The stiff, uncomfortable formality between John and Rebecca was back with a vengeance. It was “Dr. Saville” and “Miss O’Reilly” again, and while both of them still had plenty of smiles and kind words for the patients or Lois, with each other they could barely manage to be civil.
Twice Lois had to diplomatically intercede to prevent them from going at each other hammer and tongs over completely trivial matters.
Because she had been at the dentist’s yesterday when the latest trouble storm brewed, Lois wasn’t sure exactly what the problem was. By now, however, she and Hazel had become allies of a sort for this latest matchmaking campaign. So on Friday afternoon, when John stepped out of the office to grab a sandwich, and Rebecca was busy putting supplies away in the storeroom, Lois made a quick phone call to Hazel.
“Code Red,” she informed the rancher, keeping her voice down so Rebecca wouldn’t overhear her. “It’s getting ugly, Hazel. Our two lovebirds are now involved in a full-fledged cockfight.”
“What happened?” Hazel demanded.
“I wish I knew. Things were humming along just fine yesterday before I left for my dental appointment. By the time I got back, full-scale war had erupted.”
Hazel expelled a long sigh at her end. “Has Becky said anything to you?”
“Zip. And when I asked her what was wrong, she just gave me the ugliest frown and said, ‘Nothing a good hit man couldn’t fix.’”
“Hmm…can’t call that very promising—or can we? Obviously, some deep feelings are involved here, just not the right ones. Well, I’ll run my traps. You got any hunches?”
“Well, there was a letter from Louise Wallant on top of the mail stack when I came back. And John’s taking off again this weekend.”
“That’s better than a hunch,” Hazel assured her. “I’ll bet you just put your finger right on the problem.”
“Is he driving to Deer Lodge weekends to see Louise?”
“Maybe. I understand they did have an affair at one time. But unless I read him all wrong, I just can’t see him and Louise making beautiful music together.”
“Same here,” Lois agreed. “Uh-oh, I hear her coming, gotta go.”
“Thanks for the report,” Hazel told her just before they both hung up. “I’ll work on her this weekend, though I confess I’m beginning to have my doubts about these two.”
Saturday turned out to be a gloomy, cheerless day that perfectly matched Rebecca’s mood. While the rain seemed to be holding off, not even a narrow seam of sunshine appeared in a cloudy sky the color of dirty bathwater.
She was up and dressed by 8:00 a.m. Although she had no appetite, she forced herself to eat a croissant with her morning coffee. But it was impossible to hang around her place—not with the sense of John’s presence still so strong there.
She needed some busywork, so she decided to wash clothes. Since her apartment was too small for a washer and dryer, she had to drive to the laundromat in Mystery.
After I finish that, she resolved, I think I’ll go apartment hunting.
She had purposely kept her small efficiency apartment, even though she could afford a roomier place, mainly because she knew Brian had been embarrassed by it. She’d refused to let a self-centered creep like him determine her lifestyle. But now it contained echoes she didn’t want to hear anymore, and she no longer cared about her pride. She just wanted out.
Out. As she watched the hypnotic tumbling of her clothes in the dryers, that word kept gnawing at her. Out of her old apartment—and why not out of her job, too? After all, as bitterly unhappy as she felt, there was really no other solution.
For one thing, those weekend disappearances of John’s, which once intrigued her, now made her feel very differently since they’d made love.
Sure, she could probably play John’s game and simply go about her job as if nothing had ever happened between them. But unlike his, her heart was broken. There was no denying it any longer. The hurt Brian had caused her was nothing compared to working day in and day out with a man who’d been her lover.
So she knew what she must do: get another job, maybe at Lutheran Hospital, and put John Saville behind her. The way she felt about him, it would be the hardest thing she’d ever done. But as a nurse, she also knew that the best way to cure some hurts was to lance them quickly.
She was dismayed at how certain painful social moments were just that—over and gone in a blink, so far as time went. But when one had to relive them over and over in memory, the pain of it could endure a lifetime. Like overhearing a phone call or spotting the letter from Louise.
