Blythe began to quietly cry. Her chin dropped, her face took on a pained expression, her shoulders began to shake and tears fell onto her heavy bosom. “Well, there you have it. I’ve been lucky to have him. And now someone else is about to have him instead of me.”
That said, she got up from the rocker, went into the house and slammed the front door.
Tom wasn’t able to leave Blythe alone, he was that uncertain of her frame of mind. She might hurt herself. But when he stretched his mind to which friend of hers he might call to talk to her, sit with her, get her the help she needed, he was stumped for a name. That was probably the first time he considered how isolated Daniel and Blythe had been from the town. How could they be both well known and well liked in a town as small as Grace Valley, yet have no close friends? Hands who’d been lying low since the trouble started slowly came into evidence around the corrals and stables. Tom asked a trio of them, “You know who I might call to come and tend to Blythe?” The men shrugged and shook their heads.
Tom knew if he called a neighbor, one would come. But this wasn’t a barn fire or illness; it was a serious domestic dispute. It required the presence of an intimate friend. Or a professional.
In the end he called Jerry Powell, the only private therapist in town.
“Does she want to talk to me?” Jerry asked.
“It doesn’t matter, Jerry. She can either talk to you or go to the police station. Come on over.”
All this transpired at the stable while, in town at the clinic, June had been plucking shot out of Daniel’s behind, asking repeatedly what he might have done to drive Blythe to such ends. “Woman’s just plain crazy” was all he would say on the matter.
One of Daniel’s hired men came for him in a pickup with a couple of bales of hay in the back, which he was happy to lie over on the ride home.
Then there were patients to be seen, an uncomfortable number of them asking questions about Daniel’s condition. It was midmorning before June took the clip out of her hair and plied it with a brush. It was perfectly hopeless. After being twisted into a clip while damp, it had a mind of its own. She’d always assumed her natural wave would come in handy if she had any talent with hair, but alas, none. She pulled it back and re-clipped it.
It was late for her to be getting her first cup of coffee at Fuller’s Café across the street; she usually stopped there on her way in to the clinic at about seven. It’s possible this delay of caffeine and sugar had had an effect on her disposition, though June was typically even-tempered.
“Full morning, huh, June?” George Fuller wanted to know. “Daniel Culley gets a rumpful of shot and Chris Forrest is coming home, all divorced and everything. You still have a shine for him, June?”
“George, that was high school. Don’t be silly.”
“Why else would he come back to Grace Valley?”
“Well, George, gee… Why indeed? Could it be because he has family here? Or could it be it’s a good little town in which to raise teenagers? Or maybe he just likes the place where he grew up?”
George grinned stupidly. “And what if he wants to get back together with you?”
“George, it was high school!”
“I wonder, does he know how cranky you’ve gotten over the years?”
“If you’d just shut up and give me my coffee and a bear claw, I could mellow out. But every morning you have something to give me grief over.”
“I’ve been giving you bear claws and sticky buns for ten years now, June, and you’re still as thin as you were in junior high. You reckon you have an over-active metabolism?”
“Probably.”
George slapped a hand on his belly, which was straining the buttons on his shirt. He looked about seven months along. “You reckon mine’s broken?” he asked with a huge grin.
“That, and a few other of your mechanisms,” she said, taking the coffee and bun.
She turned away and behind her, he said, “I don’t take no offense. I’d be crabby if I’d spent all morning pickin’ shot out of some old rancher’s butt.”
It had made for an interesting morning so far, she thought. She would have taken her coffee and bear claw back to the clinic, but she spotted Tom down the counter with a couple of the locals, so she went in that direction.
“We got a little bet going, Doc,” Ray Gilmore said. “I say Blythe put about thirty pellets in Dan’l’s arse, but Sam says he sold Dan that old gun and it’ll only give about nine pellets per round and isn’t steady enough for anyone to put four rounds in a target as small as Daniel’s skinny butt. Sam says a dozen pellets, tops. Who buys the coffee?”
