Practice Makes Perfect (Single Father) by Janice Macdonald Read Free Book Online

announced she was selling the practice. “I was waiting for the right moment, but I didn’t want you to hear about it from someone else.”
    Sarah stared at her. “You’re not serious.”
    “Yes, I am.”
    “You’re retiring?”
    “Compassionate Medical Systems is buying me out. For a very good price, I might add. And take that horrified look off your face.”
    “I’m shocked.”
    Rose took a deep breath. “Welcome to the real world. The handwriting is on the wall. Sure, I can hold on for a few more years, but it’s like those mom-and-pop stores—like McGregor’s. I remember when I used to do most of my grocery shopping there and I still drop in to pick up milk or something I’ve run out of, but that’s mostly out of loyalty. When I need a lot of groceries I go to Albertsons or Safeway. Everyone does, it’s a fact of life.”
    Her hands suddenly icy, Sarah wrapped them around her coffee mug. Rose was going on about managed care being the wave of the future and encouraging her to apply to Compassionate Medical Systems. Sarah flashed back to the time as a kid when she’d saved her allowance to buy her mom a Norman Rockwell print: a country doctor’s office, the small boy baring his bum for the kindly old doctor’s injection.
    She could still see Rose’s bemused expression as she unwrapped the gift. Years later, she’d understood. Too sentimental. Generations of Benedicts might have practiced medicine out of the same family home, but they’d never been a Norman Rockwell family. And now that the money was right, Rose was casually parting with tradition. Selling out.
    “Sarah, I know this is a disappointment,” Rose said, apparently reading her expression, “but it’s honestly the only way to go. It’s getting harder and harder to make a living this way. More uninsured patients.”
    “Someone has to take care of them.”
    “Someone also has to make a living,” Rose said. “And if you think I’m being hard-hearted, talk to Matthew—”
    “I already have.”
    “Uh-oh.” Rose’s mouth twisted. “And?”
    “Take a wild guess.”
    “Didn’t I try to tell you?”
    After Rose left, Sarah stood in the kitchen, staring out at the gulls and the tankers on the water and the wind-tossed trees. Things did not look promising.
    On the wall of her clinic in Central America, she’d tacked up a pain-assessment chart with six cartoonlike faces whose expressions ranged from happy and smiling to great discomfort and unbearable pain. Small kids couldn’t read the captions underneath—annoying, nagging, miserable, horrible, excruciating and so forth—but they knew that a furrowed brow, down-turned mouth and falling tears weren’t good things.
    She’d stuck the chart on the refrigerator. Right now, she was definitely among the scowls and grimaces group. Coming back to Port Hamilton was supposed to be like completing a circle. A return to the place where she’d been the happiest, an opportunity to practice medicine with a doctor she admired for his ideals and who was also her best friend.
    So much for that.
    She made more coffee, carried her mug into the living room, back to the window. Tempted to just go to bed, pull the covers over her head and shut out the world, she was stopped by Rose’s voice in her head mocking her for doing that very thing. She pulled on her sweats and running shoes and jogged down to Francis Street Park, her favorite place in Port Hamilton.
    The park was steeply banked with tangles of blackberries on either side and steps running down to the water. Even before she reached the steps, she could see the dark hull of a tanker at anchor, hear the seagulls screech. She felt almost a holiness, like walking into a church.
    She took deep, slow breaths, tried to clear her mind. Minutes passed and, slowly, the turbulent thoughts began to subside. She would be all right. Things would work out. She would come up with a new plan. Maybe Matthew wouldn’t have fit into the picture anyway.
    They