The M.D. Courts His Nurse (9 page)

“Hazel mentioned to me that your husband's family worked for the McCallums way back when,” Rebecca added with secret pleasure at the momentary frown crumpling Barbara's brow. Edgar Wallant owned several thriving sawmills and like his wife hated the fact that even today the McCallum name was worth more than theirs—and better respected. After all, Hazel hadn't denuded the area of timber to make her fortune.

Now go ahead, Rebecca thought bitterly. Here's your chance to really make my day. Bring up Louise and rub my face in her success. It's what you're waiting to do. And don't forget some catty little remark about John and Louise while you're at it.

But Barbara didn't cut to the kill that quickly. She fell
in step beside Rebecca and entered the library foyer with her, a glassed-in expanse decorated with metal sculptures and trees in tub planters.

“Where did you study nursing, Becky?”

Barbara's smile showed too many teeth, and Rebecca realized Louise had inherited her horse grin from her mother. Also, however, good looks and a remarkable body.

“Colfax Community College,” she replied, wishing this tiresome woman would just leave her alone.

“Well, it's quite affordable, I suppose,” Barbara patronized her. “And conveniently located within driving distance. I've heard some people say that community colleges are nothing but high schools with ash trays. But that's unfair. You know, we sent Louise to Stanford. Personally, I think those big-name colleges are overrated. If you're smart, you'll do well anywhere, right?”

“Right,” Rebecca repeated woodenly, wondering why she had to endure this insufferable humiliation on top of everything else she'd already experienced today.

“Well, anyway, I'd advise you to chat with Louise sometime,” Barbara confided proudly. “Just last weekend she opened her newest bed and breakfast in Deer Lodge. Her fourth, you know. She has some impressive contacts in the medical community, by the way. Perhaps she could steer you in some more…lucrative direction.”

Barbara knew good and well that her daughter and Rebecca would rather eat live worms than converse with each other. The suggestion was just another catty swipe at her, punishment for daring to reject membership in the Lady Wallant Admiration Society. However, she also felt a little nubbin of hope—despite that crack about “contacts in the medical community,” at least Barbara wasn't mentioning John as specifically one of them.

“She hosted quite a celebration this weekend,” Barbara added, and Rebecca felt a new pang of despair. That was
precisely how John had looked on Monday morning—as if strung out from “celebrating.”

Fortunately, by now they had pushed through the turn-stile leading into the library proper. Since Barbara was still talking out loud, Rebecca pointed at the Quiet, Please sign.

“Well, I better get going,” Rebecca whispered, heading quickly toward the return counter before Barbara could say anything else.

She knew she'd pay somehow for rudely brushing off a high-and-mighty Wallant like that, but right now Rebecca just didn't care. It was such a relief to be rid of her—an aching reminder of the “superior” people whose ranks were closed to her.

She dropped her overdue books in the return slot after paying a small fine on them. Then she crossed to the periodicals room and scanned the nation's major newspapers. Terrible drought in West Texas; crime down sharply in Los Angeles; alarming drop in the level of the Great Lakes…and terrible heartbreak in Mystery Valley, she thought in a welter of despair.

I just lost my virginity, she said to herself in a daze of confused wonder. And here I am, sitting in the library.

Is this it, then? For years you wonder what “it” will be like, and when it's over, it's
over?

Abruptly the headlines in front of her began to shimmer, then melt, as tears of bitter disappointment filmed her eyes and splashed down her cold cheek.

T
ry as she might, Rebecca did not succeed at diverting her thoughts to the day's headlines. She gave up on the library and reluctantly headed back to her apartment.

Her cell phone had been turned off earlier. She'd had no heart for conversations with anyone. Now it burred almost immediately after she turned it back on. She picked it up off the seat as she drove out of the library parking lot.

“Hello?”

“Well cut off my legs and call me shorty,” Hazel's deep, mellow voice greeted her. “I was beginning to think maybe our little hometown heroine had absconded with her employer. You all right, Becky?”

Oh, I'm just peachy,
she thought in a moment of bitter self-pity. But she pushed that feeling aside and, with an effort to keep her tone normal, replied, “I'm fine. Just feeling those jet-lag blahs. We didn't finish up till daylight, and I'm not used to sleeping during the day. I'm driving back from the library now.”

All more or less true, Rebecca thought, if she didn't count the lies by omission. However, Hazel must not have been entirely convinced.

“You sound a little…put-upon,” the cattle queen suggested, fishing for the right word.

“Oh, it's nothing really, just lingering annoyance. I ran into Barbara Wallant at the library. You know how she can push my buttons.”

“Shoo,” Hazel scoffed. “Barbara Wallant is all hat and no cattle, you know that. Always flapping her gums about how she's a ‘true native.' Native, my sweet aunt! Her husband's kin go way back to the homestead days, true. But
she
came out here from Fort Wayne, Indiana, when she was a kid. That surgically firmed butt of hers has never sat in a saddle.”

“I know she's just a phony snob, but I just…well, I don't like to call her a witch, Hazel. But that's exactly what she is.”

Rebecca's tone had grown sharper as she spoke, revealing her strong feelings. Hazel seemed to pause, evaluating the voice, before she replied.

