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I clamp my molars on the inside of my cheek to avoid rolling my eyes. I’m quite sure you would. Though not for Dot’s sake.
Holly needs a sympathetic ear, and never much more. She’s a gabber. Needs to hear her own thoughts to decipher them. By the time we’ve reached my porch, she gives me a small smile.
“Thank you for listening. You’re the best at listening.” She hugs me, and I go collapse on the couch.
Moments after—truly moments—I hear knocking on the clinic door. It’s old Mr. Button with a sliced his finger. Chopping potatoes. It takes me half an hour and three bandages to stop the bleeding. Then I have to explain to him that he ought not to be using large, sharp knives due to his severe tremor. I try never to presume that I’m a strict voice of authority, but Mr. Button cut his thumb severely this past summer, and it’s only a matter of time before it happens again.
He leaves hunched over, looking like a just-kicked puppy. I feel villainous. I hang about another half hour—these Sunday things come in threes—and sure enough, there’s another knock. It’s poor Cindy, looking ill-kempt and quite desolate. I lead her into the residence and spend the next forty minutes talking with her, drinking tea and sharing slightly stale friendship bread.
Having suffered quite intensely in my own life, I can understand her pain—at least a bit. She feels ill like this a bit more often in the fall and winter. Unlike me, she needn’t suffer anything particularly unusual to set her off. It’s simply her body’s weakness. When she leaves, she seems a bit brighter.
“Page me anytime,” I insist. “Day or night. You know how I enjoy talking with you.”
r /> Thankfully, there’s no third patient. Twenty minutes later, I’m out the door. I walk toward the Patches, then cut up into the hillside and back toward Gammy’s cottage. It adds nearly half an hour to my trek, but lately I’ve been feeling more frightened of being found.
Which brings to mind Father Russo. What was that about? He’s one of Doctor’s closest friends and confidants…but I don’t understand. Eventually, I’m feeling so overwrought that I shut down all my thoughts and focus on the landscape. The way the mist drifts about the volcano’s peak, hiding it from view. The way the grass bends in the breeze.
How could I leave this place?
Focus on the dirt…the grass…your footsteps. No thinking.
And soon I’m at the cottage.
* * *
That night as the rain begins to fall, and thunder claps, and lightning flashes out the window, we lie curled together on our sides beneath the blankets. We’re quiet, kissing at odd moments. His eyes simmer with some unnamed thing. Perhaps I’m simmering as well.
“What do you want for yourself?” I whisper to him. “In the future.”
He shakes his head. His lips press gently together.
“Do you adore baseball?”
He traces a strand of my hair. His lips tilt at the corners. “Yeah.”
“Could you picture yourself playing for a long time?”
“I don’t know.”
“But if it worked out? Injuries…the shoulder. Your team and you seeing eye-to-eye.”
“I could see myself playing.” His eyes move away from mine, then back. “Maybe not in Boston.”
I don’t need to ask why. Why wouldn’t he want to get away—after what happened there?
“Where, then?”
His finger traces my jaw as his eyes hold mine. He shakes his head once. “Seattle? I don’t know.”
“The great Northwest Coast.”
We’re speaking in whispers, even despite the loud rain.
His palm cradles my cheek.
“Is it lush and rainy there? I think I remember talk of rain.”
“It’s rainy there, yeah. Sort of like here.”