“Don’t you boys have anything better to do?” she asked.
Sam and Ray looked at each other, shrugged and said, “Nope. You?”
“This town,” she said, shaking her head. She looked at Tom. “What did you do with Blythe?”
“She seems all calmed down now,” he said, which was neither accurate nor did he disclose any information.
“Wouldn’t they be about the last couple in town you’d expect to have a row like that?” she said. “With a firearm involved?”
“About the last,” he agreed.
“Marriage,” she said. “Delicate thing, isn’t it?”
Tom, Sam Cussler and Ray, all married to willful women, just shook their heads. One whistled, one laughed ruefully and one muttered, “Yer damn skippy,” under his breath. That last was Sam, a very fit and energetic seventy-year-old who had recently married Justine, aged twenty-six.
“So, June,” Ray said, “you must be tickled your old flame is coming home. And he’s a bachelor again.”
It was going to be a very long day.
Two
June, Tom Toopeek, Chris Forrest and Greg Silva had grown up together. They were best pals, confidants, equals. The boys didn’t seem to even notice that June was a girl until puberty hit, at which point she became somewhat aloof, having to contend with private matters. Instead of being sensitive, they’d climbed the big tree outside her bedroom window and tried to catch a glimpse of something female. Chris fell and broke his arm. Elmer applied a heavier than necessary cast and Chris walked with a starboard list for six weeks.
By the end of junior high, Chris and June were an item. Steadies. They were a couple all through high school—she the cheerleader, he the quarterback. There was another cheerleader, Nancy Cruise, who chased Chris relentlessly, despite the fact that he already had a girlfriend. Chris, only a boy really, proved susceptible. There were times he questioned whether he should be tied down while so young. When he strayed, it was always in the same direction—to Nancy Cruise. And during those brief periods of victory, Nancy would gloat. Then Chris would beg June to take him back promising never to wander again, and Nancy would plot ways to break them up. It was a four-year tug-of-war. June scored more time on the quarterback’s dance card, but Nancy was a constant and very real threat.
If Nancy was hard to take, her mother was unbearable. She was a domineering, bossy woman and a fearful presence in the town, the chair of every committee and president of the PTA for three straight years. She was a bully, to boot. What damage Nancy endeavored to inflict on poor June, Mrs. Cruise would attempt to double.
As June remembered it, the romantic triangle Nancy and Chris presented caused the only flaw in an otherwise happy high-school experience. In retrospect, she should have dumped him after the first cheat. But, like most girls, she didn’t want to be alone, and there was no one she wanted besides Chris. Then, after much negotiation—his begging, June’s waffling—she yielded her virginity. From that point until graduation, Chris did not stray again. That June knew about, anyway.
There was one area in which Chris and June weren’t at all compatible and that was the importance they put on performance in school. June enjoyed studying, which made her high grades appear effortless. Chris was restless, easily bored, and he struggled to stay focused. She was valedictorian; he barely graduated. When it was time for college, that differe
nce played a major role in breaking them up. June got scholarships and went off to Berkeley while Chris’s parents were lucky to get him to enroll in the local junior college.
For a while they wrote each other long love letters, enjoyed passionate weekend visits, made plans for school breaks and fantasized about marriage. Just after Christmas of her freshman year, June decided to change her major from nursing to premed. The new program was even more difficult and she found her studies exhausting. She didn’t go home as many weekends, the love letters became love notes. The change happened overnight. June’s mother, Marilyn, phoned her at school to tell her that Chris had dropped out of school, run off to join the navy, and had taken Nancy Cruise with him. They had eloped.
He never explained, never said goodbye, never said he was sorry.
Six months later, when Chris had his first real leave from the navy, Mrs. Cruise threw a huge reception for the couple and invited the whole town—even June. It had all the flavor of a victory lap.
