Claire had always been more intrigued by the land than the remodel, craving the escape it promised from their overscheduled lives. They already had more house than they needed in Seattle, she’d said. Room enough for all three to get lost in, intersecting through an intercom or a meal grabbed between carpools and Addison’s long days at the lab. And then he had started work on vascumab, became hypnotized by his certainty that this drug, his very own invented molecule, would turn cancer treatment end over end. He had finally let the architect go until they had time to spare.
Looking around the room now, it’s obvious to Claire that the most prudent decision would be to tear the whole house down and start over. Still, it’s disquieting to think about condemning so much history to a landfill; an insult to the family that slaved to build it—the Blackstocks, whoever they were. Almost funny to realize that several generations of living, all the birthing and loving and arguing, even the dying, could be fully played out in one spot, yet the only lasting memory seemed to be their name.
Her cell phone rings—a riff from Eric Clapton’s “Layla” that Addison had plugged in to signal his calls. His voice sounds bright, and combined with her current magical optimism she opens with a retelling of the day that makes it all fun, the way she knows they will look back on it in a year or two. “I’m thinking I should put some shredded newspaper in the Havahart traps so the mice can stay warm till we dump them out in the woods.” He laughs at this. Claire ducks behind the kitchen wall so Jory won’t figure out they find humor in her compassion. She can see his full mouth lift his already boyish features into the uninhibited hilarity of a kid. He has always been able to make her laugh before any dispute grew too hot to control, at least until these last few months. But since the night he told her the truth, all of it, about the drug study data and the money, a few of their arguments have been caustic enough to leave scars. “So how’s the Drake? Is the bathtub nice and deep?”
“Built for two!” he answers. “Wish you were with me. How did you like the hospital?”
“Well, that’s quite a segue!” Claire jokes. “I don’t know. Nice enough. The doctors I met seemed nice. If we stay here long enough to get sick I’d feel okay going to some of them.” She pauses, expecting a comeback. “I was glad nobody asked to see my résumé, though. It’s hard to even introduce myself as a doctor, you know?”
He’s quiet for a moment, then answers, “Yeah. I know.”
Claire had expected him to contest her insecurity, bolster her. She laughs anyway, unwilling to let the conversation turn negative. “Sure you know! You have to carry your résumé in a two-inch binder.” She opens the refrigerator while she talks and studies the fresh contents—there is something deeply reassuring in knowing they could survive a week or more in a blizzard now. She pours milk into a mug and dumps in two tablespoons of chocolate, adds a third and sticks it in the microwave. Addison seems to be waiting, as if he could see all of this. “I should have been a pediatrician. Maybe the board would give me credit for raising Jory and I could get certified.” She expects a chuckle at least, and wonders for a minute if they’re still connected.
“Yeah,” he answers at last, in a resigned tone, and even though she knows he does not mean it, she hears it as a stinging reminder of how far she’s fallen from medicine.
Her mood darkens. She takes a gulp of hot chocolate and tries to start over. “It must be freezing up there. Have you seen the list of who’s coming to the meeting? Stock market went up today—a little. Maybe you should treat everybody to a hot buttered rum or two and then just slip a blank check in front of them.”
“There’s an idea.”
“Oh, I have a better one. I thought of this in the car today—start talking about all the symptoms of colon cancer and pick out the guy who looks the most nervous. You’d get both an investor and a customer—just like that guy with the cure for baldness.” She waits through another minute of silence and shakes the phone, looks at the handset as if his face might appear in the shining black plastic. “Addison? Are you still there? I’m just trying to cheer you up.”
She waits again, and finally hears him say, “I don’t know how I’m going to pay our health insurance bill this month.”
Now Claire is silent. She puts the hot chocolate down, acutely aware of how still the room is, how still a winter night is. “You mean, you don’t know which account to pay it from?”
