snowy horizon scratched by black lines of bare cottonwood and willow. Maybe she has no right to try to be a doctor again. Really be a doctor—place her hands on someone else’s naked skin in search of a diagnosis, ask questions of strangers she wouldn’t expect them to answer to their spouse. Maybe she’d given up that privilege when she dropped out of her residency in premature labor, and then never gone back after Jory was born. She had trained for six and a half years preparing to take care of thousands of people—tens of thousands of people over the working years of her life. And then she had given it up in order to take care of one. She had walked away without even admitting it was a conscious decision, forever couching it as a temporary pause. If there was to be only this one child, who had seemed both sturdier and more vulnerable with each of the four failed pregnancies that followed, then Claire would not hire out any part of motherhood. She would prove to the universe the mistake it had made in giving her only one chance. At least that was the most palatable reason she could live with. And by the time she had gotten up the courage to go back, there was so much money she could walk away for good.
But now there was no money. Now she had no choice.
• 7 •
It takes only two more days to burn through the possibilities for an uncertified, inexperienced doctor to earn a paycheck anywhere near Hallum Valley. Claire makes appointments with three other private clinics near town, stopping last at Hale Richardson’s. He is sixty-four, “almost busy enough for a second doc,” until he sees Claire’s résumé. He is nice about it, as the others were. By the time he walks her to her car she feels worse for him than herself, he looks so uncomfortable. “Sure you want to stay in Hallum? Might have better luck in a bigger market.”
Claire folds her résumé into a square small enough to fit in her pocket. “My husband lost his job. It was quicker to sell our house in Seattle than the place out here.” Hale has the kind of face that makes her want to go on, to explain that it was a bit more than a lost job. It was an entire company. A fortune, in fact. Overnight. Their whole life gambled away on a single blip of disputed data. Instead she shakes Hale’s hand. “You’ve been very kind. Keep an ear out for me. If you hear of anyone desperate enough to hire me…” He laughs with her and Claire gets in her car, waving as she pulls onto the road before he can counter.
The weather is turning worse; a hostile tease of cold, as if nature were whispering its warning to take shelter. When they had come here for ski vacations such a turn was always exciting. She and Jory would stand by the enormous open log fires in the big resort lodge, and Jory would check at the front desk every hour to see if the passeswere closed, hoping for an excuse to miss a day of school. They would call room service for extra down comforters and hot chocolate, and snuggle in the deep window seats watching the black night turn white with whipping snow, a surge of alarmed exhilaration every time the lights flickered. When you can pay for so much protection from the elements, the threat becomes a game. She turns the heat up in the car and leaves a message for Jory, who, despite three calls in a row, will not pick up the phone.
There is only one more place within any reasonable radius, a free clinic advertised with one line in the classifieds, on a street somewhere south of the warehouses. She stops at the highway debating whether to even bother, then turns south, away from home. The grid of Hallum is so small the roads quickly untangle into long reaches down fence lines that bulge against the weight of snow. Deer stand with their backsides to the wind, nipping at the brush and young trees, which skew at angles through the drifts, having survived the deep cold only to be destroyed by the winter-starved herds. The road is clear for the most part,
But now there was no money. Now she had no choice.
• 7 •
It takes only two more days to burn through the possibilities for an uncertified, inexperienced doctor to earn a paycheck anywhere near Hallum Valley. Claire makes appointments with three other private clinics near town, stopping last at Hale Richardson’s. He is sixty-four, “almost busy enough for a second doc,” until he sees Claire’s résumé. He is nice about it, as the others were. By the time he walks her to her car she feels worse for him than herself, he looks so uncomfortable. “Sure you want to stay in Hallum? Might have better luck in a bigger market.”
Claire folds her résumé into a square small enough to fit in her pocket. “My husband lost his job. It was quicker to sell our house in Seattle than the place out here.” Hale has the kind of face that makes her want to go on, to explain that it was a bit more than a lost job. It was an entire company. A fortune, in fact. Overnight. Their whole life gambled away on a single blip of disputed data. Instead she shakes Hale’s hand. “You’ve been very kind. Keep an ear out for me. If you hear of anyone desperate enough to hire me…” He laughs with her and Claire gets in her car, waving as she pulls onto the road before he can counter.
The weather is turning worse; a hostile tease of cold, as if nature were whispering its warning to take shelter. When they had come here for ski vacations such a turn was always exciting. She and Jory would stand by the enormous open log fires in the big resort lodge, and Jory would check at the front desk every hour to see if the passeswere closed, hoping for an excuse to miss a day of school. They would call room service for extra down comforters and hot chocolate, and snuggle in the deep window seats watching the black night turn white with whipping snow, a surge of alarmed exhilaration every time the lights flickered. When you can pay for so much protection from the elements, the threat becomes a game. She turns the heat up in the car and leaves a message for Jory, who, despite three calls in a row, will not pick up the phone.
There is only one more place within any reasonable radius, a free clinic advertised with one line in the classifieds, on a street somewhere south of the warehouses. She stops at the highway debating whether to even bother, then turns south, away from home. The grid of Hallum is so small the roads quickly untangle into long reaches down fence lines that bulge against the weight of snow. Deer stand with their backsides to the wind, nipping at the brush and young trees, which skew at angles through the drifts, having survived the deep cold only to be destroyed by the winter-starved herds. The road is clear for the most part,
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