“What are shelf exams?” Deb asked, returning to the room after tucking in her sons.
“Medical board exams,” Ron explained. “We have them after every rotation to cover everything we were supposed to learn in lectures and practice.”
“You have tests all the time, don’t you? Seems like every time I talk to you you’re studying for a test,” Mick commented.
Ron chuckled. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Don’t know why you’d want to go through that, as much as you hated studying back in school.”
Ron shrugged. “It’s what I have to do to get where I want to be.”
“He didn’t want to do real work,” his dad muttered. While he pretended to be joking, there was just enough of a dig in his tone to make Haley move a bit restlessly beside Ron.
“Doesn’t like getting his hands dirty,” T.L. added, jerking a chin in the general direction of his garage. “He was worthless in the shop.”
The others laughed and nodded in agreement. Ron’s smile was wry as he thought about just how hard and dirty medical school could get.
Sensing Haley was becoming indignant on his behalf, he rested a hand lightly on her knee. There was no need for her to waste her breath defending him. She would never convince his family he was physician material.
“You’re right, Dad. I was a hopeless case when it came to working on cars.”
“Weren’t any good as a carnie, either,” Mick asserted. “Nor at selling cars or doing landscape work.”
“Why do you think I went to medical school?” Ron shot back with a lazy grin. “It was pretty much the only
thing I hadn’t tried yet.”
“And people really let you treat their sick children?” Deb glanced toward the back of the house where her boys slept as if unable to conceive of trusting their care to her brother’s hands.
“I’m not a doctor yet, Deb. I’m still just learning. I have a lot of supervision now, and several years to go before I’ll be fully responsible for treating patients.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
“Didn’t Ron save your son’s life once, Deb?” Haley seemed unable to resist asking.
Ron winced. The others all looked at him, as if wondering just how much he’d embellished that story in the retelling.
“I don’t know if he saved Kenny’s life,” Deb argued vaguely. “He just pulled a piece of candy out of his mouth.”
Ron bit his lower lip as he remembered the panic that had coursed through him when he’d seen Kenny’s purpling skin. The child had been limp and still in his arms, his eyes already glazing, and Ron had been painfully aware that there’d been no time to waste getting air into the little lungs. Sticking his finger in Kenny’s mouth had been pure instinct, half-remembered training from a high school first aid course. He’d never heard anything more beautiful than the boy’s first ragged cough when the candy was dislodged.
“I seem to remember you doing a lot of screaming and hollering,” Mick murmured to Deb. “You sure thought the kid was dying at the time.”
“Takes more than pulling candy out of a kid’s mouth to make a man a doctor,” T.L. commented.
“At least you’re sticking with this course so far.” Carolyn’s approval was cloaked in a touch of amazement as she spoke to her youngest child.
She glanced at Haley. “I have to warn you, Ron’s never been known as the stick-to-it type. I can’t tell you how many clubs he joined and sports he started, only to up and quit when he got bored or when it got too hard. I saved and bought him a clarinet ’cause he wanted to be in the band, only for him to quit after just a few weeks…”
“I asked for a trumpet,” Ron mumbled.
“…and then I got him an electric guitar when he was in high school, but he didn’t stick with that, either.”
She didn’t add that she’d forbidden him to play the guitar in the house because it made too much noise.
“Yeah. Hard to see Ron hanging in for another five or six years of schooling,” Mick said with a skeptical grin. “What’s the next plan, bro? Going to try fighting fires?”
“I just might. Or maybe I’ll be a mortician. I’ve been keeping that as a Plan B in case I wash out of med school. You know, if I can’t save ’em, might as well bury ’em.”