Just What the Doctor Ordered Read online

  “It always does when she doesn’t get her way.”

  “You, young woman, are a disgrace to—”

  “She’s a very efficient receptionist,” Matt smoothly finished, deciding it would be best to usher Mrs. Woodhouse out of the office altogether. “She never gets upset, no matter what happens.”

  “She doesn’t have a son,” Mrs. Woodhouse said.

  “If I did, I wouldn’t want him tied to my apron strings,” Salome ftung after Mrs. Woodhouse. “You’ve practically castrated the poor man.”

  Matt closed the door on Mrs. Woodhouse and turned back to the waiting room. Only then did he notice the four grinning faces of waiting patients. Salome and Mrs. Woodhouse had played to a nearly full house.

  He thought longingly of the huge, impersonal hospital in Charlottesville. Nothing like this ever happened there.

  Chapter Five

  Matt knew he ought to apologize to Liz—no, he had to apologize—but all through dinner that night the words wouldn’t come. He was not used to being in the wrong. The part that rubbed the hardest was that he was also right. It was unprofessional to talk about patients. Yet it was sometimes necessary to know some background when you had a patient like Josie Woodhouse. He was right about Salome, too. And he was wrong.

  “Wanna get down,” Ben told his mother the minute he swallowed the last of his apple cobbler with vanilla ice cream. “Wanna play.”

  “I want to play, too,” Rebecca said. “Joe and Eddie want to come over.”

  “Danny, too,” Ben added.

  “You can have as many children over as you want, but don’t leave our yard,” Liz said. “And stay out of the creek. You got a cold the last time you got wet at night.”

  The children scrambled out the door. The sudden quiet made his being alone with Liz feel more intimate; it gave him a heightened consciousness of her presence. It also gave him an opportunity to become aware of the clothes she was wearing, the faint aroma of her perfume as it wafted in and out among the food smells.

  Liz had changed from her business suit into shorts and a sleeveless blouse. She probably wasn’t conscious of the impression she made, but he was. He found himself staring at her with the open-eyed wonder of a teenager. He’d seen better figures—well, not much better—and he’d smelled perfume that cost a hundred dollars an ounce, but somehow they hadn’t made quite the impression Liz made on him.

  Or his body. His arousal had almost reached the point of being embarrassing. He’d been celibate for too long. “I’d better go, too,” he said, pushing back his chair. “I’ve got charts to read.”

  She didn’t say anything. She hadn’t spoken to him except when necessary since she warned him about Josie.

  He stood. “I’m sorry about Josie,” he said. “If I had known she was going to attack you like that, I wouldn’t have let her into the hall until you were out of sight.”

  Liz didn’t pause in clearing the table. “She acts like that every time she sees me. I’m used to it.”

  “It can’t be pleasant.”

  “It’s not.”

  He stood there, waiting, trying to push the words past his lips. “I apologize for speaking to you the way I did. It’s usually not a good idea to talk about patients, but in this case it would have been better if I had listened to you.”

  Liz paused, a slow smile curving her mouth. “I didn’t think you’d apologize. I didn’t think you could.”

  He felt anger, but he repressed it. “I almost didn’t.”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t have said anything. I can see what you mean about it being unprofessional. It’s just that I know Josie and Dr. Kennedy. I didn’t want you to get in trouble with him.”

  Matt wasn’t used to having anyone worry about him. It wasn’t a factor he’d ever had to put into the equation of how he dealt with people. It left him feeling unsure of how to proceed.

  “About Salome...”

  All amiability vanished to be replaced by a look that said she was ready to tight.

  “She’s not at all proper, but she does get the work done.”

  “Then you don’t want me to fire her?”

  “I never did.” But hadn’t he? He wasn’t sure now. Nothing in this town worked like it ought to. He didn’t feel nearly so sure of himself.

  “I thought she handled everything today rather well,” Liz said.

  So did he, but he didn’t feel like he needed to give so much ground all at once.

