6
By Sunday, Clara had recovered from the bottomless margarita and her OOTD was pretty and feminine and springtimey. She felt like a May queen (in February) in a delicate floral dress with a pale pink ribbon in her dark brown hair.
Of course, when you lived four thousand feet above sea level, you couldn’t wear a short dress in the winter without tall boots and a good coat. But it was springtime in her heart as she went to church with her parents for the first time since her mother’s knee surgery.
Her aunt approached her in the parking lot after Mass and said, “Clara, I completely forgot to bring the cookies. I’m so sorry. I’m going to have Asher drop them off later.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Clara said. “Don’t worry about it. I can pick them up in the morning on my way to work.”
“Or you could come with us now,” her uncle interposed. “Might be some jalapeno quiche in it for you.”
She laughed. “If you’re inviting me to brunch, I accept.”
“I can drive you,” came a deep voice. “Then they won’t need to give you a ride home.”
She looked over her shoulder and was surprised to see Jesse joining their group. He hadn’t been around when they’d left the house, and she hadn’t noticed him inside the church, either, but he was dressed in a crisp white shirt and gray pants.
“Good thinking,” Jim approved. “There’s some quiche in it for you, too.”
“Clara, can I have this dress?” her cousin Lorelei asked her, drawing her attention away from the conversation. “Like, when you’re done with it?”
“No chance.”
“Will you make me one, then? I’m turning seventeen in April.”
“No, are you kidding? It takes weeks to make something like this. What did you get me for my birthday? Oh, right: nothing.”
“Ugh, fine,” Lorelei said good-naturedly. “It’s cute, though.”
“Thanks.” When Lorelei was out of earshot, Clara turned to her uncle and said, “A hundred bucks for a dress like this. That’s a family discount.”
“We’ll take two,” he said promptly, making her laugh again.
“You should ride with Jesse,” Liesl told her, “so you don’t have to squeeze between your cousins. Your mother’s going home to rest, she said, but we’ll send her something.”
“Oh, okay. See you at the house, then.”
The Jim Wilders departed, and Clara was left alone with Jesse. She looked up at him and said after a moment, “Quiche guy, huh?”
“Yes,” he replied, unreadable behind a pair of sunglasses. “I’m so hungry.”
She couldn’t help being amused by the gravely serious delivery. “Do you want me to drive?”
“I’m driving. No music.”
“Okay,” she said agreeably, and he indicated where he had parked her father’s truck.
Once they were on the road, he glanced at her and said, “So, you make dresses, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you learn?”
“Aunt Liesl taught me the basics when I was in high school. She doesn’t sew a lot but she can fix tears and put buttons back on and stuff. She thinks all women should know how to sew a little and I happen to agree with her.”
“Makes sense.”
“You think all women should know how to sew?” she asked skeptically.
“No,” he said immediately, as though he didn’t want to go on record saying any such thing. “Look, I’m just trying to be friendly.”
“Oh. Well, I’m pretty self-taught. You can get patterns online for any type of garment and then, you know, trial and error. I studied textiles and apparel but all I really got out of that was that the fashion industry sucks.”
“You ever think of starting a business of your own?”
“No. I just like making clothes for myself.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“You probably don’t get it,” she said with a brittle laugh. “To you, it’d be like going to medical school just so you can take care of yourself when you get sick. But it’s not the same. Even a little boutique isn’t just designing and creating, it’s a ton of business and marketing and statistics. Psychology of appearance. I don’t want to do any of that. I don’t want to spend eighty hours a week creating and editing content for social media so I can attract brand partnerships.”
“I do get it,” he said. “It doesn’t sound fun to me, either.”
“I post what-I-wore pictures a few times a week and people can take them or leave them,” she said defensively. “If I get a bonus from Instagram or something, fine. But I’m not willing to spend all my free time hustling.”
“Sounds like a great boundary.”
“Well, my twenty-seven thousand followers don’t seem to have a problem with it.”
“I’m not arguing with you,” he pointed out.
“I don’t want a demanding career,” she went on, aware that she was saying too much but unable to stop the flow of her own words. “You probably don’t get that, either. I was raised by a career woman and I love and admire her. But I don’t want to be that kind of mom. Don’t tell her that.”
“I wouldn’t tell her that. Why do you think I can’t understand any of this?”
“I don’t know, because you followed in her footsteps? Or because a lot of people think I’m supposed to be Grace Wilder 2.0.”
He glanced quickly at her before returning his eyes to the road, and he was frowning slightly. “It’s fine if you don’t follow in her footsteps, Clara. I hope you know that by now.”
She did know it, so why did hearing him say it make her feel like hugging him? Of course, if she even tried it he’d probably make her get out and walk.
“What are the cookies for?”
She knew that Jesse was purposefully navigating the conversation away from the heavy stuff, and it was a relief. His innocent question about starting a business had hit a nerve she wasn’t even aware of. “Uh, the practice. They’re part of my Valentine’s decor. And we can give them out to people.”
“Should a doctor’s office serve desserts?” he asked doubtfully.
“What do you want me to give to patients? Spinach?”
“Why give them anything?” he asked reasonably. “I’ve never gotten any food from my doctor.”
“It’s good business,” she informed him.
“Because it keeps them unhealthy?”
“No! Because it’s the kind of thing people tell their friends about. Then all the kids want to go to the pediatrician that gives out cookies on holidays.” Never mind that there was only one pediatrician in town; they needed customer loyalty in case another one ever showed up.
“Wait—pediatrician?”
She frowned at his bewilderment. “Dr. Pike is a pediatrician. You didn’t know that? Like forty percent of our patients are kids. When they turn eighteen, they start seeing my mom instead.”
“Neat,” he said grimly.
“Good business,” she said again.
