[English] AFTER THE RAIN (Sau Cơn Mưa)

After the Rain
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“Jesus Christ, Red, why did you let these kids go alone?” she yelled as she pulled me down from Dancer’s back. I collapsed into her and spoke with the very little breath I had left.

“Jake is . . . hurt . . . bad. Three hours . . . east of the pasture. He needs . . . help,” I managed to let out. That was my last memory before waking up in a hospital room.

I woke to the sound of beeping from a monitor above me. I was alive. It wasn’t a dream. I turned my aching body and pressed a button to call a nurse. After what felt like an hour, a nurse finally came in and shut off the monitor alarm.

“You were just tangled up, sweetie. How are you feeling?”

“Where is my husband? Where are Redman and Bea and Dale and Trish?” The nurse smiled, looking pleased at my alertness.

Before she could answer, I heard Trish’s thick Texas accent echoing from the hall. “Oh, she’s awake?” She came running in, followed by Dale and Bea.

Trish wore her hair big, blond, and curly as she had in her rodeo-queen days. “Oh, Avelina, you’re awake, it’s so good to see those big brown eyes staring back at me.” Her hair bounced on the tops of her shoulders.

There was pity on all three of their faces. My eyes welled up. “Jake?” was all I could squeak out.

Dale’s entire face looked forlorn, and it looked like he had aged since I had last seen him. Dale was more handsome than most men you might come across in Montana. He had an air of sophistication about him. His dark brown hair was straight and always neatly combed, matching the eyebrows that framed his light green eyes. But that day there was no glimmer in his expression like there usually was.

Bea stepped up with an obligatory smile. “Jake is down the hall. Redman is with him.”

“That’s not what I want to know, Bea.” My voice was high, loud, and demanding.

“Don’t sass me, girl,” she shot back.

I started crying and then sobbing. “What is it, Dale? You’ll tell me, won’t you?”

He was at a loss for words. I ripped my I.V. out. Holding my hospital gown closed in the back, I scurried toward the door. Trish stopped me from heading out into the hallway. She had a wrinkled upper lip that drew the pink color from her lipstick into the tiny lines above her mouth, which were only visible when you were standing about five inches from her face. The result of so many years of smoking, I assumed.

She frowned. “Thank Jesus, Jake is alive, honey. He was awake earlier today, talking to all of us.”

“Then why are you frowning?”

She huffed and swallowed audibly, trying to fight back tears. With her hands gripping the outsides of my shoulders, she looked me right in the eyes and said, “He broke his neck, baby. He’ll never walk again.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could disappear. I knew Jake would not be the kind of man to take that news easily. Terrified to see him, I shuffled into the hallway and followed Trish to his room. His eyes were open and he was staring at the ceiling from his hospital bed when I walked in.

Redman rushed past me on his way toward the door. “Glad to see you up and about. He’s all yours.”

I grabbed Redman’s arm and pulled him around. “Why was Dancer out there?” I said, staring intensely into his cloudy blue eyes.

He squinted and then shook his head. “I don’t know. We were packing the horses to head out and noticed that her stall was open and she was gone. A few minutes later she was coming toward the house with you draped over her. All that matters is that you’re both here with us.” He bent, kissed my cheek, and left the room.

I moved to Jake’s bedside and leaned over. He wouldn’t make eye contact with me.

“Hi,” I whispered. He didn’t respond. He continued staring past me toward the ceiling. His eyes looked hollow. “Jake?” I said softly.

I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed his fear and spoke. “You all should have left me out there.”

“Oh Jake, I’m so sorry.” I fell forward onto his chest, overcome with guilt. He was paralyzed because of me.

I knew he could move his hands and arms but he didn’t even try to cradle me. He just let me slide off of him. I collapsed onto the floor in sobs.

Jake spent a month in the hospital and then a month in a recovery center. For each milestone he achieved—regaining full use of his hands and arms, using a wheelchair—I danced around and celebrated while he sat there and glared at me. One day, when we were with his physical therapist, I asked her if Jake could try to work up to using his legs again.

Jake snapped before the therapist could answer. “The doctors said it would be impossible. Are you deaf? Did you not ****ing hear that?” Before the accident he never spoke a hurtful word to me.

“I’m sorry, babe,” I mumbled.

He didn’t respond. Instead he wheeled himself down the hall toward the exit.

At our cabin, Dale and Redman built a ramp and made other accommodations for the wheelchair. Life didn’t get any easier once Jake was home. He didn’t want me to bathe him or care for his needs in any way that would embarrass him. Instead, he would call Bea, and even then it was only to do the bare minimum. It made me feel useless and drove a big wedge between me and Jake. By winter his hair and beard had grown long and his eyes had become more expressionless and distant. The electrical current that animated his eyes had disappeared, and they dulled in color to a doleful, hazy blue. He spoke few words to me or anyone else. He would sit in his chair all day long in the front room and stare out the window. People on the ranch would walk past and wave to him but he would never wave back. There was a small TV in the corner that he kept on all day, usually on a news or sports channel. I think it was to drown out his own thoughts.

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Besides Jake’s looks, his personality changed a lot in the months following his accident. He didn’t talk to me about how he felt. He wouldn’t kiss me; he would barely even look at me. Dale tried over and over to help him. He even encouraged Jake to begin studying so he could go back to school and become a veterinarian, or at least an assistant. Dale offered to let Jake work with him but Jake refused. He oftentimes got very agitated at anyone who made suggestions like that.

I stopped trying to convince Jake that he could have a normal life. He would sometimes call me stupid and then he would beat himself up afterward for treating me that way. The only thing I could do was try my best to make Jake comfortable. I continued working on the ranch so that we would have money. I ordered everything that a handicapped person could possibly need and had it all delivered right to our doorstep.

The doctors convinced me that Jake didn’t need pain medicine anymore but he would get so aggravated if I tried to lower his doses. He would tell me that I was lucky I didn’t know what it felt like to be crushed by a horse. He was wrong, though; the pain and guilt I felt was like a stampede of twenty wild horses trampling my heart every day.

