The You I Never Knew Part 12

Sam tried not to make too much of her acceptance as he headed inside, but the light warmth in his chest was the most pleasurable thing he'd felt all day. He went to his locker in the lounge, thinking how unreal it had been to treat his own son. To know that the fragile flesh and bone beneath his hands belonged, at least biologically, to him.

He thought about the day he'd decided to become a doctor. He'd been eight or nine years old, riding in a beat-up old car along a straight, flat road. It was a Valiant with a fake Navajo rug covering the torn upholstery. A bag of Cheetos and a bottle of something red lay on the seat beside him. His mother was smoking a cigarette and singing with the radio.

His mother knew the words to all the rockabilly songs, because for one amazing year she had been the vocalist for a Denver band called Road Rage. Sam was too young to remember it, but she claimed it was the best year of her life. They'd traveled all over the country, and their hit single, "Dearly Departed," had rocketed to number one on the Country Billboard charts.

Finding success even harder to deal with than failure, the band had broken up, its members scattered. Still, his mom sang along with the radio, her voice harsh with the static of drinking and cigarettes.

Sam had sat silent, watching bugs squishing on the windshield. After a while, he told his mother he had to pee, so she pulled off at a rest stop. By the time he finished in the men's room, Tammi Lee was asleep in the car. So he climbed on top of the hood to wait.

There he was, a towheaded little kid sitting alone on the hood of a beat-up old car, watching people pull off the highway to rest. Whenever he saw families, he felt a funny tugging sensation in his gut. A mom, a dad, two or three kids, a dog. Doing stuff as simple as having a game of catch or sitting at a concrete picnic table, eating sandwiches and pouring Kool-Aid from a plastic jug. These things-these simple, unremarkable rituals-were things he wanted so bad he ached inside.

On that particular day, he twisted around on the hood of the car, stared at his mother, and wished for some magic spell to make her wake up, smile at him, ruffle his hair, ask him if he wanted a gla.s.s of milk.

Her eyes flickered open and just for a second, he thought the spell was going to work. Then she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, dug in her pocket, took out some quarters. She held a trembling fist out the car window and said, "Get me a Tab, will you, hon?" in what he thought of as her tired voice. Later he figured out it was her hungover voice.

And even though she wasn't like the mothers pouring Kool-Aid, he loved her. Kids, he found out later when he became a doctor, loved their monster parents, no matter what.

On the way back from the vending machine-cold can of Tab held in both hands-a boy and his dad ran past, tossing a softball back and forth. The kid almost slammed into him, but sidestepped at the last minute. He never looked at Sam. Just sort of moved on by. They drove a nice car with M.D. plates. Sam was on the road so much he knew about M.D. plates.

His mom was acting funny when he got back to the car. Her face was white and shiny with sweat, her eyes glazed and rolled back in her head. She arched her back against the seat of the car and a thin, terrible noise crawled from her throat. Sam dropped the cold can on the ground and raced for the man with the softball. "Hey, mister," he yelled. "Are you a doctor?" When the man nodded, Sam said, "My mom's sick."

The doctor came over to the car and put his hand on her forehead, lifting her eyelid with his thumb. "Ma'am?" he asked. "Ma'am, can you hear me?" His wife came over with a bag. The doctor asked some questions-what had she been drinking, how long had she been like this-and Sam babbled out the answers. Rummaging in the bag, the doctor went to work. A short time later, Tammi Lee lay groggy but calm, acting sheepish as she spoke with the doctor, a.s.suring him she'd seek help in the next town.

Sam decided right then and there he wanted to be a doctor. He wanted to be the kind of guy who drove a nice car and played catch with his son and when someone got sick, fixed her.

That little kid seemed a distant stranger now, and many years pa.s.sed before Tammi Lee kept her promise to get help. Sam hurried, getting into his street clothes in record time, worried that Mich.e.l.le might change her mind, disappear like a bursting bubble from his life.

Sort of like he'd disappeared from hers.

He shoved his feet into his boots, combed his hair, and slammed his locker shut. When he got outside, she was gone. He stood there, a curse forming on his mouth.

She came out of the hospital behind him. "I went to check on Cody one last time."

He exhaled, the curse unspoken. "And?"

"He's sleeping."

"Good. Best thing for him."

She bit her lip uncertainly. Sam took her hand, feeling the shape of it through her winter glove. She pulled away, and he didn't try again. "He's going to be fine. I'm on call all night, and Raymond's on duty."

"Raymond?"

"Raymond Bear, the head nurse. We call him the Shaman. He can sense a patient in distress even before the monitors, I swear it. d.a.m.nedest thing you've ever seen."

"Is he the guy reading Soldier of Fortune magazine at the nurses' station?"

"That's him. If he's reading a magazine, that means he's not worried." His hand flexed, remembering the shape of hers. "Come on. My truck's over here."

Only four of the eighteen tables at Trudy's were occupied, but that wasn't unusual for a cold Monday night. With its red vinyl tablecloths, gold plastic tumblers, and longhorn salt and pepper shakers, the place resembled a garage sale from the seventies. What it lacked in elegance it more than made up for in good, simple food.

