"Maybe don't do that," Tessa said gently, redirecting his hand.
It wasn't trauma surgery. It wasn't even close. But as Tessa washed her hands and moved on to the next patient, she realized she was smiling.
The clinic was small. Four exam rooms, a waiting area with mismatched chairs, a reception desk staffed by a woman named Gloria who seemed to know everyone in town. Dr. Hendricks was in his sixties, silver-haired, with a calm bedside manner and a dry sense of humor that reminded Tessa of her father.
"You're overqualified for this," he'd said when she'd officially accepted the position. "You know that."
"I know. I don't care."
"Good. Because I need someone who can handle anything that walks through that door, and small-town medicine means anything can walk through that door."
He hadn't been wrong. By noon, Tessa had seen a sprained ankle, a case of strep throat, an infected splinter, two flu shots, and a teenager with a rash that turned out to be poison ivy. Nothing life-threatening. Nothing that required split-second decisions or the cold focus of the OR.
It was, she realized, exactly what she needed.
She took her lunch break on a bench outside, eating the sandwich Brian had packed for her that morning. The clinic sat on Main Street, a few blocks from the water. She could see Ruth's bookstore from here, the hardware store, the bakery where Lila sold cookies that rivaled Martha's.
Her phone buzzed. Brian.
"How's the first day?"
"Good. Extracted a raisin from a toddler's nose. Diagnosed poison ivy. Living the dream."
He laughed. "Sounds thrilling."
"It actually is. I know that sounds crazy, but it is." She leaned back on the bench, tilting her face toward the sun. "How's the shop?"
"Slow. Hank's arguing with a customer about the value of a '68 Honda CB350. Colby's pretending to do paperwork but actually watching videos on his phone."
"Sounds about right."
"Dinner tonight? I was thinking that Italian place on the pier."
"Perfect. I'll be done around five."
"I'll pick you up."
She hung up, still smiling. This was her life now. Raisins in noses and lunch on a bench and dinner plans with the man she loved. It was so far from the eighteen-hour shifts and the constant adrenaline and the gnawing exhaustion that it felt like a different universe.
A better universe.
The afternoon brought more of the same. A fishhook embedded in a thumb. An elderly woman with high blood pressure who mostly wanted someone to talk to. A construction worker with a gash on his forearm that needed twelve stitches.
"You're good at that," Dr. Hendricks observed, watching her close the wound with neat, precise sutures. "Steady hands."
"Seven years of surgery will do that."
"You miss it?"
She considered the question as she tied off the last suture. "Parts of it. The challenge. The precision. The feeling of fixing something that seemed unfixable." She stripped off her gloves. "But I don't miss what it cost me. I don't miss being so tired I couldn't see straight. I don't miss eating every meal out of a vending machine or forgetting what my apartment looked like in daylight."
"Burnout's a beast."
"Yeah. It is." She met his eyes. "I came here to recover from it. Ended up finding something better than what I left behind."
"Copper Moon has a way of doing that." Hendricks smiled. "I came here thirty years ago for a summer job. Never left."
"No regrets?"
