Different Paths (6 page)
I popped some ibuprofen and Lucy situated me in the passenger seat of the Civic. The seat went back almost far enough I didn’t have to scrunch my foot under the dash.
Lucy started the car. “Maybe I can visit Carla while you’re in the ER.”
“We’re not going to the ER.”
Lucy squinted at me. “Yes, we are.”
“No, we’re not. We’re going to my doctor.”
“She can’t help with this.”
“Sure she can. She can take a look and tell us it’s not broken.”
Lucy shook her head and took off down the lane. “You’re impossible, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Dr. Rachel Peterson had been my doctor for only a year. She’d treated me following my motorcycle accident the summer before, and I’d stuck with her. Before that, the last doctor I’d seen regularly had been my pediatrician. Dr. Peterson convinced me it was good to see a physician for more than just an emergency every ten years.
Not that I’d been in that often.
The waiting room held several people, but after a slight amount of Lucy’s badgering, the receptionist said Dr. Rachel would be able to squeeze us in. The receptionist wasn’t very
happy
about it, but what could she do? Lucy wasn’t going away.
We’d been waiting about fifteen minutes, alternately trying to avoid being sneezed on by sick people and reading pamphlets on nutrition for the pregnant woman, when the outside door opened and a man came in. He strode up to the reception desk, his comb-over flying high as he walked. “Dr. Peterson said I should stop by sometime to talk about my prescription.” He took a pill bottle out of his pocket and set it on the desk.
The receptionist smiled. “All right. I’ll let her know you’re here. And your name is…?”
The man went red. “Not
her
. It’s Dr.
James
Peterson I want.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Dr. James isn’t in today. But Dr. Rachel would be happy to—”
“I don’t
want
her. I want
him
. When will he be in?”
The smile on the receptionist’s face faltered. “Today is Wednesday. He won’t be in again until Saturday morning.”
“Satur— But my prescription runs out tomorrow!”
“I’m sorry, sir. But, like I said, Dr. Rachel will be glad—”
“Forget it. Just forget it. And tell Dr. James he can forget me, too. This is the last time I’ll be put off by him. I’ll have my
new
doctor send for my records.
Today
.”
He spun on his heel, strode toward the door, and shoved it open. He disappeared outside, but was soon back, stomping toward the reception desk. My muscles went tight, and I wondered how quickly my foot would allow me to get to the desk if he got violent. His hand shot out from his side, and he swiped his prescription bottle from the desk, knocking over a pen holder and scattering its contents onto the floor.
I hoped the door would smack his ass as he left.
“Well.” Lucy slipped from her chair and picked the array of pens and pencils off of the tile floor. She righted the holder and placed the pens back into it, setting it gently in front of the receptionist. “I guess
that’s
not something you see every day.”
The receptionist’s fingers fluttered toward her hair, then to the arm of her glasses. “Not every day, no, but far too often for my taste.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lucy sat back down and I watched the bright color on the receptionist’s face slowly fade. When the phone rang a few minutes later she jumped, but her voice sounded steady as she spoke.
A nurse soon called my name and I pushed myself from my chair. Lucy rose to come with me, but I waved her back. “I don’t want my mommy.”
She frowned. “What if you need me?”
“I promise to have the nurse get you if I think I’m going to cry.”
She rolled her eyes, and sat back down.
“Besides,” I said, “shouldn’t you be reading that brochure about quitting your smoking habit?”
A young mother close by glanced at Lucy, and I grinned at the fire I could imagine coming out of Lucy’s eyes.
The nurse did the usual—temperature, blood pressure, embarrassing questions—and left me alone in the examining room. She didn’t attempt to take off my shoe, and I didn’t get into a gown.
Dr. Peterson came in just about the time I’d decided it was too cold in the room and was standing on my good foot, rooting around below the sink for something to drape over my shoulders.
“Help you with something?”
I pulled my head out of the cabinet. “Blankets?”
“Ha, ha.” She pointed at the examining table. “Sit.”
I hopped up, and she stood in front of me, arms crossed. “So. You got stepped on?”
“Huge pregnant cow.”
“Ouch. I guess we’d better take a look.”
She gently untied my boot and slid it off my foot. It hurt, but there were no tears. Lucy could stay in the waiting room.
