Читать книгу A Home for the Hot-Shot Doc - Dianne Drake, Dianne Drake - Страница 8

IT WAS HARD watching her work, and doing nothing himself. She had such a look of determination, though. Brown eyes narrowed to her task. Biting down in concentration on her lower lip. He did have to admit Mellette was a looker. Tall, with legs that went on forever. Nice athletic form with well-defined feminine muscles. Smooth, dark skin, boyish-cut black hair with just a hint of natural curl, and all of it thrown into her work while he stood on the sidelines, casually observing.

But that was the way his days went since people around here would hardly even speak to him outside a stiff hello or an unfriendly nod accompanied by a muffled grunt. So what the hell made him think they’d accept him as a doctor? Someone to trust, someone to confide in. Someone to take care of them the way his grandmother had.

Clovis Fonseca, for example. He was waiting in line to have Mellette see him—Justin wasn’t sure why—and if it weren’t for the fact that Justin had stolen his canoe some twenty-five years ago, then gone and torn a hole in the bottom of it by racking it up on a cypress stump, Clovis might have been inclined to let Justin take a look at him. But Clovis held a grudge, and Justin had seen it every time he’d looked in the man’s eyes since he’d come home. There was no way Clovis would ever consent to a physical exam from Justin, probably just as Clovis would probably never even greet him with anything other than a snarly sort of a snort.

And Ambrosine Trahan. He felt really bad about her because she’d loved him when they’d been kids, but he’d blatantly asked out her younger sister, Emmy Lou, the prettier of the two girls. It hadn’t been so much that he’d wanted to go out with Emmy Lou, because he hadn’t. She hadn’t been his type, either. But he’d simply been trying to rebuff Ambrosine because back in the day he hadn’t gone out with girls who hadn’t been pretty. In fact, he’d been known to be intentionally cruel to them. So she was waiting in line today, a beautiful woman now, by all estimations, probably hanging on to horrible memories of the way he’d treated her, and he seriously doubted she’d want to claim him as her doctor. And rightfully so. He was so embarrassed just remembering the way he’d treated her.

The problem was, the line of waiting patients was full of bad experiences left over from his ill-mannered youth, and he didn’t trust any of them to trust him. And who could blame them? He’d been a repeat offender on all fronts. After he’d taken Clovis’s boat, he’d had pretty much the same experience with Rex Rimbaut’s pickup truck. Taken it, banged it up. Then there had been that time he’d flaunted a date with Ambrosine’s cousin, Ida, in front of both Ambrosine and Emmy Lou. Ida had been pretty. He’d done the same with their other cousin, Marie Rosella, as well, who had been even prettier.

So nothing gave Justin reason to believe that any one of those people waiting to be seen by Mellette would believe that he’d turned over that new leaf. Especially when each and every one of them assumed he’d neglected his grandmother at the end of her life. It was something that overshadowed everything else. And no one knew the real story, that she’d purposely not told him she was failing for fear that he’d want to do something drastic, like move her to the big city, rather than let her die where she wanted to.

No, history wouldn’t repeat itself on his account. But as far as the people here were concerned, twenty-five years ago was the same as yesterday, and time wasn’t healing the bad thoughts they had of him. He was Justin Bergeron, bad boy. Poor Eula’s pitiful excuse for a grandson.

And poor Eula’s pitiful grandson wasn’t welcome to touch them, not for any reason. They’d just as soon go without medical help as accept his.

Which made Justin feel like hell, seeing how hard Mellette was working while all he was doing was standing around, twiddling his thumbs and wallowing in his just desserts.

“Anything I could do where they wouldn’t see me?” he finally asked her, as she rushed into the kitchen to grab a drink of water. Looking frazzled. But sexy frazzled.

“Right. Like you really want to work,” she said, not even trying to hide her contempt for him.

“I’m not saying I want to work. But I am saying I would, if I could.” It was either that or go back to his writing, and today, like yesterday and the day before that, he wasn’t in that frame of mind. In spite of an upcoming deadline, there were too many distractions. Too many things to think about. Too many humiliating memories floating around in his mind, pushing out the intelligible words that might have gone down on paper.

“Then just do it, Doctor. The only way these people are ever going to get over their grudges against you is to see you do something worthwhile. Otherwise, in their eyes, you’re still a bad boy who gave his grandma more grief than she needed.” She tossed him a devious smile. “And a bad doctor who lets me work my fingers to the bone while he’s standing around, making an ass of himself, doing nothing to help. So take your pick … ass or bad boy.”

“Do I get a third choice?”