On the coldest night that winter after the accident, Jake found a bottle of whiskey under the sink. I sat on our couch and watched him drink glass after glass in front of the fire. Before I went to bed, I went to him. I brushed a hand down his arm from behind and bent to kiss the side of his face.

He grabbed my hand, stopping me, and squeezed it so hard I had to hold my breath to prevent a scream from escaping my lips. Pulling me down toward his face, he seethed through gritted teeth: “Don’t. Touch. Me.”

He let go and I grabbed the bottle. “No more of this, Jake.”

He reached his long arm up, took a hold of my hair and neck from behind, and slammed my head down on the TV tray over his chair. I tried to pull away but he slammed me down over and over again. Scratching at his arms and trying desperately to get away, I could feel my hair being yanked out with every effort. I was crying and screaming and shocked by his strength. When I tasted blood in my mouth, I pleaded for mercy.

“Please, baby, stop,” I cried.

He held me down over his chair and whispered, “I’m taking you with me.” He smelled of whiskey and thick B.O. mixed with the muskiness of his greasy hair.

I fell to my knees as he gripped my neck tighter. “Please! Let go, you’re hurting me!”

“You want to come with me, don’t you?” he said, matter-of-factly.

Seconds later, I felt Redman forcing me out of Jake’s grasp. He didn’t say two words to Jake as he scooped me up and carried me out.

Walking toward the big house with me in his arms, Redman said, “You’ll be okay.” His voice was low and soothing.

He took me into the guest room and laid me on the bed. Bea came in with a bowl of warm water and a washcloth to clean my face. I reached up and felt my swollen cheeks and the blood mixed with tears.

Bea’s expression was stoic as she dabbed at the cuts over my eyes. “You don’t deserve this,” she said.

“Yes I do.” I believed it like it was the ultimate truth, just like I believed that the sun would rise in the morning and fall in the evening.

She started singing “Danny Boy” quietly while she continued cleaning my face. I fell asleep wondering when Jake would come back to me. If he would ever come back to me.

One eye was swollen shut in the morning. I shuffled back to our cabin with my head down and found Jake staring out the front window with his usual blank expression. He turned his chair and looked up at me, studying my face for an entire minute. It was the first time since his injury that I saw any sign of compassion or of the man I knew before. He was guilt-stricken by what he had done to me. He scowled and shook his head but didn’t say anything. He just turned and went back to looking out the window.

After cleaning the cabin, I put on a thick jacket, baseball cap, and sunglasses and headed for the door. “I’m going to get milk and bread and cheese for sandwiches. Is there anything else you want?”

He didn’t answer me, which wasn’t unusual. At the bottom of the ramp, I looked up to the window and saw that he was watching me.

I love you, I mouthed to him.

I love you, he mouthed back.

I let a smile touch my lips before turning toward my truck. When I reached for the handle, I heard the explosive, ringing sound of a gunshot. I whipped back toward our cabin and saw, through the window, Jake slumped over in his chair.

It was a cold January morning when my husband, Jake McCrea, put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger, taking his own life just seconds after he had told me he loved me.

I couldn’t fix him. There were no healing powers in my hands.

He hadn’t physically taken me with him, as he had threatened to, but he took what was left of my heart, ending any semblance of life inside of me. At nineteen, I became cold and hard and looked forward to the end of my bleak existence.

CHAPTER 4

Binds Us

Nathanial

SPRING 2010

At twenty-nine I was the youngest attending physician at the UCLA medical center, which earned me the annoying nickname of Doogie. I had skipped a couple of years of the bull**** in high school that the rest of my classmates got stress-acne over. I could do calculus in my sleep so it was no surprise that my general surgery and cardiac residency also flew by at a faster than normal pace.

Every other doctor from my residency found a way to screw up and extend the already painfully long road to becoming an attending. Frankie blew his chances by ****ing everybody in the program. Then there was Lucy Peters, who started dating a senior resident and then botched an appendectomy after he broke up with her. But the biggest loser of all the degenerates was Chan Li, who came to work hungover one day and left a thirteen-inch metal retractor inside the abdomen of the patient he had performed a textbook surgery on. Idiot.

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My dad started to pull away from me as I climbed the ranks at the hospital. He was still the chief but I think he was trying to avoid rumors of nepotism that plagued me, especially after I began acing every surgery. I went to work and occasionally went back to the apartment I lived in with my cat, Gogo. My mom and dad expressed concern that I was making work my entire life. I thought: So what? How else can you be the best?

I met Lizzy Reid one Monday as I stood over her hospital bed and examined her chart. The fifteen-year-old was asleep when I walked in but began to awaken while I read through her medical history. She looked up at me through piercing green eyes and smiled. Her skin was tan and lush. It was hard to believe she had a faulty heart.

“Hi, Doc,” she said shyly, reaching her hand out to me.

“Elizabeth, I’m Doctor Meyers. It’s nice to meet you.” I shook her hand and went back to reading her chart.

“You can call me Lizzy.” I didn’t respond. “You seem kind of young for a surgeon.”

“I assure you I’m old enough.”

“Oh.” She shrugged and looked away. She mumbled something to herself.

“What’s that?” I asked.

She smiled coyly. “Oh, I was just thinking out loud. Just wondering something. I’m just super curious about stuff.”

“What do you want to know?”

Her lips flattened and her tone went harsh. “I wonder if they teach bedside manners in medical school anymore?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. I placed her chart into the slot at the front of her bed, slipped my pen into the pocket of my white lab coat, and crossed my arms over my chest.

Smiling I said, “Technically it’s ‘manner.’ ”

“Same difference,” she shot back.

“Maybe you’re right.” I put my stethoscope in my ears and warmed up the diaphragm on my arm, rubbing it back and forth. “Can I have a listen to your heart?”

