The Doctor's Unexpected Family: (Inspirational Romance) (Port Provident: Hurricane Hope) (8 page)

He’d miss them all when he left town. He probably only had a few weeks left to soak up the friendship of the good people in Port Provident—people like the Garcia family…and the meals they cooked.

“Those tortillas look homemade. Could you maybe spare two? When I get sent off to some corner of the world, I may not be able to get food like this. I think I need to double up.” He looked up from the griddle and gave Juanita another smile as they made eye contact. “You know, for the memories.”

“Do you know when you’re leaving yet?” Juanita ladled a generous spoonful of rice on a disposable foam plate.

“No, I’m still waiting on the official word that everything is a go, plus there are a few more things to do with the clinic before I move on.”

“Gloria said you’re selling the building and everything.” She handed Pete the plate, loaded full of more food than he could have ever expected. “Let me get you a fork and spoon too.”

“I am, Juanita. I won’t be here to supervise any rebuilding—that’s a long-term project, and I don’t want to be a long-distance landlord, either. My uncle wants to stay retired, and so we both think the best thing to do is to clean it out, continue to navigate the insurance process, and let someone who is going to be here to invest in the Port Provident recovery do something new with it. It’s in a great location, and being a historic home with a really nice layout, it has a lot of potential.”

Juanita nodded. “
Sí
. But we will miss having a doctor like you in the community.”

“I’ve got a lot of great memories of my time here. I know I’ll miss a lot of folks, too.”

Pete started to scope out a place to sit. There were a few lawn chairs that seemed to be unoccupied. As though reading his train of thought, Juanita pointed toward a blue-and-white webbed chair near a large palm tree in the corner.

“Do you think you could go sit over there by Mrs. Escobar? She’s been very worried about some medical things and how she’s going to get her medicines, since Provident Medical is expected to be closed for a while. Maybe you could talk with her and ease her mind a little bit?”

He didn’t quite know what to say. He didn’t have any insight into what was going on at Provident Medical, and since Mrs. Escobar had passed retirement age a long time ago, he felt pretty certain she didn’t need advice on delivering babies, which was his specialty these days. But to say anything other than yes would not only be rude, it would be practically spitting in the face of the spirit of support and recovery that was wrapping around the island in the days since people returned home and started to assess what it would take to rebuild their future.

“Sure, Juanita. I don’t know if I have any good advice to give, but I’ll do what I can.” Pete looked gratefully at the hot, homemade meal in his hands. Sitting by Mrs. Escobar seemed to be the least he could do.

Juanita took off her apron and hung it from the end of the metal shelf behind her that had been setup as storage for the makeshift outdoor kitchen and walked to a nearby cooler where she plucked out a bottle of water. “
Bien
. I’ll come with you. My tired old bones need a break anyway.”

The group of five ladies buzzed with quick Spanish chatter between them as Pete and Juanita lowered themselves into the empty chairs at the edge of the semi-circle. Juanita jumped right in. Pete knew quite a bit of Spanish and was able to hold his own in conversations with patients, but he realized that right now, he could either turn all his concentration to following the six ladies as they spoke between and over one another or he could focus on tortillas, rice, beans and some fresh mango slices.

With almost no hesitation, he chose the tortillas.

Halfway through his second tortilla, in mid-chew, the conversation turned Pete’s way.

“I used to check my blood pressure every day, but now that everything in my home is gone, I don’t have my monitor anymore. The hospital is closed and my doctor is on the mainland now. I can’t get over the causeway every day for a blood pressure check and I don’t know what to do.”

Pete could hear the worry in Mrs. Escobar’s voice. Before taking over the clinic, he’d been an ER physician. He knew all too well that many patients were fine with the day-to-day management of their conditions, but when changes came to their routines, it made many of them feel unsettled and out of control.

“I can help you with that. I have my bag of supplies in the trunk of my car and I have everything I need in there to check your blood pressure,” Pete replied. It would be simple to put this woman’s mind at ease.

One of the other ladies spoke up. She was a type-two diabetic who was nervous about both her sugar level and running low on her prescription. Another had stress headaches and just wished she could get her hands on a bottle of ibuprofen.

Pete finished his meal quickly and stood. “Give me a few minutes to get some things out of my car and get set up inside. Then you can meet me in the sanctuary, and I’ll be able to help all of you.”

As he walked off, he caught more of the group’s animated chatter—and he was pretty sure Mrs. Escobar said something about needing to fix him up with her granddaughter so she’d have a doctor in the family.

Pete chuckled to himself. He could check Mrs. Escobar’s blood pressure, but for the other issues of the heart, she was on her own. A small twitch in his own heart came as he thought of Anna. He wasn’t getting fixed up with anyone. He’d loved and he’d lost.

And he wasn’t ever planning on doing either again.

Angela waved goodbye to Libby Rawlings, the city councilmember for East Provident who’d given her a ride back to Pete’s beach house. She couldn’t believe the sun was already starting to sink in the western sky, casting an intense orange glow on the water of Provident Bay down at the end of Pete’s street.

A stillness hung in the air, and Angela breathed in deeply. Running from one meeting to another for the last twelve hours, she hadn’t felt still all day.

And that was to say nothing of the restlessness in her soul. She had to get a plan together for a more permanent place for her and Celina to stay. Pete had been nothing but generous, but she wasn’t about to make him sleep out on his porch again, no matter what he said about his snoring.

Oh, how she missed normal.

But she’d missed her daughter today too. And while she couldn’t fix all the issues on the island, she could give her daughter a hug, and that would fix a lot of the unrest in her heart.

Angela walked up the outside stairs, crossed the wide deck that made up the front of the house, then knocked on the door.

