He smiled. “Vintage Sarah. ‘Matthew, we open a lemonade stand. Five cents a glass. By the end of summer…’”
She sat back, folded her arms and glared at him. “You can make light of it, but I’m serious. Research shows that patients who can’t get to the doctor regularly are more likely to wait until they’re really bad off, then call an ambulance. And what does that mean? Huge emergency-room costs, hospital-room costs and everything that goes with a prolonged illness. People out on the end of the peninsula—laid-off mill workers, single mothers—some of them qualify for welfare, some don’t. But they can’t get into town to see a doctor and even if they do, they can’t afford the charges. Debbi’s just one of many.”
He carefully picked the foil off a pat of butter, then sliced open a biscuit. “Okay, let me just say something. I’ve had a brutal couple of days, I desperately need an uninterrupted night’s sleep so if you’re about to make another pitch, you’ve picked the wrong time. Again.”
“I’ve asked you already, Matthew, and you’ve made your feelings pretty clear. You’re obviously exhausted. Something clearly has to give and you think CMS is the answer. Fine. Maybe you’ll enjoy practicing in an environment where the real focus is money. Go for it. I’m just looking out for Alli Kennedy’s interests.”
He spread butter on the biscuit, set the knife down and then, as though deciding he wasn’t hungry after all, pushed the plate away and stood. “If you need to consult with me on Alli Kennedy’s care,” he said in a flat, expressionless voice, “I promise to honor your request.” He reached for the tray, started across the room. “See you around, Sarah.”
“Matthew.” She got up, followed him across the cafeteria as he loaded his tray onto a conveyor belt. “Wait. Just talk to me for a minute.”
He shook his head. “You got what you came for, now just go. Okay? Take your ideals and your sermonizing and your absolute convictions and peddle them somewhere else.”
She stood there for a moment, watching his back as he walked down the corridor, not quite believing what had just happened. Then she raised her chin and walked out of the hospital into the cool air.
The hell with him anyway.
“…AND THEN SHE ACCUSED ME of being more interested in money,” Matthew was telling his friend Roger Evans as they finished a bottle of Chianti over dinner the following night. “According to her, I’ve completely sold my soul to corporate medicine and, all in all, I’m a pretty poor excuse for a physician.”
Roger laughed. A successful pediatrician with a practice in a Los Angeles suburb, he was visiting his adult daughter who now lived in Port Hamilton. Over antipasto, Matthew had filled him in on the Compassionate Medical Systems saga and segued into Sarah as they started on the lasagna.
“Who is this woman?”
“We grew up together,” Matthew said. “She’s two years younger than me and, as kids at least, she looked up to me.” He grinned. “Although she’d choke if she heard me say that. She influenced me to go into medicine. Her parents and grandparents were doctors. We used to have all these high-flying ideas…”
“Didn’t we all?”
“But Sarah never got over hers. She’s just returned from Central America and now she’s got some plan to start her own practice. Integrative medicine and house calls.”
Roger looked amused. “Good luck.”
“If anyone can make it work, Sarah can.” Matthew pulled a slice of garlic bread out of the bread basket, bit into it and tried to recall the last time he’d had dinner at a restaurant with anyone but Lucy. “She asked me to go in with her, but…” He shrugged. “I’ve got a daughter. Upkeep. I hope she succeeds, but…”
“It’s a long shot.” Roger signaled to the waiter for more wine. “So, this woman—”
“Sarah. Strictly friends,” he said, anticipating Roger’s question. “Although, I don’t know. Sometimes I look at her and wonder.”
“Attractive?”
“In an offbeat sort of way. The odd thing is I know her so well on one level and yet she’s this complete mystery to me.”
Roger grinned. “Always fun solving mysteries.”
“Yeah, I guess. These days though, I hardly have time to figure out my own life, let alone try to figure out what makes Sarah tick.”
“Probably what you need,” Roger said after the waiter had brought the wine, “is a simple, uncomplicated woman who looks at you adoringly and is good in bed.”
