Fox - Maybe Baby

The only sure thing about luck, Delaney Pooles mother always

Six weeks later Delaney sat in the bathroom of her

Jack Shepard sat at a back booth in the dim

The moment Jack left, Delaney sank onto the rolling stool

Ten minutes after shed arrived at the clinic, Delaney stood

Delaney pulled into the drive, up to the open wrought-iron

Delaneys heart thundered in her chest, pushing blood through her

Not much masculine stuff in here. Jacks voice carried in

Sadies Diner was nearly full the day Delaney and Kim

Jack met Delaney at the carriage house the following evening

The next day Delaney finished up the last of her

In Delaneys fantasies, she always imagined herself the first to

Jack stood in the middle of the field wearing gym

Jack drove slowly, way too slowly, down Route 1 from

I was talking to Carl the other day. Delaney leaned

Ruark just died and Sybill had told Drake the truth.

The evening was cool, so Jack threw a sweatshirt on

Jacks stomach hit the floor. Jim?? Jim existed? Jim was

Sam walked into the diner with an extra spring in

Harp Cove, Maine
April

T he only sure thing about luck, Delaney Pooles mother always said, is that itll change.

Delaney was starting to believe that was true.

After a year of bad luckwherein shed endured an unhappy relationship; lived with parents who barely spoke to each other, let alone her; and worked for peanuts as a resident in a busy inner-city hospital emergency roomit looked as if it might all turn around.

First, shed dumped the guy. Then shed gotten her own apartment. And now she was up for an assignment in the most beautiful place shed ever been: Harp Cove, Maine.

As she stood across the street from a bar called the Hornets Nest, Delaney couldnt help but smile into the darkness. She loved this town. Loved it with the excitement of a kid getting exactly what she wants for Christmas.

This backward little two-stoplight town, bathed in sea salt and populated with eccentrics, was exactly what she had in mind when she checked Rural on her National Health Service Corps questionnaire. No high-profile, big-city emergency room for her. No sprawling suburban hospital with professional hierarchies and stepladders to success. Sure, they offered an intense form of professional stimulation, but they couldnt give her what she really wanted: community.

She wanted to work somewhere she felt needed. Not by the staff or administration, but by the people, the neighborhood, the town.

And here it was. Harp Cove. Population 5,000. In the winter, that was. In summertime, that number probably tripled, but it was still a friendly, manageable town. A town in need of a doctor who, in a little over a year, would be fresh out of residency with state-of-the-art medical knowledge.

Music from the bar thumped across the April night, stumbling through the air like a clumsy drunk, begging her to revel in the teeming energy of the only watering hole in town.

Delaney tilted her head back, hugged her arms around her middle, and looked up at the stars. The sky was carpeted so thickly with them they looked like shattered glass, splintered and bright. So different from the dim sparks visible through the murk of a D.C. night. She breathed in slowly. Salt, pine, soil. Intoxicating earthy scents.

Harp Cove.

She imagined herself telling people back home, when she returned for the occasional visit. Its just a tiny town on the coast of Maine, shed say, smiling wistfully, but I love it.

And they would picture her in some wild, dramatic setting, resourcefully saving lives with pinecones and twine. Pioneering.

Delaney laughed. As if she cared what the people in D.C. thought of her life. Most of them were just people she worked with anyway. Between med school, her internship and residency, shed lost touch with most of her old friends. And shed really only dated one guy since collegethe disastrous Lonnie shed gotten rid of six months ago.

So now she was freefree to start life fresh, in a brand new place. And this was the place she wanted. This odd, mystic, northern town, so unlike the predictable suburbs and myopically driven city shed known all her life.

She smiled and realized she was happy. Irrationally, deliriously so. She couldnt remember another time in her life when she felt so hopeful. It was the most centered feeling shed ever had. And it was because she knew exactly what she wanted to do, and where she wanted to do it. Odd, she thought, how the place instantly made her feel as if shed been lost her whole life, until she happened to come here.

She just had to get this assignment.

Delaney had been in Harp Cove for four days, exploring the town in which she hoped to be assigned to work by the National Health Service Corps, the organization that had paid most of her med-school tuition. NHSC required one year of service for every year of tuition they paid, so, since Delaney had saved and paid for the first year herself, she could be in Harp Cove for three years. More, if she chose.

Granted, she had one more year of residency to goin the frantic hustle and revolving-door busyness of a D.C. hospitalbut after she finished up next June she might be here, living her dream of being a country doctor. And all it took was four years of med school, one year of internship, and three years of residency.

She smiled to herself. The end was in sight. Soon, she told herself, soon she would be a real, certified doctor. Not a student, not an intern, not a resident, but a doctor .

Chances were good she would get the assignment. Apparently most people chose locations in warm climates, or towns not too far from a major city. This townnearly four hours up the coast from Portlandwas too cold and too remote to interest anyone but her. She hoped.

If she got it, she would start in July of next year. Perfect timing for this northern clime. She imagined herself moving in, unpacking her boxes, and getting to know her neighbors. They would be happy to have a doctor so close, she thought. And she would be happy to be the one these kind, quirky folk came to when they needed help.

Delaneys whole body quivered with anticipation. She wished she was already settled here and this was her first weekend as a resident. She wished that, instead of leaving tomorrow to go home for another year, she was going to start work at the clinic here in town. She wished the waiting were over and it was all starting now , because up to now it seemed shed done nothing but prepare for life. But herehere she would live it.

She spun suddenly in a circle, her arms outstretched, her shoes scrunching on the sidewalklike something from the opening sequence of a sitcomand came to a stop facing the tavern. She laughed to herself and glanced self-consciously around the square. But no one had seen her, and it wouldnt really matter if they had.

Music from the bar grew louder as the door of the Hornets Nest belched a small crowd of people. They laughed and hung on each other as they meandered down Milk Street, no doubt to walk along the piers in the unseasonably warm weather and stare out into the vast blackness that was the Atlantic Ocean.

Part of the tourist trade, most likely. Shed been told by more than one person this weekend that tourism had started early this year, thanks to an unusually warm spring. Most of the people at that bar right now were probably from away, and it was only going to get worse. Summer, people had warned her, was far different from the frozen, snowy winters in Harp Cove. But that didnt scare Delaney. She didnt need throngs of people. She certainly didnt need the loud music and smoky press of a barroom crowd. In fact the only reason she was here right now, contemplating entry into the melee at the Hornets Nest, was because of the guy in the red sweatshirt.