For the Love of Jazz

by Shiloh Walker

  Across the room, Jackie’s eyes widened but she continued laying out the supplies without a word.

  “You have consent. She has no allergies, no history of seizures and no loss of consciousness. Anything else?”

  “Is she allergic to latex?” Anne-Marie asked, keeping firm hold of her temper.

  “No. She’s not allergic to latex or anything else, to my knowledge. Any other questions, doc?” he replied, narrowing those dark eyes.

  “Not at this moment, no.” Yes, I do want to know one more thing. What bug crawled up your very excellent ass and died? she thought sourly as she soaked a cotton ball with saline and pressed it against the sullenly oozing cut.

  “Y’know, if this is too much trouble, we can go on to the hospital,” he offered sarcastically when Jackie murmured an apology and whispered, “I’ll have to get some more supplies.”

  “A good place to keep them would be the cabinet, wouldn’t it?” he snapped, glaring at Jackie’s retreating back. She paused for one brief second, causing Anne-Marie to hold her breath, but then she kept going without a word.

  Keeping her voice pleasant was getting harder with every second that passed. Of course, it’s to be expected, I suppose. As good-looking as he is, it was only fair for God to skimp out on something. Something like common courtesy.

  “Good and clean little cut, there,” she said. “Aw, sweetie, you’re such a big girl.”

  “I know,” the little cherub replied, piping up for the first time since announcing her wounded condition at the front desk.

  “What’s your name, honey?” Anne-Marie asked as she exchanged the bloodied cotton pad for a fresh one.

  “Mariah,” she said, smiling sweetly. She reached up and brushed her hand across Anne-Marie’s chin. “You’re pretty.”

  With her free hand, she pinched Mariah’s nose and said, “So are you. Does your head hurt, Mariah?”

  “Uh-uh. Just when I fell down. Not anymore. I didn’t cry hardly at all, did I, Daddy?” she asked, smiling at the man who stood breathing over Anne-Marie’s shoulder.

  “No, sweetheart. You’re a big girl.”

  That same sweet, angelic smile on her face, she turned her gaze back to Anne-Marie. “Daddy cussed, bad. He said all sorts of bad words, he said the ‘s’ word and the ‘d’ word and the ‘f’—”

  Chuckling, Anne-Marie said, “I get the point. I imagine you scared him quite a bit.”

  “That’s what he said,” Mariah said. “Do you know what the ‘f’ word is?”

  “Yep. It’s fudge,” Anne-Marie said, smiling as the little girl’s eyes rounded.

  “It’s not fudge. It’s-”

  “Fudge, I absolutely promise you. That’s what my daddy always told me the ‘f’ word was. Fudge.”

  Mariah giggled. “Fudge,” she announced when Anne-Marie dabbed some peroxide on the shallow cut. “Am I going to get stitches?”

  “Maybe one or two,” she said with a sympathetic smile.

  Mariah made a dramatic little gulp. Then her lower lip started to tremble. Her voice was a small, terrified whisper as she asked, “Will it hurt?”

  Gently, Anne-Marie brushed back a lock of hair from the girl’s face, tucking it behind her ear. It was pierced and the small silver unicorn in the girl’s lobe made her smile. Unicorns had always been her favorite—even now, she had little pewter unicorns dancing across the top of her desk at home. “The stitches themselves won’t hurt because I have special medicine. That special medicine won’t let you feel any pain at all.”

  “Really?”

  Big brown eyes gazed up at her and the trust Anne-Marie saw there made her heart clench. “Oh, absolutely. You will feel me touching you, and it will sting some when I give you the special medicine, but the stitches won’t hurt.” It was amazing, dealing with kids. The trick, though, was to be honest. A lot of people in the medical field still treated kids like they were less than people, never answering their questions, talking over them, about them, but never really to them.

  Anne-Marie was big on being honest with her patients. If they were old enough to ask a question, whenever possible, she was going to answer the question as best as she could. Behind her, she could hear Jackie. A minute later, a gloved hand held out a small gauze square and Anne-Marie took it, cleaning the laceration a little better. In a low voice, she told Jackie the supplies she needed and then she leaned back and waited for Mariah to look up at her. “Do you think you can be a brave girl for a little longer, Mariah?”