They drove in silence for a few minutes. They were on a two-lane highway, one lane in each direction with a dotted line in the middle to allow passing in the oncoming lane. The speed limit climbed from sixty-five to eighty as they got farther out of Romeo, which just went to show that it was truly the middle of nowhere.
“What is that?” he muttered, and she felt him braking as she tried to make out the nature of the debris on the road ahead. They must’ve realized at the same time that chunks of a motorcycle were spread across both lanes of traffic, because she reached for her phone as he steered onto the shoulder. “Call 9-1-1,” he ordered. “It must have just happened. We need an ambulance. Mile marker 905.”
Clara hit the hazard lights as she spotted the figure lying motionless several yards away from the biggest piece of mangled bike. Her hands trembled as she swiped the emergency icon on her phone.
Jesse was climbing out of the truck, but just before his door closed she remembered something important.
“Wait! There’s a medical kit under your seat.”
“Oh, good,” he said with perfect calm, found the kit, and jogged away to help the biker.
As she relayed his message to the 9-1-1 dispatcher she realized the danger of cars approaching the scene from east and west at above 80 miles per hour, and she scrambled to find the road flares her father kept in his glove box.
“I gotta go,” she told the dispatcher, hurrying back in the direction from which they had come and breaking open the first flare. She left it in the middle of the lane where it could be seen from two miles away, and called her mom as she went to do the same thing on the other side of the accident.
“I’ll call the hospital and let them know about Jesse,” her mother said, with that same unruffled calm. An annoying doctor trait, Clara realized. “Do you know anything about the patient’s condition?”
“No, I didn’t want to look,” Clara admitted. “I’m putting flares in the road.”
“Good girl. You’re just like your father. Put me on speaker now, I want to talk to Jesse.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Clara said automatically, and did so. She approached Jesse and his patient with some trepidation; obviously, she wished the poor guy all the best, but she had never seen a bloody accident before and was afraid she would faint or scream or throw up. The front of Jesse’s white shirt was dark red and so were his hands and arms up to the elbows. The injured biker was not making any noise, but after the fastest, sweepingest glance possible, Clara could not bring herself to look at him. “Dr. Wilder for you. On speaker.”
Jesse looked up, not comprehending, and then saw the phone. “Oh. Dr. Wilder, can you hear me?”
“Yes. What are we looking at, Jesse?” came her mother’s brisk voice.
“Patient’s an Hispanic male, late forties, presents with severe head trauma, partial amputation of the—”
Clara wished she had the power to turn off her hearing. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and continued to hold the phone while Jesse listed the patient’s injuries, reported on his vital signs, described what he had done and was doing, and then the two doctors discussed a course of action.
The police arrived before the ambulance, and one cop went to assist Jesse while the other began to manage the traffic that was beginning to accumulate.
At last the ambulance arrived, and the precarious process of moving the injured biker began. Clara stayed well out of the way now, holding her phone tight enough to leave marks on her hand. Her mother asked her how she was holding up, Clara made some brave and selfless reply, and her mother assured her the Colonel was on his way to her and hung up to put in the call to the emergency room in Alpine.
When the ambulance left with Jesse in it, headed for the faraway regional hospital, Clara climbed back into the truck to stay warm and realized that the keys were still in the ignition. She was glad to be able to run the heater, but did not trust herself to drive—her hands were shaking violently, so she shoved them in her pockets.
The Colonel took some time to reach her because of the traffic due to the road closure, but eventually he was there opening her door and she jumped gratefully into his arms for a hug.
“Did good, kid,” he said in his quiet way, and the coldness inside her began to warm up.
“I forgot to call Aunt Liesl,” she realized, and wondered why she should start to cry over such an insignificant detail.
“She knows,” he assured her. “Let’s get you home. We can pick up the truck later.”
“Okay,” she sobbed. “I used up all your flares.”
“I have more,” he said, removing the keys from the truck and locking it up. Then he took her hand and led her back to where he’d left her mother’s car.
“Why is everyone but me so calm?” she wailed.
“Clara, you just saw a man with his leg torn off. You shouldn’t be calm.”
This sounded like very good logic, so she took his advice to heart and cried all the way home.
When they reached the house, her aunt met them at the front door. Liesl whisked her upstairs and into the shower, remarking brightly that the May-queen dress had come through unscathed. But Clara thought it might be time to give the dress to Lorelei, after all.
As soon as she had dressed in sweats and slippers, she headed back downstairs to join her mother on the couch by the fireplace.
“You need to eat,” Dr. Wilder said, tucking a blanket around her. “I can’t cook for you, but I got you a cordon bleu chef.”
“What will it be?” Liesl asked. “I brought apple strudel muffins and jalapeno bacon quiche, but I can make something else if that doesn’t sound good. Chocolate chip pancakes? Mocha latte? Lasagna?”
“I’m not sure I can eat right now,” Clara admitted.
Liesl held up her open hands in a bracing gesture. “Think about it. Meanwhile, look at the cookies you ordered.”
“Oh, you brought them?” she asked, struggling to be interested in something that would have fascinated her a couple hours ago.
But when Liesl showed her the frosted sugar cookies she’d made for the medical practice, Clara felt her enthusiasm rekindling. They were shaped like hearts, decorated in pastels, and bore the classic sayings from conversation heart candy.
“Oh, these look so sweet. How did you get the words to look so neat?”
“Practice.”
“‘Fax Me,’” Dr. Wilder read. “That’s pretty good, coming from a doctor’s office.”
Clara agreed. “Thank you for making these, Auntie. They’re exactly what I wanted.”
“Well, I normally hate working with frosting, but these were pretty fun.”
“Could I really have a mocha?” Clara asked her a little sheepishly.
“Of course. Coming right up.”
Clara recalled suddenly that Jesse had been starving hours ago, and hoped he had gotten something to eat.