"Just stick with the straightforward stuff, and you can't go wrong." Sam opened his menu.

"I see the wine list is a no-brainer." She cracked a smile that did funny things to his insides. "Red, white... I a.s.sume Rosy means rose?"

"Welcome to Crystal City."

Her smile lingered. "Still pretty provincial around here."

She was a stranger to him. She was a vast, uncharted continent. Mysterious, but something he wanted to explore.

"You can find all the glitz and sophistication you want in Kalispell and Bozeman. Your old man was one of the first to move up here from Hollywood, but he sure wasn't the last. In downtown Whitefish you can buy a Tiffany bracelet and millesime cognac."

"You could have made a lot more money setting up your practice in one of those towns." She closed her menu.

"Why do people always a.s.sume doctors are in it for the money?"

"All the doctors I know are."

He thought of Karl, and of Dr. Brower in the Yucatan. "Then you know the wrong doctors," he said. "There used to be three of us in the practice here, but one defected to Kalispell." He didn't say so, but the third partner made a fortune writing prescriptions for Valium and Zoloft.

"So why didn't you follow the money?"

"I belong here. Karl and I work for the tribe up at the Flathead reservation. It's not about money, Mich.e.l.le. If it was about money, I could make fifty grand roping calves for a week in Vegas."

"You're not only a doctor, but you're n.o.ble."

"Is that what you think?"

"I think you came back here just to give everyone an inferiority complex."

He laughed. "Right."

"Why did you pick this particular town?"

No one had ever asked him that before. His credentials were good enough; he'd gone through a six-year combined degree program, and his training from UT was first-rate. He could have gone anywhere.

"I started thinking about a small-town practice when I was working in the Yucatan, mainly with Mexican Indians. I learned more than medicine there. A child is born with a cleft palate? You fix it, and the kid has a better life. A man suffers from hepat.i.tis? You treat him, he survives, and you immunize his family. That's the beauty of working in third-world countries."

"So why not stay in a third-world country?"

"Because we have those right here in our own backyard. Small towns, Indian reservations, depressed areas that can't support a lucrative practice." He studied Mich.e.l.le, noting the understated elegance of her gold watch, the French designer earrings. "I know what it's like to have money-I had that in my rodeo days. Well, some of the time, at least. I know what money can and can't do for a man."

"See? You are too n.o.ble."

He thought about the early days when he'd slept in his horse trailer or the back of his pickup truck, and how he'd lie awake nights on fire and in agony from wanting what rich folks like Gavin Slade had. It had been a sickness with Sam, that need to feel he could measure up, and it probably explained why he drove himself so hard, both in the arena and in the clinic. Only time, and the deep self-knowledge that came of healing people, had cured him of the sickness.

"I'm not n.o.ble, Mich.e.l.le," he said. "I'm just a guy."

They ordered steak dinners and a bottle of wine from a waitress who knew Sam by name. When she departed, Mich.e.l.le watched her from the corner of her eye. "Are we fueling gossip?"

"In a place this size?" he asked. "Are you kidding? You'll probably read about this dinner on the front page of the Towne Tattler."

"I didn't know the paparazzi were so vicious here." She smiled with an old mischievous sweetness he remembered well. Too well. He was getting dizzy gawking at her. It should come as no surprise that the daughter of Gavin Slade turned out to be even more of a knockout at thirty-five than she had been at eighteen. But then again, she had always surprised him.

She watched him with an expression that made his gut churn. Dewy eyes and moist lips. Total absorption in what he was saying. "And so you chose Crystal City," she said.

"Yeah. I knew Edward Bliss from the circuit, he needed a partner for Lonepine, the town needed a doctor, so it all worked out." What the h.e.l.l, Sam thought. He might as well level with her. He wanted to be in the place where he had been with Mich.e.l.le, where his dreams had been born and where hope had lingered in spite of everything. "And I figured I'd see you again."

She had no reply to that, but contemplated it with a silence he couldn't read.

While they ate, he thought about the night he'd left. The old Valiant had puttered through the quiet streets of Crystal City, pa.s.sing the Truxtop and the feed store and the Lynwood Theater, the one-screen cinema where he and Mich.e.l.le had sat holding hands in the dark. He remembered the yellowish beam of the headlights, the cigarette smell of the blanket covering the seat, the tinny sound of the radio playing a cowboy song, the too-quick rasp of his mother's breathing.

She was nervous, even though Sam, full of outrage, had wanted to stay and fight his accusers. "I didn't steal a thing," he insisted. "Not a d.a.m.ned thing."

"I know that," his mother had said with weary resignation. "Do you think that matters? Gavin Slade doesn't want you hanging around his daughter. This is his way of telling you that."

"Let's not run away, Mama. It's a free country-"

"Gavin Slade owns this town. If he wants us gone, we're gone." She had looked at him sideways, peering through the darkness. "You're not the only one they've decided to pin something on."

He braced himself. "What do you mean?"

"I had a little visit from Deputy O'Shea this evening. Seems he suddenly discovered a couple of hot checks, a couple of parole violations, and at least two outstanding warrants in Colorado. And that wasn't a set-up. I'll have to do time, son. Is that what you want?"

