Emily protested back: “I had to go around both doors.”
“True. Fine, it’s a tie.”
Once they were back on the highway, Emily looked out her window, her bleary eyes catching only a smear of green, the passing trees.
“You okay?”
She shook her head. She had distracted herself with Mark’s bridge phobia. Now they were on the last leg, an hour away from Gaylord. The dread poured over her, a spell of soggy heat. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
She groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick. Can you pull over?”
He slowed the car and pulled to the shoulder.
Emily rolled down the window. The fresh air on her face relieved her. But she still felt anxious, and she opened the car door.
“Where are you going?”
She got out and leaned back against the car.
“Em?”
Her eyes rested on a single birch tree that stood out against a wall of evergreens. She stared at it. The leaves high up on the white tree quivered.
“Emily?”
She imagined herself walking over and putting her arms around the white bark and holding on tightly. When she shut her eyes, the trunk remained, etched for a few seconds in the darkness, a remnant of the bright sun on the white bark.
When she opened her eyes, Mark was in front of her. “Are you all right, Em?”
“Ever notice birch trees?”
“Huh? Birch trees? Sure.”
“Seems like they don’t belong or . . . or like they’re ghosts of the forest.”
“I suppose, yeah. Are you okay?”
Then she thought and unintentionally whispered aloud, “Immunity from contrived guilt.”
“What do you mean?”
Emily blinked several times. “Sorry. Never mind.”
“What did you say?” he insisted.
After a second, without looking at him, she answered, “Immunity from contrived guilt.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“It’s from John. He said that no one in geriatrics feels guilty when a patient dies. But pediatric oncologists and surgeons and specialists always contrive guilt when a child dies. Only a few make it unscathed—those who are immune to the guilt because they understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That even more children would die if doctors didn’t intervene.”
“Hmm.”
She burst out in coarse laughter. “He even said I should use Nicholas’s death as a lesson, maybe my most important lesson as an intern.”
“He said that?”
“Yes. Maybe I’m not cut out for peds.”
“Don’t listen to him. You have feelings. Good, I say.”
She shook her head languidly. “I thought I could do this, but I don’t know. I haven’t seen Dr. Olsen since that morning. It’s going to bring all that back. Not to mention how upset he’s going to be when I tell him what happened that night.”
“He’ll be upset, of course. But he’ll be upset with Dr. Butcher, not you.”
“I can’t tell him the whole story. John could get into serious trouble.”
“Why do you care what happens to him?” he hissed. “You need some of that immunity from guilt, or whatever you call it, when it comes to him.”
She turned to him with pursed lips. Tired, she pleaded, “Don’t make me defend him.”
Mark crossed his arms. He moved over and leaned against the car, the two side by side.
“Besides that,” she said, “I still need a recommendation from the hospital. I don’t think they’d be too happy with me if Dr. Olsen went back to the hospital with the full story.”
“So what will you say to him?”
“I’m not sure. But I’m going to encourage him to go back and finish his residency.”
Mark straightened up. “All right, let’s go, then.”
Back in the car, Emily said, “I wonder if Doris and Evelyn are on.”
Mark’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, I could use some of their homespun humor right now.” He turned on the radio.
The station came on, but it wasn’t the voice of Evelyn or Doris. It was the gruff voice of a man reading out the fishing report.
“Which station?”
“It’s this one. The ladies probably don’t come on until after nap time, and by then we’ll be too far away.”
She laughed. “You’re awful.”
“Wonder if they’re back together.”
“I hope so.” She turned off the radio.
“Hey! I was listening to that. What part of that lake are the walleye biting in?”
“Shut up. I know more about wetting a line than you do.”
Mark smirked. “I have no doubt you do.”
“My dad used to take me fishing. I mean, I’d tag along to hang out with him and my brother.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“That reminds me. I need to call my parents. They’re expecting me today.” She pulled out her phone. “Obviously that’s not going to happen.” She called.
She explained to her father that the person who was going to replace the windshield had hurt his finger—she left out the part where she had saved the finger. “No, you don’t need to come. I’ll be all right. . . . Yes, I’m still staying at the Manistique Victorian.” When Mark looked at her, she gave him a wink. She told her dad that she’d be in Appleton in a couple of days, and that she had some important news to share when she got home. “No, I’m not getting married.” She glowered at Mark’s stupid grin.
“I take it your parents don’t know about Dr. Butcher,” Mark said when she finished.
“No. God, no.”
“Do they think you’re dating someone?”
“No. Ever hopeful, though.”
“Did you date anyone in medical school—besides Butcher, of course?”
“John and I weren’t dating,” she answered firmly. “Unless you consider hanging out in his office at the hospital or eating at the hospital cafeteria dating.”
“You weren’t afraid of being seen together at the hospital?”
“A little. But he was my mentor, so there was good reason.”
