Author: Kristan Higgins

“Yes.”

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” asked the aide sourly. Thin, chin-length blond hair with an inch and a half of black roots framed a plain, worn-looking face. She had a truck driver’s build—beer belly, big, strong-looking arms and pink-rimmed eyes.

“Uh, no, sorry…you look familiar, but I can’t think of your name,” I said awkwardly.

“Stephanie Petrucelli,” she answered, irritated that I hadn’t placed her. “We went to Nauset High together.”

Oh, yes! One of the rougher girls in my class, tattooed, bullying, large-pored. An image of freshman Spanish class came to me, Stephanie snickering loudly as I tried gamely to imitate our teacher’s accent. Memories of her waiting ominously for me in the bus line. Mocking me at the tenth-grade dance. Laughing as I barfed on the bus. Though she had never actually made good on her threats to beat me up, she had terrorized me nonetheless. Stephanie had been one of those less-gifted students who had hated everyone smarter than she was. And that was a lot of people.

“I remember now,” I said, neutrally assessing her appearance. The years had not been kind.

“I heard you were a doctor,” she said, sneering.

“That’s right.”

“So what are you doing here? Dr. Whitaker’s our doc.”

“I think I’ve already told you,” I answered snippily—amazing how quickly old resentments flare up. “I’ll be covering for him on Thursdays.”

“Oh. So. What do you want?”

“How about the charts on his patients?” I asked.

“Fine. Go down that hall to the nurses’ station. The charts are all there.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Enjoy your show.” She scowled, and I hid a smile.

I walked down the hall, aware again that Joe Carpenter was somewhere in the building, and discreetly fluffed the chronically flat part of my hair. At the nurses’ station, I introduced myself to the other staffers, only one of whom was a nurse, and spent about an hour going over charts. Most of the patients suffered from fairly standard senior-citizen complaints: coronary or vascular disease, Alzheimer’s, stroke, diabetes.

Dr. Whitaker examined each patient at least twice a month, some as often as once a week. He was meticulous in his notes, his handwriting uncharacteristically neat. He’d left a list of patients to examine today and had given me some background information on each of them, which I appreciated immensely.

The first patient was Mrs. Delmonico, who suffered from morbid obesity and insulin-dependent diabetes. I chatted with her for a few minutes before starting the exam, congratulating her on her newest great-grandchild. She had a shallow ulcer as a result of her poor circulation, and I changed the dressing and wrote orders for whirlpool therapy. Next came Mrs. Walker, a dementia patient who was nonverbal and thin but otherwise seemed to be in good health. I checked her Aricept dose and asked the nurse about art or pet therapy for her, something that seemed to work well with Alzheimer’s patients. Mr. Hughes, the father of one of my childhood friends, was ornery, itching to go home after a long recovery from peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix. I told him that I would talk with Dr. Whitaker about discharge and asked after Sandy, his daughter. He then apologized sheepishly for his bad temper and told me he couldn’t believe I was old enough to be a doctor.

It was wonderful. This was exactly what I wanted to do with my life. And then came Mr. Glover…

Stephanie helped him down the hall to the tiny exam room. Only slightly stooped, he looked pretty hale, actually. Rather dashing in a way, with a white mustache and nicely ironed cotton shirt under a blue cardigan.

“Hi, Mr. Glover,” I said with a smile.

“This is Dr. Barnes,” Stephanie said in a clear, precise voice. “She’s helping Dr. Whitaker. Is it okay if she checks you out?”

Mr. Glover looked at me, nodded and got onto the exam table without too much difficulty.

“Great!” Stephanie smiled as she left. I guess I’d been too harsh on her before. She clearly had a way with the old folks, and as for the work she did, well, you couldn’t pay her enough.

“I’m just going to listen to your heart, okay, Mr. Glover?” I asked. He didn’t answer, but smiled sweetly. I pressed the stethoscope against his chest and listened to the blood rushing through his ventricles. Faint but regular. Blood pressure excellent. I tapped on his back to auscultate his lungs, then checked his pupils for reactivity.

“Everything seems great,” I said. “How are you feeling, Mr. Glover? Any complaints?”

“I feel rather hard,” he said, gazing at me with a lovely smile.

“Pardon me?” I asked.

“I’m rather hard,” he repeated.

I glanced at his lap, not quite sure if that was the hardness he meant. It was.

“Um…” I stalled, not sure if he was giving me a real complaint. After all, involuntary tumescence was a legitimate medical—

“Care to take a look?” he asked pleasantly. His gaze dropped to my chest, and he casually reached for my breast, arthritic fingers outstretched.

“Hey! No! None of that, Mr. Glover!” I stepped back quickly, bumping into the scale. “Uh, I think you might want to talk to Dr. Whitaker if you think—” Sometimes dementia results in inappropriate sexual impulses, my brain recited. It would have been nice if Dr. Whitaker had mentioned this in his meticulous notes—

Suddenly, Mr. Glover grabbed me by the waist and yanked me closer, wrapping his skinny legs around mine, pinning my arms at my sides, and lay his head on my chest.

“No, Mr. Glover! Please let go!” I tried to sound authoritative. It had no effect. I wriggled a little, trying to free my arms. He gave a happy moan and rubbed against me.