“Two’s the limit around here. So what’s it going to be?” She took a swig out of the water bottle, then recapped it. “Because two people off my list and onto yours might make the difference between me making it home to tuck my daughter into bed tonight or being stuck here all night, since I don’t negotiate Big Swamp alone after dark.”

So she had a wedding ring and a daughter. Interesting information—not that he wanted to be involved with her in any way other than professionally. But he did enjoy these brief glimpses into her life and wondered what else he might see if he paid attention. “Okay, let me see what I can do.” With that, Justin went to the waiting area, then continued on through and opened the front door so the people standing around on the porch and in the yard could hear his announcement.

“For what it’s worth, I’m a fully qualified medical doctor. I’m sure my grandmother mentioned that to all of you at one point. I know there are a few … several of you who probably don’t want me seeing you on a professional basis, and I do understand why. But if there are any of you who’d let me examine you, I’d be glad to do so. And the fewer people Mrs. Chaisson has to see, the sooner she’ll get home to her … family. So I’ll be in the kitchen. If you’re not still holding a grudge against me, I’ll be glad to see you. Actually, I’ll be glad to see you even if you are still holding a grudge. Either way …” He shrugged, then stepped back inside and immediately looked at Mellette, who was standing near the room divider, smiling.

“Seriously?” she said. “That’s how you tell people you’re open for business? It sounded more like a challenge than an invitation. You know, come stand in my line, if you dare.”

“Best I can do. If the folks here want to see me, now they know they can. And if they don’t, I’ll be in the kitchen, cooking up a pot of gumbo.” Fixing gumbo, practicing medicine, all in the same room. What had he been thinking?

“But that’s not what Eula had me taking,” Miss Willie Bascomb scolded. “And you should know better than to give me the wrong thing, young man. Do you think I’m too old to see what you’re trying to do to me, switching off my medicine the way you are? It’s shameful. Just shameful!” She was a gray-haired lady with sharp eyes and an even sharper tongue.

“But it’s a simple anti-inflammatory for your arthritis,” Justin said. “The prescription’s easily filled at any pharmacy, and I can write you a script for ninety days so you won’t have to go to town for it very often.” Her knuckles were enlarged, fingers slightly bent into an outward curve. Nothing about Miss Willie had changed since he’d been a kid, and her condition seemed stable for the most part, but he didn’t want to prescribe an herbal potion when the market was full of great prescription drugs that could prevent further joint damage.

“But I don’t want me no prescription, Justin Aloysius. What your grandma gave me has worked well for as long as I can remember. Cures the aches, and that’s all I need.” She held up her crippled hands. “They haven’t gotten any worse in all this time, and it’s just plain foolish, wanting me to change my medicine when things are going well. Eula wouldn’t have allowed that.” She wagged a scolding forefinger at him. “And shame on you for trying.”

The only problem was Eula wasn’t here, and he couldn’t duplicate her herbal cures, which for Miss Willie’s condition was sassafras combined with prickly ash, cayenne and camphor, made into what his grandmother had called her rheumatism liniment. So in practical terms he was wasting his time with this patient because she wasn’t about to budge, just as he wasn’t. “Then I think we have a problem, because I can’t give you what my grandmother used to make. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I don’t know how to make it.”

“Because you were off gallivanting in the big city when you should have been staying home, studying real medicine, young man!” Miss Willie sniffed indignantly. “I wanted to give you a chance for Eula’s sake. She talked so highly of you, said you were the best doctor there is. But she was wrong, and it would have killed her to see just how sorry you are.”

Talk about a bitter pill to swallow. “All I can do is recommend what my kind of medicine considers standard. It’s up to you whether or not you want to take it.”

“What I want to take is my leave, young man!” With that, Miss Willie slid off the kitchen stool, gathered up her patent-leather purse, which she stuffed into the crook of her arm, and her floral print scarf, which she didn’t bother putting on her head, and headed for the kitchen door. “You tell Mellette I want my usual. She’ll know how to fix it for me.”

Then she was gone. Miss Willie and all her one hundred pounds of acrimonious fire stormed out the back door, but not before she’d looked in the pot of gumbo and snorted again. “I don’t smell filé in there,” she said. “To make a good gumbo you’ve got to use filé powder, or do you have some fancy prescription for that, too?”

“Seems like sassafras is going to be your downfall today,” Mellette said, walking into the kitchen through the front door at the same time the back door slammed shut. She was referring to filé, a thickening powder made from dried sassafras leaves.

“She always was a tough old lady,” Justin replied, on his way to the kitchen cabinet to look for filé. “Who wants what she wants.”

“She swears by the liniment. Don’t think she’s going to change her mind about that, and at her age I guess that’s her right.”

“But I can’t give her the damned liniment.” He turned to look at her. “And as a registered nurse, I’m surprised you would.”

