Baby Doctors

by Janice Macdonald

  “Sarah.” The nurse stopped in her tracks. “Wow. When did you get back?”

  “Betsy.” Her archenemy in high school. She was a good fifty pounds heavier than Sarah remembered. “Hi.”

  Betsy’s smile faded. “I’m sorry about your husband. I read about it in the paper, and then I saw your mother and she told me. What a tragedy, huh?”

  “Thanks.” Frozen, feeling awkward by the sympathy she saw in Betsy’s eyes, Sarah struggled for the right thing to say. “Anyway, I’m…I have to go so—”

  “Well, hey, it’s great to see you again.” She hugged Sarah, then pulled back to look at her. “Listen, I know it’s got to be tough. If you ever need to talk to someone, call me. I’m in the phone book. My last name’s Becker now. I married Vinny. Remember him?”

  She would be okay, Sarah thought as she continued on. Once she was working again, seeing patients, getting back into the swing of things. She would find a place to live, no matter how much Rose begged her to move back home. She would feel strong and whole again, discover a place where the sympathy and pity, no matter how well intended, would no longer make her want to crawl into a hole and hide.

  MATTHEW WAS BACK in his office when his secretary put a call through from his daughter reminding him that the school play was at seven and if he didn’t want her to hate him for the rest of her life, he’d better be there.

  One elbow on the desk, chin propped in his hand, Matthew studied the framed picture of her—one of many that filled his office—and grinned. Lucy was fourteen, a budding actress and, although she was always listing ways in which he wasn’t the perfect father she felt entitled to, he loved her as much as any father possibly could. The prospect of having more free time to spend with her was one of the more compelling reasons to join CMS.

  “I’m supposed to have tarot cards,” Lucy said. “Mom said she’d pick some up, but she forgot. Could you get some for me? Please?” she added in her wheedling voice. “I really, really need them.”

  Remembering she was a Gypsy in the play, he asked, “Something to do with fortune-telling?”

  “They tell you stuff that happened and what’s going to happen in the future. You spread them out in a cross and then you read them. Listen, I’ve got to go. Don’t forget them, okay?”

  “I won’t,” Matthew said. After he hung up, the receptionist—she was very new, very young, and he could never remember her name—stuck her head around the door.

  “This lady came in to see you. She left a note, but—” she gestured to his desk, piled high with papers and journals and more than a few empty coffee cups “—I thought you might miss it. It’s on the back of that Safeway receipt right there.”

  “Thanks.” Matthew picked up the receipt and glanced at the back.

  He saw the familiar scrawl and laughed.

  The note read: “So where the hell were you at four o’clock this afternoon anyway?”

  No signature. It wasn’t necessary.

  Sarah.

  BY THE TIME she left the hospital and walked back into town, it was not quite eleven, too early for lunch. With nothing more pressing to do, Sarah decided to stop by Curly Q. Maybe work up the nerve to get her hair all lopped off and learn a little more about Debbi and Curt’s magical medicinal garden.

  The blonde who checked her in wore heart-shaped earrings and a diamond in her left nostril. The entire shop was awash in red paper hearts. Up the walls, around mirrors and across the top of the reception desk, where they competed with a massive arrangement of red balloons bobbing amidst pink carnations.

  “Must be Saint Patrick’s Day,” Sarah joked.

  The girl gave her a long look. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

  Sarah smiled. “I wondered if Debbi is available.”

  The blonde regarded Sarah doubtfully. “Are you a client of hers?”

  “Not yet.”

  Moments later she was escorted to a chair at the far end of the room and seated before a mirror. A towel was draped around her shoulders. Debbi would be with her in a few minutes, she was told. A blond stylist to Sarah’s left, in red jeans and a fluffy white sweater, was telling a customer that Valentine’s Day was the sole reason more babies were born in November than in any other month. To her right, the topic was those clueless types who walk into restaurants on Valentine’s Day without reservations expecting to get a table. “That’s my husband,” someone said. “We’re going to end up eating pizza tonight, just like we did last year.”

