The Prodigal M.D. Returns

Ben couldn’t tell if Shayne was interested or just going through the motions. He did know, though, that he’d missed Shayne. Missed him more than he’d ever realized. Missed, too, how good Shayne’s nod of approval had made him feel. He needed that nod again.

“Yes,” Ben answered, then added, “We’d all overlap, taking over if someone was away. But mostly we stuck to our fields of expertise.”

Shayne nodded, his expression stoic. “Pay’s good, I imagine.”

There was no point to lying. “Pay’s great. But this isn’t about the pay, Shay,” Ben insisted. “This is about coming back. About finding a place for myself.”

No one knew better than Shayne how persuasive Ben could be. His charm had gotten him out of many sessions of detention, out of well-deserved punishments. He had a glib tongue and a Teflon body. There was no place for either in his clinic.

Reaching for the decanter of brandy he kept on his desk, Shayne poured a small glass for Ben and then one for himself. “We don’t need someone who wants to put on a hair shirt for a week and then take off—”

“I’m not going to take off,” Ben said, interrupting him. The smile on his lips had faded just a little. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I’m good, Shayne. You know that. I’ll do whatever you need.”

Shayne sat down on the edge of the desk and sipped his brandy slowly, watching his brother over the rim of his glass.

“What happened?” he finally asked.

Ben shrugged carelessly. “I grew up.”

“I mean to Lila.”

Ben took a breath, as if to brace himself against the words. Against the memory. “She left me,” he said simply. Raising his glass in a silent toast, he took a healthy sip before lowering it again. “That was part of the growing process.”

“Left you,” Shayne said slowly, as if digesting the information. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.” It still felt incredibly painful, more than a year later. It had taken him a year to get his act together, to take his feelings out of deep freeze. “One morning I rolled over in bed and reached out for her, but she was gone.” There’d been just the shortest of notes to say that they were different people now and she was leaving because she was bored.

Shayne watched him for a long moment. He couldn’t help feeling just the slightest bit vindicated. “Hard being disappointed in someone you thought you could count on, isn’t it?”

He had that coming, Ben thought. But even so, he couldn’t help the defensive response that rose to his lips. “I’m sorry that I hurt you, but you should have known better than to count on me back then. You were always the stable one.”

Being the stable one was a quality that, though expected, was so easily taken for granted. At times, he felt like a roof, there to give shelter and never to be noticed. Not like Ben. “And you were the one everyone doted on.”

“And the one nobody took seriously,” Ben said. He took another long sip of brandy. The guilty feelings that had haunted him, that had brought him here, refused to be sublimated.

Shayne laughed shortly. “You didn’t want to be taken seriously.”

That was the boy he’d been. But he wasn’t a boy any longer. “I do now.” Putting down his glass, Ben looked his brother in the eye. “Whatever it takes, Shay. Whatever it takes,” he repeated with feeling. “I want to stay in Hades.”

Shayne gave no indication as to whether or not he welcomed his brother’s presence. The suspicious glint in his eyes remained. “Someone suing you for malpractice?”

Ben shook his head. He had that coming, too, he supposed. That and a lot more. Time and again, he’d taken Shayne’s trust and abused it. But he was here now and he was going to prove himself. No matter how long it took. “I’m a good surgeon, Shayne. A good doctor.” His record was without blemish. Whatever else he might have been, he was always dedicated to his profession. “You could use the help.”

“I have the help,” Shayne countered. He poured himself a little more brandy, topping off Ben’s glass. “Since you’ve been gone, I’ve taken on a nurse practitioner and she lured her brother to come settle here. He’s a heart specialist. Jimmy Quintano.”

Silence wove its way around the corners as Ben absorbed what his brother had just said. He’d never thought that anyone would actually come here. When he was growing up, everyone wanted to leave Hades. Everyone but Shayne and his friend Ike.

“Then the answer’s no?” Ben finally asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Shayne said, warming the glass between his hands. “You can join me at the clinic. But we go by my rules.”

Ben felt the way he had as a kid in the dead of winter when he finally saw a ray of sunshine slicing through the eternal darkness. He grinned at his brother. “Whatever you say.”

“The first thing I ‘say,’” he told Ben, finishing his drink, “is that the clinic opens at seven.” He received the expected response from Ben, who looked properly sobered by the piece of information. “Something you’d like to say about that, Ben?”

Ben gave him a completely innocent look that didn’t fool his brother for a moment. “Yeah, can I catch a ride with you?”

Shayne snorted. “Seeing as how you’ll be sleeping in the guest room tonight, I don’t suppose that’ll be a hardship.”

Unable to contain his enthusiasm, Ben rose to his feet and embraced his brother. Shayne endured the contact, neither returning the embrace nor moving back to terminate it.

“It’s good to be back, Shayne.”

“We’ll see, Ben. We’ll see.” The look on Shayne’s face as they separated told Ben that his older brother was far from being won over yet.

But he would be, Ben promised himself silently.

He’d never been a morning person. Ever.

The two cups of extrastrong black coffee that were now infiltrating his veins, attempting to jolt his bloodstream into some semblance of attention, helped a little but not nearly enough. The swaying of the Jeep as Shayne drove them into town the next morning was all but lulling him back to sleep. It was a struggle to keep his eyes open.

When he realized that his lids had shut, he jerked his head up, but not before Shayne spared him a look. “I can still turn around and drop you off back at the house, Sleeping Beauty.”

Ben shifted in his seat. “Nope, I’m fine.”

Shayne laughed. “Yeah, for a zombie.”

Busted, Ben yawned and stretched, rotating his shoulders. “Just takes me longer to come around, that’s all.” Shayne had always been just the opposite, getting up in what amounted to the middle of the night as far as he was concerned. Like the marines, his brother got more done before eight in the morning than most people accomplished all day. “Besides, I’ve always done my best work after twelve.”

Shayne gave him a knowing look. “Yeah, I know.”

For once he wasn’t referring to anything that had to do with the fairer sex. He was being serious. “You know what I mean.”

Shayne merely slanted a glance at him before pulling his Jeep into the first parking space located directly at the rear of the clinic.

They were here. He hadn’t even realized it, Ben thought. Shayne had taken the shorter route, not through the town but the back roads, and they had approached the whitewashed, single-story building from the rear.

Getting out, Ben took in the building with its fresh coat of paint. The paint wasn’t the only thing that seemed new. He followed Shayne up the back stairs as he unlocked the door. “Is it my imagination or—”

“We’ve added on,” Shayne told him. “A couple more exam rooms,” he specified, “and an O.R. for minor surgery. Anything major we still send them on to Anchorage General.” That was one of the reasons he and Sydney had a single-engine plane, so that patients could be flown to the city if need be.

“More exam rooms,” Ben echoed. “Is the town really growing?”

“Some,” Shayne allowed. Walking in first, he waited for Ben to cross the threshold, then shut the door again. The clinic was almost eerily quiet. “We’ve had some new blood come in.” Shayne went into his office. He took out his lab coat and put it on. As an afterthought, he reached in for his spare one and held it out to Ben. “And fewer people leave.”

Ben slipped on the white coat. Almost like old times, he thought. “That new blood, is it responsible for the restaurant and emporium I saw when I was driving through?”

Shayne smiled to himself. By regular standards, the town was almost standing still. But as far as the citizens of Hades were considered, they were experiencing a building boom. An actual firehouse had been constructed less than a year ago, joining a renovated movie theater and a very small hotel.