“But it’s still not easy for me. I have to work twice as hard as everyone else. Probably always will. Helps me to ‘stay humble and stay hungry.’” Charlie sighed, long and deep, and pushed the bridge of his glasses up. “And that’s assuming I can actually pass the boards so I can get licensed and practice medicine someday.” He turned to her. “So what about you? Why are you a nurse?”
She cast her mind back, to long before nursing school, all the way back to the first moment she remembered loving being a caregiver. “My grandparents needed help. Their bodies were, well, they were wilting. Withering. I ended up as their caretaker through their last years. I felt as if ... I made a difference.”
“Must’ve been hard. To watch the decline of people you love.”
“It was. But a good kind of hard. I’d promised myself that I would never turn away from someone’s pain, no matter how much I wanted to.”
He turned to her. “I believe that. I see that in you. I see your strength. You were born to be a nurse.” It seemed like he wanted to say something else, then decided not to. He pushed off the fence. “It’s late. Try to get some sleep, Evie. Morning will be here soon.”
She was still catching up with the idea that Wren was the reason he had made it through med school when she suddenly called out, “Charlie!”
He turned back, eyebrows raised.
“I think you’re a good doctor. A really good doctor.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Definitely.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Good thing God doesn’t give up on us, huh?” Then he pivoted and continued on his way back to the buggy shop.
Evie watched him go, her thoughts returning to what he’d revealed about Wren. So she was the reason he was a doctor. There was a history between the two of them that Evie didn’t fully know, and it just made her feel ... defeated.
Wren and Charlie were so much more connected than she’d realized. Who was she to interfere? How dare she even want to?