“When you hired me to come to Big Swamp to help your grandmother, what did you expect me to do? Dispense pills these people don’t want to take? That’s not what Eula wanted, not what she would have tolerated from me. So she taught me her ways and for the most part it works out.”

“So I’m paying you to practice my grandmother’s version of medicine? Because that’s not what I wanted.”

“What you wanted was to have me help her, which was what I did. On her terms, though. Not yours.”

“If I’d wanted someone to dispense more of what my grandmother dispensed, that’s who I would have hired. But I wanted a registered nurse, someone from the traditional side of medicine. Someone to take care of the people here the way traditional medicine dictates.”

“Then I expect you’ve been paying me under false pretenses because I’ve been taking care of these people just the way your grandmother did and, so far, nobody’s complaining.”

“You’re still doing that even now that she’s gone?”

“Especially now that she’s gone. They’re scared to death they’re going to have to give up the folk medicine they’ve trusted for decades, and I suppose if you have your way, that’s what’s going to happen. Which just adds to the list of reasons why they don’t like you.”

He pulled a tin marked filé from the cabinet and measured out a scant spoonful for the gumbo.

“Twice that much,” she prompted him.

“You’re a chef, as well?”

“I know how your grandmother fixed gumbo, and I’m assuming you’re trying to copy that since it’s probably the best gumbo I’ve had anywhere.”

He shook his head, not sure if he should be angry or frustrated. Or both. “So tell me, how am I supposed to treat Miss Willie when she won’t take a traditional anti-inflammatory?”

“You give her what she wants, then if you insist on one of the regular drugs, maybe you can prescribe it after she’s come to trust you.”

“Which will be when hell freezes over,” he snapped.

“Probably. But she’s reasonable. All the people here are reasonable, which is why, when malaria hit, they took quinine—”

“Quinine?” he interrupted. “Isn’t that pretty oldschool treatment for malaria?”

“Been around for hundreds of years, but it’s cheap, and it works. And it’s what I was able to get the pharmaceutical companies to donate to me.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded. “That’s the way it works here, Justin. For the most part we get donated drugs, prescriptions that have gone over the expiration date but are still good, partial prescriptions that haven’t all been taken. And quinine worked just fine for us. But I used it along with Eula’s prescribed water and orange juice fast, along with warm-water cleanses. It all worked together, and who’s to say which was more effective—the natural remedy or the quinine, which is actually a natural remedy itself.”

“So what you’re telling me is that patience with the people here will be a virtue.”

“My husband always said patience is more than a virtue, it’s a necessity. But he was the most patient man to ever grace the earth.” She smiled fondly. “Which was good, because I’m not and I needed that counterbalance.”

“Then I say your husband deserves an award, because there aren’t too many patient people around.”

“He did deserve an award,” she said. “For a lot more than his patience. Landry was a good man. Maybe the best man I’ll ever know.”

She was speaking of him in the past tense, but Justin hated to ask, because if she was widowed, that was something he should have read on her application for working with his grandmother. Truth was, he’d hardly read past her name and credentials, he had been so impatient to hire someone. “And you’re not …” He glanced down at her wedding ring.

“Not moving on, like most people think I should. But I don’t have to. Landry can’t be replaced, and I don’t particularly want to.”

“How long?” he asked.

“A little over two years. Leonie was just a baby when he was diagnosed, and he didn’t get to stay with us very long after that. It was a pervasive pancreatic cancer. Took him almost before he knew he was sick. And you know what? If I’d known your grandmother then, I’d have been happy to give her herbal treatments a try, because I was desperate for anything. To try anything that might save him.”

“I’m so sorry,” Justin said.

“So am I, every day of my life. But thank you for the sentiment.”

“You’re raising your daughter by yourself?”

“Yes, but I have a supportive family—mother, father, six sisters. They’re so much help to me, and they love Leonie. You might have heard of my mother, actually. Zenobia.”

Justin blinked hard. “Seriously? Dr. Doucet is your mother? I’ve heard her lecture. She’s … extraordinary.”

“I think so. As a mother, anyway. As a doctor, I know she has her reputation, but I don’t pay much attention to that. So now, about Miss Willie …” Mellette pulled a small jar out of the pocket of her tan cargo pants and handed it to him. “I’d suggest you take this to her and try to make amends. I’m with you on getting her an anti-inflammatory prescription since I’ve been noting some gradual changes in her physicality, but in the year I’ve worked here she’s refused every time I’ve mentioned it. Maybe if you can get on her good side …”

He laughed out loud. “Do you really think that’s going to happen?”

“No. But I don’t believe in giving up.”

