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  “I have all that tattooed into my brain.”

  “So what are you asking?”

  That was the thing. He didn’t mind looking out for his people, taking care of them, but he hated all the stuff he had to keep track of and fix when he fucked things up.

  The love was easy.

  When his dad died after a long battle with lung cancer, Sam, for the first time ever, wanted to leave.

  As soon as the last of his father’s ashes had been blown from his fingers into the snow and wind over the lake, he wanted to get in his car and drive away.

  Away from decisions, big ones and little ones.

  Away from bills and invoices—so many of those.

  Away from how his brother and sisters looked at him, as though he was certain to let them down, but they needed him anyway.

  He didn’t run away. He made decisions, good ones and bad ones. He paid as many bills as he could, robbing Peter to pay Paul, shuffling them around until everything almost worked, and then finding bills and less money.

  He’d been the one to put their family home on the market to settle all the debts. He’d packed their entire family into boxes no one else wanted to go through, hauled everything to a storage locker he’d probably pay rent on forever.

  He’d been the one everyone thought was heartless when he called the real estate agent, when he took the first offer that came through, thank God for Mike, thank Christ for him.

  He did all that while Sarah recovered in the hospital after getting herself almost killed in some stupid stunt of an illegal bike race.

  Which could have been why he kept getting kicked out of her hospital room for yelling at her, even as he would walk to her unit and promise himself he would just sit with her this time. But she would look so much thinner, or she’d be maxed out on her pain meds for the day, or the surgeon’s report would suck and suddenly a nurse would have him by the elbow.

  No matter how he shuffled around the problem, he couldn’t figure it out.

  Sam sat up straight, trying to think, and thought about his exam room again.

  The clinic backed up on a busy road that fed into the street in front of the high school, but in there it was hushed.

  His life was stacks of papers he didn’t understand, heaps of laundry, file folders stuffed with bills, a family who edged around him, wary.

  In the exam room, he was Dr. Burnside, and the people who sat on the exam table looked at him like he could actually do something worthwhile.

  He looked at his hands, at the pink sunburn on the backs of them, at the soft and sore skin where there were blisters from picking crops and rough vines. Nina looked at him that way. Like he was worthwhile. She’d put her arm around him and hugged him in a cornfield. She’d given him work and wasn’t surprised when he did it well.

  Sam closed his eyes and tried to breathe. He thought about Nina, which was normal, but this time he was thinking, She did this.

  Not this, not exactly, but she had come here with almost nothing but the brains in her head and her expertise and a broken heart and a couple of people, new-to-her people that she had to trust her gut about, and one tilled row at a time she’d built her farms, and her CSA subscriptions, and her café, and then, when she could have expanded more, she gave back to her adopted community with the urban farm plots.

  He had so much more than she had started with—he had his family and Lacey, people he’d known his whole life and didn’t know not to trust. An entire community had his back. He and Lacey had sailed through a lot of the sector and community research, and had little problem signing practice agreements with low-income programs at the hospital.

  He and Lacey would make it. Their success was determined by history, by the families who had watched them grow up and had invested the future in them already, long ago.

  Nina grew everything herself—the farms, the business, the people, and the trust.

  Just Nina.

  He felt sick, all over again, that he had ended their date so catastrophically. His impulse hadn’t respected her and how strong she was when she was given the chance to learn and work toward something.

  That something could have been him.

  He had always wanted everything all at once, so he didn’t have to worry, so that he could have faith that nothing bad was ever going to happen.

  Nina took the bad and the good things as they inevitably came, one at a time, and grew stronger and stronger, more able to bear what was difficult, and more able to accept all the good.

  He could have been something good.

  They could have been something good.

  If it wasn’t too late, he still wanted them to be something good.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence that she had opened her café in his neighborhood, and that her community farms were here, too. She lived north of here, but her condo wasn’t the home he would have anticipated.

  PJ said he wanted to be like Dad, driving his limo around the neighborhood, waving at everyone, gossiping from the Burnsides’ stoop.

  Sounded pretty fucking good to him.

  “You see her?”

  Sam looked at Lacey.

  “You’re just sitting there with a dumb smile on your face and I figured you were thinking about her.”

  “I was.”

  “Was she there this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, I’ll—”

  Sam and Lacey suddenly sat straight up. Someone was pounding against the glass double doors at the front of the clinic. Sam tipped his chair over to start running toward the front.

  “Nathan!” Lacey yelled in the hallway. Her son was up front hanging out with PJ and Sam felt his heart in his throat.

  Nathan met Sam and Lacey in the hall. “PJ’s letting in Mrs. Washington and Rae, Mama. I think Mrs. Washington’s having trouble breathing.”

  Sam felt the whole world slow down.

  He turned to Lacey.

  “Go get the exam room set up and start up the nebulizer with two bullets of albuterol and one of those ipratropium inhalers we got from the drug rep. I want O2, pulse ox, an intubation kit with ambu bag, steroid—IM, whatever we’ve got. Call squad.”

  She was already gone.

  PJ had let in Maureen Washington and her teenage grandniece, Rae. Maureen had lifelong severe asthma and Sam was surprised she could walk. Her lips were dusky, her breathing loud, too fast, and shallow.

