Wishes and Stitches (5 page)

Chapter Eight

T
hat should do it,” said Naomi as she handed the prescription to Mildred, who then gave it to Greta, who put the paper in her purse.

They were her first appointment of the day. Both of them seventy-five if they were a day, they were attached at the hip. They always came in together, and Naomi was fond of them, even if they slowed down her average patient visit time. Eleven minutes. That's what Naomi thought was the ideal length of time to spend with a patient—that was time enough to chat, assess, and examine, if one was moving quickly, methodically, with economy of motion that usually still left enough time to make a connection.

But she couldn't do that with Mildred and Greta. There was always something just a little wrong, a bunion, a twisted ankle, a patch of dead skin, and even though these problems were easily fixed, the ladies liked their chat and didn't take hints to speed things up, even the broadest. Today it was a bout of insomnia. It was nothing compared to the breast cancer Mildred had gone through before Naomi had even moved into town. She was now eleven years in remission and going strong.

Naomi went on, “Just one before bed, and I'd recommend not taking them more than once a week. They're habit forming, but they work well.”

Greta clutched her purse. “You do have addiction in your family, dear.”

Mildred clucked. “I've avoided the gutter this far, I think I'll do just fine. Now, Dr. Fontaine, what's this I hear about a new doctor in town? Is he the fella we saw yesterday at Tillie's?”

Well, if the jungle drums had been beating, Mildred would have heard the news on the first thump. Naomi slipped her prescription pad back into the drawer. She bet Rig Keller told his patients to call him by his first name. “I'd love it if you called me Naomi, Mildred.”

Mildred gasped and pressed a hand to her generous cleavage. “My
word
! We couldn't do that. You're our
doctor
.”

So much for that bright idea. “All right. But maybe you'll change your mind. And yes, I'm thinking we might soon have a new doctor here.” For the hundredth time, Naomi wished Pederson would answer his cell phone. “More important,” she said, standing, resisting the urge to usher them out like birds, “when are you two going to start using Cypress Hollow's first health clinic?”

Mildred's eyes widened. “I don't know about all that. We see
you
.”

“It would be a perfect place to have your friends come in, have blood pressure screenings, gather to talk about cancer risk or recovery. I usually staff it in the evenings, and it's always open to the public when we are. Lots of free periodicals and informational pamphlets.”

Shaking her head, Mildred said, “Folks in town don't need that. We have enough gathering places. There's Tillie's and the Rite Spot, and the Book Spire for in between. And if I'm going to gather, I'd rather knit than talk about cancer. My word. That would just be another place for me to lose my umbrella. Speaking of which—”

“It's right here, dear,” said Greta quietly. “I have it.”

“Ah. Thank you.” Mildred beamed at Greta, who bloomed in the gaze. Naomi shuffled her feet to move them, and they bobbed in front of her like slow-moving ducks.

“Would you just like to come look at it? I have time, I could show you right now. There's going to be a free blood sugar analysis later this week. And it's just next door, just a room away. It's the old dance studio . . . I added—”

Mildred interrupted, “But there really is a new doctor in town, then?”

Naomi felt another twinge of anxiety. She'd kept this practice alive for the last year while her partner took himself on three-month trips to places like Antigua and Tanzania. She was used to being in charge, used to answering questions without having to confer with another party.

At least, if it was a done deal, he'd be just an employee until Pederson officially retired. She'd still be in charge.

“Maybe,” she said.

Mildred held open the swinging door that led from the back office to the front, and when they'd passed through she leaned heavily against Bruno's reception desk.

“The important question is this: if he's that handsome brute we met yesterday in Tillie's, is he single?” Mildred winked at Bruno, who stared back, straight faced. His pen was still tucked behind his ear, which in Bruno code meant he wasn't ready for talking. He turned back to the computer and tapped something in. Naomi let herself feel pleased for a short moment that the pen behind his ear was from the pack she'd bought at the drugstore—the expensive ones that she knew he loved but wouldn't order because he said the patients always walked away with them by accident.

