by Nina Bocci
When I stepped forward to help him up, he was just about to roll over.
I stumbled, my foot connecting with his lower half. He howled in pain this time, a sound far worse than when I hit his nose. He rolled away from me, with his legs curled up to his chest, maybe to help him breathe through the pain.
The man now lay in a small puddle, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He wasn’t crying, but there was a shallow, whimpering noise coming out of his mouth that made it quite clear how badly I hurt him. He was breathing deeply—deep breath in and then a cleansing breath out. I found myself mirroring it in the hope of calming down.
“Birdy, help!”
Birdy was out of the cruiser in a moment and kneeling beside the injured party, whispering to him.
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry!” I apologized again frantically.
I bent down to help him and gently touched his sweaty shoulder. His once-light-gray shirt was soaked through from either the earlier rain, sweat, or both. He was facing away from me, angled toward the office stairs that I so desperately wanted to run up so I could disappear behind the door and hide.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. He whimpered again, sounding a bit like the animals I had encountered at the bus stop. “I’m here less than an hour and I’m wreaking havoc. Do you need ice? A warm towel? Flowers? I don’t know what to do for this type of ailment!”
Great! My bright idea is to offer him a bouquet for the pain.
The exhaustion was getting to me. I felt a sense of delirium mixed with embarrassment and a nice heaping spoonful of guilt. The perfect blend of why I didn’t want to come back here in the first place.
“Should I get my dad?” I asked Birdy, not knowing how to care for a stranger who had been both knocked down and unintentionally kicked in the balls. “I mean he’s a doctor and can, I don’t know, help with manly business problems?”
Oh my God. Stop talking!
“Henry, son. Is everything okay?” Birdy asked, gripping the man’s shoulder. “You know, down there?”
I snorted.
Glancing up at me, Birdy scowled lightly. “It’s not funny. You’ve hit a man in the worst possible place.”
I grimaced. “I think I broke his nose, too.”
Birdy looked scandalized, but also a touch eager. “Well, you’re certainly bringing the excitement on your first day!”
My hand flew to my chest. “Oh, no, no, no!” I rambled, knowing that gossip-loving Birdy was probably salivating over sharing this news. “No one needs to know about this.” The last thing I needed, or wanted, was a slew of attention on day number one.
Nodding faintly, he still had a glint of mischief in his eye, and I had a feeling the town would know about this by lunchtime. Birdy turned back to the man he’d called Henry. “Are you okay, son? Need Doc Bishop?”
Henry shook his head slightly, whispering something that I couldn’t hear. I hoped it wasn’t “Arrest her for assault”—that would have been the icing on this already lousy cake.
“Charlotte,” Birdy said, and I felt the man’s body stiffen under my hand. I hadn’t even realized I’d kept it there. “He said he’s fine. Son, are you sure? The doc is right there.”
He nodded again but made no motion to sit up. I pulled my hand away briefly, and he exhaled loudly as if he was relieved that I’d moved it.
“I’m so sorry, Henry,” I apologized again, his name feeling strange in my mouth. “Do we know each other?” I asked, his chest seizing up again.
“Charlotte, maybe you should go ahead inside, give ol’ Henry here a little bit of room to pull himself together a bit,” Birdy said, patting ol’ Henry on the shoulder.
I shifted away from them and stood. Staring down at him, I could see that he was very well-built, clearly a runner, but I knew he must do more than that. Football? Was there a sport where you needed to be even beefier than that? Something where you tore trees from their roots and tossed them?
Even with Henry semi curled up I could tell that he was very tall. He probably had at least a foot on me, if not more. The gray shirt he wore was tightly wrapped around his biceps, just as it had been stretched across his chest. His shorts hit a spot on his legs that highlighted calves that looked like he had sewn a softball into each. I admired him for a beat.
On a scale of one to ten, what are the chances of hooking up with a guy after you hit him in the business?
Probably slim to none, with slim out of town.
