Crashing Into Tess (21 page)

To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date: Tuesday, November 13, 2:35 PM

Subject: Total Shakedown
Sam,

Vicki really did steal those drugs, some tranquilizers.
She turned what she had left over to the judge. Doc won’t
press charges for theft, so the judge gave her court
supervised visitation until she goes through rehab. I feel
terrible about what Cassie has been through, but she’ll
have a full life with her dad at the ranch, and still see her
mom every Saturday afternoon, so maybe its best for
everyone, at least for now. She’ll have to pass her drug
tests clean and gets counseling before she gets to spend
time with Cassie unsupervised.

I can’t drive yet, but my arm’s getting better. Tomorrow
I’ll head over to the thrift shop. I can walk there, and
Gertrude will keep me busy. I want to start using my fingers
again, so that’s a good way to do it. Jake’s been sweet.
There isn’t much spark, but I know he’s been preoccupied
with all that’s been going on. I’ve applied for the
Fellowship at Penn, and I’ll look at CSU. Since it looks like
I’ll be leaving, maybe it’s best we’re just friends.

Love, Way-stressed Doctor Tess
*****

Doc and Bea insisted that Tess not even step foot into
the vet clinic. “You take a good rest, dear,” Bea said. “You
started back too quick last time, and I told Doc, we just
can’t have it again. Alice and I are fine, and if we have
emergencies, why, our regular patients can just wait until
you’re back on your feet.”

Jake brought Cassie to the apartment on Wednesday
after school.

“Hi, Dr. Tess! My dad said we can take Rhiannon home
with us again! Her whelping box is all ready. How are you
feeling?” Cassie asked, as she opened the door for them.

“In the mood for a root beer float, Cass, and then
maybe another trip to the library, what do you think?”

“Yes-sss! That sounds great! And look how big
Rhiannon’s tummy is! Can I feel it, Dr. Tess?”
Jake held Rhiannon’s collar and scratched her chest,
while she showed Cassie how to gently palpitate her
abdomen. Pulling out her stethoscope, Tess let Cassie listen
to the tiny puppies’ heartbeats. After root beer floats, Jake
drove them to the library, then back to her apartment. She
helped Cassie with homework while Jake went for Mamma
Boccini’s takeout. They ate pizza with ham and pineapple
at the bistro table in Tess’s kitchen.
“Thanks for sharing her with us, Dr. Tess,” Cassie said
as they left, tugging gently on Rhiannon’s leash.
“Oh, it’s the right thing for her. Rhiannon wants to get
settled in front of that warm stove in your mudroom before
her puppies come.”
“Tilda will help. She said she likes puppies. I put a
special blanket in the whelping box, last night. We’ll take
good care of her.”
“I know you will, Cass,” Tess said, hugging the little
girl.

*****

Despite Bea’s insistence that she take it easy, boredom
drove Tess into the clinic on Thursday morning. Though
her arm was still casted, she had no problem using her
fingers. On Saturday, she and Alice took all the regular
clinic appointments.The rest of the weekend was quiet.

Doc and Bea invited her for Sunday dinner, and she
spoke at length to Doc afterward in his study. He was
understanding, encouraging even, about the New Bolton
opportunity. “You’re much too young to stick with a
practice if it’s more study and research you crave. I’m glad
you’re taking a look at Colorado State, too,” he advised. “If
livestock management is where you’re heart is, their
microbiology and pathogens programs are second to none.”

When she returned to her apartment, Tess spent the rest
of the evening on the Colorado State website, emailing off
an inquiry, requesting more information about their
research fellowship program.

Monday morning, when Tess arrived at the clinic, Alice
called hopefully, “Hey Tess, looks like you have a farm call
at McGreer Ranch Wednesday at noon.”

“Jake and Cassie called last night. I’m invited to dinner,
too.”
“That’s progress.”
“It’s only a farm call, Alice. What Jake’s after is a
bunch of healthy new stock.”
“Well, Cassie will be there, and you’ll see Rhiannon. It
might be fun.”

9
Home On The Range

Jake had over 400 h
eifers waiting in a temporary pen
when Tess pulled up Wednesday afternoon. A thick blanket
of fresh snow lay on the ground, but the sun was bright
overhead, and the temperature was above freezing.

He approached her truck, helping with her equipment.
“We’ve selected these girls for breeding stock, so I thought
we could get them all cultured and inoculated, before we
inseminate them,” he said, scanning her face. “Is your arm
okay?”

