Saving Dr. Ryan (6 page)

Yeah, that sounded like Dawn, who was the same age as his brother Cal. In fact, there was a time there when Ryan had thought Cal might have been a little sweet on Ivy's daughter, but that was a long time ago….

“Now, where on earth did you drift off to?” he heard Ivy ask, and he lifted his gaze to catch the amused curiosity in hers.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, standing to pull a chart out of the file. “Just thinking about…stuff.”

“Uh-huh. Like what to do with your houseguests?”

He slammed the file cabinet shut. “Hadn't gotten that far yet.” He peered over at her, standing there with her arms tucked up under that poncho. “Although something tells me you have.”

“Knowing you, you'd put the kids in sleeping bags in the downstairs bedroom with Maddie and the baby.”

He frowned. “What's wrong with that?”

Ivy huffed. She was nearly as good at huffing as she was at clucking. “You know, sometimes I wonder how on earth you were smart enough to get that scholarship to med school. How're you gonna keep an eye on mama and her baby if
she's down here and you're asleep upstairs? Besides, those two youngsters need their own space, and you've got those two connecting bedrooms upstairs that would be just perfect—”

“For crying out loud, Ivy—take a breath, wouldja?” Hands on hips, Ryan simply stared at her, frozen, as something damn close to fear knifed through him, as surprising in its sudden appearance as it was in its intensity. Especially as he had no idea what he could possibly be afraid of. Okay, so maybe he hadn't had any company for a while. Like forever. No reason the prospect should make him feel uneasy. And yet everything inside him whispered,
“Watch out, buster.”

“I'll go on ahead and change the beds,” Ivy said, now shedding the poncho and heading out the door and, presumably, the back stairs, “if you tell me where the clean linens are.” She vanished, reappeared. “You do have clean linens, don't you?”

“In the closet at the end of the hall. Shoot, Ivy, I'm not a throwback.”

“Could've fooled me.”

He no sooner got out a sigh when he felt somebody looking at him. He turned, still frowning hard enough to make Katie Grace frown back.

“You mad at us?” she asked.

Well, that just turned him to mush. He scooped the little girl up onto his hip, just like he did with every other three-year-old who came to his office. Difference was, this one wasn't going home in a few minutes. “No, sweetheart. I'm not mad at you.”

Calm, blue-gray eyes linked with his for a second before a pair of tiny arms looped around his neck.

Oh, Lord. He was in trouble now.

T
his bedroom didn't look much different from the one downstairs, Maddie thought, but it had two windows and was a little bigger. And a bit more inviting looking, but that might have been due to the warm light given off by a pair of rose-decorated lamps on either side of the bed. Before she'd left for the evening, Ivy had fed them all, then made up the double bed in fresh white linens, turning down the covers like this was some fancy hotel.

For what seemed like the thousandth time that day, tears pooled in Maddie's eyes, that strangers should be showing such concern for her and her children. But right now, her babies came first: instead of resenting how helpless she felt, she should be grateful that there were such good people in the world.

Since she wasn't an invalid, for heaven's sake, she'd put on a pair of jeans with the doctor's shirt, and was now settled with Amy Rose in an old but comfortable padded chair in the corner of the room. Noah and Katie Grace were in the adjoining room, bouncing from one twin bed to the other. Maddie had already told them three times to stop, even resorting
to the time-honored threat of “Okay, but if you fall and crack your head open, don't come cryin' to me,” which the kids clearly took as permission to keep jumping. So she told the doctor, who'd been in and out carrying up her cases and what-not, that if they did crack their heads, to just add his fixing them up to her bill. He'd laughed a little at that. But in the intervening twenty minutes, there'd been plenty of giggling, but no cracked heads, so she'd begun to relax some.

About that, anyway.

Despite her kids' shenanigans, Dr. Logan seemed to get on with them real well, which she supposed wasn't any too surprising, considering what he did for a living. But there was still something about him that only confirmed her earlier conclusion that he wasn't entirely comfortable with the situation. Nothing she could put her finger on, just a feeling.

“So how many rooms does this house have, anyway?” she asked, more for something to say than anything else.

“Well, let's see,” he said, leaning against the dresser flanking one wall and crossing his arms over his chest. The storm was fixing to make an encore appearance, the wind tormenting the pyracantha branches outside the house, making them scrape against the wall. “There's four rooms downstairs, not counting the office space, another six bedrooms and two baths up here.”

“Goodness.”

Dr. Logan smiled. “This had been Doc Patterson's childhood home. He was the youngest of nine. His parents kept adding to the original house every few years to accommodate them all.”

“And nobody in the family wanted the house after the doctor died?”

“Nope. His brothers and sisters had scattered all over creation years before, their kids all have places of their own.”

“What about his kids?”

“Didn't have any. Married twice, but no children.”

