Archive of Our Own

‘Hey!’ someone shouted from the road. Amid the bickering jays, Hawkeye could hear the unmistakeable crunch of bicycle tires on the gravel road and some chattering voices of the neighborhood kids heading to the beach. The sky was a bit overcast-not a prime beach day, but it was still something to do. It still felt foreign to him to witness the carefree abandon of the kids in Crabapple Cove-his chest got tight at the thought of a gang of teenagers just riding a couple miles through the woods on their own, with no idea what might-

There was no war in Maine, he tried to remind himself, giving the barn door another shove. There were no bombs, no shelling, no gunfire to keep you up at night, no guerrillas to scan the trees for as you drove into town for some bread. The biggest challenge he had today was that he had to fix this barn door like he’d promised his dad, but he could barely get it to budge. His shoulder screamed in protest as he tried again, and then stood back with a sigh. Perhaps the barn door was destined to spend the next 50 years off its runner as well.

‘Hey, Doc!’ the voice called again, and Hawkeye glanced over to see a kid waving at him from atop a blue bicycle, having stopped at the top of the Pierce’s drive. ‘Need a hand?’

Hawkeye frowned at him for a second, trying to figure out if a lanky preteen would be any help at all, but he shrugged. ‘I’m trying to get this barn door back on its runner, but it won’t budge-‘

‘Hey! Guys!’ the kid shouted, and the tires against the gravel stopped with a bit of a cacophony of brakes and skidding, but soon, he had wrangled a half dozen more, probably half the middle grades at the Crabapple Cove Central School. They ran over to the ringleader, the short kid with the big ears who’d stopped first. ‘C’mon!’

‘Alright, on the count of three,’ Hawkeye directed, as they positioned themselves along the metal strip, Hawkeye holding the handle. ‘One, two-’

Hawkeye was surprised that a few eleven to thirteen year olds would help, but they certainly did. There was some straining and grunting, but after only a few seconds, the door was back where it belonged, much to their delight-there were several happy cheers and whoops at their victory. The first kid, the one who’d initially stopped, rubbed his hands across each other, looking very satisfied with himself.

‘Anything else we can help with, Doc?’ he asked, but Hawkeye shook his head.

’No, that was it,’ he said, experimentally pulling and pushing the door, which slid neatly where it was supposed to. ‘Thanks, uh-’

‘Oh, uh, yeah, it’s probably been a few years,’ the kid said. ‘Danny, Pete, Stacey, Penny, Hank-’ he pointed at each of the kids. ‘Ronnie,’ he finished, pointing at himself. Hawkeye made the connections once he’d had them identified. Danny Arnold had gotten taller and skinnier, but was recognizable by his dad’s shocking red hair. Pete Fletcher, the mechanics son, hadn’t shot up quite as much, but his twin sister, Stacey, certainly had. Penny Hawkins, Ronnie’s younger sister, probably just tagging along. Hank Young, who was a head taller and probably had about thirty pounds on the rest of them, had probably been the most help with the door. And then there was Ronnie himself, grinning at him like Hawkeye had given him the biggest treat he’d had in years, letting him shove around an old barn door.

‘Well, thanks for the help,’ he said, wondering why Ronnie’s name stood out among the others. He knew them all, or at least their families, but there was something about that name that wedged its way inside his brain, somehow more important than the rest, but he couldn’t quite place it right then. ‘I appreciate it. Heading to the beach?’

‘Yeah,’ Dave said. ‘Last day of summer vacation-’

‘Have fun,’ Hawkeye told the small gaggle in at the foot of his driveway. ‘Don’t end up at Dad’s office-‘

‘We’ll try not to, Doc,’ Ronnie said, flashing him a grin and climbing back on his bike. A few of the gang gave him waves as they climbed back onto their bikes. Hawkeye watched them until they were around the corner safely, chewing his lip. Ronnie Hawkins.

It continued to eat at him all afternoon, as he finished up the list of chores his father had given him-he’d fixed the barn door, swept the kitchen, and took in the washing from the line. He was peeling the potatoes for dinner when his father arrived, looking pleased.

‘The barn is looking great,’ he said, tossing his case next to the door. ‘Hope the washing didn’t get rained on.’

‘Nope, all dry,’ Hawkeye assured him from the kitchen. ‘And I can’t take all the credit for the door, some kids stopped by on the way to the beach, helped me give it a good shove. Ronnie Hawkins and his crowd.’