  Solemnly, she nodded.

  Anne-Marie gave her a reassuring smile. “That’s a big girl. Now I have to tell you about the special medicine.”

  That lower lip started to quiver. “You said that the special medicine will sting, right?”

  From the corner of her eye, she could see the father moving closer and Anne-Marie held up a hand. Too many parents expected a doctor or a nurse to lie about shots, which was half the reason so many kids freaked about coming to the office. The vast majority wouldn’t hate the doctor so much if they didn’t have grown-ups lying about it. “It will hurt—at first. A little bit of a pinch but it only lasts a few seconds and then it’s done. After that, like I said, you’ll feel me touching you but it won’t hurt.”

  Mariah looked at her father and then she looked back at Anne-Marie. She took a deep breath, one that made her thin shoulders rise and fall, then she looked down, tucking her chin against her chest. “Do I have to?”

  “Well…no,” Anne-Marie said slowly, pretending to think about it. She took another gauze sponge and wiped at the blood. It was still oozing, although it was slowing down and Anne-Marie could tell it was starting to clot. She didn’t have to tell the little girl that, though. “We could just wait here until it stops bleeding. Might take a while. But I can’t let you go anywhere while it’s still bleeding.”

  As if on cue, Anne-Marie heard the little girl’s belly rumble. She pretended she didn’t hear as she glanced up at the clock. It was pushing seven. “I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty hungry.” She dabbed at the cut again and sighed theatrically. “I sure hope it stops bleeding soon.”

  “How long will it bleed?”

  Jackie leaned around Anne-Marie and studied the cut. “Hmmm. I dunno, Doc. I think it’s going to take a while.”

  They fell silent. The kitty cat clock on the wall ticked away the seconds and it seemed to get louder with each one. The cat had a yellow and blue tail that swung back and forth with the second hand and Anne-Marie counted thirty before Mariah looked at the bloodied gauze in Anne-Marie’s hand. “Is it still bleeding?”

  Solemnly, Anne-Marie nodded.

  Another huge sigh left Mariah’s lips and she whispered, “Okay.”

  In less than twenty minutes, sporting a bright pink Band-Aid on her uninjured hand, and a wide smile, Mariah inspected her “owie” in the fun house-style mirror that hung on the far end of the wall. Behind her, the dad was finally doing the paperwork and Anne-Marie and Jackie cleaned up the bloodied gauze and the remnants of the sutures. The clipboard landed with a clatter on the counter behind her and Anne-Marie hissed out a breath.

  She reached for the clipboard and gave it a cursory glance. “Mariah, I need to speak with your father a moment. Jackie can show you where we keep the suckers and stickers. I think we’ve got some unicorn stickers somewhere.”

  Mariah squealed. “Oh, stickers!” She went skipping out the door and as she disappeared from view, Anne-Marie leaned back against the exam table. Slowly, she removed her gloves and folded one into the other. She tossed them into the trashcan and then looked at the man still glaring at her.

  One black brow lifted arrogantly. “Is this going to take long? We’ve had a rough day.”

  Her temper jerked at its chain and to give herself a minute, she pushed off the table and went to the cabinet hanging over the sink. There was an info sheet on head injuries and she pulled one for him. “You need to keep an eye on her for the next few hours. Any sign of confusion, she goes to sl
eep and is hard to wake up, you need to call right away.”

  He took the sheet. “I’ve had a few hits in the head. I know the drill. Does she have a concussion?”

  “A mild one, probably. Give her some ibuprofen when you get her home. She’s probably going to have a headache. Now… Generally, we make allowances for distraught parents. When your child is injured, it’s natural to be upset. However, I will not tolerate rudeness to my nurses.”

  His brows arched up. “Was I rude? Sorry, but when a doctor’s office doesn’t have the needed supplies to take care of a hurt kid, it’s my place to question it.”

