Chapter 4
My first patient of the morning is Earl.
He’s a regular. Seventy years old, has been coming to see me since I started my own practice a decade ago, and I think most of the time he comes in, he’s looking for something to do, but I don’t mind.
“New fella out front,” he says, settling onto the exam table while I put my gloves and stethoscope on.
“Mhm.” I wrap the blood pressure cuff around his arm. “How’s the hip been?”
“Who is he?”
“Will Davis.” I pump the cuff. “Stay still, please.”
Earl stays as still as he can, but he also keeps talking. I’m not sure the old man is capable of not talking. “Davis boy. Right. Heard he was in the pokey.”
“He was.” I jot down the reading. Better than last month.
“He gonna be around?”
I pull up his chart on my laptop. “For the time being.”
He sighs, shifting on the table, making the paper crinkle. “Some folks ‘round town ain’t gonna like that, Nolan.”
When I finish with the chart, I look up to find him watching me without judgment, only concern.
“I know,” I say with a sigh of my own, deflating a bit.
“Now, I ain’t tryin’ to get all up in your business—”
“No, I get it.” I set the chart down and lean against the counter, giving him my full attention. “And I know people are going to talk. But he’s family, Earl. I can’t turn my back on him.”
Earl sits there a while, quiet, like he’s chewing on the words, before he nods once. “Seems about right to me. Don’t let ‘em get you down, Doc. They’ll come around and if they don’t, to hell with ‘em.”
“Right,” I say, standing up straight, remembering that I’m the doctor and I shouldn’t be complaining to my patients. “Now, what brings you in today?”
Between patients, I can hear Will at the desk.
I’m trying not to keep too close an eye on him. I don’t want to make him think I don’t trust him, even though I’m sure he knows on some level that I don’t. I tell myself it’s okay for the fifth time this morning. It’s answering phones.
He needs this.
The past is the past.
But sound travels. So when I allow myself to listen in, I’m just monitoring the situation. Making sure he’s okay out there.
What I didn’t anticipate was for it to be this entertaining.
“Murphy Family Medicine,” Will says, and somehow, he makes those three words sound more awkward than anything I’ve ever heard. “Yeah. Mhm.” He pauses, shuffling things around. “I don’t… Okay. Hang on.”
I hear the phone being set on the desk and the chair scraping against the floor, so I jump into action, pretending to be looking through a folder when Will appears in the hallway, clearly frazzled.
“Someone wants to know if you’re taking new patients.”
“Not currently, but the new patient forms are on the desktop. You can email them, and I’ll get back to them when I can.”
He frowns. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
My second patient of the day is a young woman I’ve been seeing since she was a child, like most of my patients these days. She’s healthy overall, and the appointment goes by quickly after a discussion about her anxiety meds.
“The guy at the desk,” she says when she gets down from the table. “He’s cute.”
I purse my lips. I guess everyone in town hasn’t heard about him. “He is?”
“Definitely. Do you know if he’s single?”
“Um.” I pause, looking around for help out of the situation I’m currently in. When it doesn’t come, I force out, “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
I could have just said yes.
“Will do, Doc.”
I can hear Will on the phone through the wall while I’m catching up on charts.
“Murphy Family Medicine.”
“Ma’am, I understand that, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s not making it clearer.”
“I’m gonna have to have someone call you back.”
I press two fingers to the bridge of my nose under my reading glasses, shaking my head. I’m starting to think being a receptionist isn’t Will’s calling.
But when I go pour myself another cup of coffee, I make a second one too, remembering the absurd way he drank it at the restaurant, as much cream and sugar as possible, and bring it out to him.
“Thanks,” he says, looking at the coffee with a raised eyebrow.
It’s getting to be lunch when he answers another call. I’m standing behind him, digging through some papers for a patient that Victoria would have found for me immediately, trying to ignore my lingering discomfort around him. Everything that happened was a long time ago.
It’s not who he is now.
“Murphy Family Medicine.”
“Yes, sir. Uh huh.” There’s a long pause, and from behind him, I can hear the man on the line talking fast. “Sir, I— yes, I understand that, but I don’t—”
He looks up from his chair, and I meet his wide eyes. “I’m gonna have to put you on hold.”
“This dude’s calling ‘cause he’s got something wrong with his toe,” he says, clicking the hold button. “He’s telling me all about how—”
“Oh. That’s Gerald,” I say, waving him off. “He calls every day about something.”
Will narrows his eyes, pressing his lips together before he shakes his head with a sigh. “You’re a dick, you know that?” I shrug, going back to my files. “You knew exactly what you were doing, putting me on the—” He shakes his head again, picking up the phone.
“Sorry about that, sir, I—” He goes quiet, and I look back over. “Yes. I— yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean— That was meant for someone else.” He closes his eyes, scrubbing his face with his hand. “I know. It won’t happen again. I’ll let Dr. Murphy know.”
He hangs up, sitting there with the phone in his hand before he sets it down too hard. “He was not on hold,” Will confirms my suspicion, tilting his neck back to look at me. “Gerald heard everything.”
“Was he angry?”
“You could say that.”
I know I shouldn’t laugh. This is my place of business, and Gerald, for all his annoying habits, has been coming here for years. But god help me, it comes out before I can stop it. The corner of Will’s mouth turns up, and I can see him fighting it, but soon enough we’re both laughing.
At the same time, our eyes meet, and we both realize what we’re doing.
The laughter dies out before it’s fully begun.
He averts his eyes, looking back at the desk, his smile falling quickly into the frown he’s worn for the last twenty years. I take that as my cue to head back, and I’m almost to the exam room when I hear him mutter under his breath, “asshole.”
Maybe I’m not the only one with some hang-ups about this.
It’s nearly five when my last patient leaves. I head out into the waiting room, finding Will already by the door, clearly ready to be done with this day. I don’t even feel bad. At least he did something today, and I kept my promise to Joyce and Frank.
“So, do you think you’ll be wanting a permanent position?” I ask, turning the lights out.
“Ha. That’s real funny.” He moves to push the door open, but I stop him with a hand on his bicep.
“Will, wait.” I tear my hand away, putting it in my pocket, regretting the physical contact instantly. “Come have dinner with me and the kids tonight.”
He shakes his head without turning around. “Nah, I think I’ll—”
“The kids want to see you,” I cut in before he can say no.
“I’ll see them another time.”
“Addie’s been asking about you since I told her you were home.
” I pause, knowing he can’t resist seeing his niece.
“Every day, Will. She misses you.” His lips turn down, and when he looks over at me, his eyebrows are furrowed, but he doesn’t say yes, so I continue.
“It’ll just be us. Dinner. A few hours.”
He scoffs. “You gonna pay me a hundred bucks to leave again?”
I cross my arms over my scrubs, unwilling to apologize for that. I did what I had to do. “She was painting something for you that day when I went to tell her you were gone. You know how much she loves you. Don’t disappoint her again.”
He might be right about me. I am a dick for saying that. And I feel terrible when his frown deepens, and his eyes catch in the light from the street.
But staying away from his family isn’t going to help him in the long run, and he knows that.
“Fine.”
I hold the door open, letting him walk through it without looking at me. And even though I’m trying to do better, as I lock up my practice, the familiar dread that comes with having dinner with Will Davis creeps its way into my chest.