‘Oh, Ronnie,’ he said, as he made it to the kitchen. ‘Good kid. Got a bit mixed up after his brother died. You know how much he used to idolize Keith-’

Hawkeye didn’t, but that was okay, he’d take his word for it. He’d been in and out of Crabapple Cove for most of Ronnie’s life-med school, residency, Korea, while his father knew everyone and everything about Crabapple Cove, and never seemed to remember which bits he’d told Hawkeye. The last month had been a bit of a crash course in relearning everyone’s names and catching up on the intricate stories that had been woven over the last several years, in bits and pieces of half-stories from his dad. He wracked his brain, trying to remember the Hawkins-they had several kids his dad had delivered, and Keith had been their oldest, but even he was about ten years younger than Hawkeye, so he never had crossed paths with them much.

‘What happened?’ he asked. Losing someone that young was unusual, and it would be good to get the medical history.

‘Well, I guess he didn’t go through your outfit,’ he said, washing his hands in the sink next to Hawkeye. ‘He was killed in Korea, about a year and a half ago-’

Ronnie Hawkins. Now he remembered, that rainy, muddy autumn, that packet from Amy, that letter.

‘You alright?’ his dad sounded worried, and Hawkeye looked down and realized his hand was practically vibrating on the potato peeler. ‘Ben?’

‘Yeah, yeah, fine,’ he assured his dad, not looking at him, fighting the little pinpricks of tears in the corners of his eyes.

‘Doctor Hawkeye?’ Gloria’s voice flitted up the stairs into the little office, cutting through the flurry of kids’ chattering that he’d thought was outside his open window but was now realizing was coming from the waiting room. He closed his chart and headed to the stairs, to find a small crew of young teens, their faces worried, with Ronnie Hawkins in the middle, clutching his own forearm, his face pretty white.

‘He hit a rock-’

‘His bicycle-’

‘We came straight here, can you-’

Hawkeye raised his hands in a placating manner and the voices stuttered to a stop, all looking at him expectantly. Once they were quiet, he met Ronnie’s eyes and gestured to him to present the arm he was cradling. Trying to be exceedingly gentle, he took it by the elbow and looked over the swollen, crooked wrist. It wasn’t desperately out of place, but certainly looked broken.

‘Has someone told Mister or Misses Hawkins?’ Hawkeye asked the small crowd as he turned the arm over gently. 

‘Yes,’ Danny answered. ‘We sent Penny back to their house, but we brought him here because it was closer.’

‘That’s good thinking,’ Hawkeye told him with a small smile. ‘Alright, Ronnie, it doesn’t look too bad from the outside, but I’ve got to get a picture of the inside. Ever had an x-ray before?’

Ronnie shook his head, and Hawkeye gestured for him to follow, sticking a supportive arm around his shoulder as they headed out. As soon as he reached the door, Hawkeye turned around and looked to the kids behind him, waiting anxiously.

‘This could be hours and hours,’ Hawkeye told them. ‘Developing x-rays. You should head home for supper.’

Once they were out the door, Ronnie let out a little pained sigh, and blinked, letting a few tears fall from his watery eyes. Hawkeye gestured for him to sit next to the little x-ray table.

‘Does it really take hours for them to be developed?’ he asked, worriedly, but Hawkeye shook his head.

‘Nah, I just told them that to get them out of here,’ he met Ronnie’s eyes over the table and gave him a smirk. ‘This is probably going to hurt, but I want to get the right angle, okay?’

Ronnie grit his teeth and shut his eyes in a bit of a pre-emptive wince, and Hawkeye tried hard to ignore the little whimper and the extra tears as he adjusted the arm, as gently as he could.

‘Alright, that’s it,’ Hawkeye told him, trying to keep his own voice steady when he was done. ‘I just need you to hold very, very, still, especially that arm.’

‘So you can take the X-ray?’

‘So that I can take the X-ray,’ Hawkeye confirmed, heading towards the button on the wall, watching warily, but Ronnie was still, biting his lip hard, concentrating on his hand. Good kid. ‘Alright, you just head to the next room and I’ll get this developed-‘ he added, pointing down the hall.

‘See?’ Hawkeye said a few minutes later, showing him the x-ray as Ronnie sat expectantly on the table in the procedure room. He pointed at the break and Ronnie looked fascinated by it.

‘Whoah!’

Hawkeye almost laughed.

‘You’re not going to be too excited when I set this, put a cast on it and tell you you’re not going to be allowed to swim for eight weeks.’

‘It’s okay,’ Ronnie said.

‘Not quite beach weather yet, I suppose,’ Hawkeye said, trying to distract Ronnie as he guided the wrist straight again. Tough kid, wincing like that but not screaming. ‘And you’ve still got, what, a month of school to go?’