“Oh,” she said, then got quiet for a moment, rubbing the baby's back. “So it's just you in this great big place, all by yourself?”

He paused. “Yep.”

From the next room came a thump loud enough to make the sleeping baby's hands flail out, followed by more giggles.

“What made you decide to become a country doctor?” she asked, because this was something she really
was
curious about.

His mouth twitched a little. “Being sick a lot as a kid, actually.”

“You?”

“Yep. Allergies, recurring bronchial infections, you name it. If Doc Patterson wasn't out at our farm, I was in here, at the office. We got to be pretty good friends, he and I. Enough that, about the time I started to grow out of many of my ailments, he started taking me with him on his calls. And I began to think I wanted to follow in his footsteps.” Now he grinned, full out. “Most people I knew thought I was nuts, wanting to take on a job with no benefits, long hours, and unreliable income. But there was no talking me out of it.” He checked his watch. “It's getting on to eight o'clock. You want me to get the kids ready for bed?”

She opened her mouth to say, no, of course not, only to realize there was a big difference between sitting still in a chair and wrestling two wired little kids into bed. So what she said was, “I'd be very grateful.”

Dr. Logan nodded, then headed into the adjoining room. Maddie decided she'd best supervise, though, so she got up and carefully moved herself and her new daughter into the kids' bedroom, where Ryan was already pawing through the smaller of the two suitcases, looking for pajamas.

“Oh, land!” Maddie nearly gasped at the rumpled sheets and every-which-way blankets and pillows on the beds. “Would you look at what you two have done to these beds! And where did you put your new coats? They better not be on the floor somewhere!”

Naturally they both flew out of the room to heaven-knew-where, appearing not ten seconds later, panting and giggling, with the coats.

Maddie set Amy Rose, who was sawing logs to beat the
band, down on one of the beds and reached out for the coats. “Give those to me.” She swiped dust and dirt off first one, then the other. “Honestly, you two.” But even she could tell her scolding didn't have much punch to it. “Get your toothbrushes out of the case and go brush your teeth,” she said, and to her immense relief, they did. She turned to Dr. Logan, who was now standing with a faded Barbie nightgown in one hand and a pair of worn Barney pajamas in the other. “They love those coats so much, I don't have the heart to make them give them back.”

“Well, that's a good thing, Maddie Kincaid, because you'd for sure hurt Ivy's feelings if you did that. And what do you think you're doing?”

“Fixing up the bed,” she said, tugging the bedcovers up on one of the beds, then rearranging the pillow. Trying to convince herself that accepting Ivy's generosity wasn't anything to be ashamed of. “And no, before you ask, I'm not straining anything.” From the bathroom, she heard lots of giggling and spitting, followed by a shriek. Her belly protested some when she straightened up.

“Noah James!” she hollered in the direction of the bathroom, “you better not be spitting toothpaste at your sister!”

“I'm not, Mama!” More giggles. On a sigh, Maddie looked over at Dr. Logan. “I guess you have a point. About the coats, I mean. It's just…”

“Tell me if the situation were reversed, you wouldn't do the same thing.”

The kids came barreling out of the bathroom, their chins a slobbery mess. Maddie grabbed a tissue from the box by one of the beds, then a child. “Well, I guess you're right about that,” she said, swiping the goo off Katie Grace's chin and sending her over to Dr. Logan. In the midst of cleaning off Noah, Maddie glanced over at the doctor, who was down on one bended knee in front of the tiny girl, patiently waiting while she unbuttoned her sweater herself. When the little girl got the last button undone and beamed up at him with a look that was equal parts triumph and adoration, something twisted
around Maddie's heart. Something she didn't need to be dealing with right now.

Despite what she'd said about letting the doctor do this, Maddie snatched up Noah's pajamas from where Dr. Ryan had left them on the foot of the bed. “C'mere, sugar. Let me help—”

“No!” Noah swiped the garments from her hand. “I can do it!” Maddie's brows lifted: she'd been fighting for some time, without much success, to get Noah to do more things on his own. Suddenly now he's Mr. Independent? At first, Maddie figured it was just because he didn't want Katie Grace getting one up on him. But as she caught his furtive glances at Dr. Logan, she understood a little more what was going on. Thought she did, anyway. He might have let the doctor take care of him this morning, when he was too frightened and tired to do otherwise, but now that he was feeling more on top of things, caution had returned with a vengeance.

Suddenly she heard herself say, “You think there's any way I could go see Ned in a few days?”

She had no idea why that had popped out of her mouth, especially right now, or why she saw that as some sort of solution, but it had and she did. Maybe it was just a sense of
doing
something. In any case, after a second or so, Dr. Logan shrugged and said, “I don't see why not. We'll find someone to watch the kids for a couple hours and I'll take you over.”

