The M.D. Meets His Match

by Marie Ferrarella

  He wasn’t and she knew it, he thought. He played along a little longer. “From what I hear, you don’t call any place home for long.”

  She pressed her lips together, curbing her irritation. “Your point?”

  He spared her a glance, then looked back at the road. Jack had picked up speed, despite the rough terrain. “Well, in order for transplanting to take, roots have to be planted.”

  She didn’t see it as any business of his. “They will be, once I find the right place. Until then, there’s nothing wrong with traveling around and seeing the world. Especially when I can make money while doing it.” She indicated the camera she’d thought to grab out of her grandmother’s vehicle before jumping into Jimmy’s. “Have camera, will travel.”

  And he, for one, was glad she’d traveled into his life.

  They hit a bump and he heard some of the bottles Alison had packed in the box in the back seat clink against one another. “Is Jack given to exaggerations?”

  “Not that I know of, why?”

  “I’m just wondering if Shayne packed enough of that antiviral drug.” He nodded toward the box. “Jack said that the whole village was down. How many in the whole village?”

  It had been a long time since she had been there herself. There had been a time when she and Max and June had all played with the children in the Inuit village. But there had been another influenza epidemic when she was thirteen, one that had wiped out two-thirds of the village and along with it, most of their friends. Remembering those days now sent a chill down her spine. Her trips to the village after that had been few and limited even before she’d left Hades.

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But I’m sure Shayne would. And he would have given you the supplies accordingly.”

  Unless there weren’t enough to spare, Jimmy thought, grimly watching the vehicle in front of him and hoping he was wrong.

  Chapter Twelve

  With Jack acting as their interpreter for those in the village who had never found the time or the need to learn another language but the language of their fathers, April and Jimmy went from house to house dispensing medicine, advice and comfort.

  Their first stop was Jack’s house, where they found his grandfather in bed, a small, fading shadow against white sheets.

  April saw concern crease Jimmy’s face before he managed to mask it. The look amazed her. After all, the old fisherman was nothing to him, just another patient in what she knew had to be a long line of patients in his life, seeing as how he spent so much of his working hours in the ER.

  But his gentle manner and his upbeat voice as he spoke comfortingly to both Jack’s grandfather and to Jack’s mother, indicated to April just how involved Jimmy felt himself to be. He spoon-fed the antiviral medication he’d brought with him to the old man as gently as if the old fisherman was his own grandfather instead of a stranger he’d met a few minutes ago.

  Leaving the old man to rest, Jimmy left a few pertinent instructions with Jack’s mother, telling her to send for either him or Shayne if there was any sign of deterioration in her father’s condition.

  Taking the woman’s hand in his own, he assured her that everything would be all right.

  “You’ll be up and fishing in no time,” he promised the old man, peering in one last time before he and April left with Jack.

  April pulled her collar up as she stepped outside the door. A few snow flurries had begun to fall.

  “You realize that he hardly understood a word you were saying,” she told Jimmy quietly.

  He fell into step, following Jack to the next house where he was needed. “That’s all right, he understood the tone. Medicine is a mixture of science and hope. I figured it doesn’t cost anything to give the old man both.”

  Jack turned around and gave him an approving, toothy smile. Jimmy chalked it up as covering his fee.

  The man was quick, he was thorough and he was kind. Everything a doctor should be, April thought, watching Jimmy work through the afternoon. She’d met her share of distant doctors, who dispensed pills and little else.

  April always believed in giving everyone their due. “You’ve got a nice bedside manner,” she told him as they left yet another house.

  Jimmy flashed a grin at her before entering the next residence. “You should only know the half of it.”

  She tried to ignore the implications behind the tone, tried, too, to ignore the anticipation that sprang out of nowhere and danced through her.

  This wasn’t the time or the place to think about things like that.

  However, they refused to completely disappear.

  It astounded April how easily this stranger seemed to fit in. Within moments of entering each home, after Jack took care of the initial introductions, Jimmy was welcomed into the bosom of each family like a returning long lost friend bearing gifts. He examined children, seniors long past their prime and those in between. Everyone who was either ill with the flu or coming down with it. Over and over again, she heard him repeat instructions as if he were saying them for the first time instead of for the twentieth or so. Rather than examining patients and then quickly retreating, he remained and answered questions, soothed concerns, treated other maladies than just the one that had brought him to the village. The serum and the medication Shayne had sent were in sufficient supply. No one, luckily, had to do without.

  The hours slipped away as the sky above the village grew angrier looking. What April had expected to be a two-hour run at most had more than doubled in length of time. And all the while, the weather grew steadily drearier and more ominous.

  Feeling wired and ready to go on for hours longer, Jimmy looked at his adolescent interpreter as he emerged from a curtained-off alcove that served as a child’s bedroom. He’d finally gotten the little girl’s fever down and he felt about twelve feet tall.

  He paused to stretch, his back beginning to ache. “Is that the last of them?” he asked Jack.

  “Yes.” Jack looked far more tired than the man he was translating for.

