At Odds with the Midwife by Patricia Forsythe

Author:Patricia Forsythe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

NATE ARRIVED LATE in the morning and was making his way through every room in the hospital to observe the work being done. Gemma had been right. People were enthused about this project, ready to help and wanted to see it through.

He saw Carly in the nursery, painting happy animals on the walls. Nate continued on his way, making the emergency room his final stop because that’s where Yvette had told him Gemma would be. In the days since he’d last seen her, he hadn’t stopped thinking about her. When he’d been seeing patients, meeting with his staff, the hospital contractor or the hospital board, she had been on his mind.

Besides the hospital board, she was the only one he’d told about his long-term plans. Maybe he should have said something sooner, been upfront about doing what needed to be done in Reston and then moving on. But she was pulling at him somehow, and he wanted a complete break with the past. He was determined to go.

Gemma was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the nurses station, adding shades of green and brown to a pastoral scene of trees and what he thought must be the Kinnick River. Her hair was pulled up in the ponytail that seemed to be her go-to style. She was leaning forward, her concentration complete as she worked.

Examining the scene she was painting, he realized it wasn’t the Kinnick River alone, but also her family’s campground, lake and cabin. She was painting a river of happy animals on the walls. Bubbles with children’s faces rose from the water. He smiled, wondering if she planned to paint in the cages and pens for all the animals she’d rescued. It was a good idea. It tied the mural into the surrounding area, besides being designed to bring calmness to the emergency room. He hoped it succeeded. He’d never worked in such a small emergency room, or such a small hospital, for that matter, and he had visions of the staff stumbling over each other during a crisis.

Nate paused and glanced back the way he’d come, thinking of all the people he’d seen in the past half hour, and all that they’d accomplished. He hadn’t worked at a hospital that was such an integral part of the community. His community.

Gemma was painting her own memories into the mural in here. The children’s faces that Carly was adding to the bubbles floating up from the river where frogs, fish and hippos frolicked—were they children she knew?

Probably, and everyone else might be doing the same thing. They might not like him and they might even continue to blame him for what his father had done, but this hospital was important to them in a way he hadn’t understood until Gemma had given her impassioned speech about getting the community to help.

That was something his father hadn’t understood, either, which might be why he’d embezzled the funds that supported the hospital. Robbing the schools and the churches would have had the same result.

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