21. Heidi
HEIDI
The clinic smells of floor wax, paper and the faint artificial strawberry of the soap somebody keeps ordering despite my objections.
I love it so much I have to stand still in the doorway.
My colleague comes up behind me carrying a box. “Don't look too pleased. The printer still hates everybody.”
“I was worried it might have changed.”
“Absolutely no personal growth.”
It is Friday afternoon, five weeks and four days after Ivy's birth.
My hair is clean and loose over my shoulders, my body tired in a softer way than usual.
Beau is having Ivy while I help prepare for Monday's community evening.
My fuller return starts after the holidays.
Today I get to be here long enough to remember where my hands belong.
I have spent too long choosing what to wear for two hours in an empty clinic.
The sweater fits differently across my breasts.
My old trousers close, but the waistband presses where I do not want to be pressed.
I end up in soft black pants and the red sweater because both allow me to forget my body for several minutes at a time.
The forgetting matters.
At home, every movement has belonged to recovery or feeding. Here, I reach for a pen because I need a pen. I move a chair because a child will need to sit in it. My body performs ordinary work without becoming the subject of every thought.
Then milk dampens the inside of my nursing pad, and I laugh under my breath.
Apparently ordinary has limits.
I put my bag beneath the desk.
My colleague has kept the room running through my leave. She has labeled the bandage bins with increasingly dramatic descriptions. I open one and find the small bandages where I expect them, despite the handwritten heading BAD DAY.
“Accurate,” I say.
“There's a system underneath the commentary.”
“There had better be.”
She grins and helps me clear the desk for the drawings.
The chair picture goes where its artist will see it when she comes in.
My colleague hands me a second picture from the child who drew me with seven fingers.
This version gives me nine. I prop it beside the first. I will have to explain the evolving anatomy to at least one parent, but I find I am looking forward to it.
My spare name badge is in the drawer.
HEIDI DUNMORE, RN.
I clip it to my sweater. The name belongs to me. So does the work. I look at the familiar shape of it against the red wool and feel something inside me sit up straighter.
A knock comes at the door before I can say anything foolish about how good it feels to be back. A child stands outside with the after-school coordinator, one hand clamped over the pocket of her cardigan.
“She wanted to ask you,” the coordinator says. “We can go to the office if you're busy.”
“What's happened?” I ask.
The child opens her hand. A bead lies in her palm, blue and shiny.
“It came off Grandma's bracelet.”
“Ah.”
“I didn't mean to break it.”
Her lower lip is trembling. I pull a chair close enough that she can sit without feeling summoned for a punishment.
“Tell me.”
The story takes a little while. The bracelet was a gift. The child wore it for a photograph. A thread caught. Now she is certain her grandmother will be terribly sad and equally certain this will be the worst thing she has ever done.
I find a small envelope for the bead and let her write her name on it. My colleague brings tape. We do not promise that nobody will be upset. We make sure the bead will get home, and I tell her that broken things are easier to talk about when all the pieces have been kept.
“Even if it's my fault?” she asks.
“Especially then.”
She thinks about that, then nods.
After she leaves with the coordinator, I stay beside the little chair for a moment.
My colleague looks at me. “You missed it.”
“Yes.”
We work until the corridor grows quiet. I put the tissues where a child can reach them without asking. My colleague tells me which families are coming on Monday and which children have been counting the days until I return.
Then she hesitates.
“Some parents have been awkward.”
“About me?”
“About your marriage. I've told them your leave is your decision and their children are our concern.”
“Thank you.”
“One asked whether Beau owns the school.”
I stare at her.
“I said the county would be interested to hear it had sold.”
I laugh, then rub my forehead. The gossip has reached rooms I used to enter without wondering who knew what. Beau's public correction stopped one lie. It could not make strangers unlearn the sight of him with somebody else.
“I hate that they know,” I say.
“I know.”
“I also hate that some of them are being very kind. It makes it harder to resent them.”
She nods gravely. “Inconsiderate.”
I laugh again, grateful that she has left me a little room to be unpleasant.
Beau arrives just before five, carrying Ivy in her car seat. We arranged that he would bring her here before taking us home so I would not have to hurry away to feed her. He pauses at the threshold, looking around as though the room has something to tell him.
“This is different with you in it,” he says.
“You've been here before.”
“Dropping things off. Waiting at the door.”
He sets Ivy safely beside the desk, then studies the drawings.
“The artist is gaining confidence.”
“And fingers.”
“Related developments.”
My colleague collects her coat. She says goodbye to Ivy in a voice much sillier than her professional one, then leaves us together.
I take my daughter out of the seat. She presses her mouth against my sweater, and Beau pulls the chair closer while I settle to feed her.
He looks at my face. “How was it?”
I tell him about the bead. The child. The envelope. He listens, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees, and I remember why I used to want to tell him everything at the end of a day.
“Will her grandmother understand?” he asks.
“I think so. She may have needed help with that more than the bracelet.”
He nods. His eyes move around the clinic again, taking in the cot, the chair, the place beneath my desk where a child once hid until the shouting in the corridor stopped.
“I want you here Monday,” I say.
The invitation has been in my throat since he arrived.
I have let Beau see photographs of the clinic. I have told him stories over dinner and in bed. He knows the children by their problems, the printer by its crimes, the chair by how often I mention it.
He has never seen the room full of people who trust me.
“Not because I need help with the display,” I add.
“I know.”
“I may ask you to carry a table.”
“Separate contractual matter.”
I smile. “Exactly.”
“I'll be here.”
“I mean with me. I want you to see it when it's full of people. I want to show you what I do.”
“I'd like that.”
I look down at Ivy, then back at him.
“Six,” I say.
“Six.”
On the way out, he carries Ivy while I lock the clinic. I stop to straighten a paper snowflake hanging low over the drinking fountain.
“You're going to fix every one, aren't you?” he asks.
“Only the ones committing crimes.”
He waits while I fix two more, smiling when I turn around.
On Sunday afternoon, the clinic display covers my dining table.
The nine-fingered nurse still lies among the drawings.
Beau taps the page. “Still one short.”
“The child is revising in stages.”
“I admire an artist who can accept new evidence.”
“He still thinks I wear the cape to bed.”
Beau looks at the red triangle sweeping behind the stick figure, then at me. I catch the thought before he says it.
“Don’t.”
“I was appreciating the practical possibilities.”
“You were about to be ridiculous.”
“Both can happen.”
I smile and return to sorting the display. Ivy lies on a blanket on the floor beside us, studying a soft toy with the intensity I usually reserve for a suspicious rash.
Beau has her for the afternoon while I work. I expected to need the quiet room upstairs, but the materials spread, and when I came down to look for the scissors, we stayed at the table together.
I tell him how the parents will move through the classrooms on Monday and what I want the clinic to offer.
“Somewhere you can come before everything gets terrible,” I say. “Parents wait too. They think they need a sufficiently good reason, or they apologize for being a nuisance before they tell me what happened.”
My scissors stop. I remember asking Beau not to leave the labor room. No apology. No ambiguity. The memory tightens my grip until the handles press into my fingers.
He sees it. He does not make me explain.
I touch the drawing of the little chair. “This child is coming with her grandmother. I want the chair exactly where she expects it.”
He nods. “What else does the room need?”
“Somewhere to put the display that does not make the tissues impossible to reach.”
“The architectural challenge of our age.”
“It has defeated several teachers.”
We test the paper arrangement on the table. When he suggests building a stand, I raise an eyebrow.
“We own a table at school, Beau.”
“Right.”
“A fine table. Very experienced.”
“I withdraw the stand.”
I laugh, and he lets the idea go without finding a smaller thing to build.