  “I also wanted to compliment on your work today.”

  She looked surprised. “Helping Tommy? That was nothing.”

  “It was quite a lot. He wouldn’t be doing nearly so well without you. That showed great courage to tackle a job like that. Most people would have waited for the ambulance.”

  “But he couldn’t wait. He—”

  “I know. That’s why it’s so remarkable. You’re a gutsy lady.”

  Matt didn’t know whether he’d ever made such a long speech in his life. He certainly didn’t remember anything making him so uncomfortable. “Well, I’d better get to those charts.”

  He left the room with Liz still staring at him. As he washed his hands and brushed his teeth, he couldn’t shake the feeling of dissatisfaction with himself, the feeling that he’d done something wrong. He didn’t understand it. He’d always known exactly what to do, how he would feel about it afterward. He couldn’t understand why he felt so dissatisfied now.

  He guessed it came from Liz. Somehow he felt he’d hurt her feelings, and he didn’t like that. But that was silly. They were both mature adults, both professionals. They could discuss a situation, even disagree, without getting their emotions tangled up in it. Or if she couldn’t, it was time she learned.

  But he was the one still chewing on this. Maybe he wasn’t as objective as he thought. Or maybe Liz was getting in the way of his objectivity.

  But that was ridiculous. She was attractive, but certainly not enough to cause him to make a fool of himself. Besides, he didn’t like her very much.

  No, it couldn’t be Liz. It must be his assignment to this wretched speck on the edge of civilization. He couldn’t think straight with all this quiet, among people who had known everything about each other since the moment of their birth. You needed distance to be objective. Everybody in Iron Springs might as well live in the same house for all the privacy anyone had.

  On reaching his room, Matt settled into a comfortable armchair and picked up a handful of charts. He wouldn’t be here long enough to worry about it. But as long as he was here, he had patients to care for. He opened the first folder and started reading.

  Less than an hour later, he put the charts aside. The sounds of children floated in through the window, but that shouldn’t have affected his concentration. The noises of Charlottesville never had.

  He got up and walked to the window. The children were playing dodgeball, and Liz was playing with them. She was the only one left in the circle. Most of the children were screaming and shouting encouragement to Liz or to the older children who dominated the ball handling. Matt could see the looks of determination on their faces as they tried to get her out. Rebecca and Ben urged their mother on with loud, shrill voices. He could hear Liz’s laughter as she dodged one ball after another. After the day she’d had, he didn’t know where she found the energy.

  Then Liz slipped on the damp grass, and one of the boys managed to hit her. She made a big production of pretending to be mortally wounded. All the kids laughed and ran to her. They collapsed into a wiggling mass of arms and legs, laughing and shouting with happiness.

  Matt found himself feeling like an outsider peeping through a keyhole at a world he wasn’t allowed to enter. He’d never cared in Gull’s Landing, but tonight he didn’t want to be excluded. He wouldn’t have known what to do if he’d been down there, but the yearning to be in the midst of all that happiness was suddenly intense.

  It was so strong he left his room and went downstairs and out onto the front porch. He stood at the c
orner, leaned against the post. He could see the children in the backyard. They had formed another circle with some of the bigger children inside this time. They had an easy time avoiding Ben’s throw, but they shrieked and pretended to barely make it out of the way. Ben thought he was great stuff.

  Liz got one out, and all the children cheered.

  “Good evening, Dr. Dennis.”

  Matt turned. A man and woman were passing along the sidewalk in front of the house. He’d seen the woman in his office yesterday afternoon. She had kidney stones. He’d given her a medicine he hoped would dissolve them and eliminate the need for an operation. “Good evening, Mrs. Gaddy.”

  “Nice evening for sitting on the porch,” she commented.

  “A good walk would do you better,” her husband said.

  “I’ve got too much work,” Matt replied. “I’m just taking a break.”

  “Make sure you use something for the mosquitoes if you mean to say out much longer,” Mrs. Gaddy said. She waved, and they passed on down the sidewalk.