When he finally answers she is more frightened by his tone than his words—the vacancy in his voice. “Nash’s investment was split, do you remember? Half for drug development and half to be paid when the review board, the IRB, approved the phase one human trials.” Nash. Married to Anna, Claire’s best friend. He’d bet twenty million dollars on vascumab, ten of it lost now, but ten still on the table, leverage Addison could play to attract new investors.
“And? He’s still in, right? I thought he promised you he was still in until you could repeat the animal trials and go back to the review board.”
“It’s a problem of timing—”
She interrupts him, doesn’t have the patience for another lecture about venture capital risk or equity positions or stock options. “Maybe… I don’t know… maybe we have to borrow against the retirement plan. I mean, the accountant said that was possible, right?”
When they had discussed this, the most dire contingency plan, Addison had always stonewalled on risking that much of their future. It was the only asset left besides this land and this house. She hears the faintest sound through the phone, a low hum that couldn’t be Addison, it sounds more mechanical than human. Suddenly she is back at the Gap store in downtown Seattle crowded against the counter by impatient Christmas shoppers, trying to explain to the flustered clerk why her denied Visa charge for a twelve-dollar umbrella has to be a fluke. “What have you done?”
“We were so close, Claire. Weeks from IRB approval and Nash’s second check. I couldn’t let it fall apart. I had to bridge the gap.”
“What are you saying to me?” Claire feels like a gaping hole has broken through her middle. Standing perfectly still, she tips off balance and grabs for the counter. “It’s impossible to take out your whole retirement fund. It isn’t legal.”
Addison’s voice sounds like it’s coming from another planet, bleeding with humiliation, but oddly detached, too. Like he’s talking about someone else’s life. “I rolled it over. I transferred the money. The law allows you ninety days between withdrawal and deposit.” Claire is sitting on the floor though she doesn’t remember sliding down the wall. She tries to talk but nothing comes out.
Addison goes on, “Nash said he’d back me up if there were a delay. I had to keep the lab going—I had salaries to pay. It didn’t feel like a choice.”
Claire coughs and chokes out, “And then Nash changed his mind, didn’t he?”
There is a long pause before Addison answers. “He heard about Rick and the animal data. He’s got a business to run, Claire. It’s not a question of friendship.”
Claire’s lips are tingling. “And now we are at day ninety-one and you can’t pay back the retirement fund. Is that what you’re telling me?”
When Addison does not refute her, in fact, does not answer her at all, she hangs up the phone without another word.
• 6 •
Jory is tucked into a fetal curl against Claire by morning, the sunken center of the old mattress a trapped pool of heat in the cold room. Claire kisses her cheek and stuffs her own still-warm pillow against Jory’s back before she slips out of bed to dress. Her face looks gray in the mirror; she had barely slept. She checks the furnace, thrumming steadily and yet the room couldn’t be more than 60 degrees. She mounds a pyramid of paper and kindling and small logs in the cold stove, sets the butane lighter on top for Jory to use, then goes back upstairs to tape a note to the bathroom mirror, signs it with a lipsticked heart.
Claire drives to the biggest clinic in town, a low brick building huddled beside the river. The gravel parking lot holds four or five ca
rs, Subarus and four-wheel-drive pickups, cars suited to the valley’s deep snow and spring slush. She had not felt nervous on the drive here, had felt, in fact, a blinding, determined confidence storming out of her anger. A furious resolve not to talk to Addison until she had a job. But suddenly she wishes she’d called ahead, or asked Jenna, the pediatrician she’d met at the hospital, to call ahead for her. What was she thinking? That the county is so starved for doctors she can barge out of the blue into a busy physician’s office hours? That because she shared the letters MD behind her name she had some invisible privilege?
The receptionist asks for her name and insurance card, and Claire says she hasn’t actually come to see the doctor. Well, yes, she has come to see Kit, to see the doctor, but not as a patient. She takes a breath and starts over. She is looking for a job.
“Are you a nurse?”
