by Mary McNear
And Mila laughed, surprising herself. It was true, she thought. Mrs. Williams’ face did look like a dried-up prune.
Now Heather placed her hand on Mila’s forehead and whistled softly. “That’s quite a fever you’re running there,” she said, standing up. “We better take your temperature.”
She led Mila into her office and closed the door behind them. “Why don’t you climb up there,” she said to Mila, indicating an exam table. And Mila climbed up on it and waited, shivering, while Heather used one of those ear thermometers Mila had only seen at doctors’ offices.
“A hundred and one,” Heather said, frowning at the thermometer. “How long have you felt sick, Mila?” she asked.
Mila didn’t answer. She was afraid if she told the truth, Heather would be angry.
“Did you feel this way when you left for school this morning?” Heather asked gently.
Mila nodded.
“And before you went to bed last night?”
Mila nodded again, keeping her eyes on the floor.
“And you didn’t tell anyone?”
Mila shook her head no.
“Why not?”
“Because my mom can’t work if I’m sick,” Mila said quietly. “She has to stay home with me instead. And she needs to work. If she doesn’t work, she doesn’t get paid. And if she doesn’t get paid . . .” Mila’s voice trailed off. She didn’t know what would happen if her mother didn’t get paid. Her mother had never explained that. But Mila knew, whatever it was, it was bad.
She waited now, for Heather to say what Mrs. Williams had said, at least in so many words. That her mother was a bad mother. But Heather didn’t say that. Instead, she asked, “Is it just you and your mom, Mila?”
Mila nodded.
“That’s hard,” she said sympathetically. “I’m sure your mother loves you very much. But she can’t be in two places at one time, can she?”
“No,” Mila whispered gratefully.
“Does your throat hurt?” Heather asked then, probing Mila’s neck with her cool fingers.
Mila shook her head.
But Heather looked at her throat anyway, gently pushing down Mila’s tongue with a tongue depressor and shining a little light into the back of her mouth.
“Your throat looks fine,” she murmured, then used the same light to look in both of Mila’s ears. “So do your ears. What about your stomach? Does that hurt?”
Mila shook her head again. “Just my head,” she said. And the rest of my body too. A chill came over her then and she felt her teeth start to chatter. She clenched her jaw to make them stop.
“Poor thing,” Heather said, helping Mila off the examining table and leading her over to a daybed in a corner of the office. “Why don’t you lie down here for a minute, okay? I’m going to check your file and see if I can give you some medicine to help you feel better.”
Mila lay down and Heather put a blanket over her. In a minute, she was back. “You don’t have any allergies to medication,” she said cheerfully, sitting down on the edge of the daybed. “So I’m going to give you some children’s Tylenol, all right? It’ll bring your fever down and help with the achiness.”
Mila nodded and sat up.
“Can you chew these?” Heather asked. She was holding a Dixie cup with two bright purple tablets in it.
Mila nodded, taking the cup from her, and chewing and swallowing the tablets in spite of her funny-feeling tongue. “Good job,” Heather said, favoring Mila with one of her warm smiles. “Now, why don’t you rest here for a little while, okay? I’m going to call your mom. But don’t worry if she can’t pick you up right away. I can stay here with you for as long as necessary.”
Mila wanted to thank her, but she was suddenly too tired to. So instead she closed her eyes and rested, just like Heather had told her to. And she must have fallen asleep, too, because when she opened her eyes, she knew immediately from the dusky winter light outside the office’s windows that it was late afternoon. Her heart sank. Her mother still wasn’t there. But Heather was there, sitting at a nearby desk, typing on a computer.
She must have sensed Mila looking at her, though, because she looked up and smiled at her. “You’re awake,” she said, getting up and coming over to the daybed. She sat down on the edge and felt Mila’s forehead with her cool hand.
“Much better,” she said approvingly, going to get the thermometer. And when she took Mila’s temperature again, she was doubly pleased. “Ninety-nine,” she said. “Almost normal. Are you feeling better, too?”