  The woman across the street called out, and Mr. and Mrs. Gaddy crossed the street. While the women chatted, the men leaned against the fence, speaking occasionally, but mostly watching their wives.

  A family came out of Hannah’s Drugs and got in their car. They stopped and Mrs. Gaddy and her friend went over to talk to them. They just stood there in the middle of the road, moving when a car came but more often talking to the occupants, as well. The drivers seemed more anxious for a chance to join in the conversation than to get on with their business.

  Matt tried to imagine such a thing happening in Charlottesville. Traffic would be backed up a dozen blocks in less than fifteen minutes. Somebody would call the police.

  Matt looked up and down the road. The scene was the same everywhere, people sitting on porches, visiting over fences, calling out to neighbors as they passed. Several spoke to him. He didn’t know who they were. It made him want to go inside. Yet he stayed on the porch, watching, speaking to everyone who spoke to him.

  “You should have played a game with us. The kids would have loved trying to get you out.”

  Liz had come around the corner of the porch. Beads of perspiration glistened on her neck and shoulders. Ringlets of blond hair stuck to her forehead. Exercise had given her face added color. She rubbed the back of her neck with a towel, but Matt thought she looked just fine. She wore a halter top and shorts—not Bermuda, real shorts—that left no question in his mind that Liz was a woman in her physical prime. He didn’t know why her husband had left her, but it couldn’t have been because he found someone more attractive. Matt revised his earlier evaluation and moved Liz up several places on his all-time-best list.

  “Too much work.”

  “Why aren’t you doing it?”

  “I’m taking a break.”

  She started up the steps. “Is that a nice way of saying we’re making so much noise you couldn’t concentrate?”

  He grinned in spite of himself. “Maybe it means you were having so much fun I was jealous.”

  He hadn’t wanted to criticize, but he hadn’t meant to say that, either.

  “You could change your clothes and join us. They’re good for another half hour or so.”

  “I’ll pass this time.”

  She stopped drying her hair, gave him a penetrating look that made him uncomfortable.

  “I can’t decide whether you look down on us for being country bumpkins, or you’re just afraid to let yourself go and have a little fun.”

  Despite having survived Salome, Josie Woodhouse and Hannah Coleman, he was caught unprepared by this frontal attack. It made him furious.

  “I’ve been too busy working my way through college and medical school and trying to build a career to have time for fun. But when I get back to Charlottesville, I’ll make certain to get a membership in the YMCA.”

  “Your mind needs the fun as much as your body needs the exercise.”

  She wasn’t backing down. She wasn’t even the slightest bit embarrassed that she’d strayed into areas that were none of her concern. She stood there, waiting as if she expected him to offer an explanation. Well, it would be a cold day in Hell before he did that.

  “Maybe, but I’ll stick with my old habits. I’ve gotten along fine so far.”

  “I don’t know. You ended up here. And as far as I can tell, you think that’s as close to Hell as you’ve ever been.”

  He wanted to agree with her. He wanted to say mean and spiteful things about Iron Springs, its people, its single street, its gossipy network of relationships, but he wasn’t really angry at her or the people of Iron Springs. He was angry at the medical board who sent him here.

  “I’m more comfortable keeping my distance,” he said. “I’m not very good with relationships.”

  “You won’t get better until you try.”

  “I have tried. It only got worse.”

  Ben came tearing around the corner of the porch. He pounded up the steps, ran over to Matt and thrust out his foot. “Tie shoe,” he said in between gulped breaths.

  “Ben, it’s soaking wet. You can’t ask Mr. Dennis to—”

  “It’s also covered with grass clippings,” Matt commented as he knelt to tie Ben’s shoe. “But I’ve handled worse things than a wet shoestring.”

  “Becca says you’re to come play,” Ben said, watching Matt intently. “She says you can get out Jeremy.”

  One of the big boys, Matt presumed.

  “Hurry,” Ben said when Matt didn’t work fast enough for him. “Gotta go back.”

