They Laughed When I Left, So I Came Home the Town's Doctor novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Gate

Sanna's first shift shows the ER how much she has changed, Paavo Niemi asks her to dinner like a fact, and Tuomas turns up at dawn with a rake.

My first shift started at seven, and by seven-fifteen I had a man in bed four with a chest full of fluid.

"You're the Lahti girl," he said between breaths. "Your mother taught my kids to spell."

"She taught half the county," I said, and listened to his lungs.

"Is it true you stood up on that stage and told Kaarina Ahola off?"

"I told a microphone a date. Lean forward for me."

He leaned forward and wheezed a laugh.

"Same thing," he said.

I ordered the diuretic and the oxygen and watched his color come back in the first ten minutes.

When he was breathing easy, he caught my sleeve.

"Doc," he said. "You stay."

"I signed the paper."

"Good. We lost the last two in a year."

The charge nurse was waiting for me at the desk when I came out.

She was fifty, solid, with reading glasses on a beaded chain and a face that gave nothing away.

"Dr. Lahti," she said. "I watched the video."

"There's a video."

"There are four. The orderlies passed them around at midnight." She slid a coffee across the desk. "For the record, this department has been waiting six years for somebody to say that to Kaarina Ahola."

"I didn't say it to her. I said it to the room."

"Better," she said. "She can't hit a room."

I drank the coffee and felt, for the first time since September, that I was in the right building.

I picked up the next chart.

The name on it was a man I had gone to school with, in for a sprained wrist.

He looked at me, then at the floor, and said in a rush, "I'm sorry about before."

"About what?" I said.

"The grocery store."

"Which time?"

His whole neck went red.

I wrapped the wrist and did not say another word, and I think that was worse for him than anything I could have said.

At three I drove to the school.

Hillcrest Elementary was a brick building with a flagpole and a line of parents who knew each other's cars.

My mother had dropped the twins off that morning, so I only had to pick them up.

I parked at the end of the line and got out.

Heads turned.

A woman I vaguely knew gave me a nod, the first nod I had been given in this town since I was twenty-seven.

I put it in my pocket for later.

"Mama!"

Helmi came across the lawn at a run in her yellow boots, braids flying.

Onni walked behind her, carrying both their backpacks, because she had given him hers.

"Hand it back," I said.

"He likes it," said Helmi.

"I do not," said Onni. "It has a bunny on it."

A very large man stood a few feet off, holding a small boy by the shoulders.

He was easily six-three, with a red-brown beard and a navy peacoat that strained across his chest.

He caught me looking and grinned.

"You're Dr. Lahti," he said.

"Everyone says that like it's news."

"It is news." He put his hand out. "Paavo Niemi. That's my nephew, who's in the twins' class and says your son is the only person who has ever explained a drawbridge to him correctly."

"A bascule," said Onni, without looking up. "A drawbridge is the old word."

Paavo laughed so loud that two mothers jumped.

"I'm a harbor pilot," he said to me. "I take the ore boats in and out of the lower harbor. If he ever wants to see one close, I'll put him on my deck. With you attached, of course."

Onni went still.

"A real one?" he said.

"As real as it gets."

"Can I ask what kind of cargo?"

"Taconite," said Paavo gravely. "Pellets."

"Mama," said Onni. "Mama. Taconite."

"I heard," I said. I was smiling and could not stop.

Helmi planted herself in front of him in her boots.

"Are you married?" she said.

"Helmi."

"It's a good question," said Paavo, unbothered. "No."

"Do you have a dog?"

"I have a cat who hates me."

"That's the wrong kind of pet," said Helmi. "Buddy, I'll think about you."

I put a hand over my eyes.

When I looked again, Paavo was watching me over his nephew's head, with the open pleasure of a man who doesn't hide it.

"Dr. Lahti, I'd like to take you to dinner Friday," he said. "The Harbor Table, seven o'clock. You don't have to answer now. I'll tell you I'm not good at games, and I'll ask again if you say no."

"You're asking in front of my children."

"I'm asking in front of my nephew. It seemed polite."

I opened my mouth to say I would think about it.

What came out was, "Seven."

"Seven," said Paavo, and it was settled.

Later, at home, my mother cut apples at the counter and said nothing, loudly.

I helped the twins into pajamas and told two stories and checked the lock.

Then I lay awake in the room I had slept in as a girl and saw Tuomas's face in the coat room.

At midnight I got up and switched the porch light off, in case a certain truck drove by.

I told myself that was about the neighbors.

At five in the morning I heard a truck idle at the curb, then a door, then a long scrape along the lawn.

I looked out through the curtain.

Tuomas Ahola stood in my mother's front yard in the dark with a rake in his hands.

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