3. Erin #2
At the front desk on the way out, Lito opens a drawer and produces a sticker sheet. Birds in every color the printer had, a whole flock of them. He lays it on the counter in front of Polly with a knowing smile. She takes her time choosing.
By eleven, I'm treating a teenager with a Colles' fracture — wrist bent wrong from a fall. I block the wrist, set it, cast it. She cries the whole time. I tell her six weeks of no sports. She nods, still damp-faced, and I hand her the prescription. She shuffles out with her head down.
By noon, I have read three elderly charts Whitlock handed me.
They are dense, cross-indexed in a shorthand that only works because the same person built it and he is still here.
I read them at the front counter with my coat still on.
The clinic bustles around me: Lito on the phone, a waiting-room chair scraping, the autoclave cycling in the back, the radiator ticking under the window.
The room smells of antiseptic and instant coffee, warmer than the hospital. More inhabited. Someone has been trying their best here with what they have.
I close the last chart. The differential for the two o'clock patient is already running in the background. I leave it there and go back to work.
Linda finds me at the front counter. "Come on," she says, "you've earned it." She steers me to the break room with a hand at my elbow, brief and professional, and I understand that I now belong to her clinic.
Lito has beaten us there. Laid out on the table are a large glass container of stir-fried noodles and a Tupperware of small fried rolls. The warm, hearty smell is enough to remind me I haven't eaten yet.
Whitlock walks in to rinse out a mug. Lito looks up from the rolls he is plating and waves him over. "Doc Ben! Plenty of pancit and lumpia to go around!"
Whitlock glances at the table, dries his hands, and gives Lito a small apologetic smile. "Next time." And he heads out.
Lito watches him go for a half-second, shrugs, then turns back to the food. He fills the plates briskly and points to the chair nearest him. "And you, Doc — no escaping! Sit, sit. Here at the clinic, we eat together. You are family."
He serves me first, then Linda, then himself, and settles in like a man whose meeting has finally come to order. "I will tell you everything you need to know."
My plate arrives with the heavenly smell of soy and garlic.
Pancit bihon , he tells me when I ask. Fine rice noodles, stained gold from the sauce, tender where the cabbage and carrot still have bite.
The lumpias beside it are golden, crisp-fried, the size of my finger.
A wedge of lemon sits at the rim of the plate, on top of the noodles.
He nods at it. "For the squeeze. Calamansi is better, but lemon will do in Colorado. "
I take the first bite. It's very good. Better than anything the cafeteria at Northwest Memorial ever managed.
"Lito," I say. The name is stitched on his lanyard, and again on the small plaque at the front of his desk. "Is that short for something?"
"Angelito." He laughs, delighted. "My mother named me for an angel. The name did not take, as you can see. Lito is fine. It's what everyone calls me. Even Dr. Whitlock, and he is a formal man."
Linda sets her water down and clears her throat. "So. David Perry drove you in this morning." It's not quite a question.
"He did," I say. "Hank is fixing my car."
"Mm." She takes another bite without looking up from her plate. "He doesn't usually come down on a Monday."
Lito's fork stops halfway to his mouth. He looks at Linda. Linda ignores him. He looks at me, then back at Linda again. His eyes narrow slightly as he leans forward.
"Perry Woodworks," he begins. "Custom furniture, reclaimed timber, six-month waitlist minimum. He makes heirloom things, the kind you hand down. Mountain SAR, years in. Widower, four years. Cleo is his only one.
"Every unmarried woman in Cedar Hollow has tried to bring that man a casserole," Lito goes on with the confidence of someone who has been watching this for years. "Linda made a very good faith effort."
"Oh, don't you start! Don't mind him. I made it for the little girl," Linda says in between bites of crispy lumpia .
"Sure." He looks at me. "He doesn't date. He won't." His voice gets quieter. "Claire was a lovely woman. But four years is four years." Then he just resumes eating.
Linda brings the coffee pot around. Lito's mug first, then her own, then mine. She gives me a generous pour and tops it off with a little extra. She leans against the counter with her mug in both hands. "Claire's heart never recovered from the pregnancy. I was at the funeral."
"She was always so tired after Cleo came," Lito adds. "We all just thought, you know, new baby. But she'd get winded walking from the parking lot. I would see her stop at the front step sometimes, just to catch her breath."
"Her ankles," Linda says. "Swollen for months. She laughed it off, said her shoes didn't fit anymore. And her heart raced constantly, the poor thing. She mentioned it once at the desk. Said she thought it was just nerves. New mother nerves."
"She seemed better for a while. We thought she'd turned a corner." Lito's eyes grow distant. "Then one morning she just didn't."
Silence fills the break room. Linda is already at the sink, running the tap. Lito has stopped chewing. He pushes the Tupperware of lumpia toward me. The food isn't as enticing anymore.
My hands turn cold around the mug. I reach instinctively for the locket against my chest.
Heart never recovered from the pregnancy. I know what that is. It wasn't postpartum exhaustion.
It was a failing heart, already beyond repair.
I press my hands flat against my thighs under the table. I slow my breathing. I make sure my face betrays none of my thoughts.
Small boots by the door, laces still loose. A ring on a weathered cord against a chest.
Linda begins humming at the sink. Lito demolishes two more lumpias . Neither of them is watching me.
I cup my coffee mug again and wait for the warmth to seep into my palms, hoping it will keep them steady.
It takes a long while.