Baby Doctors Read online

  “So what happened with you and Elizabeth?” Sarah broke the silence to ask.

  “Oh…” He considered the question. “We probably shouldn’t have got married in the first place. We’re very different. We tried to make things work, mostly because of Lucy, but it just didn’t happen. Sometimes you just have to face reality.” It might have been the moment to ask about her husband, but she felt closed off to him, contained.

  “Do you see a lot of her…Lucy?”

  “As much as I can. It was difficult for her after the divorce. I carried—carry—my share of guilt. You know how my childhood was. I swore I wouldn’t impose that on my own kids, but…”

  She smiled faintly. “I still can’t quite get used to the idea of you being a daddy. How did we get to be so old?”

  “Happens while you’re not looking,” Matthew said. “One minute you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, the next you’re middle-aged.”

  The fog had slowly rolled in as they spoke, obscuring the horizon and the distant pines on either side of where they sat. Through it, he could just make out Lucy’s red jacket as she walked toward them cupping something in her hands. He stood, reached for Sarah’s hand to pull her up.

  “Let’s go see what treasures Lucy has discovered.”

  But as they walked down to the water, Sarah stopped to examine a shell and he walked on alone. By the time he reached Lucy and turned back to look at Sarah, he could barely make her out in the drifting fog.

  “I WAS JUST THINKING about you,” Curt Hudelson said when Sarah stopped by his stall at the Saturday farmer’s market. “I went to an alternative-medicine seminar last week. Some of the things I heard there reminded me of your plan. What’s happening with it?”

  Sarah picked up a bunch of kale, feigned close inspection. “It…There’s been a set back.” She’d deliberately avoided Matthew in the week since the Colossal Fossil Failure, as she’d taken to thinking of it. “Someone I was hoping would be a key part of it isn’t interested.” She set the kale down, looked at Curt. “So now I’m doing some rethinking.”

  “Hold on.” He bagged some red potatoes the size of marbles, handed the bag over to a man in a cloth cap. “Steam them, then eat them with chopped parsley,” he said. “Good for the circulatory system.” He turned back to Sarah. “Rethinking what?”

  “The whole idea,” Sarah said before she’d had a chance to choose her words. “Maybe Port Hamilton isn’t really the place for it.”

  “You’re wrong.” Curt’s pale eyes gleamed. “Port Hamilton is exactly the place for it. It’s up to you and me—people who don’t believe big medicine has all the answers—to fight the cancer that’s spreading across the peninsula.”

  “Cancer?” Sarah fought back a grin. There was something almost evangelical about his fervor. Not difficult to imagine him in a preacher’s pulpit. “You wouldn’t be talking about Compassionate Medical Systems?”

  “Compassionate Medical Systems!” He almost spit the words. “Let’s see how compassionate they are when it comes to those who don’t have the money to pay. Down where Debbi and I live on the west end of the peninsula. People in trailers and manufactured homes. Men who used to work for the mill. My neighbor, for example. He lost his job, lost his home in town so he moved out where it’s cheaper, but he’s got no car, no money. I’ll be interested to see how compassionate the system is when guys like him drop by for a visit.”

  “Hey.” Debbi appeared at his side, smiled at Sarah then turned to Curt. “That woman with the bread stall needs help hauling boxes. I told her you’d go down and give her a hand.”

  “Off to do my Tarzan act.” He pantomimed a show of strength, then fixed Sarah with another of his laser-eyed looks. “Port Hamilton needs you. The world needs you,” he intoned theatrically.

  Debbi rolled her eyes after he left. “He can be kind of fanatical, in case you didn’t pick that up. I mean, he’s got some good ideas, but sometimes he’s over the top.” She hesitated, her tentative manner in dramatic contrast to Curt’s intensity. “I just made up that excuse to get rid of him, I wanted to talk to you alone. Do you have a minute?”

  Sarah stepped aside to allow a woman in a navy parka to inspect a basket of mushrooms. “Sure.”

