Page 36 of The Do-Over
“Well, that’s a representative sample.”
“Let’s get serious for a minute,” Bradley said. “You don’t want to go back to Deer Ridge. It’s not about this award. If they were giving it to you in Chicago, you wouldn’t be so worked up about it.”
“If they were giving it to me in Chicago, I wouldn’t have had to take a week off work.”
“You didn’t have to do that anyway. It doesn’t take a week to go to Iowa and come home. You could have done it in three days. Two, even. You took the week off because your nurse has been harassing you to take a vacation. You told me that.”
“Well, that’s true.” Jenny had been after him for a long time to close the office for a week so that she could go to the beach, and this had seemed like the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
“So is that what the problem is? You’re upset about the fact that you gave in to her and took a vacation?”
“It’s not really a vacation,” Rob said. “If I was going on vacation, I would go to Barcelona, not Deer Ridge.”
“Did you know that every time you say the words Deer Ridge you sound like you’re trying to do a shot of bad scotch? It’s like you’re gagging on it,” Bradley said. “Do you really hate the place that much?”
“I mean, you know I do,” Rob said. “I don’t think I’ve ever said anything complimentary about it. Growing up there was hell.”
“Yeah, I know,” Bradley said. “But…I’m sorry, but that was mostly because of your father, right?”
Rob was quiet for a moment.
He had opened up to Bradley in college about the way his father had always treated him. Bradley had listened with sympathy, allowing him to talk about it without interrupting, and afterward, he had never treated Rob any differently. That was the moment when the whole business had begun to feel like a part of the past for Rob. His father had stopped feeling like an active menace and had begun to feel like nothing more than a story.
When he had died, a few years ago, Rob hadn’t gone back to Deer Ridge for the funeral. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with his father.
But his father wasn’t there now, so what was the big deal?
“It’s not just him,” he said slowly. “Deer Ridge is a source of a lot of bad memories for me. My life there was pretty terrible.”
“I get that,” Bradley said. “But it couldn’t have all been terrible, right? You were a basketball star.”
“I wasn’t a star.”
“Shut up, yes you were. You were a star even in college. In high school you must have been the talk of the town. I bet you had girls following you around everywhere you went in high school.”
Rob laughed. “I had a girlfriend in high school.”
“There, you see? I bet she was a hottie.”
“She was pretty great, yeah.” He felt a pang of sadness. He hadn’t thought about Thea lately, but whenever he did, he always felt some kind of regret. The way things had ended between them had been sad, and even though it was a long time ago, a part of him would always have feelings about that.
“Will you see her while you’re in Deer Ridge?”
“Oh, I don’t know if she even lives there anymore,” Rob said. “I haven’t spoken to her in years. I’m sure she’s left the town by now. No, I don’t have any plans to see her.”
“What about your other high school friends?”
“I don’t talk to anyone from high school. You know this, Bradley. I got out of that town as fast as I could and never looked back.”
“That’s why you’re all hung up about going back now,” Bradley surmised. “You haven’t been back in a long time, and you feel like you escaped from something that you don’t want to face again.”
Rob sighed. “Maybe.”
“You’ll only be there a week,” Bradley said. “Besides, you’re not the same guy that ran away from Deer Ridge all those years ago. You’re not that eighteen-year-old kid who was running from his abusive father. Half your life has gone by since then. You’ve worked as a surgeon in field hospitals. And now you’re getting this award for military medicine.”
“That’s true.”
“What would your father have to say if he could see you today?”
