LITMIR.BIZ

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he picked up the phone from the bedside table. “I’m not the one on call tonight,” he told the page operator. “I changed with Dr. Adams. You need to call him.”

      “Then there’s been some kind of mix-up,” the operator said. “I have you down, Dr. Cameron.”

      “Call Dr. Adams,” Matthew said. “I’ll come in if I have to, but try him first.” He hung up the phone, rolled over and closed his eyes. Just as he drifted off, the phone rang again. Adams couldn’t be reached. He sat up, switched on the light. The operator put him through to the E.R. The patient was a child with intestinal problems.

      “Give me ten minutes,” Matthew said. He dressed then, shoes in hand, padded silently across the hall.

      From his room, he heard his pager go again. He sprinted downstairs, scribbled a note to Lucy and went out in the dark cool night.

      Something had to give, he thought, as he drove through the deserted streets. As stubborn as he knew himself to be—and as Elizabeth was always quick to confirm—he understood the mess the system was in. If it was a business other than Compassionate Medical Systems coming to the rescue, he could go along with it, but Olympic Memorial, like a desperate spinster, attracted few suitors.

      Sure, he could rhapsodize about the joys of a smalltown practice, the majesty of the Olympic Mountains, the achingly beautiful coastal trails. But none of the major players he’d hoped would offer their hand had shown much interest in what was also a debt-ridden, rural, blue-collar town with an aging population.

      The truth was, you had to know Port Hamilton to love it. He did. And Sarah did. Sarah. Who he used to think he knew better than anyone in the world and then realized he didn’t really know her at all. Still, it made him feel good to think of Sarah being back. If you were lucky, you had one, maybe two friendships that lasted a lifetime. Like a plant. A few leaves might fall off through lack of nurturing, but the roots never died. That was how it was with Sarah.

      He pulled into the parking lot and switched off the ignition. Through the glass doors of the E.R., he watched a nurse in blue scrubs. His beeper went off again.

      “Hey, Debbi.” The mother looked young enough to have been the patient. “What’s up with Alli tonight?”

      “She’s been throwing up and pooping all day.” Her face pale in the harsh overhead lighting, Debbi soothed the child lying on the examining table.

      “Well, let’s take a look at her.” The toddler, listless and pale, eyed Matthew as he examined her but didn’t make a sound: That didn’t reassure him. Healthier children tended not to submit so easily to being poked and prodded. “Haven’t seen you around for a while.”

      She bit her lip. “We moved out to the end of the peninsula. I met this guy and we bought some property together. He’s into a naturopathy, which worked pretty good on my asthma. Really good, in fact. But nothing was working with Alli and I got scared. He went to Olympia to some workshop and I decided I’d bring her in, just in case.”

      Matthew said nothing. Mainstream medicine clearly didn’t have all the answers, but there was an almost evangelical zeal about some so-called natural medicine proponents that he found alarming. He’d suspected kidney disease the last time he saw the child and suggested testing. He hadn’t seen her since.

      Now he reminded her again. “If it is kidney disease, it can be controlled with medication or even cured. But if it isn’t treated, it’ll just get worse until she ends up needing dialysis or a transplant.”

      Debbi’s face clouded. “How much would that cost?”

      He looked at the child. He didn’t know exactly what Debbi’s financial situation was, but he had an idea she was one of a number of patients in the practice who paid on a sliding scale according to what they could afford, which in almost all cases wasn’t very much.

      “We’ll work something out,” he said. “The important thing is that you shouldn’t delay it. Call my office tomorrow, okay, and set up an appointment.”

      But as he scribbled a couple of prescriptions and handed them to her, he doubted that she would follow through.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      ELIZABETH WANTED to scream. Walking through Safeway with her mother and her daughter was more irritation than anyone should have to tolerate. Lucy was acting like the princess she thought she was. And Pearl, her mother, was the snoopy old Queen Mother.

      Which would make her, Elizabeth, the queen, except that no one ever treated her like one. She set a bottle of champagne in the cart.

      “I thought you weren’t drinking anymore,” Pearl said. “You fallen off the wagon?”

      “Champagne doesn’t count.”

      “Booze is booze,” Pearl pronounced.

      Lucy, who had gone off in her own direction as soon as they walked through the door, reappeared with a six-pack of socks. “Can I buy these?”

      “Do you mean, can I buy them?” Elizabeth asked.

      “If you can afford champagne,” Pearl said mildly, “I would think you could afford socks.”

      “That’s not the point.” Elizabeth said, but no one was listening.

      “Thank you, Grandma,” Lucy said.

      “You’re welcome.”

      There were days Elizabeth reflected, when everything Pearl said seemed like some sort of attack. Matt always said she was overly sensitive when it came to her mother. But Matt had always idealized Pearl. Once she’d asked him, only half joking, if Pearl was the real reason they got married. Pearl was the mother he’d never had. Pearl wasn’t weird and eccentric like Sarah’s mother. Pearl was sweet and kind and baked cookies. Right. Sweet and kind to everyone but me. Pearl would have preferred a daughter like Sarah. Pearl would have loved to talk about her daughter the doctor.

      “Who’s Sarah?” Lucy asked as though she’d just read Elizabeth’s mind.

      “Sarah who?” Elizabeth picked up a heart-shaped box of candy and stuck it in the cart for George, the guy she’d been seeing lately. Giving was as good as receiving. Kind of.

      “Those will all be on sale next week,” Pearl said. “Fifty percent off.”

      “Next week’s too late for Valentine’s,” Elizabeth said. George treated her like a queen. The way Matt used to. Before they were married.

      “Dad was talking on the phone to some woman called Sarah,” Lucy said. “Who is she?”

      “Lucy, I don’t know every woman your father talks to. Maybe it was a patient.”

      “He said she was an old friend.”

      Elizabeth looked at her daughter. “Sarah Benedict?”

      “How would I know?” Lucy said irritably. “They were talking for ages. And Dad was laughing.”

      “Sarah Benedict’s back,” Pearl said. “I had to see her mother for this little thing on my nose.” She turned her face to Elizabeth. “See? That little rough patch. Precancerous legion.”

      “Lesion,” Lucy said.

      Pearl beamed. “How did I get to have such a smart granddaughter?”

      “I take after my dad,” Lucy said.

      Elizabeth eyed the champagne. Typical of Sarah to breeze into town and not call. “Sarah and your dad grew up together,” she told Lucy. “Then she went off to medical school and married this doctor and they traveled all over the place. Then he got killed.”

      “Your mother broke them up,” Pearl told Lucy. “Your dad and Sarah.”

      “I did not.” Elizabeth glared at Pearl. “What kind of thing is that to say to your granddaughter?”

      “I’m not a child,”

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