The Doctor Returns

by Stella MacLean

  He glanced down at her, his powerful hands clasping her arms. “Sherri...” His eyes told her he wanted to say more, but the words would be inappropriate under the circumstances.

  “You’d better go.”

  He grabbed his medical bag and started toward the back of the ambulance, then turned back and pulled his keys from his pocket. “You’ll need these.”

  She climbed up the hill behind him and held out her hand. “I will.”

  She watched the ambulance pull away. When it reached the highway, it quickly picked up speed and was gone from sight.

  She put the key in the SUV’s ignition; the sudden shaking of her hands on the wheel reminded her of how stressful the past few moments had been.

  But it would all be worth it if Charlie was okay. And all worth it because a barrier between Neill and her had magically disappeared. In those moments of working together, of feeling the urgency of the situation, they’d become a team again.

  The shock of what had occurred still fresh in her mind, she drove slowly along the curving highway, the panorama of ocean and bright blue sky, separated by green cliffs edged with rock outcroppings, soothing her in a way nothing else could.

  It was hard for her to believe she’d considered leaving this place.

  When she reached the hospital, she parked Neill’s vehicle in the staff parking lot near the emergency entrance and went in. The space was silent, the sun streaming through the windows into the waiting area. Over in the corner near the entrance leading to the rest of the hospital, Charlie’s parents were huddled together, deep in conversation.

  Elsa and Greg Crawford had been part of her life for as long as she could remember. They’d run the local hardware store together, offering summer jobs to as many of the high school students as they could, including Neill. When she was married to Sam, they’d been kind and caring and ecstatic to learn that she was expecting their grandson.

  Keeping the truth from them had made her feel guilty and sad, but Sam had been determined to maintain their story that he was the father of her child. Now they were faced with their remaining son’s alcoholism. Charlie clearly needed professional help to get his life under control. Her heart breaking for them, she went to them, prepared to do what she could. At the sound of her feet on the hard surface, they glanced up, their faces immediately transforming from worry to relief.

  “Sherri!” Elsa jumped up and came toward her, her arms extended, fresh tears tracing down her cheeks.

  Sherri wrapped her arms around the woman who had for a few years been her mother-in-law, while her gaze reached toward Greg Crawford, a man Sam had both admired and feared. “How’s Charlie doing?” she asked, feeling Elsa’s arms tighten around her at the question.

  Greg cleared his throat and smoothed his thinning gray hair. “He’s in surgery. They took him up just after we got here. Freda had to go to Bangor this morning, but she’s on her way back now.”

  “Is Neill with him?”

  Elsa leaned away from Sherri, pulled a tissue from the pocket of her navy blue jacket and began to dab her eyes. “Yes, he went up to surgery with him. He said he’d come back here as soon as he could to tell us how Charlie made out.”

  “You were with him, I understand. With Charlie...you and Neill.” Greg put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, and the two of them stared at her, their eyes pleading for information on how their son ended up needing surgery.

  “Yes. We’d gone to Cranberry Point for a picnic,” she said, following the elderly couple back to where they’d been sitting. “We saw Charlie’s accident happen and went to help.”

  Her words produced a fresh gush of tears from Elsa. “We’re both so glad you were there for Charlie. What if you hadn’t been?” She gazed up into Sherri’s face, her reddened cheeks and teary eyes expressing her fear for her son.

  “We were there, and that’s all that matters. And Neill Brandon is the best doctor Charlie could have had at the scene,” she said, searching for the words that would soothe them.

  Elsa pushed her unkempt hair from her forehead and lifted her chin. “To think we gave that young Neill a job in our hardware store all those years ago, and now he’s saved our Charlie’s life.” She glanced at her husband, a faint smile on her lips. “Life has a way of working out, don’t you think?” she asked Greg.

  He patted his wife’s shoulder, his eyes downcast.

  Sherri watched the two of them, remembering Sam’s description of how life was in the Crawford household, how adamantly his parents spoke against the use of alcohol, how strict Greg had been with the two boys growing up, how much Sam and Charlie wanted to please their parents, especially their father, who was very controlling. A man who saw his sons as an extension of himself, rather than as unique individuals.

  Greg’s direct gaze met Sherri’s. “The police were here looking for you a little while ago. They wanted you to give them a statement about what happened. What did happen? Neill was too busy to talk with us.”

  “We saw Charlie’s half ton coming down the dirt road leading toward the point, and suddenly it swerved and went over the bank near the...cliff.”

  A fresh sob erupted from Elsa. “He could have gone over the cliff!” She clutched her husband’s shirtfront, her eyes on Sherri.

  “A boulder stopped the truck from rolling farther. We got to him as quickly as we could.”

  The room stilled. Greg started to say something and then stopped.

  To fill the silence, Sherri asked, “Would either of you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No, dear. We’re fine. We’re going to wait right here until Neill comes back to talk to us. Why don’t you wait with us?”

  “I will, but first I need to get something to drink,” Sherri said, feeling suddenly faint at the realization that she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. She needed to put something in her stomach. “I’ll be right back.”

