7. Giselle #2
“An Ensure with every meal?” I could barely finish one in the morning, often popping it back in the fridge and gulping the rest down for dessert at the end of the day. And he wanted me to drink triple that?
“Yes. It’s fine if you can’t polish the whole bottle off, but try to get past the halfway point. We don’t want to shock your system, but since you have such difficulty eating larger meals, it’s the best way to combat your malnutrition. Especially your electrolytes.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all we can ask for.” He gave me a very polite nod. “By the way, your hair crown looks lovely.”
“My hair crown?”
He gestured to my head, then left. Scrambling for my phone, I held it up and opened my camera.
Sure enough, there was a fairly thick and even braid of hair all around the crown of my head. It actually looked quite lovely.
“Huh, I guess Nox wasn’t kidding.”
Smiling, I settled back on my pillows. As I grabbed my laptop to watch mindless Minecraft or gardening videos, I paused.
I had been really stupid lately. I knew better, I really did.
But I’d gotten so caught up in evaluation season with the kids and setting them up for the rest of their academic careers.
But like I’d thought before, I wouldn’t be a reliable source of support for them if I was having thyroid storms left and right. Not to mention fainting in front of them? Jeez. I hoped I hadn’t traumatized them for life. I had a lot of explaining to do.
Maybe I should jot some points down, just so I had a base for the possible questions my kids would ask once I went back to work.
Hopefully, that wouldn’t be too far in the future.
I understood that I needed to rest, but there was only so much time before evaluations, and I would be failing the kids if I just up and vanished for a fortnight.
Did my kids even know what a fortnight was?
I remembered in college I’d sometimes get accused of not being American because I occasionally used words like ‘lift’ and ‘fortnight’ or spelled things with a U.
I’d picked up the habit from reading too many books with British spelling.
The Chronicles of Narnia , The Secret of Platform Thirteen , a British recounting of Scheherazade , to name a few. And some habits just died hard.
My inner monologue was cut off when there was another knock on the door. Huh? It was far too soon for the doctor to come back.
But then a young, familiar voice called my name. Not my first one, but my professional one.
“Missus Fischbacher? May we come in?”
“Benny, is that you?” I called back, my flabbers most certainly ghasted. And sure enough, the door opened, revealing none other than the kid who’d kept my medical emergency from being a lot more serious.
And his ridiculously handsome father.
“H-hello there,” I sputtered, a grin spreading across my face despite my embarrassment.
I wasn’t even wearing a bra. The last time the guy saw me, I’d been dressed nicely and done up in one of my wigs.
Now… ugh. Not that there was anything that would happen between us, but I couldn’t help feeling self-conscious in front of a man who looked like he’d walked out of a magazine shoot of ruggedly handsome widowers. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“We thought you might like a visit. Plus, Junior had some stuff he wanted to give you,” Mr. Poynter said in that low, rumbling voice of his. When I’d heard him speak at our meeting, my knees had gone weak, and I’d had to remind myself to be professional.
Which, naturally, was strange for me. It wasn’t like I was asexual—most of the time I was so busy that I didn’t have the energy for something like attraction. But that first time my eyes had landed on his broad shoulders and looked into those lovely blue eyes of his, I was captivated.
It had been hard not overcompensating and accidentally being brusque to him during the meeting, but I’d found a good balance.
I didn’t want the guy to think I was rude or too frank when discussing such a sensitive subject, but I also didn’t want him to feel like I was coming on to him.
I couldn’t imagine anything more disrespectful when I was discussing the PTSD-induced nightmares his son was having.
“Things for…?” I murmured before tearing my eyes away from the man’s chiseled face. He was holding a truly gargantuan care package. “Goodness, you weren’t kidding. Surely that all can’t be for me.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Mr. Poynter said, putting it on the table beside my bed.
The basket was large enough for a sizeable puppy to sleep in, and through the cellophane, I could see fragrance-free lotion, several different types of dark chocolate, two small paperback novels, a little notebook, a fresh pack of comfort-grip pens, as well as some hair ties.
And that was just what I could make out without opening it.
