The fact that Ben would remember something so insignificant felt…meaningful. I couldn’t explain it, but it did.
I parked in the driveway like I had before and went to ring the doorbell.
Dr. Cobb opened the door, gave me a tight smile, and gestured me in.
“Hi, I’m glad you could come,” he said, obviously tense about something.
“What’s wrong?” I asked instead of telling him that of course I would come, given that this could be my next job and I liked the place.
He walked briskly to the office slash conference room and took a seat at his desk. I sat in the visitor’s chair and waited him out.
“Look, this is…” He sighed, took a deep breath, and looked at me with a serious expression on his handsome face. “I’ve decided to do something with this place, and I want you to work for me, help me bring that vision to life, but it’s…” He made a complicated face and grimaced. “It’s all mostly legal, but it’s also skirting the law a little bit.” He hastily added, “For a good cause.”
I felt surprised by the lack of warning bells, even though from any other potential future employee they would’ve been loud and clear. Something about Dr. Cobb made me trust him, for better or for worse.
“Okay. Well, first of all, I am not going to tell anyone even if I don’t take the job, so you can relax a bit,” I said, smiling. “Of course, if I think you’re potentially a threat to anyone, then that’s a whole other deal, but you knew that already.”
He gave me a tight smile back and nodded. “Of course. I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“So, how about you tell me what this vision of yours is and we figure it out, okay?”
He took a deep breath and let it out, his hands relaxing on top of the desk, and he looked at me again.
“I want to help the usual patients, what we talked about. Having a general clinic for LGBTQIA people would be excellent. The safe space thing, all that.” He gestured with his hand. “But I also want to figure out a way to spread the word that for street kids, this is a safe place to come at any hour if they need urgent care and can’t afford—monetarily or otherwise—to go to the ER.”
So far, I was following him. I understood why he’d want to do that. “All right. What’s the catch?”
“I’m going to have a few beds in the hidden room downstairs for them to use if they need to.”
First of all, ahidden room? But that wasn’t my main question, because I immediately knew what he wasn’t saying: this was also his home. He’d be an adult male, having potentially—probably—vulnerable, underage children under his roof.
“I see…”
He smiled wryly. “So, you can understand why I’m…hesitant.”
“Oh, one hundred percent.” I tilted my head and looked at him. “Who all would know about this?”
“Me. Maybe a receptionist. You. A surgeon friend of mine, and her husband who is a lawyer. Nobody else.”
I squinted at him. “Not even any other nurses you might employ?”
He shook his head. “No. I can’t take that risk. The fewer people know, the better.”
“And if they figure it out?”
“That’s an issue for future me, I guess.” He looked tired, and I could tell how much of a toll this was taking. The determination underneath was clear to me, too.
There was one question I needed to ask, though. “Why me?”
“For one, you’re queer. You’d be someone those kinds of kids might relate to the easiest. I’m older, and even though they might see me as a cool doctor with all the tattoos, I’m still more of an authority figure.” He shrugged then. “And for two, I think you know a lot about homelessness within the LGBTQ community based on what you told me about your previous job.”
He wasn’t wrong there. I couldn’t even remember all the kids that had come through the doors of that ER, whether they wanted to or not. I could, however, remember all of them who had freaked and run out mid-treatment or because they saw a cop, or someone asked the wrong kind of question.
“What about the neighbors?”
“I was thinking,” he started, then pushed to his feet. “Come see this.”
I followed him through the lower level of the house, passing the rooms that were for examinations, X-rays, minor surgery stuff that Dr. Cobb could handle here, and the storage room that was filled to the brim with everything a working clinic might need.
