3. Erin
ERIN
The plow has been through ahead of us — not recently, but enough.
The road comes down off the mountain in long switchbacks, and David's truck takes them in low gear, the engine doing the work without complaint.
The snow on either side has gone from deep to managed, the asphalt showing through in places.
The patches are gray and dry, like they are done arguing with the weather.
Cleo is in the back seat with her bare feet tucked up on the bench, singing a song about Biscuit.
Biscuit is the town diner's orange cat, shaped like a sourdough loaf basking in the sun all day.
She has been singing it for eleven minutes.
I know because she started it on the first switchback, and I counted.
David checks the road, checks the mirrors, checks the grade on the next turn. Every few minutes he glances across at me. A second, no more. Then he's back on the road.
My wrist aches where I've been pressing it against the door armrest. I shift and put my hand in my lap. The cut at my temple has settled into the dull background throb of a bruise, which may be why I find the light coming off the snow a degree or two too bright.
The town comes up at the bend.
It's smaller than I expected: low buildings with steep-pitched roofs, a street the plow has brought down to a serviceable width, mountains sitting at its back going straight up like they've always been there and have no plans to change.
At the turnoff, the population sign. CEDAR HOLLOW, POP. followed by a number crossed through in red marker, a second number above it in pen crossed through after that. The current number is written in blue marker in someone's careful hand, and it reads 825.
The first thing I see on Main is a diner, its neon sign burning orange even in the morning light, warm windows, black-and-white checkered tile along the base. Next to it, a bakery with a blue door.
"That's Joan's." David tips his chin toward the diner as we pass. "And that's Bluebird Bakery. Clinic's two blocks up, by the hardware store." He doesn't elaborate. Cedar Hollow in three facts. He seems to feel that covers it.
The garage comes up on the right. The sign above the bay reads EARL'S AUTO & TOWING in faded red paint that's been there a long time. Below it, in newer black letters that haven't had time to weather in yet: HANK'S .
David pulls to the apron and puts the truck in park.
A man comes out of the bay wiping his hands on a shop rag, big and unhurried, gray at the temples.
Hank, I assume. David hands him the bag.
A few words about my sedan — the mile marker, the front end, the cedar that came through the windshield.
Hank nods along, taking it in. He glances past David, registers me through the windshield with a small upward nod, and goes back to David.
David comes back around and climbs in. His eyes are on the garage sign, though his face is turned slightly toward me. “Earl, up there? He was Hank’s dad.” He isn’t quite looking at me. “Passed a couple months back. Town’s still working out which name to use.”
He puts the truck in gear and we drive the two blocks to the clinic.
It sits beside a hardware store, two stories of wood and stone. Timber framing over the entrance. Warm amber light already in the windows even at this hour. Either someone has been here a while, or someone never left.
David pulls to the curb. The cold when I open the door is sharper than Denver cold — this is mountain-cold, weight and clarity all at once.
I put one foot on the running board and the other on the asphalt.
My left wrist catches on the door frame with the same ache it’s been throwing all morning. I’m steady.
I turn around to look at David. “Thank you.”
Cleo has rolled down her window. "Bye, Dr. Erin! Daddy, she's coming for pancakes on Saturday."
"Oh — I don't —" Cleo is still hanging halfway out the window, waiting. "That's very kind of you."
"I know! Triangles?"
"You bet," I say.
She nods, satisfied, before pivoting to David. "Daddy. Can we go to the Bluebird after? For cookies?"
"Already?" David says. Then softer: "All right."
Cleo nods again as she sits back inside and rolls her window back up.
Behind her, David looks at me over the roof of the truck — the same check from the switchbacks, except it isn't. Something has settled in him between then and now.
He holds the look, then lets it go and gets in. The truck pulls out.
I watch it until it turns the corner and doesn't come back.
I turn around toward the clinic.
A wooden sign stands out front, built into the ground rather than driven into it. CEDAR HOLLOW FAMILY CLINIC across the top in carved letters. And below, smaller, the words a person would have chosen on purpose. Compassionate care. Close to home.
I push through the door.
The man at the front desk is already on his feet when I come through, as if he's been waiting for the bell to give him permission.