  Sam felt his blood grow warm, his heart slow down. In one beat, he was helping PJ bring Maureen to the exam room, in the next he had the nebulizer mask mixing oxygen and albuterol over her face, his stethoscope to her chest, his hand steady on her upper arm.

  He nodded at Lacey to give Maureen a steroid.

  He kept his eyes on Maureen’s, a woman he had seen at mass dozens of times growing up. He had gone to school with all four of her kids. Her eyes were wide and panicky, but he just kept his hand and his gaze steady, thought about the fields of her lungs that he couldn’t hear, listened to Lacey’s report of Maureen’s oxygen saturation.

  “The ambulance is on its way. The medicine’s already helping. Nice and slow, Mrs. Washington.”

  She nodded.

  Sam listened.

  He heard the soft, low whoosh of deeper breath in her lungs. Watched the muscles in her face relax. He started a slow, firm stroke from her shoulder over her large upper arm as he kept listening. He cast his eyes to the ipratropium inhaler Lacey had on the crash cart, and he coached Maureen through two puffs, returned the nebulizer mask, listened.

  “We up over eighty yet, Lace?” Sam smiled at Maureen.

  “Just grabbed ninety.”

  “Good job, Mrs. Washington, you’re going to be okay, darlin’, you hear me?”

  Maureen nodded and closed her eyes.

  “We’re going to keep this going until squad gets here, don’t you worry.”

  She nodded again.

  “You run out of your inhalers?”

  She no
dded, and Sam watched her eyes fill with tears.

  “You don’t worry about that, you hear me? I’m going to send Rae home with a big box of samples for both your rescue and your steroid inhalers, no matter what, okay? You come here if you start getting low again.”

  Maureen pulled down her mask, whispered, “You’ve always been such a good boy, Sammy.”

  Sam pulled her mask back up and tugged out one of the earpieces of his stethoscope, hearing the squad come through the front doors with PJ, Rae crying behind him, the rest of the world coming back into focus.

  He looked at Lacey. She smiled.

  “Good job, Dr. Burnside. It’s a pleasure to work with you.”

  Sam leaned over and kissed Maureen’s forehead.

  * * *

  Nina heard Rachel’s voice as if it was coming from far away.

  “Eat all of that pudding. Then the juice. I know it’s not as good as you’re used to, baby, but it will help you feel better.”

  “She okay, Rachel?”

  “Her color’s better. Not so white around her lips and green around her gills.”

  “I don’t have gills,” Nina said, and slowly swallowed another bite of syrupy vanilla pudding from the plastic cup the nurse gave Rachel and tried not to gag.

  “You ladies okay in here, now?”

  Nina watched the nurse go to Tay’s bedside and bend over to look at the bloody bag of urine hooked to the frame coming from Tay’s catheter. Nina closed her eyes and took a breath through her nose.

  “Good,” Nina made herself say.

  “Glad you were by the chair, ma’am, you could’ve hit your head.”

  “Fine,” Nina replied.

  Rachel clucked and smoothed her hand over her forehead. The nurse left and Nina forced herself to take another tiny bite of pudding.

  Then she heard Tay giggle.

  “Ha, ha.” Nina said.

  “It’s just that you’re tall and strong and kind of cut, even, and then you just went all noodly.”

  “Don’t tease,” Rachel said, but she said it laughing.

  “Whatever.”

  “I don’t get it,” Tay said.” You’ve butchered before. Dealt with dead animals in the fields. All kinds of stuff. Remember that deer that was all … slimy when I found it last spring? You just grabbed it by the hooves or whatever and chained it to the tractor, dragged it right out. I had to walk away and think happy thoughts.”

  “Different.”

  “Then there was that time you cut your knee right open on a loop of cheese wire. You were bleeding all over the place. I still get kind of queasy thinking about smoked gouda, and you just wrapped it up and went to the urgent care. No big deal.”

  “Still different.”

  Nina finally felt steady enough to lean back in the recliner and open her eyes.

  Rachel sat down at the foot of Tay’s bed. “It’s other people’s blood, isn’t it, baby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oops,” said Tay. “I should have warned you about that packing change, then.”

  “It’s okay. Please don’t fuss over me.”

  “You’re probably much weaker than usual, too, after all the sex with the doctor.”

  Rachel turned her head and shooshed Tay sharply.

  “Don’t shoosh me, I’m in the hospital.”

  “You can still keep hold of your manners.”

  “I hardly had manners before my pee was hanging in a bag from my bed.”

  “It’s okay, Rach.”

  The women were quiet for a while, and Nina worked on breathing and getting her center back. The visit had been going so well. Tay was feeling much better and could sit up a little. The pathology reports had come back as oncology had expected without any unanticipated spread of Tay’s cancer.

  They had been joking through their tears about Adam bossing around Nina in the fields during one of the last sweet corn harvests yesterday, yelling at Nina all day long. Then he had taken Nina to dinner to ask her what kind of ring to get Tay.

  Then the nurse had come in and worked between Tay’s legs, pulling out blood-soaked packing, changing it while Tay dozed after pushing the button on her pain pump, and it had overwhelmed Nina.

