Virgin River

“How about a discount, to start? We don’t want to get crazy.”

Mel got her sister Joey on the phone.

“Oh, Jesus, Mel! You scared me to death! Where have you been? Why didn’t you call sooner?”

“I’ve been in Virgin River where I have no phone and my cell doesn’t work. And I’ve been pretty busy.”

“I was about to call out the National Guard!”

“Yeah? Well, don’t bother. They’d never be able to find the place.”

“You’re all right?”

“Well… This will probably make you perversely happy,” Mel told her. “You were right. I shouldn’t have done this. I was nuts. As usual.”

“Is it terrible?”

“Well, it definitely started out terrible—the free housing turned out to be a falling-down hovel and the doctor is a mean old coot who doesn’t want any help in his practice. I was on my way out of town when— you’ll never believe this—someone left an abandoned newborn on the doctor’s porch. But things have improved, if slightly. I’m staying for at least a few more days to help with the baby. The old doc wouldn’t wake up to those middle-of-the-night hunger cries. Oh, Joey, my first impression of him is that he was the poorest excuse for a town doctor I’d ever met. Mean as a snake, rude as sour milk. Fortunately, working with those L.A. medical residents, especially those dicky surgeons, prepared me nicely.”

“Okay, that was your first impression. How has it changed?”

“He proves tractable. Since my housing was uninhabitable, I’m staying in the guest room in his house. It’s actually set up to be the only hospital room in town. This house is fine—clean and functional. There could be a slight inconvenience at any moment—a young woman who asked me to deliver her first baby will be having it here—in my bedroom, which I share with the abandoned baby. Picture this—a post-partum patient and a full nursery.”

“And you will sleep where?”

“I’ll probably hang myself up in a corner and sleep standing up. But that’s only if she delivers within the next week, while I’m still here. Surely a family will turn up to foster this baby soon. Although, I wouldn’t mind a birth. A sweet, happy birth to loving, excited, healthy parents…”

“You don’t have to stay for that,” Joey said firmly. “It’s not as though they don’t have a doctor.”

“I know—but she’s so young. And she was so happy, thinking there was a woman doctor here who could deliver her rather than this ornery old man.”

“Mel, I want you to get in your car and drive. Come to us. Where we can look after you for a while.”

“I don’t need looking after,” she said with a laugh. “Work helps. I need to work. Whole hours go by without thinking about Mark.”

“How are you doing with that?”

She sighed deeply. “That’s another thing. No one here knows, so no one looks at me with those sad, pitying eyes. And since they don’t look at me that way, I don’t crumble so often. At least, not where anyone can see.”

“Oh, Mel, I wish I could comfort you somehow…”

“But Joey, I have to grieve this, it’s the only way. And I have to live with the fact that I might never be over it.”

“I hope that’s not true, Mel. I know widows. I know widows who have remarried and are happy.”

“We’re not going there,” she said. Then Mel told Joey about what she knew of the town, about all the people who’d been drifting into Doc’s house just to get a look at her, about Jack and Preacher. And about how many more stars there were out here. The mountains; the air, so clean and sharp it almost took you by surprise. About the people who came to the doctor bringing things, like tons of food, a lot of which went right across the street to the bar where Preacher used it in his creations; about how Jack refused to take a dime from either Doc or Mel for food or drink. Anyone who cared for the town had a free meal ticket over there.

“But it’s very rural. Doc put in a call to the county social services agency, but I gather we’re on a waiting list—they may not figure out foster care for who knows how long. Frankly, I don’t know how the old doc made it without any help all these years.”

“People nice?” Joey asked. “Other than the doctor?”

“The ones I’ve met—very. But the main reason I called, besides letting you know that I’m safe, is to tell you I’m on the old doc’s phone—the cell just isn’t going to work out here. I’ll give you the number.”

“Well,” Joey said. “At least you sound okay. In fact, you sound better than you have in a long time.”

“Like I said, there are patients. Challenges. I’m a little keyed up. The very first day, I was left alone here with the baby and the key to the drug cabinet and told to see any patients who wandered in. No training, nothing. About thirty people came—just to say hello and visit. That’s what you hear in my voice. Adrenaline.”