  Anne-Marie narrowed her eyes and let some of the irritation she felt edge its way into her voice. “This is the end of a very long day for us and we generally restock on Mondays before the office opens. It’s a Friday night, well after hours and it took Jackie all of two minutes to grab some gauze. I will not tolerate somebody insinuating that I do not feel like doing my job or that my nurses are inept. Furthermore, I can’t provide medical care without knowing some basic information. Such things are vital in providing safe care.”

  “You really needed to know if she takes her vitamins every damned day before you can look at a cut?” he snapped, jamming his hands in his pockets.

  “No. But it is useful to know, oh, say if she has any latex allergies. A latex allergy can be fatal and allergies to latex are not at all uncommon. Such issues can be problematic—life threatening, even. The same can be said for lidocaine.” She smiled sweetly. “That special medicine that I used to numb the area. That’s a fairly common medication allergy, as is iodine. I’ve seen it with patients more than once. Had I used any of those on a patient who had an allergy, we wouldn’t be standing here now. We’d been en route to the hospital.”

  She tucked the clipboard under her arm. “We can bill you for today’s services. The receptionist has already left. I’ll want to see her back in a week, check and see if she is healing well. Remember to call if any problems arise, blurred vision, severe headaches, nausea, vomiting, anything at all unusual, or any concerns. If you aren’t happy with the services, there’s a general practitioner in town. Jackie can get you the number. There’s also a pediatrician’s office in Frankfort, about thirty miles from here.” On her way out the door, she gave him a card that had the answering service phone number on it.

  “Dr. Hart?”

  “Dr. Hart is my partner. He’s not in the office this week. I’m Anne-Marie Kincaid,” she responded. They kept forgetting to update the sign out front. In a town as small as Briarwood, most everybody knew Anne-Marie had accepted Jake’s offer to join the practice so they weren’t in a big hurry. She headed to the door and glanced at the paperwork without really seeing it.

  A drink. Just a nice glass of white wine and something to eat, she thought. And my chair, she wished longingly. I want my chair. And chocolate…I really need chocolate.

  “Annie.” The word was a whisper, a question almost too faint for her to hear.

  Her eyes fell on the patient’s name. Mariah Delia McNeil. The mother’s name seemed to leap of the paper. Sheri McNeil-Deceased.

  And the father’s name.

  Jasper Wayne McNeil Jr.

  Jazz.

  Oh, dear Lord, she prayed, as her heart started to pound in a slow, deep rhythm.

  Dazed, she turned around and met the black eyes she had dreamed about for a good part of her young life. The years since he had left fell away and she could see the boy she knew. His lean, lanky body had bulked up and filled out. Broad shoulders strained at the seams of his worn button-down and the denim jeans clung to legs that looked long and powerful.

  Staring into those black eyes, Anne-Marie suddenly understood her body’s weird reaction when she’d seen him standing at the check-in window. Her body had recognized him, even if she hadn’t. He looked so different—harder, harsher—and tired. Very tired.

  Jazz McNeil, back in town.

  “Jazz, I didn’t recognize you,” she said, congratulating herself on her smooth, level tone.

  “Me, neither.” His eyes roamed from her head to her feet and back again. Every inch between seemed to burn. “You’ve grown up.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, remembered grief making her throat constrict. The awful night her father had woken her up and they had cried in each other’s arms.

  “Jazz, they say it’s your fault he’s gone. Is it true?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  A steel gray coffin lowered into the ground, next to the mother she had lost to cancer at the age of eight.

  The night she learned Jazz wouldn’t be prosecuted, there had been tears of relief. Then tears of grief came three days later when Jazz left town for good. Angry and as bitter as Desmond was, Jazz’s leaving had done the surviving Kincaids more harm than good. Desmond lost two sons with that accident, and Anne-Marie had lost her hero.

  Now, standing there, looking at him, she wondered how badly his armor had tarnished.

  “It’s been a long time,” Anne-Marie said quietly, tucking her hands into the deep pockets of her lab coat. “I hadn’t heard you were back in Briarwood.”

  “Just got here a few days ago. Annie, I’m sorry about the…”

  “Attitude? Why, because we know each other?” she asked, inclining her head. “If you’re going to be sorry, be sorry for treating me and my nurse like shit, Jazz. But…you are forgiven, whatever the reason for the apology.”

