Family Practice

CHAPTER THREE

THUNDER RUMBLED OVERHEAD and Zach swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands, staring down at the scarred pine floor. It was barely daybreak but he wouldn’t be sleeping any more. Something about the long, rolling rumble of a storm coming in off the big lake reminded him of Afghanistan. There weren’t a lot of thunderstorms in that far-off, arid country, but there was a lot of gunfire. The one aspect he didn’t like of living near a big body of water was the really loud thunderstorms. Occasionally, they still triggered a bout of PTSD, and he didn’t want that happening with his brand-new roommate just on the other side of the wall.

He’d grown up on the edge of the California desert, shuffled from one foster home to another. He had no idea who his parents were, his people, but he suspected somewhere in his lineage there had been at least one sailor. He’d been fascinated by the sea as a child, and now as an adult by the great inland seas so nearby. The day after he graduated from high school, he’d left the last foster home he’d been placed in and joined the navy. He’d thought he’d spend the next four years surrounded by water, maybe even assigned to an aircraft carrier, but instead he’d ended up in Afghanistan. Twice.

In White Pine Lake there was water everywhere he looked, exactly as he’d envisioned as a child, but he still didn’t like thunderstorms.

He pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. Rudy had advised him early on not to wander around in his skivvies while he was living in White Pine Lake, and his old Marine buddy had been right. It wasn’t unheard of for someone to come knocking on his front door at any hour of the day or night for free medical advice. He wondered how his new neighbor, the uptight Dr. Layman, would handle that aspect of a small-town practice. Not well, he’d guess. He wondered what she was doing here at all.

Actually, the answer to that one was easy enough. She was a Layman. Knowing J.R., hearing the praises of J.R.’s father and—from the old-timers who remembered that far back—his father sung throughout the town, it was because of an overdeveloped sense of duty, not because practicing medicine in a small town was what she wanted most in life.

Well, it was what he wanted, and he intended to hang on to this job with both hands, even if it meant butting heads with her at every turn.

He’d been willing to make amends after their less-than-stellar first meeting when he’d heard her Jeep pull into the parking space behind the duplex that first night. He’d gotten up off the couch, even though he was bone tired, and walked out into the cool, humid night to greet her and offer a hand to help unload her Jeep. He could hear a radio playing in a nearby cottage, and traffic sounds from Lake Street intermittently drowned out the chirping of crickets and the eerie wail of a loon calling for its absent mate. A small tingle of uneasiness prowled at the edge of his consciousness. A motorcycle going by had masked his footsteps on the gravel, so she whirled in surprise when he spoke, hitting him in the thigh with a big overstuffed duffel bag as she swung around.

“Oof,” he said.

“Good heavens, you scared the life out of me. What are you doing here?” She dropped the duffel with a thud, barely missing his foot in the process.

“I was coming to offer my help unloading your Jeep.”

They were standing under a streetlight. He could see her face clearly. Surprise at his appearance had widened her eyes momentarily. Now they narrowed with suspicion. “Where exactly did you come from?”

He hooked his thumb over his shoulder toward the duplex. “Didn’t your dad explain? We’re neighbors. Real close neighbors.”

“No.” Her lips thinned. “He did not. He just said he knew the cabin was my favorite place and since it had become available—” She put her hands on her hips. “This isn’t acceptable,” she said.

“Why not? You just said how much you like the place.”

“What I am worried about is what people will think of us living so close. It’s...it’s not professional.”

“Come off it, Dr. Layman. This isn’t the Middle Ages. You’re not giving your friends and neighbors enough credit. Why should they care?” She had a point, though. There would be some small-minded people who would raise their eyebrows and wag their tongues—there always were in a town this size. “It’s no different from a coed dorm. Are you saying you’ve never lived in close proximity to a man?”

“I...” she sputtered. “Of course I have.”

Did that mean she’d been in a serious relationship? Did she still have a boyfriend? Somehow he didn’t like that idea, although he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. He didn’t pursue the topic, however, for the same reason he hadn’t elaborated on town gossips. Now that she was here, he didn’t want to scare her off. “Do you believe your dad would have sent you down here if he didn’t trust me to behave myself?” He was beginning to enjoy this. She was so easy to rattle.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, but she sounded as if the fight had gone out of her. For the first time he noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the droop to her shoulders. She’d had as long and as hard a day as he had. He ought to be ashamed of himself for goading her. “Good. Then that’s settled. You’re staying. It’s late. We can work out some ground rules for sharing the place in the morning so we can both have our privacy.”

He bent to pick up the duffel and so did she. They both straightened with a hand on a strap. He tugged and she had the grace to let go without a struggle. “I don’t need ground rules,” she said. “I just believe it’s better if I find another place. We’ll be together quite enough during office hours.” She didn’t give up easily; she’d hold her ground in an argument or a fight.