Emotions surged through me. For the first time since I had woken up from fainting, I really wanted to cry. Tears burned my eyes, but I did my best to keep my voice from cracking.
“Goodness, Benny, I’m the one who should be giving you a gift. If you hadn’t tried to get me to sit and helped catch me, I might have been hurt a lot worse.”
“Because you could have hit your head?”
“Yes, exactly. I could have hit my head, and that would have been very bad. I hope you know that I’m never going to forget this. You are a very brave young man.”
“I’m just glad you’re going to be okay.” He paused, cocking his head to the side like kids sometimes did when they got a random thought. “You are going to be okay, right?”
Goodness. Straight to the heart. Sometimes it really swept my legs out from under me how much kids could love back.
There was a purity to kids’ emotions that I wished they could keep as long as possible.
Because sure, it was important for them to learn how to navigate more complex situations, but also it seemed a right shame that the world so often drained their natural joie de vivre right out of them.
“Yes, I will.” Perhaps not the most responsible thing to promise, but the concern in his gaze made me even more determined to keep on top of my health. Even if that did mean drinking three Ensures in a day. I shuddered internally.
I hoped they’d come up with some new flavors. I only got the vanilla and strawberry since I didn’t like milk chocolate, but if I was tripling my intake, I needed something different.
“I got so busy that I ended up being behind on some things I shouldn’t be, so now I gotta rest and recover to get back to my baseline.”
“Oh,” Benny said like the sagely old man he most definitely wasn’t. “It’s like Natalie says: if you don’t give your body rest, it’ll pick a time for you, and it won’t care about your schedule.”
“Exactly that,” I agreed with a chuckle. “Wise words from Natalie.” Was she an aunt? A nanny? His father’s new girlfriend?
Whoa, that is way too personal of a question to be thinking. Take it back about ten steps, girl.
At least I hadn’t said it out loud.
“She’s really smart. You’d like her!”
“I’m sure I would.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say after that, and for a moment there was an awkward silence between the three of us. Should I welcome them in? Tell them to sit? I was a bit tired and not sure I was up for full hosting duties, and besides, who wanted to hang out in a hospital room?
“We can get out of your hair, if you need to rest,” Mr. Poynter said.
Despite his nearly devilish good looks, he almost looked as anxious as I was.
Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it did put me at ease to know I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t sure of the social protocol of meeting one of my students’ parents after traumatizing them.
And did I mention I wasn’t wearing a bra? Granted, my girls were barely B cups on a good day, but uh… hospitals were cold , and I didn’t really feel like the girls pointing in opposite cardinal directions was wholly appropriate.
I gripped my blanket tighter, not sure if I should send them away or not.
I was leaning towards no, because there was a not-insignificant part of me that wouldn’t mind the company.
Especially if it was Benny. I’d been trying not to think about it much until I was out of the hospital, but I really had wanted to do something special for him. My own personal little hero.
Before I could decide one way or another, Benny was practically hopping over to the recliner and threw himself into it.
“Actually, I thought you might be tired but also lonely, so I brought my favorite book to read to you. You said it’s good for nightmares, but I also think it would be good for a scary place like a hospital.”
I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Big, fat, salty tears welled up and cascaded down my cheeks. My breath was hitching slightly, but at least there were no big, gasping sobs. God, that would have been even more embarrassing.
“Oh no, Miss Fischbacher, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. We don’t have to read.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I said quickly through the tears. “I’m just really, really happy right now. You’ve made my day.”
“But… Missus Fischbacher, you’re crying?”
Back to the longer name. A cute thing I’d noticed about many of my kids was that they generally all called me Missus or Miss Fischbacher, but it would always be the short version if they were particularly excited, alarmed, or in a rush.
It was just a little idiosyncrasy of the kids, and yet somehow it made more tears come.
I really was loved, wasn’t I? How lucky was that?
Some people went their whole lives without any community, and here I was looking at mine right in the face.
Would they move on to someone else in a year?
Of course. That meant I was doing my job right.
But they would remain in my heart forever—long after they graduated and went on to their own lives.