Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance) (4 page)

“
This is an old farmhouse,”
Nate explained. “It’s been owned by the same family since the
early nineteen hundreds, but this last generation turned it into a
restaurant. There are a lot of tourists around, so they decided to
cash in on that.”

Jamie looked around and decided
she liked it. She looked at the menu.

“
I’m going to have a steak,”
Nate said. “It’s been a rough week and I’m rewarding myself.”

“
I think I’ll have the
braised chicken with potatoes and carrots,” Jamie said, folding her
menu closed and placing it on the table.

“
I know you’ve only been here
for a day, but what do you think about our town?” Nate asked.

“
Well, as you say, it’s only
been a day, but so far I like it. I haven’t worked during regular
daytime hours for years, so that’s good.”

“
I’m on call twenty-four
hours a day,” Nate said. “But most days I get to go home and
that’s it. But you never know what might happen after hours.”

“
You can always call on me
anytime after hours,” she said.

“
You’ve got quite a resume
for someone so young,” Nate said. “Vanderbilt med school,
internship in California, residency in Birmingham. ER doctor in a
major Atlanta hospital. Impressive.”

Jamie blushed. She wasn’t used
to such forthright compliments. “Thanks,” she said. “Where did
you go to med school?” she asked.

“
Harvard,” he said.

“
That is very impressive,”
she said. She took a drink of water from her Mason jar.

“
Why are you here in the hills
of Tennessee?” she asked. “You could be anywhere you want to be.”

“
I am where I want to be,” he
said. “I came here twelve years ago on a three-year contract and
decided to stay. I want to do something meaningful with my medical
degree.”

They ate their meal in silence
for a few minutes, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Jamie savored the
second good meal she had eaten in a long time.

“
You said you’re from a place
near here,” Nate said. “Where is that?”

“
I’m from Baker, Tennessee,”
she said. “It’s about two hours away. In a valley.”

“
I’ve been through there,”
Nate said. “On my way to Nashville.”

“
You pretty much have to go
through there,” she said. She hoped he would stop asking her about
Baker.

“
So you graduated high school
in Baker and then went to Vanderbilt?” he asked.

She didn’t want to think about
her graduation.

“
Yes,” she said. “I went to
Vanderbilt.”

Nate must have sensed something
in Jamie’s tone because he stopped asking her about her hometown or
her past. They didn’t have much else to talk about, so the clinic
became the topic of conversation again.

“
We’ve got starving children
up in those mountains,” Nate said. “We’ve got meth labs and
alcohol stills. The meth labs are fairly new. The stills have been
around for two hundred years. It’s the meth labs that worry me.”

“
What about the starving
children?” she asked. “Do they have any access to food?”

“
Yes, there are programs
through social agencies and the schools. But it’s a hard life. I
try to keep my eye on those kids.”

Jamie suddenly lost her appetite.
She didn’t feel right sitting in a nice restaurant eating braised
chicken and drinking wine when there were starving children nearby.

“
I probably should have waited
to tell you all that,” Nate said. “It’s not exactly dinner
conversation.”

On the drive back to the clinic,
Nate told Jamie where she could buy groceries and where the nearest
Wal-Mart was—Athens, a town about twenty-five miles away. “It’s
not too far to drive,” Nate said. “I go once every two weeks or
so to stock up on groceries and other stuff. They’ve got everything
at Wal-Mart,” he said, looking at her and laughing. She laughed
too. She supposed if there was a nearby Wal-Mart, she wasn’t too
far from civilization.

“
Where do you live?” she
asked him.

“
I live a few houses down from
you,” he said. “But I’m looking to get a place back up in the
hills. Maybe build a log cabin.”

“
You must be planning to stay
awhile,” Jamie said.

“
Yep, I think I’m going to
stay a long while. This is where I belong.”

Jamie wished she knew where she
belonged.