  “I took Alli to the E.R. a few weeks ago. Dr. Cameron saw her. He said she needs tests to see if she has kidney disease, but Curt keeps telling me it’s just an allergy. I’m giving his herbal supplements another try, but…” She shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  Sarah nodded. She’d seen enough examples of the power of natural healing not to scoff at the idea, but if the child did have kidney disease, she was probably going to need more than herbal remedies.

  “I went to the library to look up stuff about kidney disease on the Internet. What really freaks me out is surgery. My mom died having surgery she didn’t need.”

  “Well, it might not come to that,” Sarah said. “That’s probably why Matt—Dr. Cameron—wants her to come in for tests. Just to make sure.”

  Debbi nodded. “But I’m also worried about the Compassionate Medical Systems thing—what Curt was talking about. I’m scared that if they get their hands on her, they’ll make me agree to surgery. Call me an unfit mother if I refuse.”

  “So,” Sarah pressed, trying to see where Debbi was headed, “you’re not completely comfortable with Curt’s plan, but you don’t entirely trust the alternative?”

  Debbi nodded, clearly relieved at being understood. “What you were saying to Curt about the kind of things you wanted to do. That’s what I want for Alli.”

  “You want me to have a look at her,” Sarah said, a statement rather than a question. She dug into her purse for a business card, scribbled a number on the back. “Look, I’m licensed to practice here in Washington.” She laughed. “I just don’t have a practice yet.” Or a place to practice, or equipment or a business plan. “Call me,” she told Debbi. “We’ll work something out.”

  “CURT IS DEFINITELY over the top,” Elizabeth agreed when Sarah recounted the exchange over coffee at Mombassa that afternoon. “Debbi used to be a waitress here and he’d come in and pick her up. She used to hide her inhaler at work because she needed it for her asthma, but Curt would have a fit if he saw her using it.”

  Sarah nodded, remembering the almost fanatical look in his eyes. “Too bad, because a lot of what he said made sense.” She stirred her coffee. “I think I might take on Debbi’s daughter as my first patient.”

  Elizabeth smiled broadly, clinked her coffee cup against Sarah’s. “Fantastic.” She leaned across the table. “This is so great, Sarah. Even though I thought Matthew should go with CMS, I was still disappointed because, well, he had all these ideals—”

  “He also had his reasons,” Sarah broke in, not wanting to hear Elizabeth echo her own accusation that Matthew had sold out. “Matthew still has ideals. He’s still a great doctor.” She picked up her coffee cup, then caught Elizabeth’s smirk. “And I’m not defending him because there’s anything going on between us—”

  “Damn,” Elizabeth said. “I’m disappointed.”

  “Don’t be. We’re friends. But back to my first patient. Here’s my plan. The new and revised version. I’ll set up the practice here in town, hang out a shingle—”

  “Where?”

  She smiled. “Haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “I can look around for you,” Elizabeth said. “In fact, if you need an office manager—correction, when you need an office manager, receptionist, general gofer—I’m officially applying for the job.”

  “You’ve got it,” Sarah said. “But don’t talk to me about salary, at least not yet.”

  “I’m not exactly rolling in the dough waiting tables.” Elizabeth dipped a piece of biscotti in her coffee. “I am so stoked that you want to do this, Sarah. I mean, it seems like everything is falling into place. I was telling some friends about you going to Central America and taking care of patients down there and they said that what they really need is a docto
r who would make house calls.”

  “House calls.” Sarah stared at her. “That could be the answer, at least for now.” She’d clipped an article from the Seattle Times just the week before about a physician in eastern Washington who’d decided to buck the trend and start an old-fashioned practice. No insurance companies—too time-consuming and it raises overhead—no paperwork. Strictly cash. And house calls. Maybe ten a week. Payment on the spot. The whole point was to keep the costs low and the services affordable. Her own version of that would include the integrated-medicine component. Deep in thought, she realized Elizabeth was watching her across the table. “What?”

  “I was thinking about money. I mean, these people don’t have any.”

