“So, Shannon Bellamy, can you tell me more about yourself?”
Shannon hands him her document folder containing her degree and accreditations. She gives him some professional details, but nothing personal and certainly nothing that cannot be accessed via her resume.
“Impressive,” Kirk finally says, leaning back into his executive chair, which protests with a creak.
“Thank you.”
“I meant what you did back there.”
“Huh?”
His beautiful green eyes narrow shrewdly. “Martha has never been in remission from her JRA long enough to expect a full recovery. But what you did to her was a first. I have never seen her so surprised in the entire time she has been coming here.”
Shannon shifts nervously.
“I didn’t do anything. I just gave her a massage. I have lots of static electricity in my body.” She gives a short laugh. “People used to say I’m a walking generator.”
“I think we both know it’s more than that,” Kirk says in a quiet tone.
Shannon raises her eyes to meet his. His green ones are serious and understanding.
“Would you like to work here, Shannon? You and I both know you have gifts. This is a safe environment for you to practice them.”
The silence between them weighs heavily.
Kirk goes on when she doesn’t say anything, “You get a basic salary with benefits, and on top of that, you get a commission for every patient you treat.”
He writes down a sum on a notepad, tears the top sheet off and hands it to her. He smiles.
“How does that look to you?”
Her cheeks dimple. She finds herself warming to this quick-thinking, handsome doctor, who obviously is far, far more than meets the eye.
“Yes,” she says.
“And remember, don’t tell anyone here about what you can do,” he warns.
She pauses.
Then she says, “How did you know I can . . . do what I do.”
He smiles sadly. “Let’s just say I have had personal experience with people who have your kind of gifts, except that they use them for anything but healing.”
SETTLING IN
For the next week, Shannon is kept so busy at the clinic that she scarcely has time to do anything else. Between work and making their new house a home, it is all she can do not to collapse into bed, exhausted, every night.
Using her gifts makes her more tired than usual, but it is a good kind of fatigue – akin to exercise. To not use them would be to keep them bottled up inside her so that she becomes choked and restless. She is glad to be allowed to use them again.
As for Dr. Kirk, he is a whirlwind of activity at work. From sunup to sundown, and sometimes well beyond, he is there, everywhere – tirelessly seeing and diagnosing patient after patient, sending them for X-rays and MRI scans, setting splints and bandages, operating and repairing. As Shannon is not his nurse or directly affiliated with what he does from day to day, she hardly works with him except for when he has a case to refer to her.
“Mrs. Doherty needs rehabilitation,” he would say, and leave her to decide what is best.
Or:
“Mr. Hirsch has had a stroke, and the left side of his face is paralyzed. See if you can get those smiling muscles working again.”
He does most of this through the phone or as a written instruction on the patient’s case file, so she hardly has any face to face time with him. Which suits her fine. He is her boss, after all, and their relationship must be kept strictly professional.
Kirk’s nurse is Patty Kane, and she is particularly chatty during lunch hour. They are at the cafeteria. Shannon has chosen a chicken salad and a bottle of orange juice. Patty is beside her at the chow line. Her tray is laden with a plate of roast chicken with loads of gravy and mash potatoes, and she has added in a bowl of raspberry Jell-O.
“So you’re the new girl,” she says to Shannon.
“I guess I am.”
“I heard you rented the old Pullnam place.”
“I did.”
Patty is a brunette with an upturned, freckled nose. “Do you sleep well at night?”
“Yes.” Shannon finds the nurse particularly intrusive for someone she doesn’t know at all, but she is too polite to blow anyone off at this stage. “Why do you ask?”
Patty wrinkles her button of a nose. “It’s just that the Pullnam place is rumored to be haunted.”
Haunted? Shannon does not have ESP, but she has felt no vibes of ghostly activity there.
She frowns. “How is that so?”
They reach the cash register, and Shannon reaches for her wallet.
“I’ll get that,” Patty says with a smile. “Consider it my welcome gift to you.”
“Thanks.”
Shannon wonders if this is Patty’s way of poking her nose in further, but she has very few friends in Dolphin’s Bay so far, and it might not hurt her to get to know some people if she is going to live here semi-permanently.