had come to know that look and that tone well in the six months or so he’d been serving at the South Church Street Free Clinic; behind Mrs. Schmidt’s stern and stony schoolmarm’s demeanor lurked the soul of a schoolboy prankster.
Playing along, he replied in a similarly casual tone, “Oh, I don’t know. Most likely be Kenny.” He slid a sidelong glance toward the other end of the counter, where Ruthie was poring over an upside-down chart and pretending complete disinterest in their conversation.
“Baumgartner?” Behind the half glasses, Mrs. Schmidt’s eyes were now openly twinkling. “Why, that’s that nice Jewish boy, isn’t it? The one that has such a crush on our Ruthie.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a crush,” Ethan mused. Then, following a pause, “More like…the hots.”
“He does not!” That brought a rich, warm color to Ruthie’s cheeks. “And even if he did, so what? I’m not interested.” She dropped the clipboard with a clatter and went flouncing off.
“A good thing she isn’t,” said Mrs. Schmidt in a dry undertone, watching the nurse walk away toward the back of the cavernous room that had once been a fire station’s engine bay. “What kind of a future can there be for those two—a nice Jewish boy in love with a sweet Catholic girl whose twin brother just happens to be a priest?”
For a moment Ethan allowed his own gaze to follow Mrs. Schmidt’s, before he jerked it back to the counter and its pile of charts. Ruthie was a sweet girl and he was fond of her, in a way. But the fact was, there was simply no place in his life for entanglements—not now, and not for the foreseeable future. At least for the next year and a half, while Everett Charlton Brown was still in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his entire family under a constant media microscope and his son’s future in limbo as a consequence.
Ethan didn’t resent the notoriety his father’s choice of careers had forced upon him—he truly didn’t. At least, not anymore. Rhett Brown was a good man and a great president, and he’d done some wonderful things for the country—the world, even. But to be honest, there were times when Ethan thought about his childhood back in Iowa, thought about holidays spent on his aunt Lucy’s farm, or building a tree house in the backyard in Des Moines with his sister Lolly….
He thought about Lauren, and how she’d managed to escape the limelight practically on the eve of their father’s presidency. And yes, he envied her sometimes, with her law practice and her two kids and her Native American lawman husband, living out there on an Apache reservation in the wilds of Arizona, far from the glare of TV cameras.
Back then, while struggling through med school and internship out in California, he’d mostly been too busy to think about his own future…about personal relationships, anyway. A family, a wife, children…it had all seemed too far off to worry about. Lately, though, he had begun to think about it—something to do with being on the verge of turning thirty, he imagined—and whether it would ever be possible for a man in his position to meet someone he could fall in love with. Someone who would love him back, for the right reasons. Ethan didn’t consider himself to be shy—although others might disagree with him, and he supposed he might have been shy, as a child. Now, as far as he was concerned, he was just a very private person. And one thing he knew for certain: if and when he did meet someone, there was no way in hell he was going to risk having his personal life, his emotional affairs turned into public entertainment like some huge Hollywood production!
Another thing. If he ever did decide to brave the media attention over a woman, it was going to have to be something pretty compelling—the real thing, nothing less—which was a long way from the kind of gentle affection he felt for Ruthie. The truth was, he thought of her as…well, a younger sister.
Of course, part of the reason for that attitude may have been the fact that Ruthie’s twin brother, the priest, happened to be Ethan’s former college roommate and best friend.
Also, both the Mendoza twins and Mrs. Schmidt were among the very few in town who were fully aware of Ethan’s identity. Not that he could have kept it a secret, even with the well-trimmed beard and longish hair he’d tried to cultivate in an attempt to disguise his all-too-familiar face, given the presence of the pair of Secret Service agents who passed their days in vigilant boredom upstairs in what had once been the firehouse’s kitchen. Not to mention the news crews that showed up on the clinic’s doorstep from time to time in defiance of the unspoken agreement between the media and the White House that the president’s children were to be strictly off-limits. There’d been more than one occasion when Ruthie, Father Frank or Mrs. Schmidt had been called upon to run interference with a camera crew while their quarry escaped out the back door.
Ethan’s sense of gratitude toward the three was therefore deep and heartfelt, not only for their loyalty and discretion, but for refusing to allow the unfortunate accident of his parentage to stand in the way of genuine friendship. He’d learned the hard way, during the six and a half years his father and stepmother had occupied the White House, how rare and valuable such friendships were.
So it was for that reason he took advantage of every opportunity to promote EMT Kenny Baumgartner’s cause. Tonight’s ride-along, which was part of the arrangement with the city that allowed him to put in his hours at the clinic free of charge, he devoutly hoped would provide him with a few more of those chances.
Ethan gave Mrs. Schmidt a wink and a wave as he picked up the clipboard Ruthie had abandoned, and turned to confront the unhappy patient in the curtained cubicle designated as exam room three.
The patient—a boy about seven or eight years old, dressed in the standard urban uniform of baggy jeans and oversized T-shirt and a baseball cap turned backward—sat slumped on the paper-covered exam table. The boy’s mother had been sitting beside him, but she slid off the table at the doctor’s entrance and now faced him, one nervous and protective hand resting on her son’s knee.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Brown,” said Ethan in a brisk but friendly tone designed to put them both at ease, offering his hand first to the mother, then the boy. He glanced down at the chart in his hand. “And you are…”
“This is Michael,” the boy’s mother offered, and in a fiercely whispered aside to her son, accompanied by a glancing swat on his denim-draped leg, “What you doin’, boy? Get that hat offa your head.”
“Okay, Mike—”
“It’s Michael.” Obeying his mother while at the same time thrusting his chin defiantly upward, the boy slid proud amber eyes toward Ethan. “Like Michael Jordan. Ain’t nobody ever called Michael Jordan Mike.”
“You’re right about that,” Ethan agreed, instantly charmed. He gave the boy’s mother a wink and was gratified to see her relax, if only slightly. “Michael it is, then. So, I understand you’ve been having earaches?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t of brought him for such a little thing,” the boy’s mother said, tense and defensive again. “But, my sister Tamara? A woman where she works told her her boy had earaches, and they was so bad his eardrums busted. Said they had to operate on him, put tubes in his ears. I don’t want my baby to have to have no operation. Don’t want him to have no tubes in his ears. So I thought—”
“No, it’s good you brought him in.” Ear scope at the ready, Ethan leaned toward the child, who, predictably, pulled away with a sharp “Ow!” Ethan eyed him sternly. “Come on, now, you think Michael Jordan would raise a fuss about such a little thing?” Again the amber eyes slid toward him with that look of proud disdain. “Hey, I just want to take a look inside your ears, see what’s going on in there. Okay?”
Michael
