“Are you sure?”

“Three months,” she said.

“Oh, my God! Mel!”

“I know. Kind of blew my mind, too.”

“Three months? Let’s see…”

“Don’t bother trying to do the math. I haven’t had a period since he touched me for the first time. I guess he’s potent enough for both of us. At first, I thought it so impossible, an absurd fantasy. I figured I was late because of stress, change, how weird my life is. But it’s real. I had an ultrasound.”

“Mel! How is this possible?”

“Don’t ask me—stranger things have happened. But not around here, apparently. I’m surrounded by women who were pretty sure they couldn’t get pregnant and voila!

There’s a rumor about the water…I’m thinking of calling my L.A. infertility specialist to tell him about this place.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to marry Jack.”

“Mel—do you love him?” Joey asked, her voice subdued. Cautious. Mel drew in a breath, trying to calm her voice, which she knew would be tremulous and emotional. “I do,” she said. “Joey, I love him so much, I almost ache with it. I never thought I could love this much. I was in denial about that for a while, too.”

“Mel,” Joey said, then began to cry. “Oh, my sweet baby.”

“It made me feel guilty, like I was doing something wrong—I was so committed to the idea that I’d lost my one true love and would never feel anything even close to that again in my life. I never considered the possibility that I might find something even more powerful. It seemed, briefly, like a betrayal. Jack even caught me crying to Mark’s picture that I was sorry, that I didn’t expect it to happen, and promising never to forget him. God. It was an awful moment.”

“Baby girl, you haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve been through such a lot.”

“Well, in my sane state, I know that. Jack knew about my problems, and he just hung in there, just kept loving me and loving me, putting all my needs ahead of his own, promising me I’d be safe with him, that I could trust him. Oh, God,” she said, tears coming in spite of the fact that she was so, so happy. “God, he’s wonderful. Joey,” she said in a near whisper, “he wants the baby as much as I do.”

“This is just unbelievable. When are you getting married? Because we’re going to be there.”

“We haven’t had a chance to even talk about it—I just broke it to him yesterday and he asked me last night. I’ll let you know when I know.”

“But does this mean you’re staying there?”

Mel laughed. “You were right, you know—coming here was completely crazy. It was irrational. To think I’d choose to go to a town where there’s no mall, much less a day spa, and one restaurant that doesn’t have a menu? Please. No medical technology, ambulance service or local police—how is it I thought that would be easier, less stressful? I almost slid off the mountain on my way into town!”

“Ah…Mel…”

“We don’t even have cable, no cell phone signal most of the time. And there’s not a single person here who can admire my Cole Haan boots which, by the way, are starting to look like crap from traipsing around forests and farms. Did you know that any critical illness or injury has to be airlifted out of here? A person would be crazy to find this relaxing. Renewing.” She laughed. “The state I was in, when I was leaving L.A., I thought I absolutely had to escape all the challenges. It never occurred to me that challenge would be good for me. A completely new challenge.”

“Mel…”

“When I told Jack I was pregnant, after promising him I had the birth control taken care of, he should have said, ‘I’m outta here, babe.’ But you know what he said? He said, ‘I have to have you and the baby in my life, and if you can’t stay here, I’ll go anywhere.’” She sniffed a little and a tear rolled down her cheek. “When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is check to see if there are deer in the yard. Then I wonder what Preacher’s in the mood to fix for dinner. Jack’s usually already gone back to town—he likes splitting logs in the early morning—half the town wakes up to the sound of his ax striking wood. I see him five or ten times through the day and he always looks at me like we’ve been apart for a year. If I have a patient in labor, he stays up all night, just in case I need something. And when there are no patients at night, when he holds me before I fall asleep, bad TV reception is the last thing on my mind.

“Am I staying here? I came here because I believed I’d lost everything that mattered, and ended up finding everything I’ve ever wanted in the world. Yeah, Joey. I’m staying. Jack’s here. Besides, I belong here now. I belong to them. They belong to me.”

Right after a light breakfast, she headed for Doc’s. She supposed it was in order to tell him right away, but when she walked into the house, she was greeted by quiet. Good, she thought. No patients yet. She went to Doc’s office and tapped lightly on the door, then pushed it open. He was sitting in the chair at his desk, leaning back, his eyes closed. Hmm. Doesn’t sleep in daylight, huh? She stood over him. It was good to see Doc docile for once.

Mel was about to leave and wait for a better time, but something made her take a closer look at Doc. His eyes were pinched closed, his face in a grimace and his coloring wasn’t right. He was gray. She reached down and squeezed his wrist with the forefingers of one hand. His pulse was racing. Mel felt Doc’s brow and found his skin clammy. His eyes opened into slits. “What is it?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he said. “Heartburn.”