“Thank you for asking, Doc. Your manners are getting better. And thanks for warming that up,” she said as she pulled the top of her gown down just enough for me to slip the chest piece in. I heard the atrial bigeminy right away but I expected it from her ECG results. Her heart sounded like a musical beat. Instead of boom-boom . . . boom-boom . . . boom-boom, it sounded like boomboom-boom . . . boomboom-boom. I moved the stethoscope and heard a deep heart murmur caused by an interatrial septal defect.

“Well?” she asked.

Her parents entered the room with concerned faces.

“Doctor Meyers,” the mother said. “We heard you’re the best around.” She reached out to shake my hand.

Lizzy spoke up and jutted her thumb toward me. “You mean this young guy is the best?”

“Elizabeth,” her mother scolded then turned back to me. “Sorry about that.” She shrugged. “Typical teenager. I’m Meg and this is Steve.”

I shook their hands, picked up the chart, and began writing down notes. Without looking up I said, “Elizabeth’s con***ion is very common. She has an irregular heartbeat but it shouldn’t have any long-term effect on her health. What we’ll need to address, and the reason she was feeling light-headed during exercise, has to do with a minor defect in her heart. We’ll use a catheter to correct it.”

“Will you have to open her up?” Steve asked.

“No. We’ll go in through her upper leg into the femoral artery, which leads to the heart. At first the pressure of the heart will hold the device in place. Eventually new tissue will grow over the septum, which will correct the oxygen levels in her blood. I’m confident she’ll be able to go back to her usual activities in a month or two.”

“That’s it. She’ll be fine after that?”

“That’s the hope, Meg.” I grinned confidently but I could tell my attempt at charming Lizzie’s mom was ineffective.

“Okay smart guy, how many times have you done this?” Meg asked.

“Four times, and I’ve assisted and observed a similar procedure on a patient of the same age. It’s textbook, and there’s little risk of complication. But, keep in mind, that doesn’t mean there’s no risk.” I went to Lizzy’s bedside and observed her vitals. “We can schedule the procedure for this afternoon.”

“I trust you, Doc,” she said, “even though I still think you look too young.”

I finally smiled at her. “You’re going to be fine . . . better than before.”

Her eyes sparkled as she smiled back. I wondered briefly what she would look like in ten years. A vision flashed through my mind of her in a wedding dress and then another of her holding an infant. Struck by my uncharacteristically sentimental reaction, I shook my head in an attempt to eliminate the thought.

“What?” Lizzy said.

“Nothing.” I offered a short nod to Lizzy’s parents, left the room, and gave my instructions to arrange the surgery.

Later that day in the operating room, as my surgical team and I watched the X-ray screen and fed the line up from Lizzy’s leg, her pressure started to drop. A few moments passed as I calmly ordered the administration of medicines and gave instructions to the other surgeons and nurses, but her blood pressure continued to plummet. The anesthesiologist looked at me intently, waiting for me to make a decision.

There is something to be said about knowledge and experience in the medical field. You can know every fact and read every case study, but when you have less than ten seconds to make a decision your experience is mainly what is tested. Your ability to be confident in your answers comes from knowing the positive outcomes in study and the negative outcomes from your own goddam mistakes.

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“We have to open her up,” I said.

Every nurse and doctor went into motion the moment the words came out of my mouth. Within seconds trays were shoved in front of me with surgical instruments of every kind. The smell of iodine was heavy in the room, even through my mask. The sound of the saw piercing Lizzy’s sternum was like nails on a chalkboard. I had never had an emotional reaction to the gruesomeness of surgery until that moment. Everything about what I was doing seemed wrong. Cranking the spreaders to pull her bone and tissue apart took more effort than usual, and I had to cauterize several leaking ends from the breastbones. I gagged behind my mask at the smell of the vaporized blood and bone. Lizzy’s beautiful chest was peeled apart and spread open, revealing a nightmare about to unfold.

To my absolute shock and horror, her entire chest cavity was full of blood. Like in a dream, my hands and arms moved slower than my brain. “Suction!” I kept yelling, but I couldn’t find the source of the bleeding. Seconds felt like days. “****! Suction, goddammit!”

“She’s crashing,” someone said calmly.

“I’m trying,” I said through gritted teeth. I was doing everything right. I couldn’t understand what was happening and why it was happening so fast. I began running through long procedural lists in my head. Had I checked every possible source, I wondered? I continued barking orders at the team.

Twenty minutes later, a fellow surgeon told me it was over. I called the time of death with Lizzy’s heart still warm in my hands.

The first face I saw when I left the operating room was my father’s. He put his hands on his hips, which forced his overweight Hawaiian-print-clad belly to protrude from his lab coat. He pointed to the waiting room at the end of the hall and said, “Go tell the mother and then meet me in my office.”

Was he mad? I had just lost my first patient, a beautiful fifteen-year-old girl who’d had the rest of her life ahead of her.

I swallowed back anger. “You’re not going to apologize to me?”

“Apologize for what?”

“This is ****ing tragic,” I said in a frantic voice.

“Keep your voice down,” he barked back at me, but it was too late. I had already gotten the attention of Lizzy’s mother, who was watching me through a wall of glass from the waiting room. My father leaned over and in a quiet and calm voice said, “It wasn’t a tragedy, it was a mistake—that you made. I read the chart. You misdiagnosed her.”

Shocked, I stared blankly at the wall behind him. I couldn’t blink my eyes. They were dried out and stuck open, and my heart was beating out of my chest. Thoughts began swirling frantically in my head. I was a terrible surgeon. I was a ****up. I was a murderer.

“Why didn’t you stop me?” I whispered. I still couldn’t look him in the eye.

“Because you were so goddam anxious to get in that O.R., I didn’t have the time.”

I heard a cry from the waiting room. I watched as Meg, Lizzy’s mother, fell to the floor, sobbing. Somehow she knew; she could see we weren’t discussing good news.

I left my father, ran to her, and knelt by her side. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t . . . I tried.” Tears made their way to the front of my eyes and spilled over. I reached out and took her in my arms and rocked her back and forth for several moments while she screamed out, “No!” over and over in loud sobs.

When I felt Steve’s hands pulling me up, I looked into his tearstained eyes and said, “I’m so sorry.” My voice was trembling unprofessionally and laced with sadness and guilt.

