The Awakening of Dr. Brown

felt for Ruthie. The truth was, he thought of her as…well, a younger sister.

Of course, part of the reason for that attitude may have been the fact that Ruthie’s twin brother, the priest, happened to be Ethan’s former college roommate and best friend.

Also, both the Mendoza twins and Mrs. Schmidt were among the very few in town who were fully aware of Ethan’s identity. Not that he could have kept it a secret, even with the well-trimmed beard and longish hair he’d tried to cultivate in an attempt to disguise his all-too-familiar face, given the presence of the pair of Secret Service agents who passed their days in vigilant boredom upstairs in what had once been the firehouse’s kitchen. Not to mention the news crews that showed up on the clinic’s doorstep from time to time in defiance of the unspoken agreement between the media and the White House that the president’s children were to be strictly off-limits. There’d been more than one occasion when Ruthie, Father Frank or Mrs. Schmidt had been called upon to run interference with a camera crew while their quarry escaped out the back door.

Ethan’s sense of gratitude toward the three was therefore deep and heartfelt, not only for their loyalty and discretion, but for refusing to allow the unfortunate accident of his parentage to stand in the way of genuine friendship. He’d learned the hard way, during the six and a half years his father and stepmother had occupied the White House, how rare and valuable such friendships were.

So it was for that reason he took advantage of every opportunity to promote EMT Kenny Baumgartner’s cause. Tonight’s ride-along, which was part of the arrangement with the city that allowed him to put in his hours at the clinic free of charge, he devoutly hoped would provide him with a few more of those chances.

Ethan gave Mrs. Schmidt a wink and a wave as he picked up the clipboard Ruthie had abandoned, and turned to confront the unhappy patient in the curtained cubicle designated as exam room three.

The patient-a boy about seven or eight years old, dressed in the standard urban uniform of baggy jeans and oversized T-shirt and a baseball cap turned backward-sat slumped on the paper-covered exam table. The boy’s mother had been sitting beside him, but she slid off the table at the doctor’s entrance and now faced him, one nervous and protective hand resting on her son’s knee.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Brown,” said Ethan in a brisk but friendly tone designed to put them both at ease, offering his hand first to the mother, then the boy. He glanced down at the chart in his hand. “And you are…”

“This is Michael,” the boy’s mother offered, and in a fiercely whispered aside to her son, accompanied by a glancing swat on his denim-draped leg, “What you doin’, boy? Get that hat offa your head.”

“Okay, Mike-”

“It’s Michael.” Obeying his mother while at the same time thrusting his chin defiantly upward, the boy slid proud amber eyes toward Ethan. “Like Michael Jordan. Ain’t nobody ever called Michael Jordan Mike.”

“You’re right about that,” Ethan agreed, instantly charmed. He gave the boy’s mother a wink and was gratified to see her relax, if only slightly. “Michael it is, then. So, I understand you’ve been having earaches?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t of brought him for such a little thing,” the boy’s mother said, tense and defensive again. “But, my sister Tamara? A woman where she works told her her boy had earaches, and they was so bad his eardrums busted. Said they had to operate on him, put tubes in his ears. I don’t want my baby to have to have no operation. Don’t want him to have no tubes in his ears. So I thought-”

“No, it’s good you brought him in.” Ear scope at the ready, Ethan leaned toward the child, who, predictably, pulled away with a sharp “Ow!” Ethan eyed him sternly. “Come on, now, you think Michael Jordan would raise a fuss about such a little thing?” Again the amber eyes slid toward him with that look of proud disdain. “Hey, I just want to take a look inside your ears, see what’s going on in there. Okay?”

Michael nodded, but grudgingly. But he sat perfectly still for the duration of Ethan’s exam.

“How is he?” Hugging herself, the boy’s mother hovered at his side, all hunched-up shoulders and worried eyes. Dark eyes, Ethan noticed, rather exotic, tilted, almond shaped and much darker than her son’s. “His eardrums-they ain’t busted, are they? Maybe I shoulda brought him in sooner, but I couldn’t get offa work-”

Ethan assured her the boy’s eardrums were still intact. “Looks pretty red and angry in there, though. We’re going to get him started right away on some antibiotics-”

“Am I gonna hafta get a shot?” Chin cocked, Michael regarded him with his brave golden glare.