“Adrenaline again. I thought you swore off.”

Mel laughed. “It’s a completely different brand.”

“So—when you wrap it up there, you’ll come to Colorado Springs?”

“I don’t have any better ideas,” Mel said.

“When?”

“Not sure. In a few days, hopefully. Couple of weeks at the outside. But I’ll call you and let you know when I’m on my way. Okay?”

“Okay. But you really do sound… up.”

“There’s nowhere around here to get highlights. Some woman in town does hair in her garage, and that’s it,” Mel said.

“Oh, my God,” Joey said. “You’d better wrap it up before you get some ugly roots.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

Wednesday, Appointment Day, came and Mel watched the baby and saw a few patients with only minor complaints. One sprained ankle, a bad cold, another prenatal exam, a well-baby check and immunizations. After that there were a couple of walk-ins— she stitched up a laceration on a ten-year-old’s head and Doc said, “Not bad.” Doc made two house calls. They traded off babysitting to walk across the street to Jack’s to eat. The people she met at the bar and those who came into the doctor’s office were pleasant and welcoming. “But this is just temporary,” she was careful to explain. “Doc doesn’t really need any help.”

Mel put in an order for more diapers with Connie at the corner store. The store was no bigger than a minimart and Mel learned that the locals usually went to the nearest large town for their staples and feed for animals, using the store merely to grab those occasional missing items. There were sometimes hunters or fishermen looking for something. They had a little of everything—from bottled water to socks. But only a few items of each.

“I heard no one’s turned up for that baby yet,” Connie said. “I can’t think of anyone around here who’d have a baby and give it up.”

“Can you think of anyone who’d have a baby without any medical intervention of any kind? Especially since there’s a doctor in town?”

Connie, a cute little woman probably in her fifties, shrugged. “Women have their babies at home all the time, but Doc’s usually there. We have some isolated families out in the woods—hardly ever show their faces for anything.” She leaned close and whispered. “Strange people. But I’ve lived here all my life and have never heard of them giving up their children.”

“How long do you expect the social services intervention to take?”

Connie laughed. “I wouldn’t have the first idea. We run into a problem, we usually all pitch in. It’s not like we ask for a lot of outside help.”

“Okay, then, how long before you get in a new supply of disposable diapers?”

“Ron makes his supply run once a week, and he’ll do that tomorrow morning. So, by tomorrow afternoon, you should be fixed up.”

A teenage girl came into the store carrying her book bag—the school bus must have just dropped off. “Ah, my Lizzie,” Connie said. “Mel, this is my niece, Liz. She just got here—she’s going to stay with me for a while.”

“How do you do?” Mel said.

“Hey,” Liz said, smiling. Her full, long brown hair was teased up high and falling seductively to her shoulders, eyebrows beautifully arched over bright blue eyes, eye makeup thick, her glossy lips full and pouty. Little sex queen, Mel found herself thinking, in her short denim skirt, leather knee-high boots with heels, sweater tugged over full breasts and not meeting her waist. Belly-button ring, hmm. “Need me to work awhile?” Liz asked Connie.

“No, honey. Go to the back and start your homework. Your first day was good?”

“Okay, I guess.” She shrugged. “Nice to meet you,” she said, disappearing into the store’s back room.

“She’s beautiful,” Mel said.

Connie was frowning slightly. “She’s fourteen.”

Mel’s eyes grew wide as she mouthed the words silently. Fourteen? “Wow,” she whispered to Connie. The girl looked at least sixteen or even seventeen. She could pass for eighteen.

“Yeah. That’s why she’s here. Her mother, my sister, is at the end of her rope with the little hot bottom. She’s a wild one. But that was in Eureka. Not so many places to go wild around here.” She smiled. “If I could just get her to cover her naked body, I would feel so much better.”

“I hear ya,” Mel laughed. “May the force be with you.” But I’d consider birth control, Mel thought.

When Mel had her meals at the bar, if there was no one around she knew, like Connie or her best friend Joy, or Ron or Hope, she would sit up at the bar and talk to Jack while she ate. Sometimes he ate with her. During these meals she learned more about the town, about summer visitors who came for hiking and camping, the hunters and fishermen who passed through during the season—the Virgin was great for fly fishing, a comment that made her giggle. And there was kayaking, which sounded like fun to her.

