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I’ve got several text messages from Gentry, starting at four in the afternoon yesterday and continuing through until just now. All of them ask me to call her with an SOS tacked on the end.
There are three missed calls from Gentry as well, but she didn’t leave messages, so I have no idea what happened. My heart sinks as I imagine the clinic burned to the ground or the roof torn off in the storm.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should call my assistant back.”
“Go ahead.” Lennox turns onto the park road.
Gentry answers on the first ring. “Oh, my god, Doctor Brooks. Where have you been?”
“I got stuck up on the mountain last night. I didn’t have a signal on my phone.”
“Damn it.” I’ve never heard Gentry swear before. This is worse than I’d imagined. “I was hoping you were in prison or dead or something.”
“You wished me dead? What did I do?”
“Nothing, Doctor Brooks. That’s the problem.”
My chest is tight and I can’t seem to catch my breath. “Can you just give me the basic details before I have a panic attack?”
Lennox turns into the trailhead where Daisy and I parked.
Gentry blows out a breath. “A three-year-old with a high fever. The parents were freaking out and brought him here, but you were nowhere to be found. They had to drive an hour to get him to a hospital since everything else had closed by then. The townspeople turned up with pitchforks. Three patients called to say they don’t want you to be their doctor anymore. To stop the hemorrhaging, I might have slipped and told everyone you and Daisy are engaged.”
I stare at the trunk of a huge elm through the windshield, my brain whirring. On some level, I’m aware of Daisy and Lennox getting out of the car, of the two women glancing at me with worried expressions, but most of my brain is trying to process what Gentry just told me.
“You told them we’re engaged?”
“You weren’t here, and I didn’t know what else to do. I need this job and to have this job, we need to have patients. So I’m not going to apologize, because I’m not sorry.” She makes an odd squeaking sound. “Also, I might have said the reason you were unavailable was because you were called out to treat an old lady who lives way up on the side of a mountain and you had no cellservice, which you have to admit is close to the truth as it turns out.”
I groan and press a hand over my eyes. “The lies, Gentry. So many lies.”
“It’s clear you love Daisy, even if it is fake. Just propose and nail that down. Then it won’t be a lie.”
I hate how much I like the sound of that idea. Daisy would be appalled by how much I like the idea. “I’m sorry you had to deal with all of this. I don’t like the lies, but I appreciate what you were trying to do. We’ll talk about this more when I get to the office.”
“You aren’t firing me?”
“Hell, no,” I blurt. “I’m begging you not to quit.”
“I’m not a quitter, but terrified parents are possibly the scariest, meanest people on earth.”
“Is the child okay?”
“He’ll be fine. According to the Mom, the doctor at the hospital said you probably would have sent them there, anyway.”
“Good. I’ll be in the office in an hour. Can you hold down the fort until I get in?”
“I’m not going to answer the phone until you decide how to proceed.” She sounds defeated and weary. She shouldn’t have had to deal with this on her own and I have to do everything I can to fix this for her.
“Good idea.”
Daisy and Lennox face me as I step out of the jeep, both obviously dying to know what happened.
“Everything’s fine,” I say.
“Not buying it,” Lennox says. “I live in the middle of a forest. Give me the gossip.”
I sigh and tell them what happened, minus the fact that Daisy and I need to get engaged to save my clinic.
