“My grandma’s in the hospital. It looks like this is it.”
“Oh no. I’m sorry.”
Nora was about to brush off Eiko’s words. Well meant as they were, she didn’t want them. But Eiko was on to other things. She rapped sharply on the door of Exam Room Two. “Amber, can you step out for a minute?”
“What’s up?”
“Nora’s grandma is in the hospital in Toronto, and Nora needs to leave.”
“Yes, if we can get through the rest of the day,” Nora said, noting with amazement how calm her voice sounded, “I was thinking we could—”
“No. You go now.”
“I can’t just leave!” So much for calm. “There are patients here! We have a full schedule tomorrow.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Eiko said. “Go home, pack some stuff up, and hit the road.”
“What do you mean you’ll take care of it? You can’t—”
“We can,” Amber said with the quiet sureness that made her such a good nurse. “We’ll call everyone who’s on the books for the rest of today and tomorrow and either reschedule them for after the holidays or, if it’s urgent, send them to the walk-in clinic in Grand View. I can be here tomorrow in case there’s anyone we can’t reach. I obviously can’t see them, but I can triage and either rebook them for January or send them elsewhere. And I can do that right now with the people in the waiting room.”
“Are you sure?”
“Dr. Hon.” Eiko emerged from Nora’s office holding Nora’s coat and bag. “We lived without you before. It wasn’t pleasant, mind you, and we all like it a lot better with you here, but we can do it again. So just go see your grandma.”
Her things were shoved unceremoniously into her arms.
“Okay,” Nora said weakly. “Thank you.”
“I’ll call your sister back and let her know you’re leaving shortly,” Eiko said.
“Thanks,” Nora said again.
“And if there’s anything else we can do, you let us know.”
“Could you let Jake know what’s happened and ask him to keep Mick?” It was a stupid request. Jake was already keeping Mick. Mick was, at this point, more Jake’s dog than Nora’s, if you went by how much time he spent with each of them. Or the way he trotted along obediently after Mr. Dog Whisperer.
But she…just wanted Jake to know what had happened. It felt important that he know.
Chapter Seventeen
The day after Christmas, Jake bought a cell phone.
Because he had lost his mind.
“Are you going to tell Sawyer about this?” he asked Clara, who was sitting next to him in the shuttered clinic using her phone to order him a phone.
Honestly, the modern world made his head hurt sometimes.
She shot him a quizzical look. “Would you prefer I didn’t?”
He wasn’t sure how to play this. Was she teasing him? He decided to just be honest. “Yes. I would prefer you didn’t.”
“So you’re just going to have a secret phone that no one knows about?”
“I’m going to use it for weather reports when I’m out on the boat, but I don’t want to make myself available all the time, you know?”
Except to one person.
God. Nora’s continued absence was gutting him.
If only he knew her goddamn number, he could call her from his landline. But he didn’t, and there was no way to get it without asking Eve or Maya or someone. Which he still might do. He just wasn’t quite that desperate yet.
He had asked Eve once how she was doing, but there wasn’t much news. “Sounds like she isn’t doing well but is still hanging on,” she’d said, as if that were specific enough. As if that told him anything of use.
And anyway, he wanted to know how Nora was doing. The “she” in his question had meant Nora.
“You might actually be onto something with that,” Clara said. “I’m starting to think my phone is affecting my brain, and not in a good way. You want Android or iOS?”
“I have no idea what those words even mean.”
“If budget is a primary concern, I’d say Android. But since—don’t take this the wrong way—you’re kind of a beginner, I’m going to say we should go with an iPhone. It’s more intuitive.”
“Just get me a phone.” He winced. That had come out way too sharply. She hadn’t done anything but help him. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay, Jake.” She smiled affectionately at him. “I’m not going to tell Sawyer.”
“Why not?” He wasn’t sure why he was asking. He shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Honestly?” she said as she tapped away at her phone. “Because you’re one of the only people in this town who isn’t giving me shit about Sunnie.”
“People are giving you shit about Sunnie? What people?”
“Calm down. Not like that. Just, you know the way everyone in this town acts. They’re being all wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Like, I just met the girl a few months ago. She’s my first girlfriend. Meanwhile, Pearl has started emailing me pictures of wedding cake toppers with two brides. Even Sawyer is being kind of weird.”
“Yeah, I can’t help you there. I don’t know how to make Pearl not be Pearl or make Sawyer not be weird.”
“I mean, I get it. It’s hard to be from Moonflower Bay and not let all this nosiness rub off on you. But why do people have to verbalize every thought in their head?”
“I ask myself that every day.”
“Like, for example, even if I suspect that your suddenly buying a phone is related to your massive crush on Dr. Walsh, that doesn’t mean I need to say it out loud.”
He was tempted to protest. But what was the point? Clara was just a kid. She wouldn’t understand the concept of friends with benefits. And the relevant point was that she wasn’t going to tell Sawyer, who also, it seemed, didn’t understand the concept of friends with benefits. So he returned the conversation to an earlier topic: “If anyone gives you shit—like actual shit about who you are—you let me know, okay?” People didn’t just mess with Clara Collins.
She smiled. “Thanks, Jake. I mean, my brother is a cop and all, so I don’t think I’m going to need to tap you for vigilante justice purposes, but I totally appreciate that I could. Now hand over your credit card so we can buy you a phone you’re going to use to check the weather for all that fishing you don’t do.”
Grandma was slipping away. Every day she was awake less—overall and at each interval. And when she was awake, she was starting, sometimes, not to know where she was, or what year it was.
“You should think of medical school,” she said to Nora on the morning of Christmas eve, reaching out and flailing her hand. Nora grabbed the hand in her own. Her grandma’s skin was thin and crepey and pale and studded with a line that was delivering fluids and meds.
“I did go to med school, Grandma,” she whispered. “Remember how I’m patching up boo-boos in Moonflower Bay instead of cutting people up like real doctors do?”