Dinner with the Booths had gone so well while Walt’s son, Tom, was on leave, Muriel was invited back the next week. She had secret hopes it would be a regular event. It was lovely. Muriel pulled her truck up to her little bunkhouse after the next such dinner. She’d left a light on for the dogs and could hear them barking before she even had her truck door closed. This is the family I come home to, she thought. Buff, only a few months old, had to be kept in the kennel when she was away from the house; he was still full of all that destructive puppy stuff and for Labs it was almost an art form. Luce was safe on her own now at almost two, but she spent most of that time right up against the kennel, watching over Buff.

She released the puppy from his kennel in the corner and got down on the floor to scratch and cuddle and play.

She had the most wonderful time with Walt and the kids. They were energizing. So full of life and laughter, despite the fact that each one of them had been through some incredibly tough times. Obviously Walt treasured his family, that was without question. They were fantastic fun. But did he know how remarkable they were? she wondered.

They wanted to know how she got into movies. “It was a ridiculous accident,” she had told them. “I was about fourteen when I was chosen from my freshman class to appear in a public-service commercial. This agent appeared and talked my parents into letting me try out for a part in a movie. For a fourteen-year-old with virtually no experience or training, I lucked out and did well. Then there was a slightly larger part, then slightly larger, and I grew. By seventeen I was rushing through my senior year to finish all my classes ahead of time so I could be in another movie.”

“Didn’t your parents freak out?” Vanessa asked.

“I didn’t have those kind of parents. They were amazed it was happening for me. I was making money and making film-industry waves—Hollywood focus has always been on the new entrant, the incredibly young wannabe. But—at twenty-one I married my agent, who was thirty-six. That almost sent my father to the moon. But he was a tough country rancher; he came around. Life was different back in these hills in my younger years. With common country folk, when a fifteen-year-old girl was keeping company with a guy over thirty, the girl’s father got them married. Today—he’d have the guy arrested.”

“Were you married to him long?”

“Five years,” Muriel said. “He’s still my agent of record. And friend.”

“But why didn’t you stay married?” Shelby asked.

Muriel shrugged. “He didn’t really love me like I wanted to be loved. I wanted a home, a family, a life. Roots. He wanted an Oscar.”

“Forgive me for being completely uninformed,” Vanessa said, “but did you get the Oscar?”

“I was nominated three times,” she said. “I was robbed.”

And never got the family. Or the marriage that would have the kind of commitment and devotion that, even in the absence of children and Oscars, could have sustained her. After getting to know Walt’s family, she thought that even if she’d had the chance for a family, there was no way she could have produced such strong, independent, well-adjusted adults. Not in her line of work.

So she ruffled the ears and necks of her two Labs, cooing to them, kissing them, telling them she loved them.

And then she heard an engine. A truck engine. The vehicle stopped, the door slammed and booted feet landed on the porch. All these sounds were familiar. There was a knock. Wasn’t this unexpected…. “Come on in, Walt.”

He stood in the door frame in his suede jacket, jeans, hat. He looked at her on the floor with her pups and smiled. The dogs abandoned her to rush to him, weaving in and out of his long legs, Buff jumping on him. She’d have to break him of that before it got out of control, she thought.

“Any chance you brought more of that delicious dessert with you?” she asked, getting up.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t,” he said.

“Are you looking for coffee?” she asked.

“It would keep me up,” he said, tossing his hat in the chair and reaching out a hand to pull her to her feet. “Come here.” He pulled her against him. He ran a hand down her cheek and along her jaw. “Where do the dogs sleep?”

“On the bed with me.” She laughed, tilting her head up to him. She wondered if he knew how good-looking he was. And how solid; a man you could hold on to confidently. He didn’t waver, not literally, not figuratively. She liked that in a man.

“Think they’d be okay on the floor one night?”

“You making that move, Walt?” He kissed her in a way that should have sufficiently answered the question.

“Muriel, I’m sixty-two years old. I didn’t see this coming.”

“Aren’t you afraid of us becoming an item?”

“Girl, I’ve been dressed down by a president. You can’t scare me with a little gossip. What worries me is that you’ll find me old.”

She laughed at him. “You’re just a few years older than I am. And you’re almost irresistibly handsome.”

One black brow shot up. “You find me handsome?”

She nodded. “And sexy.”

“Well, now. That so? Muriel, I want to touch every part of you. And then I want us to watch the sunrise together.” The dogs were whirling around their legs, wagging, butting, trying to get someone to play. “You might have to do something about these animals.”

“They’ll settle down in a minute,” she promised. “But don’t you.”

Five

On what had lately become a fairly typical afternoon, Shelby, Mel and Doc were having a game of gin at the kitchen table in the clinic while the babies napped. Doc wasn’t doing much better against Shelby than he had over the last couple years playing Mel. These women were wiping him out. “I think I’ve gone through my retirement. You’re ruthless females.”

“I think I remember you winning a couple of hands last week,” Mel said.

