Under Alaskan Skies (23 page)

She nodded and thought for a long moment before she spoke. “What happened to you in Alaska?”

“Happened? I treated a very sick boy who I hope will get better.”

“I don’t mean that. You’ve been different ever since you came back.”

He knew perfectly well what she meant. He didn’t know whether to tell her the truth. He was afraid it would hurt too much. And what was the point? So what if he’d fallen in love with a woman, a way of life and a whole town? He was here now. He was back where he belonged. Yes, he’d changed, but it wouldn’t help Mira to know why or how.

“Different or difficult?” he asked. “I’m afraid I haven’t been easy to get along with lately. That’s why I appreciate all you’ve done in helping me get set up here. Look at his place.” He waved his arm at the new furniture. “It looks great, thanks to you. Now that I’m settled, I can concentrate on my work.”

“You have a rough schedule. Maybe when you get used to it…”

He heard the hope in her voice, and he knew it would be cruel to let her think he might change his mind when he knew he wouldn’t. “My schedule is going to be rough for the next three years,” he said. He knew it was true and he’d wondered more than once in the past few weeks since he’d started, whether it was the right place for him. It wasn’t the long hours or the time spent studying after he got back from the hospital, it was the future that worried him. But that was not for Mira to know. Or his parents. Especially not his parents.

This time she understood. There was a sadness and
a hurt in her eyes that made him wish he hadn’t had to do this. Or wish he’d done it before now. Because he’d really known it wasn’t going to work out before this. He just hadn’t faced the fact himself until now.

He stood. “Let me take you out to dinner,” he said. “I owe you for all the help you’ve given me.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” she said a little stiffly. “I loved decorating your place. I only hope…you’ll be happy here.”

He was sure she was going to say she hoped something else, but she didn’t. She politely declined his offer of dinner and left shortly afterward. He was grateful there were no tears, no recriminations, no accusations. He knew there wouldn’t be. She was too nice, too sweet, had too much self-control.

He wondered how long it would be before word got back to his parents and they called to tell him he must have lost his mind as well as the most desirable girl in the world. He heated a can of soup on the small stove in his efficiency kitchen and ate it at the kitchen table Mira had chosen. The soup filled his stomach, but in his heart he felt empty and cold. He’d hurt Mira, he’d left Carrie and he was on a professional course he wasn’t sure he ought to be on. He told himself this was a period of adjustment. He told himself he’d get used to the work. He’d take it one day at a time and see where it led. As if he didn’t know. The examples were all around him. The professors, the surgeons, his father. That was where it all led. To a satisfying, lucrative career.

He’d reached for the phone to call Carrie a dozen times in the week he’d been back. Then he’d put it down. He had legitimate questions to ask about
Donny, but he didn’t trust himself to stick to those questions. He was afraid he’d ask Carrie if she missed him as much as he missed her. If she ever thought about him. If she’d ever consider his plan for her to visit San Francisco. He wasn’t really afraid to ask the questions, he was afraid to hear the answers.

But he finally made the call on Monday after a grueling day of hospital rounds with the chief plastic surgeon, hours in the O.R. observing surgery, two classes and more hours of studying for an exam the next day.

She didn’t answer. He left a message on her answering machine asking her to call him back. Telling her he wanted an update on Donny. He lay on his couch in the living room too tired to sleep, wondering where she was. Imagining her flying over the great empty spaces of the fiftieth state by herself. Was she lonely? Was she afraid of the weather?

No, of course not. She was the bravest person he knew. As for lonely, he remembered how she’d bristled at the very thought. How she’d told him it was impossible to be lonely in the friendliest town in Alaska. Maybe that was true. But Matt knew it was possible to be lonely in the middle of a big city with friends and family and colleagues all around.

There was an ache in his heart, a longing for a deep, intimate connection that could only be satisfied by one special person and if that person wasn’t available, for whatever reason, say an accident of geography and family expectations or background, then the ache had to be ignored. There was no pain medicine that would even touch it.

