Coming to a Crossroads

by Marie Ferrarella

  “The front tire blew right after she dropped off Wayne.” In Nikki’s opinion, Ethan fairly glowed as he said with a touch of pride, “I changed my first tire, although she had to talk me through it.”

  She was doing her best to get clear about things. “So there was no one in the Chariot except for the two of you?” Nikki asked.

  “No, there wasn’t,” he confirmed. “Liz—that’s the driver—was going to change it herself, but I told her I didn’t want her struggling with the tire after what she’d already done. Good thing, too,” he reflected. “Those lug nuts were a real bear to get off. My biceps ached the next day. But it was one of those good kind of aches, you know?”

  Nikki felt as if she was getting this story in torn bits and pieces that she had to reconstruct in order to make sense out of it.

  “What was it that Liz had ‘already done’?” she asked him.

  Just then, they heard a very sharp clearing of their only nurse’s throat. Edna Vincent, looking like a nurse who had served in at least the Korean War if not WWII, was standing in the doorway, a reproving expression on her very long, very thin face. Edna had a face that looked as if it hadn’t smiled in at least a decade, possibly more.

  “Doctors,” Edna said when her cough hadn’t gotten the response she was looking for, “the patients are getting restless.”

  Without sparing Edna a look, Nikki held up her hand to indicate to the formerly retired nurse that she needed a moment longer.

  “We’ll be right out as soon as Dr. Ethan finishes what he was telling me.” Looking at Ethan, she said, “Go on.”

  “When that tire blew out, she drove like a pro. She held on to the steering wheel and kept that car from crashing and from colliding with an oncoming truck. You should have seen her, Nikki. She was absolutely magnificent.”

  Perfect!

  Nikki smiled in satisfaction. “I’ll bet.” She heard the sharp intake of breath to her right. “Yes, Edna, we’re coming,” she told the severe-looking woman, who was shifting from foot to foot.

  “So,” Nikki said, addressing Ethan, “are you planning on seeing this race car driver again?”

  “She was our Chariot driver,” Ethan protested. “She’d probably think it was creepy having me call her out of the blue. Besides, I can’t call her out of the blue. I don’t have her actual cell number.” The number he had used was one that had connected him to the drivers in the general area.

  “Oh, that can be gotten,” Nikki assured him with the wave of her hand. When he raised an eyebrow, she realized that could be taken as a slip and quickly covered it up by saying, “I’m sure that Chariot headquarters or whatever they call themselves has her number on file.” She slanted a glance in Ethan’s direction. “Unless you don’t want to see her again.”

  “Oh, I do,” he said with feeling he didn’t bother hiding. “But I don’t want her to think that I’m stalking her. I can’t just show up on her doorstep—even if I knew where that doorstep was.”

  Meanwhile, Nikki was busy working the problem before her. “This Liz person knows she picked you guys up from a bachelor party. Did any of you happen to tell her about Joel’s wedding?” she asked.

  He didn’t even have to think about that before answering. “Well, yes, but—”

  “Great!” Nikki declared. “Then you can ask her if she would mind being your plus-one. Tell her it’s your way of repaying her for being such a good sport—or such a good driver. Take your pick—or use both,” she added cheerfully, saying whatever it took to get him to agree.

  Ethan nodded, thinking the suggestion over. “I suppose that could work,” he told Nikki. But because he had an aversion to doing something that could be seen as offensive to another party, he qualified, “Let me think about it,” just as they walked out of the tiny back office.

  “About time,” Edna told the duo. She was standing right outside in the hall, her arms folded in front of her sunken-in chest. “I don’t need to put up with this aggravation. I don’t know why I just don’t retire.”

  “You can’t retire, Edna. You know you’re what keeps everything running around here. Without you, everything would just fall apart,” Ethan told her with sincerity. “And we’re sorry about keeping you waiting all this time. I just got caught up in what I was telling Dr. Connors.”

  Edna raised her chin and sniffed through her distinctly Roman nose. “I’m not the one who’s been waiting,” she informed Ethan. “The patients are getting extremely impatient.”

  “You could try smiling at them and maybe sweet-talking,” Nikki suggested with a straight face. “It might be a whole new concept for you.”

  Ethan steered Nikki to the side and said to her in a lowered voice, “Nikki, leave the woman alone. You know Edna can’t help being the way she is. She’s been that way longer than either one of us has been alive.”

  “Your problem, Dr. Ethan O’Neill, is that your heart is just too big and too kind,” Nikki said as she picked up the first chart on the scarred extended table that served as the clinic’s reception desk. “I’ll take Mrs. Klein,” she told Ethan, opening the folder and glancing down the page. “Unless you’d rather because she’s your patient.”

  He appreciated Nikki’s thoughtfulness. “Yes, I’ve seen her before, but I think she’d probably prefer to talk to you. Sometimes a woman relates better to another woman, especially when it comes to certain problems. That was why I was glad when you signed on to volunteer at the clinic.”

  “My pleasure, Ethan,” Nikki said, flashing a wide smile at the younger doctor.