Ricky introduced her to his grandmother who made a rare dinner appearance. Lydie Sudder was over seventy and had that uncomfortable gait of one who suffered arthritis. “You have a very nice grandson,” Mel observed. “Is it just the two of you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I lost my son and daughter-in-law in an accident when he was just a little thing. I’d sure worry about him if it weren’t for Jack. He’s been looking out for Ricky since he came to town. He looks after a lot of people.”

“I can sense that about him,” Mel said.

The March sun had warmed the land and brought out the buds. Mel had a fleeting thought that seeing this place in full bloom would be glorious, but then reminded herself that she would miss it. The baby— little Chloe—was thriving and several different women from town had stopped by to offer babysitting services.

She realized that she’d been here over a week—and it had passed like minutes. Of course, never getting more than four hours of sleep at a stretch tended to speed up time. She’d found living with Doc Mullins to be more bearable than she would’ve thought. He could be a cantankerous old goat, but she could give it back to him just as well, something he seemed to secretly enjoy.

One day, when the baby was asleep and there were no patients or calls, Doc got out a deck of cards. He shuffled them in his hand and said, “Come on. Let’s see what you got.” He sat down at the kitchen table and dealt the cards. “Gin,” he said.

“All I know about gin is that you mix it with tonic,” she told him.

“Good. We’ll play for money,” he said.

She sat down at the table. “You plan to take advantage of me,” she said.

“Oh, yes,” he confirmed. And then with a smile so rare, he began to tell her how to play. Pennies for points, he told her. And within an hour she was laughing, winning, and Doc’s expression was getting more sour by the minute, which only made her laugh harder. “Come on,” she said, dealing. “Let’s see what you got.”

The sound of someone coming through the front door temporarily stopped the game and Mel said, “Sit tight, I’ll see who it is.” She patted his hand. “Give you time to stack the deck.”

Standing just inside the front door was a skinny man with a long graying beard. His overalls were dirty and the bottoms frayed around filthy boots. The edge of his shirt sleeves and collar were also frayed, as though he’d been in these particular clothes a very long time. He didn’t come into the house, probably because of the mud he tracked, but stood just inside the door twisting a very worn felt hat.

“Can I help you?” she asked him.

“Doc here?”

“Uh-huh. Sure. Let me get him for you.”

She fetched Doc to the front door and while he was chatting with the man, she checked on Chloe. When Doc finally came back to the kitchen, he was wearing a very unpleasant expression. “We have to make a call. See if you can rustle up someone to keep an eye on the baby.”

“You need my assistance?” she asked, perhaps more hopefully than she wished.

“No,” he said, “but I think you should tag along. See what’s on the other side of the tree line.”

Chloe stirred in her bed and Mel picked her up. “Who was that man?”

“Clifford Paulis. Lives out in the woods with some people. His daughter and her man joined them a while back. They have regular problems. I’d rather you just see.”

“Okay,” she said, perplexed.

After a few phone calls had been placed with no success, the best they could do for the baby was take her across the street to Jack’s with a few diapers and a bottle. Mel carried her little bed while Doc managed the baby in one arm and his cane in the other hand, though Mel had offered to make two trips.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” she asked Jack. “You might have to change her and everything.”

“Nieces,” he said again. “I’m all checked out.”

“How many nieces, exactly?” she asked.

“Eight, at last count. Four sisters and eight nieces. Apparently they can’t breed sons. Where are you off to?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Paulises’,” Doc said. And Jack whistled.

As they drove out of town, Mel said, “I don’t have a good feeling about this. Seems everyone knows about this family except me.”

“I guess you deserve to be prepared. The Paulises live in a small compound of shacks and trailers with a few others—a camp. They stay out of sight and drink a lot, wander into town very rarely. They keep a supply of pure grain alcohol on hand. They’re dirt-poor, miserable folk, but they haven’t given Virgin River any trouble. Clifford says there was a fight last night and there’s some patching up to do.”

“What kind of fight?”

