Page 17 of Molly
Chicken lady rubbed her hip and glared at me like I’d been the one who’d had a drag race through the meat section. I offered her a wobbly, apologetic smile. She answered with unspoken censure. I averted my gaze and patted Chloe’s head. “Come on. Say you’re sorry.”
Her hair tangled in my fingers as she vigorously shook her head and tightened her grip on my leg. Who knew preschoolers were part boa constrictors?
Chicken lady let out an impatient huff. No way would she stick around for the time it would take to get Chloe to raise her face and mutter an apology. Painting on the most repentant look I could muster, I turned toward her. “I’m really sorry, ma’am.”
She rolled her eyes and placed the chicken breasts in her cart before stomping away.
I peeled Chloe off my leg. “Your cart pushing privileges are revoked, young lady. Time to ride.”
She groused a little but let me lift her into the seat, and we continued to make our way up and down aisles at an appropriate speed. I didn’t have a list of ingredients because I hadn’t thought to find a recipe to follow before coming to the store. That meant I had to go down every aisle to see what sparked my memory about what went into spaghetti and meatballs. I turned into the cereal aisle. Captain Crunch didn’t belong in Italian food so I lengthened my stride.
“Unicorn cereal! I want the unicorn cereal.” Chloe stretched to reach for the pink box of sugar disguised as breakfast food, the magical white unicorn sitting beside a giant bowl of rainbows tempting every little girl as she passed.
“Not today, Chloe.” I gently lowered her arm into the safe confines of the cart.
If only reasoning with a four-year-old were that simple.
Her bottom lip jutted out past the top as she peered up at me. “But I want it. Please. It’s unicorns and rainbows!”
“Not today,” I re-iterated, more firmly this time.
Her lip quivered. Eyes welled with tears.
I tilted my chin up so as not to look at her. Maybe if she didn’t have an audience her little dramatic performance would stop.
Wrong.
A Hulk-sized temper tantrum ensued. Screaming. Tears. Flailing. The whole nine yards. A mom passed us, and our eyes locked for a moment. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. I could mentally see her hand rising, three fingers out in the Mockingjay salute. No, the odds werenotin my favor right then.
I quickly steered the cart away from the cereal aisle and tried to distract Chloe from her fit. Nothing I did seemed to work. My blood pressure rose as people either openly judged or gave us those I’m-trying-to-make-it-look-like-I’m-not-looking-at-you-but-I-really-am side squints.
I stared down at the child in my shopping cart. Face red and wet, hair wild about her head. How could she be so sweet one minute and likethisthe next? It was like she’d come into the store a cutemogwai,but the grocery store had been all bright lights, water, and eating after midnight, turning her into a gremlin.
Wanting desperately to contain this public display, I hurriedly gathered the rest of the ingredients, paid, and peeled out of the parking lot.
Good-bye, Grocery World. Hello, literally any other grocery store on the planet.
6
Ben
An eighty-hour work week—that’s all the hospital was allowed to work the interns and residents per the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. But when I’d gently reminded Dr. Feinburg of that fact after he’d assigned me to continue care for the patient admitted earlier, I’d been loudly and matter-of-factly put in my place. Following a patient from admission to release, even if the process took thirty to forty hours straight, was more beneficial to the resident’s education than observing several patients over shorter periods of time. Apparently.
Dr. Mitchell didn’t have a problem extending his shift, Dr. Feinburg had pointed out with a sneer. Nor had Dr. Suthers complained about eating, sleeping, and showering at the hospital for the past fifty-one hours, he added with a macabre gleam in his eye.
But neither Dr. Mitchell nor Dr. Suthers had a young daughter they were trying to raise all by themselves. Dr. Lee had two children, but he also had a wife to help shoulder the responsibility of parenthood and make sure his sons were never left unattended. Chloe only had me, woefully insufficient as I was. Which was why I’d respectfully declined the patient and accepted Drew’s offer to cover the case.
I shuddered to imagine what sort of punishment Dr. Feinburg would think up for what he no doubt perceived as insubordination. Stool sample collection duties or worse. Didn’t matter. I couldn’t spend a hundred and thirty-six hours out of a hundred and sixty-eight hours a week at the hospital like some of my colleagues. Sleep deprivation already dulled my mental faculties, and I had more than patients depending on me.
A bird chirped from the box elder tree that grew in the front yard. Last spring a pair of robins had built a nest in one of the branches, and Chloe had loved watching the mama and papa bird hunt for worms in the front yard in the mornings. Maybe later I could take her to see if they were back again to make a second nest.
I mounted the two concrete steps and paused under the portico of the house, taking a deep breath and exhaling the stress from the hospital. The things that happened within those sanitized walls had no business entering my home. If I had a particularly hard case or lost a patient, well, that wasn’t something I wanted to bring home with me. Chloe would learn how difficult life was without me pulling the blinders of innocence from her eyes at a premature date.
Pushing my lips into a smile, I opened the front door. “Chloe, I’m—” Delicious aromas filled my senses. The distinct pungency of sautéed onions and garlic. The tang of tomatoes. “Something smells amazing.”
My feet halted on the tile of the entryway. Was I in the right house? Had I, in my sleep deprived state, accidentally walked into my neighbor’s house like I owned the place? But no. The latest issue ofThe American Journal of Medicinesat crookedly on the scarred-oak side table with Paw Patrols stickers on the legs. Chloe had stuck those on last year, and I still hadn’t gotten around to trying to peel them off.
“Daddy!” Chloe jumped from a dining room chair that had been scooted up to the kitchen counter.
