LITMIR.BIZ

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over the world. And writers are always going to some conference or other, where she has a million friends.”

      But, of course, she missed Helen madly. She asked herself daily if this wasn’t the stupidest thing she’d ever done. Was she trying to prove she could take care of herself?

      “Well, I suppose the waiting room is filling up with people.”

      “Is it busy every day?” he asked, picking up their plates.

      “Manageable,” she said. “Some days you’d think I’m giving away pizza. Thanks for lunch, Sully. It was a nice break.”

      “You come on out here any time you like. You’re good company. You make turkey on whole wheat a lot more interesting.”

      “I want you to do something for me,” she said. “You tell me when you’re ready for that hamburger. I want to take you to lunch.”

      “That’s a promise! You don’t need to mention it to Maggie.”

      “We have laws that prevent talking about patients,” she informed him, “even if she is your daughter and a doctor.”

      “That applies to lunch?” he said. “That’s good news! Then I’ll have a beer with my hamburger, in that case.”

      “Hey, boss,” Eleanor said when Leigh walked in. “We have a few appointments this afternoon and then the usual walk-ins. Did you have a nice lunch?”

      “Excellent,” she said. “Spring is coming fast! There are buds on trees and green shoots poking out of the ground.”

      “Rain in the forecast,” said Gretchen.

      Leigh had two assistants, both RNs. Eleanor was about fifty years old, maternal and sweet-natured, while Gretchen was about thirty, impatient and sometimes cranky. They were both perfectly efficient. Both of them were excellent nurses. They’d known each other for a long time but Leigh got the impression they weren’t friends outside of work. Frankly, Leigh wondered if anyone was Gretchen’s friend.

      “I’m ready when you are,” she said to the nurses, going back to her office.

      There weren’t a lot of patients waiting, but with the number of appointments, the afternoon would be steady. Some people in town used the urgent care clinic as their primary doctor, which was fine if they didn’t need a specialist. Leigh referred those appropriately. Leigh thought about the one time she’d treated Sully. He had an upper respiratory infection with a lingering cough. She ordered an X-ray, gave him some meds and told him to call his regular doctor. “Don’t need any more doctors,” he said. “I’ll let you know if this doesn’t work.” Apparently it worked.

      It was a good little clinic. There was another doctor who filled in two to three times a week for a few hours or a shift; he was semiretired. Bill Dodd. They kept pretty odd hours, staying open two nights a week and Saturdays. Outside clinic hours, patients had to drive to a nearby town to another urgent care. The clinic was there primarily for the locals. Emergencies were deployed to area hospitals, sometimes via ambulance.

      Leigh hung her jacket on the hook behind her desk and replaced it with a white lab coat. She had worn business attire under her lab coat until she’d been puked on, bled on and pooped on a few times. She was a quick learner. Now she wore scrubs and tennis shoes like her nurses.

      Not only was their attire pretty casual, the office was friendly and open. A few of the firefighters from across the street were known to drop in just to visit. If they could get past Gretchen, who was a tad rigid. Leigh thought it was nice to have this open, welcoming atmosphere when possible, when the place wasn’t overflowing with kids with hacking coughs. “It wasn’t like this when Doc Hawkins ran the place,” her friend Connie Boyle said. “You always got the impression he was secretly glad for the company, but he couldn’t smile. His face would crack.” Leigh thought that described half the old men in town, but she was learning that underneath that rugged demeanor there were some sweethearts. Like Sully. He could come off as impatient or crabby, but really, she wanted to squeeze him in a big hug every time she saw him.

      She saw a one-year-old who appeared to have croup; he was barking like a seal. Then there was a bad cold, a referral to the gastroenterologist for possible gallbladder issues and she splinted and wrapped a possible broken ankle before sending the patient off to the orthopedic surgeon.

      Just as they were getting ready to close the clinic, there was some excitement. Rob Shandon, the owner of the pub down the street, brought in his seventeen-year-old son, Finn. Finn was as tall as Rob, and Rob was a bit over six feet. Finn’s hand was wrapped in a bloody towel and his face was white as a sheet; Rob seemed to be supporting him with a hand under his arm. “Bad cut,” Eleanor announced, steering them past Leigh and into the treatment room.

      The towel was soaking up lots of blood and it looked like the patient might go down.

      “On the table and lie down, please. Nice, deep breaths. You’re going to be okay. Close your eyes a moment. Dad, can you tell me what happened?” she asked while snapping on a pair of gloves.

      “Not totally sure,” Rob said. “Something about a broken glass...”

      Finn was recovering. “It broke in the dishwasher, I guess. I was emptying it and ran my hand right across a sharp edge. My palm. And the blood poured out. You should see the kitchen floor.”

      “Well, you wrapped it in a towel and have probably almost stopped the bleeding by now. I want you to stay flat, eyes closed, deep breaths. If you’re not crazy about blood, looking is not a good idea. Me? Doesn’t bother me a bit. And I’m going to have to unwrap this and examine the wound. Eleanor, can you set up a suture tray, please? Some lidocaine and extra gauze. Thanks.” She positioned herself between the injury and Finn’s line of vision. She pulled back the towel slowly and a fresh swell of blood came out of a long, mean-looking gash across the palm of his hand. “Good news—you’re getting out of dishes for a while. Bad news—you’re getting stitches. Plenty of them.”

      “Aww...”

      “I’ll numb it, no worries.”

      “I have practice,” he mumbled. “Baseball...”

      “I don’t think that’s going to work out for you,” she said. “This is a bad cut. Let’s do this, okay?”

      “I’m staying, if that’s all right,” Rob said.

      “Sure,” she said. “Just stay out of my work space.” Leigh picked up the prepared syringe and injected Finn’s palm around the gash. “Only the first prick of the needle hurts,” she explained. She dabbed the cut with gauze. “It’s not as deep as it looks. I don’t think you’ve cut anything that’s going to impact movement. If I had even a question about that, I’d send you to a hand surgeon. It’s superficial. Still serious, but...”

      Eleanor provided drapes, covering Finn, lying the hand on an absorbent pad that was on top of a flat, hard, polyurethane tray that was placed on his belly.

      “Are you comfortable with the hand on this tray?”

      “Okay,” he said.

      Leigh tapped his palm with a hemostat. “Feel that?”

      “Nope,” he said.

      “Good. Then can I trust you not to move if we let your hand rest right here?”

      “I won’t move. Is it still gushing?”

      “Just some minor bleeding and I’m going to stop that quickly,” she said. Eleanor turned the Mayo stand so it hovered over Finn’s body and was within Leigh’s easy reach. Leigh cleaned the gash, applied antiseptic, picked up the needle with a hemostat and began to stitch. She dabbed away blood, tossing used gauze four-by-fours back on the Mayo stand, making a nice pile. “You really did a number on this hand,” she said. “You must have hit that broken glass hard.”

      “I was hurrying,” Finn said. “I wanted to get everything done so I could get

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