The next day was Saturday and the
clinic closed at noon. Jamie went straight to the Wal-Mart in Athens.
She needed everything. Up and down the aisles she went, putting two
sets of double-bed sheets in the cart, along with bath towels and
kitchen towels. She bought cleaning supplies before heading over to
the grocery section. It had been a long time since Jamie had cooked.
There was a time in her life, when she thought she would cook every
day with Tommy, using the organic produce he grew. She had learned to
cook from her mother, but she had not used those skills in many
years. She was going to get back to that.

Wal-Mart had organic vegetables,
and Jamie bought potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, cabbage,
butternut squash, lettuce, and radishes. The store had a good
selection of rice and pasta, and Jamie added brown rice and several
types of pasta to her cart. At the meat section, she selected ground
beef, pork chops, and boneless chicken breasts. On and on Jamie went,
adding whatever appealed to her to the cart. By the time she made it
to the checkout counter, her basket was practically overflowing.

For the first time since she had
left her childhood home in Baker, Jamie felt like she had a real
home. She surveyed her white walls, and decided to paint some of
them. Over the next few weeks, she painted her living room a pale
golden color and her bedroom a light blue. She wanted the kitchen to
be more vibrant, so she painted it a deep apricot. She hung her
kitchen towels on hooks and her white bath towels on the towel racks
in the green-tile bathroom.

The nurse practitioner, Stacie,
asked Jamie to attend a crafts fair with her one weekend, and Jamie
started a folk art collection that included primitive paintings,
quilts, and ceramic pieces. She and Stacie started attending fairs
and festivals almost every Saturday, and Jamie began to collect
furniture, both antique and folk pieces.

After attending the festivals,
Jamie and Stacie usually cooked dinner at one of their houses. Stacie
lived a couple of blocks down the street. It seemed the main clinic
personnel all lived within walking distance of each other.

One Saturday afternoon, when
Jamie and Stacie were taking a walk down the street, they ran into
Nate. The leaves had fallen off the trees and the weather was brisk
and cold. After chatting for a few minutes with everyone’s breath
visible from their mouths, Jamie asked Nate if he’d like to join
them for supper.

“
No clinic talk,” Stacie said
to Nate, but she laughed. “I know how you are.”

Nate held his palms out. “I
promise,” he said, laughing.

When they walked into Jamie’s
house, Nate said, “I see you’ve painted.”

“
Yes,” Jamie said. “That’s
okay, isn’t it? I just needed to see some color.”

“
Of course it’s okay,” Nate
said. “Whatever makes you want to stay here.”

Jamie went into her blue kitchen
and sliced some cheddar cheese and placed the slices on a tray with
crackers. Nate came in then. “Can I help you with that?” he asked
looking at the tray in her hands.

“
I’ve got it. But you could
get the wine out of the fridge and uncork it. Glasses are in the
cabinet to the right of the sink.”

She placed the tray on the coffee
table and Nate brought out the wine and glasses. He poured the
chardonnay into glasses and handed them to Stacie and Jamie.

“
I’ve got to get cooking,”
Jamie said. “Otherwise, I’ll get too happy with the wine to want
to do it.”

She went back into the kitchen
and started making beef stew. It was perfect for the cool November
night. She cut up the stew meat, floured it lightly, and browned it
in a Dutch oven. Then she added beef stock and onions, carrots, and
celery. She stirred everything around, then placed it covered in the
oven. She would add the potatoes closer to the time when it would be
ready; otherwise they would be a mushy mess.

“
Nate, you promised!” Stacie
was saying when Jamie walked back into her living room.

“
I’m sorry,” Nate said. “I
guess I can’t help it.”

The trio sat in the living room
and ate cheese and crackers and drank wine. Nate uncorked a second
bottle as they talked and laughed. They might move onto a third
bottle of wine, Jamie thought. But she wasn’t unhappy about that.
As they sat there, Jamie realized that she felt contented for the
first time since she left Baker. She had a best friend again, her
first since Linda. She had a house that she loved and she was able to
cook again. She loved her job and she liked Nate. A lot. He was the
first man she had met since Tommy who felt a passion about his
career, who felt a purpose in his life.

Jamie had not mentioned Tommy to
Stacie, and she decided that she might never mention him. It was old
news. Tommy was dead and she had continued to live. She wanted to
have a life.