Ethan laughed and squeezed the thin shoulder. “Nah-you just get to take some nasty orange medicine. You take it all, though, every time your mama tells you to, no arguing, okay? Otherwise you’re just gonna make those germs that’re causing your earaches good and mad, and then they’ll come back twice as mean next time. You understand?”

Trying not to look relieved, Michael nodded. Ethan scribbled a prescription for the antibiotic and handed it to the mother, explaining in an undertone the procedure for getting it filled free of charge at a nearby pharmacy and securing her promise to bring her son back for a checkup in three days.

Then, remembering what Mrs. Schmidt had told him about the most likely cause of the current rash of ear infections, he turned back to Michael, who had already hopped down from the exam table and was looking much happier now that he no longer felt the need to keep up a macho front worthy of his namesake and hero. “And no swimming, you hear me? Not until those ears are completely cleared up.”

At that, his mother gave a gasp and dusted her son’s shoulder with her glancing swat. “Michael! You been swimming in that filthy river again? After I done told you? Didn’t I tell you stay away from that filthy water? What am I gonna do with you, boy?” She turned eyes glistening with hopelessness to Ethan. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I got to work, I can’t watch him all the time. My sister Tamara, she supposed to watch him days, but she got the baby… It wasn’t so bad when he was in school, but now, with summer vacation and him home all day…”

Ethan nodded in automatic sympathy as he drew aside the exam room curtain; it was a story he’d heard many times before, one that unfortunately he had no answer for.

Just outside the curtain the woman stopped, turned abruptly and asked, “So, how much I owe you?”

It caught Ethan by surprise; he was already moving on, his mind leaping ahead to other things-the afternoon’s schedule, Ruthie’s lovelife, the evening’s four-to-midnight EMS ride-along. He turned back with a frown, poking absently at his lab coat pocket. “There’s no charge, ma’am, this is a free clinic.”

But the woman-Ethan glanced now at the chart, searching for her name…Louise, that was it, Louise Parker- drew herself up, somehow seeming inches taller. And in the proud lifting of her chin, reminded Ethan suddenly and for the first time of her son.

“Uh-uh-I got me a job, I been offa welfare for a year, now. I ain’t no freeloader. Michael and me, we pay our own way.”

Ethan glanced imploringly at Mrs. Schmidt, who had heard the exchange and was watching with great interest from her cubbyhole behind the reception counter. The woman drew a folded bill from the pocket of her faded jeans and thrust it at him. “Here-it’s all I got right now. If it’s not enough I’ll give you the rest next time I come. Let’s go, Michael.”

Speechless, Ethan watched Louise Parker and her son until the clinic’s front door had closed with a click behind them. Then he unfolded the bill. “My God,” he whispered, showing it to Mrs. Schmidt. “Twenty dollars-I’ll bet that’s a lot of money to her.”

“Probably.” As she went back to her books Mrs. Schmidt added in a musing tone, “That is one lucky little boy, you know that? With a mother like that, he might actually have a chance.”

Across the street from what had once been the South Church Street Fire Station, a thin black woman hurried along the sweltering sidewalk. So preoccupied was she with the scolding she was administering to the small boy dressed in baggy clothes and a backward baseball cap shuffling along beside her that she failed to notice a similarly dressed youth-this one Caucasian and of indeterminable gender-until they had all but collided.

“Michael!” The woman’s sharp whisper accompanied a light swat to the sagging seat of the boy’s trousers. “What you doin’, boy? Mind your manners! Say ‘excuse me.”’

“’Scuse me,” the boy dutifully mumbled, just as the “youth” was muttering, in a voice several tones deeper than her own distinctive contralto, “No, no, that’s okay-my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

The woman had done a double take and was now regarding the youth with an appraising stare, taking in the pale hue of her skin, the mirrored sunglasses, the New York Yankees logo on her baseball cap. “Hey,” she demanded on a rising note of incredulity, “you lost?”