“They’re pretty gritty folk. If they sent for me, it must’ve been a good one.”

They drove a long way into the woods, the dirt road a narrow, bumpy, one lane before it finally broke open into a clearing around which were, as Doc had said, two shacks and a couple of trailers. Not mobile homes, but camper shells and an itty bitty trailer that had seen better days, along with an old wheelless pickup truck up on blocks. They circled an open area in the middle of which was a crude brick oven of sorts. There were tarps stretched out from the campers and shacks with actual furniture under them. Not outdoor furniture but household—tables and chairs, old sofas with the stuffing popping out. Plus old tires, a couple of small trucks, unidentifiable junk, a wringer washer lying on its side. Mel peered into the trees and blinked to clear her vision. There appeared to be a semitrailer, half buried in the ground with camouflage tarps over the top. Beside it was, unmistakably, a gas-powered generator.

Mel said, “Holy shit.”

“Help if you can,” Doc said. “But try not to talk.” He peered at her. “That’ll be hard for you.”

Doc got out of the truck, hefting his bag. People started to drift into the clearing—not from within their homes, such as they were, but more like from behind them. There were just a few men. It was impossible to tell their ages; they all looked like vagrants with their dirty and worn dungarees and overalls. They were bearded, their hair long and matted, like real sad hillbillies. Everyone was thin with sallow complexions; they were not enjoying good health out here. There was a very bad smell and Mel thought about bathroom facilities. They would be using the forest; and it smelled as if they didn’t get far enough from the camp. Their facilities were minimal. It was like a little third-world country.

Doc nodded to people as he pressed forward, getting nods back. He’d obviously been here before. Mel followed more slowly. Doc ended up in front of a shack outside of which Clifford Paulis stood. Doc turned to make sure Mel was with him, then entered.

She felt their eyes on her, but they kept their distance. She wasn’t exactly afraid, but she was nervous and unsure and hurried behind Doc to enter the shack with him.

There was a small table inside with a lantern on it. Sitting on short stools at the table were a man and a woman. Mel had to stifle a gasp. Their faces were swollen, cut and bruised. The man was perhaps thirty, his dirty blond hair short and spiky, and he twitched and jittered, unable to sit still. The woman, maybe the same age, was holding her arm at an odd angle. Broken.

Doc put his bag on the table and opened it. He pulled out and put on his latex gloves. Mel followed suit, but slowly, her pulse picking up. She had never worked as a visiting nurse, but knew a few who had. There were nasty hovels all around the poorer sections of L.A. where paramedics might be called, but in the city if you had a situation like this, you’d notify the police. The patients would be brought to the emergency room. And in the event of domestic violence, which this clearly was, these two would both be booked into jail right out of the E.R. When there’s an injury in a domestic, no one has to press charges besides the police.

“Whatcha got, Maxine?” he said, reaching out for her arm, which she extended toward him. He examined it briefly. “Clifford,” he called. “I’m gonna need a bucket of water.” Then to Mel he said, “Get to work on cleaning up Calvin’s face, see if sutures are required, and I’ll attempt to set this ulna.”

“Do you want a hypo?” she asked.

“I don’t think we’ll need that,” he said.

Mel got out some peroxide and cotton and approached the young man warily. He lifted his eyes to her face and grinned at her with a mouth full of dirty teeth, some of which appeared to be rotting. In his eyes she saw that his pupils were very small—he was full of amphetamine, higher than a kite. He kept grinning at her and she tried not to make eye contact with him. She cleaned some of the cuts on his face and finally said, “Wipe that look off your face or I’ll let Doc do this.” It made him giggle stupidly.

“I’m going to need something for the pain,” he said.

“You already had something for the pain,” she told him. And he giggled again. But in his eyes there was menace and she decided not to make any more eye contact.

Doc made a sudden movement that slammed Calvin’s arm onto the table, hard, gripped by Doc’s arthritic hand. “You never do that, you hear me?” Doc said in a voice more threatening than Mel had heard before, then slowly released Calvin’s forearm while boring through him with angry eyes. Then Doc immediately turned his attention back to Maxine. “I’m going to have to put this bone right, Maxine. Then I’ll cast it for you.”

