Part 7 (2/2)
”The Happy Days Day Care Center. It was close to the GM plant and cheap, which meant it was mostly full of kids whose parents worked for GM.” He frowned as he examined a piece of hard-boiled egg on his plate. ”Katie, what are these little green specks?”
”Dill weed.”
”Dill weed? Never heard of it. But, h.e.l.l, you can't argue with success.”
”Thanks. Remind me to give you some to take home-you put it on eggs and cuc.u.mbers. So, did you like this day-care center?”
”It was okay,” he answered. ”There was one older lady, Mrs. Montague-we called her Miz Monty. I liked her a lot. But she was only there part-time. Then, after a while, she left. I guess she retired.” He tilted his head thoughtfully, remembering. Then, with a shrug, he dismissed the matter.
Kate thought that careless shrug said a lot about how Sam had learned to cope with the harder side of life. Everything was ”no big deal.” Except, of course, that wasn't true. The picture of the alone, and surely the lonely, fict.i.tious young pilot had lingered in her mind since Wednesday morning. As he continued to relate the bare-bones facts of his life, the picture came into better focus.
He'd grown up in an old apartment building in a rough section of Detroit. His father, Carl Reese, was fair and honest but strict in an old-school sense. Things were either right or wrong in Carl's book; Sam learned early that it was easy to make a mistake and that the consequences of making one were tough. He' d done okay in school but didn't really like academics, except for math and history; he wouldn't have bothered with college, but he'd had to have a degree to get the Navy to teach him to fly. So he'd gone to Wayne State, graduating with a degree in math, then headed straight to Aviation Officers Candidate School.
He'd been in the Navy for a little over seven years, much of it spent overseas, nearly all of it spent racking up flight time in fighter jets. And he'd probably have stayed in if he hadn't been offered a job he couldn't turn down. No, it wasn't the money that had tempted him-it was the planes he'd be flying. He'd traded the Navy and F-14 Tomcats for the Mojave Desert and a strange list of mostly unheard of, experimental aircraft designed by a man others in the aviation industry considered a renegade. He'd never regretted the decision.
He didn't see much of his father; he wrote now and then but didn't usually expect a reply-his father wasn't big on communicating. Carl Reese had remarried eight years ago, and Sam described his stepmother, Susan, as a ”real spitfire.” He smiled as he admitted he'd never have dreamed his father would tolerate a woman who refused to iron s.h.i.+rts. But Sam liked Susan and was glad to see his father enjoying himself; they even had a vacation to Florida planned for the winter, which surprised Sam, since the farthest his father had ever been from Detroit was the Upper Peninsula.
”Did he come up here to hunt?” Kate asked.
”No.” Sam laid his knife and fork across the top edge of his empty dinner plate with a satisfied sigh. ”We came up here on fis.h.i.+ng trips when I was a kid. I remember it being real pretty, especially in the fall.”
”That's my favorite time.” Resting her elbows on the table, she wrapped her hands around her water gla.s.s and gazed wistfully over the top of it. ”I had a friend in grade school whose father ran a seaplane service. He flew people all over Lake Superior-Isle Royale, Thunder Bay, even into the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. On my eleventh birthday, he took Patsy and me for a ride. I'll never forget it.” She glanced at Sam and smiled. ”My birthday's in September, and the birch forests were at peak. Looking down on those trees, I thought we must be flying over the Land of Oz, following the yellow brick road.”
His mouth slanted in a crooked grin. ”The yellow brick road, huh?”
”Well, it was beautiful.”
”I know. I've seen it. I've seen aspen groves in the Rockies, too, from the air. And pine forests covered with snow . . . and whales migrating south along the Pacific coast . . .” He looked away, his grin slowly fading, and for an instant his eyes lost their focus, the gray irises turning clear as crystal. An instant later, his countenance changed, quickly a.s.suming its usual unrevealing lines.
s.h.i.+fting his gaze to her, he asked, ”So is that why you're still up here? You're bent on following the yellow brick road?”
Kate had to fight to swallow her disappointment. Sam had given her another peek at that side of him he kept so carefully guarded-but then he'd s.n.a.t.c.hed it away.
”Well, maybe that's part of it,” she said. ”I really do love the U.P., no matter what time of year it is.”
”You must have gone away to school.”
She nodded. ”When I was twenty, I went to Ann Arbor and did my bachelor's and first master's degree at the U. of M. Then I went to the School of Midwifery at GeorgetownUniversity in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. for my master's in nurse midwifery. I was away eight years, total.”
”But you came back. Because of your family?”