He didn’t respond, he just pulled his shattered wife into his chest and walked out the door of the waiting room. I looked down to see my father still standing at the end of the hall, looking unemotional and stoic. I couldn’t face him.

I left the hospital and went to my apartment where I stayed for six days without speaking to a soul. My father rang the doorbell on a Sunday afternoon.

When I opened it, he gave me a pitying smile before walking past me into the living room. “It wasn’t entirely your fault, Nate.” I sunk down on the couch and watched him walk around, opening the blinds. “Son, you are the hardest-working person I know. Please don’t be discouraged. This is part of the deal. Every doctor makes mistakes and every doctor loses patients. We’re humans and we’re flawed. That girl needed a heart transplant, not percutaneous closure. Who knows if she would have made it long enough to get one.”

“You mean, if I hadn’t killed her?”

He stood over me as I stared at my fidgeting hands. “I put you in for leave.”

“What? Why?” I said with no expression on my face.

“I made an executive call. You were getting a little ****y, Nate.”

“You’re punishing me for losing a patient?”

He sat down next to me. “Look around this place. This is where you live? You’re almost thirty years old and you haven’t purchased any décor for a house you’ve lived in for five years, not even a television?”

“I’m never here.”

“You’re always at the hospital.”

“Your point being?”

“It’s not healthy.”

“Okay, so now what? You want me to take time off and decorate my apartment?”

“I called your Uncle Dale.”

“Why?”

“You’re taking a month off. I’ve got your patients covered. Son, look at me. . . .”

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It was hard to look him in the eye because I knew he was right. I needed to get away but didn’t know what I’d do without the hospital. “What about Uncle Dale?” My father’s brother, a veterinarian, lived on a ranch in Montana, one that I had visited as a kid. The owners, Redman and Bea, were friends of my grandparents. We visited the Walker Ranch during the summers when I was a kid, but now my uncle lived there.

“Dale could use some help and they have the space. It’s beautiful there this time of year. You could fish. Remember how to do that?” He smiled.

“What, and help Dale deliver calves?”

“Something like that. You’re not above that, are you?” My father’s expression was one of disappointment. It was the first time I had seen that look in his eyes in a long while. The last time he seemed disappointed was when I was seventeen and I drove my mom’s car over her flowerbed in the front yard. That look made me feel small.

My jaw clenched. “No, Dad, I’m not. I’ll go.”

“That’s my boy.” He patted me on the back.

Even as reluctant as I was at the idea, two days later I was packed and ready to go. Frankie was going to live in my apartment and take care of my cat while I was gone. His brisk knock came promptly at six a.m.

“Hey, brother.” He gave me a sideways hug and dropped a large duffel bag in the entryway. He looked around and said, “Wow, you still haven’t decorated this place?”

“Haven’t had time.”

“You bring women back here?”

“Haven’t had time.”

“It’s not like it’s hard for you. You’re a doctor, and you look like . . .” He waved his hand around at me. “You look like that.”

“It hasn’t been on the top of my priority list.” My cat jumped onto the couch in front of us. “Anyway, that’s my girl.”

“Wrong kind of *****, man. What’s her name again?”

“Gogo.”

He laughed. She went up to him, purring, and rubbed her back on his hip. He shooed her with his hand. “Go-go away.”

“You better be nice to her.”

“She’ll be fine. This situation is kind of pathetic; I don’t know why I agreed to stay here. This apartment and that cat are going to kill my *** life. You might as well get five cats now and just quit. Seriously, Nate, when was the last time you got laid?”

“I don’t know. Let’s go. Are you gonna take me to the airport or what?”

“Tell me.” He began moving toward me.

“A while,” I said, towering over Frankie’s five-foot-five frame.

“Jenny, that neonatal nurse told me that she would be willing to pay you to let her suck your dick,” he said, pointing at my crotch dramatically.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re weird, man. You look like a model and women are lining up for you and you haven’t had *** since when? Tell me.”

“I don’t know. Olivia, I guess.”

“What?” His voice was high. “That was five ****ing years ago at least. That is not normal.”

Shaking my head, I finally laughed. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

I landed at Great Falls International Airport in the early afternoon. I had brought one small carry-on suitcase and my laptop—nothing else. When my aunt Trish pulled up to the curb, she rolled down the passenger-side window of her gray dually. I hadn’t seen her in eight years, but she looked exactly the same.

She lifted her sunglasses in a dramatic gesture and said, “Well, well, look at you, all grown up. Get in here, you handsome thing.”

Once I was inside the truck, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

“Hi, Aunt Trish.”

As she pulled away from the curb she shook her head, her blond curls bouncing around. “It’s been too long, dammit. I know you and your pop have been busy but we miss you out here. Your uncle Dale misses your father so much.”

“It’s been hard to get away.”

She glanced over and pursed her lips. “Is that so?”

I smiled sheepishly.

“Well, you’re here now. Redman and Bea and your uncle will be thrilled to see you.”

We drove across miles of land as the sun slowly sank toward the horizon. I looked out the passenger window toward a field and saw a few pronghorn antelope grazing.

“Stunning creatures,” I said.

“Yes, they’re gorgeous.”

“God, it’s really beautiful out here, isn’t it?”

“You’ve been trapped in that concrete jungle for too long. You’ll feel more alive out here. The clean air gets into your bloodstream.” A beatific smile etched across her face. “You’ve changed a lot since the last time I saw you.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“You’re thinner.”

“I work out.”

She chuckled. “You do that L.A. kind of workin’ out. I see those muscles, honey, but those are skinny muscles. We’re gonna beef you up out here.”

I laughed. “Okay, Aunt Trish.”

“When we get to the ranch, I’ll show you around and introduce you to the other folks we have there with us. We’re puttin’ you to work—you know that, right?” She looked over and winked.

I looked down at my smooth, hairless hands. Prized surgeon hands were not meant to shovel **** on a ranch but I smiled at her anyway. “Who lives there with you all now?”

