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Sunflower Valley, being a very small town, relatively speaking, only needed one doctor. Todd Johnson loved being that doctor. He knew everybody in town. He taught the local schoolchildren about hand washing and germs. He made house calls, even though he had a nicely modern medical center to work out of. And he had a little blue truck, a non-sentient truck, to use for emergencies – for obvious reasons, an emotionally immature and easily panicked AI vehicle could not be used as an ambulance.
Although Bob, the town’s contractor and all-around handyman, had managed to use one of his as emergency transport once when a bad fall off a ladder had left him with a broken leg and no way to call for help. Just thinking about that was enough to make Todd shudder, not so much because of the machine’s involvement or because Bob was a friend of his, but because of the circumstances and how easily they could be repeated. The younger man had one of the most physically demanding jobs on the island. Not to mention that he lived and worked with a bunch of machines which were easily big and heavy enough to crush him if they got out of control. Bob was incredibly safety conscious, but Todd knew how easily accidents could happen. He’d worked as an emergency room doctor when he was younger, there was almost nothing he hadn’t seen, and one of the other reasons he loved his job was that for the most part he didn’t expect to ever see most of those things in Sunflower Valley.
And so far, his expectations had been met. He saw sprains and strains, the occasional light concussion or three-stitch cut, and just over three weeks ago he’d seen Bob’s broken leg, which had been the worst injury in the history of the town and God willing would stay at the top of the list for a long, long time. Not that the broken leg – a closed fracture of the tibula and fibula – had been any picnic. Especially considering that Bob and his broken leg had ridden several miles in the bucket of his backhoe over bumpy roads just to get back to the building yard to get help. And that Bob had somehow managed to keep said backhoe from panicking through the whole thing.
Todd wasn’t sure that anyone else except for maybe Fred Pickles could have done that, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to find out any time soon. Especially not with Fred, who had twenty years on Bob and would definitely not recover from an accident as quickly.
Today, though, Todd’s day had so far been too busy to spend much time worrying about accidents and who they might happen to. He’d held open clinic for his pediatric patients for part of the morning, then gone over to the lab compound to inspect their first aid stations, and after that he’d headed over to Luigi’s Café for a late lunch. He had house calls to make later in the afternoon but only paperwork to do until then, so he lingered over his lunch and was prepared to take his time walking back to his clinic. It was a beautiful day, and while he had the chance to be outside he was going to enjoy it.
Or at least he was enjoying it…until he came across the construction site where Bob’s partner Wendy was working with the machines and saw Bob, crutches and all, supervising the job with clipboard in hand. Todd shook his head and sighed quietly. He’d known it wouldn’t work for long – or rather, he’d known Bob wouldn’t not work for long. When the injury had first occurred, he’d managed to keep the builder in his house for just over a week by only giving him a pair of crutches and counting on limited mobility to keep him indoors. Then Bob had used his crutches to sneak out of the house and all the way across the building yard to his workshop, only to discover that he was still too wobbly and in too much pain to put the crutches aside and actually do anything once he’d gotten there. That was when Todd had brought in a wheelchair as Phase 2, to keep Bob off his broken leg but still let him putter around the yard.
The puttering part of Phase 2 had lasted about four days, and then Bob had started getting adventurous again. Or maybe that was industrious, it was hard to tell the difference with Bob. The wheelchair went down the sidewalks in town just fine, it turned out, and Bob was back in business anywhere his wheels and his crutches could take him. Todd did not blame himself or any of the Valley’s other residents for that, though; he blamed Bob’s latent claustrophobic tendencies and the younger man's driving need to be doing something useful.
This particular situation, though…this was not entirely Bob’s fault. This was Aaron Bentley’s fault, so Todd decided to deal with him first. He walked quietly up behind the Valley’s building inspector, an older balding man who was standing nearby with a clipboard of his own, and eased a hand onto his shoulder. “So you’re a doctor now, Aaron?”