  He and April waited in silence as Jimmy stopped to talk to the little girl’s parents, each of whom appeared as if they were coming down with the flu, as well.

  Jimmy inoculated both of them.

  “You’ve been to every house,” Jack assured him as they walked out together. Because Jimmy was walking quickly to the car to deposit his now empty medical bag, Jack lengthened his stride to keep up. “Everyone wants me to tell you that they don’t know how to thank you.”

  Tossing the bag inside, Jimmy swung the door closed again. The flurries were getting thicker. “That’s easy,” he answered the boy. “They can get well, that’s thanks enough. Beyond that—” he leaned a hip against the car “—I’d sure love a cup of coffee.”

  Rubbing the arm that the doctor inoculated right after he’d seen his grandfather, Jack beamed. Here was a request he could grant.

  “My mother will take care of that.”

  Jimmy turned toward April, remembering belatedly that maybe he should ask her if she preferred to hurry home. As far as he knew, there was no storm warning out, but he’d learned to be prepared for the unexpected. He saw the uneasy look on her face. Habit had him placing his hand to her forehead.

  “You’re not coming down with it, are you?” She shook her head, pulling away, but he wasn’t satisfied. “What’s the matter?”

  Circling his car, she stood by the passenger side like someone waiting for something to happen. “We stayed longer than I thought we would. It’s getting dark.”

  He looked up. Snowflakes melted against the heat of his cheeks. He glanced in her direction. “So it is. Is that a problem?”

  “Not if the storm doesn’t break it isn’t.” But she for one would feel a great deal better if they were back in Hades than out here, where shelter was a relative term at best.

  “You’re welcome to remain here,” Jack told them, pointing toward his own house, which was in somewhat better condition than the surrounding buildings, some of
which appeared to be from the beginning of the last century. “You can have my room.” The young man’s voice echoed of his eagerness to somehow repay Jimmy for what he had done for them.

  Jimmy slanted a look toward April. He was willing, but he could see by her expression that she was not. He sensed that despite alerting her sister, April was eager to get home to her grandmother.

  He turned toward Jack. “Thanks, but maybe we’d better be on our way.”

  Jack was determined to show his gratitude somehow. “What about the coffee?”

  That tempted him, but not enough to cause further delay. If April wanted to get back, then they were going to get back. She knew the lay of the land far better than he did.

  “I’ll take a rain check.” He swung open his door again. “I’ll be back tomorrow to check on your grandfather and a few of the others.” With that, he got inside the car. April was right beside him, buckling up before he had the key in the ignition.

  “You didn’t have to do that, you know,” April told him as they pulled away from the village.

  His brows drew together as he turned on the windshield wipers. Was it his imagination, or was it coming down harder all of a sudden? “Do what?”

  “Promise to come back.” She frowned as she looked out the windshield. This didn’t look promising. “They’re not your responsibility.”

  He didn’t quite see it that way. “Shayne looked as if he more than had his hands full at the clinic. Besides, I treat them, they become my patients.”

  She couldn’t bank down the admiration that rose within her. “As simple as that?”

  It was the only way he ever looked at it. “Why muddy it up with a lot of whereas and qualification? I’m not a lawyer.”

  “Just a simple country doctor?”

  He heard the amusement in her voice. Squinting at the road, he didn’t dare look in her direction, even though there was nothing out there for him to hit. Visibility was swiftly decreasing.

  “Surgeon,” Jimmy corrected. “But just because I’m a damn good one doesn’t mean I have to get a God complex about it.”

  She didn’t know whether to laugh at his terminology or to admire his obvious selfless philosophy. “I guess you’re not all alike.”

  He didn’t follow. “How’s that?”

  Rolling down her window for a second, she craned her neck and looked out. The weather gave no indications of letting up. She should have made him leave earlier. “I dated a doctor once.”

  “Oh?”

  She heard the interest in his voice and wondered if it was the male of the species feeling a challenge coming on, or if he was just making conversation. “A neurosurgeon. He thought he walked on water.”

  He’d run into some of those along the way. He couldn’t fault her apt description. “I only walk on shallow puddles.”

  She laughed and the sound warmed him as much as the look of gratitude on the faces of the family members of the patients he’d treated.

  The window still open, the wind whipped her laughter away, dissolving it between its teeth as it began to moan. Glancing at her quickly, he saw the smile fade from her face.

  “Can you make this thing go faster?”

  She was worried, he thought. About her grandmother, or about them? “Probably. But I can’t really make out things that easily anymore. I wouldn’t want to run into a moose or whatever wildlife is out here.”

  “All the wildlife has found adequate shelter by now. They’re usually smarter than people that way,” April quipped. “Damn, it looks like that stormfront that was supposed to miss us lost its way and is coming straight for the area.”

  Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she made it sound. He’d been in snowstorms before and had always found them rather intriguing in their own right. “Actually, I ordered ahead for that. It’s kind of romantic, don’t you think?”

  Romantic again, she thought. She ignored the word and concentrated on the reality of the situation. This man just didn’t have a clue about how brutal life here could be, did he? How could he? He came from a big city where if there was too much snow, the snowplows took care of it. Here help usually meant relying on your own instincts for survival.