Mila nodded. She was. Her chills were gone, and her head only hurt a little now.
“I think, Mila, that what you have is the flu,” Heather said, tucking the blanket around her again. “The plain old flu. And with lots of fluids, and lots of rest, you’ll be back to your old self in a few days.”
“That’s good,” Mila said unconvincingly. But that wasn’t good. If she had to stay home for a few days, that would be a problem for her mother. Heather, though, seemed to read her mind.
“And don’t worry about your mom missing work,” she said. “I already spoke to her and she was able to trade shifts with one of her coworkers. She’s going to be able to stay home with you tomorrow, and the next day, too, if you need her to. So the only thing you’ll be responsible for, Mila, is getting better.”
Mila felt relieved. Ordinarily, she was responsible for so many things. She had to walk herself to and from school every day, no matter what the weather was. She had to do all her homework by herself, even when she didn’t understand it. And she had to make her own dinner in the microwave oven every night. It wasn’t anyone’s fault she had to do all those things. It was just the way it was. But then something else occurred to her. “When is my mom going to pick me up?” she asked Heather worriedly.
“Oh, a little later,” Heather said, with a shrug. “As soon as she’s done at work. But I told her I could stay here with you. If that’s all right with you, that is.”
“It’s all right,” Mila said, feeling suddenly shy. “But . . . but isn’t there someplace you need to be?”
“Nope,” Heather said. “I’m already where I need to be. Which is right here, with you.”
“But don’t you have a family?”
“I have a husband,” Heather said. “But he understands. Now, Mila,” she went on briskly, changing the subject. “How would you like a cherry Popsicle?”
“I’d love one,” Mila said honestly. Heather brought her one from the freezer in the office, and she brought one for herself, too. Mila sat up on the daybed then, and Heather pulled a chair over, and they ate their Popsicles, and talked, while it got darker outside. And then, right as Heather was throwing their Popsicle sticks away, Mila blurted out, apropos of nothing, “When I grow up, I want to be a nurse, too.”
“Really?” Heather asked, obviously pleased, coming to sit back down.
Mila nodded. It had never occurred to her before that she wanted to be a nurse, but as soon as she’d said the words, she’d known that they were true. “I’m . . . I’m good with my hands,” she said to Heather, feeling shy again. “I’m good at making things, and cleaning things, and fixing things.” And she was. But mostly, she was good at taking care of things, even if those things, so far, had consisted mainly of her stuffed animals, who suffered from a variety of ailments that often required her attention.
“Let me see those hands,” Heather said now, and Mila, surprised, held her hands out for her. Heather held them lightly and examined them, “Just what I thought,” she said, after a moment.
“What?”
“Those are nurse’s hands,” Heather said, with a gentle smile, letting go of them.
“They are?” Mila said, fascinated, looking down at them.
“Absolutely.” And then, after a pause, she asked, “Do you like science, Mila?”
Mila, looking up from her hands, nodded enthusiastically.
“Good, because you’ll need science to go to nursing school.”
/> Mila thought of something then. “I like science,” she said, “but I hate spelling. I’m terrible at it.”
“Spelling, huh? Well, nurses need to know how to spell, too,” Heather said.
“They do?” Mila said, feeling deflated.
“Uh-huh. But if spelling’s a problem for you, I have an idea. Do you have a test every week?” Heather asked.
“Every Friday,” Mila said.
“Well, then, why don’t you come down to my office on Thursdays, at lunchtime, and we’ll review your spelling words together. I’ll have to get permission from Mrs. Williams first, but that shouldn’t be a problem. And, of course, if I have a sick student here, we’ll have to reschedule. I don’t imagine that’ll happen very often, though. The students at this school seem remarkably healthy. So what do you say? Thursdays, at lunchtime, right here?”
“I say yes,” Mila said. A whole lunch period with Heather, every Thursday? Mila could hardly believe her luck.
