She was just being silly. The heart was an organ, plain and simple. Everything else people attributed to it was just poetic metaphor. I was certain that as long as Wyatt agreed not to wield an actual weapon, logic and rational thinking would allow me to remain in a space that was emotionally comfortable.
Four days later, I met Wyatt at the Conway Cafe in the late afternoon. I was still in my lab coat. It was a busy day in the office. Lots of routine stuff, but also two small-town emergencies. First, Hallie Witherbottom came in crying. She was a year behind me in school, and currently mother to five boys. She was upset because she was one hundred percent sure her youngest son, Clive, had completely lost all hearing in his left ear. I calmed her down, noting that sudden hearing loss in a five-year-old isn’t impossible but it was unlikely. And sure enough when I got him up on the table and looked in his ear with an otoscope, there was a plastic googly eye looking back at me. Clive went home with one less eye but no hearing loss whatsoever.
Post-Clive’s google-ectomy, Judge Davis, a Conway fixture and the most upstanding and respected legal mind in town, came in for a routine checkup. For a man in his seventies he was in great condition, but I noticed he was running a low-grade fever. I asked him if he had any other symptoms and stern as usual, he said he was just fine. Then I noticed he was a little squirmy. When I asked why he was dancing in his seat like a toddler that had to pee, he begrudgingly mentioned that he’d had symptoms of a UTI for about a week. He told me that it was no big deal and it would go away on its own. When I pushed, he described peeing as akin to passing knives on fire through his urethra, but of course, he had it under control. Before he left, he had a prescription for both a painkiller and an antibiotic. Also, he’d already called the office twice to say thank you.
Finally, I’d received a consult call from a doctor in Bozeman. He had seen some of the advertising we’d been doing for the Special Spurs Rodeo and recognized my name from a paper I wrote a couple of years ago. A boy he was treating had been thrown from a horse and shattered his hip. The doc wanted a second opinion on his course of treatment. It wasn’t a particularly complicated case for me, and his plan was logical, but I still felt honored that he sought me out.
In general, I felt needed all day. I was starting to think that my work as the town doctor was going to change people’s perceptions of me. I could already see the mantle I carried for so long fading. Instead of being the sheriff's genius daughter, people started to see me as someone who cared about them. Sure, I missed conceptualizing and executing the complicated orthopedic surgeries, but I really enjoyed helping the people in Conway. I knew them. I cared for them all since I interned for Eggs as a teenager. Throughout the years, I’d always kept up with this town, no matter where I was studying. I called Eggs on the regular just to check in and make sure they were all okay.
Really knowing my patients made the work both easier and more rewarding. I could actually see from their behavior when something was off and I could genuinely care for their health in the long term. They weren’t just names in a computer or cases in a file. They were friends. People who had helped me along the way. I knew their families and their life stories. It was silly but I sort of loved being the doc that wiped runny noses. I knew it wasn’t cutting edge, but it also wasn’t as stressful. And there was a lot more laughter. Also, it occurred to me that maybe one day I could create some kind of orthopedic practice in Montana. Kids that grew up working farms and riding horses got hurt just as often as city kids. It was food for thought and I was enjoying the idea.
And then there was my meeting with Wyatt. In general, it was a good workday and I loved that I was starting to think there might be a place for me in Conway, but I was riding high all day because I knew he was at the end of it. I couldn’t stop thinking about seeing him. As I ate my lunch sitting at the little table in the employee kitchen, I pondered what rules he would come up with. As I washed my hands in the ladies’ room, I considered the feeling of his hands on my skin and wondered when I would feel his touch again. And then when it came time to meet him, I practically ran out of the office like it was on fire.
When I walked through the cafe door, I spotted Wyatt already sitting at a table in the back corner. Seeing his bulky figure leaning over a sheet of paper on the table, I went from happy to absolutely elated, because someday soon he was definitely going to kiss me again. I felt glowy anytime I remembered that he’d kissed me already. This friends with benefits thing was the best idea I ever had. I just had to remember that we were supposed to be talking about the rodeo first and our agreement second.
As I crossed through the cafe tables to get to him, he looked up, locked eyes with me, and smiled, but it wasn’t the bold broad smile he used to charm everyone from the checkout girl at the supermarket to the blue-haired bitties under the hair dryers in Delores’ salon. Instead, it was a smile I’d never seen, a sneaky you-and-I-have-a-secret-and-I-like-it smile. It made me feel a little breathless.
When I got closer, he breathed, “Hi, Caroline.” I had to glance down real quick to make sure I wasn’t naked because he was looking at me and talking to me like I was.
I swallowed and squeaked out, “Hi, Wyatt.”
He pulled out the chair next to him and I sat down. With a lazy smile and wandering eyes, he said, “I took the liberty of ordering you an iced tea with lemon. You still drink that?” I nodded, and then I just kind of looked at him. Stared into his gray eyes like a bumbling doofus. That deep laugh of his rumbled around us, and then he asked, “Where’s Bev?”
“Bev?” I questioned absentmindedly.
He nodded. “Yes, Bev, your best friend and the third member of this committee that’s putting together the rodeo.”
“Right, sorry. I don't know what I was thinking ...”
Interrupting me, sultry and under his breath, he said, “I do.”
I cackled at his little sexual innuendo, literally cackled like the green witch from the Wizard of Oz.
He smirked at me. I closed my eyes and tried desperately to calm down, hoping I could grasp for a tiny shred of normalcy.
“You were saying?” He was still smirking.
I managed to spit out, “Bev isn’t coming.”
“No?” he questioned. There was a hint of sarcasm in his tone.
“Car trouble. Flat tire or something.”
Looking concerned, Wyatt started to stand and said, “Really, where is she? We should go help her.”
“No,” I blurted, grabbing his thigh to stop him from getting up and he smiled knowingly. “She’s fine. It happened earlier. She’s home now … and … um … just too tired for this.”
“You sure?” he asked considerately, but I was pretty certain he knew Bev was fine.
I nodded. “Yep. Yeppers.” I popped my lips around the p’s in the words. My hand was still on his leg.
“Okay then,” he said. “I know we are supposed to talk about horses and saddles for special needs kids, Caroline, but can we just agree that I’ll take care of that because I can’t stop thinking about kissing you and now your hand is resting on my thigh, and I really don’t want to talk about anything else.”
Oh my God. A little self-conscious, I went to move my hand but he stopped me, clasping my hand with his larger one and shaking his head no.