Page 98 of Plentywood
“Is it the money, Ben? You’d be a junior physician in the beginning, but I could pull strings for a doctor with your pedigree.”
“The salary offer was fine, sir,” I said. “I’ll tell you what. I’m wrapping up this calendar year and then I would be available for the academic year that begins in June of next year if I decide to move on from Plentywood.”
“Plentywood?” he mused. “Interesting name for a town. Sounds quaint.”
“That it is,” I agreed. “But it’s big on personality and its residents are terrific folks.”
When had I begun to use the wordfolks? Not to mention, when had I begun to see Plentywood as big on personality?
“Very well, Dr. Hawthorne. Just say the word and I’ll send the contract out to you via courier.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll make my final decision after the new year.”
After hanging up the phone, I scrolled through old text messages. Rocco had been texting for weeks now and I still hadn’t replied. The latest ones threatened to come find me if I didn’t answer him. Apparently, he’d been struggling without me. He even said he missed me, and that maybe he’d been too hasty to let me leave without putting up more of a fight. I don’t remember him putting upanyfight.
He’d also included short videos of himself playing with his dick. Because I didn’t want to encourage him any further, I’d ignored his texts and his R-rated videos. But now I was receiving long and pleading emails begging me to return to New York. Hehad me wondering if, in fact, he did love me. His latest email ended withLove, Rocco. Rocco had never used the word love in any situation that involved us as a couple. As usual, where Rocco was concerned, I was probably reaching.
I almost dropped my phone when Agnes came bursting through the door. “Jesus!” I gasped, shoving my phone into my top desk drawer.
“What?” she snapped. “Am I supposed to knock before I come into my job?”
“Never mind,” I muttered. “I was caught off guard.”
“You don’t say,” she wisecracked. “Kinda like I was when I heard you and the Sheriff are on some kinda break.”
I looked up at her accusingly. “Who told you that?”
“You ain’t that stupid, kiddo,” she huffed. “We live in a town of less than a thousand. I know when you take a shit before you do.”
“Gross!” I said, standing and placing that morning’s patient files on her desk with notes I’d made the night before. “Notes are completed for today’s visits,” I said.
“I knew it! Youarefucking bored,” she growled. “Patient files ready before eight AM? Notes and shit already done? Spill it, asshole.”
“You are incorrigible, Agnes.”
“Think I give a flying fuck?” she snapped, hanging her heavy winter coat on the coat tree by the door she came through. “It’s too cold to give a shit about manners at my age.”
“You’re a cranky old hag, no matter the weather,” I quipped.
“There you go, kiddo,” she said, chuckling and grinning at me. “That’s the first wise-ass comment out of ya in a week. So, who killed your puppy?”
“Buzz off, old woman. I’m fine,” I lied.
Agnes pulled out the chair across from me, her fave spot to harass me, and sat down, motioning for me to sit back in mychair. “You ain’t fine, doc. You haven’t been to Jill’s in a week and she even made that ridiculous bean casserole you love. And Hunt ain’t been in for his meatloaf,” she added. “So, in my world, the moon and sun ain’t lining up right. Who dumped who and why?”
This was not how I wanted to start a new week, but I’d been miserable pretending that I was fine all last week. Acting like I was pleased with my behavior a week ago Sunday wasn’t working. I had allowed a bunch of petty things to build in my mind without letting some steam out. I should have spoken to Hunt before I began resenting him and his rigid life.
“Hunt is so… he’s just so…” I began.
“Fucking uptight?” she offered. “A stubborn asshole? As hard-headed as a fence post? Am I getting close?”
“You’re kind of right on the money,” I admitted. “He’s stuck, Agnes.”
“Then unstuck the fucker,” she stated. “He’s a goddamned man, doc. They’re all stuck in their own little heads. Often only thinking with the one between their legs.”
Her joke should’ve made me laugh, but the seriousness with which I took Hunt’s obsession with not letting go of Mark’s ghost invaded my mind and my heart. Of course, I understood his grief. Of course, he had a right to remember and to memorialize his dead husband. But two-year-old notes with instructions from how many scoops of coffee to use to squeezing from the end of the toothpaste tube, were too much for a grown man.
“His house,” I whispered. “The… the… I don’t know. It’s odd,” I ended.