“Good,” Heather said, and she seemed as pleased as Mila. They talked some more, until Mila’s mom got there, and by then Mila knew it was late. Late enough for Heather to have called her husband and told him to have dinner without her. But Heather didn’t seem annoyed with her mom. She just gave her instructions about how to take care of Mila. Not in a bossy way, though. In a nice way.
“Is that woman really the school nurse?” Mila’s mother asked her, as their old car rattled out of the almost empty school parking lot that night.
“Yep,” Mila said, thinking that cherry Popsicles were now her favorite food in the whole world.
Two years later, on a balmy spring afternoon, Mila came sailing through the door of Heather’s office. Heather was already sitting at the little table in the corner, unpacking her lunch.
“Sorry I’m late,” Mila said. “I was waiting for Ms. Collins to give back the spelling tests.” Mila was in the fifth grade now, but she still had lunch with Heather every Thursday, and she still had a spelling test every Friday.
“How’d you do?” Heather asked, as Mila sat down across the table from her.
“One hundred percent,” Mila said, handing the test to Heather with a little flourish.
“Very impressive,” Heather said, looking it over. “I guess Ms. Collins doesn’t believe in gold stars, huh?”
Mila shook her head. “She said fifth graders are too old for gold stars.”
“Well, she may have a point there,” Heather said, taking the rest of her lunch out of an insulated lunch bag. “Would you settle for a homemade brownie instead?”
And Mila, taking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of a brown paper bag, flashed a smile at her. “Only if I can still have a cherry Popsicle,” she said.
“Oh, definitely,” Heather assured her, nibbling on a carrot stick.
Then, as they ate their lunches, Heather updated Mila on the various kinds of illnesses and injuries that had come through her office over the past week, and Mila talked about her life at home. Or rather, Heather asked her questions about it, and Mila answered them. It wasn’t Mila’s favorite topic of conversation.
“So how does your mother like her new job?” Heather asked.
“She says it’s all right,” Mila said. Her mom was cocktail waitressing at a new bar now, one where she hoped she’d get better tips. But so far, the tips had been just okay, and the bartender, her mom said, was a total jerk.
“And what about Mrs. Rogers?” Heather asked. “How are you two getting along?”
Mila frowned. Mrs. Rogers was the neighbor her mother paid to babysit Mila when she was working. “Mrs. Rogers,” she told Heather now, “is the worst babysitter on the planet.”
“Why do you say that?” Heather asked, peeling the foil lid off a yogurt container.
“Well, for one thing, she doesn’t do anything,” Mila complained. “She just sits on our couch and watches TV. And she’s so old, she’s practically deaf, so she has to turn the volume up all the way. When I go to bed, I have to put my pillow over my head to fall asleep.”
“And what does your mom say about that?”
Mila shrugged. “She says Mrs. Rogers is all she can afford. She doesn’t charge a lot, I guess, just to sit there and watch TV.”
“Well, I guess it’s better than having no one there at all,” Heather said. “I mean, at least you won’t be alone in an emergency.”
“Ha,” Mila said. “A whole army of zombies could march through our living room and Mrs. Rogers wouldn’t even notice.” She thought, but didn’t add, that her mom might not notice either. She was either working, or she was sleeping. And on those rare occasions she was at home, and awake, she was complaining. Complaining about her customers being lousy tippers, or their landlord raising the rent, or their car needing a new carburetor. Mila knew it wasn’t easy for her mom, but still, she couldn’t help but wish that they could do something fun together every once in a while.
“Mila?” Heather said now, putting what was left of her lunch away. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Okay,” Mila said, warily. She was old enough by now to know that conversations that started that way usually ended with bad news.
“Honey, I don’t know exactly how to say this. I’ve known it for a couple of weeks now, but I was waiting for the right time to tell you. And then I realized that there wasn’t going to be a right time.”
“What is it?” Mila asked, and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich she had just eaten felt like a brick in her stomach.