Heartburn does not make your pulse race and your skin clammy, she thought. She ran for the stethoscope and blood pressure cuff in the exam room, returning to him. “You going to tell me what it is—or make me guess?”

“I told you…Nothing. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

She took his blood pressure, though she had to struggle with him for cooperation.

“Did you have breakfast?” she asked him.

“A while ago.”

“What did you have? Bacon and eggs? Sausage?”

“It wasn’t that great. Preacher’s a little off on the cooking…”

His blood pressure was elevated. “Any chest pains?” she asked.

“No.”

She palpated his abdomen, although excess lipid tissue on his pot belly made it impossible to feel his internal organs while he was sitting upright. And he slapped at her hand, trying to push her away. But as she palpated, he grunted in pain. “How many of them have you had?” she asked him.

“How many what?”

“Attacks. Like this.”

“One or two,” he said.

“Don’t lie to the nice little nurse,” she chastised. “How long has this been going on?”

She pulled the lids back on his eyes and they had begun to yellow. He was jaundicing.

“You waiting for your liver to blow?”

“It’ll pass.”

He was having a major league gallbladder attack, and she wasn’t sure that was all. She didn’t even think about it—she picked up the phone and called the bar. “Jack,” she said, “come over, please. I have to get Doc to the hospital.” And she hung up.

“No,” Doc said.

“Yes,” she said. “If you argue with me now, I’ll get Jack and Preacher to put you in a fireman’s carry and dump you in the Hummer. That should make your belly feel good.” She looked at his face. “How’s your back?”

“Terrible. This one is kind of bad.”

“You’re getting jaundiced, Doc,” she said. “We can’t wait. I suspect you’re in a biliary crisis. I’m going to start an IV and I don’t want any lip.”

Before she could get the needle in, both Jack and Preacher arrived. “We’ll get him in the car and I’ll drive you,” Jack said. “What’s the matter with him?”

“I think it’s a gallbladder attack, but he’s not talking. It’s serious. His blood pressure is up and he’s in terrible pain.”

“Waste of time,” Doc said. “It’ll pass.”

“Please be still,” she implored. “I don’t want to have to ask these big boys to hold you down.”

Once the IV was in, she made a mad dash to the drug cabinet while Jack and Preacher each got on either side of him, walking him slowly out the door, Jack holding the Ringer’s over his head. When they got to the Hummer she joined them. Doc said,

“I’m not lying down.”

“I think you should—”

“I can’t,” he said. “Bad enough sitting up.”

“All right then, we’ll take out the gurney and put up the backseat. I’ll pull the IV bag hook forward and sit beside you. Have you taken anything for the pain yet?”

“I was just starting to have very kind thoughts toward morphine,” he said. Jack adjusted the backseat, leaving the gurney on Doc’s porch. Doc climbed clumsily into the backseat. “We just don’t have good enough drugs,” he muttered.

“Can you make it to the hospital without drugs? Give the doctor a clean slate?”

“Arrrggghhh,” he grumbled.

“If you insist, I’ll give you something—but it would be better to let the E.R. decide what’s best.” She took a breath. “I grabbed some morphine.”

He peered at her through slits. “Hit me,” he said. “It’s just god-awful.”

She sighed and drew up a syringe from the vial in her bag, putting it right into the IV. It took only moments for him to say, “Ahhh…”

“Have you seen anyone about this?” she asked him.

“I’m a doctor, young woman. I can take care of myself.”

“Oh, brother,” she said.

“There’s a clinic in Garberville,” Jack said as he started the car. “It’s closer than Valley Hospital.”

“We’re going to need a surgeon,” Mel informed him.

“I’m not going to need surgery,” the old boy argued.

“You a betting man?” was all she said.

Doc Mullins rested a bit easier with the narcotic in him, which was good since it was over an hour, even with Jack’s fast and skillful driving. It wasn’t the distance so much as the roads—just getting to the county road that connected with the highway twisted and turned and was slow going. Mel watched out the window, remembering that first night she came here, terrified of these sharp twists and turns, the sheer drops, steep climbs. Now, with Jack managing the Hummer, she was comfortable. Before long they were out of the hills and speeding through the valley. With her attention focused on Doc, she couldn’t fully appreciate the landscape. It did occur to her, however, that every time she traveled anywhere around this county, she was amazed by the beauty as if seeing it for the first time.

She had a fleeting thought that if anything bad happened to Doc, it would be down to only her. How was she going to have a baby and take care of a town?

She thought about Joey’s question—are you staying there? It made her smile. It would hardly seem a punishment to live out her life in this glorious place. This was only Mel’s second visit to the emergency room—the first was with Connie. She had taken Jeremy and Anne to labor and delivery the night the baby came, so she didn’t really know the staff in E.R. They all knew Doc, however. He’d been putting in regular appearances there for upwards of forty years. And they greeted Mel very enthusiastically, as if she were an old friend.