”Yes, and because I don't like living in big cities. And because they need good medical professionals here. I suppose I could have found another isolated spot where I'd be just as useful, but Cal Drinker-he was my family's doctor until he retired, and he helped me through school-he told me about Doc Cabot needing help, and . . .” She trailed off with a palms-up gesture.
Sam completed the thought for her. ”You felt like you owed it to him.”
”Partly. Cressie was here, and that made a difference. But I wanted to do it, too.” Dropping her gaze, Kate added, ”I wanted to come home.”
When she looked up, she found him studying her closely.
”In that talk I had the other night with Mrs. D.,” he began, she said your mom died having a baby. Does that have something to do with your being a midwife?”
Kate drew a quiet, steadying breath. ”If you mean am I on some kind of crusade to improve obstetrics in the area because of what happened to my mother, no, I'm not. First of all, she didn't die from lack of medical care. She had heart failure during delivery, and there wasn't any reason to suspect ahead of time that it might happen. Besides, I don't really perform that many deliveries-only when there's no way the woman can get to the hospital. I just-” She tried to smile. ”I just like babies, that's all. And I like taking care of women who are getting ready to have them. It's such a . . . a happy time.”
Sam's gray eyes remained unblinking as he continued to search her features. ”You spent a good part of your childhood taking care of people,” he said. ”And I think most people in your shoes would've been pretty d.a.m.ned resentful. But you're not. And when you were given a choice, you decided to be a nurse and go on taking care of people. You get real pleasure out of it, don't you?”
Her lips parted, and a bewildered frown appeared on her brow. ”Of course, I do.” With a little flap of her hand, she added, ”Oh, I guess maybe if the reason I had to help my family was somebody's fault, I'd feel resentful. But it wasn't. My mother's dying was just a horrible thing that happened. Dad loved us, and we loved him, and we all did what we could to make things better. As for my being a nurse-” She paused, looking for words that explained what she'd never really thought about consciously. ”Sam, I like taking care of people, and I think I'm pretty good at it. And I truly believe a person ought to do what he-or she-likes and does best.”
He gave her the strangest look, one that reflected a great deal of respect; but there was something troubled, too, hiding in the depths of his eyes, something she had the most compelling desire to understand.
”Yeah,” he said quietly. ”A person ought to do what they like and do best. Can't argue with that.”
She sensed she'd said something very important. Encouraged, she started to ask if that was how he felt about flying. Before she could speak, though, she heard a sound that made her heart skip a beat.
Sam straightened in his chair as she jumped from the table and hurried toward her bedroom.
”Is that your CB?” he called.
”Yes.” She tossed an answer over her shoulder. ”Sounds like Bob Bradley over at Wanagan Campgrounds.”
The CB sat on a small table in a corner of the bedroom, and by the time she grabbed the handset, she was aware that Sam was standing in the doorway behind her, listening.
”KRT17 calling KMP- Ah, the h.e.l.l with it. Kate! Kate, are you there? Over.”
”I'm here, Bob. What's wrong? Over.”
”I've got a bad one for you.” Bob's voice was raw as he rushed to explain. ”A bear wandered in, and these two guys I've got staying down in section three tried to shoo him out. Well, you know all they did was rile him, and he attacked one of them, and- Oh, G.o.d, Kate-” His voice broke. ”He's bleeding like crazy-from his leg, mostly. Over.”
”How far up the leg?” she asked.”Just above the knee.””Have you radioed for a medevac?”
”Yes, but I had a h.e.l.l of a time getting it. Big truck wreck down on Route 51. All the crews are out. Lord knows what they're sending us-or when. I don't know if this guy's going to make it.”
”Bob, do what you can to stop the bleeding. Keep him warm. Elevate his legs. I'll be there in ten.” Signing off, Kate dropped the radio mike, s.n.a.t.c.hed her pager off her nightstand, grabbed her jacket out of the closet, and rushed past Sam, who was still standing in the doorway. ”I'm sorry, Sam. I have to go. There's pie in the kitchen. You're welcome to stay and have some.”
”You've got a chopper coming?” he asked, grabbing his jacket off the couch to follow her.
”I hope so.”
”What's flight time to the trauma center?”
”About forty-five minutes, over to Marquette.” She pulled on her jacket over her yellow blouse and linen skirt as she ran down her front steps; she'd dressed for Sam, not for work-a mistake, she realized, but one she'd have to live with.
”Listen,” she continued, ”you don't have to rush off. It's fine if you-” She stopped with a hand on the door handle of the pickup. ”Where are you going?”
”With you,” he said, opening the pa.s.senger door and swinging into the front seat.
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