Practice Makes Perfect (Single Father)

by Macdonald, Janice

  “Let me put my official face on.” Matthew affected an expression of extreme attention, leaning across the table, his eyes intent on her face. “There.”

  “You have egg on your lip.” Sarah resisted the urge to reach over and remove it.

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Official egg, though.”

  “Okay, we can do this for—” she glanced at her watch “—another two seconds, then all jokes are off.”

  “Shoot.” He drank some coffee. “Poor choice of words. Speak.”

  “It’s about one of your patients. Debbi Kennedy’s daughter, Alli.” She saw the hesitation in his expression. “It’s okay, Debbi gave me her permission to talk to you.”

  “I’m assuming you have a license to practice in the state of Washington?” Matthew asked, mock serious still.

  “From beauty school.”

  “That’ll work.”

  “Seriously.” She set down her fork. “Debbi said you told her the baby needs surgery.”

  “I said she needed to come in to have tests,” Matthew said. “I suspect she’s going to need a kidney transplant. The tests would confirm that. Unfortunately, she seems to pay more attention to her boyfriend’s medical advice.”

  Sarah nodded. “I’ve met them both. He’s an organic farmer and—

  “Crackpot,” Matthew said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. He’s well-known around town. Last year he led a crowd of protesters against a condo project on the old Dungeness Highway. As I recall, he ended up in jail.”

  “He has strong convictions,” Sarah said, irritated without quite knowing why. “Sometimes people have to take a stand. Go against the flow.”

  Matthew looked at her but said nothing.

  “It’s always easy to take the path of least resistance.”

  “Did you come here to defend Curt Hudelson? Or attack me?”

  “I’m just making my point.” She tried to calm her racing heart. “Okay, I realize he’s got strong opinions. Debbi’s a little…unnerved by him, too. She’s torn between trusting the baby to him and fear that Alli will get swept up into the jaws of Compassionate Medical Systems.”

  Matthew’s face tightened. “And you, of course, did nothing to reassure her that CMS is a reputable organization with hospitals all over the country.”

  “A lot of dirty little secrets about botched surgeries, patient dumping, that sort of thing.”

  “One thing I’ve always admired is your objectivity,” Matthew said.

  “That isn’t stuff I made up, Matthew. You can go to the newspaper archives and see it for yourself. If you really wanted to know, that is.”

  Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Then Matthew met her eyes. “So,” he said, “back to Debbi’s daughter.”

  Sarah felt her face redden. “Look, could we start again? I didn’t mean to get into a fight with you.” She took a breath. “Here’s the deal. I know I could provide the middle approach that Debbi would feel comfortable with. I know I could help Alli. But I also recognize that she might need surgery at some point and I just want to know that if that’s the case, I can come to you and know that the child won’t be…”

  “Pulled into the maw?”

  “Matthew.”

  “Where will you see Alli?” he asked. “You’re going to open an office?”

  “I’m going to make house calls.” She saw his eyes flicker. “It’s being done in other places throughout the country. It makes sense, Matthew. House calls are convenient for the patients and—” she leaned across the table “—they can also save thousands of dollars for taxpayers.”

  He smiled. “Vintage Sarah. ‘Matthew, we open a lemonade stand. Five cents a glass. By the end of summer…’”

  She sat back, folded her arms and glared at him. “You can make light of it, but I’m serious. Research shows that patients who can’t get to the doctor regularly are more likely to wait until they’re really bad off, then call an ambulance. And what does that mean? Huge emergency-room costs, hospital-room costs and everything that goes with a prolonged illness. People out on the end of the peninsula—laid-off mill workers, single mothers—some of them qualify for welfare, some don’t. But they can’t get into town to see a doctor and even if they do, they can’t afford the charges. Debbi’s just one of many.”

  He carefully picked the foil off a pat of butter, then sliced open a biscuit. “Okay, let me just say something. I’ve had a brutal couple of days, I desperately need an uninterrupted night’s sleep so if you’re about to make another pitch, you’ve picked the wrong time. Again.”

  “I’ve asked you already, Matthew, and you’ve made your feelings pretty clear. You’re obviously exhausted. Something clearly has to give and you think CMS is the answer. Fine. Maybe you’ll enjoy practicing in an environment where the real focus is money. Go for it. I’m just looking out for Alli Kennedy’s interests.”

  He spread butter on the biscuit, set the knife down and then, as though deciding he wasn’t hungry after all, pushed the plate away and stood. “If you need to consult with me on Alli Kennedy’s care,” he said in a flat, expressionless voice, “I promise to honor your request.” He reached for the tray, started across the room. “See you around, Sarah.”

  “Matthew.” She got up, followed him across the cafeteria as he loaded his tray onto a conveyor belt. “Wait. Just talk to me for a minute.”

  He shook his head. “You got what you came for, now just go. Okay? Take your ideals and your sermonizing and your absolute convictions and peddle them somewhere else.”

  She stood there for a moment, watching his back as he walked down the corridor, not quite believing what had just happened. Then she raised her chin and walked out of the hospital into the cool air.