“Okay, well,” I began, and part of me was talking to myself but I was also talking to Birdy, and Henry on the ground, too. “Like I said, I’m sorry. If you want to come in and see the doctor, I can, you know, put in a good word.” I laughed. It was lame and I knew it, but this whole situation was awkward as hell.
“Thanks, Offi— Sorry, Chief Birdy.”
He nodded to me before bending down to help Henry up. When Henry finally stood, he turned away from me with his shoulders hunched. I guess I really did do a number on him.
Chief Birdy opened the car door for him, and he collapsed inside, his head against the seat. He never glanced my way, and part of me was glad. The other part was disappointed that this was another lousy first impression. I watched them drive off.
I was at the top of the stairs about to ring the doorbell when it swung open, my father looking surprised, elated, confused, and concerned all at once.
“Charlotte!” he shouted, pulling me into a crippling hug. “I was having coffee with Reese, and I swore I heard your voice. What’s all this?”
Reese. So, there was a girlfriend. Now what?
“Surprise! I’m here for a … bit?”
2
“What a surprise,” my father said, keeping his arm wrapped tightly around my shoulders as if I would disappear. The act made my heart twist up. I hadn’t stepped over that threshold in more than two decades.
“Shouldn’t we bring my stuff in?” I asked worriedly. There weren’t any people around, but I didn’t want to leave everything out there sitting in the open.
“Oh boy, that’s a lot! But we’ll get it later.” He paused, seeing my worried expression. “It’s Hope Lake, Charlotte. The last bit of excitement Birdy got was Mrs. Mancini parking her car on the sidewalk illegally to run in to get ice cream at Viola’s. No one will steal your stuff.”
“Well, I just gave him some excitement this morning,” I said, gesturing toward the front door.
My father raised his eyebrows in shock.
“Not that kind of excitement. Jeez, Dad. I accidentally hit some poor guy in the face and then in the manly business and sent him to the pavement in tears.”
His eyebrows raised even higher toward his hairline.
“Okay, there were no tears, but I did a number on him.”
“Charlotte. You can say that you injured a man’s penis and testicles, you know. I’m a doctor; I won’t blush.”
“Penis and testicles, ladies and gentlemen. And it’s not even eight in the morning!”
“Oh boy. You’re here for, what, ten minutes and you’re causing a ruckus. I should probably warn you, once word gets out that you’re here, it’ll only get more ruckusy.”
I laughed, following his lead into the office portion of the building. “Is that even a word?”
He smiled. “Damn it, Charlotte. I’m a doctor, not a grammarian.”
I rolled my eyes. “Still pulling out the Star Trek references, huh?”
It was his schtick. Need a pick-me-up after being diagnosed with a cold? He would “Live long and prosper” you daily when he called to check on you. Want to argue about a flu shot? You’d get a “Resistance is futile.”
“You’re still pulling those lines with patients? I hope they’re at least laughing.”
“Always. The kids love it, even though most of them only know the new Star Trek films and not the classic show,” he explained. I made a mental note to get back to “the kids” later.
To my knowledge, there weren’t many people my age here. It was part of why
my mother insisted that I never come back when I was still a kid. Well, that, and the fact that there wasn’t much here for me to do. The place was stagnant—“like a hamster on a wheel,” as my mother used to say. Even if I did want to return, she made sure there was a reason why I couldn’t.
My dad led me into a small room off the foyer. While the rest of the town may not have jogged any memories, this house felt like it held a lot of them.
The foyer emptied into what served as the administrative office for my father’s practice. A wall of glass partitions welcomed me, and filing cabinets lined the space behind the two currently unoccupied desks.
A massive stone fireplace sat against the far wall, surrounded by patient seating. The mantel was filled with photos of my dad on volunteer trips. Ethiopia, Haiti, Syria—anywhere he could travel to lend a hand, he did. Not as often as he did when I was a kid, but at least one trip a year now, when his time allowed. On the opposite end of the waiting area was a small section reserved as a kid zone.
