Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Monday morning Hannah left her grandma's house in plenty of time to get to work at the clinic.
It was her first day, and she didn't want to be late.
But she had spent the entire weekend unloading and arranging her things, and also wanted to get to know the town a little.
So, seeing she had an entire hour before she needed to be at the clinic, went into the town, parked, and strolled down Main Street.
It was quiet since it was early in the morning, but there was still a man in the window at the candy cane shop and another man making candles at the candle shop.
She wanted to stop and watch but decided if she walked the whole way through town and had enough time, she might stop for a few minutes on the way back.
As she approached the town square, admiring the beauty and how neatly it was laid out, she noticed something weird on the gazebo in the middle of it.
As she drew closer, she realized that graffiti must've been painted on the structure overnight, or sometime over the weekend, since it hadn't been there when she had admired it while making a grocery run on Friday.
The words were vile, and she cringed. Who would deface such a beautiful thing with such awful profanity?
She didn't really understand the mentality of people who enjoyed destroying things. She was a builder. She gravitated toward the good and the wholesome. A healer.
Deliberately defacing and destroying things was a mindset she didn't comprehend.
"Do you know anything about this?" a deep voice said from behind her, causing her to startle and turn, her hand going to her throat.
"No. Other than it wasn't like this on Friday when I came through town."
Her eyes narrowed. The man in the uniform looked familiar.
Could it be?
"Ben? Ben Tucker?" She couldn't keep the words from coming out of her mouth.
His eyes widened, and for just a fraction of a second, his sheriff-on-duty mask slipped from his face as his eyes swept over her as though trying to figure out who she was.
"I'm sorry. I don't recognize you."
Her stomach dropped. Of course he didn't. She was the one who had had a crush on him every summer she'd visited her grandma back years ago. He hadn't known she was alive then. And from the dismissive way he was looking at her, he didn't really care that she was alive now.
Shoving all of those feelings aside, she forced a friendly but reserved smile onto her face. "I'm Hannah Reynolds. I knew you when I visited Mistletoe Meadows in the summers back when we were children and recognized you from then."
There was no emotion on his face as he jerked his head, acknowledging her words but not showing in any way that her name was familiar to him or that he remembered her from their childhood.
"So you didn't have anything to do with this?" He nodded at the defaced gazebo.
Her eyes widened. He wasn't suspecting her of doing anything wrong, was he? Of course, he'd found her standing here looking at it.
"No. Of course not. You're certainly welcome to search my car or my person or my house. I don't even have paint. Or a hammer, or... anything that would've damaged the wood like that. At least not that I know of," she said.
She must've sounded sufficiently knowledgeable, because he grunted, wrote something down in the notebook he carried, and then turned back toward the gazebo.
"I just got the call not that long ago, and the person seemed to indicate that it probably happened overnight. Do you have an alibi?"
Did she have an alibi?
"I'm sorry, I live alone. But I guess if you need to ask me more questions, I'll be at the clinic today.
" She couldn't help it. Her words were frosty.
Just because she was standing here looking at it didn't mean that she was involved in it in any way.
Surely she didn't look like a criminal, did she?
Of course, probably he wasn't allowed to go by how someone actually looked.
"I'll take your name and number. If I have any more questions for you, I'll be in touch."
So he wasn't even going to let her escape with just a mention of her location.
Grinding her teeth and trying not to be unkind, she gave him her name and her number. There was no reason for her not to do it.
"I'll be mentioning that you were found on site when the officer arrived to investigate the crime."
"I just happened to be walking through. I had nothing to do with it.
" Now he was annoying her. Was this the way investigations usually went?
Anyone who was found in the area was automatically a suspect?
"Surely you have better skills than this.
You don't need to go around accusing innocent people of heinous crimes just because they happen to be within ten feet of the structure when you arrive. "
"You need to be respectful toward the police officer on scene," Ben murmured. But his tone was dismissive as he wrote in his notebook.
"Are you done with me?" she asked, wishing that she hadn't taken a walk through town to begin with. And annoyed with herself for recognizing him when he obviously didn't even know her. She was so pathetic.
She supposed she could have introduced herself as Dr. Hannah Reynolds, but she didn't like to do that.
It felt a little bit like bragging and also like she was trying to use her earned title to command respect.
She firmly believed that if she were to be respected and admired, it would be on the merits of what she had done, not because of a title she had.
Regardless, she had to put this behind her. She had a community who needed her and a new job that awaited, and she couldn't allow her irritation over an arrogant and incompetent policeman to derail her from the calling that she had, which was to help patients and heal them with God's help.
Because of the extra time she spent at the gazebo, she did not stop to watch the candles being made but instead drove straight to the clinic after she got to her car.
Unsurprisingly, Terry was already there.
"You're early," Terry said, looking up from an iPad with a smile.
"It wouldn't do to be late on my first day. Plus, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't eager to start."
And nervous. The last time she'd practiced medicine, she'd made a horrendous mistake.
It had not cost anyone their life, and the stakes were not as high at the clinic as they were at the hospital.
That didn't mean that she didn't have that in the back of her head and that it didn't make her feel insecure and like.
.. maybe she didn't have what it took to be a doctor.
Not that her medical degree hadn't been fully and completely earned, because it had.
"Are you ready?" Terry asked, pushing herself up from where she had been sitting.
"Absolutely."
"All right then, I’ll go over today's patients with you.
We also take walk-ins as our schedule allows, and so this schedule might not be everyone we see.
But at least I can give you a little bit of the background for these folks.
I'm sure as you're here longer, you'll get to know folks on your own. "
"I appreciate all the help I can get." Hannah was sincere about that.
From her understanding, small towns were rather tight-knit, and it would help to have a little bit of information tucked in her back pocket so that.
.. even if she didn't quite fit in, she knew a little something about the people she would be treating.
"Our first patient will be Mr. Jones. He's owned a farm in the area for more than fifty years. He bought it from his parents, who also bought it from their parents."
"In other words, his family farm has been in the area for generations."
"Exactly. He's a little crusty, but he's got a good heart. Still, he's not going to do any kind of newfangled medicine. So I've been trying to do a holistic approach while noting that he declines any kind of medication I suggest."
"I see. So that's the way you handle things?" She knew that if there were any kind of lawsuits, meticulous notes needed to be taken that proper care had been offered and suggested and then declined by the patient.
"Yes. I have not told anyone that they cannot continue to come if they don't abide by what the medical standards suggest. I just can't do that. Even though my insurance company has threatened to drop me over and over."
"I see."
Hannah shivered a bit. The idea of not having insurance was scary.
Lawsuits could, and often did, run into the millions of dollars.
They needed to be covered. Still, she truly believed from the depths of her soul that patients should have the final say in their care.
Doctors were not infallible, and they certainly were not God.
They could give recommendations, but she'd seen doctors give ultimatums and unceremoniously and rather rudely kick patients out of their practice for not doing exactly what they were told.
She just didn't feel that was the right way to handle it either.
"The second patient will be my mother. She.
.. she has an issue that no one in the family knows about.
" Terry looked up, and Hannah met her eyes.
They both knew that as doctors, all medical information had to be kept confidential.
But Terry was telling her that what would normally be casual conversation could not be.
"She has leukemia, and she has decided not to go with traditional treatment."
"Oh." Hannah didn't know what else to say. Leukemia was usually very easily treated in most cases. But with Marjorie choosing not to do treatment, she was setting herself up for a slow and possibly very painful death.
"How long has she refused treatment?"