The Baby Doctors

“Someone has to take care of them.”

“Someone also has to make a living,” Rose said. “And if you think I’m being hardhearted, talk to Matthew—”

“I already have.”

“Uh-oh.” Rose’s mouth twisted. “And?”

“Take a wild guess.”

“Didn’t I try to tell you?”

After Rose left, Sarah stood in the kitchen, staring out at the gulls and the tankers on the water and the wind-tossed trees. Things did not look promising.

On the wall of her clinic in Central America, she’d tacked up a pain-assessment chart with six cartoonlike faces whose expressions ranged from happy and smiling to great discomfort and unbearable pain. Small kids couldn’t read the captions underneath—annoying, nagging, miserable, horrible, excruciating and so forth—but they knew that a furrowed brow, down-turned mouth and falling tears weren’t good things.

She’d stuck the chart on the refrigerator. Right now, she was definitely among the scowls and grimaces group. Coming back to Port Hamilton was supposed to be like completing a circle. A return to the place where she’d been the happiest, an opportunity to practice medicine with a doctor she admired for his ideals and who was also her best friend.

So much for that.

She made more coffee, carried her mug into the living room, back to the window. Tempted to just go to bed, pull the covers over her head and shut out the world, she was stopped by Rose’s voice in her head mocking her for doing that very thing. She pulled on her sweats and running shoes and jogged down to Francis Street Park, her favorite place in Port Hamilton.

The park was steeply banked with tangles of blackberries on either side and steps running down to the water. Even before she reached the steps, she could see the dark hull of a tanker at anchor, hear the seagulls screech. She felt an almost holiness, like walking into a church.

She took deep, slow breaths, tried to clear her mind. Minutes passed and, slowly, the turbulent thoughts began to subside. She would be all right. Things would work out. She would come up with a new plan. Maybe Matthew wouldn’t have fit into the picture anyway.

They hadn’t always seen eye to eye. Last night was a reminder of that.

In the silence that had fallen between them on the drive back to her apartment, she’d gone through all the things he would never actually say to her about why sharing a practice would never work anyway. He would never say them, because he loved her. Not the way she’d always wanted him to love her, but as a friend whose feelings he wouldn’t want to hurt. You’re too idealistic, Sarah. Too unpredictable. Too…much.

The wind picked up and blew in cold gusts that reached like bony fingers through the fabric of her sweats. She started to run. And this was the memory she wanted to run from now—she’d preached at him. Accused him of abandoning his ideals. Just thinking about it now made her run faster. His expression as he tried to explain was burned on her brain.

Her sneakers slapping the pavement, she continued down the trail. When she reached the ferry terminal, she stood for a moment trying to decide whether to run on to Lopez Hook or head back to the apartment and… what? Send out résumés? Return to Central America? She decided to continue for another ten minutes or so.

“THERE YOU GO.” Elizabeth set a platter of bacon and eggs down in front of the guy at the table by the window. “Can I get you anything else?”

He smiled up at her. “Maybe just a refill.”

She brought the coffeepot over and filled up his mug. If he hadn’t been reading the newspaper, she might have got him talking. She liked to do that, hear people’s stories. Chitchat about the weather. No big heavy stuff, just people being nice to each other.

Back in the kitchen, she stood with her arms folded, watching the gulls in the empty parking lot fight over a scrap of something. No one believed it when she’d taken the job as a waitress at the coffee shop down by the ferry landing. The ex-wife of a doctor, pocketing tips and getting paid minimum wage. But it wasn’t the money—Matt was good about making sure she and Lucy had enough. It was being appreciated. People smiled when she brought their food, they thanked her like they really meant it.

Trouble was, business had slowed down to practically nothing. Now she was the sole employee. Cook, waitress and cleanup crew and she still had time to stand staring out of the window. Time to start feeling sorry for herself, Pearl would say. She looked around for something to do, but the kitchen and all the tables were spotless, so she called home to talk to Lucy. The phone rang five times before the girl picked it up.

“Hi, honey.” Elizabeth smiled into the phone. “Watcha doing?”

“Sleeping,” Lucy said.

“Hon, it’s nearly noon.” As soon as she said it, Elizabeth wanted to take the words back. Everything she said these days made Lucy mad. Being around her was like walking on eggshells. “Why don’t you get dressed and come down here and I’ll make you lunch.”

“Can I come down without getting dressed?”

“Huh? No, I—”

“Joking, Mom,” Lucy said, as if Elizabeth was a child. “I think I would have figured out that I needed to get dressed first.”

Elizabeth felt tears prickle in her nose. Lucy would never talk to Matt like that. Lucy respected Matt, that was the truth of it. And she didn’t respect her mother. She blew her nose. “Okay, suit yourself.”

Through the row of spider plants in macramé hangers that separated the kitchen from the dining room, she could see the guy had finished his breakfast and was looking around the way people did when they wanted to pay their bills.

“I gotta go,” she told Lucy.

“You here visiting?” Elizabeth asked the man as she filled his cup again. He wasn’t one of the regulars, no one she’d seen around town.

“Just for a couple of days.”

“Vacation?”

“I’m a reporter for the Seattle Times. Doing an article on the goings-on at your hospital. Compassionate Medical Systems coming in, shaking things up.” He took a sip of his coffee. “How do you feel about it?”

“I’m all for it.” Elizabeth leaned against the edge of the booth. “My ex is a doctor at the hospital and he’s working himself to death the way things are now. I hear if Compassionate Medical Systems comes in, they’ll bring in more doctors. There’s even talk about building a new hospital, which, God knows, we could use. I was born in that place and I don’t think it’s been remodeled since.”

“Your husband is a doctor there?”

“Ex.”

“What does he think about it?”

“Oh…” She shrugged. “He’s one of those idealistic types. He’d rather work himself to death than bend. But if enough people want it, I don’t think he’ll have much choice.”

She set the check on the table in front of him, and after he left, she went back to the kitchen for a rag and wiped down the already clean tables. Then the door opened on a gust of cold air and a woman came in. Navy sweat suit and baseball cap. No jacket, which meant she was a tourist not used to the local weather. The woman looked at her and then they both did a double take.

“Sarah?”

“Elizabeth! I didn’t know you worked here.”

And then there was an awkward moment when she could see Sarah didn’t know whether to hug her or not, or maybe it was her feeling that way about Sarah who she’d never exactly been on hugging terms with, mostly because Sarah wasn’t the hugging type. But then they both moved forward at the same time and wrapped their arms around each other like long-lost friends.

“I feel bad we haven’t got together since you’ve been back,” Elizabeth said, which wasn’t exactly true, but what the hell. “Every day, I think, okay, I’ve got to call Sarah, but you know how it is.” She plucked at the arm of Sarah’s sweats. “You look frozen to death. How come you’re not wearing a jacket? This is Washington, not…wherever you were. Where was it? Matt told me once, but I forget. Wait, wait, don’t tell me. Panama.”

Sarah smiled. “Nicaragua.”

“But weren’t you in Panama? I remember Matt saying something about the canal.”

“I flew into Panama City.” Sarah pulled off the baseball cap, blew into her hands. “And then I went to Nicaragua.” She glanced around. “I had no idea you worked here,” she repeated. “This was my favorite place as a kid. It was a big treat to come here for breakfast before we caught the ferry.”

Elizabeth smiled. Sarah hadn’t changed a whole lot. Same reddish hair that always looked like someone had taken an electric mixer to it, fuzzy and flyaway. Maybe a few wrinkles, but who didn’t have those? And she didn’t look like she weighed any more than she had in high school, which was more than she could say about herself.

“So, you going to have breakfast?”