by Marie Force
From grade school on, she’d never fit in. Somewhere in middle school, she’d given up trying. Lizzie seemed to go out of her way to be unique. Half her outfits looked like they’d been on the Halloween closeout special rack. Granny always told people Lizzie simply marched to a different drummer, but if so, Rick had never heard the beat.
“The whole family just tolerates me, and I feel the same way about them,” Lizzie said as she fought with her seat belt. “They’re all nice folks, but I feel like I’ve been assigned to the wrong family, you know?”
He didn’t know, but he answered, “They all love you, honey.” Lies were starting to dribble out of his mouth. At this rate, he’d need a bib before long.
“That must be why they all want to change me into someone else. I swear if they thought they could get away with it, half of them would vote to have me stretched so I’d at least look more Matheson.” She ducked her head down in his coat like a turtle retreating into a shell. “I just want to find my people, you know? Somewhere, someplace probably far away, there are people just like me waiting supper, wondering where I am.”
“Right,” Rick answered, thinking that if anyone ever found that place, it would take about a second to collect the money to send her there.
Ten minutes later, they pulled up to the bridge and climbed out of the car. She leaned against the fender, pulling his jacket around her as if it were cold. “I’m never going to fall in love,” she whispered. “This is probably the one time I’ll ever stand on this bridge, and I’m here with my cousin.”
He agreed. “I almost fell once. Met a woman I thought was perfect, but it turned out she didn’t want commitment; she only wanted my body.”
“Yeah, I played that game a few times in high school.”
Rick didn’t comment that he’d heard all about it from some of his friends.
She straightened. “I think I’d better head home. I don’t feel so good. Beer and pot roast seem to be fighting in my stomach.”
He reached for the handle on his side as she did the same.
Something sounding very much like a shot whistled through the still air. Rick ducked inside his car as if the glass would somehow protect him.
Lizzie, with less skill, did the same. As she leaned out to close the door on her side, his coat tumbled off her shoulders and into the dirt. She reached down, grabbed it and tugged it over her.
For a few heartbeats they were both silent, listening for another shot.
Without a word to Lizzie, he gunned the engine and threw the car into Drive. They flew off the bridge and headed toward Lizzie’s place on the other side of town.
Rick’s mind raced. The shot could be another attempt on his life? One of these days whoever was out there wanting him dead might get lucky.
Lizzie didn’t say a word as he drove down sleepy streets, past the tiny mall, then bounced over railroad tracks. Nothing much had been built beyond the tracks in fifty years. A few grain elevators spotted the horizon. A dozen houses were scattered out along the winding road, not close enough to be considered in the town or far apart enough to be called “in the country.” Half a mile farther, Lizzie’s house hid behind one of the town’s veterinary clinics. Corrals and trailers scattered around the vet’s office almost hid her place from view.
Rick bumped along a dirt lane to her property as he circled a corral to get to her house. An adobe fence, overgrown with morning glories, separated her land from the vet’s. Rick didn’t breathe until he neared her back door.
“You really should get this road paved, Lizzie. One day a car is going to disappear in a rut.”
“Why, if it rains, I can park in Dr. McCall’s lot. He doesn’t mind, and there’s a path from my front door to his place.” She stepped out as if there were nothing else to talk about and tossed his coat back to him.
“Thanks,” she called without looking back.
“You’re welcome,” he answered too low for her to hear.
Rick tried to decide if, in her world, gunfire didn’t seem strange or if she was too drunk to have noticed.
Watching her hug herself and stagger toward the porch, he wondered if she was really that drunk or if the ridiculous shoes simply weren’t made for cobblestones. He didn’t care. All he wanted to do was drop her off and head back to his office. The federal prosecutor had asked for his help on an old case, and Rick had a feeling that somewhere in his files might be the clue needed to send a really bad guy to jail. Only problem was, he had to get to it before the bad guys got to him.