Aaron Bentley jumped about six inches. Todd didn’t laugh – part of him wanted to, but a bigger part of him didn’t. “I don’t know what you…”
“Save it.” Todd looked past him, frowning when Bob shifted his weight on the crutches and visibly winced. “Do you know how he got out here?” Bentley shook his head. “Did you call him out here?”
The building inspector puffed himself up, straightening his gold framed glasses. “This job…”
“Must be completely within Wendy’s capabilities – or else she would have called me and asked if I could give her partner a ride to the site and back.” He let his frown become a scowl. “Since I didn’t get that call, I’m guessing that you called the yard. Without talking to Wendy. Which means that Bob either walked down here on his crutches or rode down on one of the machines, because I don’t see his wheelchair anywhere.” Todd tightened his grip on Bentley’s shoulder. “Want to take a guess at how much fun that was for him, Aaron?”
“He didn’t have to…”
“Oh yes he did.” Todd was implacable. “He wouldn’t leave Wendy out here alone with you, Aaron, not when you’re in one of these moods.” Bentley’s shoulders slumped, and Todd squeezed the one he was holding. “Mary’s having a bad week?”
“It’s…I can handle it.”
“You’re trying to handle it all by yourself, and that,” he gestured toward Bob and his crutches, “is the result.” Todd squeezed harder. “Aaron, you know I wouldn’t send her away. But you’ve got to start asking for help. Ask me, ask Lucas, ask Bob – you know he’d be there with bells on if you asked him. And Mary absolutely loves Bob.”
“Mary thinks Bob is our…” The building inspector choked that off before he actually said the word. He slumped a little farther into himself. “It’s just…it’s just hard, Todd. We have children…”
“I know.” Aaron and his wife Mary had two grown children of their own, children who had been almost viciously insistent that their mother be put away in a private care facility after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Todd knew that his and Charlie’s promise to keep Mary safely out of their reach had played a big part in Aaron’s decision to join the Project. That decision had come at a price, though; their son and daughter couldn’t be cleared to know about the Project and wouldn’t speak to either of their parents, which had led to a lot of hurt on Aaron’s part and even more confusion on Mary’s. On bad days, she accused her husband of keeping their children away, on better days she tried to call them…or she ‘replaced’ them with someone else, usually Lucas Lewis or Bob since they were the only two men close to the same age as her son who she came into regular contact with. Both men handled the situation with grace and flexibility; it was Aaron who had a problem with it. Todd decided to force a little perspective on the man. “If you’d asked Bob for help instead of taking out your frustration on him, he’d be sitting in your kitchen having tea and cookies with Mary right now instead of trying to find a way to stand up that doesn’t hurt.”
The building inspector flinched, and when Todd followed the direction of the other man's gaze what he saw was Bob looking back at them both with a concerned frown on his face. The doctor could tell just by looking that Bob was a) in pain, and b) fully aware of what Aaron Bentley’s problem was, so he was c) willing to stay where he was, in pain, and supervise the job if it kept the man off Wendy’s back while she worked.
Todd decided that he was going to let someone else sort the building inspector out – he was busy today, he did not have time to play psychotherapist on the side of the road with someone as stubborn as Aaron. And he said so. “Do you actually need to be here for the whole thing, Aaron?” he demanded. “Can’t you just inspect the job after Wendy’s done? Of course you can.” He didn’t give the other man time to reply, just turned him around and gave him a push in the direction of Sunflower Valley’s small ‘downtown’ area. “Go sit around with Lucas at the café, maybe get ahead on your weekly reports,” he ordered. “I’m sure Wendy will call you when she’s finished.”
Aaron started to object, then looked past Todd, blanched, and went in the direction he’d been pushed without another word. Todd turned around and saw Bob awkwardly heading their way on his crutches, the clipboard tucked precariously into place inside the struts of one crutch and secured with what looked like a small bungee cord. The doctor sighed; he supposed he should be glad that the builder didn’t have his tool belt strapped around the other crutch. “Stay right where you are!” he called out to Bob, and then walked over to him with a tread that meant business.
