Luanne Rice - Follow the Stars Home

“In what way?” Alan asked.

“To have that time you mentioned.”

Wringing her hands, Julia bowed her head. She moaned, but the sound changed to something near glee.

“My mother, me, and Julia,” Dianne continued. “To be together after she retires. Time to do something important before Julia …”

Alan didn’t answer. Was he thinking that she had left him off the list? Dianne started to speak, to correct herself, but instead she stopped. Holding herself tight, she stared at Julia. My girl , she thought. The terrible reality seemed sharper in Alan’s office than it did anywhere else: The day would come when she would leave them.

“Dianne, talk to me,” he said.

He had taken off his glasses, and he rubbed his eyes. He looked so much like Tim just then, Dianne focused down at her shoes. Coming closer, he touched her shoulder.

“I can’t,” she said carefully, stepping away. “Talking about it won’t change things.”

“This is nuts,” he said. “I’m your friend.”

“Don’t, Alan. Please. You’re Julia’s doctor.”

He stared at her, lines of anger and stress in his face.

“I’m a lot more than that,” Alan said, and Dianne’s eyes filled with tears. Without his glasses he looked just like his brother, and at that moment he sounded as dark as Tim had ever been.

Stupid young woman , Dianne thought, feeling the tears roll down her cheeks. She had been full of love. She had chosen the McIntosh she had thought would need her most, take every bit of care she had to offer, heal from the sorrows of his own past. Tim had been brash and mysterious, afraid to open his heart to anyone. Dianne had thought she could change him. She had wanted to save him. Instead, he had left her alone with their baby.

“A lot more than that,” Alan said again.

Still, Dianne wouldn’t look at him. She bent down to kiss Julia, nuzzling her wet face against her daughter’s neck.

“Maaa,” Julia said.

Dianne gulped, trying to pull herself together. Kissing Julia, Dianne got her dressed as quickly as possible.

“It’s cool out,” Alan said, making peace.

“I know,” Dianne said, her voice thick.

“Better put her sweatshirt on,” Alan said, rummaging in the diaper bag.

“Thanks,” Dianne said, barely able to look him in the face. Her heart was pounding hard, and her palms were damp with sweat. He kissed Julia and held her hand for a long time. She gurgled happily. The adults were silent because they didn’t know what else to say. Dianne stared at their hands, Alan’s still holding Julia’s. Then she picked up Julia, placed her in the wheelchair, and they left.

By the time Alan finished seeing all his patients, it was nearly six-thirty. Martha said good-bye, rushing off to pick up her son at baseball practice. Alan nodded without looking up. His back ached, and he rolled his shoulders, the place he stored the pent-up tension of seeing Dianne. He knew he needed a run.

He had Julia’s chart out on his desk, studying her progress since the last visit. Maybe he should have done an EKG today. But he had run one two weeks before and found the results to be within normal limits.

Hawthorne Cottage Hospital was a great place to have healthy babies, to schedule routine procedures. Few pediatricians did electrocardiograms; most didn’t even own the equipment. Alan had bought his as soon as it became obvious that Julia was going to need frequent monitoring. She had specialists in New Haven, but Alan didn’t see any reason for Dianne to drive all that way when he could do the test himself.

Alan had a picture in his mind. Dianne was standing in the doorway, waiting for him to come home. She wore her blond hair in one long braid, and she was smiling as if she knew all his secrets. Her blue eyes did not look worried, the way they did in real life. She had finally decided to let Alan love her and help her; she had finally figured out that the two things were really the same.

“Ah-hem!”

Looking up, he saw Amy Brooks standing in his doorway. Her brown hair was its usual tangle, she was wearing one of her mother’s pink sweaters over lint-balled red leggings. Her wide belt and turquoise beads completed the ensemble.

“Oh, it’s the young lady who lives in the playhouse,” he said. With his mind on Dianne and Julia, he felt lousy for forgetting about Amy.

“You saw me?” she asked, breaking into smiles.

“With those beautiful green eyes looking out the window – how could I miss?”

“I was hiding,” she said. “Sick brats were pounding at my door, but I put spells on them and sent them back to their mamas. What do they all have?”

“Never mind that,” Alan said. “What brings you to my office today?”

“I like that little house,” she said, turning her back to stare at the black-cat clock, its tail ticking back and forth each second. “I like it a lot.”

“I’ll have to tell the lady who made it,” he said.

Amy nodded. She moved from the clock to the Wall. Scanning the gallery, she found her pictures in the pack. Last year’s school photo, one from the year before, Amy at Jetty Beach, Amy sitting on her front steps. She had given him all of them.

“Are there any other kids with four pictures here?”

“Only you.”

“No one else has more?”

“No,” Alan said.

Wheeling around, she bent down to read the papers on his desk. Alan heard her breathing hard, and she smelled dusty, as if she hadn’t taken a shower or washed her hair in a while. Her forearms and hands were already summer-tan, and she had crescent moons of black dirt under her fingernails.

“Julia Robbins …” Amy read upside down. Gently Alan slid the pages of Julia’s chart under a pile of medical journals. He knew that Amy was jealous of his other patients. She was one of his neediest cases. Alan had the compulsion to help children who were hurting, but he knew some things couldn’t be cured.

Amy came from a lost home. Her mother was sinking in depression, just as Alan’s mother had drowned in drink thirty years earlier. She didn’t hit Amy or give him any clear cause to contact Marla Arden, Amy’s caseworker. But the state had gotten calls from neighbors. There were reports of Amy missing school, the mother fighting with her boyfriend, doors slamming, and people shouting. They had an open file on Amy. But Alan knew the terrible tightrope a child walked, loving a mother in trouble. They were always one step from falling.

Amy had latched on to Alan. From her first time in his office, she had loved him all out. She would clutch him like a tree monkey. His nurse would have to pry her off. She would cry leaving his office instead of coming in. Her mother slept all day to kill the pain of losing her husband, just as Alan’s mother had drunk to survive the death of his older brother, Neil.

“Come on,” he said to Amy. “I’ll drive you home.”

She shrugged.

Alan knew the cycles of grief. They spun all around him, taking people far away from the ones they were meant to love. His mother, Amy’s mother, Dianne, and Julia, even his brother Tim. Alan wanted to save them all. He wanted to heal everyone, fix entire families. He wished for Julia to live through her teens. He wanted Dianne to meet Amy because he believed they could help each other. People needed connection just to survive.

“I’ll drive you,” he said again.

“You don’t have to,” Amy said, starting to smile.

“I know,” he said. “But I want to.” Doctors were like parents; they weren’t supposed to have favorites, but they did. It was just the way life was.

Amy worried that someday Dr. McIntosh would stop her from coming to his office. She didn’t need to be there: She was as healthy as a horse, her fourth favorite animal following dolphins, cats, and green turtles.