  She went out into the corridor to the alcove where the pop, juice and coffee machines were and got a bottle of orange juice. The cool sweet liquid slid down her throat into her stomach, soothing the jitters sweeping through her. She leaned against the wall as she began to feel less light-headed and calmer. She was still leaning there when Greg Crawford came toward her.

  She glanced at him and saw the naked worry in his eyes. “Is Elsa okay?”

  “She’s still very upset, and that’s only natural. Charlie is all she has left, and she’s terrified of losing him like she did Sam.”

  “Is there anything I can do other than wait with you and Elsa?”

  He searched the pop machine as if looking for something and then turned to her. “There is.”

  “Name it.”

  “I know that Sam was an alcoholic, and your life with him couldn’t have been easy. You could have left him, and you didn’t. We’re both thankful for that.”

  “Sam was a good man and very kind to me. I loved him and wouldn’t have left him,” she said, hearing the words that would have been a lie if Sam had lived. There were many nights after his death when she’d wondered if the argument they’d had before he’d left the house that day had played a role in how his life had ended. Had she said something that made him careless, or had he simply decided that he couldn’t go on? She swallowed hard and stared at the floor.

  “And he loved you. He wasn’t much for talking, but he did tell me one day that he loved you and didn’t know what he’d do if you ever left him.”

  She couldn’t tell him that she’d come very close to leaving a couple of times but had stayed more out of a sense of duty than any real love. Sam’s drinking had slowly eroded their life together and had all but destroyed her love for a man who had been so kind, so charming and such a steadying influence in the chaos of her life after Neill. “Sam and I were happy together,” she said, knowing Greg Crawford needed to hear those words.

>   “Sherri, was Charlie drinking? I realize that I’m putting you on the spot here. Charlie’s wife is filing for divorce, he lost his job at the port and he’s refused to move home to get his life back together. I’ve made some pretty bad mistakes in my life where my boys were concerned. I had problems of my own, and I took it out on them. I was too hard on them when all they wanted to do was please me.” He swiped at his eyes. “I can’t lose Charlie. Somehow we have to help him, get him to see that he can’t keep drinking.”

  She saw the desperation in his eyes and felt she had only one choice. Greg Crawford might be the only hope Charlie had if he was ever going to find help with his alcoholism. “I could smell alcohol in the cab of the truck when we reached him,” she said slowly, hating the anguish her words were causing this man who had once been a big part of her life.

  His sigh of resignation filled the alcove where they stood. “What am I going to do?”

  “Maybe this accident will be a wake-up call for Charlie. Alcohol made Sam’s life difficult, and if there’s one thing I’m sure of, Charlie loved Sam.”

  “But will this accident be enough? Will he stop, or at least try to get help?”

  “I can’t say. No one can.” She touched his arm in sympathy. “But if there’s anything I can do, you just ask.”

  “I may take you up on that offer. His wife has virtually given up, but she still cares and they have their children to consider. She’s been seeing a counselor who has suggested an intervention to see if we can get through to Charlie about his drinking. Would you be part of that?”

  “If the counselor believes it could help.”

  He drew her into a hug and kissed the top of her head. “You’re the daughter we never had.”

  Feeling his arms around her took her back to the night Sam had died. She’d gone home to visit her mother, mostly to get away from another argument over the amount Sam had drunk the night before. He’d promised he wouldn’t drink anymore. He’d needed to go up to his camp on the lake to get ready for a fishing trip with his friends. She’d been almost to her mother’s house when she’d gotten the call from the hospital in Bangor.

  “We’d better get back to the waiting room,” Sherri said to keep from crying.

  The three of them were waiting together, talking about anything other than what was going on in the operating room, when Neill came striding down the corridor toward them. Relief at seeing him, joy in the idea that this man had returned to her life, made her knees tremble.

  They rose in unison. “Is he all right?” Greg asked, his arm automatically going around his wife’s shoulders.

  “Charlie came through the surgery just fine. His broken arm is fixed, the injury to his face stitched up. He has several fractured ribs and heavy bruising on his chest, but no concussion or neck injury. He’s a very lucky man. He’ll be sore for a few weeks, but I believe he’ll come through it okay. He’s in recovery, and you can see him when he gets back to his room,” Neill said, his voice calm and reassuring.

  As he glanced at her, the vulnerability in his eyes wiped out all other thoughts. It was as if time were suspended as she listened to him speak with such kindness to Elsa and Greg.

  She waited while they finished talking, while he calmed their fears, and realized that despite everything that had happened between them—the emotional pain, the feelings of loss and betrayal she’d harbored all these years—her life had changed. She wanted Neill—not in the adolescent, hopeful way it had once been, but in a life-hardened realization that the two of them belonged together. That regardless of what the past had done to both of them, how it had changed them, the future was all that really mattered.

  * * *

  EXHAUSTION TUGGED AT Neill’s shoulders as he listened to Mr. and Mrs. Crawford expressing their concerns about Charlie. As he responded to their questions, he was acutely aware of Sherri standing close to him, her attention focused on the relieved couple. Intermittently, he’d feel her glance his way, and he’d feel ridiculously happy and upbeat despite the intensity of the past few hours.

