A Home for the Hot-Shot Doc

Justin shrugged. “I assumed …”

She stepped around him, and gestured her first patient to the area behind the cabinet. “Don’t assume anything about me, Doctor. And while you’re at it, don’t presume, either. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have patients who need medical care. If you’re not willing to provide it, get out!”

She pointed to the front door without another word. But what was there to say? Justin Bergeron was an annoyance. If she hadn’t heard Eula mention him so much this past year, she would have never guessed this man and the veritable saint Eula had talked about so lovingly were one and the same. But they were, and she wondered about the discrepancy. Wondered a whole lot.

CHAPTER TWO (#ue2b0dd8a-f09a-54b5-bfe2-1dbd2c78f28c)

IT WAS HARD watching her work, and doing nothing himself. She had such a look of determination, though. Brown eyes narrowed to her task. Biting down in concentration on her lower lip. He did have to admit Mellette was a looker. Tall, with legs that went on forever. Nice athletic form with well-defined feminine muscles. Smooth, dark skin, boyish-cut black hair with just a hint of natural curl, and all of it thrown into her work while he stood on the sidelines, casually observing.

But that was the way his days went since people around here would hardly even speak to him outside a stiff hello or an unfriendly nod accompanied by a muffled grunt. So what the hell made him think they’d accept him as a doctor? Someone to trust, someone to confide in. Someone to take care of them the way his grandmother had.

Clovis Fonseca, for example. He was waiting in line to have Mellette see him—Justin wasn’t sure why—and if it weren’t for the fact that Justin had stolen his canoe some twenty-five years ago, then gone and torn a hole in the bottom of it by racking it up on a cypress stump, Clovis might have been inclined to let Justin take a look at him. But Clovis held a grudge, and Justin had seen it every time he’d looked in the man’s eyes since he’d come home. There was no way Clovis would ever consent to a physical exam from Justin, probably just as Clovis would probably never even greet him with anything other than a snarly sort of a snort.

And Ambrosine Trahan. He felt really bad about her because she’d loved him when they’d been kids, but he’d blatantly asked out her younger sister, Emmy Lou, the prettier of the two girls. It hadn’t been so much that he’d wanted to go out with Emmy Lou, because he hadn’t. She hadn’t been his type, either. But he’d simply been trying to rebuff Ambrosine because back in the day he hadn’t gone out with girls who hadn’t been pretty. In fact, he’d been known to be intentionally cruel to them. So she was waiting in line today, a beautiful woman now, by all estimations, probably hanging on to horrible memories of the way he’d treated her, and he seriously doubted she’d want to claim him as her doctor. And rightfully so. He was so embarrassed just remembering the way he’d treated her.

The problem was, the line of waiting patients was full of bad experiences left over from his ill-mannered youth, and he didn’t trust any of them to trust him. And who could blame them? He’d been a repeat offender on all fronts. After he’d taken Clovis’s boat, he’d had pretty much the same experience with Rex Rimbaut’s pickup truck. Taken it, banged it up. Then there had been that time he’d flaunted a date with Ambrosine’s cousin, Ida, in front of both Ambrosine and Emmy Lou. Ida had been pretty. He’d done the same with their other cousin, Marie Rosella, as well, who had been even prettier.

So nothing gave Justin reason to believe that any one of those people waiting to be seen by Mellette would believe that he’d turned over that new leaf. Especially when each and every one of them assumed he’d neglected his grandmother at the end of her life. It was something that overshadowed everything else. And no one knew the real story, that she’d purposely not told him she was failing for fear that he’d want to do something drastic, like move her to the big city, rather than let her die where she wanted to.

No, history wouldn’t repeat itself on his account. But as far as the people here were concerned, twenty-five years ago was the same as yesterday, and time wasn’t healing the bad thoughts they had of him. He was Justin Bergeron, bad boy. Poor Eula’s pitiful excuse for a grandson.