  What Tay was facing. The worry in Rachel’s bloodshot eyes. Adam’s misplaced anger in the fields yesterday.

  The blood. Tay’s blood.

  Then she had gone down.

  And yeah, she hadn’t been sleeping either. Or eating all that well. Tay and Adam and Rachel, the ten thousand needs of all her seasonal farmhands, and the community projects. Taking over seed and processing orders from Tay.

  Sam.

  Sam’s body, under hers, over hers, his hands bracketing her face. The way he looked at her and kissed her.

  Marry me, Nina.

  Russ hadn’t ever proposed. Russ had been a foregone conclusion. Shortly after she graduated from ESU, he’d taken her out to dinner and they’d talked about whether his folks should get into the nursery business and then he’d asked if she thought she’d be okay getting married at Christmas, or if she wanted to do it sooner.

  She’d heard from her intern that Sam had been at his regular shift this morning, watering and weeding, and her heart had squeezed. By some mutual agreement, they hadn’t contacted each other after he left her apartment when his proposal made her cry—not like a bride-to-be cries, but like a person cries when hurting a friend.

  Then the next morning: her whole life, coming at her, her business, her farm; she had been making decisions so quickly lately that she dreaded the coming months, because she hadn’t had the time to think any of her decisions all the way through.

  She had no room for another yes, even as the no had choked her with tears.

  Farming was always uncertain, but she had grown fat the last several years, fed by all the love from people sharing her vision. Taking more on her own made her remember earlier years when she’d shouldered so much and every season came relentlessly after the next and she’d been certain she was going under, ruining farmland, letting farm shareholders down.

  This time was worse, because she knew different. She knew the fat and plenty, knew the joy of feeding and feasting, and for the first time, the safety of others. Like she had known when she was young, her parents legal, with a business of their own, and she’d been running through corn rows with a half-grown boy who smiled all the time.

  Making herself safe again, she had made for herself so much to lose.

  She couldn’t lose Sam if she didn’t have him.

  Which she was old enough to know was terrible logic, wasn’t even the logic she had recently told herself to listen to, but fear wasn’t very good at logic.

  She wondered if she was ready to feel she deserved the women in her life, the people, her dream as realized as any farming dream could be, and someone like Sam who would believe anything she did was good.

  Who would show up to take orders from her intern after she had given him nothing but no.

  “Sam,” she said, because he was in the doorway to Tay’s room.

  He looked at her, fully her surfer boy god in his familiar cargo shorts and T-shirt, his cheekbones and ears too red from the sun, his red hair with new gold highlights at the ends.

  Then he looked at Tay, and went to her.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice easy.

  “Hey, Dr. Sam.” Tay fist-bumped him.

  “How’s the digs?”

  “The food sucks.”

  “To the rescue.” He held up a sack that Nina hadn’t even noticed. It was from the strange but awesome vegan beer hall in his neighborhood where Nina had discovered had some of the best veggie burgers and fries she’d ever had, and who wouldn’t give Rachel the recipe.

  “Oh this is the shit, thanks, Sam.”

  “So you’re eating okay? On regular diet orders? No vomiting?”

  “As of yesterday night. And I’ve been super hungry all day today.”

  “Take it easy, anyway. Your pain tolerable?”


  Tay held up the button she could push for medication to go through her IV. “Got it.”

  “Don’t wait. Push it when you need it.”

  “Got it. You gonna doctor Nina?”

  He looked at Nina again, his brow wrinkled. She shook her head at Tay. “I’m fine.”

  “She almost took a header.”

  “Nina?”

  “Oh no, really. I’m fine.”

  “She can’t handle blood and she still looks pretty pale. I don’t know, maybe someone should take her home.”

  Nina narrowed her eyes at Tay, whom she could tell was trying not to laugh.

  She looked at Rachel for help, but Rachel was picking imaginary lint off the skirt of her yellow gingham sundress.

  “Did they bring you some juice?”

  Nina held her foil-covered cup of OJ to show Sam.

  “Take your blood pressure?”

  She nodded.

  Sam looked at Rachel. “She throw up?”

  “No, honey. She ate a little pudding, but I think maybe our girl Tay is right and Nina should go home.”

  “You drive?”

  Nina sighed. “I’m okay. Everyone here knows I’m okay. I rode with Rachel.”

  “Yeah, baby. But I was going to stay with Tay tonight until Adam got here late. You should go on home and rest. You were out in the fields this morning, and need to get up early.”

  “So do you. To open the café.”

  “Oh, but I’m used to it.” Rachel raised a perfect eyebrow and Nina heard Tay giggle again.

  “So am I, Rachel. I’m a farmer.”

  “Umm, hmm,” Rachel hummed, which meant she would no longer be good for conversation and had dug her heels in.

  Nina looked at Tay, who was again trying not to laugh.

  She looked at Sam.

  He actually appeared a little sorry.

  “Fine.”

  Sam stood up the same time Nina did, and they looked at each other across the small hospital room.

  “All I need is a ride.”

  “No problem.”

  “I can take a taxi; you’ll have to go north and then all the way back past the hospital to go home.”

  “Barely half a mile out of my way.”