the hours her job had required. More than that, Eric and Neil had been trying to recruit her to the hospital to take over the juvenile diabetes program. It had been a providential move, one that had launched her into a totally new frame of mind about her life, and what she wanted to accomplish. Truly, it was time to make herself useful. Make up for all those worthless years with Brad. “And you know how good I am on skis. I’d hoped that wandering around Europe, from slope to slope, all those years, would make a difference. But it didn’t. Dr. Anderson turned me down because I don’t have what he wants.”
“What does he want?” Gabby asked.
“The sun, the moon and someone who knows how to take blood pressure. I’m a good clinical dietician, but I don’t even know one end of a blood-pressure cuff from another.”
“Sphygmomanometer,” Gabby interrupted.
“What?”
“Sphygmomanometer. Blood-pressure cuff. That’s the correct name for it.”
“See what I mean? I don’t know those things, so that disqualifies me.”
“Even after Neil and Eric recommended you?”
“Apparently so.”
“I’m sorry,” Gabby said. “I haven’t been paying much attention to what Neil has been saying about the program. With just having the baby and all.”
“Two babies,” Angela reminded her.
“Two babies, a year apart. That’s kept me preoccupied. But I really thought…”
Angela held out her hand to stop her. “It doesn’t matter. Dr. Anderson is probably right, much as I hate to admit it. If my ignorance would hold the class back, I don’t want to do that. But I’ve got a plan.”
Gabby laughed. “Why am I not surprised?”
Angela mellowed a bit. Gabrielle Evans Ranard was the best friend she’d ever had, next to Dinah. And Dinah didn’t count because she was Angela’s sister, and that relationship went without saying. But Gabby… she’d come to town, showed up in White Elk totally lost, much like Angela was feeling right now. Then she’d found everything—her life, her love, her happiness. It was out there, and not so far away, Angela hoped. She had Sarah, and that was the first part. The best part. “You’re not surprised because you’ve seen my list.”
“Your long list,” Gabby corrected.
“OK, so maybe I have a few too many goals. Dr. Anderson even said something to that effect, but I know what it’s like not having any goals, not having anything to look forward to day in and day out. So a few extra goals are good.”
“If you don’t get so caught up in achieving goals that you miss something else.”
“What would I miss?”
“What is it they say about stopping to smell the roses? Well, sometimes it’s nice to stop and smell the aftershave, too.”
“You’re not talking about…?”
Gabby shrugged. Smiled. Didn’t comment.
“Well, for your information, he doesn’t wear aftershave. I smelled soap on him, that’s all. And the only thing I want to smell is the scent of pine trees when I’m called out on a rescue operation. So, I’m going to audit his class. Sit in the back row so I don’t even have to smell soap on him, and learn what I need to know so I can apply to the next class… one he won’t be teaching.”
“You smelled soap on him?” Gabby teased. “How close, exactly, were you?”
Angela shook her head. “Were you listening to anything I said?”
“OK, so I got sidetracked. But you’re so… so animated. It’s the first time since Brad that I’ve seen you react this way to a man, and it just seemed to me that…”
Angela held out her hand to stop her. “He’s grumpy. He keeps to himself. He’s not friendly. What, in that description, makes you think I’d have anything to do with him?”
“Well, for what it’s worth, he’s had a very rough couple of years.”
“And you and I haven’t? You’ve had two babies and survived an avalanche. I had one baby, a cheating husband, and I survived that same avalanche. That’s all rough, Gabby. But we’re not grumpy.”
“But I have Neil, as well as Bryce and Mary. You have Sarah. Whatever we went through was worth it to get everything we have. And we do have a lot, Angela. We’ve both been blessed in so many ways I can’t even describe it. But Mark…” She trailed off and shrugged.
“You’re right,” Angela whispered, thinking about Sarah again. “We do have everything, don’t we?”
“Neil and Eric brought him here to White Elk because he lost everything.”
“Mark?”
Gabby nodded. “It’s really not my place to say anything, except he walked away from something that made what you and I’ve gone through look like a picnic, and at the end of his road there was nothing or no one waiting there for him. So he may be a little grumpy right now, but I suppose if anyone has a right to be…”
“OK, so maybe I won’t hate him. But that doesn’t mean I have to like him, does it?”
“Just consider him a means to your end. Audit his classes, learn everything you can from him because, from what Neil tells me, he’s an amazing trauma doctor. Then, at the end of eighteen months, ask him to give you a recommendation to the next class.” Gabby grinned. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll do it. Maybe you’ll even enjoy smelling the soap by then.”
About the soap, no. Definitely not. But maybe he would give her the recommendation. Or maybe, after eighteen months, when she’d proved herself to be just as good as anyone else he was training, she’d present his words to him on a silver platter and ask him to eat them. It was certainly a satisfying image, one that made her want to run straight to her sister’s shelf of medical reference books and start reading. “I brought you a nice fresh fruit salad. It’s down in the kitchen. Want some?” she asked Gabby.
“With strawberries?”
“Lots of strawberries.” Angela pushed herself up out of the chair and headed downstairs. On the way to the kitchen, though, she stopped in the den and took a look at all the medical volumes belonging to Gabby and Neil. Dozens and dozens of them, all well past anything she could read and understand. But tucked into a corner was an old paperback medical dictionary. Words… medical words with meanings. That was as good a place to start as any, and she was anxious to ask Gabby if she could borrow it. Her fingers were almost trembling as she pulled the book from the shelf. “This is where we begin it all, Sarah,” she whispered, as she tucked it under her arm and continued on to the kitchen. “One word at a time.”
With, or without, Mark Anderson’s help.
CHAPTER TWO
“STAT, from the Latin statim, meaning immediately,” Angela said as Mark hurried by