‘Just about,’ Ronnie got out through clenched teeth. Satisfied with the placement of the bones, Hawkeye took a strip of plaster and started on the cast, as Ronnie took a shuddering breath.

‘Well, the good news is that it’s your left hand,’ Hawkeye said. He was glad it was a simple wrist fracture, like so many other kids and teenagers experienced when their bicycles hit rocks on the uneven dirt roads of rural Maine and sent them tumbling over their handlebars. To his dad, it probably felt mundane-he’d probably been setting at least one of these every summer for the last forty years, including Hawkeye’s own when he was eight. But to Hawkeye, he was still finding a lot more satisfaction in these routine cases than he ever thought he would, and it brought him a measure of peace to get to have these conversation with his patients, and the follow-ups, and the decades of relationships in the future. Ten years from now, Ronnie might come back complaining of wrist pain, and Hawkeye would know the origin.

‘You’re going to have to break the other one if you want to be excused from school-‘ he tapped the right wrist, unharmed except for the little red pockmarks of being stuck into gravel with force very recently, and grinned up at the kid on the exam table.

‘It’s okay,’ Ronnie said, watching Hawkeye continue on the cast. ‘I don’t hate school.’

‘Well, that’s a rousing endorsement of Mrs. Clark’s teaching,’ Hawkeye teased. ‘What’s your favorite subject?’

‘Science,’ Ronnie answered. ‘We’re learning anatomy right now, all the bones and stuff-‘

‘Like the radius,’ Hawkeye said, pointing to the wrist. ‘That’s the one you broke.’

‘Yeah. Doctor Pierce said I’d have to study a lot of that if I want to become a doctor-‘

Hawkeye paused with the next strip of plaster hovering over Ronnie’s arm, trying not to show how stunned he was by this revelation. He remembered the scrawl of that uneven handwriting, burned into his brain. It still floated through his mind on bad days, one of the images that came back again and again, the guilt that festered. How many kids had he sent back to die? How many of those families would blame him? He didn’t exactly blame them if they did hate him, nor had he blamed Ronnie.

‘Really?’ he asked, collecting himself and continuing. ‘Let see how well you have been studying. Take a look at that x-ray and tell me what bones you see-’

The Crabapple Cove Public Library was barely bigger than a garden shed, and only slightly better maintained. There were only 483 residents that would use it, and it was only staffed two afternoons a week by Vicky Collins, on a volunteer basis. Hawkeye was sure there were a few residents in town that had read through every single book on their shelves in their time, as the turnover in material was also slow at best. Every decade or so, the town would pony up enough money to buy a new set of encyclopedias, and people would often drop off an old dime novel or two, but many of the volumes on the shelves were older than Hawkeye was-even their copy of Last of the Mohicans was the same 1914 edition that was on his little bookshelf at home.

He didn’t stop in often, but he was walking by, and it was cold, and Vicky had two daughters. With a month and a half to Christmas, she might be able to solve the dilemma Hawkeye was having. 

‘I’ve only met her once, and she was three,’ Hawkeye explained to Vicky as he leaned against the circulation desk. ‘Any ideas on what to buy her for Christmas?’

‘How about a book?’ Vicky suggested, holding up the little reader that she was repairing while they chatted.

‘Any ideas? I don’t know what she likes,’ he lamented. ‘BJ said she was just starting to read, but I’ve never picked out a book for a kid before.’

‘Well, I don’t sell my collection,’ Vicky teased, gesturing at the bookshelves around her, and Hawkeye laughed. ‘But Robert McCloskey has written some nice children’s books, he’s from up the coast a bit. Why don’t you go up to Waldoboro and ask Roger at the bookshop there?’

‘I knew you’d have an idea. Thanks, Vicky,’ he slapped the desk and turned to go, trying to hit the post office for some stamps before it closed. Before he made it to the door, though, he spotted a familiar figure hunched over the only table at the library, an short wooden one with an uneven leg that was liable to give whoever was using it a splinter. It was crammed in the corner behind a bookshelf with an old school chair wedged behind it. It probably hadn’t moved in twenty five years, and no one ever seemed to use it much. Except now, when it was covered with a stack of books, an open notebook, a few pencil shavings, and Ronnie Hawkins’ forearm, his pencil eraser beating out a rapid rhythm against the table as he cross-checked the two books and the notebook.

‘Hey, Ronnie,’ he said.

‘Hey, Doc,’ he answered, looking up from the his book with a smile. ‘Just, uh, trying to get my chemistry homework done.’

