The Ranch

The rest of Zoe Phillips's day, after Tanya called, went like all her days, it just flew by as she went diligently from patient to patient. Most of her patients were homosexual men, but in recent years, she was seeing more and more women and heterosexuals, who had contracted the disease either sexually, or with IV drugs, or transfusions. But the cases she hated most, and she had had many of them, were the children. It was like working in an underdeveloped country. She could offer them no cure, and there was so little she could do to help them. Sometimes only a gesture, a touch of the hand, a gift of time, a moment at their bedside before they died. She spent untold hours visiting her patients. She was tireless and had been for years, since the first cases were documented in the early eighties. In the years since, AIDS had become her nemesis, her obsession, and her passion. By the end of each day, she was drained of all energy and emotion. The only human being she could still think of offering anything to at all was her daughter. She tried to spend as much time as possible with her, she even went home for lunch sometimes, just to be with her. Early on she had brought her to work with her, and kept her in her office in a basket. But once Jade began to walk, it was all over. She was just getting ready to go home to her on the day Tanya called, when Sam Warner, her only relief doctor at the time, dropped by to see how things were going. He was a good doctor and a nice man. Zoe had known him for years professionally, and they had been good friends in medical school, when they'd gone to Stanford. They'd been inseparable for a while, and when they were young, Zoe had always suspected that Sam had a crush on her, but she'd been far too intent on her work to acknowledge it, and he'd never done anything about it. He moved to Chicago for his residency, and they had lost touch for a while, long enough for him to get married, and then divorced. And when he finally moved back to California, they eventually ran into each other again and resumed their old friendship. But it was nothing more than that now. They were buddies, and he loved doing relief work in her practice.

“How's it going here? I haven't heard from you in weeks.” He popped his head around her office door as she put away her papers. He had the look of a large, cuddly teddy bear. He was tall and broad and warm, with ever tousled brown hair and big brown eyes, and no matter how hard he tried, he always looked rumpled. But Zoe knew he was brilliant with her patients. He was great with people of all ages and sizes, and he was the only relief doctor she trusted. “Don't you ever take a day off?” he asked, with a look of concern. His specialty was doing locum tenens for an interesting assortment of doctors. That meant he was a full-time “relief doctor,” with no practice of his own. This was what he did for a living. And he particularly enjoyed Zoe's practice. She ran a tight ship, and he thought she was a truly great physician, working in a nearly impossible field at the moment.

“I try not to take time off,” she said in answer to his question. “My patients don't like it.” Although they liked Sam, she felt an obligation not to let them down or desert them. She did rounds at the hospital, and visited them in their homes sometimes, even on Sundays, and Sam knew that.

“You need to take time off,” he scolded as he watched her take off her white coat and toss it in the laundry. “It's good for you, and besides,” he grinned at her, “I need the money.”

“I think I still owe you from last time, Sam. I've got a new bookkeeper and so far she's a disaster.” She smiled at him, he was always incredibly patient about payment. She had learned in medical school that he was from a wealthy family in the East and had independent means, but he never said anything about it, and nothing about him suggested ostentation. He drove a battered old car, wore simple clothes, mostly work shirts and jeans, and he wore an ancient pair of boots that he obviously loved and looked as though they'd been worn by ten thousand cowboys.

“Anything new around here?” he asked. He liked keeping up to date on her practice, so he wasn't flying completely blind whenever she asked him to take over. And the only time she did was when she was sick, or had a special event to go to. But she hadn't gone out much lately. She'd been too tired at night, and incredibly busy in the daytime, and she was just as happy to stay home with her baby. And when she went out on a date, which she did occasionally, she wore her beeper and took her own calls, and sometimes, if she had to, she walked out of a play, or left dinner even before she'd touched it. It didn't make her a very exciting date, but it made her one hell of a good doctor.

“Nothing much new.” She filled him in as she changed her shoes. “We seem to have a lot of new kids at the moment, young ones.” They had contracted AIDS during gestation, from their mothers.