“Okay, so anyone you actually dated during med school?”
“One guy. During my first year. He was a graduate student in public policy.”
“Public policy? Sounds dull.”
“It was. It got serious enough that I went with him to North Carolina to meet his parents.”
“Why did you break up?”
Emily laughed. “A fly on scrambled eggs.”
“Huh?” Mark looked at her with converging eyebrows. “You broke up over a Dr. Seuss book?”
She shook her head. “That’s not a Dr. Seuss book.”
“Sounds like a Dr. Seuss book.”
“Anyway, it wasn’t only about a fly on scrambled eggs. That was just the culmination of months of frustration that I kept bottled up inside.”
“I’m confused.”
She slapped her thigh. “Fine. Here’s the story. One morning Buff and I—”
“Buff? Your fiancé’s name was Buff? For real?”
“We were never engaged. His nickname was Buff. His real name was Ted.”
“Buff,” he repeated in a deep voice. He snickered. “All right, so what happened?”
“So one morning we decided to have breakfast at this place just outside of town. I asked for two eggs, fried, and other stuff—bacon and whatever. At some point I went to the restroom, and when I came back, there’s scrambled eggs, not fried eggs. I said something to Buff about it.”
“And what did Buff do about your scrambled eggs?”
“He didn’t do anything! He just nodded his head. He didn’t even pay attention to my order. But easygoing as I am—”
Mark burst out laughing.
“What? I’m easygoing,” she demanded.
“Sorry. Of course. I was still laughing at the name. Buff. Go ahead. Go on
.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Anyway, I started eating the scrambled eggs, until I saw a dead fly. So I pointed it out to Buff.”
“What did Buff say?”
Pinching her fingers together, reenacting the scene, she said, “He picked up the dead fly and tossed it on the floor.”
“He did?”
“Yeah, can you believe that?“
“He should have waved the waitress over and gotten you new eggs, fried eggs.”
“Yes! Thank you!”
“And you broke up right there?”
“Not only that, I got up and walked home. Five miles.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and when I got home almost two hours later, I made myself two fried eggs.”
“Good for you.”
“How about you? What about your last girlfriend?”
“Would you believe we broke up over a cockroach on couscous?”
“Shut up.” She waved him off. “Seriously, what happened?”
Mark shrugged. “Things were fine between us until Laura brought up marriage.”
“You have a thing for Lauras, don’t you?”
“You don’t know the half of it. My first serious girlfriend in college was named Lora too. But L-o-r-a.”
“Laura wanted to get married, but you didn’t?”
“We were just on two different timelines. She was ready, and I wasn’t.”
“So that was it?”
“Yep, that was it,” he sighed. Her son’s anguished expression popped into his mind.
“How long were you together?”
“Um, over a year.” He cleared his throat and muttered, “Almost two.”
“Two years! What’s a reasonable time for you before you start discussing marriage?”
He turned his head and stared at her with a wry expression. “At least one week.”
She grinned. “Fine. I’ll wait a few more days before I bring it up.”
Mark laughed. “Okay. Sure.”
“So how long ago was this?”
“That we broke up?”
“Yeah.”
“A few weeks ago.”
“That recent? That’s not long ago at all.”
He sighed. “No, but it feels longer. I haven’t really thought about her much since I came up here.”
“So you feel like you’re over her?”
“Yes, definitely.” He cleared his throat. “Her kid, Shane, well that’s a bit tougher.”
“She had a son?”
“Yes, and his father lives out of the country, so guess what?”
“You became a surrogate.”
Grimacing, he nodded.
She laid her hand on his shoulder. “Must have been hard for you, too.”
He laughed to himself. “So my two friends—Brad is one of them—have banned me from dating women with children.”
“That’s why he asked me if I had kids?”
Mark grinned coyly. “Yes.”
“Maybe they’re right.”
He chuckled, “Coming from you . . ."
“What do you mean by that?”
“You’re seeing married men.”
“Hey! Not men. One man. And not anymore. And besides that, we barely saw each other.”
He raised both hands off the steering wheel. “Sorry. So are we done with this phase of our relationship?”
“What phase?”
“Rehashing old exes.”
“I don’t know. How many other girlfriends have you had?”
“How far back?”
“Since high school.”
Mark thought for a second. “Serious ones? Four.”
“So what happened with the L-o-r-a Lora?”
“We got together at the end of our junior year in college and broke up after graduation. She wanted—”
“Wanted to get married, right?”
“Not exactly. She got a job in Indianapolis near her family. She wanted me to move there with her. Yes, there was talk of marriage. But I decided to move back to Chicago. I was twenty-two and needed some space.”
“So you broke up?”
“Not immediately. We tried the long-distance thing, but it didn’t work.”
“I see. Who came after Lora?”
“Lorelei.”
“Another Laura/Lora?”