‘Why here?’ he asked, looking around, and wrapping his coat a little tighter around his body as a breeze blew through the building.

‘Oh, I was looking for quiet,’ he explained. ‘Penny and Will are just-’

‘Distracting,’ Hawkeye supplied, remembering his younger siblings and their boundless supply of energy. ‘Doesn’t look comfortable,’ he added.

‘I already got a sliver,’ Ronnie said, holding up  his thumb, a red irritation showing the truth of the matter. ‘But I’ve got a chemistry test on Friday, and I need to get the hang of these reactions by then-‘

Hawkeye wandered over and looked over his shoulder, as Ronnie smiled up at him and sighed.

‘Ah, I remember all this,’ he said. ‘Don’t really miss it.’

Ronnie smiled at him and turned the page to get moving on his studies.

‘Hey, if you ever need a quiet place to study, feel free to come by our place in the afternoon,’ Hawkeye added, gesturing in the general direction of his house with his thumb and a jerk of his head. ‘Dad and I usually get home around six, it’s unlocked before then. Much more comfortable, and if you’re lucky, I’ll make you the best chocolate chip cookies that Crabapple Cove has to offer.’

‘Oh, no, I didn’t realize you had visitors!’

‘No, no, Ronnie, it’s fine, come back,’ Hawkeye shouted, heading for the door before he could close it behind him. He’d come in through the side door, like he had after school every day for years, his textbooks under his arm, except usually Hawkeye was still at work and Ronnie had the house to himself for a bit. ‘Sorry,’ he said, as he went to retrieve Ronnie.

‘I can study at home-’ Ronnie offered, gesturing towards the woods in the direction of his house.

‘No, no, come on,’ Hawkeye goaded him. ‘Don’t you have that trigonometry packet due on Friday? Come on, we can help,’ he beckoned Ronnie back to the door, half in and half out. Ronnie leaned his bicycle against the porch railing and followed him back in.

‘Beej, Ronnie, Ronnie, Beej,’ he introduced him as soon as they were back in the kitchen. 

‘Dr. Hunnicutt!’ Ronnie gasped, as BJ held out his hand to shake, and he did. ‘Doctor Hawkeye talks about you all the time-’

‘All of it rotten, I suppose,’ BJ teased, licking some of the sauce he was making off his finger.

‘Yeah, just the worst,’ Ronnie teased back sarcastically, and Hawkeye grinned. Granted, he didn’t think either of them were going to see much of each other, but they were both very important to him and it warmed his heart to see the two of them falling into that easy rhythm so quickly. ‘Bet he says similar things about me.’

‘He says you are terrible at trigonometry but great at algebra,’ BJ said. ‘Hawk, can you watch this for a minute? I loved trig, I want to see what he’s working on-‘

‘You loved-?’ Hawkeye mouthed, rolling his eyes but taking over the sauce at the stove while BJ and Ronnie took out his books.

'Don't you mess up that sauce,' BJ warned him, finger pointing imperitively, from the table, as Ronnie started to find the right pages. 'I want Ronnie to taste real pasta sauce for once-'

Hawkeye dipped his finger in the sauce, with a skeptical frown. Real pasta sauce. But then he licked his finger, and his taste buds exploded.

'Whoah, Beej, where the hell did you learn to make this?'

'See?' BJ nudged Ronnie with his elbow. 'Don't listen to a word he says, I'm definitely the better cook.'

Hawkeye took a bite of the cookie as he sat back on the sofa next to the phone.

‘Go over the bones of the hand again.’

He chewed on the cookie while he waited, and the voice at the other end, tired and strained, got through most of them.

‘And-?’ He asked.

‘What are you eating? It’s very distracting.’

‘A cookie,’ Hawkeye shot back, through another bite. ‘I keep making them, but dad and I can’t get through them fast enough.’

‘Unfortunately they don’t tend to keep in the mail,’ Ronnie sighed, and then there was a pause. ‘On second thought, yours could probably be improved by spending a few days going stale in a cardboard box at the post office in Augusta.’

‘Oi!’ Hawkeye retorted. ‘Those cookies got you through high school and into that fancy school you’re sitting in right now. Come on, try the bones of the hand again.’

This time, he made it through them all, though it was shaky at the end there.

‘Good,’ Hawkeye said. ‘I guess I don’t need to mail you any cookies. I’ll wait for you to come visit. You coming home this summer?’

‘Yep,’ he answered. ‘Dad wants me to get a job at the grocery store in Waldoboro, work for the summer.’

‘You sound thrilled,’ Hawkeye observed, sarcastically.

