Sandcastles Under the Christmas Moon

by Vickie McKeehan

  The fear of dying was so real it took him to the edge of a cliff, backed him into a corner where he couldn’t escape. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t cry out for help. All he could do was feel his life slowly ebb away as the blood flowed from his body while he bled to death.

  Even in sleep, he feared the alternate ending. He supposed he had that in common with the ghostly Scott. They’d both faced death.

  The difference was, Quentin had survived.

  Eight

  Monday morning, bright and early, Quentin walked past the manicured lawn and stared at the simple white sign Lilly Pierce had painted at Doc’s request several years back. The single word “Clinic” stood out in big, bold red lettering. Underneath in smaller script, Doc had already commissioned her to paint over his name and in its place add “Quentin Blackwood, MD” along the bottom.

  There were no fancy automatic doors here that ushered him into his new domain. The small clinic he was about to own had once been a house. Located two blocks off Main Street, in a renovated Mission-style abode, it consisted of eight rooms, a waiting area just inside the door, a small eating area where patients could grab a cup of coffee or help themselves to a soft drink out of the fridge. Two years earlier, Doc had added a room at the back he used as his office. A bathroom was located at the end of the hallway near three exam rooms that he’d filled with secondhand equipment, discards mostly that he’d scooped up from other physicians or clinics before they could get rid of the stuff.

  Quentin noted the castoffs could hardly be classified as such. The exam tables, diagnostic and monitoring equipment were state of the art. The medical inventory included defibrillators, intubation paraphernalia, and oxygen tanks. The pharmaceutical supplies were up to date. A long list of other medical supplies was noted in the fifteen-page contract. It told him he’d be ready for any emergency when the time came.

  Once he stepped inside, he saw the empty waiting room. But then he was thirty minutes early—plenty of time for it to fill up.

  Sydney, however, sat perched behind a reception desk looking like she could take on the world.

  “Hey,” is the only word Quentin managed to get out of his mouth before Sydney pounced.

  Breathless, she rattled off a string of details in a tone that only a nurse might use…rapid fire manner, no nonsense. “Just now, Belle called. Doc’s having chest pains. She’s called the paramedics but she wants you out at the house as soon as possible.”

  “Tell her I’m on my way,” Quentin said as he turned to go, but then stopped. “I walked over here. I’ll have to go back home and get the car.”

  “Hurry,” Sydney prompted. “But don’t drive like a crazy person to get there. If anything happens to you, the town will be without a doctor.”

  Quentin sent her a wave and scooted out the front door.

  Once he’d scurried back to where he’d parked the Woodie, he gunned the engine and roared through town, heading toward the Prescott’s ranch. He spotted the flashing lights of the ambulance before he ever made the turn into the circular driveway that led up to the house.

  An anxious Belle met him on the porch. “Don’t let anything happen to him, Quentin.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

  Jack was stretched out on the sofa while the two paramedics had their patient already hooked up to a portable EKG machine and a saline IV drip.

  “I’m Dr. Blackwood. What have we got?” Quentin asked as he watched the small machine spit out a paper the size of a cash register receipt.

  A man with caramel skin and deep brown eyes held up the findings. “See for yourself. I’m Deacon, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

  “And I’m Brian,” the other paramedic announced. “His systolic is one-fifty-two. Diastolic ninety-two. He’s stressed all right. But then if he’s experiencing chest pain...that would explain the numbers.”

  Quentin bent down to Doc. “Jack, listen to me. I want you to calm down, take a few deep breaths. Let’s see if we can get that blood pressure to come down.” He motioned for Belle. “It’s okay. He isn’t having a heart attack. Most likely nothing more than a bad case of indigestion.”

  Belle’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh no, the huevos rancheros I fixed for breakfast.”

  Quentin cocked a brow in suspicion. “Huevos rancheros? How spicy were they?”