  Sarah had the strange sensation that she’d landed from some distant planet. Was an aversion to beauty shops genetic or learned, she wondered. Maybe both. Her mother had once calculated the time and money saved over a ten-year span by wearing her own long, untrimmed hair in a knot at the nape of her neck and allowing it to turn iron-gray

  Debbi smiled when she saw Sarah. “I didn’t think you’d really come by. I thought you were just being polite.” In the mirror, her face above Sarah’s was round and doll-like, smooth pink skin framed by a dark shiny bob. Her own face looked angular, Sarah thought, her skin tanned but on the verge of leathery. She felt a tug of guilt for neglecting it. Maybe Debbi had something for rejuvenating forty-two-year-old faces.

  “Wow, how long did this take to grow?” Debbi asked, lifting the heavy braid.

  “Forever. I keep thinking I want to do something different, but I don’t like messing around with it. “

  Debbi’s lip jutted thoughtfully as she unbraided Sarah’s hair. “I could cut some layers into it. Maybe put in some highlights to give it body.” She made a few exploratory moves with the comb. “And you’ve got some gray.”

  “Cut it all off and dye it…fuchsia,” Sarah said, only half joking, then lost her nerve. “You know what? Just trim the ends.”

  “You don’t want me to cut a little more? Shoulder length would look good on you.”

  “A trim’s fine for now.” After Debbi had finished shampooing and escorted her back to the chair, Sarah spotted the row of pictures in Lucite frames on the narrow shelf beneath the mirror. Most were of a dark-eyed toddler with a mass of black curls. “Your little girl?”

  “Yeah.” Debbi smiled as she went to work with the scissors. “Alli. She’s two. The terrible twos they say.”

  “How is she?” Sarah asked, recalling Curt’s comment about an intestinal problem.

  “Pretty good. She gets a lot of tummy aches, but Curt said it’s because I feed her too much processed food. He’s so smart. He wanted to be a doctor, but he doesn’t have the patience to sit in a classroom all day. Plus he’s totally turned off to the way most doctors think.”

  “I got that impression,” Sarah said wryly.

  “He’s a really good dad. I mean, he loves Alli to death. But he’s got this idea that he can treat anything that comes up and sometimes it kind of worries me. It’s his way or the highway.” Debbi snipped the ends, then, brandishing a purple hair dryer, directed a blast of hot air at Sarah’s scalp. “There’s no in-between.”

  “That’s what I want to do,” Sarah said. “Provide the in-between. Conventional medicine doesn’t have all the answers, but alternative medicine can’t do everything, either. I want to have a practice that uses both approaches.”

  “Cool.” Debbi smiled. “When can I sign up?”

  “I’ve still got some things to work out. There’s another doctor, a pediatrician who’s a good friend of mine. We grew up together. He’d be perfect.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Sarah hesitated. “Well, I haven’t discussed it with him yet. We used to talk about this kind of thing years ago, but—”

  “There aren’t that many pediatricians in Port Hamilton anymore,” Debbie said. “It’s got to either be Dr. Cameron—”

  “Yep.”

  “He’s fantastic. I used to take Alli to see him. Until I met Curt.”

  Sarah felt a vague sense of misgiving.

  She watched Debbi try to turn a lock of wiry, recalcitrant hair into something resembling a curl and
wanted suddenly to be somewhere else. “Hey, listen, that’s fine. Really.”

  Debbi looked doubtful. “You’re sure? Want me to spray it?”

  “No.” Sarah stood. Her shoulders felt damp. She followed Debbi to the front of the shop. What did a haircut cost these days? She had no idea. She dug three twenties out of her purse, set them on the counter….

  “You need some good conditioner.” Debbi took two of the twenties to the cash register, and returned a ten and a five to Sarah. “The next time you come in, I’ll do a hot-oil treatment.”

  “Probably a good idea.” Sarah left the twenty and the five on the counter. “Good luck with your daughter,” she said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “CHOCOLATE CHIPS.” Lucy snapped her fingers, a surgeon demanding an instrument. “Butter. Two sticks.”

