Her Denali Medicine Man

by Denise Gwen

  Jake looked at her without speaking, his eyes warm and full.

  “Goodnight, Doctor Sarah,” he said, and then he was gone.

  Chapter 6

  December 23rd

  Nurse Margie approached Sarah on Monday morning as she walked in the door. “Dr. O’Reilly, your first patient’s in room one.”

  “Thank you, Margie,” Sarah said as she walked to the exam room. She didn’t think she showed it, but she was brimming with excitement. Her first day as a practicing physician, she had to pinch herself she was so excited, so thrilled. After knocking lightly on the exam room door, Sarah walked inside.

  “Good morning,” Sarah greeted five-year-old Seth Wingtail. His mother, Sue, stood beaming, her hands placed squarely on her son’s shoulders.

  This was an easy peasy visit. Seth was here for his annual well-child checkup.

  “Well, Seth Wingtail,” Sarah said. “What say we take a look at you?”

  Seth hopped up onto the table.

  “Let’s take your vitals, shall we?” She asked, although, at the back of her mind, she wondered where Jake Roundtree was, for that was his job, to take down a patient’s vitals.

  As she took down Seth’s vitals, she inquired of his mother as to his diet, exercise, and health regimen. Everything went well, and as the checkup was reaching a conclusion when the subject of vaccinations arose.

  “I see from your son’s chart that he’s received no vaccinations, and I’d like to remedy that right-away.”

  “Oh,” Sue Wingtail said.

  Something in her voice . . .

  “I’d like your son to receive the measles, mumps, rubella combination vaccination,” she said. “I know it’s a lot to take in all at once,” she said, apologetically, “but he’ll tolerate it well.”

  A solemn silence greeted her comment.

  Sarah glanced up, studied Sue Wingtail’s face. “Is there a problem, Mrs. Wingtail?”

  “There’s a problem with what you’re suggesting, Dr. O’Reilly,” Sue Wingtail said, cradling her precious son’s downy soft mane of brown hair. “Dr. Jake says vaccinations shouldn’t happen until the children of the reservation reach eleven years of age.”

  “Eleven years of a—” Sarah said, and stopped short. She fought back a wave of resentment. “Why, exactly does Doc—I mean, you do understand, don’t you, that Jake Roundtree’s not a real doctor?”

  “Doctor Jake’s a real doctor,” Sue said.

  “No, he isn’t. He’s only a physician’s assistant. I’m the doctor, not he.”

  Sue Wingtail gazed up at her with hurt, wounded eyes.

  This is ridiculous. You’d think I told her that Jake was a serial killer.

  As Sue continued to gaze at her with shock, then revulsion, Sarah realized she’d better tone it down just a tick.

  “He’s better than any doctor, if you ask me,” Sue Wingtail huffed. “And I take his teachings as gospel.”

  “But he’s mistaken. When it comes to vaccinating children, your little boy needs the MMR series of shots now, and by now, I mean today.”

  Sue Wingtail looked stricken and drew her child closer into her arms. “I’d like to talk to Dr. Roundtree,” she said finally, and Sarah knew she’d lost the argument.

  Sarah stomped out of the examining room, tossed Seth Wingtail’s medical chart onto the counter at the nurses’ station. Nurse Margie looked up at her.

  “When Doctor Roundtree decides to grace us with his presence,” she seethed, “please let him know that Sue Wingtail wants to speak with him.”

  “Yes, Doctor O’Reilly,” Margie replied with a wry smile.

  Well, Jake Roundtree was busy and couldn’t attend to Sue Wingtail right away, but when he did finally arrive at the clinic, Sarah had worked through the remainder of the rotation and Sue Wingtail was still waiting at the clinic, wanting to talk to Doctor Roundtree.

  Sarah attended to the other patients who were willing to let themselves be attended to by a mere woman doctor, and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Jake enter the clinic, saw him conferring with Nurse Margie, watched as he checked the charts, then, finally, picked up the chart for Seth Wingtail and walked into the exam room to see to the child.

