Healer (4 page)

Claire and Addison had bought their house here a few years after Addison sold his first biotech company, Eugena. Their friends all had second homes; it seemed almost logical to invest in the place they loved vacationing. But she had never considered how it would feel to have a Hallum PO box be her sole address. It colors her view of the small town as she drives through, as if the skin of it had been turned inside out. The simplicity of the clapboard-sided buildings, the wood rail fences, the absence of stoplights and neon and malls. All of it felt more punitive than peaceful when it came without choice.

The road follows the river, black as oil where it slides between its frozen banks, a contest between cold progress and solid ice. Small brown birds hover and light on straws of aspen chewed raw by the deer; a few horses stand inside a muddy pen, each with a rear fetlock cocked and ears low against their heads, as if resigned to be annoyed by the sharp wind all winter long. She thinks about Addison. She pictures him in some Hilton or Fairmont, in his silk and cashmere Barneys suit, getting ready for drinks and dinner while she runs the tank nearly empty in hopes of finding a cheaper gas station farther down the road. It’s almost funny that he’d made millions discovering a simple way to diagnose a deadly disease—ovarian cancer—a fortune built on bad news. And then all of it lost on the precipice of a cure. Ironic enough to be almost funny.

Sawtooth County Hospital is half an hour away over a shallow mountain pass between two neighboring valleys. It is surprisingly modern, but then what was she expecting? A line of double-wide trailers jury-rigged with a laboratory and X-ray machine? A log cabin with electricity and scrub sinks? In all the years they’ve been coming to Hallum they have never needed medical care beyond what Claire could
piece together from her own first-aid kit; all she has verified has been the assurance they could be airlifted back to Seattle.

She follows signs to the back of the building near the emergency room entrance and parks in a visitors’ lot next to two ambulances. There is a helicopter landing pad to her left, and beyond that are rolling fields that climb and climb into hills and then into mountains spotted with dense green stands of ponderosa pine. At the lower elevations the shadows lace the snow blue on the undulating slopes. The tops of the peaks disappear into flat, gray clouds.

The lobby of the emergency room is uncharacteristically calm, at least compared to the inner-city public hospitals of her residency. An old man leans forward on his chair with his hands pressed against his eyes; his younger friend or son reads a newspaper to him, jumping from headline to headline as if he took no real interest in any of them. A few whining children squirm in their mothers’ laps, a few more squall behind shut doors, struggling against stitches or tetanus injections or close inspection of ears and throats. The triage nurse asks Claire if she is a new drug rep, and brightens when Claire answers that she’s a new doctor in town, hoping to meet the medical staff. The nurse doesn’t react to the self-conscious note Claire hears in her own voice and points the way to the offices down a hallway. The chief of medicine has taken the day off to go ice fishing, the woman says, but there should be a secretary around who can let her know his schedule.

The newly cleaned carpets smell of disinfectant vaguely camouflaged as citrus. The walls are covered in a shiny washable plastic; the chairs and love seats with industrial upholstery, all their colors muted to an unnatural hue by the fluorescent lighting. And the chill—hospitals are never warm. She remembers working call shifts, roaming the nearly empty halls of Harborview Hospital at three and four in the morning with a blanket wrapped around her like one of the homeless souls she doctored. She could be blindfolded and know the function and purpose of this building. It leaves her feeling even more out of place, an uninvited guest in a house she used to own. She should scrawl a name tag declaring her purpose here: “No, not a patient. Not a visitor. I’m one of you, an insider. I’ve just forgotten where I left the doctor in me.”

She puts her briefcase on a chair and pulls out one of her résumés. The top two-thirds encompassed ten and a half years of her life, from college until she left her residency three months before graduation. All she sees is the empty space at the bottom of the page; she would have to write a book to fill in that blank. It’s the details she’s left
off
that critically define her, she thinks. Everything had crowded together at the end. That last terrible call night working in the emergency room; patients were waiting eight, ten, twelve hours and both of her interns were busy in the trauma room. There hadn’t been time to listen to every complaint as carefully as she should. She had been overwhelmed. She didn’t learn the consequences of her triage decision until days later. She can hear her adviser’s voice as clearly in this lobby right now as she’d heard it in his office fourteen and a half years ago: “Every doctor makes mistakes. Medical instinct, that sense that someone’s sicker than they look, that’s not in a book, Claire. It takes years of experience. Take a day or two off. Get some rest.”

