“You okay, Doc?”
I love you.
Thank God she hadn’t said it out loud.
Because she didn’t mean it like that. She’d just been so overwhelmed and relieved to find that Jake had solved her clinic problem. She meant it in the way you say, “I love you” when someone surprises you with something that makes your life easier or more delightful or when someone generally saves your ass when your ass did not expect saving.
Like last week, when she’d gotten a pizza to go from Law’s and walked to Maya’s with it. Maya had buzzed her up, swung open her door, taken one look at the telltale pizza box, and said, “I love you.”
That was it. She didn’t love-love Jake; she loved the way he made her life easier.
He also provided an interesting study in contrasts. Rufus had made everything harder. She hadn’t realized it when she was in it, but it was true. Rufus was forever asking her to cover his shifts, which required her to cancel haircuts and coffee dates with her sister. He would insist they overshoot the movie theater a few blocks from them in favor of one a half-hour subway ride away because he liked the screens there better. She got it—or at least that was what she’d told herself. He cared about things like movie screens. She didn’t, and it didn’t hurt her to accommodate him, she had always reasoned.
And maybe it hadn’t hurt her, but the little sacrifices had added up. The accommodations had accumulated until she’d forgotten what it was like for someone to have your back. What easy felt like.
Easy felt like such a relief.
“You okay, Doc?” Jake sounded concerned. She was being weird, and he was picking up on it.
“Yeah, yeah. Thank you for this.”
“Eh, all I did was some wrangling.”
Yeah, right. She knew full well he was the silent mastermind behind all of this, but she also knew he wouldn’t want her to make a big deal out of it. “Well, thanks for the wrangling.”
The week passed remarkably uneventfully. With Wynd still there and Nora’s new army of helpers cycling in and out, everything was extra efficient. When the weekend came, she opted not to go back to Toronto. Her grandma had seemed stable the previous weekend. They were only open one more week, and then she’d take off for her previously scheduled holiday break.
Mostly she just wanted to catch her breath. Be still for a day or two—no work, no travel. Do some online Christmas shopping. Hang out with her dog. And maybe her pal the man-god.
“Hey, so sorry I’m late.” Wynd rushed in. Their usual Friday-morning staff meeting was winding down. “There’s terrible black ice out there. I just about bit it twice.”
“Honey, you have to be careful,” Eiko said.
“You know what?” Nora was feeling magnanimous. “If you want to just be done, I think we’re on top of things enough that we can do without you next week.”
“Really?” Wynd asked hopefully.
“I think so. Don’t you?” She looked around at Clara, Eiko, and Jake. Yes, Jake. Even though he had no official role in the clinic’s operations, he tended to stop by in the mornings to make sure everything was looking okay for the day ahead. He had even done a stint behind the reception desk at one point when Wynd had gone home early because of a storm, Clara wasn’t around, and Eiko had to run off to cover the annual Polar Bear Dip in the bay.
Nora had come out from an appointment to find Mr. Not Much of a Phone Guy on the phone.
“Just because I don’t like talking on the phone doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do it,” he’d said when she’d razzed him. He slid a stack of messages toward her. “And I am literate, you know.”
“Yeah, we’ll miss you, but we’ll be fine,” Clara said to Wynd. The members of Nora’s misfit medical admin team all nodded in agreement.
And they were fine.
The next week presented a few minor problems, but everyone seemed to regard tackling them as a team effort. Patients got seen, even if things ran late. Appointments got made, even if people had to be called back later. Nora stayed late Monday evening to deal with the billing, which was okay, because Jake appeared bearing Hawaiian pizza and Mick.
They ate. And then they locked Mick out of her office.
They did it all over again on Tuesday.
The week was going great. And not just because of the locking-Mick-out-of-the-office part. In spite of the hiccups they’d encountered, she was full of gratitude toward everyone who was helping her out. Eiko and Clara and Jake, of course, but also Pearl, who was constantly showing up with pies. And Sawyer, who popped in from time to time to see if anyone needed anything. And Maya and Eve, who brought her dinner on Wednesday night, when Jake was at a job.
Even her patients were cheerful about longer-than-usual delays on hold or in the waiting room.
It felt like the whole town was coming together to support the clinic. To support her.
By Thursday things were humming along. Nora had a stack of résumés to look over for a permanent hire and an idea brewing to hire Clara this coming summer—if she was interested—to help her be more organized with her vaccine projects.
All was well.
When Nora came out of an exam room midafternoon, Eiko was waiting for her. “Your sister is on line one. I told her you were in with a patient and you’d call her back, but she wanted to hold.”
Nora picked up the call in her office. “Hey! Did you guys get the tree up? I’m not going to be able to get out of here until about four tomorrow, so don’t wait, but I’ll—”
“Nora.”
She knew, just from the one word, from the way Erin said her name. But she asked anyway. She wanted to be wrong. “What happened?”
“It’s Grandma.”
Oh, shit.
“She’s much worse. We took her to the emergency room this morning because she was…” Erin’s voice wavered before she regained control of it. “She was having a lot of trouble breathing. They admitted her. She’s on oxygen, but she’s getting all weirdly intense about making sure everyone knows about her DNR wishes.”
“I’m going to get there as soon as I can.”
“Now?”
This was the downside of the single-physician practice. She had been high lately on the feeling that she personally was making a difference in the lives of people in this town, that she had built something from nothing.
But it also meant that she personally was responsible for her patients. There was no getting someone to cover her shifts.
“As soon as I can.” She had patients in the waiting room. She probably had one in each of her two exam rooms, too. Maybe if she just got through today, she could have Amber call everyone on the schedule for tomorrow and shuffle things around so the people who couldn’t wait came first thing, and then she could be on the road before lunch?
“Nora. Come as soon as you can. Please.”
After assuring Erin she would, she rose and walked out of her office feeling like she was floating outside her body.
Eiko was waiting in the corridor. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing. I—”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Dr. Hon, but I once broke a story about the previous town council conspiring to siphon funds from the lighthouse rehabilitation fund. You can’t fool me.”