  A few minutes later, Sue Wingtail emerged from the exam room, fighting back tears, as she ran to the ladies’ restroom.

  A moment later, Jake opened the door and beckoned for Sarah to join him.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Doctor O’Reilly,” Sue Wingtail called to her as she emerged from the restroom.

  “Yes, Mrs. Wingtail?” Sarah asked.

  Sue Wingtail stood there, fighting back tears. “I’d like it if you gave my son the MMR shots.”

  “Oh,” Sarah said, hiding a tiny grin. “Well, then, let’s get your son into a room and let’s take care of this right away.”

  “And I want Doctor Jake to give him the shots,” Sue said with a defiant thrust of her chin.

  Well, at least I won the fight.

  That was the important thing. As a physician’s assistant, she’d expect Jake to administer the shots anyway, but she felt no urge to correct the woman; she’d already won a battle, no need to lord it over Jake, or Sue Wingtail, for that matter. She cast a grateful smile at Jake and ushered them all into the pediatric room they’d been in, hours earlier.

  Now that the decision had been made, everyone was in business and preparation for administering the shots. Jake lifted the little boy and popped him onto the exam table. The boy looked relaxed, swinging his legs over the edge of the exam table. Nurse Margie busied herself with getting the little boy relaxed and distracted before the administration of the shots and swabbed his arms and thigh with an alcohol scrub and then went to the refrigerator to pull out the tray of injections.

  “He’s not gonna be happy when he gets the shots,” Jake said over his shoulder, “so we better be prepared.”

  “Oh, yes,” Sarah said.

  Sarah placed her back to the child as she prepared the injections, and the adults talked in general terms. She nodded at Nurse Margie, turned around, swabbed the injection site on the little boy’s right arm again, then his left arm, and his left thigh. “Sorry,” she said to Jake, “but I just want to make sure it’s antiseptic.”

  “Antiseptic’s good.” Jake nodded.

  “Okay, then, are we ready?” Sarah asked.

  “Yep,” Jake said.

  On Sarah’s nod, Jake gave him the injection in his right arm, Nurse Margie gave the child the injection in his left arm, and Sarah injected him in his thigh, and the child, surprised, shocked, and enraged, howled and screamed and cried.

  Sue Wingtail scooped her child up and hauled him out of the pediatric room and down the hall and out of the clinic as Sarah and Jake and Nurse Margie stood there, looking at one another.

  “Well,” Nurse Margie said, “that went well.”

  Sarah looked at Jake, but he avoided her gaze.

  “Well,” she said at last, “that’s done.”

  She reached for the tray of vials, but Nurse Margie grabbed them. “Let me, Doctor O’Reilly.” She put the tray of vials back into the refrigerator and locked the door.

  Sarah glanced one last time at Jake, got nothing in response, and walked out of the exam room.

  It was lunchtime, no sign of Jake, so she went into the kitchen and warmed up the last of her sister’s parsnip soup.

  Somehow, she sensed, trouble was in the air.

  Jake had been simmering all day long, trying to contain his anger, but he finally reached the point where he felt he really needed to say something, or he’d burst. He approached Doctor Sarah as she stood at the nurses’ station, typing up a patient report. “A word, Doctor Sarah?”

  “Mmmm, mmmm,” she murmured, not really listening, still intently focused on her work.

  He used the moment to study her. The problem with getting mad at her, of course, she was so darn pretty, he had trouble working up a measure of anger, but this latest action had m
ade his day tough. He’d been forced to do a lot of explaining to Sue Wingtail, and he resented how it’d taken a toll on his relationship with her.

  But every time he looked at Doctor Sarah O’Reilly, he got lost in her beauty; her heart-shaped face, her elegant, tapered fingers, the way she tapped a pen against a countertop when she thought hard on a topic. There was something in the way she moved and spoke that drove him to distraction.

  But still, he had to set her straight.

  “Doctor Sarah?”

  “Mmmm,” she said, “in a minute,” and continued typing away. Her fingers flew across the keyboard.

