Chapter 3
Poppy sat slumped in the third-floor break room of Pine Ridge General, a blue-and-white fortress of fluorescent-lit hope that, this evening, felt more like a prison.
She stared at the cardboard tray of hospital cafeteria sushi she’d talked herself into buying on her lunch break three hours earlier but hadn’t taken one bite of, so it had gone into the fridge.
She liked the way the pastel slices of fish looked against the shimmery plastic, like a bento box you’d give a sad cartoon cat to cheer it up.
Thirty of her allotted forty-five minute meal break had been spent rerolling the limp sushi and picking the rice grains off her purple scrubs instead of eating when her pager sounded and she glanced down to see it was a PW code, as in patient whisperer.
It was a joke that had started Poppy’s first month when word spread she was the “patient whisperer” after gaining the trust of an elderly patient who was volatile and confused and needed to get a CT scan for a head injury and then successfully calming a child with autism who was claustrophobic with severe anxiety and had to get an MRI.
Both needed patience and to be seen and heard.
She’d benefited from growing up next door to Miss Carol, who was semiretired from foster care but would take in emergency cases, and they were usually either medically complex or neurodivergent kids.
Those kids were the reason Poppy’s dream had always been to work as an occupational therapist. Her plan was to get a good-paying job and continue schooling, but after she got her B.A.
, she just sort of stopped. If she’d continued, she would be done by now.
The truth was, subconsciously, or maybe even consciously, she thought by thirty she’d be married, having kids, and raising a family, so there was no point in continuing her education.
She really fucked that up.
It was time to figure her shit out. She stood and tossed the sushi in the trash. Usually, she’d be annoyed that her lunch was cut short, but she had zero appetite. Ever since she’d walked out of that appointment with Steph, food completely lost its appeal.
When she made it back to diagnostics, she was intercepted by Katy, the radiology services director as she grabbed her tablet. “Tabitha Five years old. Heart murmur. Hot dad. No ring.”
The look in Katy’s eye told Poppy this PW code may have had less to do with Tabitha’s age or any possible anxiety and was more likely a setup.
“The dad asked for you by name,” Katy added with a wink. “Said he was referred.”
Okay, maybe Poppy was wrong. Maybe this wasn’t a setup.
Maybe her reputation had preceded her. She continued down the hallway to the waiting area and found a little girl with springy blonde curls that fell down past her shoulder and huge bright blue eyes.
Her father was seated in the corner, which was cast in a shadow.
“Tabitha St. Claire?” Poppy called out.
“That’s me!” The girl jumped up excitedly, hand lifted in the air.
When Tabitha’s father stood, Poppy could not not notice him, which was something she resented on principle.
He grinned. “Deacon.”
“Poppy.”
She’d never been into the whole “hot single dad” thing.
In fact, it had always irritated her. She understood the psychology behind women being attracted to single dads, thinking that they are mature, responsible, stable, and nurturing, capable of commitment and emotional depth, but it was just so infuriating that men got so much credit for doing what single moms did all the time and got none.
Still, even she had to admit this one could have played a hot dad on TV.
He wore dark jeans and a very normal shirt, but the effect was.
..something. Maybe it was the fact that he was at least six foot two, or the way his chest seemed to fill up the room, or maybe the dark hair that looked both unruly and purposefully tousled, as if his morning routine involved neither comb nor care, just a hand raked through in the car on the way over.
The square jawline, the shadow of stubble, and the way his eyes were some shade of brown so deep it was nearly black, they all screamed Tall, Dark, and Handsome, but with an edge.
Not a dangerous edge, but a jaggedness, like he’d been through something.
The kind of dad who would show up to a dance recital in a Henley and stand in the back with his arms crossed, but if anyone looked sideways at his daughter, he’d take them outside.
He was all of that, and yet… she felt nothing.
Zilch. Nada. Maybe it was because he was too perfect, like he was AI or something.
Or maybe it was because Poppy’s brain was bruised from her appointment with Steph, and it refused to let her feel anything in the direction of men at all.
