A Doctor's Vow by Christine Rimmer

Author:Christine Rimmer
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-03-28T04:00:00+00:00

She kicked him out shortly after that. Sent him back to the other house to sit in his mostly unused study there, writing himself an outline for his presentation on a yellow legal pad.

In the end, he had to reject a lot of Ronni's suggestions as just too complicated. He couldn't collect a lot of materials and rehearse with them within the allotted time.

At seven in the morning, he called Murleen Anniston to tell her that he would need two screens, one on either side of the podium, as well as two slide projectors. Then he called Tanner, who said he could dig up the slides Ryan needed and also agreed to pinch-hit as projectionist.

"You'll need help setting up," Tanner added.

"I was hoping you'd say that. Meet me at the ballroom? One this afternoon?"

"I'll be there."

Ryan made more calls. To a reporter he knew at the Gazette and a talk-show host for a local television show.

Right after lunch, he drove to the Honeygrove Golf and Country Club. There, in the club's ballroom, with the setup crew milling around them, he and Tanner enlisted the aid of a few harried auxiliary ladies to help them relocate some of the tables and put the projectors where they needed them.

Murleen Anniston had the screens ready, masked with red velvet curtains to be drawn by hand when the time was right. Tanner even managed to talk the busy workers into shutting the drapes across the high windows for a half an hour, so they could try a couple of run-throughs of dimming lights and raising curtains, followed by bringing up the single spot and the two projected slides slowly and smoothly.

By three, they had it all set up. Ryan went home, where he shut himself in his study, put a straight chair up on his desk to represent a podium and gave his new speech three times to the door across the room.

Drew was sitting at the foot of the stairs when Ryan came out of the study at five. "Dad? Who were you talking to in there?"

Ryan looked down at his son and thought what he always thought: that he needed to spend more time with him. The truth was, in the past few days, he'd barely seen the boy—or Griff or Lisbeth, either, for that matter.

"I was practicing the speech I have to give tonight."

"What kind of speech?" Before Ryan could frame an answer, more questions followed. "Is something wrong with your job or something? Grandma keeps saying you've got a lot on your mind. She always says that about you, but lately, it seems like she's saying it lots more than usual. And you've been gone so much. I mean, even more than you are most times. And Dad, in school, we have current events, you know? My whole class read in the paper about Mr. Pembroke and how he ran away with the money that Uncle Tanner was supposed to use to make the hospital bigger. I guess what I'm asking Dad is, what is going on?"

Ryan resisted the urge to glance at his watch.

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