  “It’s no excuse, but the past few days have been rough. I just can’t stand to see her hurting.” His eyes were still the color of melted chocolate, and just as addicting. Over the years, his voice had deepened to a whiskey-smooth southern drawl that warmed Anne-Marie clear down to her toes. Shifting from one foot to the other, he looked uncomfortable, the way a boy would look when summoned to the principal’s office.

  “No parent enjoys seeing a child suffer. We try to keep that in mind here.” An uncomfortable silence spread out as they stared at each other. She finally turned away, busying herself with the chart.

  Quietly, Jazz asked, “Do you hate me, Annie?”

  Taking a deep breath, she took in the familiar scents of candy, alcohol and disinfectant. Opening her eyes, she stared at the framed caricature of dancing mice on the pale blue wall in front of her. She closed her hands around the chart to still their trembling.

  Hate you? Anne-Marie thought silently. How could she tell him hating him would be like hating herself? He was a part of her, every bit as much as Alex and her father.

  Cautious, Anne-Marie turned and looked at him, studying that face, looking for some lingering remnant of the boy she remembered. With a sad smile, she answered, “No. No, Jazz. I don’t hate you. I never did. I miss Alex, and I always will. But Alex is gone. Nothing will bring him back. Some lights burn so brightly, they can only burn for a short time. And Alex was as bright as they come.”

  His eyes, so dark and unreadable, met hers. “I’ve never had another friend like him. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him.” The simple cotton button-down shirt stretched tight across his shoulders as he jammed his hands in his pockets. “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could undo that night.”

  Tears burning her eyes, she turned her head. A lump in her throat made speech nearly impossible. “Jazz, I don’t have anything that I can say to you that will change things. I can’t offer you absolution. But I don’t hate you, and I’ve never wished you ill.”

  Without another word, she left.

  ~*~

  Little Annie, all grown up. And damn, but did she grow up nice. He hadn’t recognized her, not that it was too surprising. It had been sixteen years and she had just been a kid when he left.

  Now she was a doctor.

  Already.

  Jazz did the math in his head and figured she’d probably graduated early. Not too surprising. Annie had skipped second and sixth grade, and that was before Jazz disappeared from her life.

  No telling how many grades she’d skipped in h
igh school, or how fast she’d managed to get through college. Briarwood was a small town and their school system wasn’t equipped to handle kids as smart as Anne-Marie had been. So instead of accelerated classes, Annie skipped grades. Alex had been like that too, although Jazz suspected Annie pushed harder. Would explain why she skipped grades as easy as some kids could skip stones, and why Alex had only skipped the fourth grade.

  As he drove down the two-lane highway, Jazz realized coming home was going to be harder than he had thought. It might have been easier if Anne-Marie had looked at him with hatred instead of sadness. Hatred was so much easier to deal with than disappointment.

  “She was pretty, wasn’t she, Daddy?”

  Glancing in the mirror, he smiled at Mariah’s reflection. She sat in the patterned, pink booster seat with her favorite pink T-shirt splattered with blood and probably some ketchup from the hotdog she was chowing down on. “Not as pretty as you are,” he told her and he meant it sincerely. Thick spiral curls tumbled down her back, around her face, curls the color of midnight. That inky black came him from him but the curls came from Sheri. Her eyes were bluer than cornflowers and her skin was all ivory and peach. Those eyes and her complexion were another gift from her mother. Jazz’s skin was swarthy and dark and it had nothing to do with time spent out the sun.

  His pretty little girl looked like a china doll. How something that beautiful had come from one brief, rowdy affair with a friend of his high-class editor was beyond his comprehension.

  Giggling, Mariah said, “You always say that.”

  “And I always mean it.”

  “Am I gonna be ugly now?” she asked mournfully.

  Muffling a chuckle, Jazz told her, “Honey, you could bump your head two hundred and sixty-two times and never be ugly.”

  “’Kay,” she said, a yawn stretching her mouth wide. “Miss Jackie gave me a sucker. And she said Dr. Anne is the best.”