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“It’s just Redman, Bea, Dale, me, and Caleb. He’s a young guy, like you. He’s been doin’ the ranch thing most of his life. He works hard. I’d say you two will get along but Caleb can be a little, well . . . he’s a bit of the macho type, and you’re more like . . . what do they call it out there? Metro***ual?”

“What?” I laughed in surprise. “I’m not metro***ual.” Her own laugh rang out.

“Well, you look pretty well groomed to me, and aside from that mess of hair on the top of your head, it looks like you wax every inch of your body.”

“Aunt Trish!” I scolded her playfully.

“But I’m your auntie so I don’t really need to know ’bout any of that.”

After we fell into a few moments of companionable silence, she said, “Anyway, Avelina is still with us. She’s a hard worker, that girl, but she keeps to herself.”

I remembered hearing a story of a man who killed himself on the ranch. I was pretty sure that the woman my aunt spoke of was the man’s wife, but I knew very little other than that. “Avelina is the woman who . . .”

“Yes.” She stared ahead and sighed. “So young to be a widow. It’s been four years since she lost Jake.” My aunt shook her head. “Like I said, she keeps to herself, but she’ll help you with the horses. She’s extremely skilled with the animals. Not so skilled with humans anymore, though.”

“Hmm.” For the rest of the hour-and-a-half drive to the ranch, I thought about how my aunt described Avelina and wondered if I was lacking some social graces as well. Had my career taken such a hold of me that I had lost sight of why I wanted to be a heart surgeon in the first place: to help people live their lives more fully? Yet lately, I hadn’t considered my patients much at all beyond the unconscious bodies on the operating table. It took losing one, so vibrant and young, to wake me up.

“Here we are,” she said, turning the truck up a long dirt road. As we approached the barn, cabins, and main house, the ranch appeared like a photo taken right from my childhood memory. Little had changed. The ranch house had a wide wraparound porch, and sitting there in wooden rockers, the picture of cowboy nostalgia, were Bea and Redman, smiling from ear to ear.

I hopped out of the truck and headed toward them. “Get up here so I can smack you!” Bea yelled, still smiling. Redman and Bea were like alternate grandparents for me.

Redman stood up and hugged me first and then held me out from the shoulders and scanned my face thoroughly. “You’re skinny. We can fix that, but what in God’s name are you wearing on your feet?” he asked, staring at my shoes.

“They’re Converse.”

He ignored me and turned to Bea. “We have something lying around for this kid so we can put him to work?”

She stared at me adoringly. “I’m sure we can find something suitable.” Skirting around Redman, she took me in her arms. “Hello, Nathanial. We’ve missed you.” I could tell by her voice that she was on the edge of tears.

“I’ve missed you, too.”

Someone walked up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Nate,” a male voice said.

I turned. “Uncle Dale, good to see you.” We hugged.

“Glad you decided to come out. Wish I could get your father out here more.” His smile was guarded. He was a much quieter man than my father but just as compassionate and the best in his field of veterinary medicine. He, my father, and I shared the same dark hair and light eyes. When the three of us were together there was no question we were related.

“Let’s get your stuff into your room, honey,” Bea said. “And then we’ll show you around and refresh your memory.”

I followed her into the main house, down the long hall, and past a grand fireplace made of river rock. The guest room was small with a queen-size bed covered in a simple blue comforter. The nightstand was full of framed pictures and the desk on the other side of the room had a small task lamp. I studied a picture of my father and Dale, standing in front of the main house and outfitted for fly-fishing. I could see myself in the background, maybe five years old at most. I looked as though I didn’t have a care in the world. I loved the ranch as a kid; it was like Disneyland to me.

The window in the guest bedroom looked out on the front yard toward the barn, stables, and corrals. Far beyond them were the majestic mountains of Montana. Some in the very far distance were still capped with snow.

Bea stood in the doorway. “Will this do for you, honey?”

“Of course, Bea.” Redman walked up and stood behind her.

“Thank you so much, both of you, for having me. This will be wonderful.”

Redman laughed. “Don’t be mistaken—you’re here to work, son,” he said before walking away.

“Get settled and relax for a bit and come out when you’re ready. We’ll have dinner at the big table around six thirty. I’m making shepherd’s pie. Is that still your favorite?”

“Yes. Thank you, that sounds delicious,” I lied. I had been a vegetarian for years but the pure love and hospitality I felt from Bea was touching—and, frankly, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Back in L.A., even my mother had stopped asking me over for dinner because I constantly turned her down to stay at the hospital.

I unpacked my bags and set up my laptop but before I could turn it on, something caught my eye—a movement outside the window. There was a woman riding a spotted horse toward the barn. I watched her hop down and tie the horse up to a gatepost. An ugly little dog followed her around as she removed the saddle and took it into the barn. She came out with a large horse brush and began brushing down the long body and mane of the spotted creature.

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“Ehh!” He made a sound as if he were reprimanding an animal. “Watch yourself, kid. Hotshot doctor come from L.A., think you know a thing or two about our souls, do ya?” His face looked wolfish in the murky light. “You know nothin’ of this business.”

I shook my head and smiled, trying to laugh it off. “Redman, I didn’t mean that I knew what she needed. It’s just that she’s so young.”

“She’s older than me.” He laughed once, finally breaking the tension, but there was still something wry about his smile. “Lookin’ death right in the face and begging, that’s how old she is.”

“I think you’re wrong. Why don’t you have sympathy for her?”

“Sympathy, I have. Time, I don’t.”

Basically Redman was saying he didn’t want to deal with her. I remember hearing stories, growing up, about Redman and Bea. My father had said that his parents, my grandparents, were too warm and nurturing. They were pushovers, so they would send Dale and my dad out to the Walker Ranch for some tough love from Redman and Bea—the almighty wake-up call, they would say. I wondered if my father’s grounded personality was owed to the summers he had spent on the ranch.

My father came from money and I came from money, but at the ranch there was a sense that no one was born with a silver spoon in their mouth. We are all just trying to live right by each other. My father said Redman told him having too much money caused a man’s sense of survival to atrophy. I guess I understood what he meant.