Chapter
Three

After the bluegrass festival,
Jamie continued to see Matthew. He was kind to her and didn’t pry
into her past. She appreciated that. She didn’t want to talk about
Tommy. But as sweet as Matthew was—and as good looking as he was,
because he was that—Jamie knew from the start that the relationship
could never go anywhere. Matthew was a sophomore, but he still had no
idea what he wanted to do with his life. That was no crime. Jamie
couldn’t blame him for that. But where was their relationship
going?

After a couple of dates with
Matthew, Jamie had become intimate with him. The best she could say
about that is that it was adequate. She let her mind wander during
their sex and she was able to be satisfied. But not emotionally.

After six months of dating
Matthew, Jamie broke it off. She needed an emotional connection. But
her behavior over the rest of her college career did not allow that.
She started hanging out at a college bar, and looking back, she was
ashamed to say that she had picked up quite a few young men. All
one-nighters. Sometimes, she would meet someone that reminded her of
Tommy—his smile, his hair, his laugh, his voice—and she would
give them a try. But they weren’t Tommy, never could be Tommy. They
didn’t even know they were supposed to be like Tommy, and Jamie
felt sorry for them. She knew they were supposed to be like Tommy,
but they had no idea what they were up against—the best man she had
ever known.

Jamie was seeking something that
wasn’t there. But she kept trying. And she kept failing. By the
time she started med school, Jamie was celibate. And she was celibate
when she went to Grahamville, years later.

Linda had stayed with Josh
through the rest of college and married him a month after they
graduated. They moved to Durham, where Josh was from, and she and
Jamie gradually lost touch over the years. She wondered now how
Linda was doing. Was she still married? She had been pregnant the
last time that Jamie had been in touch. Linda had a seven-year-old
child and Jamie wasn’t a part of the child’s life or Linda’s
life.

And now, Jamie was a doctor in a
clinic in a little mountain town in Tennessee. As she had since she
became a doctor, she was healing one life at a time, saving one life
at a time. But she could never save the one life that she really
wanted to save. Tommy’s.

Thanksgiving was approaching and
Stacie and Nate and Jamie planned on making a huge feast, complete
with turkey and dressing and gravy.

“
Won’t you be going home?”
Nate had asked her. “I know it’s near here.”

“
No,” she said. “I’m
going to be staying here.” She didn’t want to tell Nate or Stacie
that she hadn’t been home since she left over a dozen years ago.
Wouldn’t go home where she would see Tommy everywhere, would drive
down the road where he died. She could not go home.

Stacie and the nurse’s
assistant, Tiffany, decorated the clinic with cardboard turkeys and
orange streamers. They placed a cornucopia with gourds and squashes
on the table in the waiting room.

That was the first week that Lela
brought in her three-year-old daughter, Darma. Lela carried her in
the front door, saying in a panicked voice, “I need help here.”
Tiffany immediately led the Native American woman and her child back
to a room and called for Jamie. Nate was already in a room with a
respiratory case. Jamie thought it was a case of asthma and treated
the child for that. With oxygen in her lungs, Jamie soothed the
little girl by rubbing her arm. Darma began to calm down, and so did
her mother. Jamie prescribed an inhaler and a medication to reduce
inflammation. It wouldn’t be the last time that Darma and her
mother would come to the clinic.

Thanksgiving dinner was held at
Stacie’s house. Jamie helped her with the turkey and dressing and
made the gravy. She also brought sweet potato casserole and turnip
greens that she had cooked the previous weekend. Stacie lit candles
on her dining table and the three of them drank wine and feasted
without much conversation. It was the first real Thanksgiving dinner
Jamie had eaten since leaving Baker. She thought about her parents as
they ate, and realized how hard it must have been on them for Jamie
to never go home. Her parents had visited Jamie several times a year
while she was in college and medical school. They had visited once
while she was in California doing her internship. That had been a
difficult trip. Her parents weren’t used to flying and it scared
her mother. But they had done it to see their daughter.