Back to McGuffey's. Liz Flaherty

sighed again, and closed them.

      “Well,” said Kate, smiling at the animals, “I guess there might be stranger friendships than ours.” She got to her feet. “Come on, friend. I need to walk off some of these pastries Marce is forcing me to eat.”

      “Forcing you, huh?” He chuckled and led the way out of the yard. “And here I was going to offer to buy you a bagel and a coffee—the Bagel Stop’s the only place in town that’s open this late. Guess I won’t ask you now. I’d hate to lead you astray.”

      “Oh.” Kate walked beside him, stretching her stride as he shortened his so that by the time they reached the corner, she was gasping for air and he was taking baby steps. “You know,” she said, “if you’re hungry, I could probably get something down. Just a small coffee, you know, and maybe half a muffin. I could save the other half for breakfast.”

      “You bet,” he said. “Come on, short woman. Move it.”

      When he took her hand, it was a casual, friendly gesture, but it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She shook her head. It was probably just the frayed collar of her sweatshirt. She was going to have to get some clothes; that was all there was to it.

      The Bagel Stop was half-full of people. Kate, a natural-born morning person, looked around in disbelief. She’d never been here later than nine in the morning and assumed that’s when everyone else came, too. There couldn’t possibly be this many people in Fionnegan who stayed awake until midnight. “I thought it would be empty.”

      “This is a college town,” Ben reminded her, “and it’s time for finals.” He waved at the young woman behind the counter. “That’s Debby, who works nights and always looks tired. There’s a story there, but I don’t know what it is.”

      The pretty waitress’s smile did much to erase the weariness from her face. She made recommendations and didn’t roll her eyes when Kate changed her mind. Twice.

      “It’s a lot of calories,” said Kate, when Ben did roll his eyes. “I can only walk around the block so many times before I fall asleep.”

      “That one’s not worth it.” Debby pointed at Kate’s second choice. “It looks nice and a lot of people like it, but it will sit in the middle of your stomach and weigh seven pounds. That one weighs seven pounds too—” she pointed at the first choice “—but it’s so worth it. I’d even run around the block for it, but it would take more than once.”

      Kate opted for the first one, then followed Ben across the room to slide into a booth across from him.

      She was halfway through her chocolate-chip-and-cream-cheese muffin and Ben was on his second bagel when a commotion from a corner booth captured their attention. By the time she said, “I wonder what’s going on,” Ben was halfway across the room, shouldering his way into the middle of the crowd that had materialized around the booth.

      “Call 911,” he barked over his shoulder. Then to the milling group of panicked students, he said, “What’s he on? I need to know now.”

      Kate reached for her cell phone and dialed the emergency number, noting that several people hurried out the door of the Bagel Stop, sprinting toward the college campus a few blocks away without looking back.

      “I don’t know,” she said when the dispatcher came on the line and asked her to describe the situation. “A student collapsed at the Bagel Stop is all I can tell you. There is a doctor here. Yes, I’ll stay on the line.”

      “Walk!” She flinched at the shouted command.

      Ben and one of the remaining students held a barely conscious young man on his feet. “Come on, boy, get moving,” Ben ordered, not even a hint of a bedside manner in his approach, “or I promise you’re not going to like what they do to you in the emergency room.”

      “’S jus’ pills,” the boy insisted. “Jus’ a coupla pills.”

      Ben gave him a shake, one that had his head bobbing. “Yeah, yeah, I know—a couple. Been there and done that. No, you can’t sit down.”

      “Gotta study.”

      “You probably should have thought of that just a wee bit earlier in the semester. Keep walking!”

      “’S hard.” The boy gamboled along between his escorts, walking as though his knees were made of rubber.

      Kate stood aside and watched the scene unfold, waiting with the phone for further instructions from either Ben or the dispatcher. By the time the ambulance arrived, there were virtually no students left in the place other than the tall young man who’d supported his friend from the other side when Ben forced him to walk.

      The ambulance attendants asked calm questions as they loaded the still-mumbling patient onto the gurney. His friend watched them prepare him for transport, his expression difficult to read.

      “It’s hard for him,” he explained quietly to Ben and Kate after the ambulance had left. “He doesn’t care about college at all, but his folks think that’s the only way for him to be successful. It’s not that he’s lazy or anything. He’s not even that bad of a student, but he wants to go a different direction than the one they’ve laid out.”

      “It’s too bad.” Ben shook his hand. “Thanks for helping get him back on his feet. It probably won’t be the last time he’ll need a friend.” He felt around in the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, coming out with a business card. “If I can help, call that number.” He grinned. “When I was in college, I majored in disappointing my father. We both survived.”

      The young man left, walking alone toward campus. As they watched through the window, others joined him.

      “You’re good at that,” said Kate, when Debby had brought them fresh coffee and the students were out of sight. “Good at doctoring and good at listening.”

      “I know how the kid feels.”

      She looked up, startled. “What do you mean? And when did you disappoint your father? He’s always been proud of all of you.”

      He shrugged. “All I wanted to do was ski in the Olympics—you know that. I went to med school because it was so important to my folks that we all get good educations and overcome the fact that we grew up in a bar.” Ben shook his head, looking away from her. “Thing is, I didn’t want to overcome it. It was great growing up the way we did. I’m sorry they didn’t realize it.”

      Although a part of Kate was shocked that Ben apparently wasn’t as devoted to the practice of medicine as she’d always assumed, there was another part that understood. She remembered arguments he’d had with Tim about skiing when there was good powder. “The books’ll be there when the snow isn’t good anymore. They can wait.”

      “No, they can’t,” his father had insisted. “You’ll end up behind the bar like your mother and me.”

      So Ben had studied and excelled both in medical school and in practice in Massachusetts. Tim and Maeve were justifiably proud of their middle son. It had never occurred to Kate that he wasn’t proud of himself, as well.

      “Did you come back to Fionnegan to start a practice here,” she asked, holding his gaze with her own, “or to break the news to your folks that you weren’t going to be a doctor anymore?”