“Hey! Stop it!” I said, more loudly. “Mr. Glover, please!” Though he weighed no more than one hundred and fifty pounds, he was wiry. And humming. “Mr. Glover, please let go. Right now. This is very inappropriate.” I tried to twist away, which only seemed to excite him more. He giggled. Shit! I was the doctor, which meant I couldn’t exactly knee him in the groin. “Mr. Glover!” My mind raced furiously, trying to think of how we’d been taught to handle this sort of thing in med school. Call Security was the best I could come up with.

My patient began to sing softly. “I saw her today at the recep-tion…”

“Mr. Glover, stop this right now! I mean it!” I managed to liberate my left arm, and gave him a tentative shove, trying to extricate myself without breaking his brittle bones. He didn’t notice. Wincing, I tentatively pulled on a wispy strand of his thin white hair. The Hippocratic oath echoed in my mind. First, do no harm. Mr. Glover didn’t notice, his song continuing, “At her feet was…a footloose ma-an…”

There was drool on my new sweater. Enough! “Excuse me!” I yelled. “I need some help in here!”

I heard footsteps squeaking down the corridor, and in came Stephanie, looking ever so pleased to see me in Mr. Glover’s python grip. And right behind her stood Joe Carpenter. Of course.

“Is there a problem, Doctor?” Stephanie asked innocently.

“You can’t always get what you wa-ant,” Mr. Glover crooned.

“Give me a hand here,” I ground out.

“Oh, Mr. Glover, you know you shouldn’t be doing that,” Stephanie said calmly. She pried his hands off me and calmly unwound him from my waist. I took a step back and tried not to shudder. Straightening my sweater, knowing my face was beet-red, I retrieved my stethoscope, which had fallen during the unorthodox exam. Joe looked on in amusement.

“Hey, Millie. You okay?” he said, not unkindly.

“Oh, sure, you know, just getting to know the clients here,” I babbled. “Quite intimately, in fact.” Not too bad for a woman with an octogenarian’s saliva on her chest. Joe smiled.

“So sorry, Dr. Barnes,” Stephanie said smirking as she helped Mr. Glover off the table. “Are you all finished here?”

“Um, yes. Thanks, Stephanie.” She gave me an evil smile and led Mr. Glover from the room.

“Goodbye, my dear,” he said, waving. “Thank you!”

“Uh, bye, Mr. Glover,” I answered. To Joe I said, “To think, I get to do this every week.”

“Oh, yeah? Are you working here?” Joe asked with his accident-causing smile. Finally, the reality of his presence rocketed into my nervous system, and warmth filled my body. God, his golden lashes were so long.

“Filling in for Dr. Whitaker,” I answered, sounding a little breathy. “Today was my first day. What a wacky thing to happen. Old coot.” We walked down the hall together, and I remembered to feign astonishment at his presence at OCSC. “But what are you doing here, Joe?” I peeked up at his glorious cheekbones.

“I’m doing some work here, didn’t you know?” He gave me a sideways grin, and my loins fired up.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Didn’t you see my truck in the parking lot? I thought I saw you park behind me.” He pointed out the window to the parking lot, where my car was practically mounting his truck.

“Oh, of course!” I said, blushing. “Stupid of me,” I muttered.

“Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you around, huh, Millie?” He smiled again, and I forgot my stupidity.

“You bet, Joe. Take care. And thanks!”

I watched him walk away. The view was magnificent. And the plan was working.

CHAPTER SIX

ON APRIL FOOL’S DAY, I began work at the Cape Cod Walk-In Clinic. It was a small facility in Wellfleet, located right on Route 6, in a little strip mall with ample parking. Our neighbors were a T-shirt-and-gift shop, a video/liquor store and a take-out fried-seafood place. I would have to be wary of that last one.

I would be working at the clinic full-time, though my hours would vary. It was up to the other doctor and me to split the time as we liked; we would each cover a shift. The clinic was open from eight in the morning to ten at night, so even the late shift wasn’t too bad. We’d have a nurse and an administrative assistant for the day shift; after six, it would just be the doc and a temp to fill out paperwork and deal with the phones. A nurse would be on call if things got really busy. With any real emergencies or critically ill cases, we’d ship the patients down to Hyannis. Aside from basic X-ray and ultrasound equipment and an electrocardiograph, we were pretty much bare bones.

I hadn’t met the other doc yet but was looking forward to it. I had made some really good friends during my residency, but the closest one was in Dorchester, where she worked at an inner-city hospital. Hopefully my fellow clinic doctor would become a buddy, too.

The Cape Cod Walk-In Clinic was furnished in the same generic, soulless design of thousands of doctors’ offices. The waiting room featured bland blue chairs, six in all, covered in nubby, uncomfortable fabric. Sand-colored carpeting. Blurry floral prints on the walls to soothe our patients’ strained nerves. Punishing fluorescent lights to agitate said nerves. Coffee table with fake plant on it. Children’s corner, with cardboard box of cast-off toys. Counter where patient must stand and be ignored by receptionist for at least three minutes before being acknowledged. (That actually isn’t protocol…it’s just something I’ve noticed.) And beyond the counter, two exam rooms, the X-ray area and an office. Could have been on the Cape, could have been in Arizona.

We weren’t actually open for business today; it was more of an orientation. As Cape Cod Hospital officially ran the clinic, a representative was there to fill us in on paperwork, procedure and protocol. The three Ps, as she’d said brightly on the phone. The other employees were already seated.

“You must be Dr. Barnes,” an attractive woman in her forties greeted me, extending her hand. “I’m Juanita Ortiz from the hospital. We spoke on the phone.”