Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
“ S o…” Jeremy’s voice cuts through my thoughts as I slump in the uncomfortable waiting room chair, paper towels pressed to my hand. “What even happened?”
Jeremy isn’t so great with blood. A fact I’ve known ever since a customer got a nosebleed and he started heaving in response. Frankly, I’m impressed he drove us the whole ten minutes to the urgent care center without puking or wrecking his car.
“Plastic bin was wet. I didn’t realize it, and I dropped it,” I lie easily, eyes still closed. My hand throbs, the ache sharp and bright. “Then I grabbed a piece of a plate wrong and it cut my hand.” Another half lie. I haven’t been paying any attention at all, and my carelessness is why I’m here now.
“Oh. Okay, that’s understandable.” But I can tell by Jeremy’s tone that he isn’t done. The teenager taps his foot against the floor, the noise distracting me enough that it’s hard not to grab his knee or beg for him to stop. Already my head is aching dully with the whispering promise of a stress-migraine. “But uh, can I just ask?—”
“Winnifred Campbell?” The voice cuts Jeremy off and I open my eyes, sitting up in my seat to see a nurse in pink cloud pattern scrubs leaning against an open door leading behind to the rest of the clinic. Getting up, I follow her wordlessly to the back, leaving Jeremy to shift in his chair and look uncomfortable about being here.
But I pause in the doorway, turning to look at him as a bolt of pity stabs through me. “You can go back to the diner, Jeremy,” I tell him with a small smile. “I’ll get a ride home or call an Uber.”
“Okay…” Jeremy stands up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “If you’re sure, then I?—”
“Later, Jeremy,” I interrupt, knowing he’ll ramble endlessly if I don’t. To further the point, I take another step so the nurse can let the door close behind us.
“Follow me,” she sighs, like this is the least interesting part of her day. And well, maybe it is. Maybe a multitude of other girls showed up here today with deep cuts on their hands that might require stitches, leaving a trail of bloody paper towels like a fucked up version of Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumb trail.
The exam room she takes me to is as small as I remember from being a kid with strep throat, and I hop up onto the table automatically. At least this time there won’t be a wooden stick pressing my tongue down and a swab, making me gag embarrassingly.
“So,” the nurse sighs and pecks at the keyboard with her pointer fingers, making me think she was never subjected to hours of fifth-grade typing practice like I was. “What happened to your hand?”
“I cut it on a broken plate,” I answer, watching her type agonizingly slowly. Part of me wants to offer to do it myself, since even with one hand I’m sure I’d be faster than the slow tap-tap-tapping of her hunting and pecking on the keys.
“How long ago?”
“About forty minutes? I work at the diner and I came straight here,” I explain, trying not to ramble. The shorter my explanation, the less I have to watch this agonizing display of her masterful lack of acuity in typing.
She doesn’t reply. Her entire attention is on the keyboard, and I wonder if I’ll bleed to death before she finishes.
Somehow, it’s still this century when she’s done. The nurse gets up and comes over to me, plucking the paper towels out of my hand and gesturing for me to let her see. I do, scrunching my nose in discomfort as she gently turns my hand in her latex-clad fingers to look at the cut on the side of my palm.
“That’s going to need stitches,” she tells me, still just as unimpressed as she had been calling my name in the waiting room. “No way around it. Have you ever gotten stitches before, Miss Campbell?”
“Oh yeah,” I assure her. “Yeah, I’m a pro at stitches. Okay, that’s a lie. But I’ve gotten them a few times.” Six times, to be precise. Back when I was a kid in a shitty situation with no way out except force.
“Okay,” the nurse sighs again and drops her hands. “I’ll go get the doctor. Shouldn’t be long at all.” She hands me a wad of clean paper towels that I gently press to the still-bleeding cut in my hand. She’s gone in a second, her steps certainly faster than her typing.
And all I really have to do to pass the time is wait. My hand hurts too much for me to consider messing around on my phone, and the room is incredibly boring with nothing on the walls except a washed out painting of trees and a river.
But, it’s all I’ve got. I lean forward to study it, looking for any kind of little hidden details left by the artist. Unfortunately, though, the artist really made a boring painting of trees and a river in washed out colors that blend together.
The door opens and I glance up, smiling when a woman in a white coat and black scrubs comes in. “All right, Miss Campbell?” She waits for my nod before continuing. “I’m Dr. Morris. I hear you’ve cut up your hand pretty good, and that you’re probably going to need stitches.”
“Yeah.” I sigh, kicking my legs back against the exam table. “I uh, cut it on a broken plate.” At her urging, I pull the paper towels away, and she gives a sympathetic hiss as she takes my hand in hers to turn it so the cut faces up.
“Oh, yeah,” she murmurs, touching the edges of the slice and making me wince. My hand is sore and incredibly tender, so any brush along my skin hurts like a bitch. “Yeah, I’m going to have to put in a few stitches.” Dr. Morris moves to the cabinets against one wall, systematically pulling out supplies. “So you cut it on a plate, huh?” she asks absently as I really study the side of my hand for the first time. I’ve put it off until now, for the most part. But I figure this is my last chance to see what it looks like open and gross.
Though it’s a bit of a letdown, honestly. I poke lightly at the edges of the wound, pulling it open just a little on the off chance I’ll see some kind of gory mess hiding underneath.
But I just see red.
“Oh, please don’t do that.” Dr. Morris pulls my fingers away from the cut, her voice disapproving as she brings over a small tray on wheels. “You’re going to get it bleeding again.”
“Sorry,” I mumble automatically, though I’m not really sorry. It’s my hand, after all. I can poke at it if I want to.