Matthew laughed. “If you come across one, introduce me.”
But long after he’d gone to bed that night, Matthew was still awake thinking. His relationship with Elizabeth had once seemed less complicated and sex had never been anything to complain about, but Sarah had always been there, on the edge of his consciousness. When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed about her standing on the beach, enveloped in fog just as she’d been that day on Agate Beach.
A CANVAS SATCHEL slung over one shoulder, Sarah rode her bike through town to her appointment with the Realtor to look at office space. If this all came through, she reflected, she would need to buy a car. Maybe a truck. The west end of the peninsula where most of her patients would probably live was too far to go by bike. The wind bit her face, blowing through the wool of the hat she’d jammed on as she left the apartment. It had rained during the night, a late spring storm that frosted the Olympics a sparkling sugar white—and made her think of Matthew. Of skiing down the mountain with Matthew years ago when anything seemed possible.
Everything made her think of Matthew.
At the east end of Port Hamilton, the highway split into two one-way streets. First Street ran through town. Front Street skirted the shore, before it headed west and, ultimately, off the peninsula. The day after the fight with Matthew in the hospital cafeteria, she’d seriously considered packing up and taking the road west.
Elizabeth had dissuaded her.
“So you had a fight?” Elizabeth had said. “And now you’re going to let him chase you out of town? Sarah, he’s always been smug and self-satisfied. Okay, okay, you didn’t call him that, I did. But, listen to me. People are looking to you for an alternative. You can’t let them down.”
The next day she and Elizabeth had cleared off Sarah’s kitchen table and begun a list of things they needed to take care of.
1) Location.
2) Patients.
3) Supplies and equipment.
Still, she missed Matthew. Thought about Matthew. Endlessly. Later, back at her apartment, she picked up the phone to call him. I’m sorry. I said things I shouldn’t have. Dammit. She set the phone down. What had she really said that required an apology? She took a bubble bath. Cucumber melon to soothe the troubled soul. Except that it didn’t. She climbed out of the tub, dried off. The doorbell rang. She grabbed the yellow terry-cloth robe from the hook on the back of the bathroom door and pulled it on. Her hair was wet, and water trickled down her back as she opened the front door.
“Even in Port Hamilton,” Matthew said, “you should check before you open the door at night.”
With one hand, Sarah lifted the hair off her neck for a moment. He’d come straight from the hospital, a parka thrown over his scrubs. Blue eyes, heartbreakingly blue like water in sunlight. She swallowed. “Lucky for you I didn’t check.”
“Can I come in?”
She stepped aside, then closed the door behind him.
“I can’t stand being angry at you,” he said.
“I don’t like it much, either.” Her arms were folded across her chest. She unfolded them, stuck her hands into the pockets of her robe. “Being mad at you.”
“So—” he put his hands on her shoulders “—what are we going to do about it?”
“Don’t know.” She could hardly breathe. She felt the warmth of his hands through her robe, her body, naked, beneath it. He was so close. “Maybe we need to talk?”
He smiled. “Talking seems to get us into trouble.”
She lifted her hands to cover his, to feel his skin against her
own and then she moved toward him, or maybe it was the other way around, but they were holding each other and kissing, her mouth so hard against his that she felt his teeth. When she finally pulled away, she wanted to laugh but thought she might burst into tears instead.
“Why did this take so long?” Matthew, still wearing his parka, asked after they’d moved to the couch.
“I don’t know.” Feet curled up under her, Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off his face. It was the Matthew she’d always known, but an altogether different Matthew that she hardly knew. “It wouldn’t have if I’d had my way.”
He frowned.
“Matthew, I think I’ve always been nuts about you. I probably had a crush on you from when I was about ten—”
“You had a crush on me?”
She smiled. “Don’t look so pleased with yourself. I was a dumb kid.”
“Am I looking pleased with myself?”
“Very.”
