Against the Wind (Wayward Sons)
1. Gabi
ONE
GABI
Nina Lambert, the office manager and general keeper of all records for Island Medical, threw the lock on the front door of the clinic. “Survived another one.”
I fought the urge to wilt into the nearest chair. If I did, chances were I wouldn’t be getting up again anytime soon. “Couldn’t have done it without you. Why did no one tell me what a terrible idea it would be for me to run the clinic on my own with Dr. Sibley on vacation? If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was his version of hazing the newbie.”
I’d been back on Hatterwick for just a month and a half since I’d completed my residency down in New Orleans. I’d harbored some delusion that the pace of my small hometown of Sutter’s Ferry would be slower. In reality, I felt as if I’d hit the ground at a dead sprint and hadn’t stopped yet.
Kristie Turner, one of our nurses, scraped the hair back from her face and redid her messy bun. “To be fair, I don’t think Doc deliberately planned his vacation for when a hurricane was gonna hit the island.”
“Well, even if he had, not like he could get back from Cancun in time to help.”
For a few days, it had looked as if the storm might skew out to sea, but weather reports from this afternoon had quashed that possibility. The hurricane warning had been issued and everyone on the island was behaving accordingly. Which meant we’d had a spate of injuries and accidents around hurricane prep, in addition to the usual fare of summer colds, swimmer’s ear, and sprains. It also meant that I and my team of nurses were the only official medical professionals on the island, other than the EMTs and paramedics with the fire department. I’d have been lying if I didn’t admit that prospect was intimidating as hell.
I scooped a hand through my hair. “Let’s get out of here, y’all. I suspect tomorrow’s gonna be even worse.”
We rushed through the end-of-day close-up routine. I waved my staff on out, while I made a few last-minute chart notes about some of today’s patients. I found them easier to do in the quiet, and I needed a little time to file the rough edges off my day before I headed home to my sister’s house. I was staying with her and her family until I found a place of my own—something I hadn’t expected to take quite this long. But there simply hadn’t been time to put into it yet, not with my full attention going to getting settled in at the clinic. Not to mention everything else that had been going on the past month.
By the time I locked the back door of the clinic and walked out to my car, it was getting on toward suppertime. Caroline would have something ready, but much as I adored her and the rest of the family, I wasn’t yet up for dealing with the enthusiasm of my niece and nephew. Sliding behind the wheel, I made the snap decision to stop by OBX Brewhouse for a drink before I headed home. Caroline’s husband, Hoyt, was a firefighter, so the rule of the house was that you ate when you could. Dinner would be there whenever I made it home.
The two-story wood building housing OBX Brewhouse stood open for business as usual, with the awning windows propped open to take advantage of the cross breezes. Quite a few patrons nursed pints of custom brews in rocking chairs on the wraparound porch or scattered at various outdoor tables. The industrial-meets-beach aesthetic had been all Bree’s vision when she and her grandfather, Ed, had rebuilt after a fire destroyed the original building that dated back to the 1920s, when it had been used to process fish coming in off the docks. Now gleaming copper brewing tanks stretched up two stories behind walls of reclaimed windows that had been hung to create a division of the space without blocking the view of the process going on beyond. Reclaimed heart pine floors spread throughout the taproom, and big industrial fans above made lazy circles, stirring the faintly salty air.
The mingled aromas of beer, fried fish, and wood polish tickled my nose as I paused in the entryway. The dinner crowd filled maybe half the tables inside—mostly locals taking advantage of the calm before the storm slated to hit day after tomorrow. A cover of “Southern Cross” drifted from the sound system, not quite drowning out the rhythm of conversation and clinking glasses. Bree stood behind the bar, her blonde hair pulled back in a messy knot as she filled a flight of taster glasses. She looked up as I stepped up to the bar, a smile tipping up one corner of the mouth perpetually set in a sarcastic smirk.
“If it isn’t my favorite doctor.” She slid the flight across to a couple I didn’t recognize—tourists who either hadn’t gotten the memo about the incoming hurricane or didn’t care—and made her way over to my end of the bar. “You look like you need a drink.”
“That obvious?”
“Only to someone who’s known you since middle school.” She reached for a glass. “The usual?”
