The Ranch

“I can't believe the number of patients you see every day,” Sam commented late one afternoon, “it's inhuman. No wonder you're tired all the time.” It would have been so easy then to just tell him she had AIDS. But it wasn't his problem, or his business. She had already decided she wasn't going to make it anyone's burden but her own, for as long as she could do it. She was planning to save money for herself to put aside for medical care and treatment, for nursing care if it ever came to that. The only real problem she had was Jade, and what to do with her when she died. It seemed awful to be thinking like that, but Zoe knew she had to. Part of her was still resisting it, but another part had already accepted her fate. It seemed an incredible end to a bright career, and if she let herself, she could dwell on her bad luck and ill fate, but she really didn't want to do that. She just wanted to enjoy whatever time she had. And she knew she might have years, even a decade, it didn't happen often, but it happened to some that way, and she was going to do everything she could to ensure that it happened to her. The trip to Wyoming was part of that, the rest, the scenery, the altitude, the air, along with the comfort of seeing her old friend Tanya.

“What about this one?” Sam interrupted her reverie to hold out a file to her. It belonged to an extremely sick young man. He had already entered the last stages of AIDS dementia, and Zoe doubted that he would last much longer. He had put up a valiant fight for months, and there wasn't much she could do now, except make him comfortable, and console his lover. She visited him every day. She explained it all to Sam and he shook his head. Hers was the most unorthodox of all the practices he worked for, but it was also the most creative in terms of treatment, and he was deeply moved by her compassion. She seemed to leave no stone unturned in seeking out new antibiotics, medications, ways of treating infection and pain, and even unusual holistic treatments. She did anything she could to beat the disease, right till the bitter end, and to comfort the patient.

“One of these days we'll get lucky,” she said sadly. But not soon enough for all of them. Or even for herself now.

“I think they got lucky when they found you,” he said, looking at her with ever increasing admiration. He had always liked her so much, and he liked her even more now. She was everything a physician should be, and most weren't accessible personally but she was. He wondered if it had anything to do with the lover who had died of AIDS years before. He wondered if she had loved anyone since then, and guessed that she hadn't. Surely not Dick Franklin. Sam would have liked to be closer to her. She had always been very open with him, and very friendly, but he never felt there was any interest on her part in being more than friends and business associates and collaborating physicians.

And particularly lately she felt she couldn't allow herself to be close to anyone. She was very careful to put a safe distance between herself and the rest of the world, even Sam, whom she had known since med school. She didn't want to mislead him or anyone, to lead them on, or provide a come-on. She wanted to make it clear to everyone that she was not available as a woman, only as a doctor. It seemed the only fair way to handle her situation. She had even thought about buying herself a cheap wedding band, and she forced herself not to think of the lonely path she was taking.

But as they worked on the last of the files, Sam glanced at her again and wondered if he could ask her out to dinner. There was still plenty to talk about, and he was in no hurry to go home. “Can I talk you into something to eat while we finish up? I thought we could go out for pasta in the neighborhood or something. Any interest?” he asked, nearly holding his breath and feeling stupid for it. She made him feel like a kid sometimes, and he liked that. He liked everything about her. He always had. And over the years, he had come to admire her more, and like her better.

“That sounds fine,” she said with no clue at all that he found her even remotely attractive. She had wanted to take him out anyway, to thank him for giving her the opportunity to leave town and have a real vacation. She felt a little guilty leaving Jade, but he had promised he'd keep an eye on her too, and stop in and see her and the au pair when he left the office.

“You're really a full-service on-call doctor,” she teased as she slid into the booth in a little Italian restaurant in the Upper Haight. She had come here for years, and she liked it. It was quiet, and the food was good, and it was the first time she and Sam had sat down and talked to each other over dinner since med school. They laughed about how long it had been. Although their paths had crossed regularly over the past eighteen years, they'd never really had time alone together, they were always working.