Avelina was the only person on the ranch who was not at Bea’s long dining table that night for shepherd’s pie. I didn’t ask why. Dale and Redman reminisced about the good times with my father while I tried to discreetly dodge the meat in my dinner. Afterward, I helped Bea take the dishes into the kitchen.

Across from the sink was a screen door leading to the side yard where Bea kept chickens. Ava was sitting on the two concrete steps to the yard with her back to the door. I could tell through the screen that she was eating. Next to her, sitting stoically, was the ugly dog.

I walked to the sink and then heard the screen open behind me but I kept my head on the task of rinsing the dishes.

“I’ll take care of that.” Her voice was small. When I turned to face her, she looked down at her feet, her long hair hanging forward.

“I’m Nate. It’s nice to meet you, too.”

She looked up finally and smiled very slightly, just enough to show she could be polite. Staring into her big brown eyes, I said, “I’ll wash if you dry?”

Her smile grew wider. “Okay.”

We did the dishes in silence as the others congregated in the kitchen to say good night.

Patting me on the back, Dale said, “Good, I see Ava’s already puttin’ you to work.”

Ava laughed. “He’s the one who put me to work.”

Everyone in the room turned and looked at her with shocked faces as if they had never heard her speak.

Ava immediately blushed, her pouty lips flattening. Trish warily approached her with outstretched arms but Ava bolted past her and ran out of the house, followed by the ugly dog.

“What the ****?”

“Language!” Bea scolded me.

Caleb left the kitchen shaking his head.

“Why’d everyone look so shocked?” I asked.

I turned to Dale, whose face was etched with compassion. His dark bushy eyebrows were bunched together. “We just haven’t heard her laugh in five years.”

“Oh.” The kitchen went quiet again.

On my way to bed, Bea caught me in the hallway. “She seemed to warm up to you rather easily. Red and Caleb will tell you to stay away, that she’s cursed. She’s not. Sometimes I think those boys are just tryin’ to protect her. None of us could bear to see her hurt anymore,” she said, her smile sincere and deep.

A sobering feeling ran through me. “I’m not going to hurt her. I barely said five words to her.” I suddenly thought about Lizzy, on her hospital bed, looking up at me with trust in her eyes. ****. “I think I need to get some air, Bea. I’m going for a walk.”

“Okay, honey.” She kissed me on the cheek. I pulled her tiny frame into my arms. Her long, gray hair smelled of the tobacco smoke from Redman’s pipe. I thought about the years she had given her life to him, with no children to bind her to him, and I wondered in my pragmatic mind why on earth a person would do that.

“That was nice,” she said, once she pulled away.

CHAPTER 5

A Light

Avelina

They had been shocked that I filled one moment of my life, one second, with a tiny bit of joy. They didn’t think I deserved it. Trish had reached for me cautiously while Nate had stood there with soapsuds on his hands, looking dumbfounded. Redman’s eyes had been as big as sand dollars, and Bea’s had been squinting and beady, as if she hadn’t heard things right. The walls had started closing in and then I ran, like I always do.

I wished it had been just Nate and me in the room so that I could remember what it felt like to be around at least one person who didn’t think I was poison. He seemed nice enough, and he didn’t ask me a bunch of stupid questions.

He smelled nothing like the other men I knew. His scent was clean and crisp, like fancy aftershave. I noticed there wasn’t a single dark hair out of place on his head, and the seawater green of his eyes filled up almost the entire iris. He was one of the most attractive people I had ever seen. While I had dried the dishes next to him, I had marveled at the untouchable smoothness of his skin, even along his severe jawline. He had a strong resemblance to Dale, with his classic good looks and light eyes that popped and caught the attention of everyone in a room.

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Maybe I let myself relax near him because of his warm smile or his cute playfulness or the way he squinted when he looked into my eyes, as if he were trying to see further inside of me, to my soul. Too bad he would never find it.

In the darkness, I wrapped myself in a blanket and curled up on my cabin porch swing. I swung my legs gently, letting the sound of the creaking wood lull me to sleep.

“Ava,” he whispered, his hand cupping my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw Nate standing over me, silhouetted by the moonlight. “Ava, do you want me to help you inside? It’s getting cold out here.”

“No, I’m okay.” When I stood up a small bottle of whiskey slid from my lap and clinked onto the floor. Nate picked it up and calmly handed it back to me. “I just had a little bit.”

“I don’t judge you,” he said instantly.

I swallowed and then got up and slowly began moving past him toward the door.

“Wait. Why did you run out?” he asked.

“Because they were all mad at me.”

“Mad at you for what?”

I could see his puzzled expression in the dark.

“I don’t know,” I said quietly.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“You wouldn’t understand. I hardly understand it myself.”

“Try me, I’m a good listener.” He hugged his defined arms to his chest. I noticed he was only wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops.

“That’s definitely California footwear. Not proper for a Montana night, even in the summer.” I giggled.

“That’s a nice sound,” he said in a low voice.

“What?”

“Your laugh.”

“Oh, thank you,” I said as my nerves swirled in my stomach.

“Do you want me to come in? We could talk?” The invitation seemed genuine and innocent, but I was surprised by my own thoughts of curling myself into his long body or nestling my nose into his shirt and breathing that new smell in until I fell asleep. When I turned to face the cabin, I looked past him into the window. A vision of Jake’s slumped body flashed in my mind. I gasped.

“What is it?” he asked with concern, his warm hands clasping my arms. I tried to move past him to the door again; he blocked me. “Tell me, please.”

I shook my head, fearing that if I said the words the image would flash in my mind again.

After a few minutes of silence he spoke, his voice low, warm, and soothing. “Listen, Ava. I lost a patient recently. I’m a doctor. . . .” When he swallowed I could see the muscles in his jaw flex. “I lost a patient and it was my fault.” He held my hand, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles nervously. I pulled away. It was as though he was trying to comfort me with the story, yet I could hear his own pain in the admission.

