Dianne Drake - A Home for the Hot-Shot Doc

“Still don’t on a permanent basis, but I’ve been back plenty of times to visit my grandmother,” he said, but without much conviction in his voice. “Look, earlier when you said we need to talk … you’re right. I really do want to sit down and talk to you about what I’m going to do here to take care of these people.”

“Why do you care?” she asked as she veered to the left and puttered her way up a shallow inlet.

“Because my grandmother cared.”

“Then that leads me to the obvious question.”

“Let me save you the trouble of asking. The reason I didn’t move back here, not even to New Orleans, to be closer is … complicated, and I’m not even sure I can explain it to myself, let alone someone else. It’s just the way things were with me. I ended up in Chicago, liked it and stayed. And, yes, I did have opportunities here. Could have gone to New Hope, actually. But coming back here, being so close …” He shrugged. “I like my practice, like Chicago. Like the life I have there.”

“And you were afraid that coming back to Big Swamp, even for visits, would overwhelm you with all kinds of guilty feelings.”

She slowed the boat alongside a rickety old dock, then pointed to a shanty about two hundred feet off the water. It was wooden, painted red, with blue shutters. All the paint chipped and faded. In the yard lay three good-size alligators, looking lazy and not particularly interested in the meddlers coming around to bother them.

“Or I was afraid that coming back to Big Swamp would overwhelm me with all kinds of responsibilities I can’t handle. Which is turning out to be the case.”

“Look, I’m not working tomorrow evening. If you can get to town, come by the house for dinner, around seven. Not sure you’ll want to travel these parts at night to get home, so you’re invited to stay. It’ll be at my parents’ house, by the way. I don’t live with them, but I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to extend their hospitality. That is, if you make it through the gators tonight.”

“And just how am I supposed to do that?”

“Very carefully,” she said, handing him one of his bowls of food. “They have short legs, so I think you’ll be able to outrun them.” She laughed. “But they do have that one fast burst of energy at the start, so if you don’t make it to dinner tomorrow night, I’ll know what happened.”

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