Suddenly

P
AIGE PFEIFFER RAN AT THE FRONT OF THE
pack, setting a pace that a less bold thirty-nine-year-old might not dare, but she had a point to prove and a bet to win. The bet involved dinner at Bernie’s Béarnaise, central Vermont’s most chichi restaurant. The point was that a woman her age who was in shape could easily beat a woman half her age who wasn’t. At stake was the respect of the Mount Court Academy girls’ varsity cross-country team, of which she was head coach for the fifth year in a row.

The race had become a tradition, albeit a predictable one. For the first of the three miles, the girls tossed cocky comments from one to the next. The comments waned during the second mile, which wove through a path in the woods and grew demanding of teenage bodies that had spent the summer indulging in the luxuries of the rich. Back on the road for the third mile, the pack thinned. Laboring runners fell behind. Only the stars of the team stayed with Paige.

There were six stars this year. Five of them had run for her the year before. The other was new to the school.

“How we doin’?” Paige asked of the group, and heard gasping complaints. Feeling wicked, she smiled. “Let’s pick it up.” She moved easily ahead of the others. Three moved with her. Minutes later, when she increased the pace again, only one remained. It was the new girl, so quiet up to that point that Paige knew little more than that her name was Sara Dickinson. Paige was surprised by her stamina. She was doubly surprised when, with a surge of speed, the girl took the lead.

Paige had to work to stay with her as they turned in under the wrought-iron arch that marked the school’s entrance, and for a minute she wondered if indeed she were past her prime. When the thought of that rankled, she dug deep inside and found the wherewithal to draw even. Shoulder to shoulder they ran, down the long drive cordoned with tall oaks whose leaves were a ripe September green. Without missing a beat, they veered off onto the dirt path that cut to the field house.

“You’re good,” Paige breathed with a look at the girl beside her. She was tall for her age, had a lithe build, a comfortable stride, and a look of concentration that was nothing if not stern.

As Paige watched in darting glances, that concentration suddenly shifted, and in the space of seconds she was alone. Sara had reversed direction and was walking, winded but intent, toward the shrubbery edging the path. One by one, the others joined her there.

Paige made a wide turn and, slowing to a cool-down pace, headed back. In various stages of breathlessness, the girls were grouped around Sara, who was crouched beside a spreading yew. It was a minute before Paige saw what was beneath the bottommost branch.

“It’s so tiny!”

“Whose
is
it?”

“How did it
get
here?”

Forgetting the race, Paige knelt down. She took the kitten, which was orange and gray and mewling piteously, in her hand and asked Sara, “How did you ever spot it hidden this way?”

“Something moved,” Sara said, and the chorus resumed.

“It doesn’t belong here. Mount Court only has dogs.”

“Someone must have snuck it in—”

“Then abandoned it.”

“It looks starved.”

Paige was thinking the same and wondering what could be done, when all eyes turned her way.

“We can’t
leave
it here.”

“It’ll die, it’s so little.”

“That’d be cruel.”

“You’ll have to take it, Dr. Pfeiffer.”

Paige pictured her overstuffed home. “I don’t have room for a pet. I don’t have time for one.”

“Cats are easy. They take care of themselves.”

“
You
keep it,” Paige countered.

“We can’t.”

“It’s against dorm rules.”

Paige had coached at Mount Court long enough to know that breaking the rules was a way of life, and while she certainly didn’t condone it, she was amused. “Against dorm rules? What else is new?”

“The Head, that’s what.”

“He’s an asshole.”

“
Big
time.”

“He expelled two guys on the second day of school.”

“For what?” Paige asked, overlooking foul language for the sake of goodwill.

“Smoking pot.”

“There was no warning, nothing.”

“He’s totally anal.”

“We’re talking crack-down city—”

“No-no-Noah—”

“Mount Court Penitentiary.”

Paige hadn’t met the new Head yet and was picturing something with horns when the pleading resumed.

“Take the kitten, Dr. Pfeiffer.”

“It’ll die if you don’t.”

“Do you want that on your conscience?”

