Doctor, Soldier, Daddy (The Doctors MacDowell Book 1)

by Caro Carson

  Surprise made her hesitate. “I can do the grocery shopping if you tell me what you like. Do you want the same brand of cereal again?”

  “You live here now. This is your house. You should buy your favorite cereal, not only mine.”

  “I can’t just barge in here and take over. That’s not the way I am.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “That’s too much the way I am. Last time we went to a store together, I took over. As I recall, my wife didn’t appreciate it.” Jamie put the empty bottle down and started patting Sam’s back. He kept his eyes on her, however. “Tell me the truth, Kendry. How badly do you hate to drive?”

  Dang it.

  She gave up and sat down. “Really badly.”

  “There’s no bus stop around here. I’ll drive to the grocery store, but you have to take a few laps around the empty part of the parking lot so that you get more comfortable behind the wheel. Deal?”

  Her little fantasy weekend in the castle was over.

  “Deal.”

  The compromising resumed.

  * * *

  Jamie was pouring himself a cup of coffee in the E.R.’s kitchenette when it hit him. He’d bought her scrubs and he’d bought her socks, but he hadn’t bought Kendry any underwear. Underpants. Panties. Whatever the hell they were, there had been one clean pair in the dryer, one scrap of pale blue, plain cotton, which meant—

  He shoved the stainless-steel pot back onto the burner. So, she slept commando. When she’d been standing there in Sammy’s room, with her hair loose and her glasses gone, she’d been bare-assed under his shirt. He hadn’t thought about it at the time. He’d only been surprised by how fluffy her hair was when it wasn’t scraped back in a ponytail.

  But Kendry had been aware of it. Their odd tango in the laundry room, the way she’d backed out of Sammy’s room with quick, small steps, it all made sense now.

  It was funny, really. An amusing little bit between roommates.

  Jamie didn’t feel like laughing. He had a sudden vision, a piece of a remembered dream, of a woman’s legs silhouetted against the glow of the television and a blanket drifting down over his feet. The memory was uncomfortable. Almost erotic.

  “How’s married life treating you?” Quinn’s big voice crashed into Jamie’s thoughts.

  He grunted at Quinn, took a sip of his coffee. “Did you come here on my bike or in your truck?”

  Quinn reached across him for the coffeepot. “It’s my bike. If you want to buy it back, it’ll cost you. But I’ve got the truck today.”

  “Good. I need you to help me move Kendry’s stuff into my house.”

  Quinn took out his phone and flipped through a few screens. “I can make Wednesday a half day.”

  “Tonight. She needs clothes.”

  “You sure about that? This is your honeymoon, after all.” Quinn leaned against the counter with his coffee and looked like he was settling in to enjoy a series of jabs.

  Jamie pitched his voice low, conscious now of eavesdropping staff. “It’s not like that, and you know it. She needs her own clothes. She can’t keep wearing mine—and don’t try raising that eyebrow at me like Dad.”

  A nurse peeked in the kitchenette. “Dr. MacDowell? We’ve got an MI on the way. Two minutes. Radio says he coded.”

  Jamie set down his coffee, tamed the adrenaline rush as he headed toward the room they kept ready for the most serious cases and tried not to feel too grateful for the distraction.

  “Six o’clock?” Quinn called after him.

  “Six. Thanks.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kendry was back in her old neighborhood. Despite her objections, Jamie was with her, driving the pickup truck that he erroneously thought was needed to move all of her belongings from her place to his.

  He’d even come home tonight with Quinn and a second truck, as if she needed a convoy of pickups to haul all her worldly possessions. Quinn had been pressed into babysitting Sammy instead.

  “Are you sure Sammy’s okay with Quinn?” Kendry asked. “Make a left here.”

  Jamie flicked on the turn signal. “He can thread a wire into a man’s heart. He can tape a disposable diaper over a baby’s bottom.”

