Jennifer

  She hesitated, then asked one further question that had been bothering her. “Why should I matter to Him? I’m just one person, and God—if He exists as you describe—is so much more.”

  “Your worth is measured by how He sees you, not by something you have done or could do in the future. It’s okay to trust that. You matter because God says you do.”

  “All I can promise is that I’ll think about it.”

  “That’s all I’m asking,” Tom assured her.

  Tom trailed Jennifer into her office, grateful there had been a break penciled into her day’s schedule in an overflow slot. Their calendars had finally clicked for him to join her for a Monday. “I forgot how absolutely draining it is to see a string of patients, one right after the other.”

  Jennifer laughed and pointed him toward her desk chair. “You looked like you were beginning to wilt a couple of times. Sit. Dig out that lunch you brought and never ate. I’ve got some files to pull for the rest of my patients this afternoon.”

  He turned her desk chair around and settled in. He worked hard as a surgeon, but it was a much more controlled, absorbed kind of focus. He’d complete a complex surgery and look up to find six hours had passed, feeling the exhaustion when the patient was moved safely into the recovery room. But for the most part, during the surgery he was unaware of it. Jennifer had days where ten minutes being focused on one thing was a long stretch of time.

  He opened a soda. “How do you keep the kids straight? So far today, among others, there was a Kim, Kathy, and Karen, not to mention three Mikes.”

  Jennifer thumbed through files in her credenza, pulling out an occasional name. She smiled at the question. “Kim wants to be a ballerina, Kathy is a budding scientist, and Karen has blond hair and likes boys and wants to be in the movies someday. They are as different as kids can be.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “And the Mikes—don’t get me started. One is so shy he will barely look at me, despite the fact he often calls the office to ask my opinion about what his cancer doctor told him. The oldest Mike hates taking pills and thinks doctors are a waste of his time but comes because the pain in his leg is too bad to not admit it hurts. And the youngest Mike is an animal lover—there was an actual breathing frog in his pocket at the last visit.”

  She pulled another file. “I could give you the symptoms they came in with if that would help you sort them out, but symptoms tend to change with visits, so I just remember the kids.” She found the last file she needed and pushed the credenza closed.

  “You do understand most doctors don’t rattle off particulars that easily.” He broke his sandwich in half and passed her part of it. “Not when they have over a hundred patients.”

  “It’s that many?” she said around a bite.

  “I asked your chief nurse.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “I see them one at a time. It’s not that big a deal to remember a few details.”

  “Jennifer, that hundred number was just the last month. You’re here or at the hospital most of the time. You basically see kids from the time you arrive to the time you finally call it a night. You need another partner here in your practice.”

  “I need a new pair of tennis shoes,” she said. She held up the sandwich. “This is pretty good. What’s on it?”

  “Ham and bologna, I think, with some kind of smoked cheese. Whatever was left in my fridge that still smelled edible.” He opened a bag of chips. “Change of subject. What about July Fourth?”

  “What about it?”

  “To meet your family. I can get some time off. You said your family is already planning to get together that weekend.”

  “You’d really consider coming to Chicago with me?”

  “Sure.”

  She bit her lip.

  He laughed. “It’s not going to ruin our friendship, Jen. Even if they don’t like me at all, they’ll still be in Chicago, and I’ll still be the one dropping by your office every day or so. Our relationship can handle me meeting your family, and them meeting me.”

  “I just . . . we’re not your everyday family, Tom. I need you to understand that going in. We’re all closer than most because we’ve had to be.”

  “You worry too much. They’ll like me. Just think about it, okay?”

  “Sure, I’ll think about it.” She looked at the chips. “Got extras of those?” she asked.

  He pushed over the bag. “I brought two bags. So if we see patients until six, as this schedule seems to suggest, we’d better plan dinner now because I’m going to be totally wiped by the end of the day.”

  “My place,” she offered. “I think I can find enough for a stir-fry if you want to play chef and put it together while I make a salad.”

  “I’m game.” He ran his finger along her calendar. “Ricky is next?”

  “Ten. Wants to be a firefighter. Loves adventure. Has bone cancer that refuses to be checked.” She picked up the boy’s file and passed it over.

  “Talk to me about his oncologist. Who does he see?”

  She settled on the corner of her desk and worked on the bag of chips. “Dr. Shayfield. They’ve already tried the standard protocols.” Tom flipped pages in the chart while she started running down drugs and dates from memory, adding commentary on how Ricky had responded.

  He had thought he was skilled as a surgeon, but he’d realized today after about the sixth patient that he was working with a general practice MD who knew more about caring for patients than he’d learned so far in his whole career. If she didn’t have a photographic memory for the details of this job, she had a focus on her kids that made her memory rock solid.

  “The goal right now is to keep the pain in check,” she added, “deal with two biopsy incisions that are refusing to fully heal, and figure out how to keep his spirits up. He’s seeing oncologists every week now, and he’s getting discouraged.”