Naomi cleared her throat. “I went over his CV.” The one that she'd found in a quick search of Pederson's desktop, but she wouldn't mention that. “He's definitely well qualified for the position. No one will be disappointed.”

“But ladies are already asking me. Is he single? And by that I mean, is he divorced or gay?”

Naomi blinked. “I have no idea.”
Boy, was he not gay.

Mildred flapped a hand. “Oh, you. No help at all. All right, we're off. We're going to Abigail's store next. Did you hear that her employee Sara is expecting? That makes three baby sweaters I have to make before the end of the summer.” She took Greta's arm firmly.

But Greta didn't move. She looked up at Naomi. “Do you knit, Doctor?”

Naomi bit the inside of her lip and could feel the
yes
forming on her tongue. She was dying to tell them she did, to finally have someone in town to talk to about her hobby. . .

But then they might want to see her knitting. She couldn't do that. She wasn't a bad knitter, but she was nothing like the experts she saw knitting all over town, and these two were at the top of the knitting in-crowd pile.

“I know how to, but you know me.” She laughed lightly. “Never time for anything but my patients. Don't forget to get to the pharmacy before you go home.”

“You should come knit with us at Abigail's store sometime,” said Greta.

Naomi's heart sang,
Yes, yes, yes.
Why, then, did it make her so nervous she could barely speak? Somehow, making friends in the big city had been easier. Most of her pals had worked with her—doctors like her, who didn't know how to bullshit, who cut to the heart of the matter without any wasted time. Women who weren't offended when she did the same. They were more casually formed, friends who came and went as interests and staff rotations changed. She'd always had a half dozen people on speed dial on her phone—she couldn't call any of them a best friend, but she could call them to go to the movies. Here, every connection made felt so important, so irrevocable.

“We'll see, won't we?” She watched as they wobbled together down the sidewalk.

To go through life together, side by side. What must that be like? Her heart twisted strangely and she asked Bruno for the next patient's chart.

She went on with her next few appointments, making up the time lost to Mildred and Greta, and it wasn't until she had mixed up a mother's name with a daughter's (one needed allergy medicine, the other needed birth control, and neither knew the other was there—it could have been awkward), did she realize the strange feeling in her stomach was nerves. Rig would surely come by today sometime, to get the lay of the land. That would only be natural, and it was nothing to be scared of. Obviously. Then she dropped her pen three times in the next appointment and couldn't find her stethoscope until Bruno helped her. Finally, Bruno told her she should take a break, and she heard the implied meaning: that she needed one.

In her office, sitting in her father's old brown leather chair, she took a deep breath. Eliza Carpenter would have told her to
have fun, with everything.
Easy for her to say. Of course, even sick, Eliza had known how to have fun almost all the time. Once, from her hospital bed in San Diego, where Naomi had treated her for two years for the cancer that eventually killed her, Eliza had grinned and asked her for a favor.

“I want to make a trip into the hills. When I'm out of here.”

Naomi had nodded, not sure Eliza
would
get out; the cancer had spread and was invasive.

But sure enough, after Eliza had been released from her second hospitalization, she'd asked Naomi to drive her out to the low hills around the San Vicente reservoir. Naomi's strict rule of never getting involved with patients went right out the window and she felt wildly flattered to be picked. Everyone in the hospital wanted to be near Eliza—Naomi had routinely kicked out orderlies and cafeteria workers who'd flocked to her room, and she couldn't keep track of the number of nurses who wanted to be on Eliza's floor. Many of them were knitters and knew of Eliza Carpenter's fame. But others were just drawn to her because of her sparkling green eyes and the way they lit up with excitement just to have the curtains drawn open every morning. She was electric, and even when sick she was more
alive
than most people were on their best days.