June’s devastation knew no bounds. She was wrecked. But fortunately she was also angry. She realized, too late, that Chris had zigzagged between her and Nancy for the better part of four years, and the fact that she had him in her camp more often was little consolation. If the three of them had lived in the same town, it would probably have continued. He was just a two-timing lout with a short attention span. She was better off without him and was relieved that Chris and Nancy had moved away. June got herself ready to be a doctor. Berkeley looked a damn site better than Grace Valley at that point in her life, and she welcomed the opportunity to lose herself in study. She rarely thought about Chris, and when she did think about him, she hoped he wasn’t happy.
Now June sat at her desk, in her clinic, staring at a patient’s chart but not seeing it. This only happened to her when she heard Chris was going to be home, when she thought about the prospect of actually seeing him. The curse that lay on her was that they’d never had any closure. Shoot, he hadn’t even bothered to break up with me before he got married, she thought.
But things were different this time. Chris was single.
Once she had survived the pain of a broken heart, she hadn’t had any regrets about the way her life had gone, sans Chris. There had been a relationship or two along the way; she was hardly a nun. And at thirty-seven, there was still time for a long and even fruitful union.
Remembering that phone call from her mother…
Being teased by the men in town about having her old flame come back to reclaim her…
Thinking about never knowing why…
“I need a distraction,” she said aloud. “I can’t be dwelling on things past. Stupid things.” She flipped the pages of the chart, glanced at her watch, wondered what her aunt Myrna was doing for lunch.
Then the door to her office burst open and there stood her nurse, Charlotte, a strong whiff of Benson & Hedges wafting in with her. June jumped in surprise as she did several times a day, every day, because Charlotte simply would not knock.
“Sorry,” Charlotte said. “Dr. Hudson called to ask if you’re still doing meat loaf tonight.”
June made a face and chewed on the end of her pen, looking up at Charlotte from a lowered brow. That was another thing. She always referred to Elmer as Dr. Hudson and June as June. Charlotte had been Elmer’s nurse first, and seemed to still hold his retirement against June.
“Charlotte, who cooks at your house?” June asked.
“You know Bud’s cooked since he got laid off last time,” she said crossly.
“Doesn’t it seem kind of funny that I make Elmer meat loaf every Tuesday night, and he’s retired?”
Charlotte crossed her arms over her heavy bosom and looked sternly at June. “I think he’s earned that meat loaf,” she said.
“Well, that figures,” June said, looking back at the chart, pen poised over the paper. “I’ve already told him I’ll see him at six. Remind him for me, will you?” She scribbled a note in the margin of some blood test results. There was no movement or sound from the doorway. She looked up. Charlotte appeared to have frozen there, her eyes wide open, her mouth agog, her coloring fading quickly to pallor. One arm began to rise trembling toward her chest when she went down fast with a huge thud.
“Charlotte!”
June got to her first, but John Stone and the receptionist, Jessie, were beside her in a flash. June pressed the stethoscope to Charlotte’s chest. Nothing. She placed her fingertips on her carotid arteries on each side of her fleshy neck.
“Jessie,” John instructed, “get the crash cart right now. We’ll set up the EKG and defibrillator here in the hallway. Then call the police department. We’re going to want a driver and an escort to Valley Hospital. June, start compressions. I’ll get the intubation set up and bag her.”
June started compressing her nurse’s chest, counting aloud as she did so. “One, two, three, four…”
The sound of squeaking wheels announced the arrival of the cart. It held the EKG machine, emergency drugs, paddles, everything necessary to treat cardiac arrest. John, with great speed, knelt at Charlotte’s shoulders, tilted her head back, got the intubator down her throat and began squeezing the bag.
June stopped her compressions long enough to quickly open Charlotte’s white uniform and begin attaching electrodes to her chest. “Jessie, after you call the police, call my dad and Bud Burnham.” The girl was running down the hall again. “Those goddamn cigarettes,” June muttered.