  “Coming up.” Matthew held out a bag of chips, semisweet, as she’d requested when she made the shopping list for him. He watched as she carefully measured flour into a bowl. Her long dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail, was dusted with flour. More flour had fallen like snow around her feet; a dusting of white covered the granite counter tiles.

  He couldn’t have been happier.

  “Want some music?” he asked.

  “Your kind or mine?”

  “Since I don’t think of that stuff you listen to as music, it would have to be mine. And if you’d really listen to the words, you’d realize the Eagles—”

  “Oh, Dad, no. Please. Not the Eagles.”

  He grinned and wrapped his arm around her shoulders in a quick hug. “Do you know how much I like having you here?”

  “No, but hum a few bars,” she said.

  “Old, old joke.”

  “I learned it from you.”

  “I guess that makes me an old, old guy then.” He pulled out one of the bentwood dining chairs, sat on it backward, his chin propped on the curved wood. “If I decide to go with the Seattle company that’s moving onto the peninsula,” he told her, “you could spend every Saturday with me.”

  “Do it,” she said.

  “Would you like that?”

  She beamed.

  He grinned back at her. Ultimately, it might not take much more persuasion than his daughter’s approval. “I’m thinking about it. It’s just…” The phone rang. “Hold on,” he told Lucy.

  “Pleeese, pleeeese, don’t let it be a boring old patient,” she muttered.

  He picked up the phone from its hook on the wall. “Hello.”

  “I have no pride,” a female voice said. “I leave you messages—”

  He burst out laughing. “Sarah!” No salutation, no polite preliminary chitchat. No acknowledgment that it had been fifteen years since they last spoke. “My God. You haven’t changed.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s nothing I can do about that,” she said. “By forty the character’s pretty well established. So anyway, I stopped by to see you—”

  “I know. Well, I was pretty sure it was you. I’d heard you were back. But the receptionist said a lady came by to see me and the lady part threw me.”

  Sarah laughed. Same old raucous laugh, somewhere between an engine starting and a gaggle of geese.

  “I ran into your mother in the cafeteria last week,” he said. “Almost literally. You know Rose, a hundred miles a minute. She said you were coming back. She seemed surprised that I didn’t know, but I reminded her that keeping in touch was never one of your priorities.”

  “Yeah, well…you know.”

  “Listen, before anything else, I’m so sorry about—Ted…”

  “Thanks. Me, too.”

  Something in her voice warned him to move on. “I want to see you,” he said. “Soon. Now. Damn it, I can’t…when are you available? What are your plans?” He could see Lucy in his peripheral vision; the wooden spoon in one hand had gone very still. “My daughter’s here with me,” he said. “Lucy. Fourteen going on thirty and about to set the theater world on fire.” Lucy flashed him a look over her shoulder and he winked at her. “And you didn’t hear this from me,” he stage-whispered, “but she’s a dead ringer for a young Elizabeth Taylor.”

  “She looks like her mother then,” Sarah said.

  An almost imperceptible change in her voice reminded him of the last time they’d exchanged anything more than polite formalities and he found himself at a loss for words. “Very much.”

  “Don’t you owe me a Frugal burger?” Sarah asked.

  “Frugals.” Smiling now, he leaned back against the wall. “Haven’t eaten one of those in years. I’m of the age where I have to think about cholesterol.”

  “We both are,” Sarah said. “But you still owe me a Frugals.”

  “Hold on.” He glanced at the calendar above the phone. “How about…tonight?”

  “Dress rehearsal, Daddy,” Lucy said. “Remember? You promised.”

  “Okay, tonight won’t work.” He scratched the back of his head. “I’m on call tomorrow night, but if we keep our fingers crossed that no one gets creamed on the 101 or mistakes their significant other for a shooting range, I could pay off my debt to you.”

  “Great,” Sarah said. “What time?”

  “Around six? I’ll pick you up.” He thought for a minute. “Guess I need to know where you’re staying. Your mother’s?”

