Page 49 of Doctor Daddy

I shrugged. I knew she hadn’t come in here to argue about the clothes I was packing. With that preliminary discussion out of the way, I knew the real reason she came in here was about to drop.

“I’m just nervous about you going away,” she finally confessed.

“Why?” I asked. “I’m not going alone.”

“Why? Chicago,” Mom said with a tone that conveyed that she believed every horrible thing she had ever heard about the city.

“Have you ever been?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Oh, no. I don’t think I would do well in a place like that.”

A place like that meant cold winters and a bad criminal reputation. Atlanta had its own reputation.

“You’ll be on your own for the first time.”

“I’ll be with Angela,” I said. “It’s not like I haven’t gone off without you before. I did spend a year in Scotland, remember?”

“That’s different. That was school.”

“This is also school. It’s a graduate program. Only this time, I’m gonna have to get a job.”

“Well, maybe your father can help you out there.”

I turned and looked at her. “How can Dad being here in Atlanta help me in Chicago? He doesn’t run a hospital up there.”

“Maybe not,” Mom started. “But he does have friends all over the place. I’m sure he has a colleague or some network connection that could help you find a job at a local hospital. They have hospitals in Chicago, right?”

I laughed. “Yes, Mom. They have hospitals in Chicago.” Not that I wanted to work in a hospital. But the thought of not having to go out and find a job while I was pregnant did have a certain appeal.

She still held onto the red dress and folded it onto her lap as she sat back down on my bed. “So, what’s the plan?”

I explained that Angela was heading to Chicago next week for an apartment hunting expedition. Banking on the success of that, we would be packing up a U-haul and driving up in two weeks.

“Two weeks?” Mom thought about it for a moment. “Have you given notice at your job?”

“Yeah, I’ve already let them know. Next Friday is my last day. That’ll give me one more week to pack everything up and finish getting ready.”

“Do you need any furniture to take?”

We hadn’t really talked about furniture. I looked at Mom sitting on my bed and then set my gaze around my room. It was all pink with blue flowers. I had a lot of memories here.

“I guess we’re gonna have to figure out thrift stores up there. We can get a couch and we’ll be able to get a table with chairs. We don’t want to haul too much. Bigger trailers cost more money.”

I put my hands on my hips and looked around my room. I remember getting the matching bedroom set when I was nine, and we were decorating my room for the first time. I had been so thrilled to pick everything out. I remembered pitching a fit in the Ethan Allen parking lot because Mom wanted to get me a white bedroom set with yellow flowers. I insisted on the pink with the blue flowers. And somehow, I managed to win that argument. But I didn’t want to take my nine-year-old self’s idea of interior decorating. All of this furniture could stay here.

Mom sniffled. I sat next to her and put my head on her shoulder.

“I’ll be okay, Mom.”

“I know you will. It’s just that you’re my baby and I hate having to admit that you’re now a grown-up adult.”

“I have grown up, Mom.” I was so grown up; I was already pregnant. “I can’t stay here. Chicago will give me a chance to really see who I’ve become. It’ll give me a chance to spread my wings. Besides, Dad has been really eager to get me out of the house. Well, this is me getting out of the house. I’ve never really done anything on my own. Like you said, Scotland was different. That was school, and I had the college to help me out if I got in a bind.”

“This is different,” she sighed.

“This is me trying to figure out who I am.”

“I know exactly who you are. And you’re right. You will be okay. I’ll miss you.”

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