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t,” Tess smiled, all
business. “These girls look good, nice size and weight. Do
you have someone to help with record keeping? It will go a
lot faster on my end.”

“I thought I’d stick around,” he said, trying to meet her
eye. “Tilda is getting Cassie from school, later on.”
“Okay, let’s get started, then.”
When they’d finished the twenty-ninth cow, he asked,
“Tess, is everything okay?”
“Sure, Jake, everything’s fine.”
“You don’t seem like yourself.”
“No, this is me. I’m a one armed vet, and we have 400
“No, this is me. I’m a one armed vet, and we have 400
JM345-12,” Tess said, swinging her casted left hand his
way. “Brucellosis swab.”
He handed her the culture swab, disappointed.“Is this
the way it is between us now?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said, concentrating
on her work. “We’ve got to get this job done before dark,
right?”
“C’mon, Tess,” he cajoled, holding the container for her
to drop the swab into. He wrote JM345-12 with a Sharpie,
put it in a big Ziploc bag with the others, and waited for
Larry to lead the cow away. “This isn’t how we are,” he
whispered.
Standing on her stool, Tess tossed her head and turned
to face him, not hiding her impatience. “Honestly, Jake, I’m
still trying to figure out how we are. Things were great in
the beginning, and I thought we were close. But you didn’t
call while I was in Philadelphia, and every time I’ve tried to
talk about us since then, you’ve wanted to play it cool,” she
said, clearly annoyed. “So that’s how I’m playing it. This is
cool.”
She motioned to Larry to bring the next cow, but Jake
held his hand up, holding Larry off. Larry paused, shifting
uncomfortably, and looked away. Under his breath, Jake
said, “Tess, I hope you don’t feel that I’ve taken you for
granted. You’re completely incredible. I need you to know
that.”
“I’m completely incredible, so we get to culture 400 of
your favorite cows together?” Her indignation caught him
off guard. She laughed, “What about this shows me I’m
‘completely incredible’ Jake? You just want your heifers
bred.”
She tore open a swab packet with vigor, motioning for
Larry to bring the next cow. Jake held his hand up, holding
him off. Larry continued to circle the cow in tight quarters,
pretending he couldn’t hear.
“Look, Tess, I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to see you in person
so we could talk. I was a wreck after the hearing, and I’ve
been so busy with Cassie since, this is first chance I’ve had.
I guess it wasn’t fair to spring this on you on a veterinary
call,” he admitted miserably. “But other times you’ve been
here I thought we had fun together.”
Tess gave him a baleful stare before turning to Larry.
“C’mon, Larry, we’re ready for you here.”
After she swabbed the cow, she handed the culture to
Jake wordlessly, took the inoculation syringe in her right
hand, and quickly thrust it into the bovine’s back.
“Okay, not only was it unfair, it was lame,” Jake
conceded, as Larry took the cow away. “You deserve a lot
better than this, but I didn’t think you’d mind. You’ve never
been a hard sell before.”
“Maybe that was a mistake on my part,” Tess said, her
voice clipped.
“It wasn’t a mistake, Crash. I like how easy-going and
approachable you are. I like your exuberance.” He put a
hand on her arm to slow her incessant motion. Even the
cast on her left arm hadn’t slowed her down.“Tess, c’mon.”
She flashed a look that pierced him, before swabbing
the next cow. “You don’t like my exuberance, Jake
McGreer. My exuberance scares you,” she hissed angrily.
Larry looked away uncomfortably, whistling softly in the
afternoon breeze. She stared at him resentfully, before
popping the needle into the bovine’s back. “It hasn’t been
right between us for weeks, Jake, not since the day I was
here to suture Alchemy. That was a long time ago.”
Their eyes locked for a long moment, and the heat of
her anger turned steely.
“
You’ve been certain all along you
know what’s best for me. You don’t seem at all concerned
about what I might want,” she said, her voice flat.
Man, she
can be tough
.
Once Larry led the cow away, he stepped in front of
Tess, still standing on the stool. Meeting her stormy blue
eyes, he took her hands in his, and said, “Tess, we’ve been
through this. You know how I feel about tying you down
here. I want this to be right, for all of us. You and I could be
close, probably very close, but how will Cassie take it, once
you’re gone?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Tess hissed, pulling her