“Whatever you say, Dr. Layman,” he replied as formally. “But don’t count on finding anything better. It’s high season. The town’s booked solid. No landlord in his right mind will accept the stipend the Physician’s Committee’s willing to pay, except for that old coot at the Commodore. If you’re determined to make up the difference out of your own pocket, you might as well stay here.”

“Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands. “You have made your point, and it’s too late to argue with you any more tonight. Just be careful with that duffel. It’s got my coffeemaker in it and I don’t want it to get broken. I can’t function in the morning without my caffeine.”

That scene had taken place Saturday night. Now, four days later and three days into their working relationship, it was still the longest conversation they’d had so far.

It was shaping up to be a long summer.

He punched the button to start the coffeemaker he’d found in the thrift store and headed for the closet-size bathroom to shower and shave.

Ten minutes later he was on the porch, one shoulder propped against the stone pillar that supported the roof, drinking his coffee while he kept one eye on the leaden skies. He heard the door on Callie Layman’s side of the duplex open. He shifted position slightly so it wouldn’t seem as if he was hiding from her as she sat down in one of the two pine rockers that matched the set on his half of the porch. She was already dressed for her day at the clinic in slacks, a tailored shirt and the long white lab coat that he thought was an attempt to look as much like a man as possible. It didn’t work, though. The curves beneath the layers of fabric were all female.

“Good morning, Dr. Layman,” he said, lifting his mug in salute—might as well be neighborly. He wasn’t going inside just so she could have the porch to herself.

She jumped a little in surprise and hot liquid sloshed over the rim of her coffee mug. “I didn’t see you there,” she said with a hint of accusation in her voice, holding the mug out so it didn’t drip on her slacks.

“Just checking on the weather.” The duplex was about the size of a two-car garage, with doors at opposite ends of a shared front porch. The porch was divided by a screen made from an old pair of folding doors that offered about as much privacy as adjoining hotel balconies. In the past the building had been a garage, then a bait shop and finally used for boat storage before Callie’s dad had remodeled it into two one-bedroom rental units. It was built of native river rock and, with its weathered wood trim and faded green shutters, was solid and sturdy and rooted to its spot on the lakeshore. It was small and cramped and lacking in all kinds of creature comforts like internet service and cable TV, but it suited Zach just fine.

“Looks like the storm might miss us.” He gestured out over the lake with his mug. The air was cool, and mist shrouded the far shore of the lake and clung to the tops of the high dunes in the distance, but when the sun eventually broke through the clouds, it would be a warm day.

“It will,” Callie responded confidently, scanning the dark rolling clouds at the far edge of the lake. She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t smell the rain, so it’s not coming this way.” She tilted her head slightly as though waiting for him to contradict her.

“You think so?” Why couldn’t he just agree with her? What was it about her that made him want to challenge everything she said?

“I know so. I grew up on this lake, remember. And I come from a long line of avid weather watchers.”

“Can’t argue with that,” he conceded.

She nodded, satisfied she’d won the argument. “Just a light show in the sky giving the fishermen time for another cup of coffee before they head out onto the lake,” Callie said as a three-pronged lightning strike arced out of the dark clouds and disappeared behind the dunes. Thunder rolled on like a giant’s chorus of kettledrums. Zach tightened his grip on the handle of his mug and worked to slow his too-fast heartbeat. He forgot the retort he’d been going to make. “Where did you grow up?” she asked before he could come up with another.

“California. Little town in the desert.”

“That’s a long way from White Pine Lake. How did you end up here?”

“I like water,” he said, “and Rudy boasted they had lots of it where he came from. He was right.”

“You and Rudy served together?”

“He was my buddy and my patient,” Zach said. Now, why the hell had he said that? The storm had shaken him more than he realized. He didn’t want to talk about Afghanistan and the things that had happened there. If Rudy wanted to tell her about the IED attack that had cost him half his leg, that was his business, but Zach wasn’t going to. He set his teeth and remained silent.

She tilted her head and gave him a long, straight look, then nodded slightly. “I see. Afghanistan is off-limits. I accept that.” She reverted to their previous subject. “We could use some rain, though. It’s pretty dry.”

Maybe he’d been too quick in judging her; she’d picked up on his reluctance to talk about his past and hadn’t pressed him on it. He just hoped she did as well with her patients. He relaxed, confident he had himself under control again. It was getting easier as time went on and the flashbacks became fewer and less intense. “Yeah, we could use a good shower or two.” Last winter there hadn’t been a lot of snow, so too-little rain in the summer months increased the danger of wildfires in the heavily wooded national parkland surrounding the town. “I’ll water the planters before I leave this morning. That should guarantee at least a little rain.”