“I don't need you to take me—”

“I'm up to the hospital several times a week, anyway, checking up on my patients or doing rounds. No sense in both of us driving over there.”

“Oh. Well, yes, I suppose you have a point.” She licked her lips. “And if Ned says it's okay with him, I want to see his house.”

Ryan frowned. “I told you, that house isn't fit for you and the kids.”

He had, over supper. But she said anyway, “I know what you told me. But I think I'm perfectly capable of deciding whether his house is ‘fit' or not.” She sighed at his expression, then lowered her voice, keeping an eye out on the kids,
who were busy drawing pictures in the condensation on the window panes. “We can't stay with you forever, we can't go back to Arkansas, I don't have any money, and the prospect of living in my car doesn't exactly thrill me. Besides, it's not like we were exactly living in a palace before. And if I was living at Ned's, then maybe he could come home to convalesce instead of going into that place you were talking about.”

Fortunately, before Dr. Logan could argue with her, his cell phone rang. He unhooked it from his belt, answering it even as he shot Maddie a look that said, “This isn't over yet.”

“How high's the fever, Faith?” she heard him say. “Okay, I'll be out in about forty-five minutes, if that's okay. I'll go ahead and swab him for strep while I'm there… Forget it. The weather's threatening to get nasty again. No sense dragging the boy out in the cold and the wet.”

He disconnected and turned to her, looking torn. “Will you be okay…?”

“We'll be fine,” she reassured him. “Hard part's over. Go.”

After one final, conflicted look, he said good-night, then disappeared.

And Maddie wondered, as she watched her oldest children climb into their nice, clean beds, if Ryan Logan was so busy always taking care of everybody else, who the heck ever took care of him?

 

By the time Maddie'd been in Haven for two days, she'd learned one very important thing: The women in this town looked out for each other.

Aside from Ivy's in-and-outing and fussing and hovering, it seemed like every female from here to Tulsa had stopped by to drop off a casserole or a ham or clothes or baby equipment their kids had outgrown, or to just introduce herself and tell Maddie if there was anything she needed, not to be shy, just let her know.

Lord, she'd never remember all their names.

And they'd never be able to eat all this food, not in a million years.

It was getting on to dinnertime. Since Dr. Logan was at the hospital, Ivy had been there for a couple hours, so Maddie could get a shower, at least. Amy Rose had been changed and nursed and burped, and was now snoozing away in a swing with a detachable infant seat somebody had brought over yesterday, which she'd set up next to the kitchen table. Katie Grace had conked out on the sofa in the living room, but was due to wake up any minute; Noah was sitting at the table with his head resting on his folded up arms, studying his baby sister. One foot scuffed back and forth across the tile, like to drive Maddie crazy. Not that she was going to tell him to stop. Right now, she had more pressing things on her mind. Like trying to pawn off some of this food.

“Ivy, please—at least take this tuna casserole. We've already got three!”

Wrapping herself up in her poncho for the short walk back to her house, Ivy leaned over, lifted the glass top off the dish. “Who brought this one?”

“Lord knows.”

Ivy carefully raised the heavy ceramic container, squinted at the lettering on the strip of masking tape. “Oh, Lord, Arliss Potts. The Methodist pastor's wife.” The dish clunked back onto the counter. “Sweet lady, generous as they come, but can't cook worth spit. Throw it out, is my advice.”

“How bad can it be?”

“You ever tasted tuna casserole with nutmeg in it?
And
chili powder?”

Maddie replaced the lid. Took a step back. “Oh.” At Ivy's chuckle, she said, “Why doesn't somebody just, well, maybe show her some new recipes or something?”

“And hurt her feelings?”

“Well, I don't know. Seems like a huge waste of food, otherwise.”

Ivy looped an arm around Maddie's shoulders and gave her a brief hug. “Food's a lot easier to come by than goodwill.” She let go, cramming a floppy brimmed hat over her long, loose hair. “I've been meaning to ask…did you call Didi Meyerhauser back? About the Baptist day care co-op?”

Maddie picked at the buttons on her oversize shirt. “Oh, I don't know—I mean, leaving Noah and Katie Grace with strangers…”

“No such thing in Haven, in case you haven't figured it out by now. And Didi's got a couple spaces now that the Sommerses moved away.
And
she said she knows you can't do your part for some weeks yet, not to worry about that. But you'll wear yourself out, taking care of two little ones with a new baby. So give her a call. She might laugh you half to death, but she doesn't bite!”

Then she disappeared through the back door, a dozen or so leaves fluttering inside in her wake. Maddie started to bend over to pick them up, then remembered that probably wouldn't be such a hot idea.

“Noah, honey, would you mind picking those up for me?”

The boy moaned a little, but he did as she'd asked. When he stood up, she did bend over then, to kiss him on top of his head. He leaned into her for a moment, then pushed away to dump the leaves in the garbage.