“No, I’m a doctor. I just moved here.”
The woman behind the desk pauses, and then leans across the counter. “Can you wait a bit? She’s backed up right now, but I’ll tell her you’re here. She may not think she needs any help, but I’m the one who makes out her schedule.”
Kit Halpern has a single thick chestnut braid dangling over her shoulder alongside the curving black tube of her stethoscope. She has close-trimmed, unpolished fingernails and her white coat hangs open over khaki pants and a plain navy turtleneck. She wears no makeup; looks like a woman who probably doesn’t consider makeup a smart use of her time. Claire pictures her getting dressed early every morning, putting on the same clothes she’d worn the day before if they are passably clean, braiding her dark hair with memorized motions, not a glance in the mirror. Threads of gray are woven through the braid—she is probably older than Claire by five or six years. There is an assertiveness in the lines at the corners of her mouth, and the direct gaze of her clear gray eyes suggests the comfort of compassionate authority.
Claire waits while Kit dictates a chart note. The facing wall is covered with degrees and certificates—it looks like she’s stuck them in whatever cheap ready-made frame best fit the paper, more a convention than a point of pride. Claire scans the bookcases for photographs—Kit on a horse, Kit with three wolfish-looking dogs. No Kit husband. No Kit children. She tries to imagine herself owning that side of this desk, its labeled plastic trays stacked high with her own patients’ medical charts. She still remembers all the secrets a chart can tell, the pain nobody talks about: marital infidelities that shed light on genital sores, the unconfessed alcohol that explains a distressed liver. The averted gaze of teenagers who squirm about falling grades and missed curfews and the smell of pot in their hair, young enough to believe they invented sin. And how would the Boehning financial disaster be diagnosed? What tabbed section of the chart would hide their secret? She tries to remember if there is a blood test to measure stress hormones.
She catches Kit watching her and blushes. “Candace, my receptionist, says I should hire you. But maybe I should ask you if you’re looking for a job first?” Beyond the half-open office door a nurse walks a patient down the hall; another two exam rooms have red flags calling for Kit as loud as alarms.
“I am looking for a job. I’m sorry I didn’t call you first, to make an appointment.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. You’ll find Hallum’s pretty casual. In a year you’ll recognize everyone on the street—which is a bit of a problem when you’re a doctor here. I get almost as many consultations in the grocery store as I do in the office. Where did you go to medical school?”
“University of Washington.” Claire reaches into her briefcase and pulls out one of the résumés. “I want to tell you up front… I haven’t worked in a long time. Not since I had my daughter. But I’ve tried to keep current. My license is up-to-date. And I read the journals. I know that’s not the same as treating patients, but I was thinking maybe I could start working almost as an apprentice. On a reduced pay scale.” She sounds nervous, talking too fast. It isn’t Kit that puts her on edge, it’s this job. It’s realizing this is a job she might like, this is a doctor she’d like to learn from, to work with. She holds the résumé in her lap for a minute, looking at its open white spaces wishing a sheer force of will could tack on those last few months and that critical piece of paper. Then she puts on a determined smile and hands it over.
Kit swivels back in her chair, reading. Claire concentrates on relaxing the muscles of her forehead. What’s there is good, might even be considered impressive. She’d coauthored three papers while she was in her internship, one in JAMA. She’d made Alpha Omega Alpha, had been a star of her internship class. She was elected chief resident, but had to drop that when she went on bed rest. Her references are well-known names in academic medicine, even though some have already retired. Jory had done a great job with the layout. Claire was kind of amazed she’d known that much about fonts and formatting. If she’d ever been that thorough with her homework she’d have made the honor roll.
She watches Kit’s eyes move down the single sheet of bond paper in her hands, and spots the precise moment Kit recognizes the problem. The narrow crease between Kit’s dark eyebrows deepens and she looks up, puzzled. “You didn’t finish your residency?”
