held out the letter she was still holding in her hand. “My insurance company says I need another doctor for the clinic.”
“So go out and hire one,” James Dean Pruitt stated in his matter-of-fact way.
His innocence made her want to laugh, but the aching fatigue attacking her every muscle wouldn’t allow Meg even a chuckle. She shook her head. “I tried to find someone last weekend when Jackson almost fell apart without me.”
“Kate and I figured you went to Galveston for a long weekend. Not so, huh?”
Meg waved the letter again. “For weeks I’ve been trying to find a doctor who’ll work in Jackson. This bureaucratic memo from my insurance company gives me no choice now.”
“How so?”
“They’re demanding I find another doctor or they’re pulling my malpractice insurance.”
“Can they do that?”
“Sure. The suits at the home office claim that with my high doctor-patient ratio it’s unsafe for me to run the clinic.” From a tiny reserve of stamina, Meg found the energy to laugh. The entire situation seemed so ridiculous. Not one physician at the Rural Conference for Doctors in Dallas had been interested in practicing in her hometown.
Her head throbbed and her body ached. If she were her own patient, she’d order herself to go straight to bed for three days. Maybe this was how people really lost it—never getting a decent night’s sleep and then careering straight off the deep end.
“Nobody wants to come to Jackson?” James Dean’s question shifted her attention. He frowned.
“Not one. I’m still the only doctor for seventy-five miles.” She brought her hand back to the desk and thumped the golden oak with her knuckles. “I even paid my own way to Dallas. Do you have any idea how much hotel rooms cost in that city?” She brought her hands to her face and rubbed her temples with the tips of her fingers.
James Dean rose from his chair, stepped over to her desk and rested his large palms on the only space not covered with papers. “Mego, you’re gonna wear out real quick.”
She inhaled a defeated breath at his realistic words and cradled her chin in laced fingers. He was right. In the past few weeks, she’d made mistakes from sheer exhaustion. She’d caught them all, but it was starting to spook her.
“I still can’t believe John left…and for money. I’m trying to take care of his patients and mine. One human being can’t do it all.” Being a small-town general practitioner gave new meaning to the word busy.
“Something has to give,” James Dean said.
“A lot of things will give. If I don’t find someone in a month, I’m going to have to close the clinic.”
Her cousin straightened, crossed his arms and stared down at her. “You can’t do that. We need you.”
“And I can’t run the clinic without insurance. That would be professional suicide.”
“Folks aren’t going to like driving to Fort Worth. How about Charlie’s asthma?”
“I know,” Meg whispered. She massaged her temples again. She’d treated James Dean’s son many times for a mild case of asthma. “Too bad the doctor I met at the Sunshine Café isn’t sticking around.”
“What?”
“Erin Waldron choked on a piece of hot dog down at the café. A doctor who had stopped for lunch helped out.”
She’d sign Steve Hartly up in a minute. A laugh slipped from her lips. She wondered how he’d like working in a run-down, dusty Texas town.
“Something funny?”
“No. Just thinking about a man I met.”
“About time.” James Dean’s eyes gleamed.
“It’s not like that.” But with only the brief memory of Steve Hartly, the silly butterflies were back. To fight them, she turned her attention to the letter on the desk. “What am I going to do?”
“If it’s money…Kate and I could scrape up a few bucks.”
She looked up at James Dean, loving him for the offer. “It’s not the money. That’s the least of it. I need a warm, breathing body attached to a medical license, someone who just happens to be living in Jackson.”
Steve stared at the cracked kitchen sink, then turned, walked into the living room and glanced around. Every window in the house had been broken out.
He owned a certifiable, unlivable dump.
That hard fact, on top of the emergency in the café during lunch, grated on his nerves. He’d vowed never to touch another patient again, but when he’d seen the child choking, how could he not help? And the doctor he’d met after had thanked him so nicely.
An image of Meg Graham paraded through his thoughts. Her open, pretty face and expressive, chocolate-brown eyes still grabbed at his gut. The desire to see her again oozed through his body like warm syrup.
Steve danced the beam of the flashlight over the walls of the living room to distract himself from thoughts of Meg.
Why did I have to stop for a meal where there was a medical emergency?
An autumnlike breeze whipped through the broken windows and fanned across the living room to the kitchen, causing the screen door to squeak.
He wasn’t even sure where to begin repairs. The Realtor had said it was a fixer-upper. Spending the past five years of his life as an emergency-room doctor had prepared him to repair broken bodies, not plumbing or drywall.
Steve crossed the carpetless floor and stepped onto the small front porch. He gazed at the orange-streaked sky spreading to the far horizon. Its beauty was foreign to him. In Houston he’d never had time to enjoy sunsets.
The sound of a car and the flash of headlights coming down the lane brought his gaze around. A GMC utility vehicle kicked up pebbles as it turned into the only other driveway on the small stretch of road.
Must be his neighbors coming home. Maybe they’d know someone he could hire to replace the windows in the house. Then, at least, he wouldn’t have to sleep in his car for more than a few nights.
Taking the three small steps all at once, Steve lunged off the porch, hoping his new neighbors were friendly.
Chapter Two
Meg clicked on the kitchen light and set her grocery bag on the counter. She glanced at the wall clock above the stove. If there were no emergencies, she might get a decent night’s sleep.
If she could sleep.
What in the world was she going to do about the demands of the insurance company? There were no quick solutions. And to top it off, the incident at the café this afternoon had rattled her more than she liked to admit.
The tall, handsome image