“A witch with a snap-on halo,” she agreed. “But I remember when she was younger. Edgar Wallant's high-toned wife has been kissed under the bleachers plenty of times. Tell me, though—is it really Barbara who gets your dander up? Or is it Louise?”

“They can
both
dry up and blow away for all I care. Thank God Louise is hardly ever around town anymore.”

“What do you care about those two ditzes? You're a hometown hero.”

“Oh, don't be silly. I just did my job.”

“That right? Did nursing school require you to rappel down a cliff, or—”

“Hazel, I didn't ‘rappel' down anything.”

“The news broadcasters claim you did.”

“Nobody even talked to us. I guess we left before they could swarm.”

“We?”

“John and I.”

“Mmm. So he's ‘John' finally. Good, that's progress. Somehow I suspect he's also stopped calling you Miss O'Reilly.”

Some innuendo in Hazel's tone made Rebecca glad the older woman wasn't there to see her flush.

“Anyway,” Hazel went on, “they're still showing a clip of you and him coming up over the berm with that poor lady. She's doing fine, by the way, in case you haven't heard.”

“Good,” Rebecca said, meaning it. But when she failed to add anything else, Hazel's voice became suspicious again.

“How,” she probed carefully, “are you and John getting along?”

“All right, I guess,” Rebecca offered reluctantly. She had never been good at fibbing to Hazel, so she cast about for something to say that was quite truthful. “Less friction lately. In fact, last time I saw him, we were both very civil to each other.”

“‘Civil,' huh?” Hazel didn't sound too impressed. “Honey, I'm ‘civil' to IRS agents. Are you two at loggerheads over something?”

Rebecca's best effort to keep her cool just wasn't enough. Bitter resentment, rising like flood water over a dam, seeped into her tone. “Just how could we be at loggerheads, Hazel? I mean, if we were fighting with each other, that would kind of imply that we were having some kind of relationship, wouldn't it? And we're not. I've given up on dating doctors after Brian. They're no good for me and that's that. Besides, don't you know that the code of
noblesse oblige requires the royalty to refrain from bickering with their inferiors?”

Her sarcastic emphasis on
royalty
left no doubt as to just whom she meant.

“Royalty? Sweet love, John Saville hasn't got one elitist bone in that buff body of his.”

“Surely you jest? I'm just glad I don't believe in reincarnation, or I'd be convinced I was his scullery maid in an earlier life. This time around I'm up to nurse.”

“You headstrong young fool,” Hazel told her, her tone kinder than the words. “John no more considers himself royalty than I consider myself a belly dancer.”

“No offense, Hazel,” she replied archly. “But
I'm
the one who's around him all day. I think I can tell an elitist snob when I'm constantly snooted by one.”

“Oh, yeah, you're sharp as a bowling ball, all right,” Hazel gibed. “Must be all those men you've had.”

Anger gripped her, and Rebecca said nothing. She'd never hung up on Hazel in her life, but she was close to it now.

However, her friend added mercilessly, “How long have you been in love with him?”

That tore it for Rebecca.

“Oh, sure, of course,” she said into the phone. “I mean, how could I
not
be in love with Mr. Perfection? After all, who am
I
to resist the young Adonis, God's gift to women? Why—I should be grateful for every crumb!”

“He
is
Adonis,” Hazel retorted, “and
you
are Aphrodite. The kids you two are going to have someday will be so good-looking they'll be traffic hazards. I hope you both work through this lovers' spat. Toodle-oo, hon, I've got yard work.”

Hazel's audacity, as usual, left Rebecca speechless.

But it didn't matter, because the rancher had already hung up.

“Lovers' spat,” she repeated aloud, her tone dripping
irony. Hazel used to be so perceptive about people. Perhaps age was finally starting to muddle her thinking.
The kids you two are going to have someday…

What a joke. So absurdly funny it was almost hysterical, Rebecca assured herself just before she burst into tears.

 

Rebecca found a new message waiting on her machine at home.

“Hi, Becky, this is Bonnie Lofton at the
Mystery Gazette.
Congratulations on your fine work at the accident scene. We think it's a great story, and we're just dying to get a front-page photo of you and Dr. Saville together at his clinic. We really need to get it today so it'll come out tomorrow while it's still timely news. Could you please call our office as soon as possible? The number is 555-8347.”

Rebecca liked Bonnie, who was married to Roy Lofton, Mystery's only constable. With Bonnie as editor-in-chief, the
Gazette
had won several prestigious awards in journalism and was widely read throughout Mystery Valley and even much of the state.

But no way, she assured herself, was she posing with John Saville for a photo. At least for right now she'd rather have all her molars yanked out with a pair of pliers than have to face him.

However, even as she stewed, the phone rang.

She let the machine pick it up.

“Hi, again, it's Bonnie calling back to tell you I've reached Dr. Saville, and he's agreed to a photo shoot sometime early this evening at the medical office. I can't say he was eager, but I badgered until he caved in. I hate to ask you on such short notice, but we really need that photo soon in order to make tomorrow's paper. This is an important human interest story, and it would be a shame if the state TV networks cover it and we don't. So please give me a call back as soon as you get this. I appreciate it.”

