The M.D. Next Door. Gina Wilkins

still surprised her how shaken she had been by the crisis. Meagan had spent the past ten years in the medical field, but seeing it from a hospital bed had been a completely different experience. She had been fortunate not to have had any health crises during her first thirty-two years, having been hospitalized only once for a tonsillectomy when she was nine. She had decided then that she wanted to be a doctor, but she had been so young she hardly remembered the hospital experience itself.

      This had been different. She’d been forced during the past week to face both her mortality and her fertility, and she had been taken aback by her reactions.

      Meilin had assured her the loss of an ovary would not prevent her from conceiving a child. But Meagan was thirty-two and not even dating anyone in particular. She had maybe another decade, more or less, to have a child should she decide to do so.

      As for mortality—she had always thought there would be plenty of time for the things she had neglected in her single-minded pursuit of her career. Hobbies. Travel. Marriage. Children. Now she was suddenly aware of how quickly time had passed. Her twenties had sped by in a blur of medical school studying, long, sleepless residency hours, then establishing her practice as a surgeon in a Little Rock, Arkansas teaching hospital. The people she loved were growing older. Her mother was nearing sixty, her grandmother was in her eighties. Her younger brother had just turned thirty and their little sister wasn’t far behind.

      She remembered as a child hearing older people talk about how quickly time flew. Back then she hadn’t understood; now she identified all too well with that sentiment.

      “Oof!” Her wistful musings ended abruptly when a solid, wiggling weight landed directly on her stomach, only inches from her still-healing incision.

      “What the—?”

      Warm breath bathed her face while an eager pink tongue tried to do the same. Her hands were filled with a squirming, panting yellow puppy—a good-sized one at that, with paws as big as her fists and a smiling, wet-nosed face. The dog wasn’t still long enough for her to read the red metal tag dangling from his collar. Every time one of his big feet landed on her abdomen, she groaned.

      “Waldo!”

      A girl with a fresh, freckled face almost hidden behind round glasses and an unruly mop of brown curls rushed to rescue Meagan from the friendly assault. She grabbed the pup and wrestled him into a firm clench in her skinny arms. “Be still, Waldo. I’m so sorry, ma’am. I hope he didn’t scare you. He’s really friendly.”

      Apparently, Meagan’s mom had accidentally left the backyard gate open when she left. Pressing one hand to her throbbing scar and wiping her damp cheek with the other, Meagan managed to smile at the girl. “He is definitely friendly. You called him Waldo?”

      The girl nodded shyly. “My dad named him that because we’re always asking where’s Waldo?”

      Meagan laughed, which only made her incision hurt worse. “Cute. You’d better keep him on a leash, though. I’d hate for him to run out in the street and get hit.”

      “He got away from me when I was trying to untangle his leash.” Juggling the dog, the girl managed to snap a sturdy leather leash onto his collar. Only then did she set him down, clinging to the strap with both hands when he immediately tried to dash away from her. He almost tugged her off her feet before she braced herself. “Be still, Waldo. We’re taking him to obedience classes.”

      Meagan eyed the bounding pup skeptically. “Um—how’s that going?”

      “We just signed him up for six classes. They start a week from Saturday.”

      The dog pounced on the only errant dandelion sprouting from Meagan’s immaculate backyard and enthusiastically ripped the puff from the top, shaking his head, play-growling and scattering seeds everywhere. Meagan thought the obedience class teacher would have quite a challenge with this particular student.

      “I’m Alice Llewellyn,” the girl volunteered, still clinging to the leash. “I live in the red brick house on the other side of the street, two houses down.”

      Though she had never met the inhabitants, Meagan knew the house. She nodded. “Hi, Alice. I’m Meagan Baker.”

      “We just moved here a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t met many of the neighbors yet.”

      Meagan had lived in this upscale, young-professionals neighborhood for almost two years and hadn’t met many of her neighbors either. It wasn’t that she was unfriendly, she assured herself. She simply wasn’t home much. Her working hours started very early, so she rarely saw any neighbors when headed for the hospital. She usually returned home tired and hungry, drove straight into the garage and put the door down behind her, then walked directly into her kitchen. Because of her busy schedule, she paid someone to keep up her lawn and pool. She did her walking and weight training at the hospital gym. And while she enjoyed swimming laps in her solar-heated pool, she usually did so after dark within the privacy of her tall redwood fence—the gate of which was now swinging open.

      “It’s very nice to meet you, Alice. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

      The dandelion conquered and demolished, Waldo moved on to sniff the base of an azalea bush covered in pink blooms. Fortunately Alice tugged him away from it before he could destroy that, too.

      “When we moved here, I hoped there would be some other kids my age in one of the houses close to ours,” Alice confided. “My best friends from school live in other parts of town, so someone has to drive me to their houses. We’re on spring break from school, but there aren’t any other teenagers to hang out with on this street. A few little kids, but no one my age. I turned thirteen last week.”

      Alice was quite obviously proud to call herself a teenager now, Meagan thought with a smothered smile. “Happy belated birthday.”

      Alice grinned, showing a quick flash of braces. “Thanks. Waldo was my birthday present. But now my dad says he wishes he’d bought me something less destructive. Like a chainsaw.”

      Alice’s dad seemed to have quite the sense of humor. Because the girl seemed lonely, Meagan motioned toward another outdoor chair. “Would you like to have a seat? I can get you a soda or some lemonade.”

      “No, thank you, my nan—um, the housekeeper is probably wondering where I am.”

      Meagan deliberately gave no indication that she’d noticed the young teen’s quick substitute of the word housekeeper for nanny. Teenagers, of course, would never admit to having or needing a nanny.

      “I like your pool,” Alice added with a glance around the backyard. “Dad says maybe we’ll get one when he gets time to think about it. He’s a lawyer and he’s been real busy at work lately. There was a pool at the condo where he used to live, but he decided he needed a real house now that I live with him and this one didn’t come with a pool. It has room for one in the backyard, though, so he said he’ll think about it because I love to swim.”

      Charmed by the artless chatter, even though she was bemused by how much personal information the girl had crammed into a few sentences, Meagan motioned toward her small, but functional pool. “You’d be welcome to swim in mine during your spring break. I’m home every day for the next few weeks to recover from a surgical procedure, and I’d enjoy the company if it’s okay with your dad and your, um, housekeeper. The pool is heated, so you’d be warm enough as long as you bring a cover-up for when you get out of the water. As warm as it has been this month, it’s still a little too cool to stand around in a wet bathing suit.”

      Alice’s face lit up with her smile, making Meagan realize the girl was actually quite pretty beneath the glasses and wild hair. “That would be so cool. I really love to swim. I’ll ask my dad. I’m sure he’ll say it’s okay. Thanks, Miss Baker.”

      “You can just call me Meagan.” She’d never been one to insist on being called “doctor,” like some of her more pretentious colleagues.

      “Thanks, Meagan. I’ll see you later, okay? Come on, Waldo, let’s go home.”