“Sure, sure.” I hurried to the door then hurried back to the bed to touch his forehead one more time. “You’ll be ok,” I reassured myself. I decided to come home early, anyway. And once I was at work, I texted him a few times, just to make sure he was all right. He seemed to be, and told me to stop worrying about him, that he was just as tough as I was.
“Again?” Euna snipped when I told her about leaving mid-day. I had gotten there a little late after pausing to make the tea and oatmeal, and lingering and talking, too, so she was already in a bit of a snit with me. “You have another appointment? More time off?”
“It’s very important. I can’t miss it,” I told her.
She took out a binder which I saw was labeled “Camdyn Riordan,” just like César’s file on his laptop.
“What is that?” I asked.
Euna didn’t answer. She opened it and flipped through some pages, and there seemed to be a lot of them. She pulled her finger down a chart, pursing her lips and shaking her head, a kind of “you dealt it, I smelt it” face. “You should know that you’re now using up your vacation time. You’re well into it, in fact. I recorded all the hours you spent in the bathroom and reported them,” she informed me.
“I have to go to the doctor today,” I told her. “I can’t miss it. Also, I don’t have much to keep me busy here right now, so it’s not like I’m leaving you with a ton of work. We don’t have one event besides the Steins’ anniversary party next month. It’s really dead, Euna, but that’s not my fault.” It was more the fault of the owners and the general manager. They didn’t believe in social media no matter how hard I lobbied that they should open a few accounts to get their name out more, and they wouldn’t pay to advertise their facility for winter use because they thought it was too big an expense.
At least Euna had seen the need for the New Years’ party, and we would be busy again in the summer because the winery was too pretty at that time of the year not to use. Things would pick up fast as it got warmer and I would be as indispensable as I had been back when they had hired me after I graduated. But until then, I certainly had time to go to the doctor.
Euna just pursed her lips and flipped to a different place in the binder. She lifted her pen and started to write and I craned my neck to try to read what it said. I was dying to see everything in that binder under all those tabs. “Go ahead to your doctor’s appointment today,” she said with emphasis. “I’ll be speaking to the general manager later.” She tapped her pen and made another notation.
I went back to my desk and tried to keep an eye on the clock so I wouldn’t be late in leaving. It was snowing today and the roads were bad, and my driving trips were already taking me ten years longer than they used to. I glanced toward Euna’s office and woke up my computer like I was doing work. Since César had mentioned it that morning, I had been thinking of the stuff I would need to buy, the baby stuff. He had said something about a changing table, but did I actually need a specific piece of furniture for diaper stuff? I looked online at some of the must-have lists and they were incredible, long and confusing and so loaded with expensive items that I got hot and anxious. Really? How was I going to pay for it all? Well, I wouldn’t—not if I didn’t have a job.
“Uh, Euna? Would you like a cup of coffee?” I called into her office. She didn’t respond, and I was never any good at sucking up, anyway.
I kept clicking around on my computer and went down a baby product rabbit hole that lasted way too long. When I looked at the clock on the screen, I saw that I was close to being late, or actually late if you assumed that you needed to be there exactly at your appointment time. But the doctor was late again too and I sat in the lobby nervously texting with César to take my mind off the fact that I was in a medical building. He sent me a series of incredibly stupid jokes, making me laugh out loud and also making me hope that he was feeling better.
“How are you?” I asked when I got home, and he claimed that he was totally healed. “Well, the baby is fine, too,” I told him. “Everything looks great, perfect size, perfect everything. Here.” I handed him several pieces of paper. I had printed out his questions and tried to transcribe the doctor’s responses as she talked.
César was resting on the couch in the family room, the one that now had a permanent stain from the pizza that had decorated it after our party. “I can’t read what you wrote. What do these symbols and little drawings mean?” he asked.
I sat down next to him. “That’s my code with Ellie. We came up with it when we were about eight so we could have a secret language with only each other. I still use it sometimes to take notes. Here, I’ll translate.” I filled him in on what the doctor had said. Some of his questions had been extremely detailed and I had skimmed a little as I took down her answers. “She mentioned that she did have other patients to see,” I told him, “and she
