The Ranch

“Not really. I think we might have eventually, but we didn't talk about it. He'd been married, and he had kids. And I was busy building up my practice as an internist. I was in a practice with two other docs then, but I left it when I set up the clinic. I never felt compelled to be married, or even to be with anyone indefinitely. We saw each other a lot, and we were very close, but we didn't live together actually until he was dying. I took three months off work and took care of him. It was very sad,” but she looked as though she had made her peace with it, She was serious, but not grieving. It had been a long time since he'd died and a lot had happened in the meantime. She still saw his children from time to time, but she hadn't been close to them, it was only after Jade was born that she actually understood the extraordinary joy of having children. He asked her about that too, and she told him how it had come about. Jade's mother had been nineteen years old, unmarried, and had no desire to keep the baby. And her family had refused to take her in when they discovered that the baby was Asian.

“She's the greatest thing that ever happened to me,” Zoe said simply. And then she turned the tables on him. “What about you?” She knew he'd been married briefly in Chicago. “What happened with your marriage?” They had lost track of each other during their residencies, and by the time he came back to San Francisco, his marriage was behind him and he said very little about it, and it was rare for Sam and Zoe to take a night off, just to talk, like this.

“The marriage lasted for two miserable years, while I was doing my residency,” he explained, looking thoughtful. “Poor kid, I never saw her. You know what that's like. She hated it. She said she'd never get involved with another doctor. But she was genetically doomed. Her father was a big thoracic surgeon in Grosse Pointe, her brother is a sports doctor in Chicago, and after me she wound up marrying a plastic surgeon. She has three kids and lives in Milwaukee, and I think she's very happy. I haven't seen her in years. And when I first came back to California, I lived with a woman for several years, but neither of us ever had any interest in getting married. We'd both had bad experiences before, and neither of us was ready. You remind me a little bit of her actually. She's kind of a saint like you. She had a real need to make a difference, and she was always pressuring me about it. In the end, she did what she had to do, and I stayed behind. She's a nurse-practitioner in a leper colony in Botswana.” Zoe vaguely remembered hearing about her, but it was before Sam had done locum tenens for her, and Zoe had never met her.

“Wow! That's serious.” Zoe looked at him, fascinated by what she was hearing. “And she couldn't talk you into joining her?” Zoe thought it sounded vaguely appealing, but Sam clearly didn't, as he shook his head, with a look of horror.

“Not on your life.” He grinned. “No matter how much I loved her. I hate snakes, I hate bugs, I was never in the Boy Scouts, and I think camping trips and sleeping bags are sheer torture. I was definitely not cut out for a life serving mankind in the jungle. I like my nice comfortable bed at night, a good meal, a warm restaurant, a glass of wine, and the wildest vegetation I want to see is in Golden Gate Park on a weekend. Rachel comes over here about once a year, and I'm still crazy about her, but we're just friends now. She lives with the head of the leper colony, and they have a baby. She loves Africa and she says I don't know what I'm missing.”

“By not having children, or by living here?” Zoe was laughing, but it was quite a story.

“Both. She says she'll never leave Africa. But you never know. The politics over there get pretty scary. It's definitely not for me. She's a great gal, and she did the right thing. She left five years ago, and I don't know, the time has just flown. I'm forty-six years old and I guess I've just forgotten to get married.”

“Me too,” she laughed at him, “my parents used to go crazy over it. They both died in the last few years, so there's no one to bug me about it anymore.” And now she knew she certainly wouldn't be getting married. But talking about his own life suddenly made Sam feel braver.

“What about Dr. Franklin?” He felt nervous asking her, but he was curious. And she definitely didn't put out vibes that said she was open to invitations. He wanted to know if it was because of Dick Franklin, or if there were other reasons, maybe even someone else he didn't know about. It was hard to believe that a woman like Zoe only cared about her practice and her baby.

“What about Dick?” Zoe asked, looking puzzled. “We're good friends, that's all. He's an interesting man,” she said kindly, but Sam was looking into her eyes for deeper meaning.

“You don't give much away, do you?” he said, and she laughed at him.