Page 19 of Daddy's Little Liar
Damn it, Daddy.
Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Georgia groaned and gave in. It helped to be sitting a little tenderly. She wasn’t about to go stomping out to the garage—where she could just make out the muffled whirring of a mechanic’s drill—to give him a piece of her mind. She couldn’t stomp if she wanted to.
“I don’t have any money,” she called back, granting permission via lack of refusal. “I can’t pay you.”
“Oh,” the doctor said as he came down the hallway. A good-natured wave of his hand slapped that objection aside. “We don’t need to worry about that. Which leg is it?”
She pulled up the blankets to show him, and over the next few minutes, did her best not to shout as he gently examined the bruising and swelling. He had nice hands, gentle, slender, softer than Daddy’s. Definitely not the hands of a spanker, but that was probably a good thing, considering the look he leveled on her over the top of the glasses he wore.
“You, young lady, should have come to see me last night.”
“I couldn’t pay you last night any more than I can pay you today.”
His look didn’t soften. How he glared that sternly and still be half-smiling, she didn’t know. Regardless, it made her bottom crawl in all the spots that were still a little tender from Daddy’s ministrations the night before.
“Well, do you want the good or the bad news?” he finally asked, just before taking his hands from her ankle and covering it over with the blanket again.
“If it’s another blown head gasket, I definitely can’t pay you,” she tried to joke. Apparently, he wasn’t a joking kind of doctor. “Good news,” she tried again when he just waited. She’d had enough of the other kind to last a lifetime, anyway.
“I don’t think it’s broken. In fact, I’m certain enough, I won’t insist on taking you for x-rays.”
Georgia startled. That really was good news. She hadn’t been expecting that.
“Okay,” she said cautiously, “what’s the bad, then?”
“You won’t be wearing those for at least a few weeks.” He nodded to her high heels, sitting on the coffee table where Daddy had left them the night before, close to the aspirin—or from her discarded panties. Georgia’s face flamed. The only thing that kept her from snatching her panties off the table and tucking them under the blanket out of sight was the slim hope Doc Johnson hadn’t noticed them.
“You’ve strained the ligament,” he diagnosed. “That means weight off your foot as much as possible, and you’ll be wearing a boot. I have one at the clinic I can give you. I’ll also prescribe some pretty decent painkillers to get you through the week. Take only as needed, and not while you’re driving. I’m sure you know the spiel.”
Her shoulders sagged. It was going to be a long drive to her interview with her ankle throbbing. It would also be one hell of a story when she walked into her new Human Resources office several hours late, with a walking boot on her leg, explaining, “Funny thing happened on my way to Santa Fe…” She hoped they liked funny stories, but she already knew she was leaving out the ‘Daddy’ and spanking parts.
“I’ll be back momentarily with that cast.” Patting her on her blanketed knee, the doctor stood.
In other words, don’t go anywhere until he returned.
Georgia sucked at following directions, always had. The moment he was out the door, with Daddy already in the garage, hard at work, she crawled off the couch and hobbled her way down the hall to the bathroom. The short trek was far enough to convince her, she didn’t dare attempt a shower, but that was okay since she’d already had a bath the night before. She got dressed, smoothed the rumples from her clothes as best she could, combed her hair with her fingers—Daddy’s comb was sitting right there on the side of the sink, but that was just too weird, too intimate—then hobbled back down the hall.
A box of cereal, a clean bowl and spoon, and a note saying the milk was in the fridge and EAT was waiting for her on the table. That was where she was, sitting in her chair, her foot gingerly propped up on its pillow from the night before, munching on generic raisin bran when Doc Johnson returned.
He gave her a censuring frown, but that was it. He put the boot on her foot, left a pair of crutches leaning against the table within easy reach, along with a prescription for painkillers.
“Stay off that foot as much as possible and keep it elevated for at least two days,” he ordered. He didn’t even take down her personal information or offer to send her a bill. “It’s been taken care of,” was all he said right before he left, then somewhere out of sight, the front door closed behind him.
She knew who had taken care of things—Daddy—and he was waiting for her in his garage.
Staying off her foot probably didn’t include doing dishes, but Georgia had been enough of a mooch as it was. She cleaned up the minor mess of breakfast, left her dishes in the sink, and with crutches tucked under her arm and raisin bran sitting like a milk-heavy lump in the pit of her stomach, she hobbled outside to see what the status was.
When she slipped out through his tiny office, her car was sitting just outside the open garage door, already completely put back together, and Daddy was hard at work on a beat-up, two-tone pickup.
“Good morning,” he called when he spotted her. His gaze swept from her crutches to the gray and white plastic boot cast on her injured leg. “I see Doc’s been by.”
What did one even say to that? Except maybe, “Thank you.”
A corner of his mouth quirked as he came out from under the propped hood of the truck, putting down the socket wrench he’d been using and picking up an oily rag to wipe his already oily hands.
“You’re welcome,” he said, coming toward her. “How you feeling?”
“A little tired,” she admitted.