But the next day her uterus began the slow process of expulsion, doing the proper work of labor at the improper time. Jory was delivered almost three months early and Claire began the weeks of vigil in the neonatal ICU, willing the power of her mind and her love to do what her body could not: keep Jory alive. She remembers being enraged at fate, at God, at her corporeal self for its failure. There had been moments in the middle of the night, watching Jory’s doctors and nurses struggle, when Claire was certain this was punishment for her missed diagnosis. What part of it all had kept her from going back to finish her residency? She didn’t know. She had let the course of life make her decision.

She puts the résumés back in her case and snaps the lock shut. She should leave, she decides. It is a waste of everyone’s time to pretend she could take a job here; that she’s come for any grander purpose, if she drills her conscience, than to goad Addison, to prove that she will not stand by helpless. She looks around to orient herself, wanting to get to her car without going back through the emergency room. A woman with silver-streaked hair and a navy blue sweater buttoned tight over her white nurse’s dress walks out of the bathroom at the end
of the hallway and fixes Claire in her focus, strides toward her with so much authority Claire wonders what rule she could have broken. The idea of explaining herself to this woman—to anyone—suddenly feels overwhelming. She opens her mouth to ask what the visiting hours are and the nurse halts in front of her. “They’re all at lunch.”

“I’m sorry?” Claire says.

“If you’re here to see any of the docs, they’re all in the cafeteria. Chief is out today.” She pauses just long enough to see Claire nod, then takes hold of her arm and marches across the lobby into a small, brightly lit cafeteria.

At a long rectangular table six or seven people laugh and talk, breaking into each other’s words like they spend so much time together they don’t filter their conversation around manners anymore, dive straight in for the punch line. Every other table seems sober in contrast.

The navy-sweatered nurse says, “Thursday’s burrito day. Nobody goes out. People from town drive over just for lunch on Thursdays. I’m Marti. I didn’t catch your name. How should I introduce you?”

“Claire. Claire Boehning.”

“Ms. Boehning, meet our staff docs. And a few interlopers. One good look and you’ll decide to stay healthy. Jim, they want to know if you need contrast on that CT. Can I get you a cup of coffee?” she asks, turning back to Claire.

Thank God she had changed her clothes. There are five men and two women at the table, dressed in jeans, khakis, lined fleece shirts; not a white coat among them. Not…
doctorly,
she thinks. But the last time she had lived and worked in the world of medicine she had been in academics, where rank and role were clearly and constantly defined. They are all within ten or so years of her age, all but one—a tall, white-haired man well past retirement age. One of the youngest, a puff-cheeked fellow with a chin cleft, reaches out to shake her hand. “Have a seat. Don’t let these guys scare you. Z. Make room for her.” The elderly man scoots his chair and Claire slides into a seat at the end of the table. A plate of tortillas sits in the middle and she wonders if Jory has eaten.

Marti brings her a cup of coffee and sits at the other end of the long table. “So you’re looking for a job.”

Claire smiles, glad not to be the first to say it. “Do I look unemployed?” Her voice comes out higher than normal; she tries to relax her throat.

“Nobody around here carries a briefcase unless they’re selling something, and we know all the reps. Are you a nurse?”

“A doctor. We just moved here. My family.” She pauses a beat. “My daughter and I.”

“How old is your daughter?” asks one of the women.

“Jory’s fourteen. We moved out from Seattle last week. But we’ve owned property here for a few years, on Northridge Road—outside Hallum.”

“Where on Northridge?” This from the man two down, a gaunt blond with bangs cut perfectly straight across his forehead as if he’d done them at home with sewing scissors, his voice melodic enough to mitigate his stern face.

“About eight miles out. There’s an old homestead there, with an apple orchard.”

“Oh, you’re at the Blackstock homestead. Is that right? That’s a nice piece. I bike around there. What are you going to do with the house? I’m Steven Perry, by the way. Surgery.” He stands up to stretch over the others and shake her hand.