He’d call the sheriff and tell her about the shot, if it was a shot. Then he’d be careful about standing around looking like an easy target. The idea of someone following him didn’t make sense. Harmony was a small town; folks still noticed strangers and license plates that weren’t local. If the shot had been directed at him, it was probably meant to scare him off, and the guy just caught a lucky chance when Rick was dumb enough to stop on the bridge.
Lizzie had almost made it to her home, but she missed a step two feet from the porch and sank her high heels into the mud. Shaking off mud, she climbed onto the first step and turned to wave good-bye. As if just remembering what had happened, she yelled back to him, “You going to call that gunfire in?”
He shook his head. “Probably only a backfire.”
“Want to tell me why that might not be the truth?” She glanced at him with those big eyes of hers. “You know, Ricky, if you ever need me, I’ll come running.”
“No. Don’t worry about me, Lizzie Lee.” The last thing he wanted to do was talk with her about his problems. Shifting the car into Reverse, he offered a quick wave.
As he drove away, he remembered the veterinarian who had built the clinic had once owned her house. Years ago, the clinic, Lizzie’s house, and the small shop across the road had all been one property. The last vet had lived in the house, run the clinic, and rented out the shop. Now Lizzie owned the house and the shop, where she did pet grooming on Wednesdays and Fridays. Who knows what she did the other days, but he didn’t want her worrying about him.
Rick thought about asking where the new vet lived, but he really didn’t care. With no pets, he wasn’t likely to use either of their services. “Good night, Lizzie,” he yelled as he glanced back and saw her entering her house.
He tossed his jacket into the backseat knowing that it would need cleaning. Between her perfume and her dropping it on the bridge, he doubted he could wear it now.
Rick couldn’t help wondering just how few friends she must have if she counted him among them. He thought of yelling, “Don’t call me Ricky, and for God’s sake, please don’t ever try to save me,” but she was already inside.
Rick laughed. The last person on this planet he’d ever call for help was his nutty cousin.
TWO
A LITTLE AFTER dark, Lizzie tapped on the door of the veterinarian’s office. The entrance had been designed to look like a barn door four years ago when Dr. McCall moved to town, bought the practice, and remodeled.
Four years and everyone still called him the new vet, she thought. He wasn’t new or fresh out of school. He’d been practicing in San Antonio for a few years before he came to Harmony. Someone said the doc mentioned wanting to move to West Texas after he lost his wife. No one wanted to pry and ask whether she left him or died, but Dr. McCall seemed to have given up on people in general. A kind of sadness hung over his broad shoulders. If his wife had left him, she’d left him broken.
Though still in his thirties, he was grumpy and never bothered with idle conversation, but Lizzie accepted him, just as she guessed he did her. Dr. McCall might not like people, but he cared about animals, including her cats, although he mostly handled large stock at the clinic. Their usual interaction, if he noticed her passing his place, was little more than a nod. The other vet had handed out advice about everything in life. Dr. McCall simply talked to the patient on his examining table and barely noticed her.
Sometimes when she was grooming a dog or cat in her
tiny pet salon across the road from him, she would notice something wrong with her client and run to his office. He always took the time to examine her animal while his waited. The horses never seemed to mind. He’d explain to her what she needed to tell the pet’s owner, and he never charged her for the advice.
Dr. McCall might not be friendly, but he wasn’t unkind, and in Lizzie’s world that counted.
On the third knock the porch light came on, and the doc opened the door.
“Evening, Elizabeth, you got a problem with Sam or Molly?” He leaned down, not looking at her face but searching for a carrier.
Lizzie tried to smile. He always said her name as if that day he’d read it on the mailbox for the first time, even though they’d lived next to each other for years.