“Mama!” As soon as the door cracked open, Celina wedged herself through the open space and threw her arms around Angela’s waist.

“
Querida!
” Angela ruffled Celina’s hair as she greeted her with a favorite term of endearment. “It smells amazing in here. Is that spaghetti?”

“It is.” Pete stood a few feet away, stirring a few shakes of dried oregano into a bubbling pot of tomato sauce.

In the overhead light, Angela noticed a dash of gray running throughout Pete’s closely-trimmed hair. In all the hectic ups and downs of yesterday, she hadn’t really looked closely at Pete. She’d always been distracted, trying to do too many things at once. Part of dealing with the aftermath of a disaster and taking shelter in a makeshift refugee camp was that you didn’t notice details any more. Life became a task list. You checked one box and moved on to another.

But right now, in her moment of slow sunglow and the peace she’d found in her daughter’s warm hug, Angela forced herself to press pause and take in the moment. Strictly on a connection between friends, this man had opened up his home and his kitchen to her little family. Community and compassion were alive and well in Port Provident, and this evidence of that fact gave her strength for the road ahead.

“I really don’t know how I can thank you,” Angela said with simple gratitude.

Pete put the lid back on the saucepan. “It’s just spaghetti. Not a big deal.”

Angela wanted to say something more, but couldn’t think of a way to describe her gratitude in a way that didn’t come across as awkward.

Then Celina began to tug on her hand and the moment passed. “Pete! Can we show her? Please?”

“I have a feeling you’re not talking about pasta.” She tried to dislodge her hand from Celina’s excited, pinching grip. “What is it?”

“I can’t tell you unless Pete says so. It’s a surprise.” Celina’s grip got stronger. If Pete didn’t give the green light, Angela feared she might lose her thumb.

Pete clicked off both burners he’d been using on the stove. “Sure, kiddo. Celina and I worked at the church until after lunch time, and then we came back here and worked on a project together.”

Celina began to drag her mother toward the door. “Come on, Mama!”

She flung open the door, let go of Angela’s hand, and took off at a sprint across the deck and down the stairs.

“Where are we going?” Angela questioned Pete as he closed the front door behind them.

“You’ll see,” he said, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Angela caught the white sparkle of the light and thought it perfectly complimented the salt in his light brown hair. It felt somehow disloyal to her constituents to be thinking of anything other than how to get their lives back to normal, but at the same time, it felt almost soothing to be thinking about something other than the aftermath of the hurricane.

Pete stopped at a plain door among the stilts that elevated his beach house more than ten feet off the ground. It was slightly hidden behind the garage area.

“Open it, Mama! Open it!” Celina couldn’t keep her feet on the ground. She bounced with excitement. Angela couldn’t think of anything that would get her daughter that excited, except maybe having Huggy Lovey back.

She reached her hand out slowly and put it on the door knob. The orange light from earlier filtered through the spaces in between the boards of the deck and made a pattern on the dirt and concrete here below the house.

“Go ahead. Nothing in there will bite.” Pete gave a little chuckle.

She turned the knob, and then Celina gave the door a strong shove, pushing it wide open. Angela looked around. She saw a small kitchenette with a narrow, rectangular window across the room. Closer to her were two chairs and an older-model television on a low stand. Behind that area was a double bed covered in a blue and maroon patterned quilt with a large brown teddy bear sitting in a place of honor atop two white pillows. She recognized it as the guest bed Pete had laid Celina on last night when they’d arrived at her house. A small walled off area with a plain white door was tucked in the corner, which based on the layout, was probably a small bathroom.

It looked like an efficiency apartment—sparsely, yet fully furnished.

“What do you think?” Pete leaned against the door frame. “I’d moved the furniture upstairs when the storm came through and had just moved it all back down here about two days ago after scrubbing out the mud on the floors.  It’s hard to believe, but there wasn’t much damage down here. This room was built to handle some flooding. Celina helped me clean—she’s great with a mop—and my next door neighbor helped me move the guest bed down here. I had a twin-sized bed in here before the storm, but I knew that wouldn’t work for the two of you, so I made a switch.”

Angela didn’t know what to make of the goose bumps popping up on the skin of her forearms. “But what is all this?”

“Well, Brownie the Bear needed a good home.” Pete shrugged. The half-cocked smile never left the corners of his lips.

His answer left her with another question. Nothing really made sense. “Who is Brownie the Bear?”

“Mama! Brownie’s right there on the bed.” Celina gave the direct and obvious answer, in true six-year-old fashion.

“I see that. But where did Brownie come from, and why does he need an apartment?”

“Brownie came from the good people at the First Cornerstone Church of Spring, Texas. They’re the ones who sent that first truck. Brownie was on it, and he and Celina became fast friends. And Brownie needs a place to crash because Celina needs a place to crash. They’re pretty inseparable.” Pete’s smile morphed into a full ear-to-ear grin. “And Brownie said he can’t live in a tent. Humidity isn’t good for his fur.”

“Isn’t it great, Mama? We can stay with Pete! We don’t have to go back to the shelter or the tent!” Celina gave a little bounce, followed by a twirl.

The goose bumps had multiplied and turned into one big lump in Angela’s throat. “No, really, we can’t. I told you this was temporary. I can’t take advantage of things my constituents don’t have available to them. It’s just not right.”

“Not right?” The smile fell from Pete’s face. He looked at her with a practiced seriousness, as though he were giving her a diagnosis she didn’t want to hear. “I think you can get a lot more done for your people here. You’ll have a space to work, and your daughter will feel safe and secure. You’re not taking advantage of anything. You’re not pulling any strings. You’re not giving me anything in return. I’m offering this of my own free will. Well, that and because I have a soft spot for teddy bears who need a good roof over their heads.”