Tears filmed her eyes as she carried her clean laundry out to the Bronco. She chided herself for thinking again about just where John probably was this weekend: in the arms and bed of a woman she despised. The idea that he could be so cold and casual about sexual intimacy infuriated her and strengthened her resolve.
Yes, it would be hard to stick to her guns. No matter how much she denied it, John was not just one more bit player in the drama of her life—he was a fundamental part. For that very reason, she told herself, trying to feel determined and resolute, I’ve got to get another job.
Her cell phone chirred, and grateful for the distraction she pulled the phone out of her purse.
“Hello?”
“What’s new, Boogaloo?” Hazel’s throaty voice greeted her. “You busy right now?”
“Hi. Not really, I’m just driving home after a thrilling trip to the laundromat.”
“Be out of your way to swing by? There’s something I’d like to show you.”
“I haven’t passed your road yet, anyway. I’ll be there in maybe five minutes.”
“Good. Look for me out in the side yard.”
“What’s—”
But Hazel hung up before Rebecca could ask any questions.
She spotted Hazel in the big side yard even before she turned in at the stone gateposts of the Lazy M. The rancher was accompanied by a man Rebecca had glimpsed around town but never met. She parked behind a new pickup truck with huge toolboxes in the back and a yellow hard hat visible on the dashboard.
The doors of the truck advertised Dave Perry, Construction Contractor and included a phone number in nearby Lambertville. Now she guessed what was going on. Hazel had mentioned her intention to replace the old pump house, built in 1920, with a new one. Mountain snowmelt was low this year, and the Lazy M depended on pumps to keep water flowing to outlying irrigation ditches and stock ponds up in the summer pastures.
“Becky!” Hazel called to her as the latter threaded her way through the tall spruces toward them. “I’d like you to meet someone. Becky O’Reilly, this is Dave Perry.”
He smiled at her from a face pleasantly tanned from years of outdoor work. He had a neat, closely trimmed beard slightly darker than the sandy-blond hair curling over the top of his collar. Dave Perry was lithe and slim-hipped, dressed in jeans and a clean flannel shirt, with a measuring tape clipped to one of his belt loops.
“Pleasure to meet you, Becky.” The long, appreciative look he gave her showed that he was indeed pleased.
At the moment, however, male attention was not high on her lists of priorities.
“Dave stopped by to give me an estimate on a new pumping station,” Hazel explained. “Naturally he wants to skin me alive on the price.”
Dave glanced at Rebecca and sent her a quick wink to let her know he wasn’t fooled by Hazel’s tricks.
“She calls me the Robin Hood of construction contracting,” he confided with another smile. “She claims I rob the rich and give to the poor—namely myself.”
“Poor?” Hazel rolled her eyes. “What, is last year’s hot tub out-of-date already?”
Despite her despondent mood, Rebecca had to smile at the pious, innocent face Dave assumed. Clearly he liked to clown around.
“Hazel, you’ve been fed vicious rumors about me. Why, I live so simply and humbly my neighbors call me the Dali Dave. And what looks like a satellite dish in my yard? It�
�s really just a birdbath in the style of Picasso.”
Both women laughed at Dave’s charming silliness. By now, however, Rebecca fully realized he was the “something” Hazel wanted to show her. The incurable old romantic was up to her matchmaking tricks again, for it was in her nature to do her all for Mystery’s future. “The quality of any town,” she once insisted to Rebecca, “equals the quality of the people who live in it.”
At the moment, however, Rebecca had little time to resent Hazel’s meddling because she was forced to laugh repeatedly as the Matriarch of Mystery and Dali Dave concluded their business deal, drawing it out in true Western horse trader’s fashion. Hazel complained bitterly that, land love us, she was a helpless old widow being fleeced. Dave stubbornly insisted he was practically giving the work away for nothing, for crying out loud. They eventually settled on the price they each knew beforehand would be agreed to. But this way was more fun.
Dave’s truck was still meandering down the driveway when Hazel asked slyly, “Would he have been a better choice than Rick Collins?”
“I s’pose,” Rebecca conceded without much interest.