  One more left turn, and they were there. Kendry’s home. Her heart sank as she tried to see it for the first time, the way Jamie was seeing it. The driveway they parked on was choked with weeds, and the bushes grew wild all around the dingy home exterior. The house still stood despite the neglect, probably because it had been built of brick.

  When Kendry had found this neighborhood, she’d noticed how sturdy the block of brick houses were and had thought it a point in their favor. She’d had no choice but to overlook the signs of neglect, the furniture left to rot in the front yards, the chain-link fences allowed to rust away. Kendry was glad she’d swung that machete to tame the foreclosed house’s weeds not long ago. The street looked better for it.

  “This is your house?” Jamie’s voice was obviously, painfully, neutral. Nonjudgmental, when there was only one judgment possible. Kendry’s heart squeezed in her chest in gratitude.

  “I rent the garage, actually.”

  The truck cab felt stifling, the air thick with silence. There was nothing Jamie could say without making her feel worse, and he probably knew it.

  She took her glasses off and looked out the window. It was nearly seven, and people were starting to loiter in the streets. During the day, the place was a ghost town, but at night, people came out of their houses. Neighbors started sharing beers, laughingly taunting one another. It took a few hours for the camaraderie to turn vicious. Kendry didn’t leave the safety of her brick-walled garage at night.

  “I should have used the rental car and moved my stuff out myself. I didn’t want to bring Sam here, I guess.” Not even in the daylight.

  Jamie opened his truck door. “Come out on my side. That bush is blocking your door.” He gave her hand a tug as she slid across the bench seat. Once she was out, he didn’t let go while he used his free hand to grab an empty cardboard box out of the truck bed. They crunched their way over rocks and weeds toward the garage’s side door.

  Inside, the temperature was easily over a hundred degrees. Kendry tucked her taped glasses into the breast pocket of her scrubs. She lowered the half window on the door and turned on her little electric fan. “This will cool things off. It’s amazing how much a fan helps.”

  “I know. It was the same way in Afghanistan.” Jamie dropped the box onto the concrete floor. “We should put the bigger stuff in the truck first, like that chest of drawers.”

  “The furniture isn’t mine. The apartment came furnished.” She’d always called it her apartment. It had a tiny, dorm-sized fridge and an electric hot plate, so she had a kitchen. The twin bed and chest of drawers were her bedroom. It was just a quick hop across the yard to the utility room of Mrs. Haines’s house, which had a sink, toilet and microscopic shower stall. All the components of an apartment were here.

  “Did you write to your parents yet?” Jamie’s question was unexpected.

  “No. Why do you ask?” Kendry pulled open the lowest drawer and took out her favorite sweatshirt, which was wrapped around one of her parents’ pottery pieces, and set it carefully in the box.

  Nearly done packing.

  Jamie was still on the topic of her parents. “I need to find a way to send them money without offending them. We could fly them back to the States under the pretense of celebrating our marriage. I’ve got enough to help get them on their feet, if they want to live here.”

  “Get them on their feet? Jamie, my parents aren’t poor.”

  He went very still. “Don’t tell me they have money.”

  “They have all they want. They’re fine.”

  “They’re fine,” he repeated in his flat vo
ice. Suddenly, he shoved her one and only chair away with his boot. “Then what the hell is this? Some kind of sink-or-swim lesson? They cut you loose to live on your own in a gang neighborhood?”

  “I’m almost twenty-four years old, Jamie. I’m not their responsibility.” Pride made her pretend she was the proud owner of this place. “It may not look like much to you, but I’m really doing fine.”

  “This neighborhood is dangerous. You’ve been starving. What kind of parents let their child starve if they have money?”

  “They’re good parents, Jamie. I came back to the States with money for college and everything. It wasn’t their fault I blew it, so I haven’t asked them for more.” She sank onto the end of her bed while Jamie paced one lap around her one-car garage.

  He returned to the bed and sat next to her. “If they’re good parents, they have no idea about what part of Austin you live in, do they?”