  I could stand here all day long and watch her type.

  “Just one sec . . . ” she said, and he almost gave up being angry with her, and if she’d made him wait one second longer, perhaps he might have abandoned his anger and asked if she wanted to eat dinner with him, his mother, and Joshua that evening, but in the next second, she looked up at him and he saw the smirk on her face, and his anger came back, two-fold.

  “Don’t you ever do that again,” he said.

  She reared her head back in surprise.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” he repeated, feeling like a fool.

  “Don’t ever do what again?”

  “They all call me Dr. Jake around here. That’s the name I go by.”

  “You’re not a doctor, though,” she said evenly. “You’re just a physician’s assistant.”

  Oh, you’re being such a little snot, just like your sister said.

  “Just?” he cocked an eyebrow at her. “Just? You ought to ask your sister about my skills, Doctor O’Reilly. She will personally attest to them, especially when it came to saving Sue Wingtail’s life five years ago, when she was suffering from pre-eclampsia and nearly died giving birth to her son.”

  “I’ve heard it already,” Sarah said with a negligent wave of her hand and this had the exact wrong effect upon Jake because he finally got mad at her.

  “I’m so glad you already know my skills, then,” he said coldly.

  “Yes, yes, yes, I’m well acquainted with your skills, Mr. Jake Roundtree,” she said, pointedly emphasizing the Mister in his name. “But I’m the medical doctor here, not you. And you need to retrain your patients not to refer to you as Doctor anything, do you understand? It’s highly improper and you could get in trouble with the State of Alaska Medical Licensing Board.”

  “Are you threatening to turn me in?”

  “No, of course not, just yet.”

  “Not yet?”

  “That was the wrong thing to say,” she said with a rueful smile.

  He gazed at her, seething.

  She flinched.

  “Doctor O’Reilly,” he said evenly, “If you do decide to report me, before you do, please give me time to retrain the patients at this facility not to call me Dr. Jake or Dr. Roundtree.”

  “I will,” she said meekly.

  “But I’ll warn you. They’ve known me for years, and I’m not practicing medicine without a license, you know. I am a duly licensed and properly authorized physician’s assistant.”

  “All right.”

  He glared at her, but she said nothing further.

  “Don’t you dare report me before I have a chance to re-educate my people,” he said. “I love my people and I’d be devastated if you caused my standing in this community to fail.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing,” she assured him hastily.

  “Of course, you wouldn’t,” he said sarcastically.

  She turned off her laptop and stood up. “I’m sorry, Jake, er, I mean Doctor Jake, oh, wait, I mean Mr. Jake. I wanted to thank you for what you did for me today, when you persuaded Sue Wingtail to let her son get the MMR vaccination.”

  She’s flustered. That’s a good sign.

  Even so, he couldn’t quite forgive her.

  “You’re ever so welcome, doctor,” he hissed, and strode away down the hallway.

  That’d gone very badly. Very badly, indeed.

  Sarah went back to work on her charts, feeling dispirited and out of sorts following her flash argument with Jake Roundtree.

  She’d meant to handle this much more tactfully, and she’d done the exact opposite…she’d handled it very badly, very badly indeed.

  She’d meant to thank him for interceding, for talking Sue Wingtail into accepting the vaccinations for her little boy, and after all had been said and done, it’d ended up being a dismal failure with Jake refusing to make eye contact or even look at her during the remainder of the workday.

  At the end of the day, and with her thoughts disordered and out of sorts, Sarah retreated to her cabin, sat down at the pull-out desk, and wrote in her journal.

  I really messed things up today with Jake Roundtree. Now he’s furious with me. And what’s strange, he was mad about something I didn’t think about. I told the patient’s mother that he wasn’t a real doctor, and not to refer to him as Dr. Jake. I thought he’d be mad at me for insisting on the patient being vaccinated, but to my surprise, he was perfectly fine with that.

  Why did I have to insist that they not call him Dr. Jake? What difference does it really make? I’ve got my ego into this thing.