‘I want to take the MCAT in the fall, and I know when I’m not working, Mom’s going to want me to help with Cassie-‘

‘Not conducive to studying,’ Hawkeye commiserated, then chewed his lip and thought for a second. ‘Listen, Dad’s not working as much now, so Gloria’s been assisting me more. Might be good to have someone around to answer the phone. You can study when it’s not ringing,’ he offered.

‘Really? You sure, I don’t want-‘

‘No, no, it’ll be good to get that off her plate, frees up her to help me more with procedures, and then I can help Dad with his patients, you’ll just have to answer the phone, call people about their appointments, you know-‘

‘Better than bagging groceries,’ Ronnie agreed.

‘Job’s yours, but only if you can give me the rest of the bones of the arm and shoulder,’ Hawkeye told him, with a smile. ‘We only got about three minutes left before the operator comes on to yell at us for talking too much, and you’ve got an anatomy exam to pass.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Hawkeye looked up from the plate of hors d'oeuvres he’d been staring at, some little pastry that tasted like it had crab in it, to see a familiar round face framed with two cartoonishly large ears. ‘I thought you were in residency, aren’t you supposed to be sleeping in some disused exam room and drinking half a gallon of coffee an hour?’

‘Told them my grandfather died,’ he said with a shrug, picking up a pastry from the tray and leaning over. ‘How’re you doing, Doc?’

‘Been better,’ Hawkeye said, with a sigh. How are you doing? Everyone kept asking him the same question. How do you answer that? I'm fine, except for the fact that my father, my only surviving parent, the person I've lived with for over forty years, the one who knows me better than anyone else in the world, was gone. He let his facade drop a little bit about Ronnie, though. That kid knew him better than most people in this town. Kid? He was in residency. When was he going to stop thinking about him as a kid, biking past the house on the way to the beach on that little blue bike?

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Ronnie admitted. ’Nothing would really help, would it?’

’Not that I can think of,’ Hawkeye said morosely, glancing around the dining room. The house was overflowing after the funeral-just as it had overflowed the church-with just about everyone in Crabapple Cove, and many from even further afield, coming to pay their respects to Doctor Pierce. All of them asking the same question. How are you doing?

I’m not sleeping, again. I’m getting touchy around children, again. I think I might be sleepwalking, again. I’m tempted to try to mail a latrine to North Korea, again.

Someone nearby cleared their throat, and Hawkeye looked away from Ronnie to see another new arrival, someone else he barely expected to see.

‘Ah, Charles. Ronnie, Doctor Winchester, Boston Mercy. Doctor Winchester, Doctor Ronnie Hawkins. Resident at Mass General.’

‘Indeed?’ Charles asked in interest, and Ronnie nodded, reaching out a hand, which Charles grasped briefly. Hawkeye was pleased that Charles didn’t dismiss him out of hand. In fact, he thought maybe he should duck out of this conversation altogether and let Ronnie talk to him, make professional connections that Hawkeye didn’t have, and couldn’t provide him.

Before he could, however, Charles produced a flask from inside his pocket and presented it to Hawkeye, who recognized it-banged up and dented, but the initials clearly scratched in the corner. Well, scratched, crossed out, and replaced. Hawkeye smirked, running his fingers over the inscription. His own initials, BFP, the F and the P scratched out, and then “JH” etched below the B, vertically, like a little crossword. He only vaguely remembered the drunken argument over BJ stealing his flask, and all his attempts to repatriate it were half-hearted at best. Besides, Cho came through the next week and Hawkeye just bought himself a new one.

Hawkeye unscrewed the top and caught a familiar whiff of pure grain alcohol, and recoiled.

‘Oh, god, we used to drink this?’ he asked Charles in disbelief, a half-hearted laugh coming to his throat, the first he’d managed in days.

‘You did,’ Charles corrected. Hawkeye caught some movement out of the corner of his eye, and noticed Ronnie trying to leave, so he grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back. ‘This was mailed to me a few months ago, with instructions to give it to you should this come to pass,’ Charles explained, gesturing at the funeral luncheon. ‘In case the owner was unable to make it.’

‘Thanks, Chuck,’ he said, taking a quick sip and making an obvious face as it burned unpleasantly, then handing it over to Ronnie, who looked apprehensive.

‘Go on, it’s not as bad as it looks,’ he prompted him, waving his hand encouragingly. Ronnie pulled a face that was probably even worse than Hawkeye’s, and sputtered a bit after he'd taken a sip. Hawkeye giggled. It reminded him of when he tried to ply Radar with the stuff.