  “…AND THEN SHE ACCUSED ME of being more interested in money,” Matthew was telling his friend Roger Evans over dinner the following night. “According to her, I’ve completely sold my soul to corporate medicine and, all in all, I’m a pretty poor excuse for a physician.”

  Roger laughed. A successful pediatrician with a practice in a Los Angeles suburb, he was visiting his adult daughter who now lived in Port Hamilton. Over antipasto, Matthew had filled him in on the Compassionate Medical Systems saga and segued into Sarah as they started on the lasagna.

  “Who is this woman?”

  “We grew up together,” Matthew said. “She’s two years younger than me and, as kids at least, she looked up to me.” He grinned. “Although she’d choke if she heard me say that. She influenced me to go into medicine. Her parents and grandparents were doctors. We used to have all these high-flying ideas…”

  “Didn’t we all?”

  “But Sarah never got over hers. She’s just returned from Central America and now she’s got some plan to start her own practice. Integrative medicine and house calls.”

  Roger looked amused. “Good luck.”

  “If anyone can make it work, Sarah can.” Matthew pulled a slice of garlic bread out of the bread basket, bit into it and tried to recall the last time he’d had dinner at a restaurant with anyone but Lucy. “She asked me to go in with her, but…” He shrugged. “I’ve got a daughter. Upkeep. I hope she succeeds, but…”

  “It’s a long shot.” Roger signaled to the waiter for more water. “So, this woman—”

  “Sarah. Strictly friends,” he said, anticipating Roger’s question. “Although, I don’t know. Sometimes I look at her and wonder.”

  “Attractive?”

  “In an offbeat sort of way. The odd thing is I know her so well on one level and yet she’s this complete mystery to me.”

  Roger grinned. “Always fun solving mysteries.”

  “Yeah, I guess. These days though, I hardly have time t
o figure out my own life, let alone try to figure out what makes Sarah tick.”

  “Probably what you need,” Roger said after the waiter had brought the water, “is a simple, uncomplicated woman who looks at you adoringly.”

  Matthew laughed. “If you come across one, introduce me.”

  But long after he’d gone to bed that night, Matthew was still awake thinking. His relationship with Elizabeth had once seemed less complicated, but Sarah had always been there, on the edge of his consciousness. When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed about her standing on the beach, enveloped in fog just as she’d been that day on Agate Beach.

  A CANVAS SATCHEL slung over one shoulder, Sarah rode her bike through town to her appointment with the Realtor to look at office space. If this all came through, she reflected, she would need to buy a car. Maybe a truck. The west end of the peninsula where most of her patients would probably live was too far to go by bike. The wind bit her face, blowing through the wool of the hat she’d jammed on as she left the apartment. It had rained during the night, a late spring storm that frosted the Olympics a sparkling sugar white—and made her think of Matthew. Of skiing down the mountain with Matthew years ago when anything seemed possible.

  Everything made her think of Matthew.

  At the east end of Port Hamilton, the highway split into two one-way streets. First Street ran through town. Front Street skirted the shore, before it headed west and, ultimately, off the peninsula. The day after the fight with Matthew in the hospital cafeteria, she’d seriously considered packing up and taking the road west.

  Elizabeth had dissuaded her.

  “So you had a fight?” Elizabeth had said. “And now you’re going to let him chase you out of town? Sarah, he’s always been smug and self-satisfied. Okay, okay, you didn’t call him that, I did. But, listen to me. People are looking to you for an alternative. You can’t let them down.”

  The next day she and Elizabeth had cleared off Sarah’s kitchen table and begun a list of things they needed to take care of.

  1) Location.

  2) Patients.

  3) Supplies and equipment.

  Still, she missed Matthew. Thought about Matthew. Endlessly. Later, back at her apartment, she picked up the phone to call him. I’m sorry. I said things I shouldn’t have. She set the phone down. What had she really said that required an apology? She took a bubble bath. Cucumber melon to soothe the troubled soul. Except that it didn’t. She climbed out of the tub, dried off. The doorbell rang. She grabbed the yellow terry-cloth robe from the hook on the back of the bathroom door and pulled it on. Her hair was wet, and water trickled down her back as she opened the front door.

  “Even in Port Hamilton,” Matthew said, “you should check before you open the door at night.”

  With one hand, Sarah lifted the hair off her neck for a moment. He’d come straight from the hospital, a parka thrown over his scrubs. Blue eyes, heartbreakingly blue like water in sunlight. She swallowed. “Lucky for you I didn’t check.”

  “Can I come in?”

  She stepped aside, then closed the door behind him.

  “I can’t stand being angry at you,” he said.

  “I don’t like it much, either.” Her arms were folded across her chest. She unfolded them, stuck her hands into the pockets of her robe. “Being mad at you.”

  “So—” he put his hands on her shoulders “—what are we going to do about it?”

  “Don’t know.” She could hardly breathe. She felt the warmth of his hands through her robe. He was so close. “Maybe we need to talk?”

  He smiled. “Talking seems to get us into trouble.”

  She lifted her hands to cover his, to feel his skin against her own and then she moved toward him, or maybe it was the other way around, but they were holding each other and kissing. When she pulled away, she wanted to laugh but thought she might burst into tears instead.