And poor Eula’s pitiful grandson wasn’t welcome to touch them, not for any reason. They’d just as soon go without medical help as accept his.

Which made Justin feel like hell, seeing how hard Mellette was working while all he was doing was standing around, twiddling his thumbs and wallowing in his just desserts.

“Anything I could do where they wouldn’t see me?” he finally asked her, as she rushed into the kitchen to grab a drink of water. Looking frazzled. But sexy frazzled.

“Right. Like you really want to work,” she said, not even trying to hide her contempt for him.

“I’m not saying I want to work. But I am saying I would, if I could.” It was either that or go back to his writing, and today, like yesterday and the day before that, he wasn’t in that frame of mind. In spite of an upcoming deadline, there were too many distractions. Too many things to think about. Too many humiliating memories floating around in his mind, pushing out the intelligible words that might have gone down on paper.

“Then just do it, Doctor. The only way these people are ever going to get over their grudges against you is to see you do something worthwhile. Otherwise, in their eyes, you’re still a bad boy who gave his grandma more grief than she needed.” She tossed him a devious smile. “And a bad doctor who lets me work my fingers to the bone while he’s standing around, making an ass of himself, doing nothing to help. So take your pick … ass or bad boy.”

“Do I get a third choice?”

“Two’s the limit around here. So what’s it going to be?” She took a swig out of the water bottle, then recapped it. “Because two people off my list and onto yours might make the difference between me making it home to tuck my daughter into bed tonight or being stuck here all night, since I don’t negotiate Big Swamp alone after dark.”

So she had a wedding ring and a daughter. Interesting information—not that he wanted to be involved with her in any way other than professionally. But he did enjoy these brief glimpses into her life and wondered what else he might see if he paid attention. “Okay, let me see what I can do.” With that, Justin went to the waiting area, then continued on through and opened the front door so the people standing around on the porch and in the yard could hear his announcement.

“For what it’s worth, I’m a fully qualified medical doctor. I’m sure my grandmother mentioned that to all of you at one point. I know there are a few … several of you who probably don’t want me seeing you on a professional basis, and I do understand why. But if there are any of you who’d let me examine you, I’d be glad to do so. And the fewer people Mrs. Chaisson has to see, the sooner she’ll get home to her … family. So I’ll be in the kitchen. If you’re not still holding a grudge against me, I’ll be glad to see you. Actually, I’ll be glad to see you even if you are still holding a grudge. Either way …” He shrugged, then stepped back inside and immediately looked at Mellette, who was standing near the room divider, smiling.

“Seriously?” she said. “That’s how you tell people you’re open for business? It sounded more like a challenge than an invitation. You know, come stand in my line, if you dare.”

“Best I can do. If the folks here want to see me, now they know they can. And if they don’t, I’ll be in the kitchen, cooking up a pot of gumbo.” Fixing gumbo, practicing medicine, all in the same room. What had he been thinking?

“But that’s not what Eula had me taking,” Miss Willie Bascomb scolded. “And you should know better than to give me the wrong thing, young man. Do you think I’m too old to see what you’re trying to do to me, switching off my medicine the way you are? It’s shameful. Just shameful!” She was a gray-haired lady with sharp eyes and an even sharper tongue.

“But it’s a simple anti-inflammatory for your arthritis,” Justin said. “The prescription’s easily filled at any pharmacy, and I can write you a script for ninety days so you won’t have to go to town for it very often.” Her knuckles were enlarged, fingers slightly bent into an outward curve. Nothing about Miss Willie had changed since he’d been a kid, and her condition seemed stable for the most part, but he didn’t want to prescribe an herbal potion when the market was full of great prescription drugs that could prevent further joint damage.

“But I don’t want me no prescription, Justin Aloysius. What your grandma gave me has worked well for as long as I can remember. Cures the aches, and that’s all I need.” She held up her crippled hands. “They haven’t gotten any worse in all this time, and it’s just plain foolish, wanting me to change my medicine when things are going well. Eula wouldn’t have allowed that.” She wagged a scolding forefinger at him. “And shame on you for trying.”