‘No, it’s worse!’ he finally gasped, wiping his mouth with his forearm and handing it off to Charles, who started to cap it, but Hawkeye protested immediately.

‘Oh, no, no, you’re not getting out of it,’ Hawkeye goaded him. Charles rolled his eyes but lifted the flask.

‘To Dr. Pierce,’ he said solemnly, before he took a sip and his eyes bugged, making Hawkeye laugh a little harder.

‘No wonder Hunnicutt broke the still,’ he gasped once he’d collected himself. ‘Why on earth did you two save this-this poison?’

‘Because it’s given me the closest thing I’ve had to a laugh in the last two weeks,’ Hawkeye said, taking the flask and recapping it himself. ’Thanks for making the delivery. And maybe you can tell Ronnie about that research you’re doing-he’s not a surgical fellow, but-‘

‘Didn’t you write up a paper on mitral valve replacement?’ Ronnie chimed in. ‘I’d love to hear more about your thoughts on long-term prognosis and future treatment on recipients-‘

Hawkeye grinned again, as Charles seemed genuinely flattered and more than willing to talk heart valves. It would be good for Ronnie, too, not only to hear more about mitral valve replacements, but to make connections with Boston medical royalty. He wouldn’t exactly have a bevy of career options if he returned to Crabapple Cove, unless Hawkeye gave up the practice.

‘Hey, Doc,’ Hawkeye looked up from the bay he’d been staring at to see who was looking for him and smiled, a little hesitantly.

‘You’ve got a whole party going on for you back there,’ Hawkeye said, jerking his head towards the house, where the backyard was filled with most of Crabapple Cove, raucous laughter and happy voices. It wasn’t often one of their own made it through college, never mind med school and residency. He deserved the party. ‘What are you doing here?’

He squinted up in the summer sun, still smiling. Someone must have goaded him into wearing his white coat, and it suited him. He was a head shorter than Hawkeye and still hadn’t filled in the stretched out limbs he’d acquired as a teenager. It was hard to believe he was twenty nine years old, with the round, boyish face, crooked grin, and larger ears than he deserved.

‘Heard you were out here,’ he replied, climbing down to sit next to Hawkeye, their legs dangling off the edge of the dock, a few inches above the gentle waves, stirring in the breeze of a perfect summer evening in Coastal Maine. An ideal day for a party, to celebrate the end of residency, and the homecoming, of Crabapple Cove’s finest. ‘Didn’t see any gift from you,’ he teased, leaning into Hawkeye and knocking him with his shoulder.

‘It was too big to carry,’ Hawkeye jerked his head in the direction he knew was in town. ‘It’s at the practice, I’ll give it to you when you’re in next week.’

‘Thanks for letting me pop in,’ he responded. ‘It’ll be good to work with you for a bit, until I can figure out where I’m going to land.’

‘Where do you want to land?’ Hawkeye asked, dreading the answer. Maybe he’d been too presumptuous with getting that sign made with “Dr. R Hawkins” emblazoned on it. They’d discussed it, obliquely, in letters and the occasional phone call, as he’d wound his way through med school and residency, and arranged to come back to Crabapple Cove for some experience in a family practice, but Hawkeye had never asked outright if he wanted to take over, and now was realizing that had been a mistake.

‘Family practice,’ the younger doctor said, nodding in his surety.

‘Yeah, I know that,’ Hawkeye laughed, teasing a little; ‘I’ve known that since you were sixteen!’

‘Chambers up in Damariscotta has got to be retiring soon-’ he proposed, tilting his hand back and forth. He wasn’t wrong-Ned Chambers was ancient. Hawkeye had been expecting news that he’d dropped dead mid wart removal for nearly a decade at this point.

‘You want to spend your summers treating posh Bostonians for hangnails so they don’t ruin their vacations in their summer homes?’ Hawkeye scoffed, skeptically.

‘Could try Down East,’ he added, with a shrug. Hawkeye smiled furtively. He hadn’t been wrong-Ronnie Hawkins wanted to stay in Coastal Maine. He had a chance to talk him into staying in Crabapple Cove.

‘Do you want to go Down East?’

‘Less tourists.’

‘Do you want to stay here?’ Hawkeye asked.

‘I’d love to stay in the Cove,’ Ronnie lamented, and leaned over and nudged Hawkeye’s shoulder again. ‘But the town ain’t big enough for the both of us, partner,’ he said, in a truly terrible Western accent that made Hawkeye giggle, but the words themselves made his heart soar in relief.