  Kendry shook her head. “It’s only temporary, so why worry them? It might take me eight years, but I’m going to be a college graduate with a nursing degree. The end result will be the same.”

  “What happened to your college fund? You’re the most responsible person I know. Were you robbed?”

  Kendry shook her head.

  “Were you in over your head, involved with a bad crowd? Drugs?”

  “No.”

  Jamie would find out everything, sooner or later. If they were still married on September thirtieth, she couldn’t keep it a secret. She stood and walked to the door. The fan pushed the hot air past her, out the window she’d been so proud to rent. Even the view of overgrown shrubs had brought her pleasure, because they were an improvement over her previous circumstances.

  Jamie’s opinion of her had always mattered. Maybe she could make him see how much progress she’d made on her own. But first, she had to tell him how stupid she’d been.

  “We were never rich, but during the times we lived in the States, we usually rented a real apartment. We had a TV. I had shoes. My parents wouldn’t have let me wear worn-out sneakers, either.” She looked down at her new sneakers and flexed her foot.

  “And then?” Jamie stayed on the bed, giving her his full attention.

  “And then I got my GED right before I turned twenty. Finally. The diploma arrived while we were living in Mexico. My high school years were mostly spent overseas, so I got too old to keep enrolling whenever we came back for a few months. It’s embarrassing to be an eighteen-year-old sophomore. Anyway, when the GED arrived, my parents surprised me with this nest egg they’d saved for me. They left Mexico for Peru, and I came to Austin, ready to enroll in the community college.”

  “Why Austin?”

  “I’d made friends who were from here, people my age who were vacationing in Mexico.” Kendry remembered their fun-loving confidence. She was an American high school grad, too, like they were—or so she’d reasoned.

  “I moved in with two of them, sharing rent on a great house. Three bedrooms and a swimming pool in a gated community. The guy had one bedroom, which he shared with his girlfriend. The girl had one bedroom, which she shared with her boyfriend. I had the third all to myself. The four of them got me a part-time job where they worked. I was thrilled to be waitressing at this high-end, trendy restaurant, bringing home hundreds in tips.

  “My share of the rent was in the hundreds, too, though. I did the math and decided if I worked full-time, I could keep living with my friends and save a little more for college, as well. If I worked for two semesters instead of going to school, then I’d have enough to skip community college and go straight to a university for all four years.”

  “Knowing you, it was probably a solid plan.”

  “I kept pushing that college entry back. I decided I could buy a car if I worked for three semesters, and then go to university.” She rested against the doorjamb, watching the shrubs blow in the evening breeze. It was nearly dark outside, and she tried to remember if Jamie had locked the truck.

  “The guy and the girl decided they loved each other instead of their roommates, and they ran off. I was left with a weeping ex-girlfriend and an angry ex-boyfriend who didn’t want to pay their share of the rent. After a week, the two of them had a fight. They broke a window. I thought I’d been robbed, until the girl returned to get her clothes. She left. He left. I was alone when the bills for the month came in. Electric. Water. Satellite. Internet. Rent.”

  She kept her arms wrapped around her stomach, feeling sick at the memory. There’d been so many bills, arriving in the mail one after another.

  “Half my savings were wiped out in one month. Half. Then a new restaurant opened up, and our trendy place stopped being trendy. Within a week, my tips plummeted from hundreds to tens. No one I knew could afford to move in with me.”

  She wanted Jamie to understand. It had all been one domino falling after another, one huge downward spiral. “I panicked when the rent was due again. Four weeks came so fast. I let my car insurance lapse to pay the bills, but then I got in an accident. I rear-ended a car. I got the ticket.”

  “And you got the medical bills?” Jamie sat forward on the bed and rubbed his face with his hands. “God, Kendry. How long were you in the hospital?”

  “Not a minute, thankfully. I wasn’t going fast enough to trigger the air bags, but I’d hit the other car at a little bit of angle, they told me. Just enough to throw the frame out of whack. I totaled a Mercedes.”