Dr. Peterson peeled off my sock and together we stared at the swollen black and blue mass that used to be my foot. She pushed on a few spots with her fingers while I clenched my teeth.
“Well.” She stood up. “It’s x-ray time for you.”
“Damn.”
“Yup.” She rolled a stool over and began filling out a prescription for the procedure. “You can go right next door to the hospital. No need to even drive anywhere.”
“Great.”
She laughed. “You don’t sound too pleased.”
“Why should I be? This will set me back a day of work.”
She stopped laughing, but kept grinning, shaking her head. “It’s going to set you back more than that.”
I closed my eyes. Of course she was right.
“You’d better get Lucy,” I said. “I think I’m going to cry.”
Dr. Peterson did get Lucy, but it was because she wanted her to wheel me over to the hospital. I looked down at the wheelchair, then up at the doctor. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
She wasn’t. She pointed at the chair, and I sat in it. Lucy began pushing me toward the door, but Dr. Peterson stepped in front of us, searing me with a schoolteacher stare. “Now I don’t want to hear any reports that you’ve been a difficult patient. You go in and do what you’re told.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
And I did. It wasn’t hard setting my foot on the table and holding it still. Even I could manage that. Fifteen minutes later I was out of the room and headed back to the doctors’ office. We were part way to the door when I grabbed the wheel. The chair lurched to a stop and Lucy banged into the back of it.
“Let’s go see Carla while we’re here.”
“We really ought to get you back to—”
“It’ll take a couple of minutes for Dr. Peterson to get the x-rays and read them. Come on. She’s just over here.” I gestured toward the ICU.
Lucy sighed. “Fine. I’d like to see her, anyway.” She started to push, but the chair refused to move. “Stella, hands off.”
“Sorry.” I let go of the wheel, and we were soon in front of the ICU nurses’ station.
The nurse, a familiar face from yesterday, looked at Lucy, and then at me. “Weren’t you standing up yesterday?”
“Yup. Carla in?”
She waved her hand. “Go ahead. Boyfriend’s in there, though.”
“Oh, great.”
Lucy grinned. “Good. I want to meet this guy.”
Bryan jumped to his feet when we opened the door, but still kept a hold of Carla’s hand. Tightly, if the grimace on her face meant anything. She pulled her fingers out of his and flexed them.
Carla’s forehead furrowed as she stared at my wheelchair. “What in the world?”
I pointed at my foot. “Cow stepped on me. That real pregnant one.”
“Wendy?”
“That’s the one.”
“She still hasn’t had that calf?”
“’Fraid not.”
She thought for a moment, probably remembering the C-section last summer, then shook her head. “You’ll have to have Bruce or Tim come out if there’s a problem again. Don’t think I’ll be delivering calves any time soon.”
“She’ll be fine. It’s my foot that won’t.”
“Broken?”
“Guess we’ll see. I was just getting an x-ray.”
Carla brightened. “Those folks are nice down there, aren’t they? Did you have Nancy as your technician?”
I looked at her and tried not to laugh. “Sorry. Didn’t make it a point to get to know her.”
“Well, it’s your own fault.”
Lucy put her hand out toward Bryan. “Lucy Spruce. Friend of Carla’s.”
Spruce. It still took me a moment to think who she was talking about, without the old “Lapp” after her name.
Bryan cleared his throat, looking briefly at Lucy’s face before ending up gazing somewhere past her shoulder. “Bryan Walker. Um. Friend of Carla’s.” He shook Lucy’s hand. “I think…uh…I’ll go get some coffee. Or lunch. Or…something.” He swiveled his eyes toward Carla, his face pleading.
“You do that, sweetie. These ladies will keep me company for a bit.”
He tried to grab Carla’s hand again, but she avoided the clutch and patted his arm. “Go ahead.”
He scurried toward the door, not looking back.
I raised my eyebrows. “What’s up with him?”
“You are.”
“What?”
“You make him nervous. He thinks you don’t like him.”
“Oh. Well…”
“I told him that was ridiculous. What’s not to like?” She pierced me with a steady gaze.
Lucy giggled. “I think he’s adorable.”
I looked up at her so quickly I got a crick in my neck. “You do?”
