Secret Santa (23 page)

Charli’s stomach knotted at the prospect of seeing Neil. He’d been so cold and unforgiving the last time they’d talked. And the article he’d written—the last one she’d read—had skewered her inaction, squarely placing the blame of Bethie’s illness and several other community members’ sickness on Charli.

That’s fair enough,
she thought.
It was my fault.
She met her mother’s eyes, saw a strong woman who had risen from the ashes of her life. If she could face her mistakes and rise above her past, Charli could, as well. “I promise, Mom.”

Charli’s cell phone buzzed, immediately testing her new resolve. She glanced down and saw that it was the state medical board.

Here was her future. It had to be faced.

* * *

N
EIL
HUNG
UP
the phone, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He sat at his desk at the paper, his email program open, seeing the dozen unanswered emails he’d sent to the one contact he’d developed at the state medical board.

No reply. Not even an automated response.

The guy had been helpful at first. He’d been delighted to get all of Neil’s early reports, told Neil that he’d been doing the right thing forwarding an account of what had transpired at the migrant settlement.

Back then, when Bethie had first gotten sick and Neil was certain that the migrant workers had given it to her, he’d been glad someone in authority had agreed with him.

Even so, he’d never thought they’d take Charli’s license—not until his medical board contact had speculated that Charli might be used as an example for the many, many doctors who flouted the reporting rules.

Then, Neil had felt a twinge of doubt—a twinge that had morphed into a full spasm now that he knew that it wasn’t the workers’ illness but Lige’s contaminated well that had spread the bacteria to the general population.

Neil had wanted to be sure the review board had all the facts—not just the ones Neil had put in his first tell-all article, the one that skewered Charli. He’d sent emails and links and even overnighted a copy of the
Bugle
with its follow-up article. But his contact had gone radio silent.

“No luck?” Dawn asked, breaking him out of his reverie.

He hadn’t even heard her come around the divider, but apparently she’d been making plenty of noise in preparing to leave for the day. She had her purse on her shoulder, her nylon lunch bag in hand.

“No. I called the board, hoping to get some sort of official word at least, spent half my time either on hold or punching buttons on automated menus.”

“But you did get somebody?”

“Yeah. A public-information type.” He consulted his reporter’s notebook. “She said, and I quote, ‘We cannot comment on an ongoing investigation, and no statement will be made until the investigation is complete and the board has met.’”

“So when will the board meet? Did they at least say they’d gotten all the information?”

“Sometime next month. And I asked. The woman said they’d received lots of public input on the case and they were... What were her words?” He flipped up the notebook again. “Oh, yeah. They’re ‘reviewing all relevant material.’”

“I’m sorry, Neil.”

“Why are you sorry? I was the one who went all editorial on Charli.”

“You reported the facts. As you knew them.”

“Right. And we all know that facts can’t exist in a vacuum. I was angry. And I felt betrayed. And...I crossed the line. You know I did.”

Dawn pursed her lips, pausing before she nodded her head. “It wasn’t your usual impartial balanced reporting, that’s for sure. And I was surprised when you put it on the wire and helped out the big papers and CNN. It was like...you were on a crusade.”

“I was a self-righteous, arrogant jerk.” He reached over and clicked the send/receive icon on his email. It refreshed and showed no new emails.

“And what about Charli?” Dawn’s question was hesitant. “Have you heard from her?”

“No. But is that surprising? I threw her to the wolves. I’ve probably cost Charli her medical license.”

“You didn’t do anything. Charli made her own bed.”

Neil shook his head. He’d had this same argument with Dawn the day before. How could he explain the deep guilt he felt at what he’d done? Sure, he’d stuck to the facts, but he’d made sure those facts were hard to miss. He’d used every trick in his writer’s arsenal to put a bull’s-eye on Charli.

“Yeah, Dawn, she didn’t report the outbreak according to state regulations. But that guy at the medical board told me lots of doctors don’t bother to report small outbreaks and that the DPH was steamed about the regulations being flouted. That’s why he thought the state might make an example out of Charli. Because she’d generated so much media coverage. And she generated so much media coverage because I made sure that first article was as sensational as possible. I could have waited. I
should
have waited.”

