Page 24 of Dirty Little Secret
Hurrying to the ER, I found a nurse waiting in my office. “Hey, Dr. Price. We’ve got a twenty-six-year-old female in room one. She’s got a laceration on her left palm. It’s approximately one inch in length and fairly deep. She said she got it at work last night.”
“Last night?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” she replied with a nod. “She wants stitches, but I told her that we probably couldn’t do them now. It’s just too late.”
“So, what’s the problem?” I took a seat in my chair, thinking there wasn’t any reason for me to see this patient at all.
Her hands went to her hips, clearly annoyed. “The problem is that she wanted me to ask a real doctor.”
“And you looked at the laceration, right? If you think it’s too late, then go back there and tell her that a real doctor has told you that stitches can only be done within a few hours. After that, all we can do is use butterfly bandages on the wound.” I opened the computer to get back to seeing what had happened the night before.
“Will do, Dr. Price.” She left the office, and I went back to checking things out.
Not five minutes had passed when my aunt called me back, telling me to go to the lobby to meet Fox. Hopping up, I went to get my son, happy that he was back and would be spending the day with me.
When he spotted me, he ran my way. “Dad!”
“Hey, you!” I went to him, grabbing him up and hugging him before putting him back on the ground. “Boy, you got some sun.” More small freckles peppered the top of his nose, and there were some on his cheeks now too.
“Yeah, I did. We played at the beach all day yesterday. It was fun.” He followed me as we headed to the office. “And I saw a shark too.”
“You did?” I asked with enthusiasm. “Up close?”
“Nah,” he said as he waved his hand in the air. “It was really far away. And it was just the fin. Uncle James said it was probably a dolphin, but I was pretty sure it was a shark. I got out of the water to be on the safe side.”
“Good thinking. Better safe than sorry, I always say.” We turned the corner to the ER wing, and I pushed the double doors open.
“I know that.” He laughed. “That’s what I told everyone when they laughed at me. I said, better safe than sorry. What if it had been a shark? Bet no one would’ve been laughing then!”
“Smart thinking.” I noticed a young woman up ahead at the nurses’ desk. Bent over, she looked like she was signing papers. “So, what else happened in Florida, Fox?” I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off the woman.
“Well, I walked on the beach and found lots of seashells.” He tugged at my white jacket to make me look at him. “Don’t worry. I brought them all home to put in our shell collection outside.”
“Great.” I looked away from him to look at the woman again. “We can add them to the garden outside when we get back home this evening. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
“Yeah, it does.” He tugged my jacket again, and I looked down at him. “Can we maybe cook some hotdogs outside too? I really wanted a hotdog this whole weekend, and Aunt Nancy wouldn’t let me. She says they’re nasty and she won’t feed me nasty food.”
“Well, some of them are. But the ones I buy aren’t. We can make some hotdogs on the outdoor grill.” I looked back at the woman, who had by now straightened up and shook out her hair.
Long dark hair cascaded down her back. Dark blue streaks ran through it.
It’s her.
It had to be the waitress from the bar.
She was talking to the nurse and raised her hands as she said something. There was a bandage wrapped around her left one.
The patient with the cut. The hand she’d cut at work the night before.
It has to be her.
“Dad, the door’s right here!” Fox shouted, as I walked right past it in my distracted state.
The woman turned around at the sound of Fox’s shouting. The world around me seemed to stop as our eyes met.
Zandra Larkin!