Mid-forties. A green cardigan over a button-down, the cuffs folded once.
Reading glasses pushed up into hair that has gone gray at the front and nowhere else.
He has the kind of face that arranges itself toward whoever has just walked in — open, attentive, glad to see them.
"Oh." He puts both hands flat on the desk. "You must be Dr. Erin!"
"Erin Clark." I put my hand out.
He takes my hand in both of his. "Lito Reyes.
I run the desk, I answer everything, I take care of everyone here" — one hand goes to his chest — "and I am very, very glad you made it.
" He comes around the desk without letting go.
"Since spring, Doctor. Since spring, Dr. Whitlock has been carrying this whole —"
A door opens behind the desk. A second man comes through drying his hands on a paper towel — pale blue scrubs, a long undershirt rolled at the wrists, glasses fogged at the lower edge from the autoclave he must have just stepped away from.
Late forties. Dark hair going to silver at the temples in a light dusting, not the full salt-and-pepper of a man who has surrendered to it.
He looks like he hasn't been off his feet since morning, except morning was a long time ago.
His eyes flit to my badge, and he stops in his tracks. He doesn't seem to care enough to mask his reaction. He takes a breath and pushes his glasses up his nose.
"Dr. Whitlock," I say in greeting.
"Ben." He puts his hand out and I take it. Dry, firm. A clinician's handshake. He shakes his head once. The breath that comes with it is quieter than the usual relief. "We've been waiting." He looks over at Lito, who nods solemnly.
"Come on," Whitlock says. He holds the door and I follow him through. As I pass, I see his left hand on the frame and notice a faded band on the ring finger where a ring used to be.
"You already know Lito," he says, pulling me out of my thoughts. "Come this way."
The waiting room has a handful of chairs, a couple of them currently occupied. A rack of leaflets on one wall. On the other, the words again, painted this time: We treat the body. We care for the whole person.
He walks me through it without slowing, past the inner door, down a short hallway lined with exam rooms, to the imaging and lab at the far end.
He pushes open the last door on the left.
The emergency bay opens up behind it, two curtained slots and a crash cart in the corner that has been checked recently. The tag is clean. The date is current.
"Off-hours it's just you and whoever's on call," he says. "Until last week that was only me." He doesn't put any weight on it. I'm thinking he's past the part where he can.
In the hallway outside exam two, a woman with short blonde hair and a blood pressure cuff looks up as we pass. Blue eyes and a gray cardigan over her scrubs. She holds herself easily, like she has been here a while.
"Linda Cordell," Whitlock says. "Charge nurse. She's been here longer than I have."
Linda looks at me once, and whatever she sees is enough. She breaks into a wide, warm smile. "Well," she says. "There you are." Then she turns back to her patient.
By ten that morning, I've stitched a logger's forearm. Four sutures, a clean tear from a saw kick. He's forty or so, large through the shoulders, work-roughened hands folded in his lap. He seems the type who would have stitched himself up in the truck if the angle had been any easier.
He looks at the ceiling while I irrigate and says nothing.
I talk him through it in the low, even voice I use for people who need information and not comfort: what I'm doing, why, and what to watch for over the next two days.
His jaw unclenches by degrees. He starts answering my questions in full sentences.
I set the needle driver down and move on.
Not long after, Travis Finn comes in with a little girl on his hip. She's four, maybe just turned five, and she has a plush turtle clamped to her chest with both arms. Green dome shell, pale flippers, one of them more squashed than the other.
He sets her down and puts his hand out. "Travis Finn. This is my daughter, Polly. We're here for her checkup and her second MMR."
I drop into a crouch in front of Polly. "It's nice to meet you, Polly. I'm Doctor Erin. Who's this?"
"Pickle," she says with some gravity. "He comes with me to the doctor. He's brave."
"He sounds like a good friend to have."
The checkup is what it should be for a four-year-old. Height, weight, ears, lungs, reflexes. The MMR takes three seconds. Polly's face crumples at the sting, and she makes a small sound of surprise before pulling Pickle tight against her chest. And we're done.
When I tell her she was excellent, her chin wobbles. She takes a deep breath and wipes her tears with the back of Pickle's head.