“I didn’t realize that.” He adopted a theatrically solemn expression. “All I can say is that if you had a crush on me, you certainly hid it very well. Mostly, I had the feeling you just wanted to prove that you could do anything better than me.”
“And I could,” she shot back.
“No.” He shook his head. “I could arm wrestle you—”
“Well, there was that. You were three years older and on the football team, for God’s sake.”
“But you mispronounced paradigm,” he said in a low voice, “I did not.”
“Yes, you did. You pronounced it paradijum.”
“You didn’t even know what it meant.”
“Before I mention the time you said, without a shadow of doubt, that Tasmania was an island off the coast of England—”
“Maybe that’s what happened,” she said. “We’ve always had a competition going on. Like at the hospital. I feel this need to prove that my way is right and you—”
“No.” He shook his head. “Maybe when we were kids. But that stuff at the hospital had nothing to do with me wanting to prove something about Compassionate Medical Systems. It’s not what I’d be doing if…” He shook his head, his expression suddenly weary. “Let’s not get into all that again, Sarah. Okay?”
She nodded, reached over to stroke his hair. “I’m glad you came by. I’ve missed you. A lot.”
“How come you never…I mean, most women give off clues that they’re attracted, but you…” He leaned his head against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. “I always had the feeling that if I’d made a move you’d have hauled off and hit me.”
Sarah ran her finger under the elasticized cuff of his parka. “Maybe it was self-preservation. Maybe I was scared you’d reject me.” He pulled her onto his lap and they kissed again. She felt the robe coming apart as they moved and, in a fleeting moment of sanity, decided that as much as she wanted to make love to Matthew, tonight wouldn’t be the night. Things were happening too fast. She slid off his lap. Ironic, really, since they had taken a lifetime to progress to this point. Glancing at the small travel clock on top of the stereo, she saw that it was after midnight.
“Lucy’s in a play,” he said impulsively. “She’s a fortune-teller. Clare Voyant. Which reminds me, I’m supposed to go buy her some tarot cards.”
“I have some,” she said.
“You have tarot cards?”
“I have a superstitious streak that I don’t talk about.”
“Tomorrow’s opening night. Want to go with me?”
“Maybe she’d rather have you to herself.”
“Of course,” he said, feigning dismay. “How stupid of me. I wouldn’t have figured that out by myself. Okay, I take back the invitation.”
“Stop.”
“You want to go, or not?”
“I want to go.”
He smiled. “See how simple that was?”
CHAPTER TEN
BUT INVITING SARAH TO THE PLAY hadn’t been such a great idea after all, Matthew realized. He was feeling beleaguered. First Elizabeth had given him a hard time for not consulting Lucy before extending the invitation—then Pearl, now Lucy herself. He’d picked her up from school and, as they were driving back to his condo, he’d casually mentioned it, confident that Lucy, unlike her mother and grandmother, wouldn’t consider him some sort of insensitive clod who didn’t understand the first thing about women.
Wrong.
“It’s my play.” Lucy folded her arms across her chest, her eyes fixed on the windshield. “I think I should be allowed to say who can come or not.”
“So you personally invited everyone in the audience?” Matthew shot back, then immediately wanted to retract the words. She’s a fourteen-year-old kid. “Lucy, I don’t understand the big deal,” he said slowly. “Sarah’s just a friend—”
“Girlfriend,” she spit out. “Fine. Take her, I don’t care.”
He made an impromptu, conciliatory stop at the Buzz where Lucy loved the homemade blackberry ice cream. “Come on.” He caught her by the arm. “Let’s go get a cone.”
Inside, they sat at small iron tables in the window alcove and Lucy brightened a little. As he ate his ice cream, he attempted to sort things out in his own mind. Sarah was a friend, had always been a friend. He loved her as a friend. But was Lucy right in calling Sarah a girlfriend? Maybe not at the moment, but at some point?
Maybe.