This is what he’d been hoping for-he couldn’t leave Crabapple Cove without a doctor, but he also had felt more and more desperate to escape since his father’s death. Not that he didn’t love the town, and many of the people there, and the relationships that he built with his patients. He was going to miss that, and hearing the loons in the harbor, seeing the blaze of oranges and reds through the maples every autumn, stuffing his face with the blueberries from the backyard every autumn, the way the sun glinted off the sea on a sunny day. But with each passing year, he was becoming more and more, achingly, lonely. The house was too empty-he’d moved into the master bedroom downstairs and couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone upstairs. The dinners alone were too quiet. Coming home in the cold and having to light the wood stove himself while he shivered made him long for sharing body heat with someone else, seeing the brightness in someone’s eyes that they’re happy you’ve arrived home.

The closest thing he had to family in Maine had been away at med school and then residency in Boston, and when Ronnie was done, he was going to have to move elsewhere if he wanted a career as a family physician. When BJ mentioned one of his old instructors retiring, and Hawkeye thought about all that tutoring, and how gratifying it was that Ronnie was about to finish residency- it felt like the pieces were fell into place, and just in time too. It was getting harder and harder to hang up the phone every other Sunday when the operator from Mill Valley would cut in with a warning that they were about to go over their booked time, and he would have to say goodbye, trying not to let his voice shake so that BJ wouldn't hear it.

‘Doesn’t need to be,’ Hawkeye told him, staring out into the harbor. ’The practice is yours. Your gift-I had a new sign made, we can hang it up next week.’

‘But what are you going to do? Ronnie asked in disbelief, ‘This is your life’s work, this is your dad’s practice, I can’t just-kick you out-‘

‘All those years, studying with you at the kitchen table, those late night phone calls when you were worried about your exams, that summer I helped you cram for the MCAT, when you would come back on breaks during residency and talk over your difficult cases with me. Got me to thinking, and I realized that as much as I liked being a doctor, I- I really like the idea of being able to shape the next generation of doctors, you know?’

‘You gonna move to Dartmouth?’ Ronnie asked, but Hawkeye scoffed a little. It wasn’t a bad guess-it was the closest medical school, and he’d barely left Maine since 1953-two trips to California, a wedding in Iowa, a handful of weekends in Boston. All told, he could still could count them all on less than two hands.

‘Accepted a teaching position at Stanford, actually,’ Hawkeye told him. ‘Starting next fall. I’ll get you on your feet here, clean out the rest of Dad’s stuff, you know, and head over sometime next year. Beej promised we’d could come back in the summers, but yeah. It’s all yours.’

* * * 1971 * * *

‘You sure you got everything, Doc?’ Ronnie asked, for what was probably the fourth time. He’d been over at the Pierce’s house all morning, helping pack the old light blue DeSoto, sweeping out the all the rooms, covering the furniture, taking the last of the potatoes from the root cellar. He wondered why he seemed so much more upset about this departure than Doctor Hawkeye did, saying goodbye to the house he'd grown up in.

But Ronnie supposed it was his childhood home in some ways as well. The barn door he’d carefully latched yesterday was the door he and his friends had helped back onto its runners on that summer day. The kitchen table he’d covered with an old bedsheet that morning had little marks on it from were he’d drummed his pencil eraser against it, afternoon after afternoon, as he’d studied. He’d cleaned out the oven that had baked him so many cookies, and noticed the dings on the porch rail were he used to lean his bicycle every day.

Doctor Hawkeye nodded at the car, leaning lopsided on the front porch, one hand on his hip, the other on the railing.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Ronnie decided to choke out, before he could stop himself, looking out at the little lawn between the porch and the road. He’d promised to find a neighborhood kid to mow it, and Doctor Hawkeye had left him an envelope of cash for the purpose, which Ronnie had no intention of touching. ‘I think you’re going to be a great teacher.’

‘You think so?’ Doctor Hawkeye asked skeptically, leaning both his elbows on the railing instead, crossing his legs and staring out into the woods on the other side of the road, and the old, rusty DeSoto parked in the drive. Ronnie was slightly worried it was going to fall apart before he reached New York, never mind California.

‘Yeah, of course,’ Ronnie laughed, surprised by the skepticism. ‘I’m proof positive, aren’t I? You said tutoring me was the reason you considered teaching. If you can drag me through high school, those late night phone calls at Bowdoin so you could quiz me-if you can make me into a doctor, you’re going to do a great job with these kids at Stanford.’

Doctor Hawkeye reached a hand up and squeezed his shoulder, and Ronnie leaned on the rail next to him.