Paige stroked the tiny creature, which was little more than a handful of fur and bones, and trembling at that. “I’m being manipulated.”

“It’s for a good cause,” one of the girls said.

Paige shot her a chiding look. “It’s for a good cause” was what she always said when she pushed the girls for an extra campus loop. “But I don’t know where to
begin
,” she protested, a mistake if ever there was one because the words were barely out of her mouth when she was barraged with advice on food, litter, and housing. Ten minutes later she found herself in her car with the kitten in a cardboard box on the seat beside her.

“Only until I find it a home,” she warned out the window as she drove off and, determined to do just that, headed straight into town. She pulled up at the police station, intent on presenting the kitten to the animal officer, but he was gone for the day. So she left him a note and tried the General Store. The family who owned it had cats. They had lots of cats. She didn’t figure another would make a difference, especially one so tiny.

“Can’t do,” Hollis Weebly said with a sad shake of his head. “Just had to put one of ours to sleep. Feline leukemia. It’ll get the others, too. And yours, if I take it. You’d be best keeping it yourself. You’re a doctor. You’ll take good care.”

Paige was feeling desperate as she followed him up and down the short aisles, making her case. “I’m a pediatrician. I don’t know the first thing about cats.”

“But you know the vet, and he does. So take it there in the morning, and he’ll tell you what you have to know. Here.” He thrust a large brown paper bag into her arms. “All you need ’til then.” He guided her to the door. “Give it fresh water with the food, and a warm place to sleep.”

“But I can’t keep it.”

“It’ll love you, doc. Everyone loves you.”

She was suddenly back in her car, with kitten supplies and the kitten, and Hollis had returned to his store.

“Swell,” she told the tiny creature, which had fallen asleep snug in a corner of its box. “I am not a pet person, but does anyone listen?” She was a people person. Between the hospital, the office, and the school, her days were a medley of interpersonal happenings, and she liked it that way. She lived to a smooth, steady rhythm.

Mara, now Mara was the one to take the kitten. She was a sucker for the defenseless, had a heart of gold, and between the loss of her last foster child and the baby from India who would be months yet in coming, she needed a distraction.

After arriving home, Paige tried phoning her friend and colleague, but there was no answer. So she carried the kitten box inside and went back for the supplies. By the time she had mashed food into a bowl, the kitten was awake and crying. It started eating the instant she placed it before the food.

She sat and watched, thinking that the kitten was a mere step from newborn, that it looked more like a mouse than a cat, that maybe it should be drinking milk. A human baby drank milk, if not breast milk, then formula, and if it had a lactose intolerance, there was a solution to that, too. Paige knew all the options for a human baby. A kitten was something else.

The kitten kept eating. After a minute, she wiped out an old plastic basin and filled it with litter. She set it down not far from the food and was about to plunk the kitten in it, as the girls had instructed, when the phone rang.

It was her answering service with an evening emergency. The victim was a five-year-old who, in the course of a backyard baseball game, had stepped up to the plate before his predecessor was done there. The bat—plastic, mercifully—had connected with his eyebrow.

Paige arranged to meet father and son at the Emergency Room of Tucker General in twenty minutes, which gave her just enough time to shower and get there herself.

The boy didn’t appear to be concussed, but the gash was a deep one that would leave an unsightly scar if not stitched well. More immediate, he was terrified of the hospital and of Paige. So she sat for a bit before she began, telling him in the gentlest of terms what she would do, and even then it wasn’t easy. Application of the anesthetic hurt, and no amount of compassion on Paige’s part could prevent that. Once it had taken effect, though, the stitching was a breeze. She rewarded the boy’s valor with a barley pop and a hug, then walked him and his dad to their car.

She was barely back inside when her beeper sounded. One of her newer patients, a nine-month-old who had been feverish during much of the day, had awoken from sleep hotter than ever and screaming. The parents were frantic. Paige, who was more worried about the parents than the child, directed them to bring her in.

“You wouldn’t by chance want a kitten?” she asked the desk nurse, who quickly shook her head. “Know anyone who might?” When the nurse looked dubious, she volunteered, “I have one, if any possibilities come to mind.”

