Man, I wish we could work cows more often,” Stephen told her. “Nobody else ever feeds me like this.”
“You know I’ll feed you anytime you want me to,” Nell smiled at him, plopping down a platter of scrambled eggs and bacon. She finally sat down after her last trip to the stove.
“Thank you, Lord, for these Thy gifts we are about to receive,” Gene said as he filled his plate.
Nell added, “Amen.”
“How are you guys doing? It seems like I haven’t seen you all week,” Stephen opened a biscuit and covered it with a rich helping of gravy.
“Well, pretty good,” Nell answered him. “We’ve both felt good this week, but of course we’ve been up to the Evanses’ place a time or two. I took some food, and Gene helped him with his cows on the day of the funeral.”
Stephen’s eyes dimmed and he set down his fork. “That was an awful deal.”
“Yes, it was. It is.” Nell stirred her coffee sadly. “They told us you were the one at the hospital.” She poured in cream and stirred some more.
“Yeah,” said Stephen. “It’s something I’ll never get used to.”
“The Lord used you to minister to them, I believe,” Gene offered.
Stephen kept silent.
“Well, what else?” Nell queried. “Are they working you too hard up there at the hospital?”
“Not too bad,” said Stephen, “That one night was horrible, but I don’t really have a right to say it was horrible for me. I can walk away. It’s those parents who…” Stephen broke off.
Nell and Gene both looked down at their plates.
“Since then I’ve not been back to the ER. I’ve had to put in some long days at the clinic, though. One of the other doctors has been on vacation this week.” Stephen tried a small bite of his breakfast.
“Did you go somewhere Tuesday night?” Nell posed, changing the subject.
He had to smile inwardly at the image of Nell in her bathrobe, watching out the window as his truck drove by.
“Yeah, I did. I went over to my friend Joe’s to a Bible study.”
“A Bible study?” Nell’s voice was full of cautious energy.
“Good for you,” said Gene.
“It was good. I was glad I went,” Stephen told them. He took another bite of biscuit and washed it down with coffee.
“Do you want to tell us about it?” Nell asked.
“About what?” Stephen baited her.
“The Bible study. You know, you rotten thing. We’ve been trying to get you to go for years.” She squinted her eyes at him.
“It was good,” Stephen held, smiling at her. “I liked it.”
Gene laughed while Nell scowled at them both. “Men!”
After breakfast, Gene and Stephen went out to the barn to prepare the vaccines, ear tags, and other supplies they’d need for working the cows. Nell finished cleaning up the kitchen, dressed herself in overalls and boots, and joined them. Stephen noticed that her hair was still in curlers under the red bandana she had tied around her head.
“Have you got a date tonight?” he kidded her.
“What do you mean?”
He pointed to his head.
Nell’s hand went up to hers. “Oh, these? Well, you don’t think I’d take them out for a bunch of cows, do you?”
Stephen grinned as he sharpened his pocket knife on Gene’s whetstone.
“Beside, Gene and I do have a date. We’re going to Sam’s Club.”
“Ooh, Gene, now that’s romantic!”
Gene’s eyes wrinkled like thin paper around his eyes. “I might even take her to Wendy’s for a Frosty. You like those Frosties, don’t you, hon?”
“Yeah, I like Frosties. I like dip cones, too.” Nell picked up a bucket she was going to fill with water. “But, speakin’ of dates, are you ever going to have one?”
Stephen looked at her for a moment as though he was deciding something. Then he answered slowly, “I was hoping to have one tonight.”
Nell dropped the bucket. “You were?”
“Yep, but I got turned down.” Stephen went back to sharpening.
Gene looked up and said, “You kidding me?”
The very idea seemed to make Nell angry. “She must have been blind and stupid.”
Working the Patricks’ cows went as smoothly as possible for a somewhat messy situation. The three ranchers formed an assembly line in the old cor
ral. Nell’s job was to prod the cows, using a stick, into the rusty chute. Gene stood on one side to put in their ear tags, and Stephen stood on the other to administer shots. Few of the cattle went through willingly, but most were manageable—until it came time for the bull calves. It was as if they instinctively knew what was about to happen. Nell reluctantly turned on her electric prodder for them.
As she got them into the chute, Gene put the ear tags in each one, and Stephen gave the shots. Then, using his razor-sharp pocket knife, Stephen neutered them as quickly as possible. Gene doused the area with Fulvicin spray solution to stop the bleeding and prevent infection.
When they released the calves after the cutting, their behavior was unpredictable. Instead of heading for the gate and open pasture, many jumped and danced wildly about the corral, as though demon-possessed. One calf kicked a slat out of the rickety cedar gate before exiting, and another time Stephen had to climb up on the chute to keep from being rammed.
“They don’t like you,” Gene said, grinning.
When the three neighbors were finished working all of Gene and Nell’s cattle, they scrubbed their hands and arms in the yard. Stephen was glad he’d worn the plastic apron he brought with him. He held it up, and Nell sprayed off the blood and manure with the hose until the water ran clear. Then they hung it on her clothesline to dry while they ate lunch.
“We sure do appreciate your help,” Gene told Stephen between bites of chicken salad. “I don’t know if Nell and I could do it by ourselves anymore.”
“Oh, well, it’s my pleasure,” Stephen told them.
“Your pleasure to cut those bull calves?” Nell looked like she might lose her lunch.
“You know what I mean.”
“Tell me again just why that’s the best way to do that. I trust you and all, but it sure didn’t seem as horrible when me and Gene used to band them. And that was bad enough.”
“Well,” Stephen began, “they need their hormones to help them grow and develop to be good to sell. You can band them and then give shots with the hormones, but this way is more natural.”
Love Finds You in Romeo, Colorado Page 9