  She shook her head. “Spoken like a man who’s never been snowed in.”

  He thought of the possibilities. Of having nothing to do but hold her in his arms, soft and pliant. “That sounds romantic, too.”

  She wasn’t listening. Not to him. April was listening to the howl of the wind. The snow was falling harder, cutting visibility down to a few feet in front of the vehicle. “Stop the car.”

  Puzzled, Jimmy looked at her. They hadn’t hit anything. “Why?”

  She hadn’t expected him to question her about the order. “Because I’m going to drive. You don’t know your way around here.”

  He still didn’t understand. This was just retracing their steps and he’d paid attention the first time. “Why can’t you just navigate from where you’re sitting?”

  Shifting in her seat, she looked at him. This wasn’t about authority, this was about common sense. “This is no time to suddenly become macho.”

  “Suddenly?” Jimmy released his seat belt and got out of the vehicle. He raised his voice to be heard above the wind. “I thought I was being macho all along.”

  April might have laughed if she hadn’t been so concerned.

  And with good reason, she thought less than ten minutes later. The light flurries that had capriciously fallen when they’d gotten less than halfway to the Inuit village had now turned into a full-fledged storm with gusts of wind ushering in waves of snow. Visibility was cut down to only a few feet in front of them.

  They needed shelter and they needed it fast.

  It had gotten dark. Jimmy tried to not let his mind get carried away with possible scenarios. He knew there was nothing to be gained by letting his imagination run away with him. Especially when the woman beside him seemed to be extremely cool.

  Still, he thought, it didn’t exactly look promising out there. They hadn’t seen another vehicle or even another life form for more than half an hour.

  He couldn’t remember how long it had taken them to get to the village from Hades. “I’m beginning to wish we’d stayed for that coffee,” Jimmy murmured, reaching over to turn up the heat in the car. By the time they’d been finished drinking, he mused, the storm would have hit and they would have been forced to remain where they were for the night.

  All things considered, that wouldn’t have been too bad. It was certainly preferable to being frozen in a snowdrift.

  She was gripping the steering wheel too hard. April forced her hands to relax.

  “Too late now,” she told him.

  He asked the question that had been nagging at him for the past fifteen minutes, as visibility decreased to only several inches in front of them. “Can we make it back?”

  “No. But there’s an abandoned shack close by.” She didn’t tell him that it had been her abandoned shack. That she and her family had lived there until her father had taken off. There was no point in telling him that.

  Right now, it could be their only chance.

  She strained her eyes, scanning the area, praying she hadn’t gotten turned around. Max used to tease her that she had a better sense of direction than any bloodhound. “We passed it on the way to the village. We can stay there until the storm blows over.” Provided I can find it, she added silently, fervently hoping for once that Max was right.

  The silence between them was pregnant. Jimmy gave voice to what was haunting her. “Do you think you can find it?”

  “Piece of cake,” she assured him flippantly, deliberately ignoring the skittish nerves racing through her. No sense in both of them worrying.

  She amazed him. They were driving in a storm that seemed intent on only growing worse with each passing minute and she appeared to be completely unfazed by it and unafraid after her initial insistence on taking the wheel. His eyes slid over her profile. The woman was absolutely magn
ificent. He couldn’t think of anyone who would have remained this calm in the given situation. To him it looked as if they were lost. But then, he reminded himself, he didn’t know the terrain the way she did.

  How the hell was she going to find one lone cabin amid all this snow?

  And then, he thought he saw it. Or something. Jimmy blinked once, afraid his eyes were playing tricks on him. The speck remained.

  “Hey, is that it?” He pointed to what amounted to a black dot in the distance.

  Pushing the wiper blades up to high, she squinted, concentrating on where he was pointing. At best it appeared to be a faint shadow, but it wasn’t moving, so maybe that was it.

  “It better be.” Praying, she turned the vehicle in that direction.

  As they approached, the snow-laden cabin looked barely able to withstand the storm. Its roof was sagging beneath the weight of the snow and its walls looked as if they were sucking in to draw themselves away from the cold. All in all it was a sorry-looking sight, but it was standing and there were four walls and right now, April thought, that was more than enough.

  Home, sweet home, she thought cynically.

  Pulling up the hand brake, she turned toward Jimmy and pointed to the lone box on the back seat of the car. The box of food June had packed. It hadn’t been necessary at the village, but April was grateful they’d brought it along. There was no doubt in her mind that it was going to come in handy now. There was no telling how long they would be stuck out here.

  “Take that with you.”

  It was a needless order as far as he was concerned, but he let it pass. The woman did like to take charge, he noted with a touch of amusement. Seeing as how this was her terrain and she had gotten them this far, he figured he’d let her.

  The moment he got out of the vehicle, the wind fought him for possession of the box as well as his breath. Both were nearly snatched away. The ten steps to the front of the cabin were harder to negotiate than he would have ever dreamed. Careful to not lose his footing, he followed closely behind April. He heard her mutter an oath as she jiggled the doorknob.