Chapter 29
Doug was exhausted. He had already put in a long day before his date started. Now it was hours after it should have ended. The hospital in Brandon had reported back: Dr. Roberts was stable. He’d done all he could before he shipped the old man off to a medical centre that was set up for cases like these. Hopewell Hospital simply wasn’t big enough to handle them.
It hadn’t just been a single cardiac event, either. Doug had spent two rotations on the cardiac ward and recognized the older doctor’s symptoms of a secondary attack before it hit. Doug’s warning had given them time to prepare for it. Now he needed a shower and a nap, in that order, but first he needed to track down Jackie.
Louise gave him a weird look on his way out the door, but he put it out of his mind. Whatever she thought she knew about him wasn’t important at the moment. Jackie was.
The sun was long down when he arrived at her building door. The lights in her apartment were still on, so he pressed her buzzer. She let him in immediately.
Whatever she’d been doing, she hadn’t been sleeping. She had a grey knit tube with needles poking out all over on her coffee table, a mass of red yarn skewered with metallic gold needles on the kitchen counter, and a ball of white wool in her hands.
“How’s Dr. Roberts?” she asked.
“Brandon says he’s doing well.”
Her head jerked at his words, but it was more of an acknowledgement he’d answered her rather than the content of his message. “I know you aren’t mad at me about us cancelling our date—”
“Of course not!”
“We did everything we could and now he’s in excellent hands,” he added. Jackie remained silent.
For a second.
“Well, that’s good, since if he dies, Hopewell will be down to one doctor until Dr. Singh gets here.” She snatched a knitting needle out of the red yarn and ran it through the white ball, skewering them together like a voodoo snowman.
“Excuse me?”
“Louise mentioned it. I’m glad she did, since it’s obvious you weren’t planning to tell me you already had your replacement lined up and one foot out the door.”
“Hold on.” He’d walked through the door expecting a little concern for Dr. Roberts and a lot of sympathy from her. He hadn’t seen this coming. Sure, his news was going to be a surprise, but he hadn’t expected her to be mad about it, unless it was the fact that Louise told her before he had a chance to. “Wait one minute. What exactly are you mad at? Let’s make sure you have all your facts straight.”
“Sure. Let’s do that,” Jackie snapped. “Because I need to have my facts straight. This whole ‘enjoy what we’ve got while we’ve got it’ thing. I was thinking years. You were thinking, what, weeks?”
It seemed they were having this conversation now. “Yes. As soon as Dr. Singh signs her new contract, I’ll be free to return to Winnipeg.”
“It would be nice to have a female doctor in town for a change. Of course, it would also be nice to have a boyfriend in the same town as me too, but I guess I can’t have everything.” She turned and stomped back into the living room, firing the yarn snowman across the room so it bounced off the wall and fell into one of her baskets.
“If you want a female doctor, there are plenty in Winnipeg. I know most of them. Any of them would take you on as a patient.”
“How is that going to help? Why would I drive three hours for a check-up when Dr. Singh is here?”
“Because we would be living in Winnipeg.”
She took a deep breath. “I told you that I want to stay in Hopewell, Doug. I always have. There’s nothing there for me.”
“I’d be there.”
“I won’t. You didn’t even give us a chance! Me. The hospital. The town. Don’t try to tell me your lottery win changed things. You arrived planning to leave, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you start anything with me at all. I can’t have this conversation with you right now. Will you just please go? I’ll call you in the morning.”
She wasn’t certain if it was a good or bad thing that he left without another word.