“Bah,” he said, struggling to his feet. He grabbed his cane and hobbled out of the kitchen.

“Is there anything I can do around here that would help you two more than being a third hand in a card game?” Shelby asked. “Need someone to organize charts? Clean up a drug cabinet or treatment room? Inventory? Lab or supply run?”

“Tomorrow is appointment day and I have three prenatals and four Pap smears. Since you’re working here, you can assist. How does that sound?” Mel asked.

“Like a very slow day.”

“The thing about country medicine is that it runs hot and cold,” Mel said. “This town is so small that days, sometimes weeks, go by without anything exciting. Then everyone will pass around a virus and they’re all hacking up a lung, and while they’re doing that, everyone else is having an accident or going into labor. You have to be ready for everything, and nothing.”

Shelby never tired of Mel’s stories drawn from her nursing career, from the wild days of big-city emergency medicine, to the transition to small-town doctoring. For Shelby, working in a hectic urban E.R. sounded exciting, though she wondered if she’d really enjoy living in a big city. But being a nurse in a town as little as this didn’t seem to have enough jazz for her. More and more she thought she might end up in an emergency or operating room in a place like Santa Rosa—something between big and small. Or perhaps Eureka or Redding.

“Having come from a big-city hospital, there was one thing about small-town medicine that took me by surprise,” Mel said. “In no time at all, your patients are your friends. If there’s some intervention you can’t get to them in time, you feel not only that you’ve failed a patient, but let down a friend. For example, hardly any of the women in this town had been having regular mammograms, and when I finally got a nonprofit foundation to bring a portable X-ray unit to Virgin River to examine the women over forty, one of my best friends was diagnosed with aggressive, advanced breast cancer. She died—and I keep kicking myself for not getting the thing done sooner.”

“You must feel you can never do it all.”

“To the contrary,” Mel said. “I feel I have to think of everything, and I must do it all. To many of these uninsured rural women, Doc and I are all they have. These Pap smears—I’ve cajoled almost every one of them. I call them, I push them, I get them in here and charge only lab costs.”

“It’s an easy thing to let slide, I guess,” Shelby said.

“But you wouldn’t let it slide,” Mel said.

“Well, that hasn’t exactly been a priority the last few years,” Shelby said with a laugh. “But I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that….”

Mel’s back stiffened instantly. “How long might you have let that go?”

“I haven’t had one,” Shelby said.

“What?”

“I’m an extremely low risk,” she said. Then she lowered her eyes. “I haven’t had sex.”

Mel sat forward. “That’s kind of unusual. At your age.”

“I haven’t had a boyfriend. Oh, I dated a little in high school, but not seriously. I’m the product of an accidental pregnancy and my mom raised me alone. If we hadn’t been lucky enough to have Uncle Walt, life would have been a terrible struggle for us. My mom always felt so guilty about that, about taking all his help. I was scared to death of something like that happening to me. Mostly, I was afraid of disappointing my mom and my Uncle Walt.”

“You were very cautious….”

“Well, yes. And I was shy. And then I became nearly a recluse, taking care of my mom. The only men I came into contact with were married doctors, male nurses or hospice volunteers. And here I am, probably your first twenty-five-year-old virgin.” She made a face. “Please, I really don’t want the whole town to know I’m a helpless, recovering introvert who lived with her mother for twenty-five years.”

“Shelby, you know everything in this clinic is confidential—you took the oath when you decided to help out here. Besides, what you did for your mom gets nothing but admiration around here,” Mel said. “It was very selfless. And if you don’t mind me saying so, you seem quite sure of yourself.”

“Oh, I got over a lot of that shyness while I was taking care of her. I had to be assertive to be sure she was getting what she needed medically. Once you learn to stand up to a highfalutin neurologist, you can handle the bag boy at the grocery store just fine. I’m not crippled by shyness anymore, just a newcomer into the big, free world,” she said. “And I don’t want to be unprepared….”

“Honestly, I don’t want the first thing inside you to be a speculum, but you should be examined. There are other concerns—not just cervical cancer. There’s uterine cancer, ovarian cancer. And then you should be protected. Ready. When that time comes, you shouldn’t have too much to be worried about—I can’t imagine you still have a hymen with all that riding….”

Shelby sighed. “I wonder if it will ever happen.”

“It’ll happen.” Mel smiled. “Let me ask you something—how important is it to you that the first time be noticeably the first time?”

“That’s not a big issue with me.”

“I think I can get you through an exam without changing the whole landscape too much.” Mel took a breath. “Let’s do it.”

“Now?” she asked squeamishly.

Mel nodded. “Get naked. I’ll meet you in the exam room. You know where the gowns are.”

A few minutes later Mel let herself into the exam room to find Shelby seated on the table. “Take a deep breath,” Mel said, smiling. “It’s going to be fine.” She helped to ease Shelby into the position, keeping a hand on each thigh so she wouldn’t slide too far. “The good news is, I have really small hands.”

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