Claire sits up straighter. “No. I couldn’t. I had some trouble with my pregnancy. I had to go on bed rest at twenty-six weeks. Then Jory—my daughter—needed a lot of medical care for a couple of years. And then…” She lets her eyes rest on a leafless tree shivering outside the office window where an empty bird’s nest is buffeted in the wind. She lifts one shoulder and lets it drop again. “No. I never finished.”
“So, you’re not board certified?”
“I couldn’t take the boards. I was short the required hours.” That answer is obvious to both of them, but saying it aloud feels like some kind of justified penance. The whole room seems to sigh, and Claire sees Kit’s shoulders sag. She knows, then, that she would have gotten the job. She could have worked with this admirable woman and nurtured her own medical practice alongside her.
Kit folds her arms across the résumé on her desk. She looks almost as disappointed as Claire, which, for some reason, makes the rejection harder. “It’s not me,” Kit says. “It’s the insurance. My malpractice insurance would never take you. Well, that’s not really fair. They would take you at a higher rate. I can’t afford to hire you if you’re not board certified.”
Claire’s face goes hot, embarrassing her even more. She should have told Kit outright, before she even sat down. She feels like a liar, telling everyone at the hospital, and Kit, too, that she is a family practitioner. She is a doctor of nothing. All that work, all those years of school, and she had quit before she got the final official stamp. In a profession that demanded the gold seals that were only doled out with the last handshake on the graduation stage, she had blown it.
Claire tightens her fingers around the leather binding of the steering wheel until her wedding ring bites into her flesh. She feels diminished by the verbalization of the years she’s been away from the practice of medicine—personally diminished, as if it subtracted from her value as a human being to say the double digit aloud and admit that she’s never earned back the fortune her education cost her parents and the state. She should paste a picture of Jory at the bottom of her résumé where the missing months of training should be—Jory’s, at least, was one life she knew she had saved.
The wind whips at her car and the low gray clouds blur onto the snowy horizon scratched by black lines of bare cottonwood and willow. Maybe she has no right to try to be a doctor again. Really be a doctor—place her hands on someone else’s naked skin in search of a diagnosis, ask questions of strangers she wouldn’t expect them to answer to their spouse. Maybe she’d given up that privilege when she dropped out of her residency in premature labor, and then never gone back after Jory was born. She had trained for six and a half years preparing to take care of thousands of people—tens of thousands of people over the working years of her life. And then she had giv
en it up in order to take care of one. She had walked away without even admitting it was a conscious decision, forever couching it as a temporary pause. If there was to be only this one child, who had seemed both sturdier and more vulnerable with each of the four failed pregnancies that followed, then Claire would not hire out any part of motherhood. She would prove to the universe the mistake it had made in giving her only one chance. At least that was the most palatable reason she could live with. And by the time she had gotten up the courage to go back, there was so much money she could walk away for good.
But now there was no money. Now she had no choice.
• 7 •
It takes only two more days to burn through the possibilities for an uncertified, inexperienced doctor to earn a paycheck anywhere near Hallum Valley. Claire makes appointments with three other private clinics near town, stopping last at Hale Richardson’s. He is sixty-four, “almost busy enough for a second doc,” until he sees Claire’s résumé. He is nice about it, as the others were. By the time he walks her to her car she feels worse for him than herself, he looks so uncomfortable. “Sure you want to stay in Hallum? Might have better luck in a bigger market.”
Claire folds her résumé into a square small enough to fit in her pocket. “My husband lost his job. It was quicker to sell our house in Seattle than the place out here.” Hale has the kind of face that makes her want to go on, to explain that it was a bit more than a lost job. It was an entire company. A fortune, in fact. Overnight. Their whole life gambled away on a single blip of disputed data. Instead she shakes Hale’s hand. “You’ve been very kind. Keep an ear out for me. If you hear of anyone desperate enough to hire me…” He laughs with her and Claire gets in her car, waving as she pulls onto the road before he can counter.
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