Claire nods and takes a sip of her coffee, a quick flash of their tabled house plans pushed out of her mind. “Yeah. We feel lucky to own it.”

“What’s your specialty?”

“Family practice.” She says it calmly enough, knowing the answer implies all the things she isn’t—board certified and experienced. “We aren’t sure how long we’ll be living here yet, but I thought I’d introduce myself. Find out who might be looking for help if we stay.” She starts to add more, but leaves it open-ended, shrugging her shoulders in a quick half apology. They introduce themselves then, going around the table with names and specialties she tries to memorize but finds no space for, too preoccupied with guessing what she might have to explain next.

“You should stop by Kit’s place, south of town along the river road,” a pediatrician named Jenna says. “She’s been busy. I don’t know if she’s advertising, but I can call her up.” She turns to Marti. “Richardson
just hired a nurse practitioner, so he’s probably stretched. What about Alton?”

Marti shrugs. “Maybe. He says he’s losing so much money he’s thinking of moving to Wenatchee. He’s a bald-faced, cheapskate liar, though.” And she laughs. “Z? How about you? Aren’t you ever going to retire?” Marti looks across at the white-haired man next to Claire. She has assumed, with his silent, observing passivity, that he is a part of this gathering only through social history, quiet, perhaps, with the winding down of age. Only after Marti singles him out does he introduce himself. “Dan Zelaya.” His hand is rough as a rancher’s, the hand of a man who uses his body more than his mind to earn a living; the joints stiff and knotty but firm in grip. He wears a string tie and a white pearl-snap shirt—a neat row of enameled buttons with little silver rings around them and blue embroidered trim work. All that is missing, Claire thinks, is a cowboy hat.

Marti gets more enthusiastic as she goes on. “Dan, you’ve been running the busiest clinic in the valley with one nurse and a box of old Band-Aids. Hire this woman and take Evelyn to Arizona for the winter.”

The table erupts with laughter, though Claire can’t tell if it is about the pecuniary limits of his clinic or the idea of heading south. Dan winks at her and lifts a large felt cowboy hat off the seat next to him; his long, angular fingers close over the entire crown with room to spare. The hat has the same silver snakeskin rope around the brim that encircles his neck, silver-tipped tassels that click when he settles it over his white hair. “Never get her house fixed up if she works with me.” Then he stands up, taller than she had expected, and takes his leave.

Steven pulls a prescription pad out of his shirt pocket and writes down names and directions for Claire. The table slowly empties; even Marti finally excuses herself to return to the ward. Claire finishes her coffee and watches the patients leaving their own tables, plays a game of guessing their diseases, stopping short of trying to recall differentials and treatments. She has danced this initial foray into Hallum’s medical universe nimbly, she decides, diverting any details about why they had left Seattle. And never once had she reached into her briefcase to pull out her makeshift résumé.

• 4 •

Jory is asleep when Claire finally gets home, though it is past three. She is the elongated mound buried under three down comforters piled on the double bed, the quiet breath in the otherwise still room. Claire stands in the doorway after a brief survey of the clutter throughout the house—identical to the clutter left behind that morning. Jory has slept her day away in the certainty that one of the adults in her world will carry her steadily on to the next milepost.

But Claire needs to move around, the best diversion she’s found so far. She hunts in the closets until she finds a small electric fan and props it in front of the woodstove to draw the meager heat deeper into the room. Corrugated boxes are stacked on the peeling kitchen counters, shoved up against the walls and piled at the bottom of the stairs waiting to be carried up, and these are only a fraction of what was packed onto the moving van. Most are labeled with a room that doesn’t exist here: Mom’s study, walk-in closet, library, guest powder room, butler’s pantry, media room.

This house has no such discretionary rooms. It is a single tall box divided into four spaces, two bedrooms sharing a bathroom upstairs, and one large living room and a small kitchen down. There is another box, too, a utility alcove and tiny toilet stall shunted underneath a low shed roof adjacent to the kitchen—probably added in the forties when the house was finally electrified. Last spring break Claire let Jory and her friends paint all the kitchen cabinet doors in enameled reds and blues and yellows—the only vibrant colors in the house.