The corners of her mouth turned up in only a slight smile, but it was enough. It transformed her face and made him catch his breath. He wondered what she would look like if she really let go. Spectacular, he suspected.

“Same with washing your car. Works every time,” she said. “I’ll take my turn later in the week.”

“It’s no trouble. I’ve been taking care of them all summer.”

“So I’ve noticed,” she said drily. “When was the last time you deadheaded the petunias?”

“Uh, you’ve got me there.” Did she always have to be in charge? Be the one to give the orders? But her next words surprised him.

“We’ve got joint custody of the landscaping now, so I’ll do my share. How’s this for a division of labor—you water, I’ll weed. Deal?”

“Deal.” He considered holding out his hand to shake on the agreement but found himself reluctant to do so. He remembered how the softness of her palms against his that first day had electrified his nerve endings and then refused to fade away. Better not to touch her at all, no matter how casual the contact. Anyway, she’d probably take it as an insult, call it inappropriate conduct. She kept both her hands wrapped around her coffee mug as she rose from her seat. “Good. That’s settled. I’d better go. I have some things I need to research before office hours start.”

He considered taking the reference to office hours as an opening to talk about their working arrangements. The situation was awkward for all of them at the clinic right now, as most of the patients were on his schedule and there was little chance to discuss which of those patients would be least upset to be moved to her care, as the doctor in charge.

So over the past couple of days, he’d taken the established patients while Callie had dealt with the walk-ins. She’d spent the rest of her workday reviewing their procedure list, making notes on her laptop, discussing with Bonnie and Leola the changes they would like to see when the clinic was remodeled, and generally avoiding being alone with him.

This practice wasn’t as structured as the military. The chain of command was clear as mud. Outside of the mandatory guidelines and protocols the hospital imposed on them, they had to work out their own routine, and Zach preferred to do that in private. The sooner the better. He opened his mouth to start the ball rolling but he’d waited too long.

“I’ll see you at the clinic,” she said, her hand already on the screen door handle as another long, low peal of thunder rumbled out over the lake, fainter than before and even farther away, as she had predicted. “It will be a zoo today with the carpet cleaners in the waiting room and the electrical inspector coming at noon. We’ll have to keep a pretty strict schedule this morning to have room for him.”

“I don’t like to rush my patients,” he said. There was no way he was going to turn into a clock-watching corporate sawbones just because she wanted to clear the schedule over the noon hour.

Nonetheless, he had to admit she was right—he was heavily booked. He was going to have to keep people moving through at a steady clip, whether he wanted to or not.

“I’m not asking you to rush any of your appointments, but I also don’t approve of patients sitting in the waiting room for too long,” she said, all starchy and nose-in-the-air. She was very much on her high horse again, no hint of the incandescent smile he’d witnessed earlier, no softening of her professional demeanor. The humorless and by-the-book Dr. Layman had returned.

“Neither do I.”

“Good, then we do agree on something.” It wasn’t quite a question but he chose to respond as if it was.

“Yes, Dr. Layman, I guess we do.”

* * *

“HI, DAD, WHAT ARE YOU doing here?” Callie looked up from the chart she was attempting to decipher. The White Pine Lake Community Health Center had not yet gone digital in its record keeping. Zach Gibson might not be entitled to an M.D. after his name but he sure had the chicken-scratch handwriting that usually accompanied the title.

“Ezra Colliflower asked me to sit in on the electrical inspector’s walk-through. He’ll be gone all day delivering a load of lumber to the mill in Gaylord.”

“Good. I’d rather have you here than Ezra. He’s scared me ever since he caught me and Gerry Forrester mushroom hunting in the woods out by his place and threatened to come after us with his chain saw. I still say we were on the other side of his property line, but he acted as if we were stealing his family jewels or something.”

“You did have a heck of a bag of morels,” J.R. reminded her. “I’ve never tasted better. Worth their weight in gold.”

Callie sighed, remembering her haul of succulent fungi. “Hmm. Maybe he did have a reason to be angry, but I still say we were on the right side of the line on state ground. Twenty years hasn’t mellowed him, either.He’s still bad-tempered and cranky.”

“He wouldn’t be Ezra if he changed his habits,” J.R. said with a grin. Her father was a handsome man, just under six feet tall, with a full head of steel-gray hair and skin permanently bronzed by years of exposure to wind and sun and the cold temperatures of long northern winters.

“Rudy and his gang finished the subfloor in the lab section this morning. Hopefully they’ll have the new laminate flooring installed as soon as the electrical inspector gives the okay on the additional wiring. Bonnie and Leola are thrilled by the layout for the new electrical outlets. They’re tired of running extension cords all over the place whenever we get a new piece of equipment.”