  A knock at her door.

  “Oh, wait, hold on,” she called out, and closed her journal and closed the lid to the desk and again, she marveled at how beautifully the wall had been finished, because once the drop-down door was closed shut, it blended seamless into the wall and nobody would know, except someone who knew what the button on the wall was for, that she had a secret cupboard in her wall.

  When she opened the door, she inhaled sharply at the sight of him.

  Jake.

  The gorgeous man whom she’d infuriated, earlier in the day.

  But what a contrast between the man who’d so scarily been yelling at her earlier in the day, to the somewhat shamefaced man she saw standing before her now. He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “I, uh, hm, wanted to apologize.”

  Oh, instantly she forgave him. She forgave him and she wanted, more than anything, to throw her arms around him and plant his face with kisses, but she knew she’d be rebuffed if she even attempted such a thing, and so she forced herself to stand still and gaze steadily at him, while silently marveling at his beautiful form, his sinewy, firm body.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Really, it’s okay.”

  “Well,” he said.

  “Look, why don’t you come on in?” She opened the door wider and stood back for him to enter.

  He hesitated a moment, then looked around him. “I don’t know if that’s such a wise idea.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re bringing in a draft.”

  She indicated the fire, burning merrily away, and opened the door wider.

  “Got it,” Jake said, and smiled, and as he stepped inside, he looked around him with interest, his eyes landing on the button on the wall. “Are you making use of your built-in desk?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, stepping forward—too close to him, but it was too late to do anything about it when she realized how close she was standing next to him—and pulling the button and drawing down the drop-down leaf of her desk. She pushed her journal under a pile of papers but grimaced when she saw a slow smile spreading across Jake’s face.

  “Rachel was correct when she told me you liked to keep a journal.”

  “I do. And I love this feature in the cabin and that you had the forethought to install a hideaway desk for me to keep my journal in.”

  “It’s not so hide-away any more though, is it,” he said, reaching forward and skimming his fingers across the top of the closed journal.

  She inhaled sharply and pushed the lid of the desk up, forcing Jake to pull his arm back. He cried out a little, not from pain, more in surprise, really, and she released her hold on the lid.

  He cradled his arm in the crook of his other, gazing at her with surprise. “I wasn’t going to take your journal and
read it, you know,” he said, gazing at her with an injured expression.

  “Sorry, mister, but I grew up in a household with two nosy older sisters. If you touch my stuff, you suffer the consequences.”

  “Two?” he asked, confused. “But I thought—”

  “I misspoke,” she said quickly. “One nosy older sister. And she learned the hard way, never to snoop, ever again.”

  After a long moment, his look of wounded pain was replaced with a sly smile. “I forget sometimes that Dr. Rachel did spend a part of her life as a young girl, and I also forget she was, and still is, an older sister. Did she often sneak peeks into your journals?”

  “She used to, until one day she saw something in my journal that made her realize she’d better not snoop into my private things, ever again.”

  Jake smiled. “What happened?”

  She sensed color darting across her cheeks, and she looked away. “I’d better not tell you.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “I wouldn’t want you to hate me even more than you do now.”

  The words had flown from her mouth, unbidden, and she’d meant to convey a certain lightness of tone, perhaps even bordering on flirtation, but as she spoke, she saw the effect her words had upon him. His face, which had begun to show some semblance of openness, of friendliness, suddenly changed, and as she finished her sentence, she realized she’d blundered. For his open, friendly look was now replaced by one of darkness with a hint of hurt.

  “What makes you think I hate you?” he asked, apparently attempting, and failing, to conceal how much she’d wounded him.

  “What, oh, wait, well…” she stammered, and then she simply gave up. “Oh, don’t mind me, Jake. I’m just jabbering away. I’m sorry.”

  She looked at the wounded expression on his face.

  “If I hurt your feelings. I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, but she could tell, clearly, that it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t the least bit okay. They stood only inches away from each other, he was so close to her she could reach out, grab him, and bring him close. And the door to her cabin was closed.