“You ‘s’pose,’” Hazel exclaimed in disbelief. “Girl, I double-hog-tie dare you to look me in the eye and tell me you don’t find Dave Perry attractive.”
“Sure, he’s all right,” she conceded. “Lively sense of humor, too.”
But something about the distracted, detached way she said it made Hazel study her for a moment, her eyes narrowing. “You know,” she confessed, “I’ve got him in mind for your next date. Believe it or not, he’s neither married nor gay, and he’s definitely available. I noticed how he was checking you out nine ways to Sunday.”
“No, thanks,” Rebecca demurred. “Nothing against Dave. I’m sure plenty of women have their sights set on him.”
“As a matter of fact, yep,” Hazel affirmed, still watching her friend from shrewd eyes. “You are in love with John Saville, aren’cha?”
Rebecca flushed. That was answer enough for Hazel.
“Listen, hon,” she urged Rebecca, “a date with a fun guy like Dave is just the tonic you need right now. Why become a she-hermit just because you’ve had some bad luck in love?”
However, Rebecca resolutely shook her head. She couldn’t explain it to Hazel, but she simply could not “play the field” right now. Never mind that even as they spoke, John was probably with Louise, perhaps even making love to her. Until Rebecca managed to shake him out of her heart, she simply could not go out with another man.
“I’m going to be pretty busy for a while,” she explained. “I’ll be apartment hunting, and I may be looking for a new job, too.”
“A new job? Becky, you’re shooting a shotgun into a rain barrel. Just because you’ve had some little spat with John—”
“It’s no spat,” Rebecca said, her voice charged with feeling. “He isn’t just an arrogant snob, Hazel. He’s also a…well, he collects women in his bed, that’s what. And I won’t work for a man like him.”
“All right.” Hazel surrendered. She knew Rebecca’s moods to a hair—trying to change her mind, once it was set, was harder than holding the ocean back with a broom. “Well, if a handsome jasper like Dave Perry doesn’t entice you, I’m out of options.”
“Are you sure about that?” Rebecca demanded. “The more I think about that date with Rick Collins, the more all the ‘coincidences’ bother me. Especially the fact that John showed up right on time to give me a ride home.”
“The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” Hazel quoted, her face and tone exaggeratedly innocent.
“Yeah, well, so do you.”
Hazel shrugged. “Well, if a system works for the Lord…”
Unable to help herself, Rebecca laughed. “Hazel, shame on you! True, I didn’t think much of Rick, but causing him all that trouble wasn’t right.”
“Oh, pouf. Don’t worry about that. I had one of my wranglers slip an envelope under his door anonymously. There was a hundred-dollar bill in it to compensate him for the trouble.”
Hazel’s comment about being out of options may have seemed like surrender at last. But after Rebecca had left, Hazel remained out in the yard, turning this urgent problem back and forth for a while.
This is serious, she decided. Dave Perry had been the ace up her sleeve. Since the disaster-date plan had failed, she had decided to reverse her approach and set Rebecca up with a truly sexy, fun-filled guy—somebody to take her mind off John. But the poor girl was so far gone in love with her employer she was inconsolable.
This is a tough match, Hazel conceded again. She was still convinced, however, that Rebecca and John would be a superb couple if only the “speed bumps” on the road to love could be smoothed out. But Rebecca was on the verge of radical steps, such as quitting her job.
Hazel recalled that comment about how John Saville “collects women in his bed.” She was convinced, despite a lack of any evidence, that Rebecca had him sized up all wrong. That young man was not a womanizer—he was steady and faithful, like an altar lamp that never goes out.
Her face settled into a mask of determination as she again stared toward the big main barn. The old foreman’s quarters would need plenty of sprucing up, and quickly, but she had capable workers on her payroll. She must move swiftly now, or else this rocky pas de deux between John and Rebecca would soon be over.
“That’s it,” Dr. Saville finally announced, stepping back from the operating table and the heavily sedated young boy. He surveyed his work, peeling off his latex gloves. “Betcha fifty bucks this little guy won’t even have a scar to prove we operated.”
