Page 29 of Chosen Path
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Hope sniffled and shook her head. Then she drew in a big breath and exhaled shakily. She met Molly’s eyes. “Someday, yes. But not right now.”
“Of course.” She gave Hope’s hand an understanding squeeze.
“Thank you.” Hope managed a tremulous smile even as tears swam in her eyes.
Molly’s heart tightened in her chest, and the strength of her own reaction surprised her. She cared about her patients. Of course she did. She would have never become a small-town general practitioner if she hadn’t had what her family liked to call an overdeveloped sense of empathy. But, this was beyond her usual concern for a patient. She was absorbing Hope’s grief as if she were a sponge.
Maybe the strength of her emotion was because she couldn’t imagine losing her mother. Maybe it was because Hope’s mother had been so kind to her. Or maybe it was just the rawness of Hope’s pain. But Molly wanted nothing more than to soak up Hope’s sadness and take it away. The unfamiliar feelings knocked her off-balance. She felt as if she would sway, overcome with dizziness, if she stood up.
Hope tented her eyebrows and a crease formed in her forehead. She peered at Molly. “Are you okay?”
Molly worked up some saliva to answer her. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m a bit lightheaded.” As she made her excuse, she realized it was true.
She reached into the pocket of the white lab coat she wore mainly to remind her patients that despite her relative youth, they really shouldn’t call her ‘sweetie’ and dug out a package that contained a half-eaten granola bar. “I just need to eat something.” She tore off a piece of the day-old bar and popped it in her mouth.
Hope jumped to her feet. “Do you have low blood sugar? Do you need orange juice or anything?” She spun around the kitchen, wild-eyed and frantic.
Molly chewed the bite, then raised her hands and gestured for Hope to calm down. “No, I’m fine.” She washed down the food with a sip of her cooled tea.
Hope slumped into the chair and pushed her bangs out her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak out. I know I overreacted. I ....” She trailed off, wide-eyed.
“Hope?”
She laughed but there was no humor in it. “I know someone who died after lapsing into a diabetic coma.”
“Oh, Hope.”
Hope was looking over Molly’s shoulder but her eyes were unfocused. She was lost in a memory. “Funny thing is, it was Mr. Wolf.”
“Mr. Wolf? He was related to Corrine?”
Hope nodded. “Her husband, Travis. I only knew him as Mr. Wolf, though. He was my homeroom teacher. He taught environmental science. My junior year, I ran cross-country. I realized I left my running shoes in a bag under my seat and went to get them before practice. He was so weird. He was all sweaty and paranoid. To be honest, I thought I caught him doing drugs or something. He snapped at me, called me a bubblehead for being forgetful. And that wasn’t like Mr. Wolf at all.”
“It was the early stages of DKA. Diabetic ketoacidosis.” Molly spoke in a low voice.
Another nod from Hope. “I didn’t even know he was diabetic. Afterward, Mrs. Wolf said it was a rare thing, diagnosed when he was like forty. LADA, I think?”
“Latent autoimmune diabetes of adults, sometimes called Type 1.5. It is rare. And it can be difficult to manage.”
Hope wasn’t listening. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how strange he’d acted. After practice ended, I just had this feeling in my gut, you know? I’d seen his car was still in the parking lot, and I thought, well, if he is high, he shouldn’t be driving. So I went back to his classroom and … found him. He’d passed out over the lab tables. I think he was feeding this turtle he had in there. His head had hit the corner of the terrarium and there was dried blood all over the side of his face. I called for help and I tried to give him mouth-to-mouth.”
“Did his breath smell fruity?”
Her eyes widened. “Like an overripe banana. Sweet, but bad.”
“The vice principal came, and we lugged him out to her car. He wasn’t a big guy, but he was heavy. Dead weight, I guess. We drove him to the hospital, but it had been too long. He never regained consciousness. Corrine showed up with their son. That poor kid. He was only eight—nine, at most.” She fell silent.
Molly watched as a ripple of pain passed over Hope’s face. Then the full weight of what Hope was telling her landed like a punch to the gut. “You found both of them. The Wolfs.”
Hope squeezed her eyes shut. After a long moment, she looked at Molly. Her face was bleak and drawn. “I always felt kind of protective toward Mrs. Wolf after that. I know that’s stupid. But I did.”
“That’s why you went to her house with the cough syrup this morning, isn’t it?”
She nodded, then wrapped her arms around her midsection, curled in on herself, and began to sob.
Without thinking, Molly opened her arms. “Come here.” And Hope fell against her shoulder. Molly rubbed her back as she cried. “It’s okay, Hope. Let it out. Let it all out.”