I couldn’t be sure why he was telling me about his patient but his expression was so piteous that it made me feel a little sick. He had obviously heard about my story and maybe he thought we could mope around together or something.

“Was she your wife?”

“No, but . . .”

“I have to go in. I’m sorry about your patient.”

“Wait, Ava.”

I turned back. “Yes?”

“I just thought we could hang out a little while I’m here. I mean, since we’re kind of the same age.”

I instantly felt pity for him. He fumbled for words like no doctor I had ever known.

“Okay. Maybe we can take the horses out to the stream tomorrow?” I said. He nodded and smiled. “We can fish?” I suggested.

“That sounds great.”

“But no talking,” I warned.

“No talking,” he repeated and then stepped out of the way to let me pass.

Like many nights, before bed I went into the kitchen, found the large bottle of whiskey under the sink, and drank three large gulps, praying I wouldn’t dream. My new version of a bedtime prayer after Jake’s death, though it had nothing to do with faith in a higher power. I simply hoped the whiskey would numb my mind enough to allow me to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I packed lunches and saddled up Dancer and Tequila, an old Tennessee Walker we’d had on the ranch for many years. He was the most comfortable horse to ride and had the smoothest gait. I thought Nate would appreciate that—I assumed he hadn’t ridden a horse in some time since he was a fancy doctor in L.A. After waiting for a while with no sign of Nate, I wondered if maybe he had changed his mind about going for a ride. Maybe the thought of being alone with me on horseback terrified him.

I searched the shed for fishing tackle. Redman was a hoarder when it came to the shed and barn spaces, I think because Bea had such a strong arm about keeping a tidy house. It was Redman’s way of rebelling. There were about twelve tackle boxes full of mostly junk, but I managed to find the right lures and line for stream fishing.

Before I heard him, I felt a presence coming toward me from behind. I wasn’t used to being around people so I was very aware when someone was near. I just continued rummaging through the boxes until I found my favorite lure, a shiny golden one in the faint shape of a heart.

“Can I help you find something?” Nate asked.

“No, I’ve got it!” I held the lure up in triumph. “This baby gets ’em every time.”

“Good morning. I’m happy to see your competitive spirit is alive.”

My smile faded. Nothing about me is alive. We were standing inches apart, facing each other in the small, darkened shed. Between us, I held the lure. He took it and examined it. When I looked at the ground, I noticed he was wearing Converse sneakers. I let out a sigh, relieved he wasn’t in Jake’s boots. His black jeans looked to be designer, tight against his legs and slightly pegged at the bottom. He was also wearing a plain black T-shirt. His hair and clothes contrasted nicely against his smooth, sun-kissed skin and blazing green eyes.

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A tiny smirk played on his lips. “It’s not the shape of anything that exists in nature. Why would a fish want to eat this?”

I looked up, blinking. The thought hadn’t occurred to me. There were lures of all shapes and sizes.

“Well, it’s kind of the shape of a heart, and that exists in nature.”

“A real heart isn’t heart-shaped.” He shot me a ****sure grin. “It’s more cone-shaped, sort of.” His grin disappeared abruptly as he stared past me in thought for several moments, perhaps recalling a painful memory. It was a look I was familiar with.

“Shall we head out?” I asked.

He nodded and then followed me outside of the barn. I untied Tequila and walked him out a few feet. “This is Tequila. You’ll be riding him. You know how to ride, right?”

“Not very well.”

“That’s okay. Get up in there and I’ll adjust the stirrups.”

He lifted his foot with grace into the stirrup, hoisted himself into the saddle, and looked down at me. His chest was pumping and there was fear growing on his face.

“Go ahead and get down,” I said.

“Why?”

“Let’s do this right so you feel comfortable.”

When he got down, I handed him the reins. “Lead him around in a circle.” Nate followed my command. “Now let him smell you.” He let Tequila smell his hands.

I handed him a carrot to feed to the horse. I could see it was coming back to him. I knew he had spent time on the ranch as a kid but horses are large, intimidating animals if you haven’t been around them much. “His name is Tequila because he’s the only horse you can ride when you’re ****-faced drunk.”

Nate let out a huge sigh of relief and then chuckled. “Thank God. I’m not gonna lie, the name threw me.”

“He’s a Tennessee Walker. You’ll look really cute and fancy riding him,” I said, in a mocking tone.

“Oh, I see, this is all for your amusement, isn’t it?”

I giggled.

“There’s that sound again.” He smiled and hopped into the saddle.

I called for Dancer, who was grazing on a little patch of grass near the main house. Climbing into the saddle, the fishing rods in hand, I looked over to Nate. He looked comfortable; he relaxed back in his seat after a few minutes of acquainting himself with the horse.

“Why weren’t you at breakfast this morning?” he asked.

“I normally eat in my cabin. And remember our agreement?”

“What?”

“No talking.”

We walked slowly past the main house. Bea waved to us from the porch where she was knitting in her chair. Dancer picked up her pace a little as we rode toward the meadow above the stream. I could feel Nate and Tequila keeping pace behind us. I slowed Dancer and let Nate ride up beside me.

Nate was holding the reins high, which was normal on a horse like Tequila who trotted naturally with a high-necked posture, but I was pretty sure he was holding the reins that way out of fear. “It’s actually more comfortable to gallop that horse than to trot.”

“I’m comfortable,” he said.

“I don’t want you to exhaust him. Go ahead and let him out a bit so you can see. Give him a little squeeze.”

“I’m scared he won’t stop.”

“You’re riding the horse. You’re controlling him. You wouldn’t put a car in neutral on a hill and just see what happens, would you?”

He laughed. “No, I definitely wouldn’t do that, and the analogy is not helping me. This horse has a mind of its own.”

“Not if you don’t let him have his way. If you want him to stop, pull back on the reins and say, ‘Whoa, horsy.’ ”

“I have to say ‘horsy’?” He looked incredulous.

“I’m kidding.”

“****, I would be laughing right now but I’m terrified.” When he looked over at me I could see his eyes were wide.

“Listen, Nate, Tequila won’t pass me on Dancer. He was trained that way.”