  “Jack used half a bottle of hot sauce to cover his eggs. He insisted he wanted something special to kick off his last week at the office. That dish is one of his favorites. Now look what’s happened.”

  “Are we transporting to the hospital, Doc?” Deacon asked Quentin.

  “Nope. Not necessary. I think I can fix the stress factor here and now.” Quentin sat down next to Jack as the EMTs started packing up their gear. “You didn’t have to go to this kind of trouble just for me. What if these guys had had a real emergency to tend to? What then?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Please. Give me some credit. What do you say we make this thing official today? No need to wait until Friday. I’m not sure your heart can take it. I’ll sign the papers now, whatever you want me to do.”

  A grin spread over Jack’s face. “Really? You’d do that?”

  “I just said I would. But I draw the line at scrawling my name in blood, okay?”

  Jack sat up. “Belle, call Kinsey. Quentin’s agreed to sign early.” He looked back at Quentin. “Kinsey’s already got the paperwork drawn up sitting there on her desk. I already signed my portion last week, all you have to do is go into her office and she’ll take care of the rest, like filing the deed at the county, that sort of thing.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Quentin drawled, sure this entire scene had been played out for his benefit. “I think you should rest now, maybe take the week off. That’s on the advice of your physician.”

  “I knew you’d eventually see it my way.”

  “No doubt I’m the sucker you were waiting for. This pretty much seals the deal.”

  On his way back to the office, he whipped into Kinsey’s place on Landings Bay to get it done. The woman greeted him at the door while two toddlers held onto her skirt. “You guys go back to playing with your trains while I get our new doctor set up with all his paperwork.”

  As the kids padded off into the other room, Kinsey led him into the study across the hall. “You probably have patients waiting.”

  “Let’s hope. Were you in on this snow job from the start?”

  Kinsey grinned widely. “As an interested citizen I wanted the finest doctor we could get as our very own. You fit that bill. Logan and I are thrilled to have you here.”

  “At least someone wants me.”

  “Who’s been giving you a hard time? Name them and I’ll sic Logan on them.”

  He wasn’t about to admit that his own nurse had reservations. Did a ghost count as a legitimate critic? He didn’t think so. “That’s not necessary. I’m more than capable of fighting my own battles.”

  “Suit yourself. But if you need allies, start right here with us. You’re probably in a hurry. I promise this won’t take long. We’ll go over the contract paragraph by paragraph.”

  True to her word, Kinsey was thorough. He left feeling like there were no hidden clauses that would come back to haunt him later.

  As soon as Quentin walked back into the office, the one he now owned, he counted six people in the waiting room. But Sydney wanted an update before anything else happened.

  “Well, how is he?”

  “Belle didn’t call and give you the news?”

  “No. Was it a heart attack?”

  “Nope, a bad case of huevos rancheros that apparently didn’t sit well.”

  “Well for God’s sake, is that all? Scared me half to death.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t already know? You weren’t in on staging this thing to do the final close?”

  “What are you talking about? How would I know what Doc ate for breakfast? How would I know such a thing?”<
br />
  “Just checking to see if the enemy is bent on continuing her agenda. Since you seem to know everything that goes on around here before anyone else does. So let’s clear the air. We both know how this works.”

  “I’m not your enemy,” Sydney stated. “Our job here is to take care of the patients. Period.”

  “Then you might want to know that I signed the papers at Kinsey’s office just now. As of fifteen minutes ago this place is mine. I say we put aside our differences and get to work.”

  “I’m all for that.”

  He rolled up his sleeves without bothering to put on the starched white coat hanging on the peg in the hallway. “Who’s our first patient?”

  “Sonnet Rafferty is sitting in exam room one. She’s complaining of a sore throat and fever. Her temperature is one hundred and one and she has a cluster of white spots in her throat. I took the initiative while you were gone and did a swipe, sent the culture out to the lab. Results might be in late this afternoon or more likely tomorrow morning.”

