Blindsided, Mikki practically stuttered as she answered, “No, he’s, um—”
“I’m a friend of the doc’s,” Jeff said, coming to her rescue. “She made my mother well a couple of weeks ago,” he told the little girl. “The doc works so hard she keeps forgetting to eat, so I thought I’d bring her some food.”
“But why did you bring so much food?” Eva asked, fisting her small hands on her waist as she surveyed the many boxes. “She can’t eat all that.”
“No, she can’t,” he agreed. “But she doesn’t like to eat alone and she knew there’d be a lot of people in her waiting room, so she asked me to bring enough food for everyone.”
“Oh.” Eva thought the answer over and her face lit up. “That’s good. Can my mom eat some?”
“Everyone can have some,” Jeff replied. “That’s why I brought so much. Would you like to help me hand the boxes out?”
The little girl bobbed her head up and down, her curls bouncing every which way. “Sure. I like helping. Don’t I, Mama?” She looked toward her mother for backup.
A worn woman, looking far more tired than her years warranted, nodded and smiled at her daughter. “Yes, you do.”
Mikki looked on in amazement, wondering what had possessed Jeff Sabatino to do this.
But very quickly, she stopped looking for a reason and was just happy that he had thought to do something so magnanimous.
Leaving the waiting room, Mikki got back to work.
* * *
Mikki expected Jeff to leave after he had distributed the last of the food and everyone had eaten. Instead, he came into the inner office and surprised her by asking, “Mind if I hang around until you close up tonight?”
Although she had to admit that she liked having him there, Mikki didn’t want him feeling obligated to stay.
“It might be a while,” she warned.
He shrugged. “That’s okay. I left the restaurant in my assistant’s hands and my mother is with my sister, so basically I’m free,” he told her. “So, is it okay with you?”
“It’s fine with me,” she answered, wishing that she could think of something witty to say. But she came up empty.
Getting back to work, she wasn’t able to quell the flutter in her stomach, so she decided just to ignore it, focusing on the patients waiting for her attention.
* * *
It felt like forever, but eventually, the last of the patients left the clinic and Frieda quickly closed the doors.
“Well, I’ve got a cat and a husband to get home to and make dinner for,” she announced in her typical no-nonsense voice. “Nice of you to come by and feed the masses,” she told Jeff, nodding as she picked up her things and made her way to the back door.
Then, passing Mikki, she said to the doctor in a low voice, “You want my opinion, he’s a keeper.”
“He’s not mine to keep,” Mikki quickly protested.
“Uh-huh,” Frieda replied, sounding completely unconvinced.
Turning at the door, she glanced over her shoulder at the man who had come in and disrupted everything at the clinic, but in a very good way. “Hope to see you again, Mr. Sabatino.”
“Jeff,” he corrected her.
Frieda’s uneven smile widened with approval. “Jeff,” she repeated. “A keeper,” she told Mikki again just before she let herself out.
Chapter Thirteen
“Looks like you have a fan,” Mikki told him once they were alone. She saw Jeff raise an eyebrow as he looked at her. Afraid that he might have misunderstood her meaning, she quickly explained, “I was talking about Frieda.”
“I see. But not you.”
His expression was unreadable. Had she insulted him, or hurt his feelings? She didn’t want to do that, but she didn’t want to say too much, either. While she was attracted to him, she didn’t want to encourage him, because that way lay trouble. She’d learned that by watching her mother.
“I like your food,” she told Jeff. “And I admire your generous spirit.”
He nodded, accepting her rather vague compliments. He didn’t want her to feel as if he was crowding her. “I’ve been told worse things,” he allowed.
“I’m just trying to figure out why you would come here and bring all this food with you.”
“Well, it’s simple,” he told her. He watched as she began closing everything down. “I came here because you were here. I brought the food because you seemed to enjoy it the other evening.”
“You brought way too much food,” she told him and he knew it.
“Actually,” Jeff corrected, “it turned out that I brought just enough. You had an awful lot of patients here, not to mention that most of them didn’t come here alone.”
“So you did plan on feeding all these people?” she questioned incredulously. Who did that kind of thing?
Jeff explained his reasoning. “I knew you wouldn’t eat unless they had something to eat, too. Luckily, I’m in a position where bringing extra food with me is not a problem.”
Mikki looked at this surprising philanthropist, still not a hundred percent clear about what had gone through his head—or how he would even think to do something like this.
“I don’t understand. How would you even know—”
“My dad died when I was very young. I was raised by a single mom who sometimes had to work two jobs to make ends meet and feed all of us. And, as a kid, I wasn’t a stranger to free clinics.” He glanced around at the area that had been teeming with people just a short while ago. “Let’s just say that this is payback—on a small scale.”
She had just assumed that he had come from a comfortable background. To find out differently surprised her. “I didn’t know.”
He laughed. There was no reason why she would. “I don’t have it printed on the back of the menus, but it’s not a secret, either,” he told her. “So,” Jeff said, changing the subject. “Does this mean you’re done for the day?”
“It’s after eight o’clock. The clinic is officially closed,” she told him. She began to turn off the overhead lights as she slowly made her way to the back.
