AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Taking an ax to the pile of bucked up wood on the side of his house would help too. Splitting that wood Rook had dropped by would give him a start on their winter firewood as well, and that would be a good feeling. Put effort in, get rewarded for your hard work. That was a good feeling. If only medicine had as guaranteed a payback.
He was about to close up shop for the day and head back to grab some shuteye on the couch in the office before Apollo was here at the ass crack of dawn to pick him up when there was a knock on the wooden door, and a man walked in without waiting for an answer.
“Got time for one more, doc?”
There was something about the man’s voice that sounded familiar but Owen was probably just tired. Tired and missing Cricket. Best to keep busy until he could go home to his babygirl again.
“Sure do. Come on in.”
While the man shucked his slicker and sat on the edge of the makeshift exam table, Owen washed up.
“So what’s going on, Mister…”
“Ain’t no Misters around here. Just call me Monty.”
The universe sure was messing with him today which felt fucking rude, to be honest. He was trying to do a good thing by bringing medical care to this rural ass fishing village and it was going to dredge up ghosts? That felt personal.
Owen strode over to the table while getting his tablet set up for a new patient. Almost everyone he’d seen today was new to him, although there had been a couple guys who’d moved here from another fishing village he’d been too. Owen knew for sure he hadn’t seen Monty; he would’ve remembered. He had a good memory anyway, and he wouldn’t have forgotten a guy with the same name as his dead father.
“So Monty, tell me what’s—”
Owen stopped dead in his tracks. Looking at the old salt who was sitting on the table in a beat to hell flannel shirt and a trucker hat that read “Unless you’re the lead dog, the view never changes” was like looking at his own reflection through an Instagram filter. The girls liked to play with them and send each other and their Daddies silly pictures of them with puppy ears. Gwennie had pranked Gav with a hair dye filter that had gotten her turned bottoms up over his knee.
He’d never seen a “grizzled old fisherman” filter but goddamn if that’s not what he’d look like if he spent the next twenty-something years of his life out on a fishing boat, making his living from harvesting the bounty of the sea instead of being a bush doc.
Monty stared back at him and Owen had to remind himself to breathe. What in the hell…
Under his tanned, leathery skin, Monty looked a bit green. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, there. What’d you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. Name’s Owen. Owen Pierce.”
Owen had made it through medical school, residency, and some fairly hairy shit. But this was fucking with his head. Not to mention that no one ever taught you a tactful way to ask someone if they were your father, who was supposed to have died over thirty years ago.
“I had a son named Owen,” Monty said slowly. “Would be about your age, I’m guessing. Don’t ’spose you were born in Alaska?”
Owen swallowed and tried to find his footing. He’d never felt so unsteady, except for maybe when his mom told him his dad had died. Which felt really fucking unfair at this moment since it seemed as though maybe he hadn’t.
“I was,” he croaked. “My mom moved us back to Washington where she was from when I was a little kid. Told me my dad died in a fishing accident.”
Monty closed his eyes and looked pained, his forehead creasing like waves on the sea. When he opened them again, they looked watery.
“Her name wasn’t Nadine, was it?”
It was very possible Owen was going to vomit, and that would be embarrassing. Plus, out of all the bodily fluids, puke was probably his least favorite and he didn’t want to clean any up.
“Yeah. But she mostly used her middle name. Which was—”
“Ashley.”
They stared at each other for a few long moments and Owen scoured his brain for something appropriate to say. Or do. Or anything. But he came up with jack shit. Judging by the way Monty was looking back at him, he wasn’t alone in having no idea.
But the old-timer had come in here for a reason, and Owen could at least see to whatever medical issues he had going on while he waited for his brain to come up with something.
“The only part of my brain that’s not exploding right now is the stuff I got hammered into me in med school and residency. You mind if we deal with that first?”
“Works for me,” Monty agreed.
It was comforting to do a basic physical exam, to basically be a robot doctor. Monty was in good health for a guy his age and the hard way he lived. His only ailments were being slightly farsighted and the minor arthritis in his knees. All Owen had for those issues were to suggest seeing an eye doctor next time he was in town, and getting a cheap pair of readers in the meantime, and over the counter painkillers for his joint pain.