  “Got some ideas?”

  “Nope. But I’ll listen to him until I hear something I can work with.” She shrugged. “All that medical school and I’m back to what my mom would have recommended. General practice is pretty far from the certainty of surgery.”

  “I’m remembering.” He finished his apple and threw away the remnants of lunch. “Let’s go see Ricky. Who brings him in?”

  “Normally his mom.” Jennifer pushed open the office door and headed toward the nurses’ station to get the sign-in chart. Tom followed, glad he had made these arrangements so he could step into her world and see what she did during a workday. He was getting an education on what it was like to be a top-tier general-practice doctor. If he hadn’t seen this day for himself, he never would have understood what she meant when she occasionally commented it had been a busy day.

  7

  Jennifer stretched out in the warmth of the sun, a stack of books beside her deck chair. It was easier to read these while at Tom’s than carry the books back and forth to her home. She could hear Tom still on the phone inside, talking about a surgery scheduled for the following Monday. When he was finished with his call, he was going to take her shopping, and she thought she would enjoy this day more than most.

  She picked up his Bible. She didn’t mind the studying Tom was asking of her. This was important to him, and it required some of her time, but he wasn’t pushy about it or insisting she put blind faith in something she didn’t understand.

  She did see consistency in him and in what the Bible said was true about Christians. He was a surgeon, at peace with life. That came from somewhere. The highs and lows that seemed to pace her own life didn’t seem to be his experience. He lost patients, but it didn’t bury him in sadness. He had hope in something after this life, and it changed how he viewed the events that happened to him and around him. She was beginning to appreciate how powerful an advantage that gave him when trouble came.

  “What are you reading?”

  She turned the Bible so Tom could see the page. “Luke. Where I started reading the Bible all those weeks ago. The book makes more sense n
ow.”

  “Does it?”

  “It reads less theoretical, more factual. I read about Jesus healing someone who was blind and it no longer jars as impossible to believe. If Jesus is God, as He says He is, healing a blind man should have been as simple a task as Luke describes. There’s no need to make a big production out of making a blind man see when you have the power to create sight to begin with. It would seem more out of place if Jesus had made a big deal out of it.”

  “I’m glad it’s starting to ring true.”

  “At least I’m beginning to understand why you believe Jesus is God, even if I still have a lot of questions about the implications of what that claim means.” She closed the book and set it on the stack beside her. “How are things at the hospital?”

  “We’re ready for Monday.”

  “Good.” She pulled on her shoes. “I’m ready to go if you are.”

  “How on earth did I let you talk me into shopping again?”

  She grinned and caught his hand. “Face it, you like shopping with me.”

  “Do you have a list this time?”

  “I do.”

  “We’ll do this efficiently then.”

  She laughed. “You can only hope.”

  They headed toward the mall parking lot, crowded with shoppers coming and going. Tom unlocked the car and opened the trunk. Jennifer added another two packages to her accumulated pile. “That’s the last item on the list. I’m done. For now.”

  Tom rested an arm around her shoulders. “I like you, Jennifer.”

  She glanced up at him and laughed. “I’m starting to really like you too.”

  “Tell you what then, little shrimp, I think we should go do something a lot more fun to fill up the rest of the afternoon.”

  “Little shrimp?” she asked, wondering where the teasing was coming from, but letting him get away with it. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’m shopped out, walked out . . . and movies are a nice place to hold your hand but not much for conversation. What do you say we go play golf or something like that?”

  “I’ve never played golf.”

  “Never? As in not ever, never, none?” He turned her toward the passenger-side door. “This we have to fix.”

  “I’m pretty good at miniature golf.”

  He winced. “That is definitely not the mental image I have in mind for our golfing future. We’ll start at the driving range. Buckets and buckets of golf balls, and a nice single driver that will let you smack those balls for two hundred yards without blinking. We can work on your putt and actually getting a ball into a small hole sometime later.”

  Jennifer hit the golf ball and watched it soar, hoping to hit the big target straight ahead of her that read 200 yards. She missed.

  “That’s better,” Tom encouraged, smiling. “It only sliced into the next county.”

  Jennifer wrinkled her nose at him. That golf ball had sailed left with great purpose. “Maybe by the time I get to the bottom of this bucket, that will be fixed. Maybe I just need a better teacher.”

  “It’s going exactly where you told it to go. Look at where you want it to go, look down at the ball, and swing. Don’t turn your head as you hit the ball to see where you want it to go. Just smack the daylights out of the thing.”

  She laughed and positioned another golf ball on the plastic tee. “You make this sound so easy, and it’s anything but simple.” She settled back into position for a swing and checked her grip on the driver. “The next one is going to be solid.”

  It sliced left again. “Shoot.”

  Tom laughed.

  She found herself more amused by the minute with the fact he’d talked her into trying this. She pointed the club at him. “Five more tries, then I’m admitting defeat. And you will be too.”