“Considering it’s strictly on a volunteer basis, you certainly put in long hours here,” Jeff commented.
He was telling her that he thought she was being overworked. Right now, considering the way she felt, she couldn’t really argue with him. But she felt she needed to tell him that it wasn’t always this hectic here.
“There’s normally another doctor here, too. We take shifts. I open the place and he closes up.”
He nodded, taking it in. He’d been here for half the day and the only medical personnel he’d seen were Mikki and the dour-faced nurse. “And where is he?”
“He had a family emergency—same as the two other nurses who are usually here,” she added.
He nodded. “I see. So in other words, it was all on your shoulders.”
Mikki raised her chin somewhat defensively. “I managed.”
“Yes, you certainly did,” Jeff agreed. The last thing he wanted to do was offend her or get in some sort of an argument over the nature of her rather zealous work ethic. “Could I interest you in going back to the restaurant for a drink, or some dessert?” he asked her. He really wanted to spend some time with this compelling woman in a somewhat less harried setting.
She considered his offer. “Either one sounds good.”
Jeff grinned. “Either one it is.”
But just as she was about to turn off the last two lights in the clinic, there was a loud pounding on the front door. Surprised, Mikki immediately turned toward the front of the clinic.
But Jeff was apparently leerier than she was. He quickly moved in front of her, blocking her access to the door.
“Don’t open that,” he warned her. “Your hours are posted outside. Everyone knows that the clinic is closed now, and th
is isn’t the greatest neighborhood,” he pointed out.
Whoever it was pounded on the door again. “That sounds like someone who needs help,” Mikki argued.
“If they need help, there’s a hospital a few blocks away,” he reminded her.
The pounding started again, even more urgent sounding than the last two times. Moving him out of the way, Mikki undid all three locks and opened the door just enough to be able to look out. There was a distraught woman on the other side, holding a whimpering little boy of no more than five in her arms.
The second the door was opened, the woman began talking. “Please, my son, I think he broke his arm. He needs help.” The woman looked at Jeff, directing her words to him. “You’re the doctor, right?” she asked breathlessly.
“No, she’s the doctor,” he said, indicating Mikki. “Here, let me help you,” he offered, taking the bruised little boy from the woman.
At this point, the child, clearly frightened, began to cry and moan as he shrank away from Jeff.
“Bring him in the back,” Mikki instructed him. She paused only long enough to lock the door again. “The first room,” she called out to Jeff. “Put him on the exam table.”
“I wanna go home,” the boy cried.
Mikki was quick to follow in Jeff’s wake. The boy’s mother was one step behind.
“You will, sweetie,” Mikki told him. “I just want to take a look at that arm.”
Obviously anticipating more pain, the boy was wiggling as he sat on the exam table. It made things difficult and each time the boy moved, he whimpered and cried.
“Jeff, could you help him stay still?” Mikki requested. “Jeff’s going to play statue with you,” she told the little boy. “Both of you are going to stay as still as possible.” She smiled encouragingly at him. “I bet you’ll win, too.”
“Mama?” the boy cried, looking toward his mother for help.
“Listen to the nice doctor, Henry,” his mother told him, clearly on the verge of tears herself. Worry lines were permanently imprinted on her forehead.
“But she’s gonna hurt me,” Henry cried.
“Oh, you must be thinking of some other doctor, Henry,” Jeff told the boy. “Dr. Mikki never hurts anyone.” He winked at Henry. “Especially if you stay very, very still.”
“Like a statue?” Henry asked, trying to look brave enough, though a few tears escaped and were sliding down his cheeks.
“Just like a statue,” Jeff told him solemnly. He raised his eyes to Mikki’s. “We’re ready.”
“All right, Henry,” Mikki began in a calm, soothing voice, “I’m going to have to examine your arm—”
Henry immediately froze up. “No!” he protested.
“Why don’t we have Dr. Mikki examine my arm first?” Jeff suggested. “Then you can see that she’s not going to hurt you.”
The boy looked at him uncertainly, as if trying to decide whether or not to trust him. Finally, he sniffed, “Okay.”
“I’m ready, Doc,” Jeff told her, pretending to brace himself for the boy’s benefit.
Mikki went through the motions, slowly feeling up and down Jeff’s outstretched arm. Henry was watching her so intently, she could almost feel his eyes on her.
“No break here,” Mikki concluded. She moved away from Jeff and turned toward the little boy. “All right, it’s your turn, Henry.”
Henry stayed exactly where he was. Instead, he looked at Jeff. “Did it hurt?”
Jeff shook his head. “Maybe a little, but not too much,” he answered, knowing that if he said no, the little boy would immediately balk at the first sign of pain.
“Henry, the doctor has to look at your arm,” his mother told him. The woman turned toward Mikki. “He was running and he fell right on it. When I touched it, he started screaming. He’s so delicate,” Henry’s mother added. “He’s always been that way.”
The woman looked as if she was very close to bursting into tears.
“Looks like a big, strong boy to me,” Jeff observed. Henry gave him a grateful, brave smile. “What do you think, Dr. Mikki?”
“I agree,” Mikki answered, giving the boy an encouraging smile. “This’ll be over with really quickly,” she promised.