He tucked the jar of liniment into his pocket, then went back to the stove to stir the gumbo. “I’m serious about wanting you to add an extra day to your schedule here.”

“And I’m serious about not having the time. I work full time in emergency at New Hope, and between that and this, there’s no more time to give you. As it is, you’re getting my two days off from the hospital every week.”

“What about working here full time?” he asked, not sure where that had come from. Certainly, he could afford her. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Actually, I might.”

“You’d have to match, maybe even exceed my entire salary from the hospital, depending on how many hours you’d want me to work here, plus make up the difference for what you’re paying me when I’m here. And you’d have to cover my benefits—insurance, retirement plan, paid holiday. I’m a pretty well-paid specialist, Doctor, and I really don’t think I’m the solution for whatever you’re trying to accomplish.”

“What I’m trying to accomplish is to offer this community more medical care than they currently have. My grandmother loved these people, and taking care of them is what she would have wanted me to do.”

“Then stay and take care of them.”

“Not a chance.”

She smiled. “Eula said you were too good for the likes of Big Swamp. Although I think she secretly believed you’d come back to it someday.”

“I’m not too good for Big Swamp. I might have thought that at one time, but I grew up. But I do have a life that doesn’t include mosquitoes, muskrats and alligators, and it’s a life I enjoy.”

“I have a life I enjoy, too, and if I don’t get back to my patients, I’m not going to get home to that life tonight.” Mellette headed for the door, then spun around to face him before she went back to the room full of waiting patients. “Your grandma was proud of the work you do, Justin. My grandson, the real doctor, is what she always used to say. For what it’s worth, I don’t think she ever resented the fact that you chose the city over her.”

In the city … Yes, that was where he belonged. But lately he wasn’t sure why. In fact, the only thing he was sure of at the moment was that hiring Mellette had been one of the best things he’d done in a long, long time. Now all he had to do was convince her to take over here full time. Maybe then his guilty feelings would be assuaged. Or some of them.

The day went surprisingly fast, and while the patients weren’t flocking to Justin, the handful he did manage to see turned out to be a big help to her. So now Mellette could get out of Big Swamp before dark and make it back to Leonie before bedtime, for which she was eternally grateful. “You going to work again tomorrow?” she asked him, as she dipped a spoon into the gumbo that had been simmering for the better part of the day.

“If you want to call it working. I saw four people, and got rejected by four people.”

“But they gave you a chance, and that’s almost as good as them letting you treat them. Good gumbo, by the way. I think you inherited Eula’s cooking talents.”

“That was one of the things I always took for granted, I think. She had an amazing way in the kitchen that I didn’t appreciate until I was away from here, living on fast food and whatever else I could scrounge cheaply.”

“Well, if you should ever decide to give up medicine, I can definitely see you in a restaurant kitchen.”

“I’d invite you to stay, except I know you want to get back to your daughter.”

“And I might have taken you up on the offer, but you’re right. I need some time with her—don’t get enough of it.” Heading toward the door, she paused before she stepped outside. “Did you ever take that liniment to Miss Willie?” she asked. “Because if you didn’t, I’m betting now would be a good time. And I think she’d appreciate the gumbo, too. She doesn’t do much cooking for herself these days, and a nice, hearty meal would do her some good.”

“As much good as it would do me, getting into her good graces?”

“Every little bit helps,” she quipped. “Oh, and I think she probably likes her gumbo over rice.”

“Can you point me in the direction of her house?” he asked. “I might have known once, but it’s been a long time since I’ve gone tromping through this backcountry, and I don’t particularly like the idea of getting lost out there this time of day.”

“I can do you better than pointing. I’m going to go right by her place. I can give you a lift, and that should be good enough to show you how to get yourself back before the sun goes down.”

It didn’t take a minute for Justin to ladle out enough gumbo for several meals into one bowl, and scoop up an ample amount of rice into another. “Who would have ever guessed I’d be making house calls and carrying in food,” he said, shutting the kitchen door behind him, then following Mellette down to the boat dock where her skiff was moored.

It was a small boat but big enough to seat four comfortably. Not fast, but high enough to sit her above the reach of alligators and other water creatures that might get curious. Not that an alligator had ever come near enough to threaten her. But she was a city girl after all. And even though her city sat on the edge of Big Swamp, that didn’t mean she had swamp experience. In fact, she’d surprised herself taking this part-time job where she had to boat in and out for easiest access, dodging stumps and roots. There’d been any number of part-time opportunities available at New Hope, or in other private enterprises, but something about the call of the wild had intrigued her.

Maybe it had been Landry’s influence. He’d loved Big Swamp. Had spent part of his childhood in a community not too far from here. Being here made her feel closer to him.

