Chapter 13 #2
Rebecca led me into a small office with a desk, two guest chairs, and an entire wall of neatly organized binders.
A second monitor sat ready beside her laptop, and a headset rested on its charging stand.
The only decoration in the room was a potted snake plant in the corner that looked like it was single-handedly trying to liven the place up.
She motioned for me to take a seat before settling into the chair across from me. “How was the drive?”
“Not bad.” I set my backpack on the floor beside me. “I’m still learning my way around Denver.”
Rebecca smiled. “You’ll get there. We try not to throw too much at our fellows on day one.”
I relaxed a fraction.
Good. That meant we’d probably go over paperwork, meet my mentor at Little Voices, maybe tour the clinic before I started seeing kids next week.
Rebecca folded her hands on the desk. “Before we dive into orientation, let’s discuss your clinical placement and what the next nine months are going to look like.”
“Perfect.” I smiled, sitting a little straighter in my chair. “I know I mentioned it during my interview, but I’m excited to work with kids. That’s always been the goal.”
Rebecca smiled back. It was kind, but maybe a little too kind. “I know.” She opened the folder in front of her. “Unfortunately, there have been a few staffing changes over the last week.”
My smile faltered.
“The mentor originally assigned to your clinical fellowship accepted another position before your start date.”
“Oh.” I nodded. “So, who’s taking over my mentorship?”
“I am.”
A wave of relief washed over me.
I laughed softly. “Okay. I thought maybe I’d be meeting them after orientation once I head over to Little Voices.”
But Rebecca didn’t laugh with me. “You won’t be.”
The room suddenly felt much quieter.
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ll be completing your clinical fellowship here at High Country.”
I blinked. “...Here?”
“When Heather left, we no longer had any mentors for pediatrics. So we reviewed all our incoming fellows to determine the best fit for each department.”
That was enough to have my stomach sinking somewhere beneath the floor, but she kept going.
“In your interview, you told us about a close family friend living with Parkinson’s disease. You talked about helping her, supporting her family, and how watching her navigate changes in her communication inspired you to keep going with this career.”
Lori.
“You spoke with so much empathy,” Rebecca said. “Not only about the patient, but about the people who love them. That’s an incredibly valuable perspective in adult neuro rehabilitation.”
She thought she was complimenting me, but my world was crumbling faster than I could handle.
“We can teach treatment protocols,” she continued. “What we can’t teach is genuine compassion for families facing progressive neurological disease. Based on your interview, we felt your strengths aligned exceptionally well with this team.”
She smiled, like she hadn’t taken my feet out from under me. “We think you’re going to make a difference here.”
I looked down at the backpack resting against my chair, picturing the finger puppets, plastic dinosaurs, bubbles, and all the cards I’d laminated myself because I was so excited to use it all.
I’d packed for my first day as a pediatric speech pathologist.
Instead, I would now spend the next nine months helping people navigate the same disease slowly stealing one of my favorite people.
I made it back to Mikko’s that afternoon, more tired than I’d ever been.
The garage opened the moment I pulled up, and I returned the car to the same spot I’d found it this morning.
Mikko had also put a key fob on my key ring, and I swiped it by a security reader, calling the elevator.
It dinged, then opened for me, and I stepped on, sagging against the wall.
Without even selecting a floor, it zoomed upward and deposited me in Mikko’s foyer far faster than I was prepared for.
When the doors slid apart, Leena looked over, then broke into a run toward me.
I dropped to my knees and let her crash into me, arms around my neck.
Her little giggle was almost enough to chip away at my walls, but a tear slipped free when she planted a little kiss on my cheek.
I wiped it away before Mikko noticed and forced myself to smile at Leena.
“I missed you.” I pushed to my feet, taking her hand when she reached for mine. “Did you have fun while I was gone?”
She answered by dragging me toward the kitchen.
Mikko stood at the stove in a faded charcoal t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders and a pair of gym shorts that had absolutely no business looking that good on anyone.
One hand stirred a pot while the other rested on his hip, his attention bouncing between whatever was simmering on the stove and the toddler now proudly escorting me into the room.
“How’d it go?”
Before I could answer, Leena tugged me the rest of the way into the kitchen.
A pot of tomato sauce bubbled on the stove while a pan of browned Italian sausage waited beside it. A loaf of garlic bread sat on the counter next to a bowl of Caesar salad. I looked between the ingredients, then back at him.
“You cooked again?”
“That’s a generous interpretation.” He pointed at the pan. “The sauce came from a jar, and the bread was frozen. I’m also ninety percent sure dumping salad out of a bag doesn’t count as cooking.”
“It absolutely counts.”
“Good.” He pointed toward the refrigerator. “Because if this goes badly, we still have chicken and rice.”
Leena banged a wooden spoon on an overturned bowl, shrieking in delight at the racket she made. It was the best sound I’d heard all day.
I pulled out a barstool and dropped into it, letting my head fall to the marble counter. “Today sucked.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mikko didn’t say anything else, only the happy sounds of Leena playing at our feet filling the room.
Maybe someone else would have been put off by his non-attempt to further the conversation, but I was starting to understand him.
It wasn’t so much that he wasn’t listening or didn’t care, but more so that Mikko himself was a deeply private person.
He was letting me choose if I wanted to end the conversation there or give him more.
On any other day, I probably would have dropped it, but today was a disaster of epic proportions, and texting Stevie felt too daunting right now.
I lifted my head, resting it on my hands. “What if I actually hate the job I’ve worked so hard for?”
Mikko mixed the sausage in with the tomato sauce, then put a lid on top of it. He turned and leaned against the counter, arms crossed across his chest highlighting every single muscle.
“Do you? Hate it, I mean?”
I heaved a sigh, then looked down at Leena. “I was supposed to work in pediatrics, to help kids like her. That makes me feel important, to feel like I’m helping kids who need someone to go at their speed. To help them find their own voices.”
“And that’s not what happened today?”
“No.” A bitter laugh escaped me. “I got placed with a mentor who handles adult neurology patients instead. They want me to work with Parkinson’s patients.”
“Like Lori.”
I put my head back down before more tears could fall.
“That makes you sad,” Mikko said, the words sounding more like a question than a statement.
“Well, it sure doesn’t feel good.”
“Can you ask for another placement? One that’s back with kids.”
“Not without changing my whole timeline.” The words were muffled, my head still down. “I’d have to go back through the interview process again, starting over.”
“Would it be worth it, though? To not be sad.”
And fuck, I was sad. Even sitting through presentations today was hard, imagining how much worse Lori would get before the inevitable end.
“Watching my mom lose her mobility is something I’ll never forget,” Mikko said.
The words were so unexpected, I sat up. “How old were you?”
“Five.”
I took a page out of his book and kept my mouth shut, giving him the option of elaborating or leaving it there. But whatever weird energy was in the air today had him opening up too.
“Maybe every kid grows up thinking their parents are superheroes, but mine were. They were Olympians, pushing every boundary set in front of them. Invincible. Until she wasn’t.”
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
“I was old enough to understand how bad it was, but not to understand that a wheelchair wasn’t a death sentence. And my father…” Mikko shook his head, then dropped pasta into the last pot on the stove. “He was never the same.”
“Ah, Daddy issues. I’m well acquainted with those.”
He smirked, but the amusement didn’t reach his eyes.