of embarrassments, she needed her first “young woman” appointment. He had to be a hundred years old by now.
It just wasn’t fair.
Even to herself she sounded like a petulant child, but . . . She shook her head to change her focus. This topic wasn’t any better to think about. First she had to pay more attention to the road. And then she had to accentuate the positive. She’d get to spend more time with her grandmother, and she loved Grandma Bethel more than any other person on this planet. Bethel had always told her that when life handed you lemons, you got to make lemonade.
“I guess I’ll be making a lot of lemonade over the next several years,” she muttered with a strained laugh. It was time she accepted her fate with a smile.
But since her grandfather had died in the same wreck that had taken Sage’s parents, she had an unbreakable bond with her grandmother. They needed each other, and it had been just the two of them since she was ten years old.
Plus, it wasn’t like her to throw tantrums or to dwell on her “misfortunes.” She knew a number of good students who hadn’t received any offers of residencies, and she’d been offered several. She also knew that a lot of residents would never become full-fledged doctors. If she didn’t pull herself together, and fast, she could end up throwing everything she’d worked so hard for right into the garbage can.
She had chosen to accept this position. The thought of being two thousand miles away when her grandma needed her had been thoroughly unappealing. So, as much as she hadn’t wanted to come back home, it had been the right decision. She refused to regret it.
As Sage topped a rise in the road and neared the picturesque town of Sterling, she thought of the people she’d met in Stanford and LA—where she’d gone for her undergraduate and graduate programs—who would never consider being stuck in a town like Sterling, Montana.
Maybe they were right. But it was still home, and whether she liked it or not, she was back for at least three years. This won’t be so bad, she told herself with a determined glint in her eyes. Call it a midyear resolution.
As Sage came down the other side of the hill, another car turned a corner, and its lights temporarily blinded her. She focused on the wet pavement and the barely visible lines on the side of the road, but she turned the steering wheel too far to the left as she tried to regain her bearings.
A horn blared, and before she could stop the car, she felt her tires slipping on the water and loose gravel on the shoulder of the road. The ditch was quickly coming up to meet her, and it wasn’t looking too friendly.
“Perfect!”
That was the only word that made it past her lips before the car skidded down into the hard earth and her head slammed against the steering wheel. Her fear vanished as everything went black.
THAT HAD BEEN too close. His heart in his throat, Spence Whitman pulled over to the side of the road, turned on his emergency flashers, and leapt from his car, leaving his door swinging in the strong wind as he dashed into the ditch. There wasn’t any smoke right now, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t coming. He needed to assess the condition of the driver and do it fast.
Pulling his phone from his coat pocket as he scrambled down the bank, he dialed emergency services, connecting just as he reached the car.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
Spence had yanked open the door to find a red-haired woman pressed against the steering wheel, a slight line of blood dripping down her cheek. “It looks like a twenty- to thirty-year-old female. Unconscious. Her car slammed hard into the ditch between milepost seventeen and eighteen. She has a visible contusion on her right cheek and a rapidly forming contusion on her forehead.”
“Are you a doctor, sir?”
“Yes. This is Dr. Spence Whitman.”
“Emergency vehicles are on their way.”
“Thank you.” Spence hung up the phone as he began checking her vital signs. “Ma’am, are you okay?”
It was stupid to ask that question, or any question, when she was clearly knocked out. He knew this, but he couldn’t help it, not when it was so ingrained in him from his training. Lifting his hand to her neck, he was relieved to find her pulse strong. Though she was out cold, at least