Dr. Dad

by Judith Arnold

  His office was located in a two-story brick building that housed several other medical practices a five-minute drive from the hospital. Entering the suite that housed Arlington Pediatric Associates, Susannah was assailed by a cacophony of giggly young voices. The waiting area looked more like a preschool than a doctor’s office. A wide chalkboard hung on one wall, a huge aquarium filled with fish occupied another, push toys and building blocks littered the floor and a carved wooden rocking horse stood in a corner. The noise came from a half-dozen toddlers who were busily engaged in marking up the chalkboard with big white squiggles and pushing plastic trucks around the floor. One small child sat solemnly on the rocking horse, her father hovering over her, pushing the horse gently back and forth.

  The entire mood was so cheerful Susannah might not have realized she’d entered a doctor’s office. Shouldn’t toddlers be panicking about having to see the doctor? Shouldn’t they be clinging to their parents and whining that they didn’t want to get a shot?

  Evidently, they weren’t afraid of Toby and his partners. Or they were so distracted by the array of playthings in the bright, bustling waiting area, they forgot what would be happening to them once they were taken to an examining room.

  The nurse and the receptionist behind the broad desk across from the fish tank gave Susannah a long, hard stare. They recognized her; she knew the look. She squared her shoulders and smiled at them, determined not to rattle or be rattled by them.

  Toby ushered her through the waiting area, deftly avoiding scampering children and crawling toddlers as he steered her toward the receptionist desk. “Nan, Serena, this is Sue Dawson. She’s going to be observing me at work today.”

  Serena, the nurse, gaped openly at Susannah. “I’ve got to ask—you’re that actress from Mercy Hospital, aren’t you.”

  “Yes,” Susannah said softly, not wanting everyone in the waiting area to hear—not that her voice would have carried above the din of giggling, chattering children.

  “I told you,” Serena boasted, elbowing Nan.

  “When you walked in, I said, ‘Nan, that lady with Toby looks just like Dr. Lee Davis on Mercy Hospital,’ and lo and behold! Toby, since when did you start hanging around with actresses?”

  “Since this actress retired and moved into the house next to mine,” he said.

  The discomfort Susannah had braced herself for didn’t come. That Toby’s colleagues recognized her didn’t unnerve her—maybe because they seemed so friendly and good-natured. They weren’t pushy, demanding anything from her. They were simply acknowledging her.

  She acknowledged them right back. “Toby has graciously let me come and watch how a real doctor works. On the show I was just faking it. But people like him—and you—are the real thing.”

  Nan seemed to think this was hilarious. She laughed so hard she struck a few errant keys on her computer keyboard. “The real thing, huh? What do you think, Serena? Are we the real thing?”

  “We’re the real something,” Serena allowed. “I’m not sure what. Listen, Toby, you’ve got a pretty full schedule today. Your first appointment’s at eleven, so you’d better get your butt in gear.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He saluted her with a nod, then led Susannah past the desk and through the door to the examining rooms and offices in back.

  His office was small, occupied by a broad desk, a few shelves bracketed to the walls, a framed diploma from Yale Medical School, several potted plants lining the windowsill. There was less personality in the room than she would have expected—except that Toby’s personality was devoted to his patients. She understood that it was with them, not in this cubicle, where he was most fully himself.

  Over the next few hours, she and Toby spent little time in that office. Mostly they were in one or another of the examining rooms. She watched as he examined each patient, talking, asking questions, listening, bringing the child out as he checked the child’s heart, peered into the child’s ears, grilled the child’s parent on symptoms and explained therapies. His office, she learned, was only for writing notes in files and telephoning prescriptions to the pharmacy.

  She lurked in the corner of whichever examining room they were in while he diagnosed an ear infection, took a throat culture for strep, removed the sutures from a cut on a boy’s forehead, described the difference between a croup cough and a bronchitis cough to a worried father. Several of the parents who brought their children in to see him recognized Susannah—and she discovered that it didn’t matter. One mother asked politely for her autograph and explained to her chicken-pox-spotted daughter that Susannah was a famous actress. Toby offered a sheet from his prescription pad, and Susannah wrote, “Get well soon!” to the little girl.

