had been several weeks since he’d seen eight-year-old Timmy for that cough of his. The boy’s skin was clammy now, but Alex doubted it was from fever. It was pain making him sweat.
“We found him up on Chilkoot Pass. Fool kid shouldn’t have been up there alone. He said some tourists gave him a ride out of town to the base. They should be shot for leaving a kid like that there by himself. Don’t know what he was doing. He must have slipped on some rocks or something. We wouldn’t have found him if we hadn’t been out looking for that Lawson fellow—the one who’s been missing.”
Alex nodded. He’d been on the search team that had come upon Tucker Lawson’s crashed plane. They’d found some blood and his business card with a stake driven through it, but there was no one around. Searchers, under the direction of the sheriff, had been looking for the man, or his remains, since then. Surely the boy hadn’t been up there looking for Lawson, though. Timmy groaned.
“Easy now,” Alex said as the boy started to move. “Let me check you out first.”
“He’s got a lump on his head,” one of the men said.
“I see that,” Alex said as he ran his fingers over the rest of the boy’s scalp, then he turned to Maryann. “Flash—”
“Here.”
“Thanks.” She’d given him the flashlight before he’d even gotten the word out. Things like this were why he’d promised to write her a letter of recommendation and leave it for the next pediatrician that came here. She was an excellent nurse. She didn’t insist on being personal with him, either. His last nurse had wanted him to—well, he wasn’t sure what she had wanted. She’d resigned when he refused to have dinner with her one night after work.
Timmy opened one eye and stared.
“Don’t worry about focusing,” the doctor murmured to the boy before remembering to use simpler words. “Don’t worry about what you see. It might be fuzzy.”
“I see an angel choir,” Timmy said in quiet awe.
Alex choked back his chuckle as he looked over his shoulder. Children were so honest about their feelings. He saw that Maryann was doing the impossible and getting the fancy women to exit the room. All those women with their dyed blonde hair and sparkling gold might look like a band of angels because of the sun shining on their jewelry as they tiptoed past the gurney, especially when Maryann wore her white uniform to usher them out. No wonder Timmy saw angels.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s Nurse Jenner and some friends of hers.”
“They’re not my friends,” Maryann protested from the door as the men who’d carried Timmy down the mountain followed the last of the fancy women out of the clinic. Alex realized with a jolt that he was teasing Maryann. He’d never done that with any of his other nurses. He believed in professionalism in the clinic. But he liked the way her cheeks pinked up and her brown eyes sparked with indignation. She had dark, fringed bangs, and her hair shone as it floated around her head in the breeze from the open door.
“Is she an angel?” the boy asked.
“Some days,” Alex said. Then he forgot himself enough to grin at Maryann. He decided it would be okay to relax with her; he’d be gone before long, so what could it hurt?
Maryann tried to give him a stern look, but the blush on her face spoiled the effect. She shut the open door, but her hair still floated around her face.
“Does that mean I’m dead?” Timmy asked with some anticipation.
Alex looked down at the boy and smiled. “Not today you’re not.”
“Oh,” Timmy said, and with that, he closed his eyes.
Alex looked up at Maryann again, but she was one step ahead of him. She held out an ice pack she’d brought from the back room along with the gurney. He pressed that against Timmy’s face. “The cold will wake him up.”
“I’ll call his parents,” Maryann said.
“No.” Timmy opened his eyes in alarm. “You can’t call them.”
“You know we have to,” Alex said gently as he finished running his hands over the boy’s legs. “You took quite a fall. Does your leg hurt?”
Timmy winced and nodded. “They’ll kill me for sure.”
“I’ll tell them you’re a brave soldier,” Maryann said as she walked over to the phone.
Alex imagined she would say those very words to them, too. No one could accuse her of not caring about everyone who stumbled across her path. She was generous to a fault and that was the only reason he could think of for her to have sat in the diner last night talking with her cousin about matching him up with someone. Not that either one of the women had shown an over-abundance of caring when Maryann had called him The Ice Man. Wait until that nickname made the rounds of Treasure Creek. He wasn’t the kind of person who talked about himself to everyone he met, but he’d helped enough children in this town to have some friends among the parents. He’d been warned about last night’s conversation by two sources already.
He watched Maryann as she held the phone to her ear and talked to Timmy’s parents. He couldn’t hear the words she was saying, but he could hear the soft tones of her voice.
He supposed the matchmaking had been inevitable. Maryann was the kind of woman who’d bring home stray cats. He knew that when he hired her, but he’d had no other choice. Women like her just couldn’t accept that some men—like some animals—were better off alone. She must have sensed the sadness in him and decided marriage was the solution.
He’d meant to tell her today that he was fine with the single life, but he hadn’t quite figured out the right words. Usually, he’d just blurt it out. He didn’t know why he was hesitating. As near as he could figure, he didn’t want to make her feel bad for caring that he was alone. Also, it bothered him that she thought of him as an ice man, and part of him wanted to prove her wrong.
He must be going soft from living in Treasure Creek. People around here wanted to be connected. They weren’t content with just loving their neighbor, they wanted to know where the guy was going for Sunday dinner, and if he needed help defrosting anything. Maybe it was some primitive emotional throwback to the freezing winters of old when people relied on their tribes for a safe existence. People needed other people then. And at least in this small town, that feeling seemed to still hold true.
He hadn’t thought much about that until one day when people came from miles around for a simple funeral. Even if people didn’t know the old man who’d died, they knew someone who knew someone who knew him. So they mourned the loss of those connections. The tribe had been lessened.
And then every year there was a Christmas pageant at the church that attracted the whole community. Even though he hadn’t been going to church, he’d always been drawn to the pageant.
He wasn’t used to a place like this. He envied the people here their connections, but he didn’t belong.
He should head south for Los Angeles as soon as he could. He’d been saving his money for years so he could open a clinic there. No one would be inviting him to any Christmas pageant down in L.A.
Not that he had time to think about that now, when it looked like Timmy had a fractured bone in his leg as well as the bump on his head. What had the boy been doing out on the pass, anyway?
Maryann hung up the phone and turned back to them. Alex could see why Timmy had been confused enough to think she was some celestial being. Her pink cheeks made her glow. She looked sweet. He had a hard time believing she had talked so openly about his personal life in front of everyone. If she knew anything about the tour guides of Treasure Creek, she’d know they would be making jokes at his expense from now until he left here. In fact, they’d be making jokes about it long after he was gone.
But seeing her in front of him, he couldn’t convince himself she’d meant any harm. Maybe the gossips had it