“That’s new,” he said proudly, motioning to the child area. “We have a pediatrician coming in. She’s using the offices until she can find her own place. Or until I convince her to join the practice. I’m getting old, you know.”
“You’re not. You haven’t aged a day,” I said, smiling when his cheeks turned pink. He looked exactly the same as he did when I saw him last, when he stopped in Brooklyn on his way to the UK for a seminar last year. Our weekly FaceTime chats didn’t count. You couldn’t see a person that well on video calls.
He was sporting a few more grays mixed through the reddish brown at his temples. At least he didn’t look tired like he did the last time I had seen him in person. Running between two towns could be exhausting. Overall, he still looked like Dad. Too tall, too lanky from all the cycling he did before he saw patients, and too harried from all the hours spent at the practice. A hazard of living where you worked, I wagered.
“Is a full-time pediatrician really needed here?” I asked, curious to know how many patients she could possibly see in a town with fewer than ten thousand residents. I supposed it could be a handful.
He looked at me curiously. “Of course. She’s swamped, actually. She started coming once a week, then twice. Now it’s four days a week, and she’s splitting time between us and Mount Hazel, trying to decide where she’s going to settle. I’m hoping she chooses to stay here.”
My father sounded so hopeful, and I wondered if he would be repeating the same phrase to me by the end of the summer. Or, by the time I got my shit in order—whichever came first.
“Did you get a couple of days off with Memorial Day last weekend?” I asked, noticing that the purple shadows under his eyes looked lighter than when we’d FaceTimed last week.
Our weekly calls were scheduled for Tuesday nights during dinner. It was after his last patient of the day, and it gave me time to get home and make something other than ramen or canned soup. Anything to give him the appearance that all was well. Even when it isn’t.
He frowned, rubbing the back of his neck. “I meant to, but there was an emergency in Mount Hazel. Fireworks displays never seem to go off properly there.”
I winced. “What happened? Anyone lose a finger this year?”
“Thankfully no,” he explained, looking relieved. That had happened on more than one occasion. “Someone did get a Roman candle to the forehead, though. I went up to help with a couple of burns and stitches.”
“Never a dull moment with you, Dad,” I teased, bumping his shoulder. “You can’t just sit with a cigar, whiskey, and slippers, and relax. You’ve got to start taking care of yourself.”
“Never a cigar, you know that,” he said in his doctor voice. “Whiskey—hell, I’d probably take a sip and fall asleep. But the slippers? I should get a pair of those this winter.”
Mentally, I added them to his Christmas list.
We wandered through the exam rooms, which had been converted from the formal dining and family rooms into four smaller patient spaces.
Everything looked pretty much the same as it had when I visited the office as a child. If you didn’t know it was a house prior to the office, you’d think it was built this way. My dad’s living quarters on the floor above us mirrored the ground-floor plan—but without the clinical feel.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, cocking his head.
I smiled again. “It’s funny what memories resurface and when.”
He frowned, pulling his doctor’s coat from the hook in the hallway. It must have been closer to opening time than I’d realized. “What do you mean?”
“I’m just thinking out loud, that’s all. I remember running down this hall when I—well, before we left.”
His expression darkened. My leaving was still a sore spot that we avoided. “Gigi loved it when you visited the office growing up. So did I.”
I smiled, hooking my arm through his as we walked down the hall. This was good. Comforting, too. We passed an air freshener, and I had a sense of déjà vu so strong that he held on to my arm when I swayed.
“Sweetie, are you all right?” he asked, his hand flying to my forehead as if to check for a fever.
Oh, Dr. Dad, always worried.
“I mean, the walk down memory lane, the luggage out front …”
“We’ll get to that in a minute, Dad.” I laughed and walked ahead toward the back of the building. I stopped at a collage of photos of my father and Gigi spanning from his med school graduation to what looked like a recent one of her in her fancy new wheelchair.