“I’m glad you brought it to my attention. Zach said he’d intended to bring the subject up himself but you beat him to it.”

Zach hadn’t mentioned any of that to her. But to be fair she hadn’t spoken to him about her conversations with the female staff. She should have. They were on the same team, after all. Something she had difficulty remembering whenever she was in the same room with him.

J.R. crossed his ankle over his knee. He was dressed in jeans and a green White Pine polo, so she guessed he was taking the early shift behind the bar today. The middle of summer wasn’t a busy time for his CPA business but it was for the bar and grill. It usually worked out well for him, but today he seemed tired and there were new lines around his hazel eyes, the same color as hers. She wondered briefly if the new baby would share their eye color, Ginger’s blue-gray or a shade unique and entirely his own? “How are you and Zach getting along?” J.R. asked before she could start her own line of questioning about his health.

“Fine,” she said automatically.

“Hmm,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “So not very smoothly, huh?” He knew her too well.

Callie cut her eyes to the open door. Her new office had been doing double duty as a storage area since the sprinkler malfunction, although she couldn’t complain; she only had the occasional interruption to deal with, not patients funneling in and out for blood tests and weights and measurements as Zach did. “He’s good at his job,” she said, determined to put the best face on it. “We have different styles of interacting with our patients, that’s all.”

“Coming from the military, he’s had a lot of responsibility thrust on him from a young age. He’s used to being his own boss,” J.R. said. “But I’m confident you two will work it out.”

“Of course we will. We’re both professionals.”

“I know it hasn’t helped that you’re in the other half of the duplex,” J.R. said with a frown. “It’s just...well, things are complicated right now. I didn’t plan far enough ahead. All those years of the two of us rattling around alone at the White Pine, I never realized it could get overcrowded, but it has. Becca’s too old to share a room with her brother, and I assured Ginger I was fine with the baby being in our room, but—”

“It’s a huge improvement over the mini-suite at the Commodore.” She gave an exaggerated mock shudder and was rewarded with a quick smile from her father. “But it’s as much my fault as yours. I should have planned where I’d be staying before I ever got here,” Callie said. “Dad, is everything all right between you and Ginger?” She waited, not quite sure how he would react to such a direct personal question from her. Her father was a very private man.

“It’s not easy getting used to the idea of being a new father when you’re staring your fiftieth birthday in the eye,” he said candidly. He shook his head ruefully, one side of his mouth lifting in a grin.

“Or being a sister when you’re twenty-nine,” Callie admitted, returning the smile. She waited but he didn’t add anything further. “We’ll figure this blended-family thing out together. Deal?”

“Deal,” he said. “Your mother has plenty of room out at her place if it gets too uncomfortable being in such close proximity to Zach Gibson day and night.”

“The prospect of moving in with Mom and the goats and the chickens should be all the incentive I require to come to a truce with my PA.”

She’d made peace with her mother over the years, accepting the reality that Karen could only be happy marching to the beat of her own drummer. J.R., however, had never come to that same acceptance. He might have forgiven Karen for leaving him and their marriage, but never for abandoning Callie. Her parents were civil to each other these days but by no means friendly. Juggling birthdays and holidays without causing hard feelings was stressful for Callie—for all of them, really. Deep down she had to admit that continuing animosity between her parents was the biggest reason she hadn’t come home as often as she could have these past few years.

“That’s settled, then.” J.R. relaxed in his chair, but she knew him too well not to notice that the tension hadn’t completely left him.

“You are okay with the new baby, aren’t you?” Overcoming a lifetime of reticence on her dad’s part—and on hers—wasn’t going to happen overnight, she realized.

“Sure,” he said a little too quickly. “Especially if I get another great little girl like you.”

“Come on, Dad. You can admit you really want a boy.”

He dropped his foot to the floor, not reacting to her smile. “Either one is fine with me as long as he or she and Ginger are both fine.” He stood up. “I’m going to go check in with Rudy and the inspector and see what’s going on. Want to come along?”

“I don’t know anything about electricity, and I don’t want to know any more than it hides in the wall and comes out when you plug something into a socket. Don’t you dare tell anyone I said that. Especially Zach.” She stood up and straightened her shoulders. “But when duty calls, we Laymans step up to the plate.” J.R. opened his mouth and Callie was afraid he might broach the subject of her staying longer than the three months she’d agreed to. “While we’re at it, I could use another receptacle or two in here.”

J.R. took the hint. “We don’t have an unlimited budget, remember. Especially not until we find out how much the insurance company is going to pay for the water damage.”