“Mila, my husband and I are moving to Nebraska, where his family’s from.”
Mila blinked. For a moment, she thought she’d misunderstood her. But Heather went on.
“Rob’s parents, who own a farm, are getting older, Mila. They can’t do all the work by themselves anymore, and Rob and I are going to need to help them.”
“How soon?” Mila whispered.
“At the end of this school year,” Heather said, reaching out across the table and taking Mila’s hands in hers.
Mila, though, turned her face away and looked at the office’s wall. She was trying not to cry. But when Heather slid out of her chair, and came around to Mila’s side of the table, and knelt down beside her, Mila felt a tear slide down her cheek.
“Stay here,” Mila said softly. “Please. Or, if you leave, take me with you.”
“Oh, honey,” Heather said, hugging her gently. “I can’t do either of those things. I have to go. My husband’s parents need us. And if I took you with me, your mom would miss you, Mila.”
Mila wiped away another tear with the back of her hand and Heather brought her a box of Kleenex.
“It’s okay to cry,” she said to Mila, and for a while that was what Mila did. She cried, quietly, and Heather rubbed her back and said soft, soothing things to her.
And when her crying finally stopped, Heather brought her a wet paper towel to wipe her face with. “You know, Mila,” she said. “I feel a little bit like crying too,” she confessed.
“You do?” Mila asked, surprised.
Heather nodded. “This is my favorite part of my workweek, having lunch in my office with you. When my husband told me he thought we needed to move, the first thing I thought was, ‘But what will Mila do without me?’ And then I realized that that was silly, and that Mila would do just fine without me.”
But Mila shook her head. “No, she won’t. I mean, no, I won’t.”
“Yes, you will,” Heather said, smiling. “And do you know why, Mila? Because you have a dream. You want to become a nurse. And as long as you don’t lose sight of that dream, you’ll be fine. You’ll be better than fine, actually.”
Heather continued, “Besides, you don’t have to do it alone. I’m still going to be a part of your life, Mila. Even if I can’t have lunch with you every Thursday.”
“How will you be a part of my life?” Mila asked, forgetting her misery long enough to be curious.
“We’ll write to each other,” Heather said sim
ply.
But Mila looked at her blankly.
“We’ll write letters to each other,” Heather clarified. And then, “You have written someone a letter before, haven’t you, Mila?”
But Mila shook her head. “I don’t have anyone to write to,” she said. And it was true. Her mother’s parents were dead, and she’d never known her father or her father’s family.
“Oh, Mila,” Heather said, her blue eyes dancing with excitement. “You’re going to love writing letters. And, more important, you’re going to love reading letters. My grandfather and I used to write to each other when I was growing up, and to this day, I cannot open my mailbox without feeling a little bit of excitement.”
Mila looked at her skeptically. “Is getting a letter that exciting?”
“It is when it comes from someone who’s important to you,” Heather said. And then, “Mila, promise me you’ll write to me every week?”
“I promise,” Mila said automatically. Heather had never asked her to promise anything before, and this, at least, was something Mila knew she could do, even if she couldn’t necessarily do it very well.
“Good,” Heather said, beaming at her. “And I promise I’ll write you back as soon as I get your letter. And, Mila? I don’t know if you’ll still have spelling tests in middle school, but if you do, can you send me copies of them, please?”
“Okay,” Mila said, slowly warming to the letter-writing idea. “And I can send you other stuff, too.”
And she did. She sent her lots of stuff. After Heather moved away, at the end of the school year, Mila sent her a steady stream of letters, not to mention report cards, school pictures, essays, drawings, and even, as it turned out, the occasional spelling test. And Heather always sent back long, newsy letters. Letters about her life on the family farm she and her husband had taken over from his parents, and about her job as a nurse at a clinic in a nearby town. In those letters, she assured Mila that nothing interesting ever happened in rural Nebraska, but to Mila, Heather’s letters were fascinating, especially when she wrote about her work at the clinic.