  Edna moved in closer, looming over them and scowling like a dark rain cloud. “I hate to break up this mutual admiration fest, but the patients—” she said, pointing toward the waiting room.

  “Nose to the grindstone, Edna. Nose to the grindstone,” Nikki replied, walking by the woman and out into the waiting room. Raising her voice, Nikki called out, “Mrs. Klein?” as she scanned the sea of faces looking back at her.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ethan saw the dour-looking nurse nodding slightly to herself in what seemed like approval.

  Why, you old fraud, Ethan thought. You actually like Nikki, don’t you? You just probably like giving her a hard time even more.

  He had been concerned for no reason, he thought.

  The next moment, he wondered if maybe he got in his own way a lot like that. Like creating reasons not to do something that he actually wanted to do.

  Brightening, he picked up the next file on the reception desk and read off the name across the top as he walked out into the waiting room.

  * * *

  Ethan had to admit that the more established doctor had given him something to think about.

  Something that he knew he really shouldn’t be considering, but something that nonetheless kept sneaking into his mind time and again over the course of an extremely long day.

  And even after he and Nikki had seen the last patient—almost two hours after the clinic’s official closing time—Ethan kept going back to and thinking about what she had suggested.

  So much so that it prompted him to suddenly ask, as he locked the front door and pulled down the shades, “You really think I could get that driver’s phone number from Chariot?” He turned to look at Nikki, hoping she could talk him into it. “Isn’t that a little, you know, unethical of them?”

  “Tell you what, let me handle it. I could call in, tell the dispatcher or whatever that one of my friends used their service the other night and was very impressed with both the service and the driver’s driving skills and professionalism.” She congratulated herself for throwing in that last part, confident that it would cinch the argument. “I’d then go on to give them the date and destinations she drove all of you to so the company can track down the name of the driver who was behind the wheel. How’s that?”

  He wasn’t quite sold on her plan. “Why would they
give it to you?”

  She wished he didn’t have such a detail-oriented mind. She was just making this up as she went along, because she already knew Liz’s name, her number and where she lived, thanks to her mother. She was just looking for a way to get him to think she was ferreting it out.

  “Leave that to me. What I need you to do is go home and make sure you give that woman a five-star rating for the drive. Since it involves her livelihood, I’m sure she keeps up on her ratings. A five-star rating will make her more amenable to you,” she told him.

  “I don’t have to do that,” Ethan answered as he picked up his medical bag and his jacket.

  “Oh yes, you do,” Nikki insisted. “These days almost everyone is dependent on getting good ratings. Grocery cashier, people behind the post office desks, Chariot drivers.”

  “I know,” Ethan cut in, “that’s why the first thing I did when I got home that night was go online and rate her. I gave her a five plus.”

  “Five plus?” she echoed. “You can do that?”

  Ethan walked her out the back door and into the tiny parking area behind the clinic, then he accompanied her to her car. “I augmented the rating with an explanation why I thought the driver was outstanding, and in case you’re wondering, when I cited the driver, I used her driver number, not her name, so it sounded as if I was being neutral.”

  Nikki smiled as she got into her car. Ethan really was such a cuddly, adorable human being.

  Liz Bellamy, brace yourself. Dr. Wonderful is about to enter your life and make you happy to be alive, Nikki thought.

  And then, as she started her engine and pulled out of the lot, she mentally tipped her cap to her mother.

  Looks like you and your friends have done it again, Mom.

  Chapter Six

  Liz didn’t discover the small, well-worn notebook until almost two days after her blown-tire thrill ride. The truth of it was, when she had returned from her last Chariot run that night, she had been too exhausted and too shaken by the thought of what could have happened to her as well as to her passenger when that tire blew. She was just grateful for the training that her stepfather had drilled into her until it was like second nature. But she definitely didn’t have the strength or wherewithal to clean her vehicle the way she always did when she came home after spending all that time driving strangers around.

  And the next morning, after being unable to fall asleep, Liz had wound up oversleeping and almost missed her class—and her test. She managed to get to the classroom by the proverbial skin of her teeth.

  The moment classes were over for that day, she had raced to her other part-time job that she had mentioned to her handsome fare. She was a bartender at a small local Chinese restaurant.

  Liz had gotten that position through a form of nepotism. Young Lee, the stately older woman who owned and ran the restaurant, had known her ever since she had been a little girl. She and Young’s youngest daughter, Sandra, had gone to school together. But more important than that, Young had always been partial to her because she was so studious and hardworking.

  Fortunately for her, Liz thought, Mrs. Lee thought those qualities, and thus she, were up there, right at the head of the line. Plus, the sacrifices she had made in order to help pay her stepfather’s medical bills were not lost on the honorable woman, either.

  Liz might not have even found the pocket-size notebook at that point, either, but she refused to go to bed that second evening until she checked over her car. She was on call the next evening. That meant washing her car and vacuuming the interior.

  She was relieved to discover, after having given her vehicle a second once-over in as many days, her car was none the worse for its unexpected, harrowing ordeal. Miraculously, there wasn’t a dent or so much as a ding to commemorate the event.