“Johnny, you wield a mean scalpel,” praised Dr. Bob Morningstar. “They’ve come up with some impressive techniques for correcting hiatal hernias since I interned. I paid close attention to the way you tightened up that muscle wall without an incision. He won’t even need any major painkillers after the anesthetic wears off.”
“It’s a piece of cake with a kid this young,” John agreed. “But it gets more complicated to do as the patient ages.”
The two men left surgery and peeled off their masks and scrubs, tossing them into a hamper.
“How ’bout a hot cuppa?” Bob suggested. The full-blooded Blackfoot Indian was about fifteen years older than his colleague, with thick salt-and-pepper hair, pronounced cheekbones and a strong, hawk nose. “Then you can come home with me, have a good dinner with the family. The kids have been asking about you.”
“Sounds great.”
Both doctors looked tired, for it was nearly 6:00 p.m., and they’d been performing surgeries at the Bitterroot Valley Indian Children’s Hospital since 8:00 a.m.
“Another Saturday in the books,” Bob remarked. “And you’re scheduled for another full day tomorrow. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate what you’re doing, Johnny. It’s hard as hell to lure surgeons out here to the boonies at mediocre pay. We’re always shorthanded.”
“Don’t even bother to thank me,” John assured him as both men headed toward the cafeteria for coffee. “Do you know how nice it is to have a place where I’m still ‘Johnny?’ Coming here is like coming home.”
John didn’t bother, however, to tell Bob another reason why he appreciated coming here on weekends. The hard concentration and long hours temporarily took his mind off Rebecca.
Life under a father who ran his home like a military boot camp had taught John to discipline everything except his emotions, which refused to be curbed by reason or even fatigue. All the hard work not only helped to keep his mind off Rebecca, it also kept him from dwelling on a cold, hard fact—he was that saddest of modern creatures, infinitely successful, yet infinitely lonely.
Coming to the Indian hospital to volunteer his badly needed services was the balm for his soul. The children he worked on were often abused and neglected, just as he had been; many of them came from dysfunctional families, just as he had. In a way that was very personal and private to him, each time he helped one of these innocent chi
ldren, it helped to blot out the troubling memories. Nobody had been kinder to him, growing up, than his Native American neighbors—who had become more like family than neighbors.
Good family, not the kind he had.
“Something bothering you, Johnny?” Bob’s voice cut into his musings over coffee. “You seem a little down in the dumps.”
John mustered a weak smile. “Ahh—I’ve got a lady on my mind,” he admitted. “Or actually, I’m trying to get her off my mind.”
“That’s paleface logic for you,” Bob teased him fondly. “A young stag like you should have women on his mind plenty.”
John laughed. But he couldn’t hold the smile on his face—it slowly melted, replaced by a frown.
“Maybe some other woman,” he replied. “But not this one.”
“What, is she doing the hurt dance on you?”
“The thing is, I don’t seem to have a snowball’s chance in hell with her.”
Bob snorted. “I find that hard to believe. Melt her heart, that’s all it takes.”
John set his cup down, startled. “What?”
“You heard me, melt her heart, man. Women can be very strong on the outside, even seem mean. But inside they are all soft places. Look at me—I’m homely as thirteen miles of bad road, and we both know it. But you’ve seen my wife. Is Sharon beautiful or not?”
“Absolutely beautiful,” John said truthfully.
“Yeah, boy, it’s that mix of Indian and Anglo blood, best of both. And you know how I hooked such a looker?”
“Speak, oh, wise one, I’m all ears.”
“Not by sitting around glum-faced like you, that’s for sure. I got to one of her soft places inside. See, three times I asked her out; three times she said no way. So then I sent her a little note: ‘I have placed a stone in front of my house. When that stone melts, so too will my love for you.’”
“Smooth, lover boy.”
“Well, anyhow it worked. That broke her inner resistance to me. Three days later she called me up and asked me out. The rest is matrimony, my friend. And that stone is still in front of our house.”
The M.D. Courts His Nurse Page 13