LITMIR.BIZ

      “SALLY, THEY STOOD ME UP!” Maude said as she entered the back door of a large, rambling old house in a cul-de-sac only a few blocks from her own tidy little home.

      Sally Sanderson, Maude’s friend since childhood, glanced up from the washer into which she had been shoving colorful clothing of many small sizes. “Well, I’m glad.”

      “What?”

      Sally snorted a laugh as she pulled her mop of blond curls away from her gray eyes and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Go pour us some coffee. I’ll be done in a sec.”

      Maude put cream and sugar into Sally’s—I need the energy, she had said about the added calories—and sat down to wait. Sally did need the energy. Her slight five-foot-two-inch body chased five children all day and half the night.

      “I wasn’t sure I’d get to see much of you after Doc left,” Sally said as she set a basket of folded towels by the door and took a seat at the worn wooden table big enough to seat the small army of Sandersons and a few more.

      “Me, too.” Maude laughed. “Doc Avery was supposed to be here for a month after I got here, but it seems their granddaughter had her delivery date recalculated.”

      “Mommy. Mommy.”

      Sally reached down and picked up Lizzy, a shy five-year-old replica of herself, who had wandered into the room, spotted the intruder and made a beeline for the safety of her mother’s lap. The sparkling stars mounted on floppy stalks attached to the headband Lizzy wore batted her mother on the chin and Sally pushed them gently aside. “Doc’s gone only one day and here we are. I’m delighted to have your company.”

      “I’m glad you are. Thank you.”

      “All right. So what’s that about?” Sally stroked Lizzy’s hair.

      “Yesterday morning at the grocery store they were gossiping, called me little Maudie.”

      “And you just had to hide behind the dill pickle display and listen?”

      “Well something like that. It was canned peas.” Maude reached down and patted Barney, the docile family dog that had followed Lizzy into the room and now sat with his head against Maude’s leg. “What if this keeps up?”

      Sally snort-laughed again and Lizzy looked up at her. “This is St. Adelbert, honey. It took them a year to decide to plant flowers around the flagpole in the town square. Give them time.”

      “I just feel sort of blindsided. I came here because I knew there would be no one when Doc Avery left. It’s not as if I’m an outsider. They know me. Most of them know my family. Was I some kind of moron when I was a child?”

      “No, but you were cute.” Sally hugged the child on her lap. Laughter played in her big wide-set eyes.

      “Cute? Who wants a cute doctor?” Maude stirred her coffee.

      “Barry Farmington.”

      “Oh, please. He doesn’t count. He’d hit on a lamppost if he thought he could get some.” Maude sipped coffee, put it down and stirred again.

      “They’ll come around,” Sally assured her.

      “What do I do in the meantime? I’m used to working sixteen hours a day.” Maude tapped her fingertips on the tabletop until Sally reached over and quieted the tapping by covering Maude’s hand with her own.

      “Since it won’t last long, take some time for yourself. Drive to Kalispell and have a massage. Go out and make new friends. Eat dirt. What do you feel like doing?”

      “I don’t know. Yesterday, when a patient came in as an emergency, someone must have called Doc Avery. He stopped in…on his way out of town.”

      “Cora and Ethel. Know everything. Blab all.” Sally smoothed the hair back from her daughter’s forehead. Lizzy snuggled closer into her mother’s bosom.

      “You heard.” Maude crossed and uncrossed her legs.

      Sally nodded. “I was behind the cornflakes this morning.”

      Maude put her face in her hands.

      “It’s early.” Sally patted her on the head and played with her hair the way she did her daughter’s. “Besides, they asked you to come and take over.”

      Maude laughed and looked up. “I didn’t tell you what they said the first time I called, when I was just starting my Rural Medicine fellowship. It’s too embarrassing.”

      “How about…‘Oh, Maudie, you’re too cute to be our doctor’?”

      “Close. ‘We’re sure we’ll find someone before you’re ready.’ I know I heard the head of the selection committee cringe when she said it, too, hoping I wasn’t going to beg for crumbs or anything. That was two years ago and I was already board certified in internal medicine.”

      “The jerks, but like I said…”

      “I know. It’s early.” Maude sat up and pulled her shoulders back, and then slumped forward onto her elbows. “Maybe I’ll go to Fiji and then come back next spring to see if ‘little Maudie’ is better than no doctor at all.”

      “Yeah, go. And while you’re there, you can choose another profession, maybe something that doesn’t take any backbone.”

      As if to emphasize Sally’s point, Barney put his paws on Maude’s lap and stretched up to lick her face. “Thank you. I needed that,” she said to Sally and Barney. She scratched the back of the dog’s head.

      “See the patients that come. Treat them like kings and queens, and give away ice-cream cones. They’ll come back.”

      “Possibly. Where are the rest of the kids?” Maude reached out and touched the silken cheek of the girl in her friend’s lap and got a shy smile as a reward.

      “The twins are having a nap—early, but I take what I can get. The older two are on a playdate, so I have peace and quiet—just what you’re shunning. Remember this day. You’ll rue it if you waste it. Now tell me what else has you going.”

      “Going?”

      “You’re twitchy and I know all this maudlin—” she paused to cover Lizzy’s ears “—crap is a cover-up for what you don’t want to talk about.”

      “I am not—” Maude

Скачать книгу