“New paint?” I said, trying to change the subject from my staying to something benign. The walls remained the sunny, pale yellow I remembered from childhood, but they looked freshly done.
He nodded. “Reese had a friend in Barreton that needed work, so we got him to come up a month or so ago. He fixed up the moldings, too. Great craftsman.”
“Who’s Reese?” I asked, racking my brain for a reminder. Did he tell me about this person, and I spaced out? It wouldn’t be surprising given that my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders lately. “Another general practitioner?”
Hiring another doctor would make sense, since he was inching toward retirement age, but two general practitioners and a pediatrician? That seemed like lofty aspirations for a tiny practice in a small town.
“Speak of the devil,” he said, turning toward the swinging doors that opened up to the mudroom and back parking lot.
If he was the devil, sign me up for hell. In walked a tall man with dark, closely-cropped hair and a knee-buckling smile. Hello, Idris Elba’s look-alike. He appeared to be in his midthirties but dressed like he was in college, with a faded AC/DC T-shirt and a pair of ripped, worn denim jeans. There was something classically handsome about him with his sharp, stubbled jawline and piercing brown eyes. Judging by his gait, he was very confident. He strode in with purpose. And his smile was blinding. Good Lord, who knew Hope Lake was hiding all the hotties.
Here I thought Reese would be Dad’s girlfriend.
“Dr. Reese, this is my daughter, Charlotte. Charlotte, this is Dr. Maxwell Reese. He officially joined the practice as of last week,” Dad explained happily.
“Dr. Reese.” I smiled and extended my hand but pulled it back quickly as I realized something obvious. “Oh!” I shouted.
“Please call me Max,” he encouraged, clapping my father quickly on the back.
I extended my hand again, and he held it for a beat longer than customary.
My father looked at us curiously, his eyes darting before sliding a keen eye over at our clasped hands.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Max,” I said, enjoying his soft hands on mine. I kept my eyes down, feeling the heat creeping up my neck.
“It’s so wonderful to finally meet you, too. I’ve heard so much about you. We plan to venture to Brooklyn next month to take you to dinner. There’s a conference we’re attending in Manhattan.”
Still reddening, I looked up, hoping that no one noticed. �
��Surprise! I beat you guys to the visit. I’ll be here in Hope Lake.” Max looked pleased, but not nearly as happy as my father, who was positively beaming.
“For a little while at least,” I said nervously, hearing the back door open again. Soft voices carried down the hallway. I realized that their office would be opening, and I still had yet to explain my situation to my father. Though Max seemed nice, and was certainly attractive, I didn’t exactly want to air my baskets of laundry in front of a stranger.
“I know you’re swamped, so I’ll just crash upstairs for a little while. I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours, and I’m beat. Oh, but all my stuff is still outside. I have to get that first. My God, I’m so tired, though. No one will steal it, right? I can sleep for a couple and then grab it all and unpack the nightmare.”
I was rambling and didn’t notice my father trying to get a word in edgewise.
“Oh, honey. I wish you’d told me of your plans,” my father finally said when I paused to take a breath.
Yeah, I don’t exactly have a plan, Dad.
“This was sort of spur-of-the-moment,” I said, leaving out that I had zero plans and was just winging it. Something that my super-organized father never did.
Dad’s mouth was a perfect O, his brows were furrowed, and his normally pale skin was flushed pink. “We have a slight conundrum, you see. Max hasn’t closed on his house yet.”
“Nearly there,” he said, clapping his hands together and pointing them to the ceiling. “Soon, I hope.”
“And the B and B is filled with the crews who’re trying to finish up all the renovations and expansions before the summer tourist season starts. I didn’t think you’d be here, so I invited him to stay with me at the house instead of doing a short-term lease somewhere else.”
“Oh.” My voice sounded flat. “Congrats on the future house.” He wasn’t much older than me. Six years give or take, and he was moving into a practice and buying a house. Meanwhile, my life was piled up on my dad’s front porch and I couldn’t remember if I brushed my teeth last night.
