Page 26 of The Someday Daughter
“Yeah, he met us in Austin and I kind of cut out of brunch to call you, but look, I’m sorry, okay?” I hold up a hand to my dad, who stops a few feet away and just stands there, watching me. “That picture isn’t anything. That guy isn’t anything. I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” he says. There’s a pause; I think I can hear him breathing, but it might just be my own panicked inhales. “Can I call you later?”
“Yes,” I say, relief moving down my body in a wave.That’s lonely, Silas told me. But I’m not lonely; not with Ethan. “Yes, please.”
“Okay,” he says again.I love you, I want to say. A flickering impulse that feels maybe more like an olive branch than something I really feel in this moment, panic-stricken on an unfamiliar porch. But I don’t say it, and Ethan says, “Okay,” one more time, and I say, “Okay,” and then we’re hanging up.
“Okay?” Dad asks, eyeing me.
“Okay,” I repeat, but I’m pretty sure neither of us is convinced.
“Can we go back inside?”
I stare up at my father from the rocking chair. I feel rooted to it, leaden. “I really don’t want to be around her right now.”
Dad’s eyebrows twitch together, and he lowers himself into the seat beside me. I hold up my phone, open to that photo of me and Silas, and watch his eyes track across it.
“I don’t want this,” I say. “I don’t want to do this with her and deal with all of this.” The anger rises in me like carbonation, fizzing frantically, looking for a way out. “She’s using me, Dad. She’s using me for her career bullshit, and it’s snaking into my own life, and she doesn’t even care that—”
“Audrey.” It’s so rare he calls me by my name that my mouth snaps shut. “Your mother loves you, and she’s not trying to use you.” He leans closer, eyes scanning mine. “And you know she can’t control every action of the press, right?”
I squeeze the arms of the rocking chair. I shouldn’t be surprised that he isn’t on my side. “I wouldn’t have to deal with the press at all if she hadn’t brought me here.”
He sighs heavily, reaching out to jiggle my arm. He’s always cutting the tension this way—picking me up, jostling me, wrapping me in some big bear hug. It’s easier for him, I think, than finding the words. “We’ll see if Magnolia can help. But cut your mom some slack, all right? She’s been through the ringer, too.”
“Really,” I say. “Like when?” I wave my phone at him. “I don’t see the press actively dismantlingherrelationships.”
“You deserve to be mad about this,” Dad says. “All I’m asking is that you give your mom the benefit of the doubt every now and then, okay? You don’t know everything about her.”
I lean back, searching his familiar face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, mouse. Just that you assume the worst of her, and she doesn’t always deserve it.” He stands, reaching for my hand. I don’t want to take it, but I do. “Come inside and eat your breakfast.”
20
“Let’s say the patient presents with sudden numbness on the left side only.” Dr. Kowalski leans back on her heels, arms crossed. “What do you do first?”
Sadie and I are in the emergency department at Zilker Hospital, where her contact here in Austin—a pint-sized doctor named Maureen Kowalski—is giving me the third degree. Unlike the other visits, which have basically been lovefests for Sadie rounded out by offers of future rec letters for me, Dr. Kowalski doesn’t seem to really care who Sadie is. She seems to caremuchless who I am.
But the leveling of her gaze, the paces she’s putting me through, the double doors from the ambulance bay rushing open to wheel in someone who needs real help—this is the best thing I’ve been a part of all summer. This is where I make sense.
“The FAST assessment,” I tell Dr. Kowalski. “The patient’s having a stroke.”
She eyes me. “Maybe. Good place to start. What about periumbilical pain that migrates to the right lower quadrant, accompanied by vomiting?”
I hesitate. “Kidney stones?”
“Appendicitis,” she says curtly. “But good guess. Dr. Stone tells me you were a student EMT, so you were probably more likely tobe dealing with a burst appendix than a kidney stone, at any rate, given the average patient’s age in your line of work.”
My line of work.Even after getting the question wrong, it sends a shiver of pride up my spine. Dr. Kowalski turns on her heel to lead us deeper into the ER, and Sadie falls into step beside me.
“Nicely done,” she says quietly. She apologized as we drove to the hospital this morning, finally acknowledging what she’d said in the car back in Santa Fe.It wasn’t my place, she said.She’s your mother, not mine.And I just nodded, zipped it away. I hate that Camilla touched this part of the summer, that even there—driving to meet a doctor I’m desperate to impress—we were talking about her. But I shouldn’t be surprised; Camilla is ruining everything. Including, if I’m not more careful, my relationship with Ethan.
“We’ll wrap up in the ICU,” Dr. Kowalski says now, leading us down a hallway tiled in scuffed laminate. “So you can get a feel for what it’ll be like at Hopkins Hospital in the fall. That shadowing position will really set you up—one of the best in the country.”
Don’t I know it. When I start to lose my grip on reality—when Camilla slips a vacuum-sealed face mask under my hotel room door or emails me interview questions for some press piece—I imagine myself there. All the tactile things about it: a laminated badge with my face on it, the sturdy sneakers I’ll buy, my chapped knuckles from so much handwashing.
“Tell me more about your EMT experience,” Dr. Kowalski says, casting a backward glance in my direction as we push through the doors into the ICU. “What was typical for you? Broken bones?”
