Page 105 of Power Play

The nurse was fantastic.In no time, Tess was smiling through her tears. Once her face was cleaned up and she didn’t look so much like an extra in a horror film, I was able to breathe a little easier too.

Dr. Dana came in and assessed the wound with the kind of confidence that put a person at ease. She gave the nurse some instructions in a low voice and turned to me.

“Just as a precaution, do you know your daughter’s blood type?” she asked me.

I’d been scared of this, pretending to be her father was going to get us in a world of hurt when it came to these kinds of questions.

“I’m O negative,” Tess said.

“You know that? Wow. Me too,” I said and winked at her.

“Universal donor,” we said at the same time, which made her laugh again.

“Well,” Dr. Dana said, “you must have gotten that from your father because only seven percent of the population has it.”

The chances of Tess and me having the same blood type seemed important.

Too important.

A whole-body shiver ran over me and I looked over at Tess where she was lying on the bed in the exam room. The nurse laid a blue blanket over her and another one over her head with a hole where the wound was.

“Honey,” the nurse said, and I wasn’t good with accents but she sounded a little bit like Shrek. A girl Shrek. “We have to shave a tiny little bit of your head.”

Tess made a sound, a terrified but trying to be brave squeak, and I was beside her in a flash. Her hand in mine.

That’s when I knew. It hadn’t reached my brain yet, but it had reached my gut. And my gut was where all my decisions were made.

It’s how I knew all those years ago when I first saw Kit, that she was real.

“I got you, Tess. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

About forty minutesand three more suckers later, we were given a prescription and the nurse, Holly from Glasgow, opened the door to the exam room and I carried Tess into the waiting room. Kit was still sitting there and when she saw us she got to her feet. Her phone in her hand. Her cheeks pale and her eyes dark, like she’d been stressed out.

“Hey,” I said, putting my arm around her too. Kit leaned forward and kissed Tess’s cheek. “We’re okay.”

“I got fifteen stitches!” Tess cried.

“Fifteen,” Kit said, like that was both incredibly sad and very amazing.

“Yep. They had to shave my head.” She tilted her head down to show Kit and the sight of the wound, the dark stitches on her pink skin, made Kit’s eyes fill with tears.

“Come on. Let’s fill this prescription, get some pie for breakfast and go home and watch a movie. Sound good?”

Tess nodded but Kit still looked apprehensive.

“Everything okay with Janice?” he asked. “Was she freaking out?”

“No,” Kit said with a smile that did not look real. “She was okay. But…we need to talk.”

When mom ‘got sick’the environment in the house changed. It was like the weather. An electrical storm would come in throughthe kitchen and the living room. It would settle in the stairway and the shadows outside her bedroom. Somewhere along the line, I developed an antenna for this. Incredibly sensitive, I could tell by the way she walked through the house, the way she held her shoulders and tilted her head if a storm was coming.

Wyatt didn’t believe me at first but then he did. He learned to be scarce in those times, but I tried to change the direction of the storm. Tried to get it to lift and pass over our roof line.

Obviously, it didn’t work.

When I moved out of the house, I let go of the skill. I got complacent. I was the center of the universe for a while and it was a relief not to have to read the weather in every room. To try and gauge how everyone was doing and feeling and if there was something I needed to do to make it all better.

I played hockey to the best of my ability and people loved me.

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