She watched the boy brace himself. Very gently, she passed her fingers along the upper portion of his arm—the part she knew hadn’t been hurt.
Henry watched her with huge eyes. And then, startled, he stifled a yelp of pain as she worked her way down his forearm.
“It hurts, it hurts!” he yelled. He would have pulled back his arm if Jeff hadn’t been holding it down, keeping the limb immobile.
“I know it does, sweetheart, but you’re being really, really brave and we’ll be finished soon.” She looked at Jeff, silently asking for his help. “I’m going to have to take an X-ray.”
“What’s that?” Henry cried, looking really frightened.
“That’s a picture of your bones,” she explained soothingly. “You’ve had pictures taken, haven’t you, Henry?”
“Sometimes,” he answered warily, watching her every move again.
“Tell you what, pal,” Jeff said. “How about I take you to where the doc has her X-ray machine and she’ll take that picture of your arm in no time?”
Henry looked up at him, clearly wavering. “You’ll be there, too?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jeff told the boy. “Ready?” he asked, coming over to stand next to the exam table.
Henry nodded. “Ready.”
As gently as possible, Jeff picked the boy up and, with Mikki leading the way, he brought the boy into the room where the X-rays were taken.
At the hospital, this was something that was done by the technicians. But Mikki had watched it being done often enough to feel confident that she could operate the X-ray machine herself.
With Jeff’s help, she managed to take two views of the break in Henry’s arm. Development of the films went quickly.
* * *
“That doesn’t look like my arm,” Henry protested when Mikki showed him the X-rays he’d asked to see.
“That’s what it looks like under your skin. See this tiny line here?” she asked, pointing it out to the boy as if she was talking to a colleague.
Henry leaned forward, squinting hard as he looked at the X-ray. “Uh-huh.”
“That’s called a hairline fracture,” she told him. “That’s what you have.”
A terrified expression came over his face. “Is my arm going to fall off?”
Mikki congratulated herself for not laughing. “No, honey, we’re going to put a cast on it and it’ll be good as new in a few weeks.”
“In the meantime, you’ll have this cool cast all your friends are going to want to sign,” Jeff told him.
Henry twisted around on the exam table to look up at his new friend. “They can’t write.”
Undaunted, Jeff switched gears. “They’ll draw pictures.”
Henry nodded. “Okay.” Reassured, he turned so that he was looking up at the doctor. “Do it.”
“You’ve got a brave guy here, Mrs. Hendricks,” Mikki said to the boy’s mother.
The woman nodded, blinking back tears of relief. “I know.”
Working methodically, Mikki prepared the plaster for the cast and applied it, layer by layer, onto the boy’s arm. She made sure she used a material that dried very quickly.
“It’s kinda heavy,” Henry told her when she was finished, gingerly lifting his arm up.
“I know, but that’s to make sure your bone grows together,” Mikki told him.
Turning away, she opened up the bottom drawer in the cast room cabinet. After some rummaging, she found what she was looking for.
“Here, let’s put this sling on. It’ll help distribute the weight for you.” She slipped the sling, which had little carto
on characters on it, onto his arm and then up, onto the back of his neck. “There you go. You’re all set.” Turning toward the boy’s mother, she told her, “I’m going to need to see him in two weeks. Depending on how it goes, we can put a lighter cast on in its place at that time.”
“More casts?” Henry groaned.
“But it’ll be lighter,” Mikki emphasized, smiling at him.
“And your friends can draw more pictures,” Jeff told the boy.
Henry glanced down at his cast. “Yeah, they can, can’t they?” That seemed to satisfy him.
Jeff helped the boy off the exam table. His mother turned toward Mikki.
“How much do I owe you?” Mrs. Hendricks asked. The lines on her face seemed to deepen as she fumbled inside her purse.
Mikki put her hand over the other woman’s, stilling it. When the woman raised her eyes in question, Mikki told the boy’s mother, “It’s called a free clinic for a reason.”
Mrs. Hendricks exhaled a huge breath. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said, tears shining in her eyes. A couple slid down her cheeks.
“Just teach him to walk, not run, and we’ll call it even,” Mikki quipped.
“Don’t worry,” she said, putting her arm around her son’s shoulders—she had to stoop a little to do it. “I’m not letting him out of my sight.”
“He was just being a kid,” Jeff said, coming to Henry’s defense. “Weren’t you, Henry? Kids break things, sometimes on their own bodies. It happens. But you’re going to try to be more careful, aren’t you?” he asked.
The boy bobbed his head up and down. “Uh-huh. For sure.”
“Good enough for me,” Jeff responded, ruffling the boy’s hair. “Can I drop you two off at your home?” he offered, turning toward Mrs. Hendricks.
“No, that’s all right, really. It’s just a few blocks away from here,” Mrs. Hendricks told him. “We can walk.”
“Yes, but riding in a car is faster. Besides, Henry here’s been through a lot,” he added. And then he turned to look at Mikki. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Wait for me?” he asked hopefully.
Truthfully, she didn’t want to turn him down, but she felt as if she should. He’d already put himself out a lot today.
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