Sanctuary

father’s footsteps and go into medicine. And they had assumed she would continue to follow, into his cardiac surgery specialty, into his thriving practice, and right along to the platinum-edged lifestyle both of them so enjoyed.
    Instead she’d chosen family practice, her grandmother’s weather-beaten cottage, and the simplicity of island life.
    She couldn’t have been happier.
    Tidily arranged with the appointment book that bore her initials in gold leaf were a snazzy phone system with intercom—in the unlikely event that she should ever need an assistant—and a Lucite container of well-sharpened Ticonderoga pencils.
    Kirby had spent her first few weeks of practice doing little more than sharpening pencils and wearing them down again by doodling on the blotter.
    But she’d stuck, and gradually she’d begun to use those pencils to note down appointments. A baby with the croup, an old woman with arthritis, a child spiking a fever with roseola.
    It had been the very young or the very old who’d trusted her first. Then others had come to have their stitches sewn, the aches tended, their stomachs soothed. Now she was Doc Kirby, and the clinic was holding its own.
    Kirby scanned her appointment book. An annual gyn, a follow-up on a nasty sinus infection, the Matthews boy had another earache, and the Simmons baby was due in for his next immunizations. Well, her waiting room wasn’t going to be crowded, but at least she’d keep busy through the morning. And who knew, she thought with a chuckle, there could be a couple of emergencies to liven up the day.
    Since Ginny Pendleton was her gyn at ten o’clock, Kirby calculated she had at least another ten minutes. Ginny was invariably late for everything. Pulling the necessary chart, she stepped back into the kitchen, poured the last of the coffee from the pot she’d made early that morning, and took it with her to the examining room.
    The room where she’d once dreamed away summer nights was now crisp and clean. She had posters of wildflowers on the white walls rather than the pictures of nervous systems and ear canals that some doctors decorated with. Kirby thought they made patients jumpy.
    After sliding the chart into the holder inside the door, she took out one of the backless cotton gowns—she thought paper gowns humiliating—and laid it out on the foot of the examining table. She hummed along with the quiet Mozart sonata from the stereo she’d switched on. Even those who eschewed classical would invariably relax to it, she’d found.
    She’d arranged everything she’d need for the basic yearly exam and had finished off her coffee when she heard the little chime that meant the door at the clinic entrance had opened.
    “Sorry, sorry,” Ginny came in on the run as Kirby stepped into the living room that served as the waiting area. “The phone rang just as I was leaving.”
    She was in her middle twenties, and Kirby was continually telling her that her fondness for the sun was going to haunt her in another ten years. Her hair was white-blond, shoulder-length, frizzed mercilessly, and crying out for a root job.
    Ginny came from a family of fishermen, and though she could pilot a boat like a grinning pirate, clean a fish like a surgeon, and shuck oysters with dizzying speed and precision, she preferred working at the Heron Campground, helping the novice pitch a tent, assigning sites, keeping the books.
    For her doctor’s appointment, she’d spruced herself up with one of her favored western shirts in wild-plum purple with white fringe. Kirby wondered with idle curiosity how many internal organs were gasping for oxygen beneath the girdle-tight jeans.
    “I’m always late.” Ginny sent her a sunny, baffled smile that made Kirby laugh.
    “And everyone knows it. Go ahead in and pee in the bottle first. You know the routine. Then go into the exam room. Take everything off, put the gown on opening to the front. Just give a holler when you’re ready.”
    “Okay. It was Lexy on the phone,” she called out as she scurried down the hall in her cowboy boots and shut the door. “She’s feeling restless.”
    “Usually is,” Kirby replied.
    Ginny continued chatting as she left the bathroom and turned into the exam room.
    “Anyway, Lexy’s going to come down to the campground tonight about nine o’clock.” There was a thud as the first boot hit the floor. “Number twelve is free. It’s one of my favorites. We thought we’d build us a nice fire, knock