‘And more than being engaging, having a compelling sense of humor-you have a knack for figuring out the best way to explain something-finding out how to reach an understanding. Not just, you know, explaining the periodic table to the idiot in your kitchen four times until he gets it, although that’ll also be great for your students. You’re honest, sometimes overly so, and I think that’s a great quality for young doctors to see. People open up to you because you open up to them.’

‘Overly honest?’

‘You once told a nine-year-old that you barely knew that sometimes you hated yourself,’ Ronnie explained, scrambling to get the words out before his throat closed up. He felt like the paper in his front pocket was vibrating, the quote bringing it back to life after all these years, reminding Ronnie of the power of those words.

Doctor Hawkeye looked over, surprised and a little confused. Ronnie pulled the letter out of his pocket, the aging paper crinkling a little and held it out. He straightened up as he took it, his eyes narrowing as he likely recognized his own handwriting.

‘Don’t you remember writing to me? Miss Clark assigned us to write to the doctors in your outfit in Korea-‘

‘Of course I do,’ he answered, his voice thick, his eye fixed on the paper he was unfolding. ‘Just-uh-didn’t remember the exact words. Oh, I was a bit blunt-‘ he admitted.

‘You took a few words scribbled in haste and grief on a piece of notebook paper, and found the words to touch an angry, messed up, nine-year old boy,’ Ronnie explained. ‘I’m not naive enough to say this letter saved me, or changed my life, or that I absolutely wouldn’t have ended up on this path if it hadn’t been for it, maybe I would have found peace a different way- but um-‘

Ronnie was struggling to keep his words steady, but next to him, Doctor Hawkeye was wiping his eyes on the shoulder of his shirt. ‘I never thanked you properly, for taking the time to care, just want to tell you how much-’

He couldn’t hold it together any longer, and wiped his own tears away.

‘It was a bit overly honest,’ Doctor Hawkeye repeated, in the silence while they both struggled to collect themselves, folding up the letter.

‘It helped me realize how many shades of grey there are in the world and how many people are just trying their hardest in bad circumstances. That there often isn’t one ‘right’ thing to do that you can nail down. It helps a lot in every decision I make with my patients, and I hope you teach your students that too.’

Doctor Hawkeye tried to hand the letter back to Ronnie.

‘You keep it.’

‘No, no,’ he insisted. ‘It’s yours. Someday, you’re going to find a mixed-up nine year old, who is going to need to hear those words-‘ Ronnie tried not to think about the news from Vietnam, how there might be other kids from Crabapple Cove like Keith, and little brothers who would be forced to handle more grief than their young hearts deserved. ‘Do me a favor, though,’ he requested, and Ronnie nodded in agreement. ‘Write me when you can. Tell me what you learn as a doctor, so I can share it with my students.’

‘Will do,’ he promised, taking the letter back and stashing it away, catching a glimpse of his watch in the process. Doctor Hawkeye obviously noticed the watch too, checking his own.

‘You should get going, you don’t want to get into Albany too long after dark,’ he choked out, unable to look at the older doctor, who was fiddling in his pockets, trying to sniffle away his tears as well.

‘Uh, yeah, here,’ he said, holding out a key, with a little Golden Gate Bridge key chain attached to it. ‘I’ve winterized everything, the pipes are dry, the water’s off. Just pop in now and then, check the mousetraps, get the lawn taken care of-‘

Ronnie took the key and nodded, and they headed down the stairs towards the DeSoto.

‘You sure you got everything?’ he asked, again.

‘We’ll be back some time in May or June,’ Doctor Hawkeye promised him, nodding, and Ronnie believed him. The older doctor hadn’t forgotten anything, of course he hadn’t. He was a former surgeon; he was meticulous, thorough, and organized when he needed to be. ‘We’ll let you know when we know.’

Ronnie leaned through the passenger window while Doctor Hawkeye climbed into the driver’s seat.

‘Drive safe,’ he told him. ‘Call me when you get there-’ he got a playful, two fingered salute. ‘I know Dr. Hunnicutt probably won’t remember me, but say hi from me anyway-‘

‘He’ll remember you-‘ he promised. Ronnie was less sure-it had been more than a decade since he’d last visited. He knew Doctor Hawkeye hadn’t seem him at all since his father died, unable to get away from the practice. He was glad they’d finally be able to enjoy each other’s company more regularly. Doctor Hawkeye deserved to be surrounded by people he loved.

‘Call you when you get there, Doc,’ Ronnie pleaded yet again, tapping the frame as he stepped back, continuing to fight his tears. He watched, and waved, as the car bounced away down the road, muffler roaring and the gravel crunching under its tires, until the cloud of dust was out of sight, and the muffler was echoing in the distance.