The Ranch

by Danielle Steel

  “I'm glad I caught you,” he said, sounding pleased and then asked her the question, and she gave him the answer. She was happy that he'd asked, so many other people didn't give the primary physician that courtesy to make the decision.

  “I really appreciate your asking me,” she told him. It was why she liked having him cover for her instead of other people. Other relief doctors had screwed up many of her patients while she was gone, and never even bothered to tell her.

  “Thanks for saying that,” he said. He sounded busy and happy, and he said he was taking a rare lunch break. “You don't get fat around here, I'll say that much. I haven't run this hard since med school.” In the past he had covered for her at night, or an afternoon, so she could go to dinner, or the theater, or have a glass of wine without worrying about it at a social event. This was the first time he'd done a whole week for her, and he loved it. “You run a great show here,” he said admiringly, “and all your patients love you. It's mighty hard to live up to.”

  “They're probably not even asking for me by now.” She smiled. “They're all going to come in asking for Dr. Warner.”

  “I should be so lucky.” And as he listened to her, he thought she sounded a little strange, as if she was tired or in bed or had just woken up, or been crying, and it suddenly struck him as odd, and he asked her about it. It was just an instinct, and she was so startled to be asked if she was really all right or upset about something that it silenced her for a moment, and then she started crying again, and couldn't answer. And he heard that too, and suddenly in his head, there were alarm bells.

  “Did something happen to one of your friends?” he asked her gently. “Or to you?” He was an extraordinarily intuitive person and that scared her.

  “No, no, they're fine,” she said, and then realized she had to ask him about the following week while she had him on the phone, and she decided to try it. “Actually, I was going to call you anyway. We're having such a good time that I was wondering if…” She faltered and pressed onward all in the same breath, hoping he wouldn't notice“… if you could maybe do another week for me, possibly less. But at worst, I'd come home a week from Sunday. I wasn't sure if you were free, or how you felt about it, and I wanted to ask you.”

  “I'd love it,” he said quietly, but he had listened to every intonation in her voice and he was convinced she was crying. “But something's wrong, and I want to know what it is so I can help you.”

  “Really nothing,” she continued to lie to him. “But can you do another week at the clinic?”

  “I told you I would. No problem. But that's not the issue. Zoe, what's wrong? There's always a piece of the puzzle you don't show me. Why are you hiding? What's wrong, baby… I can hear you crying… please don't shut me out… I want to help you.” He was almost crying too, and at her end she was sobbing.

  “I can't, Sam… please don't ask me…”

  “Why? What is it that's so terrible that you have to hide and carry all your burdens alone?” And then as he asked her, he knew. It was the same thing she saw every day, and he was seeing now. The ultimate scourge, the greatest shame, the final sorrow. She had AIDS. She didn't tell him, but he knew it. “Zoe?” She could hear in his voice that something had happened. And at her end of the phone, she was very quiet. It explained a lot of things, why she wanted no relationship with anyone, why she had looked so ill that day. It happened to a lot of doctors who treated patients with AIDS. You tried to be so careful, but it happened. You made a mistake, someone moved wrong, you stuck a child and pricked yourself, you were tired, you got sloppy, whatever the reason, the result was final. “Zoe?” he said again, and his voice was very gentle. He was only sorry not to be in the same room with her so he could put his arms around her. “Did you stick yourself? I want to know… please…” There was a long, long silence, and then a sigh. It was so hard fighting him. Her secret was out now.

  “Yeah… last year… she was a little kid and very wiggly.”

  “Oh, God… I knew it. Why didn't you tell me? I've been so stupid, and so have you. What are you doing? Why are you hiding from me? Are you sick now?” He sounded panicked. She had AIDS, and he'd done nothing to help her except cover her practice. His mind and heart were racing. “Are you sick?” he asked her again, sounding still more forceful.

  “Kind of. It's not serious, but the doctor here wants me to take it easy for a few days. I think I'll be all right by Monday. He says give it a full week to avoid secondary infection.”

  “Listen to the doctor. What is it?” He sounded suddenly clinical and she smiled. “Respiratory?” She didn't sound like it though. Aside from the tears, her voice was normal.

  “No, the usual horror that comes with this disease. Raging diarrhea. I really thought I was going to die last night. I'm amazed I didn't.”

  “You're not going to die for a long time,” he said matter-of-factly, “I won't let you.”

  “I've been through this myself, Sam,” Zoe said sadly. “Don't do this to yourself. Remember, that's how I started in this business. The man I lived with got a bad transfusion. I started the clinic because of him. But it was the hardest thing I ever did, watching him die, and I had a lot of good years with him before that. I won't do that to anyone, and I sure won't start that way. That's starting at the ending. I won't do it.”

  “Do you regret you did it? Are you sorry? Do you wish you hadn't been with him?”

  “No,” she said clearly. She had loved Adam till the end. But she didn't want Sam to go through what she had gone through.

  “What if he had said he wouldn't let you? What if he tried to send you away?”