She tried to call Mara again, again with no luck.

The baby had an ear infection. After instructing the parents on the fastest way to lower her temperature, giving them antibiotics enough to last until they could go to the pharmacy in the morning, and reassuring them that the child would be fine, Paige walked them to the parking lot. That was when an ambulance came screeching to the door.

In the hours that ensued, Paige knew why she had chosen to practice medicine in Tucker, Vermont, rather than in Boston, Chicago, or New York. In Tucker she came as close to being a general practitioner as most modern doctors got. While pediatrics was her specialty, the nature of the region and its medical community dictated an “all hands on deck in a storm” approach. In this case, the storm was a multicar accident, and though there were staff doctors on hand, her presence was put to good use. She stitched lacerations, set bones, even ran a fetal monitor on one of the victims, who was in her eighth month of pregnancy. Had the woman gone into labor, Paige would have handled that, too. Delivering babies was nearly as gratifying as seeing sick children get better, which was what her practice was about.

She had the occasional downer. Inevitably a child came by who was sick enough to need a specialist, and of that number there were the occasional grim prognoses. But these were the exceptions. For the most part, Paige’s practice was about birth, growth, and healing.

It was one in the morning when she returned home, exhausted in a satisfied way. She might have passed through the dark house and been asleep in bed within minutes had she not tripped over the kitten’s box on her way through the kitchen. In a rush, she remembered the baby. Apparently it remembered her, too, because the noise of her fall set off a distant meowing. She followed the sound through the living room and down the short hall to her bedroom. There, nestled between the patchwork pillows on her bed, was the tiny furball.

She picked it up. “What are you doing here, baby? You’re supposed to be in the kitchen.” The kitten began to purr. Paige stroked the fuzzy spot between its ears. Lulled by the fragile motoring sound, she sank onto the rattan love seat that bridged a corner of the room and relaxed against a second slew of patchwork pillows. She drew up her feet, which she had been on for eighteen hours straight, and might have purred right along with the kitten.

“Y’like this, huh?” she asked, feeling a vague pleasure. She knew she couldn’t possibly keep the kitten, but for the moment it wasn’t all bad.

She thought to try Mara again. Mara rarely slept before two in the morning, and then not for long. She was a brooder. She was also an activist, which meant that she had plenty to brood about. No doubt now it was Tanya John, the foster child who had run away. That one had hit Mara hard.

Then again, for that very reason and the fact that Mara had been looking tired of late, Paige didn’t want to call on the off chance that she might indeed be asleep.

The kitten was curled in a ball, its nose tucked to its thigh, its eyes nearly closed. She carried it to the kitchen and carefully set it in its box, but she was barely back in the hall when it darted past. It was waiting on the bed when she arrived. Suddenly too tired to mind, she undressed and climbed in. She didn’t have another thought until the phone jangled by her ear the next morning.

Ginny, the office receptionist, was calling to say that it was eight-thirty and Mara hadn’t shown up. She was neither answering her phone nor responding to her beeper.

Paige grew concerned. She pulled the phone onto the bed and tried to call Mara herself, with no more success than she had had the night before. She couldn’t imagine Mara had gone far, not with patients waiting to see her. Paige half imagined that she had been out driving the night before—she often did that when she was upset—and had pulled off the road when exhaustion had hit, and fallen asleep in her car.

Grateful for small-town familiarities, she punched out the number of the Tucker Police Department and explained the problem to the deputy chief, who promised to check the roads and Mara’s house and sounded delighted to have something to do. The occasional automobile accident notwithstanding, Tucker, Vermont, was a sleepy community. Any excitement was welcome.

Paige set down the phone and made for the shower. Too few minutes’ worth of hot spray later, she opened the door and reached for a towel, then made a sound of alarm when something small scampered through the steam.

She let out a breath. “You frightened me, kitty. I forgot you were here. Just looking around?” She dried herself off. “There isn’t a lot to see. My place isn’t what you’d call big.”