What Matters Most by Gwynne Forster Page B

succeed. But when he’d needed her encouragement most, during those awful days and nights of his first months at college, when he’d tried to be a good student while his classmates fought for popularity, she’d slipped away from him. Suddenly. Like the explosion of a cannon.
    In those days, his father had wallowed in his own grief, seemingly forgetting that his son—an only child—had lost his mother. Yes, today he walked tall and sometimes performed what his colleagues at the hospital referred to as miracles. He wasn’t a fool, and not much frightened him. He knew himself, and he knew he excelled at what he did. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t vulnerable, that he didn’t need love, affection and a woman’s tenderness.
    Melanie’s hands stroked and caressed his back, and, whether she intended them for his ears or not, her whispered words came to him clearly: At least you’re precious to me. He didn’t comment; when she wanted him to know it, she’d say it loud and clear. He slipped his arms around her waist, hugged her, kissed her belly and sat up.
    “Do you think you can manage the office next week? I have to attend a convention. I’m conducting a workshop on the diagnosis of certain circulatory ailments, and I haven’t found a doctor who’s willing to fill in for me at my South Baltimore office. They’d happily take my Bolton Hill patients, but…well, you know the story.”
    “What will I do if someone really needs a doctor?”
    “Send them to General, but phone first. I’ll give you a message that should make their admittance easier, and you have my cell-phone number.”
    “You know I’ll do the best I can.”
    He didn’t like leaving Melanie alone to handle his office emergencies, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t leave his patients with no care at all. Since he’d opened that office, he’d learned more about poverty and the plight of the poor than in his previous thirty-four and a half years, and the knowledge had changed him irrevocably.
    “You can certainly phone me. But if it’s an emergency like we had the other night, you may call a doctor whose name I’ll leave with you. He owes me, and he should help.”
    “All right, but I hope I don’t have one that I can’t handle.”
    At the concert’s end, he packed up, walked with Melanie to his car and stored the picnic basket and remains of their supper in the trunk. “I don’t know about you,” he said as he eased the Porsche from the curb, “but for me, this has been a delightful and revealing evening.”
    “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, Jack. It’s been wonderful.”
    He stopped for a red light and looked at her, feminine and sexy with her hair swinging around her shoulders. “And in the office tomorrow evening, you’ll have your hair up and some little white pearl balls sticking in your ears.” He allowed himself a slight shrug. “But I don’t mind. Both women get to me.” When he reached the building in which she lived, he accompanied her to her apartment and waited while she unlocked the door.
    “You gave me something very special tonight, Melanie. I’ll have to think about it for a long time before I’ll be able to articulate it, but I’ve locked it right here.” He pointed to his heart, leaned down and kissed her quickly on her lips. “Good night.” It had been an evening that he would never forget.
    The following morning, Friday, at his Bolton Hills office, when he saw his South Baltimore office number on his cell phone caller ID, his heartbeat accelerated, pounding like horses’ hooves. Melanie never called him at this location.
    “Hello, Melanie. Is everything all right? How are you?”
    “Hi. I’m fine. I just got a call from Mrs. Hawkins. She said Midge got out of bed this morning and passed out as soon as she stood up.”
    “Hmm. What’s her phone number?” Melanie gave it to him. “She’s a very sick girl. I’ll call her mother. Stay sweet.”
    “You do the same.”
    No