“Who’d have ever thought you’d get me out on the bayou in a boat, all by myself, just to get to work?” she countered, as she took her seat and started the engine. “But never say never, right?”

“Being a Doucet, I guess this really wouldn’t be normal for you, would it?” he said, setting down the bowls of food in the bottom of the boat.

“Being a Doucet, nothing’s normal. We’re an … I guess the best way you can put it is an unusual family. Seven girls … My poor daddy. I know he wanted a son, but he turned out to be quite prodigious in the daughter department. And at times I think it simply overwhelmed him. Then he held out such high hopes for a grandson when I was pregnant, and got another girl.”

“Whom he loves, I’m sure,” Justin said, sitting back as the thrum of the boat’s engine settled into a gentle cadence while they wound their way through Big Swamp trees.

“He adores her. In fact, Daddy’s retired now—he was an anesthesiologist—and he’s the one who watches Leonie most of the time. Spoils her rotten. But I do hope that someday one of my sisters gives him a grandson.”

“Leonie’s his only grandchild?”

“So far. I’m the only one who’s married. My sisters Sabine and Delphine, twins, are dedicated doctors, and Magnolia’s a legal medical investigator. Then there are Ghislaine, Lisette and Acadia, all of them in various stages of their medical education or careers.” She smiled. “We’re close in age. My mother didn’t want to interrupt her medical career for too long, so she popped us all out pretty quickly, about a year apart. And so far I’m the only one to take the marriage plunge. But it’s Daddy’s biggest fear that the rest of them will fall in love at the same time and he’ll have to spring for six weddings in rapid succession.”

“I can’t even imagine having that many brothers or sisters,” he said.

“Eula never really told me much about your family situation.”

“There wasn’t much to tell. I was an only child. Didn’t come from Big Swamp, although my father did, obviously, as Eula was his mother. But my grandfather took my dad out of here when he left my grandmother to seek fame and fortune or whatever it is he wanted to do, and never looked back. He pretty much poisoned my dad to Big Swamp, and the people who lived here. Including my grandmother. Anyway, my parents raised me in New Orleans, then after they were killed—plane crash—I ended up with my grandmother in the place where my dad had refused to go.”

“And you forever hated it here?”

“That’s what she told you?”

“Not in so many words, but it makes sense. You left here when you were a kid, hardly ever came back to see her. Probably under your father’s influence in some remote way. It only stands to reason that you didn’t want to be here, given the history. Still don’t, I suppose.” She steered around a clump of low-hanging moss, then slowed down as a meandering nutria swam by the boat, not at all concerned about being disturbed. It was his domain, she supposed, and he was simply asserting his place in it.

“Still don’t on a permanent basis, but I’ve been back plenty of times to visit my grandmother,” he said, but without much conviction in his voice. “Look, earlier when you said we need to talk … you’re right. I really do want to sit down and talk to you about what I’m going to do here to take care of these people.”

“Why do you care?” she asked as she veered to the left and puttered her way up a shallow inlet.

“Because my grandmother cared.”

“Then that leads me to the obvious question.”

“Let me save you the trouble of asking. The reason I didn’t move back here, not even to New Orleans, to be closer is … complicated, and I’m not even sure I can explain it to myself, let alone someone else. It’s just the way things were with me. I ended up in Chicago, liked it and stayed. And, yes, I did have opportunities here. Could have gone to New Hope, actually. But coming back here, being so close …” He shrugged. “I like my practice, like Chicago. Like the life I have there.”

“And you were afraid that coming back to Big Swamp, even for visits, would overwhelm you with all kinds of guilty feelings.”

She slowed the boat alongside a rickety old dock, then pointed to a shanty about two hundred feet off the water. It was wooden, painted red, with blue shutters. All the paint chipped and faded. In the yard lay three good-size alligators, looking lazy and not particularly interested in the meddlers coming around to bother them.

“Or I was afraid that coming back to Big Swamp would overwhelm me with all kinds of responsibilities I can’t handle. Which is turning out to be the case.”

“Look, I’m not working tomorrow evening. If you can get to town, come by the house for dinner, around seven. Not sure you’ll want to travel these parts at night to get home, so you’re invited to stay. It’ll be at my parents’ house, by the way. I don’t live with them, but I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to extend their hospitality. That is, if you make it through the gators tonight.”

“And just how am I supposed to do that?”

“Very carefully,” she said, handing him one of his bowls of food. “They have short legs, so I think you’ll be able to outrun them.” She laughed. “But they do have that one fast burst of energy at the start, so if you don’t make it to dinner tomorrow night, I’ll know what happened.”