"What I want is for us to quit running."

"Well, we sure as h.e.l.l can't afford a lawyer. And I sure as h.e.l.l don't want to be a guest of the state for the foreseeable future. So off we go." Tammi Lee had reached out to punch in the cigarette lighter. "I guess it won't help much to tell you I'm sorry," she said. "I screwed up. Again. Just when you were starting to like living around here."

He had a fierce urge to fling himself out of the car. For years he'd been fleeing with her, but now he had someone to fight for. Mich.e.l.le. And his own innocence. But he knew he had to stick with his mom. Tammi Lee Gilmer would never survive without him.

Mich.e.l.le would.

"At least let me stop and say good-bye to her," he'd said.

Tammi Lee grabbed his arm. "This is serious, son. It's the real world. People like us can't take a risk like that. We set foot on that property, and we're toast."

Sam knew what she wanted him to say. It's okay, Mama. We'll find someplace else. Something will work out for us.... That's what he always said to her, every time they left a town on the lam. Well, not this time. This time, he wasn't going to tell her everything was okay.

The full moon rode high in the cold November night, and he could see Blue Rock Ranch on the way out of town, a snug compound in the distance, lights twinkling from the windows, a twist of smoke coming from the chimney of the main house.

'Bye, Mich.e.l.le.

Knowing her had taught him something medical school never could-that the human heart could sing. He had vowed that night to come back to her once he and Tammi Lee settled down somewhere. But there was no time to call the next day, or the day after that, and when he finally scrounged up a handful of change to call from that pay phone in Oklahoma City, he was too late.

"I left Blue Rock the day after you disappeared," she said softly, after her long silence. "My father wasn't terribly understanding about my pregnancy."

Now, that didn't surprise him. Gavin Slade was a man devoted to his own image. The perfect acting career, perfect stock to parade at rodeos, perfect daughter... until she had turned out to be human and flawed. After that, she couldn't be part of his image. He had excised her swiftly and cleanly from his life.

"I wish I'd known that," he said quietly.

She sipped her water, a droplet gleaming on her lower lip. Sam tried not to stare. "There's probably a gloat factor involved in my coming back, too," he admitted. "Maybe on some level I wanted to say 'screw you' to guys like-" He broke off, catching himself.

"Guys like my father."

"Yeah, okay."

"He should have told me you were living here. But I can't seem to get all worked up over old business like that. His illness makes everything else seem so petty." Mich.e.l.le set down her water gla.s.s with a nervous rattle of ice. "So tell me how you did it," she said. "Tell me how you became a doctor."

"Rodeo."

"What do you mean?"

"I used rodeo money to put myself through school."

"You're kidding."

"No, ma'am." He took a bite of his steak. "I pa.s.sed my G.E.D. and got into a combined degree program, so I could get my bachelor's and M.D. in six years. It was a pain in the b.u.t.t, living on the road, sleeping in a horse trailer most nights. I lived on autopilot for a lot of years. Didn't look left or right, didn't let myself falter. I stayed focused on that one and only goal-to get through school and residency, and I didn't let up until I made it." He picked up a breadstick, snapped it in half. "Sometimes I wonder what I missed in those years." A shadowy wave washed over him. "The birth of my son, for one thing." He took one look at her face and said, "Aw, s.h.i.t. I didn't mean to-"

"I want to know the rest. What about your mother?"

"She's okay. On the wagon, living over on Aspen Street." It sounded a h.e.l.l of a lot simpler than it had been. With Sam pushing, sometimes bullying her into rehab, she'd fought every inch of the way. But each time she stumbled, he picked her up, checked her back in to rehab or sent her to yet another AA meeting. Sometimes he had to be harsh with her, because sometimes that was the only thing that worked. The experience had given him an edge of ruthlessness he didn't particularly like.

Finally, after years of battling Tammi Lee's addiction, sobriety stuck. She had been sober for five years.

"Really? That's great, Sam."

"She works at LaNelle's Quilt Shoppe in town." Ah, Christ, he thought. He was going to have to tell Tammi Lee about Cody. He had no idea how she'd take it. She was sober, but she'd always be fragile. You never knew what might set her off. "So what about you? I'll bet you've got paintings hanging in the Met."

She stared down at her salad plate. "Maybe the rest room of the Met. I work for an ad agency."

"Functional art, then." He immediately wished he could reel his words back in.

She laughed, but the sound was brittle and forced. "Oh, yeah. Pictures of scrubbing bubbles and industrial extrusions."

He felt a sinking regret. She had been so vibrant, so d.a.m.ned talented that people caught their breath when they saw her paintings. She had loved art the way most folks loved food or air. "So is painting a hobby for you now, or-"

"I don't paint, Sam." She stabbed her fork at her salad. "I never had the time. I was busy with Cody."

s.h.i.t.

"You should have found me," he said, an edge in his voice. "Should have made me help."

"Oh, right. In between roping championships? Clinical rotations? Trips to Mexico?"

"I want those years back," he said brusquely. "All those years I didn't know I had a son."

"You weren't there. I couldn't find you."