“Sure. Want to give me a key?”
Mel smiled at her sister. She kissed her cheek. “We don’t use too many keys around here, sugar. It’s open.”
Mel rode with Doc in his truck, just in case some of the dirt roads had gotten soft from the rain. She didn’t want her BMW stuck in the mud.
They found Sondra and her husband in a state of panic, for the baby did seem to be wheezing. His respirations were accelerated and shallow, but he had no temperature. After a little oxygen, he cleared right up, which did nothing to tell them what was wrong. Mel rocked him for a good long while. Doc sat at the kitchen table and talked to the Pattersons, drinking coffee. “He’s too young for something like asthma. Might be some kind of allergic reaction, a symptom of an infection, or it could be more serious—a problem with his heart or lungs. Tomorrow you’re going to have to take him over to Valley Hospital to the outpatient clinic for tests. I’ll write down the name of a good pediatrician.”
“Is he going to be all right through the night?” Sondra asked tearfully.
“I expect so, but I’ll leave the oxygen. You can drop it off tomorrow. It wouldn’t hurt to spell each other and stay awake, just in case. If you have any problems or you’re worried about him, call me. That little foreign thing of Mel’s isn’t worth a crap on these roads in the rain. Besides, Melinda has company from out of town.”
Two hours later, Doc was ready to take Mel back to her sister. By eight o’clock, all the patrons had left Jack’s except Joey. Jack had sent Ricky home, Preacher was cleaning up the kitchen, and he brought Joey a cup of coffee and sat down with her again. He asked about her kids, what her husband did, how she liked living in Colorado Springs, and then, “She didn’t know you were coming.”
“No, it was a complete surprise. Though it shouldn’t have been.”
“Your timing couldn’t be better. Something’s been eating at her.”
“Oh,” Joey said. “I guess I thought you knew what was going on. Because she said that you and she…” She stopped and looked into her coffee cup.
“We what?” he asked.
Joey raised her eyes and smiled sheepishly. “She said you kiss.”
“Every time she’ll give in a little.”
“In a place like Virgin River, does that make you a couple?” she asked. He sat back in his chair, willing the bar to stay empty. “Yeah, something like that,” he said. “With a big hunk of something missing.”
“Look, I don’t know that I have the right…”
“To tell me who ripped her heart out and crushed it under the heel of his boot?” he finished for her.
“Her husband,” Joey said bravely, lifting her chin.
That caused Jack to sit up straighter. Joey hadn’t said ex-husband. “What did he do to her?” he asked, a definite angry edge to his voice.
Joey sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought. If Mel hadn’t told him, she didn’t want him to know. She was going to be pissed. “He got himself murdered in an armed robbery that he happened into by accident.”
“Murdered,” Jack said weakly.
“He was an emergency room doc. He’d worked an all-nighter and stopped into a convenience store for milk on his way home in the morning. The robber panicked and shot him. Three times. He died instantly.”
“God,” Jack said. “When?”
“A year ago. Today.”
“God,” he said again. He leaned an elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand. He massaged his eyes. “She knows it was today?”
“Of course she knows. She’s been heading for it. Painfully.”
“In L.A.,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “And to think I wanted to punch him in the face a few times for hurting her.”
“Look, I feel kind of funny about this. Disloyal. One of the things that drew her here was that no one knows. No one looks at her with pity. No one asks her fifteen times a day how she’s doing, if she’s lost more weight, if she’s sleeping yet…I guess I thought she’d have told you, since…”
“She’s holding back,” he said. “Now I know why.”
“And I let it out. I don’t know whether to be guilty or relieved. Someone who cares about her out here should know what she’s been through. What she’s going through.”
She took a breath. “I didn’t think she’d make it a week here.”
“Neither did she.” Jack was quiet for a minute and then said, “Can you imagine what kind of courage it took for her to chuck her big job in L.A. and come to this little town, to work with a man like Doc Mullins? She told me a little about what it was like there—city medicine, she called it. A battle zone, she said. She thought it was going to be real dull and boring here. Then she ends up riding to the hospital with a patient in the back of an old pickup, over these roads, holding an IV bag over her head, freezing. Christ, I could’ve used her in combat.”
“Mel has always been tough, but Mark’s death really derailed her. That’s why she did this—she started being afraid to go to the bank, the store.”
“And she hates guns,” he supplied. “In a little town where everyone has a gun because they have to.”
“Oh, jeez. Look, it’s no secret—I begged her not to do this—I thought it was crazy and way too drastic a change,” Joey said. “But something about this seems to be working for her. What she calls country doctoring. Or maybe it’s you.”
“She has these spells,” he said. “When she’s so sad. But it passes and there is such a brightness inside her. You should have seen her the morning after she delivered her first baby at Doc’s. She said she felt like a champ. I’ve never seen anyone so lit up.”
He chuckled at the memory, but there was a morose tone to his laugh.