The only problem was Eula wasn’t here, and he couldn’t duplicate her herbal cures, which for Miss Willie’s condition was sassafras combined with prickly ash, cayenne and camphor, made into what his grandmother had called her rheumatism liniment. So in practical terms he was wasting his time with this patient because she wasn’t about to budge, just as he wasn’t. “Then I think we have a problem, because I can’t give you what my grandmother used to make. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I don’t know how to make it.”

“Because you were off gallivanting in the big city when you should have been staying home, studying real medicine, young man!” Miss Willie sniffed indignantly. “I wanted to give you a chance for Eula’s sake. She talked so highly of you, said you were the best doctor there is. But she was wrong, and it would have killed her to see just how sorry you are.”

Talk about a bitter pill to swallow. “All I can do is recommend what my kind of medicine considers standard. It’s up to you whether or not you want to take it.”

“What I want to take is my leave, young man!” With that, Miss Willie slid off the kitchen stool, gathered up her patent-leather purse, which she stuffed into the crook of her arm, and her floral print scarf, which she didn’t bother putting on her head, and headed for the kitchen door. “You tell Mellette I want my usual. She’ll know how to fix it for me.”

Then she was gone. Miss Willie and all her one hundred pounds of acrimonious fire stormed out the back door, but not before she’d looked in the pot of gumbo and snorted again. “I don’t smell filé in there,” she said. “To make a good gumbo you’ve got to use filé powder, or do you have some fancy prescription for that, too?”

“Seems like sassafras is going to be your downfall today,” Mellette said, walking into the kitchen through the front door at the same time the back door slammed shut. She was referring to filé, a thickening powder made from dried sassafras leaves.

“She always was a tough old lady,” Justin replied, on his way to the kitchen cabinet to look for filé. “Who wants what she wants.”

“She swears by the liniment. Don’t think she’s going to change her mind about that, and at her age I guess that’s her right.”

“But I can’t give her the damned liniment.” He turned to look at her. “And as a registered nurse, I’m surprised you would.”

“When you hired me to come to Big Swamp to help your grandmother, what did you expect me to do? Dispense pills these people don’t want to take? That’s not what Eula wanted, not what she would have tolerated from me. So she taught me her ways and for the most part it works out.”

“So I’m paying you to practice my grandmother’s version of medicine? Because that’s not what I wanted.”

“What you wanted was to have me help her, which was what I did. On her terms, though. Not yours.”

“If I’d wanted someone to dispense more of what my grandmother dispensed, that’s who I would have hired. But I wanted a registered nurse, someone from the traditional side of medicine. Someone to take care of the people here the way traditional medicine dictates.”

“Then I expect you’ve been paying me under false pretenses because I’ve been taking care of these people just the way your grandmother did and, so far, nobody’s complaining.”

“You’re still doing that even now that she’s gone?”

“Especially now that she’s gone. They’re scared to death they’re going to have to give up the folk medicine they’ve trusted for decades, and I suppose if you have your way, that’s what’s going to happen. Which just adds to the list of reasons why they don’t like you.”

He pulled a tin marked filé from the cabinet and measured out a scant spoonful for the gumbo.

“Twice that much,” she prompted him.

“You’re a chef, as well?”

“I know how your grandmother fixed gumbo, and I’m assuming you’re trying to copy that since it’s probably the best gumbo I’ve had anywhere.”

He shook his head, not sure if he should be angry or frustrated. Or both. “So tell me, how am I supposed to treat Miss Willie when she won’t take a traditional anti-inflammatory?”

“You give her what she wants, then if you insist on one of the regular drugs, maybe you can prescribe it after she’s come to trust you.”

“Which will be when hell freezes over,” he snapped.

“Probably. But she’s reasonable. All the people here are reasonable, which is why, when malaria hit, they took quinine—”