Page 11 of The Ripple Effect

“Were you right?”

“Yes.” I notice he doesn’t ask if I was kind.

“Well then.” He shrugs as if he can make the whole mess go away just like that.

“You shouldn’t hand over your trust so easily, McHuge. There are good reasons you should look for someone else.”

“But I want you,” he says simply, and my heart lurches hard enough that I have to look down. His voice is a slow eddy, calm and welcoming; I only imagined it held a rush of current.

“You need someone with an MD and whitewater experience in time for next week’s launch. I need stability. At the end of the summer, I want a chance to become an owner. Stock options for five percent of the Love Boat.”

“Ten percent,” he counters, without a second’s hesitation.

“Ten?!” His unexpected generosity makes me faintly nauseous. “Don’t you have to consult with lawyers? Or Tobin?”

“He’s on paternity leave. I have his proxy vote. You know he’d give you anything you asked for.”

“I asked for five.”

“I’d have given you fifteen.”

“You’re terrible at business,” I mutter. “No more freebies after I come on board.”

“Okay then. Welcome aboard, Stellar J.” He extends his hand, then seems to realize what he called me. A subtle flush backlights his cheeks beneath the freckles.

I take it as a good sign for our future working relationship that we shake firmly and let the moment pass.

Chapter Three

Nothing bends time like hard physical work.

It feels like way longer than four days ago that I packed everything I’d need for camp, took my valuables over to Liz’s, and gave my neighbor the keys to pass on to my subletter, an Australian mountain biker and TikTok star named Br!an.

My connection to the apartment felt so breakable despite my efforts to make it sturdy. My art and furniture was scavenged from Buy Nothing groups on Facebook—nothing I would’ve chosen for the way it made me feel; nothing I saw and loved and had to have. I hate that I could leave it behind and not feel sad.

The thing about having a con artist for a parent is that every con comes to an end. If it succeeds, you take the money and run. If it fails, you move on, hoping to find easier marks and evade consequences. Whether we were broke or flush with dirty cash that didn’t last, Mom and Dad and I moved constantly.

I saw medicine as a way to stop packing my bags with an hour’s notice. It was the opposite of everything I knew: honorable money in a steady supply and a profession whose firstcommandment wasnotto hurt other people. If I didn’t feel called to it the way my classmates with comfortable childhoods did, I could live with that. Wanting money is only embarrassing to people who already have enough.

The calling came little by little, sneaking up on me until one day I realized that every time I told a patient I would take good care of them, I was doing it because I wanted to. Because I meant it. Medicine tethered me to something deep and steady and good in a way I’ve never felt before or since.

I didn’t want to come back to this unanchored life, closing the door to an apartment that could belong to anyone, living in a tent I borrowed from Liz, whose orbit drifts further from mine every day. But it found me anyway, like a shadow at my feet, impossible to outrun.

At least the work keeps me busy. A morning of manual labor at camp is the equivalent of a day at any other job. Afternoons scouting nearby rapids with McHuge feel like another whole day, me in a generic solo canoe and McHuge paddling his custom boat with Babe the dog chilling in the front seat. Eating dinner and staring exhausted into the campfire is at least a half day. We’re still behind schedule because Tobin can’t be here, but sometimes I have hope we’ll be ready for launch on Monday.

The best thing about this job is that today is Friday—payday. Some employers play games, withholding the first check if you haven’t worked a full pay period. McHuge paid me last night, early, for Tuesday through Thursday plus a small but meaningful signing bonus. He made a choking sound—hrgack!—when I buried my face in the check to inhale the scent of solvency.

I didn’t care if he saw me being weird. I told him not to make me manage his airway, then took a solo paddle out to the middle of the river, one of two places to find a cell signal here, to electronically deposit the money.

For the first time in months, the volume on my financial crisis lowered from a full-on air raid siren to a manageable background hum of debt. I made my student loan paymentin advance. I set up automatic rent checks to my landlord. I did budget math and didn’t have to go for a run afterward.

Emotion-wise, I haven’t needed to run at all since I got to base camp. It’s been too long since I came out to the wilderness. Too many years of putting my head down and pulling the plow of my life back and forth, back and forth over the same ground. I let myself forget what it’s like to have a sense of flow, like the river. That, and the daily level of physical exertion is enough to tamp my feelings down to a barely glowing ember.

I’m out for a morning run anyway, because the second place to get cell service is a fallen tree a couple of kilometers closer to the highway. It comes in handy when I want to send my daily batch of texts to Liz without asking McHuge to help me unrack a boat. Or worse, interrupting his “me time”: morning plunges in the river I highly, highly suspect are done in the nude, based on the way we both screamed when I accidentally spied either an extremely formfitting white bathing suit or McHuge’s pale butt cheeks flashing above the water on Wednesday morning.

It’s a very good ass. Unfortunately. High, round, with the sun sort of sparkling off rivulets of water. Which makes it all the more important for me to be far, far away.

At the fallen tree, I pull out my phone, freshly charged with the solar battery. The weak signal eats a lot of juice.

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