That day, Naomi had picked Eliza up at the small independent-living apartment she'd been staying in for the last few years. They were small, joined cottages, and Eliza said that everyone who stayed there was a knitter, that it was a knitters' retirement home. Naomi hadn't quite believed it, but when she drove onto the property, she saw various light poles and bus benches covered with colorful bits of knit graffiti. A VW bug parked in a space marked for C
ARSHARE
was clothed, roof to wheel wells, in a granny-square car cozy. Four women sat in a circle at a picnic table, all of them knitting, and she drove past a small yarn store attached to the property that was packed with elderly residents.

Naomi helped Eliza load a little folding spinning wheel and tiny stool into her car, and then tucked a bag of fiber behind the passenger seat.

Once they were sitting on a low green rise overlooking the water of the reservoir, clear, bright sunlight spilling around them, Eliza spun as Naomi set out their picnic. Between bites of
caprese
sandwich and sips of her favorite cream soda, Eliza's wheel flew. Naomi knitted a clumsy watch cap as she watched the thin cream-colored yarn dripping from Eliza's fingers like water. By the time they packed to go, as the sun was dropping into the wide bowl of dark water, Eliza had plied two bobbins' worth of cream laceweight yarn.

“Here,” she said, “this is my last hand spun, from the sheep I loved best. Make two skeins, soak them, and dry them to set the twist. It will be enough for the simple wedding shawl in the third book.”

Naomi had laughed. “I'm never getting married. I may never even manage a second date again.”

Eliza looked at her sharply. “What about your mother? She married twice, didn't she? Maybe you're just a late bloomer. You never told me her name.”

“Maybelle. Her maiden name was Skye. Why? Oh! Did you meet her, in that short time she lived in Cypress Hollow?” Why hadn't that ever occurred to Naomi before?

“Is she a knitter?”

Naomi laughed. “No, my mother pays people well to do everything they can for her. No matter how many times she ends up getting married, she'll never make a shawl.”

Eliza's eyes dropped to the fiber on her lap she was predrafting. The soft wind lifted it, making it dance as she held on to it lightly. “Then make it for yourself, sweet girl, even if you never marry. It'll work as a pretty scarf. There's nothing wrong with that.”

Suddenly overcome by a gift of hand-spun yarn from someone like Eliza Carpenter, Naomi said, “I couldn't. I'm not good enough at knitting.”

“You are. You have clever fingers. Please, take this. You've made me happy, bringing me here for the last time.”

Naomi remembered how bright Eliza's eyes had been, snapping with life and verve. That hand-spun wool, not a piece of knitting as the world would have predicted, was Eliza Carpenter's last finished object. But it hadn't been Eliza's last gift to her.

On Naomi's final visit to her while she was still conscious, Eliza took her hands and said in a whisper, “Your eyes don't belong here. You're not a city girl. The ocean is in your blood. Go to Cypress Hollow. Go, live there. Love there. For me.” The way Eliza's hands had gripped her own had felt like a benediction, and Naomi had felt a rush of connection unlike any she'd ever known from a patient.
This
was why doctors had to keep a professional distance.
This
was why her colleagues couldn't remember their patients' names without stealing a glance at their charts.

Eliza had died an hour later. Naomi informed Eliza's inconsolable friend Abigail, who was waiting just outside the door. Abigail had then turned to the other grieving knitters in the cold hallway who'd been whispering prayers into the stitches of their sweaters and socks, and Naomi had taken herself home to mourn. She hadn't yet moved the yarn from the bobbins into skeins to set the twist. She was a terrible spinner, but she knew how to do this much. Tears in her eyes, she wound the skeins from her thumb to her elbow.

But at the end of one bobbin, taped to the actual wood itself, was a piece of paper. She hadn't noticed anything different about Eliza's spinning that day, but then again, she'd been knitting. Eliza had wound fiber all around this so it was completely invisible until now.

Hands trembling, Naomi used her yarn scissors to snip the tape and pull off the paper. She unfolded it carefully.

A ring fell into her lap.

A small gold ring, with a tiny diamond, the sides of which were held in place by what looked like platinum leaves. It was delicate. Perfect.