  “Actually, I just rented an apartment,” Sarah said. “Yesterday. At the foot of Peabody, just above Front Street. The Seavu. I was walking back to my mother’s, saw the For Rent sign, called the landlord and moved right in. I’m still bringing boxes over from my mother’s.”

  He mentally located the place, a rambling multistory wooden building with fire escapes running up the sides and seagull droppings on the front steps.

  “You don’t mean the old hospital?”

  “Yep. I always wanted to live there. Especially after it became a place for shady ladies. Kind of appeals to the outcast in me.”

  He was still laughing when he hung up the phone.

  “That wasn’t very nice of you, Daddy,” Lucy said, her back to him.

  “What wasn’t very nice?”

  “What you said about people getting into accidents and getting shot at.”

  “Oh, honey,” he said, still thinking about Sarah, “it was just a joke.”

  “People dying is just a joke?”

  “Give me a break, Lulu,” he said. “How’re the cookies coming?”

  “They’re not.” She carried the pan to the sink. “Who was that, anyway?”

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE that out of all the places in Port Hamilton, you actually chose this,” Rose said when she dropped by to see the apartment. She stood in the middle of the tiny living room, gazing out through the window. “Nice view, though.”

  “Isn’t it?” Sarah stood beside her mother. Windows on this side looked out over the Straits of Juan de Fuca to the distant coast of British Columbia. From the bedroom, she could see the soaring Olympic Mountains, still covered with snow as they would be for much of the year. “Last night I watched the ferry until it disappeared out of sight.” She glanced at Rose. “Want some coffee?”

  “Sounds good,” Rose said. “I’m going to check out the rest of the place.”

  “Actually you could do it from where you’re standing,” Sarah said. “But go ahead.”

  She filled the coffeepot with water, took a package of muffins from a basket on top of the refrigerator, and stuck two of them in the toaster oven. On the battered three-burner stove was a blue enamel kettle. Above it, on a shelf she’d tacked up that morning, she’d filled a yellow jug with wooden spoons and whisks, a couple of candles and a wicker basket. Just looking at the arrangement pleased her. Amazing how much better she felt than this time yesterday. Hearing from Matthew was another part of it.

  She’d felt so terrific after talking to him that she’d thrown caution to the wind and gone on a shopping trip of sorts. At the Goodwill store, she’d found the coffeemaker, some floor pillows, a couple of rugs. Tomorrow, she would bring over t
he last boxes from Rose’s basement. Home. I’m home again, she thought. I have a home, she amended.

  “I see you’ve erected your tent,” Rose called from the bedroom. A moment later, she was back in the tiny kitchen. “I remember you making tents in your room when you were a child. You’d crawl inside, close the flaps and shut out the cruel, nasty world.”

  Sarah grinned. Her purchases had also included yards of pale gauzy fabric that she’d pinned on the walls and ceiling around her bed. It did feel rather tentlike, very cozy. Lying in bed last night, covered with quilts, she’d felt completely at peace.

  “Long-term lease?” Rose regarded Sarah over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses, strands of steel-gray hair already escaping from the knot at the back of her neck.

  “Just six months. I’d like it to have been longer, but apparently the building is up for sale. Actually, I’d like to buy it.”

  “Why not just enjoy it while you have it,” Rose said. “Enjoy it for what it is. A place to stay for now.”

  “Because I want…” To feel secure, she thought. She poured coffee into two mugs and spread the muffins with butter. In the fridge, she found the marmalade and blackberry jam she’d picked up from the farmer’s market.

  “I still don’t understand paying rent for a place when I’m rattling around in a house that’s far too big for me.” Rose spooned sugar into her coffee.

  Sarah said nothing. It was pointless to argue with Rose, cruel to voice what they both knew: living together would drive Sarah nuts because Rose was an exacting, demanding perfectionist given to dark, morose moods when things didn’t go her way. Sarah reluctantly conceded she’d inherited the trait herself and, so, found it doubly irritating to deal with in her mother. Ted had once suggested that everything she did was an attempt to prove she wasn’t like Rose. She’d fought him on that, told him he didn’t really know Rose. Later, she wondered if he really knew her.