Dawn shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you. You’ve learned your lesson, crossing over from reporting to the dark side of editorializing. You won’t make the same mistake again.”

“No.” But that promise was shutting the barn door after the horse was gone. It didn’t bring Charli back to him, so he could at least...

What? Apologize for taking away her livelihood and the career she’d indebted herself to have?

Dawn shifted the lunch bag to her other hand and began to fish in her purse for her keys. “It’s half past five. You can’t do anything else tonight. Go home, Neil. Get some sleep. And try not to kick yourself, okay?”

He heard the front door jangle behind Dawn, but he sat there, alone in the office. Spreading out the current issue of the paper, he read the six-column headline: DPH Links Contaminated Well to Outbreak.

The subhead, in smaller typeface, was his personal apology to Charli: Local Doctor Not at Fault in
E. coli
Spread.

But, like his contact at the medical board, Charli had remained missing in action. She hadn’t replied to his voice mails. She hadn’t been at home. He couldn’t find her anywhere. She must have taken her mom and fled town, away from the reporters and the satellite vans and the polished on-the-scene TV reporters armed with microphones and supersize cans of hairspray and bronzer.

TV reporters. He’d helped
TV reporters.

One headline did cheer him—in a sidebar, he’d written a short story about Bethie’s progress. The little girl was off dialysis and mending well.

If only a doctor could heal his broken heart the same as those Atlanta doctors had healed Bethie.

Wait. One doctor could. Only he’d hung Charli out to dry, cost Charli her license...and blown any chance with her.

He folded the paper and pushed back his chair. Maybe Dawn was right. Maybe he should just go home.

At home, though, his Christmas lights mocked him. They looked too cheery in the darkening evening light. Especially the Santa on the roof who, to Neil at least, had a leer instead of the benevolent grin he was supposed to have.

He noticed that Rudolph’s nose had burned out, again, and walked over to the decoration to check it out. Sure enough, the bulb was blown. Maybe it was defective wiring, but this was the third bulb in as many days.

Maybe it had a short from its tumble off the roof.

Neil remembered that night, when Charli had first taken in his lights. He recalled another night, too, the night under the mistletoe when they’d kissed. He’d been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt then...so what had changed? What had made it so easy for him to forget the heart of the woman he’d come to know?

As he unscrewed Rudolph’s nose bulb, the sound of tires crunching on gravel caught his ears. He looked up, saw Charli’s car pulling up into her drive.

Charli.

Here. In Brevis.

Neil stared as she got out of the car, slowly, as though she’d been driving all day. She came around the end of the carport and stood there.

Staring back.

For a long moment, they just locked eyes. Her chin went up, the way it did when she was determined to tough something out. She gave him the smallest and coolest of smiles. Then she turned on her heel and went inside.

The sound of the door slamming shut made him jerk.

Neil would have to face her. He at least needed to make some sort of amends. But if a six-column mea culpa on page 1A didn’t do the trick, what would?

Well, buddy, you are the one who started the media circus and made her such a handy whipping boy for the state medical board.

His feet seemed cemented to the ground, staked as well as Ruldoph was. He couldn’t seem to pick them up and make the distance across the lawn.

Charli’s door opened.

Neil watched as she headed for the gap in the hedge, her back straight, her head high, her expression resolute.

She didn’t appear to have the same hesitation he’d had. But then again, maybe she just wanted to cuss him out for writing first and thinking later.

“Charli—” he started, then stopped. What had he wanted to say? He’d been desperate to give her his side of the story, to apologize, to try to make things right. And now all of those words were gone.

“You should have these,” she said, and for the first time, Neil realized she held a stack of notebooks. Charli shoved them at him, and he took them in pure reflex.

“What are they?” he asked.

“My father’s journals. They’re kind of jumbled up, with patient notes—patients he saw on the side. I’ve checked, and there are no official patient files on any of these people at the office.”

“Why do you want me to have them?”

