makeshift bandage—the towel made his foot look like it had swollen up as big as a cantaloupe.
“You could get an infection,” Annie went on. “That trophy’s not clean, and—”
“Shut up, Annie,” Neal said flatly.
Annie was quiet only for a few seconds. “I’m sorry your hurt yourself, Neal, but I don’t see why you’re acting like such a baby about it.”
“I’m not acting like a baby.”
Natasha started to cry.
Annie gave another weary sigh and went over to the crib. She picked up Natasha and patted her on the back, rocking her from side to side. “There, there thweetie. Go back to sleep.”
Neal glared at both of them. Natasha continued to cry, her eyes squeezed shut. It wasn’t a hungry cry—even Neal had learned to recognize that particular sound. It was a cry of irritation, of disturbance. At that moment, Neal realized how much a baby—all babies—could affect what went on around them. Their crying almost always caused some kind of reaction in the environment, even if their mothers weren’t around.
As Natasha started to quiet down, Annie said, “Neal, you
Neal watched her for a moment, then pushed himself up off the floor and limped into the bathroom.
* * *
“Well, Mr. Becker, I have some good news. No foreign matter appears to be left in the wound.”
The young doctor was holding some x-rays in his hand. He had just come back into the curtained-off section of the emergency room where Neal had been sitting the past two hours, mostly alone. The nurses had made Annie and the baby stay in the waiting room, which was just fine with Neal.
“Let’s have another look at it,” the doctor said. He gingerly took hold of Neal’s ankle and raised it, inspecting the hole again. The man was no more than thirty years old, probably an intern. But he seemed to know what he was doing.
“All things considered,” the doctor said, after a moment of peering and gentle squeezing, “it’s a pretty clean wound. No need for any stitches—you’ll just have to keep it bandaged up for a while.” He let Neal’s foot back down. “What do you do? Work or go to school?”
Neal hesitated. “I’m in the flower business.”
“Uh-huh. But what do you do, exactly?”
“Well...I’m the delivery manager. I schedule all the, you know, deliveries that have to be made.”
“Uh-huh,” the doctor said again. His facial expression told Neal that he knew it was a lie, but that he didn’t really care. “The reason I’m asking is that you’ll need to stay off your foot for a few days. There’s already considerable swelling, and I have a feeling it’ll get worse before it gets better.”
Neal only nodded, sorry that he had lied. But the thought of telling this young and successful doctor that he was nothing but a lowly flower delivery boy was too much for his ego to bear. Some day he would be a doctor—or something equally impressive—too.
“So, it won’t be a problem?” the doctor said.
Neal was so lost in his own thoughts he had forgotten the flow of the conversation. “What won’t be a problem?”
“Staying off your foot.”
A typical day of driving the Snell delivery van flashed through Neal’s mind—all the trips in and out of high rise apartment buildings, up and down stairs, across huge parking lots...
“It won’t be a problem,” Neal lied.
“Good.” The doctor began to explain how to clean the wound, change the bandage, and so on, but Neal only half-listened. He was worrying about how he would get through the next few days without the Snells discovering that he was practically disabled. If they knew, they wouldn’t let him drive the