“Absolutely.”
“And why shouldn’t she?” Carla said. “He
is
adorable.”
My mouth opened, but I shut it before any sound came out. I leaned my head down and rubbed the back of my neck.
Carla and Lucy rehashed how the two new lovers had met, from the dance, to what Carla was wearing, to exactly how long it took him to kiss her (three dates). Carla explained what all she knew about him (not much beyond his job and what kind of music he liked) and how sweet he was with her dog, Concord. I was about to scream when Lucy finally said, “So, how are you today? How’s your head?”
Carla wrinkled her nose. “Yesterday they said they’d let me eat.”
“And?”
“Jello and chicken broth.”
I laughed, the pain in my neck forgotten.
Lucy gave me a stern look. “Better than nothing, right?”
I snorted. “Not for this woman. But look up, Carla, by tomorrow you’ll be able to have pureed carrots.”
She groaned. “At least they’re considering letting me go home today.”
I blinked. “Already?”
“They say my vessel tear isn’t expanding. The blood’s being reabsorbed into my body, and apparently that’s a good thing.”
“It is.” Lucy’s voice was flat. From the look on her face, she’d had personal experience with Carla’s type of situation. Probably when Lucy’s first husband, Brad, took the fall down the stairs that first paralyzed, and finally killed him.
Carla looked down at herself. “I just want to take a shower—I feel so disgusting. And wear my own clothes. And raid my own refrigerator…” Her voice took on a dreamy quality.
Lucy smiled. “When will you know?”
“When the doc makes his afternoon rounds. He has to okay it.”
“You won’t be able to go back to work right away, will you?” I thought of Wendy, and of the other guys in Carla’s practice whom I liked, but not as well as Carla.
“Nope. Lots of restrictions. No heavy lifting, no driving, no aerobic activities.”
“You need me to come stay with you tonight?”
Carla looked at me, and then at my foot. “Lotta help you’d be. But thanks, anyway. Bryan said he’ll stay. He’ll bring Concord back over and take care of both of us.”
I didn’t like that. “Carla—”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I thought the doctor said no aerobic activities.”
Carla looked confused for a moment, then laughed when she saw the corners of Lucy’s mouth twitching upward. “Don’t worry. Bryan will be sleeping on the couch. Besides, he’s a
gentleman
.”
I snorted again.
“You have a problem?” Carla scowled at me.
“No. No problem.” Unless you count her brand new boyfriend that I didn’t trust farther than I could throw a lasso.
Lucy kicked my wheelchair, then said, “Any word from the detective today?”
Carla turned her frown toward Lucy. “Nope. Last I heard was yesterday. My truck’s totaled.”
I thought of my visit with Willard. “So no information about the guy who did it?”
“Nope. They don’t seem to know anything about him at all.”
“Except,” said Lucy, “that
he
is definitely
not
a gentleman.”
Neither Carla nor I argued with that.
There were no irate men in Dr. Peterson’s waiting room this time, and we were immediately sent back to her office. Lucy wheeled me in, and stayed. I guess she was afraid I’d cry when I heard the results of the x-ray.
Dr. Peterson swiveled her computer monitor around so we could see it. “Straight metatarsal fracture.”
I looked at her, then back at the x-ray. “Huh?”
She smiled. “That’s good news. It’s a non-displaced break. Nothing is out of alignment. Just fractured. Which means it should heal easily and I can do a walking cast right here in the office.”
A cast. I must’ve looked upset, because she added, “You’ll be able to get back to work in a day or two. With some restrictions, of course.”
I didn’t say anything, because whatever came out wouldn’t be nice.
“So,” Dr. Peterson said to Lucy, “if you could please wheel her out and into exam room three. I think I have an old pair of sweats in my trunk she can use.”
She did, and I was soon wearing them, my jeans folded into a Landis’ Supermarket bag.
After I was situated on the exam table, Lucy looking anxious, like she might need to hold my hand, Dr. Peterson got to work rolling an elastic stocking type thing onto my foot, and then wrapping it in batting.
“I didn’t know you were a quilter,” I said. “With the batting and all. Can I pick the colors?”