  Sarah nodded, holding her mug in both hands, savoring the warmth. Spring had made a tentative appearance on the peninsula; daffodils bloomed in grassy roadside strips and pale green leaves covered tree branches, but the sun was deceptive and she inevitably ended up dressing too lightly for the weather. “I’m not in this to make a lot of money,” she said. “I saved a little while I was in Central America. My dad left me some. It’s enough to get started.”

  “When are you going to tell Matthew?” Elizabeth asked. “Or are you going to tell him?”

  “Don’t know,” Sarah said. “To either of those questions. Right now, I have a million other things to think about.”

  MATTHEW HAD BEEN PAGED to the E.R. at around midnight. At two in the morning he’d started for home, but the fog was so thick it all but obscured the streetlights, creating a ghostly aura that would have been great for Halloween, except that it was mid-March and more of the same was forecast.

  Socked-in fog was bad news on the peninsula.

  The night before, he’d decided it wasn’t worth going home and was napping on a couch in pediatrics when his beeper went off again. Car accident on 101, head injury. Fog had precluded flying the victim to Seattle.

  As he’d walked down to the E.R., he’d imagined a conversation with Sarah. “While your ideals are all very well, this gets old. With CMS, there would be a trauma surgeon on call. The fog wouldn’t be an issue.”

  But even as he’d worked up righteous indignation, he’d remembered her face after he’d dropped her off following the fossil trip. The same closed-off look, her voice with the same brittle quality.

  “She’s not very friendly,” Lucy had remarked.

  “You just have to get to know her,” he’d said.

  Now, thoughts of Lucy receding, he examined the young girl who lay drugged but conscious on a stretcher in the middle of the room, squinting against the bright overhead light. A nurse was adjusting the monitors that traced her heartbeat and respiration.

  Matthew leaned over so that the girl did not have to turn to see his face. Her eyes were open and she looked responsive and alert. An X-ray tech at one end of the room fitted a newly developed picture of the skull into a manila folder and placed it next to the chart on a steel table. On the floor lay a brown paper bag with the clothes she’d been wearing.

  After he’d examined her, he stepped out into the hallway to talk to the family and found them huddled in a corner of the waiting area across from the emergency room. Straight-backed chairs against cinderblock walls. Compassionate Medical Systems would have to be an improvement.

  He finished reassuring them about their daughter, grabbed a few hours’ sleep then, groggy and in need of coffee, he started down the corridor and ran into Sarah.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “YOU LOOK LIKE HELL,” she told him. It had been over a week since the trip to Agate Beach, a week absorbed in the million and one details of setting up a practice. Long days and sleepless nights and still she had to look very closely to determine that she’d actually made any progress. On the other hand, she’d been too preoccupied to obsess about her relationship, or lack thereof, with Matthew. But now, although she’d sought him out on strictly professional terms, his gaunt appearance and shadowed eyes produced a rush of feeling she hadn’t anticipated. “Seriously, are you okay?”

  “Slept here last night.” He ran his hand through his hair. “And the night before. I’m thinking of giving up my condo. Why do I need it?” He yawned. “What’s up?”

  “I need to talk to you about something.” His eyes looked tired but very blue. She took a step backward. “A patient of yours.”

  “Okay.” A moment’s hesitation. “I was headed for a bite. Want to join me?”

  “I’ll even buy,” she said.

  In the cafeteria, the woman dishing out scrambled eggs and biscuits did a double take when she saw Sarah. “Aren’t you Rose Benedict’s daughter?”

  “Yep. And you’re…” The woman, who had worked there for years, used to serve her up extra portions of hash browns when she’d come in with Rose. “Betty.”

  “You could have just read her name tag,” Matthew observed.

  “Don’t give him any food,” Sarah told Betty, relieved that despite his obvious fatigue Matthew’s sense of humor was still intact.

  “So what are you doing these days?” Betty asked.

  “Big plans in the works,” Sarah replied.

  “Sarah’s always working on something,” Matthew said. “Usually a way to improve the world.”