I nodded, claiming one of the bar stools. The usual was the house IPA, which I’d helped Bree test and refine during a visit home back when she’d first started brewing. “Your grandfather’s not in tonight?”
“Nah, he’s battening down the hatches at home. Though knowing Pop, he’ll show up tomorrow anyway, storm or no storm.” She set the beer in front of me. “You eaten?”
“Not yet. But Caroline will have food at the house. I just needed a little more decompression first. It was a hell of a day.”
“Storm shit?”
“You know it. Y’all ready?”
“There will be some prep still to do around here tomorrow. You ready for your first storm back?”
I sipped at my beer. “Ready might be a strong word. But I’m here. The only doctor on-island, so far as I know.”
Bree went brows up. “Only?”
“Yeah, Dr. Sibley is on vacation in Mexico.”
“Shit timing. But I have faith you’re up to the task.”
“Glad somebody thinks so.”
Bree swiped at a wet spot on the bar with a towel. “Hey, have you heard from Willa?”
Willa Sutter, one of my oldest friends and Bree’s former roommate, had just eloped last week with her lifelong crush, Sawyer Malone. Prior to the hurricane, it had been the talk of the town gossip chain.
“She popped in a couple days after the wedding.” That spontaneous elopement only a week or so after he’d gotten out of the Navy meant she hadn’t gotten around to birth control before the wedding. “But not since then. I think she’s trying to live her best newlywed life.”
“God knows, she deserves it after everything she’s been through.”
Willa was the poster girl proof that coming from money and privilege didn’t mean she had a good family. She’d been estranged from her parents since she’d turned eighteen. She hadn’t ever talked about the whys around it, but the emotional scars were easy enough to see.
“Gotta be weird for you not having her at home. Y’all roomed together for several years, right?”
“Yeah. It’s stupid quiet at the cottage. I even miss that big lug of a dog.”
Willa’s pit bull, Roy, was her well-known shadow. She seldom went anywhere without him, which I knew was as much because she loved dogs as because of her social anxiety.
“Did you see this coming? Her and Sawyer, I mean.” As someone who hadn’t ever left the island, I wanted Bree’s perspective.
“Oh, I’ve suspected they had a thing for each other for years. I confess, I didn’t quite expect it to go down the way it did, but so long as she’s happy, that’s what matters to me.”
“No question, Sawyer’s been a big support, helping her out with her grandfather’s funeral and facing down her parents.” Part of me wondered how much all of those things had pushed them to take the leap and tie the knot so they could be their own family. I sighed, thinking of all he’d done to protect Willa. “It’s nice to know at least some people have better luck in love.”
It was more than I meant to say, and Bree’s sharpening gaze told me she hadn’t missed it. “There a story about that?”
“Not one worth telling. I was involved with this guy. Thought it was serious. Turned out it was more of a situationship than a real relationship. More fool me.” I washed down the bitter taste in my mouth with more of the excellent IPA, not wanting to dwell on the shadow that had cast a pall over the last weeks of my residency. “What’s going on in your love life?”
Bree scoffed. “What love life? I don’t have time for anything other than casual.”
I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that was true. Even as busy as Bree was running the Brewhouse and keeping tabs on her grandfather to make sure he didn’t overdo, I felt like if there was someone worth it, she’d make the time. But I also knew she had old wounds that were probably mucking things up.
Way back before I’d left for college, Caroline and I had thought for a bit that Bree was finally going to get together with her long-term best friend, Ford Donoghue. Ford was also best friends with our brother, Rios; Willa’s husband, Sawyer; and Willa’s elder brother, Jace. They’d been thick as thieves from elementary school on. The Wayward Sons, they’d dubbed themselves. All four of them had gone into the Navy at the end of that summer, and something had gone horribly wrong between Ford and Bree that had ended their years-long friendship. I had some suspicions about what that might have been, but I’d never asked. Bree and I were friends, but not that kind of close. And, even if we were, I wasn’t sure she’d actually tell.
Lord knew I wasn’t in any position to judge anybody for the way they chose to run their love life.
“Fair enough.” I drained the last of my IPA. “I need to be getting on.” I stood, shouldering my purse. “It’s good to see you. Take care of yourself and Ed during the storm.”
Bree saluted. “Same goes. See you on the other side.”