It was supposed to be funny, but Dr. Peterson—now in full doctor mode—didn’t laugh. I watched as she finished up with the padding, then filled a bag of something with warm water. She mushed it around a bit, then emptied out some of the water before pulling out a roll of sticky material.
“This is the cast,” she said. “So hold still while I wrap it around.”
I wasn’t about to disobey. She was scary when she became “The Doctor.”
I watched the top of her head as she worked. “So what’s up with the angry patients in the waiting room?”
There was a hitch in her movements, but she didn’t look up. “What do you mean?”
I glanced at Lucy, and she gave a brief shake of her head. I chose to ignore it. “While we were waiting some guy came in. Threw a hissy fit because your dad’s not working today. Your receptionist said it wasn’t the first time.”
Dr. Peterson finished up the roll of material and added water to another bag. She squished it around, let out the water, and pulled out a new roll. “My dad’s retiring. He figures he’s put a good forty-five years into this practice, he deserves some time off. So he’s been weaning the patients off of him. He hardly has office hours anymore. Saturday mornings. Some Mondays, to help when it’s really busy.”
“And the patients?”
“Aren’t taking it well.” She bent back over my leg and began wrapping. “The men I guess I can understand. It’s embarrassing for them to come to me. They’re men, after all, and I’m a young woman.” She gave me a quick grin. “Relatively young, anyway. They feel strange talking to me about their physical problems. The women…I thought they’d be glad. You know, to have a female as their doctor. The younger women are fine. No problems with them. But the older ones? They’re almost as bad as the men. If not worse. They act like I’m a little girl and there’s no way I can know as much as my father.” She smacked the end of the roll onto my calf.
I jumped. “Hey!”
“Sorry. It gets to me.”
Lucy clicked her tongue. “I can see why.”
I held out a hand, palm out. “Just don’t take it out on me.”
“I said I was sorry.”
The cast material was already beginning to harden. Dr. Peterson got some hand soap from the sink and rinsed down my leg, wiping the cast. When she was done she took a few inches of the padding and stocking thing that were still sticking out of the top of the cast and rolled them over the highest part of the cast, which ended right below my knee.
I frowned at my toes, bare and sticking out of the cast. “If it’s my foot that’s broken, why’s the cast so huge?”
“To protect you. Keeps your leg from moving your ankle and foot around.”
“But how am I supposed to—”
“You can walk on it. Look.” She pulled a shoe-type thing out of a bag. “This will go over your foot. You strap the Velcro over the top. After a day or two you can use this to work again. Make sure you put a bag over the cast when you do get back to the barn—and tape it to your skin at the top so stuff doesn’t get in. You can wear an extra large boot over it if you want.”
“But I can’t walk on it today?”
“You like pain?”
I frowned at her.
“Give it a couple of days to heal, Stella. Take it easy. Pop some Tylenol and let other people do stuff for you.”
“She won’t let me, you know.” Lucy looked almost irritated.
“Well, then, I guess that’s her problem. If she wants to heal, she’ll take my advice.”
“She’s not always so good at that.”
“Hey,” I said. “Right here. Haven’t left the room.”
Dr. Peterson kept looking at Lucy. “Maybe you’ll need to take some Tylenol, too.”
Lucy nodded. “I just might.”
I wriggled off the table. “Will you two shut up?”
Dr. Peterson grabbed my elbow. “Fine. Now stay there for a minute.” She left, but was back moments later with a battered pair of crutches. “Use these. I’ll give you a prescription to get a better pair at the medical supply store, but these will do you till then.”
“A prescription?” I watched as she scribbled on her pad. “For crutches?”
“Insurance won’t let us sell them to you. They want to pay much less than they think we’d charge. So some patients kindly give us their old pair and we can loan them out. Just try to bring them back when you’re done with them.”
“Sure.”
Dr. Peterson stuck the crutches under my arms and adjusted them for my height. “These will do you fine until you get your new ones. Come here.” She opened the door and gestured to the hallway. “Try them out. Let me make sure you can manage.”
I must’ve done fine, because she said good-bye and good luck and headed for another exam room.
“Dr. Peterson,” I said.
She looked back.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
I grinned. “You did pretty good for a woman doctor.”
I almost fell over when I ducked the prescription pad she aimed at my head.