Page 58 of Once Upon A Second Chance
I stare at it for a long moment, jaw tight.
Then I sit back down, cold pot pie forgotten, and open the clinic’s on-call folder.
If this town’s going to become a battleground, I’ll be damned if I show up unarmed.
Chapter Twelve
Penny
I change my morning route to the clinic.
Take the long way down Maple instead of cutting through Willow where the old Texaco sits—Travis’s usual haunt. It’s not that I’m scared. Not exactly.
It’s just that I don’t feel like being brave before my first cup of coffee.
I mean, why take chances? It’s just a weird week, I guess.
The parking lot at the clinic is already half-full, and it’s not even 7:00. Holloway’s truck is in his usual spot. Simmons’s obnoxiously clean SUV gleams like a dentist’s smile. And Richard’s familiar blue pickup is parked beneath the only tree that provides decent shade.
A relief and a problem, all at once.
The gossip hasn’t stopped.
Rebecca’s grenade of a Facebook post might’ve stopped exploding, but the shrapnel is still flying.
Patients canceling appointments.
Church ladies whispering in exam room corners.
Even a few doctors hesitating to share notes with him, like malpractice is contagious.
I slam the car door harder than necessary and head inside.
The front desk is quiet. Darlene barely glances up when I walk by—just shifts a stack of patient intake forms and mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like, “Morning.”
Lena’s already in the break room, stirring creamer into her coffee with the aggression of someone imagining a face at the bottom of her mug.
“She’s still pissed,” she says by way of greeting.
“Darlene?”
“Darlene. Simmons. Half the clinic staff. Apparently, when a man has a bad surgical outcome with a child on the table—even if it wasn’t his fault—he should lose his license, be excommunicated, and fedto coyotes.”
I grab a cup and pour until the bitter smell nearly burns my nose. “Remind me what the policy is on poisoning coworkers.”
“Frowned upon.” Lena pauses. “Unless you make it look like a wellness smoothie.”
I snort, but it doesn’t last. The ache in my chest is too heavy. Too sharp.
Because the truth is, they can think whatever they want about Richard.
But I’ve seen him in action.
I’ve seen him stitch up a stranger with tornado debris embedded in his ribs.
I’ve seen him catch a heart murmur in a newborn that even the pediatrician missed.
I’ve seen the quiet way he touches his patients, listens to them, makes them feel like they’re not just a chart to be signed.