  At one-thirty he took ten minutes to wolf down a sandwich from a deli across the street. He told Susannah she should take her time with her own lunch, but she wanted to stay with him, to experience the hectic pace of his workday. Unable to finish her sandwich as quickly as he’d finished his, she rewrapped half of it, stashed it in her tote bag and accompanied him back to an examining room, where a boy in his early teens, dressed in an Arlington Middle School baseball uniform, sat on the table, with one foot elevated and packed in ice. The boy explained, in exuberant detail, how he’d been stealing second when his foot got caught on the bag and his ankle twisted.

  Toby nodded in understanding. “Did you feel anything pop?” he asked as he unwrapped the bandage that held the ice pack in place. “Did you hear a crack?”

  “Uh-uh. I didn’t feel anything. But then my foot swolled up something wicked.”

  “We’re going to need some X rays,” he said as he examined the boy’s foot. “The lab is down at the other end of the hall. We’ll get you a wheelchair. I’m guessing it’s just a sprain, but we’ll need some pictures to be sure. Just tell me this, Mike—were you safe, or did they tag you out?”

  “I was safe,” the kid boasted, his grin glittering with the silver wires of orthodontia.

  By the time Mike was settled in the wheelchair and his harried-looking mother was pushing him back through the waiting area, a gray-haired woman in a white coat like Toby’s approached him in the back hall. “Can I bother you for a minute, Toby?” she asked, ignoring Susannah. “I’ve got a patient I want you check. I’m hearing a heart murmur. I think it’s just an innocuous noise, but I’d like your opinion.”

  “Sure.” Toby shot Susannah a quick smile. “You can wait in my office,” he said before hurrying after his colleague.

  Susannah returned to his office, almost grateful for a moment’s break. On Mercy Hospital, the doctors ran around a lot, but they were always driven by emergencies contrived to propel the drama—accidents, shootings, stabbings, women going into labor at inopportune times. Toby ran around as much as those fictional doctors did, yet he didn’t seem frantic or rushed. He didn’t shout orders like the doctors on the show. No matter how tight his time was, he remained friendly and unhurried with his patients, talking and listening to them. There was a tranquillity about him, a sense of purpose and utter confidence.

  His office was a peaceful refuge, its uncluttered space relaxing her. She noted his blazer hanging from a hook on the back of his door, the neat pile of files sitting squarely on his blotter, the thick somber reference books arranged on one shelf. A large framed photo of Lindsey stood prominently on a corner of his desk. A school photo, Susannah guessed, given the bland background and the stiff pose. In spite of Lindsey’s rigid smile and her too-neat hair, she looked lovely.

  On a shelf above his desk was a smaller photo. Susannah lifted it and angled it to the light. Taken in what appeared to be a park, it featured Toby, an adorable toddler and a woman who resembled Lindsey uncannily.

  His wife. The toddler was Lindsey, and the beautiful woman with the dark hair and creamy skin was Toby’s wife.

  She seemed so happy in the picture. So did Toby. His hair was shorter, his smile brighter. Susannah saw no sign of tension in him, no edge of wistfulness, no hint of doubt. He lo
oked secure and satisfied—and extraordinarily handsome, although not as sexy as he looked now. There was no urgency in his gaze, no need burning inside him. He’d been content then.

  He wasn’t anymore. He’d suffered a loss; he harbored doubts now. He lived with anger and fear and desperate yearning. She’d sensed it in his kisses; she’d seen it in his smiles. She remembered the evening he’d hung her mirror, when he’d admitted that he had lost his faith in the discipline he’d devoted himself to. He wasn’t the same man he’d been the sunny afternoon that photo had been taken.

  Somehow, the shadow that darkened his soul, that tempered his smile and gave his eyes an enigmatic glow, made him more fascinating. More trustworthy. More approachable. People as certain of the world as the man in the photo scared her. She related much more easily to people who wrestled with demons, as she did.