The doctor was a mixture of the actor Jake Gyllenhaal—add a few years—and Sam Elliot—take away thirty years. Cute in a roughed-up, uncared for kind of way. He always wore worn jeans, boots, and a sweater from September to March. In summers he switched into short-sleeve knit shirts, but Lizzie suspected there was a sweater hiding a few feet away in the closet. Guessing, she’d say he could have been handsome if he tried, which he didn’t. But, with just enough gray in his shaggy hair to look sexy and with his clothes always wrinkled, he’d somehow managed to stay off the available bachelor list in town. She had the feeling he always talked down to people and up to animals.
Pulling the raincoat around her, she whispered, “May I come in, Doc? I have a medical question.”
He stepped back. “Of course, Elizabeth, if it’s something that can’t wait until tomorrow morning. The fellows and I were just sitting down to watch a movie.”
As she passed him, the doc poked his head outside and glanced at the cloudy sky, then looked back at her raincoat.
She walked into his wide foyer and waited, not sure which door to take. His quarters were on one side of the long, narrow building and his office on the other. She wasn’t surprised to see two dogs waiting at his open apartment door as if they were his assistants. The smell of popcorn drifted from his place.
Doc shooed the curious dogs back as he closed the door. “Go on, boys, eat your supper without me. I’m needed in the office.”
She waited as he opened the door on the other side. There was no reception area, just a large room with equipment lining the walls and three doors opening out to an arena where larger animals could be brought up to a stall/examining room. As always, the place was clean but cluttered with supplies and books.
The doc offered her a chair as he leaned on an old desk that had to have survived several vets. “How may I help you?” he asked as he shoved shaggy hair back with one rake of his big hand.
Lizzie slowly pulled open her coat. “I need to know what to do about this. I can’t seem to stop the bleeding.”
For a moment, he froze as if he couldn’t make sense of what he saw, then he knelt in front of her chair hesitantly. His chocolate eyes were wide with concern. “Elizabeth, you’re bleeding.”
She tried to smile. “Thanks for confirming my diagnosis, but that’s not the question.”
His almost-bushy eyebrows wrinkled. “You’ve got to go to the hospital. I can’t treat you.”
When she just stared at him, he seemed to understand that she didn’t consider that an option. Slowly lifting her off the chair, he set her on the desk. “I’ll get something to help stop the bleeding then I’m driving you to the hospital.”
While he collected supplies, she shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll treat myself. I just need you to tell me how.”
He shook his head as he cleared the desk and spread out a clean sheet. With one twist he rolled a fresh towel to use for a pillow.
She lay down on her unharmed side and tugged up the T-shirt she’d switched into when her cousin brought her home. Half the white cotton was already covered in blood.
He pulled the raincoat away from her side and pushed the shirt up past her bra. An inch of flesh had been ripped away halfway between her bra and the low-cut waist of her jeans.
“It’s just a scratch.” She closed her eyes almost believing her own lie. “I don’t want anyone to know. I could have doctored it at my place, but I had a little problem.”
Doc McCall put gauze over the place where blood seemed to be dripping out of an opening in her side the size of a dime and planted her hand over it. “Press,” he ordered as he rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands. “If it’s only a scratch, I guess I could patch you up. Not as a doctor, of course, but as a friend.”
“Thanks. It’s a hard place to clean up, and I’m still too drunk to have a steady hand.”
“Been at your Sunday family dinner again?” he asked as he worked.
She tried to smile. “You know me well.” Six months ago she’d taken out all his trash cans trying to park, and three months ago she’d locked herself out after one of the Sunday dinner binges.
Doc pulled up the chair and sat so he was eye level with the wound. Carefully he began cleaning blood away. “How’d you hurt yourself, Lizzie? Fall into that wild flower bed of yours and puncture yourself?”
His hands were warm on her skin as he cleaned.
“I didn’t do anything, Doc. I was just standing on that old bridge downtown and all at once I felt something hit me. It came out of nowhere.” She fought back tears and gripped his shoulder. He felt solid as a rock, and right now she needed something or someone to hold on to. The room was starting to circle around her. “I didn’t know if I could dig the bullet out myself, so I came here.” She let out a low cry as the cotton passed over the wound.