hands away from him. “You don’t want to get it. This is a
lot more about Vicki, than it is about me.”
Larry held off, circling the next cow a few yards off, he
noticed gratefully, before giving Tess his full attention.
“What do you mean?”
“Vicki felt tied down, she made you miserable because
she hated it here, so with Tess, it’s like you’re looking for
an excuse, an out, to protect yourself. Whenever there is a
misunderstanding, your first instinct is to bolt, and you do,
every time. Instead of calling me when you got the
insurance letter, you made unfair assumptions, so sure that
I’d turned you in, that I’d betrayed you. Instead of
discussing it, you just waited, fuming when I showed up. It
was like you wanted there to be something wrong.”
“Tess, I. .” he began, but she continued.
“My dad has a heart attack, and you pretend not calling
me is about giving me space, not crowding me while I’m
home with my family. You sent flowers, but what was that
all about anyway? You can’t really think that was ‘making
it right for me’, can you?”
“Probably not,” he admitted, sheepish.
“The whole time I was in Philadelphia, you left me
hanging. You might not have been able to offer much help
from Green Junction, but at least if you’d called, I’d have
known you cared. You’ve treated me badly, Jake. We could
have stayed close, but you didn’t really want that. You
don’t really want to trust me, and you refuse to allow
yourself to believe in us.”
“Oh, Tess,” he said wearily. “I trust you, I do. I know
you have my back. Look what you did for us last week.
After the hearing, all you cared about was Cassie, even
with your arm. My life is crazy right now, and honestly, I
don’t want you stuck with any part of it. You’re incredibly
generous, but I can’t take advantage of that. I won’t. It just
doesn’t feel fair to involve you, or worse, trap you. It’s too
much to ask.”
“Too much to ask? Too much for me to ask, right? That
I could actually know what is going on with you, between
us? That you’d communicate with me, without holding
back? Because then what we’d have would be real, as in, a
real relationship, real intimacy, real trust. You’d like to
pretend you’re doing me a big favor, making it easy for me
to leave, but that’s just an excuse. Instead of taking a
chance and really letting us happen, you’re all about
protecting yourself,” she fumed.
“Tess, that’s not fair. You’re brilliant, with so much to
offer, and I know how life is. I don’t want you caught in a
situation that will wear you down, and I can’t bear to have
Cassie grow close to you, and lose you. She doesn’t need
that.”
“And neither do you,” she said, looking right at him,
her eyes blazing.
“That’s right, neither do I. I don’t want to be hurt again,
I don’t want to hinge my dreams on someone else, and be
disappointed.”
“And you’re certain I would disappoint you?”
“No, I’m not certain, but it feels risky. Look Tess, I’m
sorry. I hurt you, but I didn’t mean to. I understand how
confusing these past weeks must have been for you. I was
trying to protect you, and myself, I guess. I should have let
you in; I wanted to, I was just afraid of overwhelming you,
that it would be too much.”
“I assure you, it would not have been too much,” Tess
snapped. She crossed her arms, and her voice got quieter,
but the ice was still there. “Maybe you’ve done a good job
of protecting yourself from disappointment, Jake, but you
sure haven’t protected me.” Her bright eyes narrowed. “The
first time we got close, you said I was safe with you. It
hasn’t felt very safe to me at all, and that has everything to
do with the way you’ve behaved since then.”
Jake felt as if she’d knifed him. “Tess, I’m sorry. I’ve
been thinking of you for weeks, waiting to get a break from
all the stress. I just wanted to be able to enjoy each other,
without any pressure. That was what today was supposed to
be about, lame as it is.” He could still see the clouds of
hurt in her eyes, and he wanted to pull her close, hold her,
offer her comfort. He stepped closer, but Larry was still
circling the next cow.
Tess motioned him forward.“Well, Jake, you’re right, it
was lame. But I guess at least you tried, if only a very little
bit,” Tess told him resignedly, turning to swab JM294-12.

*****

 

Tess had almost finished inoculating the heifers when
Cassie rode up on Sparky.

“Hi, Daddy, Hi, Dr. Tess,” she said, in her cheery high
pitched voice. She was all bundled up. Little fringed chaps
covered her legs.

“Hey, little girl,” Jake said affectionately.

 

“Hi, Cassie,” Tess smiled.

 

“Daddy, Tilda said it was okay for me to ride out to see
you guys.”