Mel had no idea what had just happened. “You don’t want an X-ray?” she heard herself ask Doc. And her answer was a glare from the doctor who’d asked her to try not to talk. She went back to the man’s face.

There was a cut over his eye that she could repair with tape, no stitches required. Standing above him as she was, she noticed a huge purple bump through the thinning hair on the top of his head. Maxine must have hit him over the head with something, right before he broke her arm. She glanced at his shoulders and arms through the thin fabric of his shirt and saw that he had some heft to him—he was probably strong. Strong enough at least break a bone.

The bucket of water arrived—the bucket rusty and dirty—and momentarily she heard Maxine give out a yelp of pain as Doc used sudden and powerful force to put her ulna back into place.

Old Doc Mullins worked silently, wrapping an Ace bandage around her arm, then dipping casting material into the bucket, soaking it, and applying it to the broken arm. Finished with her assignment, Mel moved away from Calvin and watched Doc. He was strong and fast for his age, skilled for a man with hands twisted by arthritis, but then this had been his life’s work. Casting done, he pulled a sling out of his bag.

Job done, he snapped off his gloves, threw them in his bag, closed it, picked it up and, looking down, went back to the truck. Again, Mel followed.

When they were out of the compound she said, “All right—what’s going on there?”

“What do you think’s going on?” he asked. “It isn’t complicated.”

“Looks pretty awful to me,” she said.

“It is awful. But not complicated. Just a few dirt-poor alcoholics. Homeless, living in the woods. Clifford wandered away from his family to live out here years ago and over time a few others joined his camp. Then Calvin Thompson and Maxine showed up not so long ago, and added weed to the agenda—they’re growing in that semitrailer. Biggest mystery to me is how they got it back in here. You can bet Calvin couldn’t get that done. I figure Calvin’s connected to someone, told ‘em he could sit back here and watch over a grow. Calvin’s a caretaker. That’s what the generator is about—grow lights. They irrigate out of the river. Calvin’s jitters don’t come from pot—pot would level him out and slow him down. He’s gotta be on something like meth. Maybe he skims a little marijuana, cheats the boss, and trades it for something else. Thing is, I don’t think Clifford and those old men have anything to do with the pot. They never had a grow out there before that I know of. But I could be wrong.”

“Amazing,” she said.

“There are lots of little marijuana camps hidden back in these woods—some of ‘em pretty good size—but you can’t grow it outside in winter months. It’s still the biggest cash crop in California. But even if you gave Clifford and those old boys a million dollars, that’s how they’re going to live.” He took a breath. “Not all local growers look like vagrants. A lot of ‘em look like millionaires.”

“What happened when you grabbed his arm like that?” she asked.

“You didn’t see? He was raising it like he was going to touch you. Familiarly.”

She shuddered. “Thanks. I guess. Why’d you want me to see that?”

“Two reasons—so you’d know what some of this country medicine is about. Some places where they’re growing are booby-trapped, but not this one. You should never go out to one of those places alone. Not even if a baby’s coming. You better hear me on that.”

“Don’t worry,” she said with a shudder. “You should tell someone, Doc. You should tell the sheriff or someone.”

He laughed. “For all I know, the sheriff’s department’s aware—there are growers all over this part of the world. For the most part, they stay invisible—it’s not like they want to be found out. More to the point, I’m in medicine, not law enforcement. I don’t talk about the patients. I assume that’s your ethic, as well.”

“They live in filth! They’re hungry and probably sick! Their water is undoubtedly contaminated by the awful, dirty containers they keep it in. They’re beating each other up and dying of drink and…whatever.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Doesn’t make my day, either.”

She found it devastating, the acceptance of such hopelessness. “How do you do it?” she asked him, her voice quiet.

“I just do the best I can,” he said. “I help where I can. That’s all anyone can do.”

She shook her head. “This really isn’t for me,” she said. “I can handle stuff like this when it comes into the hospital, but I’m no country practitioner. It’s like the Peace Corps.”

“There are bright spots in my doctoring, too,” he said. “Just happens that isn’t one of them.”

She was completely down in the dumps when she went back to the grill to collect the baby. “Not pretty out there, is it?” Jack said.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.