“Hurry up,” John said. “Do we have sinus rhythm?”
The EKG machine was old. Slow. June was in agony waiting for the first strip of wet graph to feed out. “She’s flat,” June said, reaching for the paddles. She squirted them liberally with gel, pressed them against Charlotte’s chest and yelled, “Clear!” John lifted his hands free of the bag. The jolt lifted Charlotte’s heavy body off the floor. There was no change. June increased the voltage, pressed the paddles again to the woman’s chest and said, “Come on, old girl! Clear!” She watched the tape. Flat.
“I’ve got lidocaine ready,” John said.
June moved aside while John made the injection directly into Charlotte’s chest. The second he finished, June increased the voltage and pressed the paddles to Charlotte’s chest again. “Sinus rhythm,” she said with huge relief.
“That’s our girl,” John said. “Stubborn. Start an IV of Ringers TKO. I’ll dose Lasix and beta-blockers. She have a chart?”
“Jessie’ll find it. John, this is going to upset my dad. Charlotte was his nurse for thirty years. At least.”
“It’s going to upset all of us, June,” he said. Though John had been with the clinic for only a few months, he was already attached to the gruff but extremely skilled old nurse. “I’ll back the ambulance up to the door and get the gurney out, if you think you can handle this now.”
“Go. The sooner we get her to Valley’s cardiac unit, the better her chances.”
John ran down the clinic hall to the back door. June, kneeling beside her nurse, gently stroked the woman’s forehead. “When I said I needed a distraction, I didn’t mean anything as dramatic as this.”
June and Elmer spent the evening at Valley Hospital with the Burnham family. Charlotte was conscious and holding her own, but this heart event had not been a warning. It was the real McCoy—a myocardial infarction. The only question was the extent of damage. The best-case scenario was that Charlotte would recover, but she could not go back to her old ways. And that included nursing.
“She always said that was the best part of her life,” her son, Archie, told June and Elmer.
June took his hand. “She always told us that raising you kids was the best part.”
“She’ll have more time for the grandkids now,” Elmer said. “Within reason.”
“She’s going to make it, isn’t she, Doc?” Bud wanted to know. “I mean, I know she’ll have to watch it, but she’s going to make it, right?” He looked back and forth between June and Elmer, not specifying which doctor he
was asking.
“Bud, we don’t know too much right now,” June said. “Her heart took a bad whack. But medical science is amazing, and what might’ve killed her ten years ago is just a setback now. The good thing is, it hit at work. We were on her right away. She was resuscitated and medicated immediately. That helps in the recovery.”
“I don’t know how we’ll ever thank you,” he said.
“Perish the thought!” June said. “Wouldn’t Charlotte have been there for either of us? And hasn’t she been, a hundred times?”
As Elmer and June left the hospital, she said to her father, “What are we going to do for a nurse?”
“Call the registry. They’ll send someone out.”
“I know that. I mean in the long term. We both know Charlotte is done nursing.”
“I wouldn’t write her off that fast. She’s always been a feisty pain in the butt,” Elmer said.
June thought it might take a bit more than feistiness this time.
John was on call and had the ambulance for the night, so Elmer gave June a lift back to Grace Valley in his truck. As they rode, June called John on her cell phone and gave him an update on Charlotte’s condition. Then, instead of meat loaf at June’s, they availed themselves of roast beef at the Café. Sadie, who had waited patiently at the clinic, joined them. George always had a supply of dog food on hand.
Charlotte was, as much as Elmer, a fixture at the center of the town. She’d been a nurse for forty years, all of them in Grace Valley. She had barely taken the time off to have her own children, and there were six of them. Nearly every citizen in the valley had crossed Charlotte’s path at one time or other. News of her cardiac arrest had spread through town and almost everyone who happened to be at George Fuller’s café wanted to know how she was doing.
By the time June and Sadie got home, it was after ten…and her porch light was on.