It would go away by itself. It had to go away. He
refused to think he’d have to live his life like this, knowing there was someone out there who could make his life complete but unable to have her.

He had to forget about her. Put the memory of her in a vault, to be taken out and treasured, but only when he felt stronger than he did right now. Right now he had to forget about her. Right after he got the boy down here, got him seen by the right specialists, returned him to the village after he’d been treated with the best care Matt could get for him, and then Matt could really put this whole episode behind him.

That was why he’d called her. That was the only reason. To find out about Donny. That was why he checked his answering machine twenty times the next day. That was why he couldn’t concentrate on the study of the maxio-facial structure the way he should. That was why he was vague when he ran into his mother at the hospital on her way to a meeting of the women’s auxiliary. She put her hand on his arm and looked at him with a frown.

“Matt, you look terrible,” she exclaimed.

He gave her a faint smile. “That’s because I haven’t slept for twenty-four hours and I had a graham cracker at noon for lunch. I’m an intern, mother, that’s how it is. I’ve been on call for the past three days. I’m not complaining, I’m just telling you we don’t get much sleep.” He didn’t say that even when he got home and tried to sleep, he couldn’t. It was partly the noises of the city he was unused to—the ambulance sirens and the garbage trucks, but it was also the fact that his brain wouldn’t shut down. His thoughts kept going round and round in his head, always
seeking a solution to his problems, but never finding one.

“Don’t worry. It won’t last forever,” his mother said.

No, not forever, just for the next three years. “I know,” he said. “Everyone’s going through the same thing.” Everyone but the doctors who chose not to do a specialty. Who got their M.D. when he did and left to practice general medicine in the boondocks somewhere. As Matt’s father said, they traded instant gratification for the challenge of a specialty. Matt was on his way to a lecture so he didn’t have time to talk further. It was just as well. Everything he said would just upset her. His mother left, still frowning. Fortunately, there was no time to talk about Mira. He had no idea if his mother had heard he’d broken up with her.

The next weekend he had two days off that he was looking forward to more than he thought possible. He didn’t know which was more tired, his brain or his body. He decided to drive up to Yuma, the small town in the foothills of the High Sierras where he’d once done a rotation while still in medical school. He craved the sight of open space and the smell of fresh air. He planned to stop by the clinic where he’d worked, and he thought he might even run into a former patient or two. But mostly he just wanted to walk in the hills, savor the solitude and breathe in the silence.

He checked into a motel, and, after filling his lungs with fresh air that afternoon, he walked to the fifties-style diner on Main Street where he saw one of the doctors he’d worked with. Dr. Brown was delighted
to see him and invited Matt to join him and his wife at their table. After Matt brought him up-to-date on his activities, the doctor told him they’d raised enough money to build a new hospital, but needed another doctor to handle the additional load of patients.

“I’d love to practice up here,” Matt blurted, surprising himself because up to now he’d known exactly where and what he was going to practice. Plastic surgery in San Francisco.

“I’m afraid we can’t afford a plastic surgeon,” Dr. Brown said regretfully. “We need someone who can do the basics, set broken bones, treat the run-of-the-mill stuff. Not as exciting or as lucrative as plastic surgery.”

Matt nodded. It was true, even though excitement and money were not on the top of his priority list. But he didn’t say anything. How could he give up everything he’d been working for? Coming to work as a doctor in this small town would mean giving up everything he’d been destined for since he could remember. He told himself this idea was nothing but a whim, a dream, an excuse to get out of a difficult internship. He could hear his father now, telling him it was the lazy man’s way out.

He told Dr. Brown how much he’d enjoyed the small-town atmosphere there in Yuma and recounted his adventures in Alaska. Both the doctor and his wife were fascinated to hear about what he’d done and seen up there. Then Matt asked about various patients he’d treated while working with Dr. Brown and his staff. Since most of the patients were
local residents, it wasn’t hard for the medical staff to keep track of them.

The next day, Matt accepted Dr. Brown’s invitation to stop by to see the new hospital. It was set on a hill on the outskirts of town with a view of the surrounding countryside. Matt and the doctor stood outside on the front of the still-uncompleted building, facing the hills. Matt told the doctor his pride in the new facility was well justified.