“You’re always talking about stuff you used to do,” Lucy said after they’d sat in silence for a while. “Like in the car going to that dumb beach thing. ‘Oh,
Sarah,’” she mimicked his voice, “‘Remember this?
Oh. Matthew—’” high pitched now “‘—remember that. Oh, wasn’t it so fun?’” She glared at him. “How d’you think that made me feel? Like I wasn’t even there.”
“Lucy, that’s…” Frustrated, he shook his head. He’d been about to dismiss it as silly, but it clearly wasn’t silly to his daughter who, he could see, was on the verge of tears again. “Look, sweetheart, I know this play is very important to you, so if it’s going to upset you for me to bring Sarah, I won’t.”
She eyed him through her tears. “But you asked her.”
“She’ll understand.”
She managed a tremulous smile. “She won’t be mad?”
“No.” Matthew felt his heart drop at the thought of breaking the news to Sarah. “She’ll understand,” he repeated.
SARAH SPENT the afternoon getting ready to go to Lucy’s play.
She took a bubble bath, considerably more relaxing than the one she’d taken the night before, played Bizet on the stereo. After drying herself, she even painted her toenails then tried on clothes for the better part of an hour.
Attractive but not trying too hard—that was the look she wanted. At the mirror over the bathroom cabinet—the only mirror in the apartment, in fact—she considered her hair. Released from the braid, it came all the way down her back and the truth was, she was sick of it. Maybe she would call Debbi. Make an appointment to cut it all off. But not today, she decided.
In the bedroom, she kicked off her jeans and began pulling clothes from the closet. Discarding combinations, hating everything. It was as though three other people sat on the bed delivering commentary.
Elizabeth shook her head. “That drains your color.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “What color you have.”
Lucy smirked. “That’s kind of old-fashioned.”
“That one should have stayed in the jungle.” Rose again.
“Not bad, but not with that skirt.” Elizabeth.
Sarah banished them all from the room. This was ridiculous. Not just that her wardrobe was limited, but that it mattered. She was a forty-two-year-old woman. A physician. Without a practice, without a patient, but a physician nevertheless. And she was getting ready to spend the evening with a man she’d known forever. Matthew. Her old friend Matthew.
Matthew, the father of a fourteen-year-old girl who hated her.
She sat on the bed and, witho
ut even thinking about what she was doing, picked up a pen from the bedside table. On the back of a grocery list, also on the table, she started a list of reasons she should halt this relationship before it went any further.
Number One, she wrote.
Not stepmother material.
She scratched out the words, crumpled the paper and tossed it in the trash. Maybe she was projecting just a tad? In the kitchen, she got a soda from the fridge, drank some and carried it over to the computer and immediately forgot everything else. Google had turned up several more articles on physicians who made house calls, mostly in rural areas like Port Hamilton. When the doorbell rang, she glanced at her watch, thinking at first that the time had gotten away from her and it was Matthew. But he’d said six.
She opened the front door. Matthew stood there, an expression on his face she couldn’t quite read. “You’re a little early,” she said.
“I know.”
“Couldn’t stay away, huh?” She closed the door behind him and he followed her into the living room. He looked uncomfortable. Constrained somehow. “Have a seat.” She gestured at the couch. “What’s up?”
He scratched the back of his head. “I have to…disinvite you to the play,” he said, the words all coming out on a breath. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I was looking forward to this. It’s Lucy. I told her you were coming and she got bent out of shape. Maybe I shouldn’t have caved in to her, but it’s her play and…” He looked at her. “I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”
“Hey.” She curled her feet up under her. Even if going to the play meant more than anything else in the world—and it didn’t—the look of sheer misery on Matthew’s face was enough to convince her that it wasn’t that important after all. “It’s okay, really.” He still seemed miserable and not entirely convinced so she scooted next to him and stuck her face under his. “Boo.”
He smiled. “You’re not angry?”
“Furious. Leave and never darken my door again.”
Baby Doctors Page 9