  “He did more than once,” she smiled. “I just didn't listen. I didn't go. I wouldn't have left him,” and as she said it, she thought about what she was saying, and then faltered, “but that was different.” And then she wondered. “I would have felt cheated if I hadn't been there,” she said pensively, thinking of Sam. But in some ways she hardly knew him, in other ways she'd known him forever.

  “Why are you trying to cheat me?” he said bluntly, no longer willing to be put off, or pretend, or hide his feelings. “I'm in love with you. I think I have been for years. Maybe even since Stanford. I think in those days I was just too stupid to know it. And once I figured it out, you never gave me the opportunity to say it. But I'm not going to let you stop me now. I want to be there for you… I don't care what this miserable disease does to you… I don't care if you get diarrhea, or sores on your face, or pneumonia. I want to help you stay alive, I want to do your work with you, Zoe… I care about you and Jade… please let me love you… there's too little love in the world, if we've found some, let's share it. Don't throw it away. Your having AIDS doesn't change anything, it doesn't make me not love you, it just means that what we have is more precious. I won't let you throw it away. It means too much to me…” He was crying now, and she was so moved, she couldn't speak through her own tears. “Zoe… I love you… if I weren't covering for you here, I'd get on the next plane and tell you in person, but you'd probably kill me if I did that, and left no one minding the store.” He laughed through his tears then and so did she.

  “Yes, I would, so don't you dare leave the clinic.”

  “I won't, but otherwise I'd be there tonight. Besides, I miss you. You've already been gone too long,” he complained.

  “Sam, how can you be so crazy? How can you do this to yourself?”

  “Because you don't get choices about things like this in life. You fall in love with the people you fall in love with. Sorry if it's inconvenient, sorry if you're sick. I could fall in love with some awful woman tomorrow and have her fall under a train. At least you and I know the score here. We have some time, maybe a lot, maybe a little. I'm willing to take what we can get. What about you? Are you going to waste this?”

  “You'd have to be so careful.” She was still trying to discourage him, but he wouldn't listen. He was absolutely sure of what he wanted from her.

  “Being careful i
s a small price to pay, isn't it? It's worth it. God, I miss you so much, Zoe. I just want to hold you, and make you happy.”

  “Will you work with me? Full-time, I mean, or even part-time?” That was almost as important to her, maybe more so. She had a responsibility to a lot of people, even more than to herself as far as she was concerned. And she needed Sam to help her. But he was more than willing.

  “I'll work with you night and day if you want,” he said, and then thought better of it. “Actually, I'll do the night and day stuff, you do a little less, please. And let's take some time for us. I don't want you wearing yourself out anymore. Let's take good care of you. All right? Just like we tell the patients. And you'd better listen to me. In your case, I'm the doctor.”

  “Yes, sir,” she smiled, and wiped her eyes again. It had been an emotional morning. She had told her two best friends and Sam, and none of them had let her down, on the contrary, they were three extraordinary human beings. And then Sam startled her yet again.

  “Let's get married,” he said, and she couldn't believe what she was hearing. He was truly insane, but she loved him for it. She was smiling broadly when she answered.

  “You're certifiable. I won't let you do that.” She was horrified but deeply touched that he would offer.

  “I would have wanted to marry you whether you had AIDS or not.” And he meant it.

  “But I do, and you don't need to do that to yourself,” she said sadly.

  “What if this were one of your patients? I know you. You'd tell them to do whatever made them happy and seemed right to them.”

  “How do you know this is right?” she asked gently.

  “Because I love you,” he said, praying she'd hear him.

  “I love you too,” she said cautiously, “but let's not rush into this, let's take it slowly.” He liked what she was saying, because it meant she thought she had some time to make decisions, and that meant she was optimistic, which was important. But he really did want to marry her. But he knew he might convince her more easily in person.

  “I'm awfully glad I called you today,” he said happily. “I got advice about a patient, a job, full-time preferably, and possibly a wife. This was a very fruitful conversation,” he said, and she laughed.

  “I can't believe I left a lunatic like you in charge of my clinic.”

  “Neither can I. But your patients love me. Think how happy they'll be when we're Dr. and Dr. Warner.”

  “I have to take your name too?” She was laughing. She really did love him. She had been so fond of him for so long, but she had never allowed her feelings for him to move forward. She had been too busy taking care of her patients to let herself be anything more than a doctor, and mother,

  “You can call yourself anything you like if you marry me,” Sam told her magnanimously. “I'm very openminded.”

  “You're crazy,” and then she grew serious for a moment, although they were both in good spirits. “Thank you, Sam… I think you're wonderful,” she said honestly, “and I really do love you,” she said softly. “It scared me before how much I liked you, but I was determined not to get you into a mess like this. And you walked yourself right into it. You can still change your mind if you want.”

  “I'm here forever,” he said calmly.

  “I wish I were,” she said sadly.

  “You might be. If I have anything to do with it, you will.”

  “At least my work will be… and the clinic… and Jade… and you… and my friends…”

  “If you ask me, it sounds like a lot to stick around for.”

  “I'll do everything I can, Sam. I promise.”

  “Good. Then get a lot of rest while you're there and come back healthy, and check yourself into the hospital if the diarrhea doesn't stop.”

