“Don’t know how you can be a doctor without ever going into the hospital,” Pop was grumbling when Jake came back in. “All that money and schooling on a medical degree and you don’t ever go in to the office or visit the hospital. Are you sure you’re not just a quack?”
“Might I remind you that working remotely is what enabled me to move here to be near you,” Jake shot back as he flipped open the laptop. With HIPAA, he had to make certain no one could see anything on the screen—which, even though his dad would have absolutely no clue about how to read an X-ray image, and nor could Pop even read the notes without his thick bifocals—Jake still had to maintain privacy standards. So he sat in the corner with the computer screen facing the wall and logged in to the highly secure VPN for his radiology group.
“What do ya know—this one’s from Sydney,” he said when the patient info came up on the screen.
“You’re looking at an X-ray from a guy from Sydney? As in Australia?” Pops turned from the sink—whoa, he was wearing pink elbow-length dishwashing gloves!—and stared at him. “Why the hell they want to send their X-rays all the way here?”
“A female,” Jake said absently as he read the notes from the emergency physician before opening the image so he could read the film. “Hmm? Just a minute, Pops, I need to take care of this first…”
He carefully examined the image, made his assessment, typed up detailed notes, then sent everything back—a total of twelve minutes after the alert came in. Just as he did, another notification chimed and he had a second film to read and interpret. That one took longer because he had to hunt down previous X-rays from a different system so he could compare the baseline to the new images.
Forty minutes later, he closed the laptop and looked at his dad, who’d taken a seat at the table across from him and was eyeing Jake with an unreadable expression.
“What?” Jake asked.
“Were you really looking at X-rays from Australia?” His dad appeared both skeptical and fascinated.
“I was. It’s one in the morning there, you know, and sometimes they don’t have radiologists on staff at the smaller hospitals or care centers—or they’re unavailable—and so my group is on call for some of the hospitals in Sydney. That way, the Australian radiologists can sleep through the night.” He grinned.
Pop shook his head, scratching at the thick, wavy hair that still grew there. “You can really do all that just on your computer?”
Jake nodded. “Yes. I really can. It’s pretty common for radiologists to work remotely nowadays. There’s usually no reason for us to be on site.”
Working from home most of the time made for an interesting lifestyle. It allowed him to be flexible and comfortable—hell, he worked in his boxers sometimes and had stopped shaving daily three years ago—but it also could be pretty lonely, not leaving the house regularly and having few human interactions. And since his relationship with Mandy had gone south, his social life had been even worse.
He’d spent alotof time making bread.
Which was one of the reasons he hadn’t minded moving permanently to Wicks Hollow. And why he’d bought his own place instead of living with Dad, because the two months he’d bunked here in this twelve-hundred-square-foot cottage had been enough to turn his own thick head of hair gray. And Jake wasn’t about to go salt-and-pepper at thirty-four.
“That just means I have more time to help you with things around here,” Jake went on. “So no more climbing on the roof, please? I don’t want to be looking atyourX-rays someday when you fall off and break your damned neck.”
His dad snorted. “Fine. But I’m still mowing the lawn, and I’m going to finish painting the living room.”
“Only if you don’t have to stand on a ladder to do it. I’ll get the ceiling, all right? And the beehive I saw out there. So, when do rehearsals start for this play of yours?”
“I don’t know,” Pop responded. Then he gave Jake a sharp look. “Why are you so interested in the play?”
“I… Well, I was just curious. After all, rehearsals will be cutting into your lawn-mowing time, and that might mean I’ll have to come over here and do more of the yard work. I’ve got my own place to take care of, you know.”
And he did—he’d managed to snag an unusual but promising house on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. It needed quite a bit of updating (something he could do while waiting for his pager to go off or his dough to rise), so he’d snagged it for a sweet deal. That was because it had been in the dead of a lake-effect January winter in the middle of a blizzard and subsequent snow-in that the house had gone on the market. It had to sell quickly—and he’d been here to snatch it up. He owed his realtorbigtime, even though he’d had to remove a freakingtreefrom the middle of the living room.
“I told you I don’t need your help around here. All that much,” his dad added quickly. “I won’t climb on the roof again, all right?”
“No climbing anything but the stairs—you hear me? Pop, I’m not kidding,” Jake said.
“Don’t take that tone with me, sonny. I’m still your father.”
“Yes, and I want you to stay that way.”
“I don’t know when those rehearsals start, but they want me to come in and help with the set.” This bit of information was obviously his father’s version of a peace offering—maybe an acknowledgment of Jake’s concerns.
“You mean building the set?”
“Yes, and painting it and things. I hope Maxine’s not there. Last thing I want is to see that woman running around with a goddamned saw. Or an electric screwdriver.”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved I haven’t met her yet.”
“Be glad. Be very glad. Maxine Took makes your mother look like a kitten.”