“You know what—I think I’m going to call it a night. Go back to Mel’s and hang out until she gets home, so I can be there for her.”
“Let Preacher drive you,” he said. “These roads at night, in the rain, can be treacherous if you don’t know them. The first night Mel drove out to the cabin, she slid off a soft shoulder and had to be towed out.”
“What about Mel?” she asked.
“Doc might just take her straight home—he has no respect for that little car of hers. Or she could come here for her car—she’s pretty good on these roads now, but if she has any worries about it, I’ll drive her out. Fact is, it wouldn’t surprise me if she was out at Patterson’s half the night, so don’t worry. She hates leaving a sick patient. But I’ll wait up.” He went to the bar and got a piece of paper. “Call me if she shows up at the cabin. Or, if you need anything,” he said, writing down his number. It was nearly ten by the time Mel walked into the bar. She saw Jack at the table by the fire, but frowned when she looked around and didn’t see Joey. “Where’s my sister?”
she asked. “Her car’s out front.”
“I had Preacher take her home in the truck. Her first night in town she shouldn’t have to deal with those roads in the rain.”
“Oh. Thanks,” she said. “I’ll see you sometime tomorrow, then.”
“Mel?” he called. “Sit with me a minute.”
“I should go to Joey. She came all this way…”
“Maybe we should talk. About what’s been going on with you.”
She had been on this precipice for days, teetering on the fine edge of losing it. The only thing that seemed to take her mind off the violent event that changed her life was work. If she had a patient or an emergency, she could lose herself in it. Even the day with her sister, showing Joey the town, the lambs, the beauty, took her away a little bit. But it just kept coming back, haunting her. A picture of him lying on the floor bleeding out could float in front of her eyes and she’d have to pinch them closed, praying she wouldn’t break down. There was no way she could sit down and talk about it. What she needed right now was to get out of here, go home and have a good hard cry. With her sister, who understood.
“I can’t,” she said, her words little more than a breath.
Jack stood up. “Then let me drive you home,” he said.
“No,” she said, holding up a hand. “Please. I need to just go.”
“Why don’t you just let me hold you. Maybe you shouldn’t be alone.”
So, Mel thought. She told him! She closed her eyes and held up a hand as if to ward him off. Her nose became red, her lips pink around the edges. “I really want to be alone. Please, Jack.”
He gave his head a nod and watched her leave.
Mel went down the porch steps to her car, but she didn’t make it. It hit her before she could get there. She was nearly doubled over by the sudden crushing pain of memory, of loss. The emptiness came back, draining her of all good feelings and filling her up with the horrific unanswerable questions. Why, why, why? How can this happen to a person? Even if I’m not good enough to deserve better, Mark was! He should have lived to be an old man, to save lives and treat people with the brilliance and compassion that made him one of the best emergency room doctors in the city!
She had made it all day without falling apart, but now in the dark, in the cold night rain, she felt as though she was going to collapse to the ground and just lie there in the mud long enough to perish, to be with him. She stumbled toward a tree and grabbed the trunk, embracing it, holding herself up and holding on at the same time. The cries that came out of her were loud and wrenching.
Why couldn’t we at least have had a baby? Why couldn’t even that small thing have worked in our favor? Just to have a piece of him to live for…
Inside, Jack paced back and forth in the bar, feeling his own helplessness because he couldn’t do anything for her. He knew all about the crushing pain of loss; even more about the difficulty of getting beyond it. He hated that she’d left without at least letting him try to comfort her.
Frustrated, he opened the door to go after her. There sat her BMW, right in front of the porch, but she wasn’t in it. He squinted to look into the car, but then he heard her. Sobbing. Wailing. He couldn’t see her. He stepped out onto the porch, went down the steps into the rain. And then he saw her—holding on to the tree, the rain drenching her.
He ran to her, embracing her from behind, holding the tree with her, holding her against the tree. Her back heaved with her cries, her cheek pressed against the rough bark. The sound of her anguish broke his heart; no way could he let her go, no matter what she said about being alone. This crying made her weeping over baby Chloe look like a mere rehearsal. She was wracked. She started to crumble to the ground and he put his arms under hers and held her upright as the rain soaked them.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she howled. “Oh God, oh God, oh God!”
“Okay,” he whispered. “Let it go, let it out.”
“Why, why, why?” she cried in the night, her breath coming in jagged gasps. Her whole body jerked and shook as she cried. “Oh, God, why?”
“Let it all out,” he whispered, his lips against her wet hair. She screamed. She opened up her mouth, tipped her head back against him and screamed at the top of her lungs. He hoped she wouldn’t wake the dead, the sound was so powerful. But he only hoped she wasn’t heard so that no one would disturb them and stop this purging. He wanted to do this with her. He wanted to be there for her. The scream subsided into hard sobbing. Then more quietly, “Oh, God, I can’t. I can’t, I can’t.”
“It’s okay, baby,” he whispered. “I’ve got you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”