  “Hi.” Toby’s voice came from behind her.

  He must have already seen her studying the picture, so there was no need to pretend she hadn’t. She set it back on the shelf, then turned to him. “Your wife was beautiful,” she said.

  He smiled—that poignant smile she found so alluring.

  “Lindsey takes after her.”

  “A lot,” he agreed.

  She gazed at him, filling his office door, his shirt slightly rumpled beneath his white coat, his tie loosened, his hair mussed, his chin bristly, his stethoscope peeking out of a pocket. The day’s labor showed in his face—he appeared not so much weary as full, as if each patient he’d seen had satisfied a hunger inside him.

  Toby was a man who needed to heal others, to make them well and whole. As hard as he worked, his job wasn’t a habit. It was a source of joy.

  She wanted her independence, but she wanted him, too.

  “There was a man in California….” she said.

  She saw movement in his neck as he swallowed. He stepped farther into the office and closed the door. Then, digging his hands into his trouser pockets, he leaned against the door and nodded slightly, an invitation for her to elaborate.

  “It ended badly.”

  Again a slight nod. She wondered how much detail she would have to go into. She didn’t want to recite the entire miserable story of her relationship with Stephen, but Toby deserved some sort of explanation for why she’d pushed him away Saturday night, why she was so afraid to stop pushing him away.

  “It wasn’t as if I wouldn’t have quit the series and left Los Angeles anyway. But that was just the final straw.”

  “You don’t have to explain,” he said.

  “I do.” She wished he would step away from the door, move toward her, open his arms. She wanted his forgiveness. She wanted him to swear to her that she would be safe with him, that he would never try to bend her to his will. He seemed so far away from her, as if waiting for her to make the first move.

  She’d made the first move by talking, hadn’t she? Obviously, it wasn’t enough.

  “I worked with him. He was one of the other stars on the show,” she said. “I thought I loved him. I wanted a marriage. I wanted to create a family with him. But as far as he was concerned, it was all showbiz. We looked good together. We helped each other on the show. We were good for each other’s careers. He didn’t want what I wanted.”

  “Then you were smart to break up with him,” Toby said, a trace of a smile teasing his lips.

  That mere flicker of a smile gave her courage. She pushed away from his desk and walked toward him, not too close but closer than they’d been. “I’m sorry about Saturday night. I should have told you then. Instead, I acted like a jerk.”

  “It would have been nice to know what was wrong,” he admitted, although his careless shrug implied that he considered the matter closed. “If you’re still working things out with him—”

  “I’m not,” she insisted. “There’s nothing to work out.”

  “Well, so you need some time to recover. That makes sense.”

  “I’m all recovered,” she argued. “I just don’t want to let anyone have that kind of control over me again. I don’t want to get swallowed up by another intense relationship. I don’t want to be thinking about someone else all the time.” A pointless wish, since she seemed to be spending an awful lot of time thinking about Toby.

  Another sly smile flickered across his face. “So we’ll skip the intense relationship. Any chance you’d be open to a totally meaningless, no-strings-attached fling?”

  She laughed. His joke made her desire him even more. She would love a fling with him—but she was the one who would attach strings to it. She wasn’t cut out for casual affairs, and even if she was, she couldn’t have one with Toby. She already liked him too much.

  “I’m open to a lot of things,” she conceded. “I just want to take it slow. I know it sounds silly for a thirty-two-year-old woman to be trying to find herself, but that’s where I am right now.”

  He extended his hand to capture hers and tugged her across the few feet of space that still separated them. Tenderly, he brushed his lips over hers. “We can take it as slow as you want,” he murmured.

  The promise of a real kiss from him was almost enough to make her want to take it fast. The warmth of his body so close to hers, the whisper of his breath against her cheek, the possessive clasp of his hand around hers made her want to lose herself, not find herself.