Don’t be a bitch about it, Winnie, I remind myself as I watch the doctor pick up a few gauze pads soaked in peroxide. You know what happens when you piss off a doctor. Well, I’ve never pissed off an urgent care doctor, and I doubt she’s as terrifying as a psych ward physician, but I might as well not take any chances.
“This will probably hurt,” Dr. Morris warns, a second before she dabs at the side of my hand with the gauze. I just stare, dispassionate about the blood and the sharp, stinging pain in my palm. It’ll go away, and I can breathe through it. This isn’t my first rodeo with being injured by broken dishes.
Dr. Morris continues to talk, rambling about nothing in particular while she finishes cleaning my hand and picks up a small syringe. “This will definitely hurt,” she warns, but doesn’t give me a chance to really process the words before she’s poking the needle into my hand near the wound.
“Ouch!” I grit my teeth as my stomach twists at the sharp pain. “Yeah, you’re right. That doesn’t feel great.”
“Honestly, I expected more of a reaction,” Dr. Morris admits, setting down the syringe and picking up her suture materials. “Most people say that’s the worst part. I’ve had grown men pass out when I do that on their hands.”
“Oh, yeah?” I’m not that interested in her words, or the story she launches into about some weight lifter she’d had to stitch up earlier this year. I’m focused on the tingling pressure in my hand, and watching the needle dip into my skin as she pulls the edges of the wound back together.
Slowly, the red of the inside of my hand gets harder and harder to see, and finally all I’m looking at are black sutures and the line of the wound that had been gaping open a few minutes ago enough for me to see the flesh beneath my outer skin.
And maybe it’s a little disappointing that it looks so… normal now. As if the damage hidden below was all in my head. “Thank you,” I murmur politely as the stitches are concealed under a gauze pad taped to my hand.
“Anytime. Though maybe be a little more careful around broken dishes from now on, okay?” Dr. Morris gets to her feet with an amiable chuckle and goes to the computer to type something in. “And you’re just about done. I’m going to put in an order for antibiotics at the pharmacy. You can take an anti-inflammatory for any pain or swelling. Just wait here for me?” The woman flashes me a quick, perfunctory smile and opens the door before closing it halfway behind her and disappearing down the hall.
Leaving me with the stupid river painting once again.
Before I can consider drastic action like reading a magazine or poking at my numb hand, my phone vibrates in my pocket, surprising me. Normally my service sucks in here. I can only imagine the person calling me had put out an offering to the cell phone gods to be able to successfully call where there’s very little reception.
But I wiggle my phone out of the pocket of my jeans and put it to my ear, a neutral greeting on my lips the moment it’s in place.
“ Winnie ?” Immediately I recognize my sister’s voice, and her panic. While it’s not uncommon, it’s certainly not what I want to deal with today. “ Hey, where are you? I dropped by the diner, but you weren’t there.”
“Uh, yeah. I’m at the urgent care,” I admit quietly, glancing out into the hallway and seeing no one around. My legs swing off the edge of the exam table, back and forth, heels sometimes clipping the metal surface under me.
“ What?” Genuine panic enters Lou’s voice, and I roll my eyes at my sister’s motherly concern.
“Hey, I’m fine. I just cut myself on a broken plate. I’m literally, totally fine.” The assurances are completely for her, so she doesn’t bundle me up in bubble wrap and keep me on her sofa, feeding me lukewarm soup until she’s satisfied I won’t drop dead.
“ Okay… ” she trails off, and from her tone, I realize I’ve ruined her plans in some way.
“You need me to babysit, don’t you?” I sigh, turning to gaze at the river painting. “Your sitter canceled again? You should fire her, you know.”
“ I know ,” Lou moans in agreement. “ But I can’t ask you to babysit, Winnie. Not when you’re in urgent care. I’m not a monster. ”
“I know you aren’t. But…” I lift my hand and flex my fingers, looking at the white gauze covering the side of my hand. “I can babysit for you, Lou. I don’t mind at all. Scott isn’t like a hassle or anything. We’ll watch movies, eat pizza, and, I don’t know, plot world domination?”
“ He’s really into world domination right now, that’s for sure,” Lou mutters into the phone. “ Are you sure, though? I was going to ask you to stay all night. Brent and I had a date night planned and we have reservations at an Airbnb in Akron. But seriously, if you can’t ? —”
“I can,” I argue. “It’s no problem at all. You can just pay me double my rate to make up for it.” I’m teasing, but she and her husband could definitely afford it, no problem. “I’ll be there in…an hour? Probably less.”
Lou lets out a relieved sigh, just as the door opens and the terrible typer herself walks back in, looking as bored as ever.
“ I love you, Winnie,” Lou says, though I’m barely listening. “ You’re a lifesaver. ”
“No problem. But I gotta go. See you in a bit.” I hang up and shove my phone back into my pocket, the nurse looking at me as if I’ve committed a mortal sin by being on the phone in the urgent care center.
“I have your discharge papers,” she sighs heavily, like she’s carrying the weight of the world on her unskilled fingers. “And your prescription has been sent in. You’re all good to go.” She sets down a few papers on the counter, waving at them. “Those are for you.”
“Thank you.” I don’t toss the papers in the first trashcan I see, even though I want to. Instead, I wait to chuck them into the bin outside as I open my phone to call an Uber to take me back to the diner where I can pick up my car.
If I’m fast, I’ll be at Lou’s in forty-five minutes with blankets, movies, and an unlimited pizza and brownies budget. It’s not exactly everyone’s ideal example of a perfect Friday night, but I certainly have no complaints.
Not as long as I can get pineapple on my pizza.