Page 122 of Better Late Than Never

That would’ve been a disappointing thought with anyone else. With Connor? It just meant more hanging out on his couch or in his pool, talking over good food, and/or lazily kissing while a movie played without us. Sign me up.

Right then, the waiting room door opened, and I shook myself back into the present. I was still at work and had work to do.

Pediatric patients could sometimes be challenging because kids struggled to be still even when theyweren’tsick, hurting, or otherwise uncomfortable. Plus some of them were scared of the noise made by the machinery. Then I made it all worse by asking them to get into even more uncomfortable positions. I made a lot of kids cry, and that was definitely not my favorite part of my job.

This little girl today was seven. She’d hurt her foot at the beach, and the pediatrician wanted to rule out any fractures. If I had to guess from the minimal swelling and bruising, she probably had a moderate sprain, but it was always best to check. Unfortunately, that meant she had to lie back with her heel on the table and her toes up, and that wasn’t comfortable at all. The lateral view—with her leg and ankle on their side—was even worse. She’d been determinedly stoic and brave when she walked in, but by the time I was finished, her eyes were brimming with tears.

She was still trying to be brave, though, fighting back those tears and working her jaw so hard it had to hurt almost as much as her foot.

After she’d sat up, I said, “You know, I get big tough soldiers in here. Marines. All those guys.”

She looked up at me, eyelashes dotted with some of the tears that had escaped.

I smiled. “They cry sometimes. Did you know that?”

Her red eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yep. When it hurts, it hurts. Doesn’t matter who you are.” I patted her shoulder. “It’s okay to cry if it hurts.”

Some kids completely fell apart when I said that. Some just sort of exhaled and relaxed, letting the tears fall without shame but not like sobbing or anything. That’s what this kid did—her neck and shoulders unwound, and her jaw relaxed. The tears she was fighting back fell, and she released a long, ragged breath.

Her mom, who’d come back into the room once I was done taking the X-rays, met my gaze.“Thank you,”she mouthed.

I just offered a smile. I wished I could give her daughter a piece of candy or something. I kept a bowl of fun-size candy bars in the office for exactly that reason, but on the off chance her X-rays came back with a displaced fracture, she could need surgery. Or the doctor might give her pain meds that could upset her stomach. Best not to take the risk.

Her mom and I helped her into the wheelchair she’d come up in, and a moment later, another corpsman came by to take them back down to her pediatrician.

I returned to my office to send her X-rays to the pediatrician. A quick glance confirmed what I’d suspected—no fractures. Good. Poor kid’s day had already been shitty; she didn’t need a cast, crutches, and an order of“no getting in the water at the beach for a couple of months”on top of it.

I sent off the X-rays, and I was just about to check my email when the waiting room door opened again. It was going to be one ofthosedays, apparently.

Well, being busy made the day go by faster, so whatever.

It was definitely one of those days. For a solid three hours, there may as well have been a revolving door on Radiology, and I even ended up with a few people in the waiting area. I got called down to the emergency department twice, and for a hot minute I considered calling the other tech or my chief to come in and help.

I kept it under control, though, and I didn’t keep anyone waiting too long. My already tired body wasn’t thrilled about it, and some of those aches and twinges were getting more uncomfortable than amusing, but… eh. Could’ve been worse. My job kept that in sharp perspective, too; I really couldn’t complain to an aircraft maintainer who’d taken a fall that landed him in the ER with three broken ribs and a concussion. Or the sixteen-year-old whose fractured tibia hadn’t healed as well as she’d hoped, and she was going to spend a few more weeks in a cast. Or the XO from one of the ships who’d taken a tumble down a ladder and broken his collarbone.

By about 1530, things had wound down a little. I finished with a civilian contractor who had suspected pneumonia (more than “suspected” from what I saw on that chest X-ray), and my waiting area was empty. There were no summons to the emergency room. HM2 Fox would be arriving soon, too, so there’d be two of us until my shift was over. Nice.

I was just sending off some images to Orthopedics when the door swung open again.

I rose and stepped out of the office, fully expecting another patient (or Fox arriving early), but?—

“So you’re not answering texts anymore?” Tobias glared at me.

I halted in the doorway. “I—excuse me?”

“I’ve texted you half a dozen times today, and you haven’t even read them.”

I blinked, needing a second to process this. Then I shook myself. “I’m sorry, am I obligated to get back to you by a certain?—”

“You’re ignoring me,” he declared.

There was a time when I’d have insisted that, no, I wasn’t. I really wasn’t! And I’d show him—look! See all these patients today? The summonses to the ER? I hadn’t even had time to look at my personal phone, never mind ignore his texts.

But the longer I was away from him—and especially the longer I was with Connor—the less willing I was to be Tobias’s doormat.

I affected boredom and sighed. “Well, you’ve got me now.” I spread my arms. “What was so important that I needed to reply to your texts?”

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