  But that was a mistake she wouldn’t let herself make. So she resisted the urge to throw her arms around him, pull his mouth back to hers and press her body to his. She would take it slow because she had to—and she would thank her lucky stars that she’d met a man like Toby, generous enough to let her do what she had to do.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “HI, SUSANNAH?” Lindsey cupped the phone to her ear. She was in the kitchen, Amanda and Meredith hovering next to her as if they were dying to snatch the phone away from her so they could hear Susannah’s voice themselves.

  Well, they’d hear it soon enough. Lindsey had promised them she’d figure out a way for them to see Susannah, and she’d come up with a great plan. Assuming Susannah fell for it, which was a big assumption. But Lindsey believed it would work.

  “Yes?” Susannah’s voice sounded exactly the same on the phone as it did on TV.

  “It’s Lindsey.”

  “Hi, Lindsey.”

  Lindsey tried to measure Susannah’s mood by her tone. She didn’t sound annoyed, as though Lindsey was the last person she wanted to hear from. So she took a deep breath, turned away from her friends’ eager faces and said, “I was wondering if I could, like, borrow MacKenzie.”

  “Borrow him?” Susannah sounded surprised and amused.

  “Yeah. See, like, I’ve got this friend, and her cousin is really into cats, and she wanted to send a photo of her and a cat to her cousin, only she doesn’t have a cat. And I was like telling her about how wonderful MacKenzie is, and we just sort of thought maybe we could take a picture of her with MacKenzie to send her cousin.”

  “Sure,” Susannah said so automatically Lindsey wasn’t certain she’d heard right.

  “Sure?”

  “Sure. When does your friend want to borrow him?”

  Lindsey grinned at Meredith and Amanda. “Well, she’s here now.”

  “At your house?”

  “Yeah. It’s okay with my dad. He lets me have friends over when he’s not home.”

  “Well…okay. Why don’t I bring MacKenzie over and your friend can have her picture taken.”

  Lindsey gave Meredith and Amanda a thumbs-up. They squealed and gave each other a high five. “Okay,” Lindsey remembered to answer Susannah. “That’d be great.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Susannah said. “’Bye.”

  Lindsey hung up the phone and announced, “She’ll be right over.”

  Amanda and Meredith squealed some more and hugged her, which was a bit much although Lindsey relished having them so in love with her. After about ten seconds of being hugged, she wriggled out of their arms. “Come on, guys. We’ve got
to get organized. Meredith, is your camera ready?”

  “Yeah.” Meredith had gotten a camera for her eleventh birthday. It wasn’t too fancy—it focused all by itself and had a built-in flash, and Meredith had already taught Lindsey how to use it. Lindsey had phoned her last night and told her to bring the camera to school with her so they could try this scheme out at their weekly Susannah Dawson Admiration Society meeting.

  That the plan seemed to have worked and her friends adored her gave Lindsey a huge boost. She’d had another really awful day at school. Ms. Hathaway had chewed her out in front of the whole class because her math homework was wrinkled. “This looks like something you might have pulled out of a trash can,” she’d said. “And what a shame, because you probably got all the answers right. But when you have no regard for your work, why should I have any regard for it?”

  Lindsey had had to sit at her desk, saying nothing, staring at her hands, as Ms. Hathaway lectured her in front of everybody on having no regard. She had only a few weeks more school and then she’d be done with Ms. Hathaway forever. The question was, could she survive those few weeks without going nuts?

  At the moment, with Meredith double-checking her camera and Amanda standing by the window, watching for Susannah, Lindsey believed she might survive after all. It was a clear, summery afternoon, finally hot enough for sandals. More important than the warm weather was the fact that Lindsey’s father seemed to be in better spirits than he’d been on Sunday after his date with Susannah, and when he was in good spirits, Lindsey’s life was a lot easier. She figured he had cheered up because he’d abandoned the idea of actually dating Susannah, which was a good thing, given Susannah’s secret baby back in California.

  And now Susannah was coming over with MacKenzie. Except for school, Lindsey’s life was definitely looking up.

  “Here she comes!” Amanda shrieked from the window. “Oh, my God!”

  “Listen, you guys—be cool, okay? Don’t make a fuss over her or she’ll leave. Okay?”