  “Why did this take so long?” Matthew, still wearing his parka, asked after they’d moved to the couch.

  “I don’t know.” Feet curled up under her, Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off his face. It was the Matthew she’d always known, but an altogether different Matthew that she hardly knew. “It wouldn’t have if I’d had my way.”

  He frowned.

  “Matthew, I think I’ve always been nuts about you. I probably had a crush on you from when I was about ten—”

  “You had a crush on me?”

  She smiled. “Don’t look so pleased with yourself. I was a dumb kid.”

  “Am I looking pleased with myself?”

  “Very.”

  “I didn’t realize that.” He adopted a theatrically solemn expression. “All I can say is that if you had a crush on me, you certainly hid it very well. Mostly, I had the feeling you just wanted to prove that you could do anything better than me.”

  “And I could,” she shot back.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I could arm wrestle you—”

  “Well, there was that. You were two years older and on the football team.”

  “But you mispronounced paradigm,” he said in a low voice.

  “I did not.”

  “Yes, you did. You pronounced it paradijum.”

  “You didn’t even know what it meant.”

  “Before I mention the time you said, without a shadow of doubt, that Tasmania was an island off the coast of England—”

  “Maybe that’s what happened,” she said. “We’ve always had a competition going on. Like at the hospital. I feel this need to prove that my way is right and you—”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Maybe when we were kids. But that stuff at the hospital had nothing to do with me wanting to prove something about Compassionate Medical Systems. It’s not what I’d be doing if…” He shook his head, his expression suddenly weary. “Let’s not get into all that again, Sarah. Okay?”

  She nodded, reached over to stroke his hair. “I’m glad you came by. I’ve missed you. A lot.”

  “How come you never… I mean, most women give off clues that they’re attracted, but you…” He leaned his head against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. “I always had the feeling that if I’d made a move you’d have hauled me off and hit me.”

  Sarah ran her finger under the elasticized cuff of his parka. “Maybe it was self-preservation. Maybe I was scared you’d reject me.” He pulled her onto his lap and they kissed again.

  Things were happening too fast, so she pulled away and scooted to the other end of the couch. Ironic, really, since they had taken a lifetime to progress to this point. Glancing at the small travel clock on top of the stereo, she saw that it was after midnight.

  “Lucy’s in a play,” he said impulsively. “She’s a fortune-teller. Clare Voyant. Which reminds me, I’m supposed to go buy her some tarot cards.”

  “I have some,” she said.

  “You have tarot cards?”

  “I have a superstitious streak that I don’t talk about.”

  “Tomorrow’s opening night. Want to go with me?”

  “Maybe she’d rather have you to herself.”

  “Of course,” he said, feigning dismay. “How stupid of me. I wouldn’t have figured that out by myself. Okay, I take back the invitation.”

  “Stop.”

  “You want to go, or not?”

  “I want to go.”

  He smiled. “See how simple that was?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  BUT INVITING SARAH TO THE PLAY hadn’t been such a great idea after all, Matthew realized. He was feeling beleaguered. First Elizabeth had given him a hard time for not consulting Lucy before extending the invitation—then Pearl, now Lucy herself. He’d picked her up from school and, as they were driving back to his cond
o, he’d casually mentioned it, confident that Lucy, unlike her mother and grandmother, wouldn’t consider him some sort of insensitive clod who didn’t understand the first thing about women.

  Wrong.

  “It’s my play.” Lucy folded her arms across her chest, her eyes fixed on the windshield. “I think I should be allowed to say who can come or not.”

  “So you personally invited everyone in the audience?” Matthew shot back, then immediately wanted to retract the words. She’s a fourteen-year-old kid. “Lucy, I don’t understand the big deal,” he said slowly. “Sarah’s just a friend—”

  “Girlfriend,” she spit out. “Fine. Take her, I don’t care.”

  He made an impromptu, conciliatory stop at the Buzz where Lucy loved the homemade blackberry ice cream. “Come on.” He caught her by the arm. “Let’s go get a cone.”

  Inside, they sat at a small iron table in the window alcove and Lucy brightened a little. As he ate his ice cream, he attempted to sort things out in his own mind. Sarah was a friend, had always been a friend. He loved her as a friend. But was Lucy right in calling Sarah a girlfriend? Maybe not at the moment, but at some point?

  Maybe.

  “You’re always talking about stuff you used to do with her,” Lucy said after they’d sat in silence for a while. “Like in the car going to that dumb beach thing. ‘Oh, Sarah,’” she mimicked his voice, “‘Remember this? Oh. Matthew—’” high pitched now “‘—remember that. Oh, wasn’t it so fun?’” She glared at him. “How d’you think that made me feel? Like I wasn’t even there.”

  “Lucy, that’s…” Frustrated, he shook his head. He’d been about to dismiss it as silly, but it clearly wasn’t silly to his daughter who, he could see, was on the verge of tears again. “Look, sweetheart, I know this play is very important to you, so if it’s going to upset you for me to bring Sarah, I won’t.”