The Doctor's Unexpected Family: (Inspirational Romance) (Port Provident: Hurricane Hope) (5 page)

Angela nodded slowly. “Pete, I think maybe you’re exaggerating just a little bit. I’ve had diabetes my whole life. It’s not like I was just diagnosed last week and don’t understand what I’m dealing with. Besides, I can’t take my daughter to your house. I don’t even know you.”

“Well, to that point, I don’t know you either. But we both know Gloria. I trust anyone who is a friend of hers, and I’d hope you’d feel the same.”

“Of course I trust Gloria’s judgment.” Angela’s voice was still. It reminded Pete of the calm of the eye in the middle of the hurricane not so long ago.

“So you’ll come with me?”

Gloria shook her head, her brown hair softly dancing around her face. “Really, I’m fine. I’ve got the monitor. I’ve got the insulin. You don’t need to worry about me.”

Pete stuck his hand out and gave her the monitor. He didn’t know her well, wasn’t her physician of record, and didn’t have any other way to convince her.

He said a brief goodbye to both Angela and Celina, then stooped to exit the tent, trying to convince himself that the nagging feeling in his midsection was just the remains of his own Samaritan’s Cross food truck meal, and not the gut instinct honed from years on the front lines of medicine.

His bed was lumpy. After seeing how so many of his fellow citizens were sleeping, in tents and sleeping bags, Pete mentally chastised himself for feeling uncomfortable in his own home. But in spite of this, he kept shifting his position and mentally replaying the events from earlier in the day.

Angela had to be a practical woman. She’d been elected to the Port Provident City Council and he remembered from the last election that she also helped run her family’s small business. While he respected the fact that she’d been managing diabetes most of her life, he didn’t understand why she seemed to agree with him, yet refused to accept the help he was offering.

He rarely pushed aside his gut reaction. Part of being a good doctor was maintaining the balance of knowledge and instinct. Instinct pushed him to follow his knowledge down paths to solve his patients’ health issues, or to proactively make decisions to keep them from ever having issues. Tonight, though, he made himself ignore that strong feeling.

He told the voice in his head to hush, rolled over again, and picked up the remote control to the TV. He’d come in to his bedroom early, trying to wind down with a favorite movie recorded on his DVR, knowing he should enjoy the distraction while he could, since TV of any kind likely wouldn’t be an option to unwind with wherever Mercy Medical Mission would probably send him. For now, though, he was still in the United States, where mindless TV would take his mind off everything that had happened lately.

Especially one epically stubborn, brown-eyed City Councilwoman.

The sound of his cell phone buzzing against the nightstand woke up Pete from a sound sleep. The blue light of the TV flickered from the corner, giving the whole room a strange glow. He must have fallen asleep while zoning out on reality TV.

“Dr. Shipley.” The digital clock near the phone said it was too early to be asleep, but too late to be receiving social phone calls.

He didn’t know what this call could possibly be about. All of his patients had been transferred to the care of doctors off the island since the clinic was now permanently closed and even Provident Medical Center was shut down for the foreseeable future due to hurricane damage.

“Pete, it’s Angela. I need your help.”

Of all the calls this could have been, Angela asking for help didn’t even make his top 100 list. She started talking so fast, his brain couldn’t keep up.

“Whoa, whoa. What did you say?”

She paused and spoke much more slowly. “There’s been a shooting on the other side of the tent city. The police are here now.”

“Angela, are you ok? Is Celina ok?” The brain fog induced by mindless television was completely gone now. Pete felt like a bolt of lightning had cracked under his bed, propelling him up into a sitting position.

“We’re fine. It happened on the other side of the grounds. But the police are shutting this down. They’re clearing everyone out right now and moving us to the high school. They’re re-opening the shelter they established there the night of the hurricane.”

He relaxed a little at the knowledge that Angela and her little pigtailed pixie of a daughter were okay. “So what do you need? Help taking down the tent and packing up?”

“My car is in the City Hall parking garage, and I need to get out of here. They’ve got the area on lockdown, but I think I can get the police to let you in. I told you I don’t like exploiting my city council privilges. But this isn’t for me. It’s for my daughter.” He could hear her take a deep breath and then he heard a small, muffled sob. “Celina is terrified of going to the shelter. My sister Emmy took her there the night of the hurricane while I worked at the command center, and she doesn’t want to go back. Can we still use your guest room?”

He knew there was a reason he couldn’t dismiss that gut feeling earlier.  He just didn’t expect the reason to be something other than blood sugar.

But the truth was, he didn’t blame Celina one bit. She’d been through enough in the very recent past to last her a lifetime. Whatever he could do to bring the smile back to her face, he would.

“I’m on my way.”

“Thank you, Pete. Thank you for helping my daughter.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “I wish I could fix things for everyone else here as easily.”

Chapter Three

There was too much to do right now for Angela to sit still, but her body was working against her. The adrenaline surge that drove her to cover Celina with her own body at the sound of the distinctive “pop pop” of gunfire made her feel lightheaded and unsettled. She hadn’t fully recovered from the day’s earlier episode and she’d exerted too much, too fast.

But she did what she’d had to do. There was no other option but to protect Celina, no matter what. 

Now the police had assured the people gathered in the tent city that the immediate danger was over, but that they all needed to wait inside their tents or other structures until they were escorted to shelter at the high school in an orderly fashion.

But neither her body nor local law enforcement could convince Angela to sit still.  It wasn’t in her nature, especially not recently—not since the weather forecasts first put Port Provident in Hurricane Hope’s crosshairs.