  “Too bad I haven’t had time to start on you,” Sarah shot back. He was fine, she decided.

  “I heard about your husband,” Betty said. “Sorry about that.”

  “Thanks.” Sarah experienced the usual discomfort involved in not knowing quite how to respond to condolences. “He was definitely too young to die.” A lame response, she thought, hearing the words. Is anyone ever the right age to die?

  “You’ve never talked about Ted,” Matthew said after they’d carried their trays over to a corner booth. “I just met him briefly when you came home after the wedding, but…”

  “He was sweet and kind,” Sarah said. “A good person.” She started attacking her food, aware of Matthew watching her. Three years had dulled the pain of Ted’s death, but it was still difficult to talk about him. Especially to Matthew. “You know, you married the wrong man,” Ted had told her more than once, usually after she’d finished describing some shared escapade with Matthew, and she’d always reply that she and Matthew had been friends, nothing more. Ted had never seemed convinced. She drank some coffee. “Actually, I’m here in an official capacity.”

  “Let me put my official face on.” Matthew affected an expression of extreme attention, leaning across the table, his eyes intent on her face. “There.”

  “You have egg on your lip.” Sarah resisted the urge to reach over and remove it.

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Official egg, though.”

  “Okay, we can do this for—” she glanced at her watch “—another two seconds, then all jokes are off.”

  “Shoot.” He drank some coffee. “Poor choice of words. Speak.”

  “It’s about one of your patients. Debbi Kennedy’s daughter, Alli.” She saw the hesitation in his expression. “It’s okay, Debbi gave me her permission to talk to you.”

  “I’m assuming you have a license to practice in the state of Washington?” Matthew asked, mock serious still.

  “From beauty school.”

  “That’ll work.”

  “Seriously.” She set down her fork. “Debbi said you told her the baby needs surgery.”

  “I said she needed to come in to have tests,” Matthew said. “I suspect she’s going to need a kidney transplant. The tests would confirm that. Unfortunately, she seems to pay more attention to her boyfriend’s medical advice.”

  Sarah nodded. “I’ve met them both. He’s an organic farmer and—

  “Crackpot,” Matthew said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. He’s well-known around town. Last year he led a crowd of protesters against a condo project on the old Dungeness Highway. As I recall, he ended up in jail.”

  “He has strong convictions,” Sarah said,
irritated without quite knowing why. “Sometimes people have to take a stand. Go against the flow.”

  Matthew looked at her but said nothing.

  “It’s always easy to take the path of least resistance.”

  “Did you come here to defend Curt Hudelson? Or attack me?”

  “I’m just making my point.” She tried to calm her racing heart. “Okay, I realize he’s got strong opinions. Debbi’s a little…unnerved by him, too. She’s torn between trusting the baby to him and fear that Alli will get swept up into the jaws of Compassionate Medical Systems.”

  Matthew’s face tightened. “And you, of course, did nothing to reassure her that CMS is a reputable organization with hospitals all over the country.”

  “A lot of dirty little secrets about botched surgeries, patient dumping, that sort of thing.”

  “One thing I’ve always admired is your objectivity,” Matthew said.

  “That isn’t stuff I made up, Matthew. You can go to the newspaper archives and see it for yourself. If you really wanted to know, that is.”

  Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Then Matthew met her eyes. “So,” he said, “back to Debbi’s daughter.”

  Sarah felt her face redden. “Look, could we start again? I didn’t mean to get into a fight with you.” She took a breath. “Here’s the deal. I know I could provide the middle approach that Debbi would feel comfortable with. I know I could help Alli. But I also recognize that she might need surgery at some point and I just want to know that if that’s the case, I can come to you and know that the child won’t be…”

  “Pulled into the maw?”

  “Matthew.”

  “Where will you see Alli?” he asked. “You’re going to open an office?”

  “I’m going to make house calls.” She saw his eyes flicker. “It’s being done in other places throughout the country. It makes sense, Matthew. House calls are convenient for the patients and—” she leaned across the table “—they can also save thousands of dollars for taxpayers.”