4. Erin #2
I crouch. Cleo holds up the bag with both arms extended.
Up close: color good, eyes clear, the left pigtail has abandoned its elastic and is now trailing loose across her shoulder.
She’s shifting her weight back and forth on both feet, all the pent-up patience of someone who has been inside a bakery for a very long time.
I take the cookie from the bag with appropriate gravity. "What kind?"
"The good one. With choco chips and nuts! Not the plain ones — those are for people who don’t like having fun."
"My deep condolences to them."
Cleo’s own cookie is already half gone. She eats while she talks.
The library cats again, the new library book she’s reading, a running assessment of whether a big fire in the house could objectively bake more cookies faster, which David received with what I can only describe as heightened parental focus.
When David’s hand comes down on her shoulder, she spins toward him and has to catch herself, one hand pressed against my knee.
I clock it. The catch, the slight imbalance. And as she steadies, I spot both shins, the pant legs risen just enough. Yellow-purple in the hollows below both kneecaps. Not one shin. Two.
Cleo is small-framed. The ground is hard, winter is coming, and kids who spin without looking fall on both sides.
Surely not here. It’s probably nothing.
The part of me trained in pediatric hematology does not fully agree.
I let the thought sit.
David has Cleo’s coat in hand and is steering her toward the door. "Say thank you."
"I said it already. In my heart!"
"Try it out loud."
"Thank you, Erin." A pause. "Can we come back tomorrow?"
"Cleo."
"It’s a reasonable question?—"
"Truck."
She goes, cackle trailing behind her, the door swinging shut on her voice. I follow them out, not far, just to the front curb, the cold hitting me fast without my coat.
David’s truck is right out front, pulled up to the clinic from the Bluebird.
Cleo reaches it first and hauls herself up into the footwell with both hands on the doorframe, her small legs working harder than they should need to.
She makes it. David gets her buckled, one-handed, practiced, then rounds the hood to his side.
He looks back once, across the roof of the truck. Brief. Not a question. Then he gets in.
I stay at the curb. The engine starts and coughs, and then they pull away down Main Street. I head back inside.
I stand in reception with a cookie I haven’t eaten yet and put the observation beside the other ones. The edge of the week, the back of the day, the place where things go when I’d rather not think about them. I don’t write it down. I go back to the afternoon’s last chart.
I drive up to the cabin Saturday morning. There's still snow on the road, but the plow's been through. David's truck is in the turnaround, fresh snow on the back end.
He opens the door before I knock. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
"She's on the couch. Asking about pancakes."
“I won’t be long.”
He nods me through. The cabin smells like cedar smoke, coffee, and bacon, roughly in that order.
Cleo is on the couch in pajamas and a quilt and an arrangement of stuffed animals I haven't seen before.
She's watching the morning light come through the window over the sink. She lights up when she sees me.
“Erin!”
“Hi, Cleo.”
“Daddy is making pancakes. They’re going to be triangles.”
"Yes, I heard." I set my bag on the coffee table and pull a chair around.
Cleo sits up straight without being told.
I press the bell to the cotton of her pajama shirt.
Left lung. Right lung. Lower. I show her how — in through your nose, out through your mouth.
She does it, careful and deliberate. Both lungs clear.
Air entry good, equal on both sides. Underneath, her heart is steady. Ninety-two.
I straighten and tuck the stethoscope back around my neck. “All good.”
“Can I listen?”
I think about it for a second. “Sure.”
She reaches up with both hands. I lift the cord over my head and pass it down. She fits the eartips carefully, both index fingers settled on the bell. Then she wraps both hands around it and presses it to the front of her pajama shirt, right over her heart.
Her eyes go round. “It’s loud,” she whispers.
“Mm-hm.”
“That’s me?”
“That’s you.”
She listens some more, both of her hands cupped around the bell, her face just a few inches from mine. The curve of her eyelashes against her cheek, the small chip on her front tooth, the auburn at her hairline coming free of the loose pigtail David made for her this morning.
“Erin,” Cleo says, still listening, “will you be at the hospital?”
I hold still. “Which hospital?”
“Any hospital.” She glances up at me. “If I have to go.”
“Why would you have to go?”
She shrugs. Both hands stay where they are. “I don’t know. I’m just asking.”
“If you ever had to go,” I say, “I would be there, too.”
“Okay.” She nods in satisfaction and goes back to listening to her heart.
In the kitchen behind me, the pan hits the burner. David doesn’t look over.
After pancakes, I take the long way home.
It’s ten to six and the Bluebird is closing up, but the sidewalk between the clinic and Cypress Lane still carries the aroma of what was baked in the final hour, something with butter and brown sugar, warm enough to reach the corner even in the cold.
I’ve been going the long way all week. I’ve decided this is fine.
Cedar Hollow has a bakery, and it smells cozy, and I live here now for at least twelve months, and I’m going to walk past it every time I want to.
I’m thinking about the knock-knock joke.
I’m thinking about the voice at the corner and three heads turning in unison.
I’m thinking about a cup of coffee that was perfect right before I asked for it, and a man who called it a lucky guess and didn’t make a big deal of it.
I have a slice of fresh cherry pie in my bag, and I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll eat it standing over the kitchen sink or whether tonight is actually a sit-down-at-the-table night.
There’s lots of time to make those decisions. Right now, I have this walk to enjoy.
I glance at my reflection.
It’s automatic. I’ve been doing it since medical school, checking posture and hair on the way past any large plate glass, a reflex that requires no conscious input. The dry-goods store has a wide front window and the street lamps are on, and I catch myself in it mid-step and I… stop.
The woman in the glass is wearing my college sweatshirt, the one with the letters cracking from years of washing, the color gone from green to gray-green at the collar. My long brown hair is in the low ponytail I put in this morning without thinking. My cheeks are bright from the cold.
I am smiling.
Not for show. Not the way you arrange your face for someone watching.
Wide, and present, and for no one. No, just for me.
Alone on the sidewalk in the cold air with no reason I can put my finger on.
The dark circles I stopped trying to cover two weeks ago are still there.
I am still wearing an old sweatshirt. None of that matters.
I’m smiling.
I press my hand flat against the glass. The woman in the glass presses hers back.
When was the last time this happened? I go back through fourteen months looking for it and come up empty, and I stand there with my palm against cold glass, and the smell of the bakery behind me, and the last light going off the peaks, and I think.
There is a slice of fresh cherry pie in my bag. There is a mug that will be waiting at six-forty tomorrow. There is a little girl with smiles and surprises for me. There is a man who gives me small gifts and calls them lucky guesses.
I keep smiling the whole walk home.