It was like she’d become immune to the entire species, an evolutionary trick, like a carnivorous plant that suddenly decided to swear off bugs.
It was as if her mind decided that if she was not going to reproduce, then there was no need for her to find men attractive, and it had given her libido a vacation. If that was the case, it was going to make her plan for a passionate affair impossible.
Always the epitome of professionalism, she forced a smile to mask the depressingly bleak forecast of her personal life. “Right this way.”
Poppy led the duo down the hall, past a gurney parked like an abandoned space shuttle and a nurse rushing by with meds. She glanced back to check that Tabitha was keeping up, the girl was practically skipping.
“Have you ever had an MRI before?” Poppy asked.
“Yup. For my heart bubbles.” Tabitha hopped from one tile to the next like she was playing hopscotch.
Heart bubbles—that was a new one. Poppy had heard it called ‘waterfall heart,’ ‘leaky heart,’ and ‘choo choo train heart,’ but not ‘heart bubbles.’ Tabitha suffered from a heart murmur. It must be severe if she’d had to have regular MRIs. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to be slowing her down.
“Can I wear the headphones again?” Tabitha smiled, showing a missing incisor.
“Absolutely,” Poppy replied. “What music do you want?”
“Encanto,” Tabitha responded without hesitation. “The Bruno song.”
“Just the Bruno song?”
She nodded.
“Sorry,” her father mouthed.
Well, Poppy knew what song would be in her mind for the next week. She pressed her badge to the imaging suite door, and it unlocked with a cheerful thump.
“It looks like a spaceship,” Tabitha said, pointing at the MRI machine as they entered, a white cylindrical tube with a blue glow around its bore, humming softly. “I pretend I’m going to space.”
“You’re right,” Poppy agreed. “It does look like a spaceship.”
The imaging room was cold and washed in that odd, watery light that made everything look and feel otherworldly. Poppy knelt down to Tabitha’s level. “Can I ask you something?”
Tabitha nodded.
“Do you have an astronaut name?”
Her eyes widened slightly as she grinned. “Princess Ninja Flower.”
This time Poppy’s smile was real. “Okay, Princess Ninja Flower, your mission is to lie down like a burrito and stay super, super still. If you need to wiggle your toes, you can, but the rest of you has to be a statue. Do you accept this mission, Princess Ninja Flower?”
Once she was lying down, Poppy fitted the headphones over her ears and chose the song. “Tell me if it’s too loud,” she said, and Tabitha gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.
She turned to Deacon. “You can wait in the observation room, or sometimes parents like to stay right here. Up to you.”
“I’ll stay.”
“Totally fine.” She handed him a pair of protective headphones. “You just can’t cross the yellow line, and if you have any metal on you, you need to leave it out here.” She paused, then added, “That includes cell phones, smart watches, credit cards, keys, and any piercings, anywhere.”
He grinned. “Got it.”
It took a few minutes to get Tabitha strapped in with the little lavender eye mask and the weighted blanket, which helped with the fidgeting.
She was always surprised by how much she loved working with kids.
She’d always thought it would be draining, but something about their pragmatic energy made sense to her, like a kid would either trust you or not, and if they didn’t, they told you.
Same with elderly people, typically. There was no facade. No lies. You knew where you stood.
She slid Tabitha into the machine and went to boot up the imaging software. “Ready?” she called through the intercom.
Poppy clicked through the pre-scan protocol, her fingers moving automatically. She’d done this hundreds of times, but today she felt off-axis, aware of the man standing behind the glass, the way he watched his daughter as if he could will her into being healthy with the force of his gaze.
She was halfway through the scan when she realized she’d been staring at the same set of numbers for at least a minute.
The earworm of Encanto was digging into her brain, but underneath that, she kept thinking about all the things she was never going to do.
She would never have a kid like Tabitha.
She would never know what it was like to be on the other side of the glass, full of hope and dread for a tiny person. She would never be anyone’s mom.
Immediately, she chastised herself, this was not the time for existential crises. She had a job to do. She forced her attention back to the scan, adjusted the parameters, and made a note in the chart.