  Jamie frowned at that.

  Kendry was getting used to him frowning at her now that they were married, but she didn’t like it. He’d always been so nice to her when they were just friends, talking to her easily over cafeteria lunches, listening to her stories. Of course, she hadn’t told him stories like this one.

  She went back to staring out the window. “It’s that easy to go from having a little bit of savings to using the public library’s free computer to look up homeless shelters.”

  “You lived in a homeless shelter,” he repeated in that carefully neutral voice, the voice that didn’t fool her. There was only one judgment to make.

  “Look, I know it was a stupid gamble, to go for a month without car insurance. You know the law in Texas. If you break it, you have to pay for it, whether you have car insurance or not. That’s fair, but it hasn’t been easy. For two years, I’ve been buying a Mercedes-Benz, one paycheck at a time. I’ve got twelve payments to go. I’ll make the next payment on September thirtieth.”

  “The judge expected you to pay off a Mercedes in three years?” In the corner of her eye, she saw Jamie stand up. “Kendry, most people who buy a Mercedes get a loan that lasts far longer than thirty-six months. Did you appeal?”

  “Appeal what? I hit them from behind.”

  “Your sentence was outrageous.”

  Kendry had nothing to say to that. She’d been living with it so long, it seemed normal to her. “The good news is, the thirtieth is also my six-month anniversary at the hospital. I’ll have health insurance for the first time in my life, and I get a raise. Another fifty cents per hour.”

  Outside, a bird twittered near her window. People called out to each other across the street.

  A single gunshot rang out.

  Jamie tackled her. His arms came around her as he landed with her on the ground, hard. Her head would have bounced off the concrete had he not cradled it in his hand. She gasped into his neck, tasted the salt of his skin as she panted in fear.

  “A car,” she breathed, as soon as she was able. “A car backfired. S’okay.”

  He was heavy on her, clasping her to his chest. “It’s gunfire.” He rolled off just enough to slide them both closer to the brick wall, away from the wooden door.

  “No, I’ve heard that sound before. People have old cars around here, and they backfi—”

  Several gunshots sounded, a dozen within a second, sounding
like an automatic machine gun. A woman screamed. Kendry was instantly smashed underneath Jamie again.

  Long moments passed. Outside, everything had gone utterly silent. No birds. No people. Inside, she could hear only her own heart pounding in her ears, her own shallow, rapid breathing. She wanted to take a deeper breath, but Jamie was holding her too tightly. His breathing seemed steady and even, but her face was pressed against his neck, and she could feel his pulse, strong and quick.

  “You’re right,” she panted. “That was gunfire.”

  Jamie didn’t say anything, and she remembered his earlier comment about Afghanistan. Perhaps he was going through a kind of post-traumatic stress episode. Concerned, and more than a little shaken herself, she lifted her hand and combed her fingers through his hair. “Jamie? Are you okay?”

  He eased up far enough to look into her face. Their breaths mingled. “You’ve heard that sound before?”

  She nodded, feeling very small and very inexperienced in the arms of a man who’d lived through a war.

  “And what did you do? Did you lie there on your bed, telling yourself it was a car? A bullet could have shattered that glass. You could have been killed where you lay. How could I protect you from that?”

  Kendry recognized the look in his eyes, the slightly wild look he’d had in the emergency room when he’d talked about Amina and Sammy and her. About the responsibility he felt. About the normalcy he craved. She felt like she’d deceived him, agreeing to marry him when she’d known all along that she would add to his burdens, not lighten them.

  “You don’t have to protect me.”

  “The hell I don’t.”

  “I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t just lie there if bullets were flying.”

  He gave her a little shake, his face so close she felt the air vibrate with his voice. “Bullets were flying. You stood by the window.”

  “You didn’t give me a chance to move!” She wasn’t helpless. She wasn’t a mess. She’d worked damned hard to live in these brick walls.