Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Her mother didn’t go back to the medicare card.
Delaney’s brow lifted expectantly. “Or … no?”
Amanda still didn’t seem put off by the question. Unbothered, if anything. “As I understand it, some of your cousins still talk between you or Bexley, so—”
“I don’t go out of my way to ask about you anymore, it never served me,” Delaney interjected.
As quiet as the words were, she knew the impact they would have on her mother from that moment forward. What had long been an unspoken understanding between Delaney and her mother would now be very clear.
Sometimes, things just had to be said.
It wouldn’t always feel good.
“Well,” Amanda said in a sigh, her attention turning back on the screen as her fingers began to fly over the keyboard, “I had heard you were back in town. Or the area … living with the Briggs girl again?”
“In an apartment Gracen owns,” Delaney replied, to be civil.
Very little else.
She didn’t offer more information, and the short reply seemed to do the job of making it clear to her mother that they would not be talking about Gracen, or much else. As it was, the two had already talked too much.
For her liking, anyway.
“What’s the reason for the trip to the ER today?” Amanda asked.
Holy hell.
Somehow, she had forgotten in her shock at seeing her mother that she would have to explain to her why she needed to visit the emergency department at Valleyview Hospital. The immediate lump in Delaney’s throat even took away her ability to take in air for a few seconds. The internal panic was real.
“Uh,” Delaney tried to say.
Amanda’s brow lifted higher than the screen in front of her. “I need to input it for the nurse who will see you in the triage next. Are you running a fever or—”
“Bleeding,” Delaney said, the word stumbling from her tongue before she could swallow it back down. Now that she got it out there, though … “I’m bleeding. I think I’m having a miscarriage. I had a positive test, but with a very faint line, and I’ve been bleeding for the better part of the day today.”
Perhaps her mother’s many years of working behind the receptionist desk for a family doctor had done something for Amanda’s professionalism because hearing that news from her daughter didn’t affect her as she input the information to the record for the visit through her keyboard. On the surface, anyway. Delaney could see the way Amanda’s gaze shifted to her, and then widened pointedly before she asked, “Is all of your personal information up-to-date—single, person to contact is Gracen Briggs … oh, if you’ve moved, we should put in your new address.”
Delaney’s jaw ached from how hard she clenched her teeth as she repeated the new address that she had managed to memorize quickly after moving into the apartment over the garage. “And yes, Gracen still works.”
“And the status, or not, of your relations—”
“None of your business,” Delaney replied.
Amanda cocked an eyebrow. “I’m just asking, Delaney.” Except her judgemental gaze came around the monitor to pointedly glance down toward the non-existent swell of Delaney’s stomach. “Perhaps if you are single … is it not for the better? These things are often in His plans.”
No way.
This isn’t real, she told herself.
Someone wouldn’t say that to someone else. A woman wouldn’t look another woman in the eyes after she had admitted her fear of having a miscarriage just to be told it was God’s plans.
Except there Delaney was being told exactly that by her own mother.
After all those years, not one damn thing had changed.
“Excuse me, can I help you?”
Delaney, who found herself glaring through the pane of plexiglass at the woman on the other side, didn’t notice the nurse in colorful, cartoon-printed scrubs that entered the cubby from a side door. The open doorway exposed the nurses’ station on the other side. Bustling with quiet activity, the waiting room sat on the other side.
“She’s almost registered,” Amanda said. “It’ll be another—”
“I’ll see her in triage now,” the nurse with the kind eyes and soft smile said.
She never looked away from Delaney.
Had the woman heard what her mother said?
She hadn’t noticed if the door had been cracked.
Who knew if the wall might be thin?
Amanda frowned and looked back over her shoulder at the nurse. “I don’t even have her registration bracelet printed yet, Madison.”
The nurse walked beyond Amanda in the office chair, picked Delaney’s medicare card up to look at the information on the front, and then she slid it back through the hole for her to take. Delaney noticed the RN stamped on the name badge hanging from Madison’s breast pocket of her scrub tops.
“Triage is just down the hall, it’s a cubicle, you can’t miss it,” Madison told Delaney.
She clutched the card, standing from the chair and avoiding the confused flutter of her mother’s hands over the keyboard while Delaney awkwardly moved out and around the chair.