“No. I thought so too until it was explained it to me by her father. Lorelei and Laura are two separate names. Lorelei is a German siren. In the Rhine, I think. Her father majored in German literature.”
“All right, so what’s the story with Lorelei?”
“We met at a friend of a friend’s party, and we sort of hit it off. It lasted a while. Almost a year.”
“Why did you break up? Wait! Let me guess. She started talking about marriage.”
Mark grimaced. “It was a little more complicated than that.”
“I’m sure it was.”
He hesitated then, “In my defense, she started talking about marriage on our second date. Kid names and all of that. I was in my mid-twenties, and I had things to do before getting married.”
“What things?”
Mark sighed. “Well, grad school, for one. And traveling. Buy a house. Things like that.”
“Where did you travel to?”
He bit his bottom lip. “Nowhere,” he conceded. He sighed, a deep sigh. “But I really wanted to. See all of Europe, Asia.”
“Just because you get married doesn’t mean you can’t travel.”
“It does. You get married. Have kids. Suddenly twenty years go by and you’ve been nowhere but the Dells.”
Emily laughed. “Come on.”
“I did get a master’s degree in wealth management, and I did finally buy a house two years ago.”
“Good for you. At least you didn’t dump poor Lorelei for nothing.”
“I didn’t dump her. It was mutual. Plus she did all right for herself, married some kind of multi-millionaire from Minnesota.”
“I’m sure she still thinks of you as the one who got away.”
He shook his head. “I doubt she’s thought of me since.”
“What’s the deal with buying a house on your own anyway?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just something on my list to be checked off.”
“So you’re ready now?”
His head wobbled indecisively. “I guess.”
“So what about the last Laura? If you’re ready for marriage now . . ."
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think it was a mistake breaking up with her. I just didn’t feel quite ready for family life.”
“Maybe you’ve gotten so used to not being ready, you don’t know what being ready feels like.”
“Maybe.”
“How about the other girl? You said there were four. Who’s the other one?”
“Yeah, Nora. She came after Lorelei.”
“Come on. Lora, Lorelei, Nora, Laura. Really?”
“God’s honest truth.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “What’s Nora’s story? When did she start asking about marriage?”
He shot her a side glance. “You think you have me all figured out, don’t you?”
“Let’s see. Mark dates girl. Girl mentions marriage. Mark breaks up with girl. How’s that?”
“It’s much more complicated.”
“I’m sure. So what happened with Nora?”
“She died.”
“What?! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“I’m kidding. She didn’t die.”
She punched him in the arm. Hard. “Ouch. Geez. What happened to ‘First do no harm,’ doc?”
“That’s only when you want to help someone. I felt really bad, I thought she had died.”
“You sure turn quickly.”
“I’m emotionally nimble.”
“Right.” He laughed. “So Nora. I met Nora when I worked at a financial planning firm, and then later she became my second client when I struck out on my own.”
“So she’s wealthy?”
“Not exactly wealthy, no. She had inherited a fair sum from her grandparents and she needed assistance with financial planning.”
“Isn’t there a code of conduct about dating your clients?”
“You serious?”
“No.”
“Well there should be because she was my first client to leave—in fact, she’s the only client who’s ever left me.”
“So what happened between you?”
“In a nutshell—case!”
“Case? Huh?” she asked, confused.
“Nutcase—she was a hypochondriac.”
“Oh. So you dumped her instead of helping her get over it?”
He turned to her with pressed lips. “Please. There was no helping her. She’d exaggerate every little ailment. A dull headache was brain cancer, a sharp one was an aneurysm, a sneeze was pneumonia, a stomach ache was—I can’t remember.”
“Crohn’s disease.”
“Yes! The internet sucks when you’re involved with a hypochondriac. They’ll find any and every disease and convince themselves they have it.”
“Ha! Try being a doctor. And it’s not just hypochondriacs. Everyone’s an expert because they read some obscure blogger who lives in his parents’ basement.”
“I can imagine it’s bad. Anyway, Nora would often say, ‘I’m going to die before I ever get married.’ That was her passive-aggressive way.”
“How long did it last with her?”
“Six months, though we got back together a few months later. I had forgotten how bad it was. But that only lasted a month. Not even. I couldn’t take it.”
“She must have had some redeeming qualities.”
“She did, for sure. She was kind when she wasn’t pretending to be sick.”
“Pretty?”
“Yes. But that’s not what attracted me to her, or at least, that’s not what kept my interest.”
“I knew it.”
“Personality is much more important to me. How about you and Dr. Jimbo?”
She shook her head. “What? What about him?”
“Would you be considering staying in Manistique if he weren’t there?”
“Honestly? No.”
Mark was taken aback by the quick admission. “Really?”
“First off, it’s nice to be wanted at a place where your help is truly needed. And second—never mind. It’s none of your business.”
“Em and Jimbo sitting in a tree . . ."
She sighed. “How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
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