Page 2 of Knocking up his Nanny

I groan. After entertaining them all with my story, I excuse myself from the room to stretch my legs. My only comfort during these chemo sessions has been to find all the hospital vending machines and buy as much junk food as humanly possible. I must say, the coffee vending machine isn’t terrible either.

But very few things in this world comfort me like Cheetos.

After a quick stroll through the hospital halls, I am grateful to see that there is still one small bag of my favorite treat left in the vending machine. I reach into my ugly sweater to extract some money, and feed a crumpled bill to the machine. I am running low on cash—my mother doesn’t know that I can barely afford the gas to get us to the hospital, which is two towns over. I’ll have to ask my sisters for help later.

The machine eats my dollar, then I punch in the code for Cheetos. B3. It’s like a Bingo number.

Maybe one of these days I should bring a set of Bingo cards to chemo to entertain the old people, instead of knitting or inventing stories about a thrilling love life that doesn’t exist.

I stand here, waiting and waiting for my Cheetos to drop so I can collect them. But the metal coil around the junk food twists, and fails to push it out completely. It hangs there, halfway out—but no longer moving. And I don’t think I have another dollar.

“No,” I whisper in horror, placing both hands flat against the glass. “Please. Please, Cheetos, I need you—I beg you to come down out of there and into my stomach. We are fighting cancer and you’re the only thing that cheers me up in this whole hospital. Please don’t fail me, today.”

I’m really bad at praying and begging, so I quickly turn to cursing and threatening.

“Damn you, Cheetos! I paid good money for you, and you’re juststuckthere, staring at me, taunting me.” I press my finger against the glass, angrily. “You better behave yourself, or I’m going to come in there, and knock some sense into you. Don’t think I won’t. I’m not a nice little nun like they all say. I’m a hungry, angry—hangrywoman—I will eat you alive!”

Beginning to beat my fists on the machine, trying to dislodge the junk food, I want to scream in frustration as I kick the machine and curse at it. I let out all my anger at cancer, chemo, and rising gas prices on the poor vending machine.

I notice the Cheetos just barely beginning to budge. It’s working!

Dropping to my knees, I shove my entire arm into the hole where the Cheetos are supposed to fall, and try to reach up and grab them. “Come on! Come on!” I say with frustration, getting into every weird position I can to try to reach my prize. Finally, with my body pressed against the floor, and my shoulder thrust up into the bowels of the vending machine, I think I feel my fingers brush against the sharp corner of the plastic bag.

“Yes!” I say. “Right there—I’ve got it!”

But then I manage to push the Cheetos up a few inches, instead of pulling. And they still don’t fall. It’s completely out of reach. My shoulder happens to get a bad cramp at the same time, and I wince, letting out a string of curse words suitable for a sailor.

This is a bad day. I feel like I was drowning at sea, and those Cheetos were the only life raft for miles. I clutch my shoulder miserably.

But then, someone behind me clears his throat. It’s a masculine sound.

Kind, but filled with amusement, like he is trying not to laugh at me.

“Uh. Can I help you with that, Miss?”

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