“Sure we can’t tempt you to join us?” Dr. Brown said with a smile. “You’re just the kind of medic we’d like to have around. You not only have the skills we’re looking for, we liked the way you related to the patients. They remember you, still ask about you.”

Matt was unreasonably pleased to hear that. Of course his father’s patients still remembered him, too. Not so much for his personality or his bedside manner, but for the surgery he’d performed. Every time they looked in the mirror, for years afterward, they most likely sent silent thanks to the doctor who’d given them a new look, a new chance at a new life. That was the kind of thing Matt could look forward to.

He told the doctor he was flattered but he was committed to plastic surgery. What was the point of even considering such a radical change of direction? He was trying to imagine life in this town, when he ran into a former patient as he was walking down Main Street that afternoon, a woman whose breech baby he’d delivered one night when Matt had been on call at the old hospital, a small, older brick building right in the middle of town.

Matt had managed to turn the baby around and deliver the baby without having to resort to a C-section. He was happy to see her and her toddler as he strolled down Main Street. She was thrilled to see him and delighted to show off her curly-haired little girl.

After chatting with her for a few minutes and admiring her child, Matt walked on, noticing how different from the city the pace of life was here. It wasn’t quite like Mystic, Alaska, but there were some similarities. The friendliness of the natives, the interest they showed in each other and the proximity to nature. That morning he’d gone walking again in the hills. He passed a seasonal stream that would be rushing with water from the Sierras later in the season, and he wondered if there was good fishing there.

Before he left, he went up to the cemetery above the town. He walked from grave to grave, reading the inscriptions on the marble markers and noting the dates. He imagined his own tombstone and wondered what it would say. He wondered who would mourn him when he was gone. And he wondered how many years he had to do what he wanted to do. Not what he had to do, but what he should do.

He went back to the city with renewed energy, determined to face the future without complaining. But the city seemed more crowded and congested than ever. He was stuck in traffic on the bridge for over two hours on his way home to the city. When he got home, there was a message from Carrie. His heart pounded at the sound of her voice. He cursed himself for having been out of town and missing her call. She sounded very cool and calm and collected. She reported
on Donny’s condition and said she’d be gone for a few days but would try to call him later.

She said nothing at all about missing him. No, of course she wouldn’t. Obviously, she had jumped right back into her routine just as he’d done. Or as he’d tried to do. He called her back immediately but got her machine again. Damn, damn, damn. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to hear something in her voice that told him she missed him, that she cared about him and that she thought about him. Not as much as he thought about her, just one half of that would do. Even a quarter. But she wasn’t there.

When he hung up, his mother called to invite him to dinner.

“We want to have an evening of slides of Alaska, yours, ours and Mira’s and her parents.”

Did she know he’d broken up with Mira? Was this a good time to restore the relationship for what it had always been, one of friendship and nothing more?

“All right,” he said. He’d dropped off his slides to be developed but hadn’t picked them up. Why? He was busy, that was why. It was not that he was afraid to look at them, afraid the feelings he’d kept bottled up would explode. Afraid that looking at them would bring back too many memories, would call into question everything he was doing, everything he’d planned. No, it was just that he was too busy. Now that they wanted to see them, he’d have no excuse to postpone it. He’d have to put those few days in perspective, treat them as a memory and nothing more.

On Friday evening he picked up his slides and drove to his parents’ house. He didn’t look at the pictures beforehand, he hadn’t had time. He hadn’t
had time for anything. Not even to think about what he was doing. He felt like a robot, moving from place to place, memorizing, listening, reading, observing, standing on his feet for hours during surgery.

He greeted Mira with a kiss on the cheek. She smiled and murmured something. Her parents were polite but he sensed some stiffness in their part. Maybe he was just imagining it. While setting up the slide projector in the family room, his father asked him how it was going at the hospital. He said fine, but his mother gave him a worried look from across the room where she’d arranged a platter of appetizers. He must look as tired as he felt.