  “Nice work. Let’s take a look at our patient.” Quentin knocked on the door and was surprised to see a teenage girl of about fifteen sitting on the table. He shook hands with the teen and then turned to the father, introduced himself. “I’m taking over Doc Prescott’s patients.”

  “Doc’s old,” the teenage girl said. “You’re not.”

  Her father, Malachi Rafferty, who owned the T-shirt shop in town, gave her a harsh look. “We wouldn’t be here at all if you’d listened to me and hadn’t gone out to the beach in the middle of the night without your jacket last week.”

  “Remember, Sydney says it might be strep, which means it had nothing to do with me not wearing my coat,” Sonnet croaked out in a whisper.

  “Why is it my girls never listen to a thing I say?” Malachi moaned in frustration. “I try to give them a decent life and how do they repay me? Give me grief about every single thing, every day of my life.”

  Quentin got to work despite Malachi’s rant. He had Sonnet open her mouth, checked her neck and looked in her ears. He pushed up the sleeves of her sweater to inspect her arms. He listened to her heart rate and took her pulse again.

  “It may not be strep,” Quentin concluded after the brief exam. “Her lymph nodes are swollen, so are her tonsils. She has the beginnings of a red rash on her arms. See these faint welts? Have you been unusually tired lately?”

  “This weekend she slept all day, never left her room,” Malachi answered for his daughter.

  “She may have mono. We’ll put her on cephalexin for starters. But if it is mono—and we should know one way or the other by tomorrow—the antibiotics won’t do her much good. I’ll write you a prescription though, give you enough pills for two days. After we get the results back from the lab, we’ll reassess and go from there. She still could have strep as a secondary infection. In that case, we’d continue the antibiotics.”

  “And if it’s mono?” Malachi asked.

  “We’ll see that she gets an ultrasound to determine if the liver and spleen have enlarged.”

  “Does that mean my other daughter, Sonoma, will probably come down with it, too?”

  “It’s a possibility.” Quentin stepped to the door, called for Sydney. “I need blood work and a urine sample before I send her home. Make sure you specifically request the white cell count.”

  “You got it,” Sydney said.

  Quentin turned back to Malachi. “If we eliminate strep then I’d like to see Sonnet back in here for a monospot test so we can check for Epstein-Barr antibodies.”

  After Quentin left the room, Malachi leaned over to Sydney and whispered, “This guy sounds like he really knows his stuff.”

  Sydney nodded. “He does, doesn’t he?”

  In between patients, Quentin familiarized himself with the medical supplies on hand including needles and syringes. When he spotted the drug cabinet, he pushed the key he’d been given by Kinsey into the lock to inventory the stock on hand. The stockpile included any samples left by eager pharmaceutical salesmen pushing one type of pill over another. He made notations in a notebook as to the quantity and the last time the drug had been dispensed.

  After seeing six more patients, he and Sydney broke for lunch around two that afternoon. The pair sat around the small table in the kitchen area eating the roast beef wraps Belle had sent over.

  “Does she do this often?” Quentin asked, enjoying the tasty sandwich. “Belle? Does she make Doc’s lunch every day?”

  “Four days a week. On Wednesdays he usually meets Nick Harris at The Pointe for lunch. I have no idea what they discuss, but it’s a standing date that neither man hardly ever cancels.”

  “Nick the banker?”

  “One and the same. Oh, before I forget, Ryder called this morning and said your windows came in right on schedule. He picked them up from Tucker and promises with the help of Zach and Troy to have them installed by nightfall.”

  “I should celebrate.” But he no longer thought a window would keep a ghost at bay. He thought about bringing the subject up to Sydney, but decided against it. Things were going so well it wouldn’t do to have her think he was a nutcase.

  “Good call on the mono with Sonnet. I completely spaced out on that one.”

  “Don’t know yet if it’s mono. Mono’s hard to pin down. Haven’t seen a case of it since back in my residency days.”