  “There,” Matt said. Ben turned and headed off.

  “What do you say?” his mother called after him.

  “thank you.” Ben raced down the steps and tore off around the corner of the porch.

  “So much for your being rotten with relationships,” Liz said.

  “What do you mean? Oh, that? He just needed someone to tie his shoes.”

  “Ben is ashamed of not being able to tie his shoes. Generally he won’t go to anyone but me. He went to you that first day.”

  “He’s a little boy. He’d naturally go to a man.”

  “Not Ben. He even avoids his uncle. And Rebecca never invites adults to do anything with her. She’s invited you to go to Aunt Marian’s twice and play ball once.”

  “I don’t see... That doesn’t mean... I like kids. Yours are especially nice. You’ve done a great job raising them.”

  “Thank you, but you’re trying to ignore what I’m saying. You can be good with people if you want. Everybody likes you, even Salome.”

  Matt thought of what Salome called him and decided what she liked had nothing to do with his personality.

  “You can go on being a hermit if you like,” Liz continued, “but don’t excuse it by saying you can’t handle relationships. Maybe you don’t want to handle them, but I imagine you could do it extremely well. Now, before I make you so angry you’ll pack up and live in a tent before you’ll spend another minute in my presence, I’m going to take a shower.”

  Matt woke early the next morning. He didn’t want to. It was his first day off. After studying charts until well past midnight, he’d intended to sleep late. There was nothing to do in this miserable excuse for a town, this bump on the backside of the Appalachian Mountains. No reason to get up.

  Yes, there was. The sounds of children poured in through the window. He looked at the clock—7:43 a.m. What kind of parents let their children out of the house at this ungodly hour? A parent like Liz Rawlins apparently. She’d probably driven them outside so she could sleep late.

  He looked outside. At least a dozen kids filled Liz’s backyard. Just his luck to have taken rooms adjacent to the community playground. He closed the window, cut on the air conditioner and got back in bed. It didn’t work. He was awake. He might as well get up.

  But he didn’t want to go downstairs where he might run into Liz. He was still angry at her for offering advice about personal relationships. He’d been t
o dozens of “counselors” and “attitude adjusters” when he was growing up.

  His mother had stopped in Gull’s Landing long enough to have her baby and die. The townspeople had felt compelled to do their duty by him, but they didn’t feel compelled to like him. They said he was ungrateful and mean. They said he was sullen and uncooperative, a loner with no social skills. He was like a mongrel cur they were afraid would bite. They were glad when he won a scholarship and left for college.

  Now Liz was telling him people in Iron Springs liked him. Let them get a whiff of his background, and that would be the end of that He got up and pulled on a T-shirt and jeans. He couldn’t hide in his room. He never had, and he wouldn’t start now. Besides, he was hungry.

  Liz tried to calm her voice. She didn’t want David to know how much his call had upset her.

  “Of course I’m surprised to hear from you,” she said to her ex-husband. “You haven’t bothered to contact me since I left New York.”

  “I was in the middle of very sensitive negotiations,” David said. “They took every minute of my time.”

  “I realized that when you didn’t show up in court for the divorce decree.”

  “I didn’t need to be there. Everything had already been decided.”

  Liz didn’t know why she was bringing this up. She knew how unimportant she was to David. His infidelity had proved that. His neglect had proved he didn’t care much about his kids, either. So why was she so upset at the sound of his voice?

  “My business is a real success,” David said. “Everything worked out just like I said it would.”

  “I’m glad for you, David.”

  And she was. She couldn’t have loved him as much as she did, lived with him as long as she did, feel as betrayed as she did, and not still feel some of what drew her to him in the first place.

  “I thought you might have been happier if I’d failed.”

  “I may have said some terrible things to you, David—I’m not sure, since I was too upset at the time to remember—but I’ve never hated you. You’ve wanted this all your life. I’m glad you have it. Maybe you can have some time to yourself.”