  “We’re so thankful you were there, Neill,” Greg said, extending his hand. “We’ve taken up enough of your time. I think we’ll have a bite to eat in the cafeteria while we wait for Charlie to be taken to his room.” Elsa nodded vigorously in agreement, a smile etched on her face.

  Neill shook Greg’s hand. “I’ll check on him later, and we’ll be in touch. Charlie will make a full recovery,” he said, aware that unless their son stopped drinking, something like this could happen again. “If you need anything or would like to talk, I’d be more than happy to meet with you.”

  “Thanks so much for everything,” Greg said, his gaze flitting from Neill to his wife. “But we’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

  So they weren’t ready to talk about their son’s problem, and in a way Neill couldn’t blame them. After all, Charlie was a grown man, and he had to want to overcome his addiction. No one could do it for him.

  “You take care, and don’t hesitate to call if you need me. In the meantime, Sherri and I have to get to the police station and give our statements.”

  He turned to Sherri. “Are you ready?”

  “Your SUV is outside.”

  They’d always been a great team, and never more so than in the past hours. He wanted to reach for her hand, to hold her close, feel her warmth.

  He wanted to, yet he didn’t. A sudden feeling of awkwardness crept over him.

  Having said their goodbyes to the Crawfords they walked out into the brilliant afternoon sun. In ten minutes, they were sitting in the police station being interviewed by Paul Attlee, the police officer who had been called to the scene of the accident. Officer Attlee’s questions were straightforward, and he, like Neill and Sherri, was sorry to learn that alcohol was involved. Paul’s older sister had gone to school with Charlie and liked him, as did so many people in Eden Harbor.

  Once they were finished and standing outside on the front steps of the police station, Neill gave in to his urge, put his arm around Sherri’s shoulders and hugged her close in one long, delicious squeeze that felt so good, so right.

  “I’m starving. You must be, too. Did you have something to eat while you were waiting?” he asked, keeping his hand on the small of her back as he led her to his vehicle parked at the curb.

  “I had orange juice, but I need something else,” she said as he opened the passenger door for her.

  “Let’s go to the bistro a few blocks from here. I’ve ordered takeout from them before, and they’re pretty good.” He started the car and headed out of the parking lot toward downtown.

  “Great,” she said, holding her hand over her rumbling stomach. When they reached the restaurant, he parked and they walked in together—and were greeted by the smiles and curious glances of a few patrons Neill and Sherri had known all their lives.

  “Will we be the talk of the town before nightfall?” Neill asked.

  “I think so, if not before,” Sherri said, sliding into a booth near the back of the restaurant.

  They ordered and settled in to talk. Neill had waited a long time for this—this feeling that he and Sherri were a couple again, enjoying a meal at a restaurant like other normal couples did.

  “Greg asked me about Charlie and whether he’d been drinking,” Sherri said, her expression solemn.

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him the truth.” She wove her paper napkin through her fingers.

  “What did he say?”

  “What could he say? He knew Sam was an alcoholic. Greg knows the risks involved.”

  He saw the pain in her eyes and wanted to ease it, to protect her from whatever memories today had forced on her. “Want to talk about it?”

  “Sometimes I feel that if I’d been more forceful with Sam about his drinking, if I’d taken a stand and left, that
maybe he would have had no choice but to seek help. As it was, I just sort of went along, hoping each day that a miracle would happen, that Sam would wake up one morning and not want to drink anymore.”

  “No one can force an addict to change their behavior.”

  “As a professional I know that, but as Sam’s wife, I still believed that there had to have been something I could do to help him. Sam never hurt anyone. He loved me, he loved his family and he deserved so much better.”

  “Sherri, you’ve never talked to anyone about your life with Sam, have you?”

  She shook her head. “Sam rescued me, and I owed him. I was living in Bangor, a pregnant university freshman, and I was trying to figure out what to do. Then one night I ran into Sam at the grocery store down the street from my apartment. When Crawford’s Hardware store was bought out by one of the big chains, Sam was offered a job in Bangor. He and I started talking and then dating and finally one night I told him what had happened. He didn’t rail on about you, or about how this wasn’t fair to the baby. He simply told me that he’d loved me all through high school.”

  “And he offered to marry you.”

  She finger-combed her hair in what had become a nervous habit. “Yes. And I accepted. Our son needed a father, and I needed someone to care for me. I didn’t love him when I married him, but I liked him so much. He was aware of how I felt, but he told me he’d make it his mission to change my heart. We had a quiet wedding in Bangor with his family and mine as the only guests, and we agreed that he would be the baby’s father, that no one would ever know the truth.”

  Remorse rose through Neill, followed by anger he knew he had no right to feel. “Why?”

  “Because you were out of my life. Because Sam wanted to be the father of my child. Because I wanted him to be. My child deserved two parents who loved him and who would do anything for him. After we were married, I began to see how devoted Sam was to me and to our baby. When Patrick died, Sam was so supportive even though his heart was as crushed as mine was by the loss. It was during the weeks after Patrick’s death—weeks when I learned what it meant to have someone care as much as I did—that I came to love Sam, not in the way I’d always imagined love to be, but in a way that offered happiness and security.”