Oh, cripes, Rebecca thought as she rewound the message tape. Much as I hate to do this, I can't stiff Bonnie. So Dr. Saville wasn't too keen on the idea, either. Why should he be—he got what he wanted. Easy sex with no obligations…slam, bam, see ya, ma'am. He probably only agreed because he couldn't resist the publicity for himself.

Reluctantly she called Bonnie at the
Gazette
and agreed to show up at the medical office at 6:00 p.m. It still hadn't really sunk in yet how widely the Copper Mountain rescue mission was being reported. But she found out a bit later when she turned on the 5:00 p.m. Action Four news broadcast out of Helena.

By now the story no longer led the news, but it was still prominent. And sure enough, there was the footage of the tired young doctor coming over the berm with his patient— Rebecca and Dan Woodyard right behind him. So even though no reporter had caught them in time, obviously a cameraman did.

But the most riveting part of the broadcast was the brief footage from the intensive care recovery ward at Lutheran Hospital. The woman John had carried up, identified as Carol Brining, a retired schoolteacher from Michigan, was still weak and pale, but managed a plucky, grandmotherly smile from her hospital bed.

“There were heroes on that mountain,” she assured the camera, “and that's why I'm alive today.”

Rebecca turned the TV set off and started to get ready for the photo shoot. Though the story brought tears to her eyes, it also left her feeling even more insecure. After all, the Admirers of John Saville Society had enough members already. This would only ensure more.

 

“What Bonnie's hoping for,” explained O'Neil Bettinger, the
Gazette
photographer, “is a good representative
photo of you two doing something together, doctor and nurse stuff. You know, some task you normally collaborate on, whatever.”

The three of them stood in the empty waiting room, only O'Neil looking relaxed and comfortable. The awkward tension in the faces and manner of the other two, however, had nothing to do with the fact of being photographed.

O'Neil's innocent words nonetheless made Rebecca flush:
You two doing something together.

“Well, we often confer over X-rays,” John suggested after an awkward silence. “Since Becky's basically supervising postop care after a patient's surgery, she needs to also understand the preoperative condition. So we get together and discuss it along with lab results and other tests.”

“Sure, sure, that sounds great,” O'Neil approved, already planning out the photo aloud. “We can hang an X-ray up on your light doohickey, then have you two on either side of it, both looking up at it in profile.”

John's gaze had avoided hers since she'd arrived—or so it seemed to Rebecca. Now, however, she caught him frankly checking her out. She'd dressed in a full skirt with a small waist and a crisp, white short-sleeved blouse. Her long hair was pinned flat on both sides of her head but cascaded down over her shoulder blades in back, unrestrained.

Their eyes met, held, but then he looked quickly away again, his face firming into a frown.

New doubts filled her.

By now they'd all moved back into examination room A, and John switched on the backlit X-ray reading screen.

“Perfect,” enthused O'Neil, a short, balding, slightly hyper man in his middle forties, dressed in a garish plaid sport jacket. “There's already an X-ray hanging there. That's a…jaw, isn't it?”

“Knee,” John corrected him with a straight face.

“Knee. Sure, sure, I didn't look close,” O'Neil muttered as he opened the top of his twin-lens reflex camera and took a quick light reading. “What's the deal on this one, Doc? Broken bone?”

“Well, this patient is a teenage athlete who severely extended the left knee and damaged some cartilage and ligaments. He'll be undergoing surgery with me and an orthopedic team to strengthen the knee without actually replacing the joint. It's called an interstitial buildup, done mostly in younger patients to restore full use of the joint. It was first developed in sports medicine.”

“Huh, interesting. Okay, Doc, now act just like you would if you and Becky were conferring. By the way, shouldn't you be wearing a starched lab coat or something?”

“Not here at the office, no. But I wouldn't be wearing this, either,” John admitted, unbuttoning his dark-blue suit jacket and laying it aside.

“Good, good,” O'Neil encouraged as they pretended to confer. “Just keep that up while I move around the room and take a few different angles. Bonnie likes to have a choice.”

By now Rebecca very much regretted agreeing to this. John was standing so close she could smell his aftershave lotion. Thank heaven she had the excuse of an X-ray to keep from looking at him.

O'Neil had moved farther back, out of hearing range, if they spoke in low tones.

“Guess you didn't plan on seeing me like this, huh?” John muttered in her ear.

“Nor you me,” she replied with forced lightness. “If it's any consolation, I don't want to be here, either.”

So I was dead right earlier today, John thought. She
did
hustle me out of her place. And now she's making sure I
get the message that she's not interested in a repeat performance.

“Be brave,” he muttered with sarcasm. “The ordeal will soon be over.”

Her gaze cut momentarily to his face. She read contempt in his eyes. It stabbed her insides.

“Perfect,” O'Neil pronounced again. “I shot half a roll of film. Bonnie should get a nice piece together with it.”

Rebecca hardly even heard him, her pulse was so loud in her ears, surging like angry surf. After the shoot all she wanted to do was escape to her car before tears overwhelmed her again.

O'Neil made it to his vehicle first. She was about to open her door when John's voice arrested her.