Charli frowned as if in pain. “I’m not making excuses. Please know that. But you need the whole story. About the money. And why I donated it.”

“You said it was your father’s. But I thought he was broke.”

“He was. Officially. I found the money that I donated to the clinic in his safe deposit box. I didn’t know how he’d come to have it, and I could find no legal, aboveboard way he could have acquired it. And then I found the notebooks, and apparently my dad must have got it from covering up a TB outbreak. Like father, like daughter, huh?” Her words were bitter and tinged with regret.

Neil couldn’t process it very well. “Who?” he asked. “Who paid him the money?”

Charli shrugged. “I have no proof. When Lige first threatened to fire me and turn my mom in for tax evasion, it sure sounded to me like he was the one who’d bribed my dad. But I doubt he’d confirm it on the record. And Dad’s notebooks don’t tell that part. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that my dad took a bribe—or a lot of bribes—and I didn’t want to spend it or have anything to do with it, so instead of doing what I should have done and going to the authorities, I donated it to the clinic.”

Neil looked from Charli to the stack of notebooks in his hands. “And it was Lige?”

“Neil, it doesn’t matter what I think. I have no proof. Lige will come out of all this as clean as a whistle.”

“No, he hasn’t. Haven’t you heard? They found the migrants.”

Now it was Charli who was surprised. “Where? How? Are they sick?”

“Just across the Alabama state line. They’re okay—none of ’em got HUS. But Lige ran them off so they couldn’t turn him in.”

“Hmm. Sounds like something he’d do,” Charli said. “The DPH didn’t tell me that when I was meeting with them.”

“That’s where you’ve been?”

“Well, yeah, for yesterday and today, at least. I’ve been in Atlanta at their headquarters. And with the medical board. Before that, I was in Savannah, looking for my mom.”

“I thought she was with you. You didn’t take her with you?”

“No, she was...” Charli closed her eyes, and Neil saw exhaustion in her face. She opened them again and spoke. “It’s a long story. Suffice it to say I jumped to some very wrong conclusions. But I’ve been doing that a lot lately, haven’t I?”

Before he could tell her that she wasn’t the only one who’d done that, Charli went on in a hurried voice, “There it is, what I came to give you. I just wanted to be sure you had it, so that you’d have time to read it and to ask me any questions before I, well, before I leave.”

Neil swallowed hard. “You’re leaving again?”

“Yeah, well. Student loans don’t wait. I’ve got to find some way to earn a living.”

“So they did take your license? I’m sorry, Charli. I sent them my newspaper article, and what all the DPH had said about the contaminated well, and I kept trying to get them word that the DPH had cleared you.”

“No.” She shook her head. “What do you mean?”

“They said—well, somebody said that the state medical board was going to make an example out of you, since you had all this media coverage—and that’s all my fault, and I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

“Neil, I don’t know what you’ve heard...” Charli spoke slowly, as though she were trying to make connections that weren’t coming together easily. “But the medical board and I came to an agreement today.”

“Tell me you didn’t give up. Tell me you didn’t surrender your license. We can fight this! Other doctors haven’t been prompt in reporting, and the DPH said you saved Bethie.”

“Whoa. Neil. They let me keep my license. I agreed to a pretty harsh consent order that will stay with my record, and I’m going to be teaching a continuing ed course for the DPH on the importance of prompt reporting. Kind of like community service for doctors. But I have my license.”

Relief pulsed through Neil, and it was like a huge weight had lifted off his chest. “So they did read everything I sent. I talked to them today, though, and they said the investigation was still ongoing, that the board hadn’t met—”

“It’s not official yet. But I signed the paperwork, so it will be. Next month.”

“Then...why are you leaving Brevis?”

Now Charli did look befuddled. “Because. I don’t have a job.”

“But you do. Here. You have your dad’s office.”

“I need a hospital that will extend me privileges, Neil. And I don’t think Lige will be doing that for me any time soon.”

“Didn’t you get my voice mails?” For the first time, hope coursed through him. If she didn’t know about Lige...