  Sydney noticed his demeanor had changed from the attentive physician. She decided he had his mind elsewhere. “What’s going on with you?”

  “You met Beckham yesterday at the pier. His grandmother’s ill. He says she won’t see a doctor.”

  “Ah. You should work your magic on her like you’ve done with Beckham.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He looks up to you with a little hero worship in his eyes.”

  “Somehow I doubt that. Beckham doesn’t seem the fan type to me.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. Teen boys are just as impressionable as teen girls, sometimes more so. Think popular sports figures. Boys emulate athletes. Girls emulate models. It’s the way of the teenage mindset. Think back to your role model. What baseball player did you want to be when you grew up?”

  “Don’t recall ever thinking about baseball or football. My hero was my dad. Still is I guess.”

  Sydney looked surprised. “I doubt your father was a sports figure.”

  “Dad? No way. He had a brilliant mind and when it came time for college, he showed people what a Miwok Indian could do. He could’ve practiced anywhere, had a lucrative office in Beverly Hills, or a six-figure job in any of the major hospitals. He could’ve written his own ticket, but he chose to stay in Tahoma and help his people.”

  “Why?”

  “He was a young doctor, idealistic. Returning to his hometown meant he had a chance at curing the sick and making sure little kids got the nutritional leg up in life they needed. Instead of a brilliant surgeon who specialized, my dad turned out to be just a plain ol’ country doctor who delivered babies or took out tonsils when the situation warranted it.”

  “Ah. Like you are now. But you’re a little late emulating your dad. Why is that? You were a brilliant surgeon, probably with a swelled head and too much of an ego.”

  “Your opinion of the medical profession as a whole is disheartening. It’s a wonder you can work at it every day and still have a fresh perspective.”

  “I suppose that’s true. It’s because I’ve dated most of the assholes with egos out to here,” Sydney said, holding her arms out wide for emphasis.

  “Egos and swelled heads go hand in hand with the mighty specialists, especially neurosurgeons. I suppose I didn’t have what dad had inside me to stay in Tahoma. I aspired to greater things, took a different path than becoming a general practitioner. And yet, after all that, here I am.”

  “But after your PT ended, why didn’t you stay in Tahoma and be the only doctor there? You could have.”

  “Because times have changed. The twelve hu
ndred people in Tahoma usually go over to Truckee for medical care. It’s been that way since my dad died. There are several good doctors in the area, not to mention urgent care facilities. Getting to South Lake Tahoe is less than an hour away. Tahoma didn’t need me. Pelican Pointe does.”

  “Aren’t we the lucky ones?” Sydney said with a sardonic smile. “No need to get puffed up. It was a joke, nothing more. Why are you so worried about Beckham’s grandmother anyway? You think what she has might be serious? She could just have an early case of the flu.”

  “That’s what I thought. But it wouldn’t hurt to urge her to see a doctor. I’m thinking about going over there after work.”

  “An impromptu visit? We could both go over there after we’re done here and gang up on her.”

  “Jack said the last time she was in here was for a cut foot.”

  “I’ll go look up her chart so we’ll know for certain.”

  “Charlotte Dowling is the name.”

  Before either of them could decide what to do, they heard the front door open and close.

  “That must be Landon Jennings, your three o’clock. He called this morning and said he’d pulled a muscle in his shoulder lifting a heavy tree out of its container. He owns The Plant Habitat, you know, the nursery and landscaping place over on Landings Bay.”

  Quentin caught sight of Landon hunched over in pain, his wife, Shelby, helping him through the doorway. “Hey, Dr. Blackwood. Sydney told me you’d taken over for Doc. I think I must’ve done something really bad this time. This hurts worse than when I slipped in the warehouse and wrenched my back.”

  “We’ll get you fixed up,” Quentin promised, noting the man looked very pale.

  Together, Sydney and Quentin helped get Landon settled in the exam room. Without applying very much pressure, the simple act of touching the clavicle caused Landon to wince in pain.