“You’ve been shot!” Suddenly the always-stone-faced doctor sounded very young. His hand brushed her hair away from her face as he looked at her, really looked at her. “Elizabeth.” He forced calm into his words, but she saw fear and worry in his face. “You were shot?”
“It was an accident.” She couldn’t tell him that the bullet was meant for Rick Matheson. She didn’t know that for sure. “A stray bullet I’m guessing. If I go to the hospital, I’ll have to fill out forms and answer questions.” She almost added that it would somehow turn into being all her fault and, by the end of the day, people would be speculating that she probably shot herself.
He pressed his palm over the wound gently, his long fingers brushing her skin from the underside of her breast to her waist as if he thought the touch necessary. “I can’t treat you. It’s against the law.”
“You’d take care of me if I were an animal.”
McCall shook his head, silently telling her that there was no use in arguing.
“I’ll do it myself, then.” She tried to rise. “I’m not going to the hospital. I’ll do it alone if you won’t help.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks. This had been a crazy idea, coming here, asking a man she didn’t even know by his first name for help. Thinking he’d show her the same kindness he’d show an animal. Of course, he couldn’t help her.
“I’ll drive you to the hospital.” He tried again, his hands holding her still.
“No.” She shook her head. “I told you, I’m not going. I’m sorry I bothered you. I can do this alone.” It felt as if every troubled time in her life she’d always walked alone. People were nice, but never wanted to be real friends. Family, teachers, everyone seemed to believe she’d do best left to herself. Just add being shot and surviving to the list.
He kept his hand on her side as she sat up. She saw the panic in his eyes and almost felt sorry for him. He hadn’t volunteered to help; he’d been drafted.
“But—” he began.
“No buts. I don’t have to seek medical attention, and I doubt anyone would consider this a life-threatening situation. If you can’t help me, and you won’t tell me what to do, I’ll figure it out. I’m sure I can Google instructions on how to remove a bullet.”
McCall still didn’t turn her loose. “All right,” he reluctantly agreed. “Let me take a look at it. Maybe all it needs is just a dressing.”
They both knew it would require more.
She leaned back on the sheet now spotted with blood, and he began. After a few minutes, he whispered, “I can see the bullet. It didn’t go in far. You’re going to need something for the pain, only guessing from your breath, you’ve already fairly self-medicated.”
“No. Nothing for the pain. Just do it.” Lizzie closed her eyes so hard, tears flowed out in tiny rivers.
Doc pulled clean towels from a shelf and placed them on either side of her, bookending her small frame. As he worked, his gloved hand stroked her gently, keeping her calm with his touch. “It’s not as bad as it could have been. The bullet skirted along just under the skin, scraping off enough hide to bleed.” His hand spread out over her middle. “You’re going to be just fine, but you’ll have a scar.”
Lizzie tried to smile as she realized she’d stepped up in the world. Doc was treating her like an animal. The pain sobered her, and his gentle touch soothed her. She didn’t make a sound as he worked, but her fingers dug into his shoulder as if it were a lifeline.
When he placed butterfly stitches over her wound and bandaged it, she relaxed, knowing this latest crisis was almost over. The reluctant doctor had made that possible even if he didn’t care for people. He’d smiled when he thought she’d brought one of her cats, but he hadn’t smiled since.
“I’ve got antibiotics in my purse. The emergency room gave them to me last month when I stepped on a nail while trying to clean out a clogged gutter. I also had a tetanus shot, so I’m covered there.” Nerves made her ramble. “I still can’t figure out how the nails got on my roof. I clean that gutter almost every time it rains, and I never saw nails sticking up before, but last month I must have found a dozen at the gutter’s edge. It’s a wonder I didn’t tumble off the roof in pain.”
He nodded, only half-listening as he examined his work. “Tug off that bloody shirt, and I’ll loan you another.”