Pete didn’t waste any time either and arrived faster than she’d ever dreamed possible. Once he got to their spot, he made quick work of everything that needed to be done, including gathering her limited possessions together and taking down the tent that had served as their temporary home the last few days.

Once everything had been removed from inside the tent, Angela and Celina came out and stood a few feet off to the side. Out of the corner of her eye, Angela could see a police officer keeping watch over them. Further in the distance, families were boarding school buses bearing the name of the district across the causeway, which made sense because all the buses belonging to Port Provident ISD had been at the bus depot which received a drastic amount of flooding from the hurricane.

A strange sadness tugged at Angela’s heart as she watched Pete dismantle the tent and its fabric pool on the ground . She knew the tent wasn’t home—wasn’t even close to a home—but it was surrounded by friends and neighbors. She and Celina were still right in the middle of the community they knew and loved. Everything else had changed, but that hadn’t…until now.

Tonight’s transfer of people out of the tent city would simply accelerate the plans of the government agencies and private groups to shepherd everyone to new locations—many would be off the island. When the red tape was cut and the rebuilding started, what would happen to the only neighborhood she and her daughter had ever known?

Would it look the same?

Would the character and the community of the island she loved so dearly ever again be the town she’d loved her whole life?

“You ready? I’ve got everything loaded up, Angela.” Pete stood a few paces away.

She wasn’t ready. But she hadn’t been ready for lots of other things in her life. She hadn’t been ready to be a single mother. But she had done okay so far. Celina was happy and growing. Angela had to remember that God was in the details. The important thing now was to make sure she got healthy and they both stayed safe.

Angela would do anything for her daughter, whether she herself felt ready or not.

Pete drove his truck back through the familiar streets of Port Provident, but their route was more circuitous than it normally would have been. It seemed like at least a block or two of every street was still closed, for one reason or another. Finally, they reached the main road, a two-lane highway that would take them out to East Provident Island and the small clusters of beach neighborhoods.

She couldn’t keep her eyes from looking at what the crisp moonlight illuminated all around her. In the few days since the hurricane hit, Angela’s time had been consumed with checking on her constituents in and around the
La Missión
and Alamo Court neighborhoods, ensuring everyone was taken care of at the tent city, attending small gatherings at
La Iglesia
when she could, and making sure she took part in the unending stream of official meetings and updates which were required of her as a City Councilmember.

She’d been burning her candle at both ends--and a few spots in between.

She’d heard reports of East Provident’s status from the city councilmember who represented their district, but she hadn’t seen it for herself. There was more big debris out here, which was to be expected since there were lots of boats and boathouses. The homes out here stood on stilts and most had storage areas underneath them.  The grass that divided the small four-lane highways was dotted with ice chests, fishing poles, and outdoor chairs and tables.

And of course, wrapped around every pole and stuffed in every link of metal fencing was drying seagrass. It was everywhere, washed up from the bottom of the ocean and deposited in the nooks and crannies by crashing waves. It looked like a giant thatched palapa had exploded and littered the once beautiful beachside landscape.

Angela noticed the silence behind her and turned her head to check on her daughter. Celina was asleep in her seat behind Angela’s.  The young girl looked so sweet, so untroubled. A lump pressed on the front of Angela’s throat. She knew how much their world had changed, but she could only hope that Celina did not fully realize what had happened to the little world they called home.

Angela blinked back tears as a prayer formed in her heart and flowed through her mind.
Please God, don’t let her ever know. Don’t ever let her know how much has changed. Don’t let her childhood be scarred by this.

Pete flicked on his blinker and made a left turn into Seagull Cove, a community of older beach homes. Angela had always loved this area. The homes were painted in a variety of cheerful colors. A light shone on a two-story teal house on the corner and caught Angela’s eye, making the muscles in her cheeks twitch. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like to smile.

The smile slipped away almost as soon as it appeared. 

Pete turned into a driveway and pulled forward under the stilts of a faded green house with a large deck out front.

He looked behind him as he put the truck in park. “She crashed, huh?”

“Before we even hit the Open Water Highway. It’s more than an understatement to say she’s been out of her routine and off her schedule lately.”

Pete nodded.  “Then let’s let her sleep.”

“I can’t just leave her out here, Pete.”

“I didn’t mean leave her out here, Angela.” He gave a short laugh as he hopped easily out of the truck.  “I’ll carry her in.”

Angela opened the door and tried to get out as quietly as possible. “Are you sure you can get her?”

Pete handed her his keys as he laughed again. The unmistakable sound of amusement echoed off the beams holding the little beach house about twelve feet off the ground. For the second time in less than five minutes, Angela thought about how much she missed laughter and smiles and a time, not so long ago, when things seemed easier.

“I have carried more than one pregnant woman in labor at the birthing center. I’m pretty sure I can get a what—five-year-old?”  Pete opened the door to the backseat and gently leaned over Celina and unbuckled the seatbelt.

“She’s six. And you did that like a pro. I always manage to wake her up when I unbuckle the seatbelt.”

Pete slipped his arm behind Celina’s neck and the other under her knees and with a deft twist had her seamlessly out of the car. As he turned back toward Angela, he grinned. “I guess I have the winning touch.”

He had a winning smile, there was no doubt in her mind about that. It set her at ease, at least for the moment.

“Can you unlock the front door, and get my bag out of the bed of the truck? I’ll carry her in. I’ve got a guest room—I’ll put her on the bed in there, then we can come back out and get your things.”