Virgin River (Virgin River #1)(85)

So, he hadn’t come to Virgin River for a couple of drinks a while back. He’d come to see if there was medical assistance here. Mel had said that the delivery that shook her up had occurred on the other side of Clear River and there was no doctor or clinic in that town. Grace Valley and Garberville were just a little farther away, but there were more people around.

It was a little over a half hour before the woman came out, Mel walking behind her. The woman turned and shook Mel’s hand; Mel squeezed her upper arm. The man helped her into the car and drove slowly out of town.

Jack stood and Mel met his eyes across the street. They were on their respective porches and, even from the distance, she could see the deepening frown gather on his face. Then he walked over to her.

She slipped her hands into the pockets of her jeans as he approached. When he was near, he put one foot up on the porch steps and leaned his forearms on his bent knee, looking up at her. The frown was not angry, but definitely unhappy. “Doc know what you did?” he asked her.

She gave a nod. “He knows I delivered a baby, if that’s what you mean. It’s what I do, Jack.”

“You have to promise me, you’re not going to do that again. Not for someone like him.”

“You know him?” she asked.

“No. But he’s been in the bar and I know what he is. The problem isn’t him bringing a woman to the doctor, you know. It’s you being on his turf. It’s you going with him in the middle of the night. Alone. Just because he says—”

“I wasn’t threatened,” she said. “I was asked. And he had been by the clinic before, looking for a doctor, so he wasn’t a complete stranger.”

“Listen to me,” Jack said firmly. “People like that aren’t going to threaten you in your clinic or my bar. They like to keep a real low profile. They don’t want their crops raided. But out there,” he said, giving his chin a jerk toward the mountains to their east, “things can happen. He could’ve decided you were a threat to his business and—”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “He wouldn’t let anything happen to me. That would be a threat to his business—”

“Is that what he told you? Because I wouldn’t take his word for that.” He shook his head. “You can’t do that, Melinda. You can’t go alone to some illegal grower’s camp.”

“I doubt there will be a situation like that again,” she answered.

“Promise you won’t,” he said.

She shook her head. “I have a job to do, Jack. If I hadn’t gone—”

“Mel, do you understand what I’m telling you? I’m not going to lose you because you’re willing to take stupid chances. Promise me.”

She pursed her lips and merely lifted her chin defiantly. “Never…never suggest I’m stupid.”

“I wouldn’t do that. But you have to understand—”

“It was down to me. There was a baby coming, there really was, and I had to go because if I hadn’t it could’ve been disastrous. There wasn’t time to think about it.”

“Have you always been this stubborn?” he asked.

“There was a baby coming. And it doesn’t matter to me who the woman is or what she does for a living.”

“Would you have done something like that in L.A.?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.

She thought for just a moment about how life had changed since leaving L.A. After being picked up by a gun-carrying illegal grower and delivering a baby back in the woods, shouldn’t she be packing? Running for her life? Unwilling to ever be put in a position like that again? Instead, she was doing a mental inventory of what was in Doc’s refrigerator, wondering if it wasn’t about time to take a few things out to Paulis’s camp. It had been a couple of weeks since she’d last done that.

Although she really didn’t want a repeat of the scenario with the grower, something about the experience got her attention. When she’d left L.A., they didn’t have any trouble filling her job. There were ten people who could do what she did, and do it just as well. In Virgin River, and the surrounding area, it was her and Doc. There just wasn’t anyone else. There was no day off or week off. And if she had hesitated even long enough to fetch Doc to go with her, that baby wouldn’t have made it.

I came here because I thought life would be simpler, easier, quieter, she thought. That there would be fewer challenges, and certainly nothing to fear. I thought I’d feel safer, not that I’d have to grow stronger. Braver.

She smiled at him. “In L.A. we send the paramedics. You see any paramedics? I’m in this little town that you said was uncomplicated. You’re a big liar, that’s what you are…”

“I told you, we have our own kind of drama. Mel, you should listen to me—”

“This is a real complicated place sometimes. I’m just going to do my job the best I can.”

He stepped up onto the porch, put a finger under her chin and lifted it, gazing into her eyes. “Melinda, you’re getting to be a real handful.”

“Yeah?” she asked, smiling. “So are you.”





Thirteen




Mel didn’t tell Doc where she was going, just that there were a couple of people she wanted to look in on. He asked her, since she was out, to stop and check on Frannie Butler, an elderly woman who lived alone and had high blood pressure. “Make sure she has plenty of medicine and that she’s actually taking it,” he said. He popped an antacid.