Going to the Chapel by Debra Webb

settled into the ancient wooden swing. She could almost
hear Doc Bishop’s gravelly voice as he told her stories to keep her
occupied while he sutured her up close and personal encounter with
a rusty nail. She still had the tiny scar on her left
thigh.
    Caroline smiled. He always
made the necessary visits easier. As gruff as he appeared, he’d
been a big teddy bear. All the kids had loved him.
    A car skidded to a stop in
front of the clinic drawing Caroline’s attention to the
street.
    “ Dr. Gregory, thank God
you’re here.” A woman, mid-fifties raced up the sidewalk, a
screaming toddler in her arms.
    Caroline stood
instinctively. “What happened?”
    The woman bounded up the
steps and across the porch. “He broke a glass and cut himself. It’s
bled something awful.” She turned where Caroline could see the arm
wrapped in a kitchen dishtowel. Blood stained the towel. “I was
afraid I’d have to drive all the way to the city with him bleeding
like that.”
    The boy needed immediate
attention, but how was she supposed to get into the clinic. It was
surely locked. “I’m sorry,” Caroline began, “I don’t have the keys
to the clinic.”
    The woman’s eyes widened in
fear. “What am I going to do?” The child wailed in punctuation of
her words.
    Caroline had to do
something. She couldn’t just let him go unattended. The closest
medical facility was thirty miles away. “Give me a minute.” She
tried the front door, it was locked. “I’ll go around to the
back.”
    Just as she’d feared, the
back door was locked too.
    After looking around for
something handy, Caroline decided on a small clay flowerpot. She
smashed a pane of glass in the door and reached inside to unlock
it. Five minutes later she had the child on an examination table
and was preparing to clean and suture his wound.
    While his grandmother held
him still, the child screamed at the top of his lungs. Caroline
tried her level best to tune out his wailing, but she couldn’t. And
she hated for him to feel such fear.
    “ Do you like stories,
Kenny?” she asked over his sobs. He didn’t answer. The grandmother
attempted a smile for both their sakes. “Well, let me tell you one
that someone very special once told me. Once upon a
time...”
    By the time Caroline got to
the part about the wolf chasing the grandmother around her cottage
the little boy was listening intently. The grandmother looked as
relieved as Caroline felt.
    When she had his wound
bandaged and had scrounged up a lollipop from the drawer Doc Bishop
had always kept them in, Caroline gave Kenny a pat on the head and
told him what a brave boy he’d been.
    “ I can’t thank you enough,
Dr. Gregory.” The woman, Mrs. Cooper, Caroline had learned, scooped
Kenny up into her arms. “How much do I owe you?”
    Caroline smiled. “It’s on
the house.”
    After Mrs. Cooper and Kenny
left, Caroline cleaned up the broken glass, then drifted through
the clinic, just remembering. She had cleaned up the exam room
she’d used and decided she’d better walk over to the hardware and
have a piece of glass cut. Maybe Mrs. Henson could get in touch
with Mr. Hadley and have him hurry over to install it in the door.
Caroline didn’t want to leave the clinic vulnerable.
    “ Breaking and entering is
against the law.”
    Caroline whirled around at
the sound of Chase’s deep voice. He stood in the doorway watching
her. The look of desire in his eyes burned wherever his gaze
touched her. It wasn’t fair for him to let her see what he was
feeling. She blinked to conceal her own wanton thoughts.
    “ It was an emergency.” She
turned out the light in the exam room and waited for him to move
out of her way. She wondered for two long beats if he intended to
at all.
    He stepped aside, allowing
her to pass. “Mrs. Cooper told me what you did. It’s a worthy
enough cause that I’ll overlook the broken pane of
glass.”
    “ Anyone else would have
done the same. I’ll replace the broken glass.”