“Okay,” he said, his voice shaky. “That’s what I want to hear.”

“Let’s just trot a bit and then we’ll canter. Give him a little kick with your heel a bit farther back than you normally would, just on your right side. That’s how he knows to canter. Stay upright and move your hips with the motion. It will be like a smooth jog, and then we’ll race after that.”

His eyes shot open even wider.

“Relax, we’ll gallop a little while we have this nice open space,” I said, giving him a reassuring smile.

I let Dancer pick up the pace. I could see in my peripheral vision that Nate had done the same. “This is fun!” he shouted to me. “I want to run.”

“Let the reins out but stay firm. Tap him with both heels.”

Tequila was actually just following me but it was good that Nate was learning to give the proper commands. There was a fleeting moment when I looked over at him and saw joy on his face. I wanted that feeling and thought maybe I could allow myself a little of it once in a while.

I found it uncomfortable and distracting for Dancer to run while I was holding the fishing rods, so I slowed and then headed toward a familiar embankment that led down to the stream. We stopped at the top of the bank. Nate looked like he was having so much fun. He pulled a pair of dark sunglasses from the saddlebag and put them on while still wearing a huge smile.

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“That was awesome,” he said. “It’s way hotter out here than I thought it would be.”

“Yeah, I should have grabbed you a hat.”

“What, like a cowboy hat?”

“No, a baseball cap.” I laughed. “This isn’t Texas, Nate.”

“Trish wears a cowboy hat.”

“She’s a rodeo queen.” I didn’t bother mentioning that Jake wore both baseball caps and cowboy hats and that it kind of depended on what he was doing. Just thinking back to him in his black Stetson on the night we met felt like a knife slicing through my heart.

“Weren’t you?”

“No, I’m from California,” I said simply and then began leading Dancer down the hill.

“Oh. I didn’t know. Wait, we’re taking the horses down that hill?”

“Four legs are better than two,” I yelled back to him.

“Good point,” he said as Tequila picked her way down the bank.

At the bottom, we let the horses drink from the stream before tying them up. Nate continuously ran his hand through his windblown hair. There was no product in his hair that morning like there was the day before. The loose, tousled strands gave his look a more youthful charm. I had never met a doctor who resembled a real, flawed person with insecurities, but more than that, I had never met a doctor who was so terribly good-looking and didn’t know it.

Without speaking, we drew our lines through the poles and dug around in the saddlebags for various things. We took our shoes off, rolled up our jeans, and stepped carefully over the pebbles to the edge of the stream water.

“So you’re from California? Which part?”

“The Central Valley.” I sat on a rock to tie my lure.

“Allow me.” Nate reached out. I handed over my line and lure.

His deft hands tied the lure on the line with speed and accuracy. “What kind of doctor are you?”

“I’m a heart surgeon,” he said, smirking. I smiled too, probably sharing the same thought as he tied up the heart-shaped lure.

“Well done.”

I cast my line into the deeper part of the stream and reeled it in slowly.

“Do you know how to fly-fish?” he asked.

“You have to be quiet, Nate, you’re going to scare the fish away. And yes, I know how.”

“Okay. I just thought maybe you could show me,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

He was adorable. I couldn’t help letting a smile touch my lips.

“Just hold the line with your index finger, turn the bail arm, pull back, and release the line at the peak of the pole’s arc. Aim for that deeper water there,” I said, gesturing toward where my line had landed.

He cast and immediately got a bite but lost it.

“You need to jerk back when you feel a sure tug, that’s how you set the hook,” I said to him.

“That’s right. It’s all coming back to me,” he said with a smile.

The carefree look Nate wore reminded me of a feeling I used to know but had been absent for so long. It was the first time in a long time that I wished for that feeling back.

CHAPTER 6

Hearts in Nature

Nathanial

At midday the score was Ava: six, me: zero. I love a woman who challenges me but Ava was beating me to a pulp, which I think was even more refreshing. The fish weren’t biting anymore so Ava handed me a sandwich from her saddlebag.

I opened the foil. “Peanut butter and jelly. I like it.”

Her smile was shy. “I don’t have much in my cabin.”

We sat on rocks under the shade of a tree near the stream and ate. The day was unusually warm for spring. Ava wore faded, tight jeans rolled up and a beige cotton blouse with short lace sleeves. When she leaned over I could see the swells of her breasts¸ glistening from sweat. Her skin was a warm, natural tone.

“Why did you move here from California?” I asked.

She glanced up, looking conflicted. “Nate . . .” I could tell from her expression that she wanted to tell me things but couldn’t find the words. She looked back down at her feet. I remembered our rule of no talking.

I stopped chewing and swallowed while I stared at the side of her face intensely. “Take down your hair, Ava,” I said in a purposeful tone. Something came over me suddenly and I felt the need to touch her, like my body was moving of its own accord.

Facing her on the rock, I watched as she kept her gaze straight ahead and slowly slipped the tie from her ponytail. Her long, straight hair fell cleanly down her shoulders. I reached and grabbed her by the side of the neck and pulled her toward me. She didn’t resist but didn’t face me either. I leaned into her hair and inhaled so deeply I felt drowsy. I was shocked by how drawn I felt to touching her and equally shocked that she had obeyed me and submitted to my touch.

It was like there was a force beyond me creating the involuntary movements of my hands on her body. She smelled of sweet alyssum like no one I had ever known, so sweet and natural only God could create it—a reminder of salvation in the secular age we were living in.

I wanted to rub her skin against mine. I glanced down her shirt and wondered if her sweat tasted as sweet as she smelled. I wanted to be inside of her. I was impossibly close to telling her to take her clothes off. Somehow I knew she would do it if I asked. It seemed like she was that directionless at times. It was as though her mind was a pinwheel endlessly spinning on a TV screen, and she was waiting for someone to come along and change the channel. She seemed lost and fragile one minute and then sharp and callous the next. I knew I couldn’t take advantage of someone like Ava, even though in the moment I was one hundred percent sure she wanted to escape it all with me.