  She got out another golf ball, took two test swings with the club, and clenched her teeth at the pain in her back before the second swing was done. She lowered the club to the ground to brace herself and gingerly took a step away from the grass square.

  Tom had hold of her elbows to steady her before she got the second step taken. “How bad?” He didn’t have to ask what had happened; he’d have seen her expression change as her back muscles tightened up.

  “Just a pulled muscle that’s not holding its own.” She was glad he was supporting her. Her left leg had just gone numb again.

  “You’re seeing a doctor, one that’s good at back injuries.”

  She blew out a breath. “Right now I’ll settle for sitting down.”

  He guided her over to a nearby bench. “I didn’t even think—”

  “Don’t, Tom. I’ve been fine the last month. I never thought about it either.” She sat down and carefully shifted her position until the pain in her back seemed to fade away. “Relax, it’s already beginning to wear off. Why don’t you go find me a soda? I’ll take a couple Tylenol, and while they kick in, I’ll sit here and watch you show me how a pro would swing that golf club.”

  “Others here can use the bucket of golf balls. I’m taking you home to get an ice pack.”

  “Start with the soda, and we’ll see,” she compromised. It wasn’t the end of the world—she’d just aggravated a pulled muscle that had apparently never fully healed.

  Monday morning Jennifer chose to sit on the edge of the exam table with her feet propped up on a chair. She wasn’t interested in being a patient, but given Tom’s insistence, she didn’t have much choice. She’d taken a great deal of care in choosing her personal doctor, and today that fact was going to matter.

  The door swung open and a lady small in stature but big in heart came into the exam room, a group of medical students trailing in her wake. She sent them on their way with a wave of her hand. “My office in twenty minutes, students. Find some notes to write.” They obediently flowed back out.

  Tina Landers turned, studied Jennifer’s face, and sat down on the stool beside her. “What’s been going on, Jennifer? I saw the notation on Heather’s schedule for me today.”

  Jennifer liked that Tina didn’t even think about picking up and reading the chart her nurse had meticulously filled out. Instead she went right to the heart of the matter.

  “I picked up a three-year-old several weeks ago, and it must have been at an odd angle. I pulled something in my back. It’s never really gone away but rather seems to flare up at the most inconvenient times. I think I might have a disk slipping out of place.”

  “Sharp pain when it comes?”

  “More like weakness. My back just suddenly gives out and refuses to let me pick something or someone up. Or my leg goes numb. The pain is more like an ongoing ache with an occasional breathtaking stab.”

  “I’d ask if you get much exercise to keep your back limber, but I know your schedule. You walk a marathon around this hospital every week.”

  “True. But lately I’ve been going for the elevators rather than the stairs, and that’s not like me.”

  “You voluntarily walking into my office tells me this is more than just occasionally catching you off guard. What are you taking for the pain?”

  “Tylenol. Anything else isn’t worth the side effects.”

  “Any other aches and pains going on? Your joints, your muscles?”

  “No.”

  “Any colds, fevers, headaches?”

  “Nothing beyond what I catch once in a while from patients.”

  Her doctor took hold of her hands. “Any coldness, sensations of being light-headed, unusual balance problems?”

  Jennifer shook her head.

  “Any bruising, tenderness? Have you fallen?”

  “No.”

  “Anything beyond lifting up the boy that seems to coincide with the symptoms?”

  “Lifting the boy probably aggravated something that was already there. I’ve had the occasional backache for a couple of years now. I assumed it was the bike riding, so I switched to walking instead. That about made it disappear.”

  Tina lifted Jennifer’s feet one at a t
ime, checking reflexes to touch. She retrieved her stethoscope and listened to the pulse in each ankle. “I hear you’ve been seeing Tom Peterson.”

  Jennifer smiled. “Are there any secrets around this hospital?”

  “Gina is his chief surgical nurse, and I’ve been friends with her forever. He’s a nice man, from what I hear.”

  “He is,” Jennifer agreed.

  Tina stepped back and slid her stethoscope back into her pocket. “Let’s find out what is going on. Can I schedule you for the tests we’ll need this week?”

  “Maybe later this week to start things? I’m covering for Larry the next few days. And I honestly don’t think this is urgent, just persistent.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll write the scripts and you can work the tests in as they fit your schedule. X-ray, MRI, blood work. While I have the chance to get the data, you can have the rest of the physical for free. You’re long overdue.”

  “I’d say thanks, but this is not going to be fun.”

  “You’ll be glad once it’s done. Hospital policy for staff—nothing goes through with your name on the tests—so what shall we call you?”

  “How about Darla Reese?”

  Tina noted it on her prescription pad. “Why don’t you bring dinner with you and stop by my office Thursday evening around seven, say two weeks from now? I’ll try to clear the backlog of paperwork on Thursdays, so I’ll be in. We’ll look at the test results and pictures that have come back by then and talk. We’ll get this figured out.”

  Jennifer tucked the list Tina handed her into her pocket. “Thanks, Tina.”