Healing Grace by Lisa J. Lickel

to get a job.” His easy laugh of a moment ago was gone. Eddy looked up from his turkey project, eyes wide under his heavy swath of bangs. Ted put his hand on his son’s shoulder.
     Grace smiled to reassure the boy that nothing was wrong.
    It didn’t work. “You’re getting a job, Grace? Who’s gonna take care of me?” His anguished face nearly undid her plans right then. She gave Ted “the look” out of the corner of her eye as she swiftly went to put her arms around Eddy while he sat at the table.
    “I’m only thinking about helping Doctor Evans out at the clinic while you’re at school, Eddy. I’m not sure if he needs help. You’re my most important job right now. I’ll still be here almost all the time when you need me. It’s just sometimes someone has an accident or gets sick when I want to come home, but I have to help them, too.”
    “Oh. I like Doctor Evans,” he said. “And Matty puts me on Ranger Robot bandages,” he continued, clueless about mixing up his words. He went back to coloring, totally relaxed. “I can come and see you there, too, can’t I? I didn’t know you were a doctor. But I did know you’re smart as Miss Jones. I love you!”
    “Yeah, well…” She ruffled his head as she stalked past the little man’s father out of the kitchen.
    * * * *
    “Time to start moving, Eds,” Ted told his boy, Eddy’s work apparently done here.
    All the way home he heard her voice in his head. Ancient, hmmm… and he caught the present tense in her answer about children. What did she mean when she said she didn’t think she’d ever want anything to do with medicine again? What had happened back in Tennessee? He’d never pried, never felt the need to. He’d trusted her from the moment he’d first seen her, one of his old ragged T-shirts wrapped around her hair as she cleaned cobwebs Jilly had never bothered to notice. He should have asked for references at least, before he hired her to take care of Eddy. He had meant to. Somehow, he’d never gotten around to it. Shelby’s opinion seemed more than adequate. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so hasty.
    “Bedtime, kiddo,” he said as they crossed the threshold.
    “Dad!”
    “What clothes are you wearing tomorrow? And where’s your school bag? Let’s pack it up. What papers did you bring home for me to see?”
    During their evening routine, thoughts continued to swirl. There must be a better way to learn more about her. Shelby and Davy could help figure out where this Woodside clinic was. Somewhere in Tennessee…
    * * * *
    Grace returned to Doctor Evans’s clinic and this time went inside. When she explained her reason for stopping in to Nancy, the receptionist, there was no mistaking the young woman’s wide-eyed look of relief. “Wait right here!” Nancy disappeared down a hallway and returned three minutes later. “When can you come back and talk to the doctor?”
    On a mid-November Friday afternoon, when Eddy and his father were home together doing whatever fathers and sons find to do, she paused in the driveway in front of the clinic. The parking lot was an ominous three-quarters full, car windows glinting in the fading light, and wind rattled the remaining brown leaves still clinging to skeletal trees.
    She clutched the pristine envelope with her diploma, CE credits from Harvard and certificates from Greenville declaring her duly bestowed with all the privileges of a Physician’s Assistant, along with references she never imagined she would ever need. It had been a sort of joke in Woodside, keeping the papers in her emergency bag in her car. Now she was glad to have them even if she could not believe that she actually wanted—ached—for the feel of steel instruments in her hands, the look of children and mothers who begged her to help them feel better, the brisk scent of rubbing alcohol. Gloves. She’d have to remember gloves at all times. She pushed open the glass doors, thinking up reasons for the amount of cars in the