  “It has,” she said, and that reassured him.

  “Drink a lot of fluids.”

  “I know. I'm a doctor. Don't worry. I'll be good. I swear.”

  “I love you.” It was odd. It was so totally unexpected. He was so happy suddenly. She loved him. She had AIDS, it was terrible news, and yet in some crazy way he was happy, and so was Zoe. She was still smiling when Mary Stuart and Tanya came in later after lunch to check her.

  “What happened to you?” Tanya asked suspiciously. “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.”

  “I talked to Sam. He's going to come to work at the clinic full-time.”

  “Wow, that's terrific,” Mary Stuart said enthusiastically, she knew what a relief that was for Zoe.

  “No, no, wait… she's lying,” Tanya said, narrowing her eyes and looking at their old buddy. “There's more, and she's not telling.”

  “No, there's not.” But she was laughing as she said it. It was a far cry from the intensity and sorrow of the morning.

  “What else did he say?” Zoe was grinning from ear to ear as she tried to avoid Tanya's question.

  “Nothing. I told him,” she hesitated, looking more serious suddenly, “that I was positive.” She hated to say the words, and then she looked at her friends with wide eyes filled with disbelief, still unable to believe what he had said to her at lunchtime.

  “What did he say to you?” Mary Stuart asked gently, and Zoe turned to her with a broad smile of amazement.

  “He asked me to marry him. Can you believe that?” The other women's jaws dropped, and they looked at her in delighted disbelief, but it was Tanya who spoke first.

  “Let's get you healthy so you can go home to this guy, before someone else grabs him. He sounds terrific.”

  “He really is.” Zoe had no idea what she was going to do yet. But she was going to be with him, and work with him, and let herself experience everything that life offered her, and if he really wanted to marry her, then maybe she would. But whether or not she married him, she knew she loved him, and that was the most important thing.

  “Well, I'll be damned,” Mary Stuart said, enormously impressed by Dr. Sam Warner.

  The three of them talked about it for a little while, and then Mary Stuart and Tanya went out for the afternoon, since Zoe seemed to be doing so much better. Hartley and Mary Stuart went for a hike that afternoon, and talked about a number of things, especially Zoe and a man who was brave enough to marry a woman he loved and knew was dying. They both thought it was an extraordinary gesture, and they loved him for it.

  And Tanya went out riding with Gordon. They were lucky that day. No one else in her party wanted to ride, Hartley was on the hike with Mary Stuart, and the doctors from Chicago had gone fishing that afternoon, so they were actually alone, without even planning it. Gordon took her to a waterfall in the mountains, on horseback, and they dismounted for a while, and lay in the tall grass among the wildflowers while he held her and they kissed, and it took a superhuman effort not to let it go any further, but they wanted to move as slowly as they could, despite the limited time they had. They already felt as though they were on an express train. But it was the most beautiful afternoon of her life, as she lay looking up at him, and then he lay next to her, and they looked at the mountains. They walked for a while, hand in hand, leading their horses, talking about their childhoods, and they talked about Zoe too, and Sam's remarkable love for her. They were brave people in a hard world. And in her own way, Tanya was too. She had come a long way in her life, and now suddenly, there was someone solid and warm and kind beside her. It frightened her a little bit to think of what the press would make of it, and she tried to warn him of the damage they could do, the hurt they could inflict, but he didn't seem to care, and he told Tanya to look around them.

  “As long as we have this, how can you care about all that? It is so unimportant. We're all that matters, and what we are to each other.”

  “And if we don't have this anymore?” she asked, looking around her, and thinking of going back to California.

  “We will,” he said quietly, “we have to. As long as we have something here, a place we can come to, to get sane again, maybe the rest of that insanity won't ma
tter.” It was an interesting idea, and she liked it. Maybe he was right, and she should buy a place in Wyoming. She could certainly afford it. She could even sell the house in Malibu. It was huge, and she almost never went there.

  “I feel as though I'm standing on the edge of a whole new life,” she said, as they stood on a bluff, looking out over the valley. They could see buffalo, and elk, and cattie, and horses. It was an amazing sight, and she could see easily why he loved it.

  “You are standing on the edge of a new life,” he said calmly, and then he turned her toward him again, put his arms around her, and kissed her.

  Chapter 17

  On Friday morning, Zoe was still asleep when Tanya tiptoed in to look at her, but she seemed peaceful, she'd eaten well the night before, and Mary Stuart agreed when she came in that Zoe's color was better.

  They were just going out to ride, when she got up, and wandered into the living room in her nightgown, and they were pleased to see that they'd been right. She looked a great deal better.

  “How do you feel?” Mary Stuart asked solicitously. They were both so worried about her.

  “Like a new woman,” Zoe said, almost sorry she told them. She wondered if she shouldn't have said she had AIDS, but the cat was out of the bag now, and it meant a lot to her to have them support her. “I'm sorry I was so much trouble yesterday.” Tanya wanted to tell her how sorry she was that Zoe had pricked her finger the year before, and contracted AIDS, but she didn't.