As soon as he got close, Bob immediately started defending his need to be there, on the job site, with the clipboard. “I’m not doing anything, I’m just standing there checking things off so Wendy doesn’t have to stop for Mr. Bentley all the time,” he told the scowling doctor. “The job will go a lot faster if I help.”
“No, the job will go a lot faster now that I made Aaron leave.” Johnson corrected. He looked Bob up and down, scowl deepening a little when the younger man couldn’t keep from shifting again. “Does your leg hurt?” Bob opened his mouth, and the doctor held up one hand. “Please keep in mind that you can’t lie to save your life, especially not to someone who knows you. So, does it?”
Bob sighed, coloring up a little. “Yes, it does. In fact, I pretty much hurt all over right now,” he admitted. But he looked Johnson in the eye and in a lower voice followed up with, “But you know why I had to come out here, Todd.”
It was Johnson’s turn to sigh. “Yes, Bob, I know,” he said. “But you could have called me – we have cell phones now, remember? How did you get out here, anyway? I don’t see your wheelchair.” This time the younger man didn’t meet his eyes, and the doctor’s scowl returned. “Tell me you didn’t walk.”
“You said I couldn’t lie to you,” Bob returned. He shifted again, winced. “I was working on the wheelchair when Mr. Bentley called; one of the tires was wobbling and I was trying to fix it. I couldn’t get it back together fast enough to make it over here in time.”
Johnson thought about that for a minute. He could only imagine how Aaron had sounded on the phone, so he had to admit that Bob had probably had good reason to think time was of the essence. The doctor spotted Wendy looking in their direction and waved, letting her know that everything was all right, and then returned his attention to her partner. “All right,” he said. “I’ll accept that. But I’m going to go get the truck and then you’re going home – no arguments. You’ve got until I get back to tell Wendy anything she needs to know about passing inspection.”
Bob smiled at him. “Deal,” he replied. “And I’ll tell her to call Mr. Bentley when she’s finished – on her cell phone.”
“Deal,” Johnson agreed, and headed back to the clinic to get his truck. He took the time to call the mainland and leave a message for Charlie, and then drove back to the work site to get Bob. Who came with him without any arguments, as agreed, and only put up a minor fuss when the doctor insisted that he go to bed instead of sitting up in his chair in the living room. “I don’t want you on your feet again until tomorrow unless it’s a necessity,” he told the younger man, who in spite of the fuss had settled into his bed with a groan of pure relief and let the doctor prop his casted leg up without comment. “And just so we’re clear, nothing work-related is considered a necessity. Necessity is to the bathroom and back, possibly with a short detour along the way to get something from the kitchen. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes.” Bob swallowed the pills Johnson handed him, then let himself sink into his pillows with a sigh. “I’ll stay put, Todd, I promise. I just couldn’t…”
“I know.” Johnson gave him a smile. “Get some rest, and I’ll come by tonight after dinner to check on you.” Bob agreed with him sleepily, the pain pills already kicking in – which made the doctor wonder if his patient had eaten lunch or not. Probably not. A quick look through the house showed that he had, though, fed his cat, done some laundry, and partially disassembled his wheelchair. Johnson looked over the parts spread out on newspaper on the kitchen table and shook his head. Bob had been more bored than he’d thought.
He called Wendy, letting her know that her partner would be asleep for the rest of the afternoon, and then took his truck back to the clinic. He had about an hour and a half until his first afternoon house call, which was only about two blocks from the clinic; he still had time to do some paperwork. So he sat down in his office with a glass of ice water, spread his paperwork out on his desk…and then leaned back in his chair and looked out the window, enjoying his view of the clear blue sky and white fluffy clouds that were accenting such a nice, sunny day.
Because one of the many things Todd loved about being Sunflower Valley’s only doctor…was that he was never too busy to stop being busy for a few minutes whenever he felt like it and just enjoy the moment. And he was really, really hoping that would never change.