  Liz felt that she owed one of the charitable organizations she occasionally gave to a generous donation. Or at least generous in her terms, which at times, depending on her bills, was not all that much. But thanks of some sort were definitely owed to the angel she firmly believed she had watching over her. Liz was not about to let that go until she could pay that debt forward.

  Liz had already made up her mind to double up on her driving until she earned an extra amount that she could put toward the donation. To her that meant that her vehicle had to be in top condition.

  After washing and drying the outside of her car—because a car wash would have subtracted from her profit—she proceeded to vacuum its interior. A quick survey first of the front and back areas assured her that there were no discarded wrappers or snack containers to clog up her machine. Turning the vacuum cleaner on, Liz went over the upholstery slowly.

  When she stuck her hand in between the front passenger seat and the cushion comprising its backrest, at best she expected to find a few crumbs that had worked their way into the seat’s crease. She did not expect to find a small, worn notebook.

  Without doing any actual reading, she saw that there was a lot of writing on those small, cramped pages. This had to be a commemoration of someone’s past. She immediately couldn’t help wondering who it belonged to and if it was important.

  But Alan from Chariot’s local office hadn’t contacted her to say that someone had called in, asking if a notebook had been turned in. That probably meant that it wasn’t important, she decided. Besides, in this day and age, if anyone wanted to remember anything of importance—or even something in general—they dictated it into their cell phone. It was just handier and easier that way, Liz thought.

  But, as she flipped open the notebook and looked at it a little more closely, she realized that there was extensive writing on three-quarters of the pages. This had to be important to someone.

  Liz’s mouth dropped open. Apparently, someone had been using this—and might still be in the process of using it—as a journal.

  She tried to remember if she had picked up an older man or woman during the last day she had driven for Chariot.

  There had been one passenger who definitely fell into the senior citizen category, an elderly woman. But the passenger had held on to her purse with both hands, keeping it close to her chest as if she expected to be mugged at any second right there inside the car.

  Thinking, Liz remembered carrying on a steady stream of conversation—which in actuality amounted to a monologue on her part—during the whole ride. She had done so in order to try to put the woman at ease. It had to have worked, Liz congratulated herself at the time, because the elderly woman had given her five stars and had mentioned something in her review about her having a “nice, soothing voice.”

  Still, Liz supposed, the notebook could belong to the woman, even though she hadn’t seen the woman take it out at any time—and she had looked in her rearview mirror several times to check on her fare’s condition.

  Maybe there was a name written in somewhere either in the front or back of the notebook that could help her identify who the thing belonged to. Or at the very least, there might be something tangible for her to work with.

  Liz flipped through the pages with her thumb, taking in the preponderance of writing on them. In her estimation, all this writing represented an awful lot of thoughts. She could not, in good conscience, just toss this notebook away or even put it aside for the time being and allow it to collect dust until she got around to reuniting the owner with the notebook.

  Thinking of the task ahead, Liz sighed, trying not to get overwhelmed.

  She didn’t exactly have an abundance of extra time, but this came under the heading of karma or balancing out the universe. Moreover, if she didn’t try to find the owner of this journal, something bad was bound to happen to her.

  In general, Liz wasn’t a superstitious person, but there were certain things that she refused to risk by ignoring.

  Liz was disciplined enough to finish cleaning up her vehicle and then store her cleaning tools before she went on
to her next task. She managed to curb her considerable curiosity until she went back upstairs to her third-floor studio apartment.

  But once she had closed her door behind her, Liz immediately opened the notebook and scanned both the inside cover and the page facing it.

  The owner’s name was entered in such tiny, neat letters that she almost missed it. Especially since the rest of the writing appeared to be far more illegible, written in script that seemed far more suited to a doctor than...

  The thought stopped her cold.

  A doctor? The man she had come close to touching death with had been a doctor.

  Ethan.

  Admittedly, part of her had thought that Ethan was kidding when he told her that he was a doctor, because, well, how would she have known if that was the truth or not? A lot of people partying for the evening liked to pretend to be something they weren’t just to build themselves up for that small island of time, especially if they weren’t ever going to see that person again, she reasoned.

  Liz pressed her lips together, reassessing her analysis.

  No, Ethan hadn’t been like that. He certainly hadn’t instantly pounded his chest, telling her about being a doctor—a surgeon, at that, she reminded herself. As a matter of fact, she had had to drag that information out of him, as if his chosen vocation was just a fact of life and definitely nothing that needed to be held up to the light and revered.

  Besides, whether he was or wasn’t a doctor was ultimately easy enough to ascertain. She could just google the man—provided, of course, that he had given her his actual name.

  The thought had her immediately drawing in her breath. Not over the fact that Ethan might have lied to her, but over the fact that her mind was actually entertaining those kinds of dark thoughts.

  When had she gotten so cynical?

  She used to believe everything anyone told her, falling back on her old rule of thumb: She didn’t lie to anyone, so then why would anyone want to go out of their way to lie to her?