“How many what?”
“Attacks. Like this.”
“One or two,” he said.
“Don’t lie to the nice little nurse,” she chastised. “How long has this been going on?” She pulled the lids back on his eyes and they had begun to yellow. He was jaundicing. “You waiting for your liver to blow?”
“It’ll pass.”
He was having a major league gallbladder attack, and she wasn’t sure that was all. She didn’t even think about it—she picked up the phone and called the bar. “Jack,” she said, “come over, please. I have to get Doc to the hospital.” And she hung up.
“No,” Doc said.
“Yes,” she said. “If you argue with me now, I’ll get Jack and Preacher to put you in a fireman’s carry and dump you in the Hummer. That should make your belly feel good.” She looked at his face. “How’s your back?”
“Terrible. This one is kind of bad.”
“You’re getting jaundiced, Doc,” she said. “We can’t wait. I suspect you’re in a biliary crisis. I’m going to start an IV and I don’t want any lip.”
Before she could get the needle in, both Jack and Preacher arrived. “We’ll get him in the car and I’ll drive you,” Jack said. “What’s the matter with him?”
“I think it’s a gallbladder attack, but he’s not talking. It’s serious. His blood pressure is up and he’s in terrible pain.”
“Waste of time,” Doc said. “It’ll pass.”
“Please be still,” she implored. “I don’t want to have to ask these big boys to hold you down.”
Once the IV was in, she made a mad dash to the drug cabinet while Jack and Preacher each got on either side of him, walking him slowly out the door, Jack holding the Ringer’s over his head. When they got to the Hummer she joined them. Doc said, “I’m not lying down.”
“I think you should—”
“I can’t,” he said. “Bad enough sitting up.”
“All right then, we’ll take out the gurney and put up the backseat. I’ll pull the IV bag hook forward and sit beside you. Have you taken anything for the pain yet?”
“I was just starting to have very kind thoughts toward morphine,” he said. Jack adjusted the backseat, leaving the gurney on Doc’s porch. Doc climbed clumsily into the backseat. “We just don’t have good enough drugs,” he muttered.
“Can you make it to the hospital without drugs? Give the doctor a clean slate?”
“Arrrggghhh,” he grumbled.
“If you insist, I’ll give you something—but it would be better to let the E.R. decide what’s best.” She took a breath. “I grabbed some morphine.”
He peered at her through slits. “Hit me,” he said. “It’s just god-awful.”
She sighed and drew up a syringe from the vial in her bag, putting it right into the IV. It took only moments for him to say, “Ahhh…”
“Have you seen anyone about this?” she asked him.
“I’m a doctor, young woman. I can take care of myself.”
“Oh, brother,” she said.
“There’s a clinic in Garberville,” Jack said as he started the car. “It’s closer than Valley Hospital.”
“We’re going to need a surgeon,” Mel informed him.
“I’m not going to need surgery,” the old boy argued.
“You a betting man?” was all she said.
Doc Mullins rested a bit easier with the narcotic in him, which was good since it was over an hour, even with Jack’s fast and skillful driving. It wasn’t the distance so much as the roads—just getting to the county road that connected with the highway twisted and turned and was slow going. Mel watched out the window, remembering that first night she came here, terrified of these sharp twists and turns, the sheer drops, steep climbs. Now, with Jack managing the Hummer, she was comfortable. Before long they were out of the hills and speeding through the valley. With her attention focused on Doc, she couldn’t fully appreciate the landscape. It did occur to her, however, that every time she traveled anywhere around this county, she was amazed by the beauty as if seeing it for the first time.
She had a fleeting thought that if anything bad happened to Doc, it would be down to only her. How was she going to have a baby and take care of a town?
She thought about Joey’s question—are you staying there? It made her smile. It would hardly seem a punishment to live out her life in this glorious place.
This was only Mel’s second visit to the emergency room—the first was with Connie. She had taken Jeremy and Anne to labor and delivery the night the baby came, so she didn’t really know the staff in E.R. They all knew Doc, however. He’d been putting in regular appearances there for upwards of forty years. And they greeted Mel very enthusiastically, as if she were an old friend.
Doc was not one to allow fussing; he made it plain he didn’t think he needed to be there. Mel and Jack were seated outside the exam room while the emergency room doctor checked him over. Then another doctor went into the exam room and Doc was heard to bellow, “Aw, for Christ’s sake! Can’t I get a better surgeon than you? I don’t want to die on the goddamn table!”
Mel blanched, but she saw that some of the staff was chuckling. After a bit the surgeon came out to them. He had a smile on his face. He held out his hand. “Dr. Simon, Miss…？”
She stood and took his hand. “Monroe,” she said. “Mel Monroe. I work with Doc. Is he going to be all right?”
“Oh, I think so. Doctors. Great patients, aren’t we? I’m going to admit him and that gallbladder has to come out, but we can’t take him into surgery until we get him out of this biliary crisis. That could take a day or week. Good call, Miss Monroe. I assume he didn’t assist you a bit.”
“He tried not to. May I see him?”
“Of course.”
She found Doc in a raised position in the bed while the nurse was fiddling with the IV. The E.R. doctor was writing in the chart and when he saw her, gave a nod of hello. And on Doc’s face was the unhappy expression she had come to view with fondness.
Mel looked around the E.R.—far smaller and less crowded than the one she was used to in L.A. Still, memories flooded back to her—the days and nights she had spent working in that environment. The adrenaline rush of emergencies; the edgy environment that had excited and stimulated her. At the nurses’ station a young doctor was bent over a nurse, reading over her shoulder, making her laugh at some whispered remark. That could have been Mel and Mark a few years ago. She let her eyes slowly close as she realized that she had moved completely beyond that. That familiar pang of longing did not plague her anymore. Now the only man she longed for waited for her just outside this room, prepared to go through anything with her. Her hand crept absently to her tummy, resting there. It was all right, she realized. What I suffered was very bad; what I have is very good.
“Young woman,” Doc snapped. “You gonna be sick?”
“Hmm?” she said, coming out of the haze. “No. Of course not.”