Independence Day. Amy Frazier
of the SUV. “What else do you have?”
“This,” Martha replied briskly, tying a huge plastic Macy’s bag around his waist. Empty, it flapped behind him like half a loincloth. “Now, lean on your wife. I’m going to park the car and wait in it. I picked up plenty of new magazines today, so don’t think I’m in a rush.”
Chessie threaded her arm under his and across his back, but he pulled away. “I don’t need help.”
“Nick, I’m sorry. No one could’ve anticipated this.”
As he limped ahead of her through the emergency entrance, he winced at the pain dogging his every step. Warm moisture trickling down the back of his thigh told him the wound had reopened.
“May I help you?” the nurse behind the desk asked.
“A dog bit me,” Nick replied. “I think I need stitches.”
The nurse handed him a clipboard with a form attached. “Do you know if the dog had been immunized for rabies?”
“The owner assured me it had.” Call that the only plus in this doggone day.
“Fill out the form, and a doctor will look at you as soon as possible.” The nurse motioned to a row of chairs against the wall. “You can have a seat over there.”
“He can’t.” Chessie pointed to his backside. “Sit, that is.”
“Chessie,” he growled, grabbing the clipboard. He headed for the corner.
“Mr. McCabe! What you doin’ in here?”
Nick turned slowly to see Chris Filmore, the high school’s star running back, hobbling on crutches out of the examination area. A bright white cast covered his left leg. The sight did not bode well for the upcoming football season.
“What happened, Chris?”
“Broke my leg.” The kid looked sheepish. “Playing Frisbee at the beach. What are you in for?”
“A dog bit me.”
“Where?”
“In the square.”
“No, man. I mean where did he bite you?”
How did a high-school principal refer to that particular part of the anatomy with a student?
As Chris surveyed the plastic shopping bag draped over Nick’s backside, understanding crept into his face. “Oh, the glute.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “And here I was feelin’ embarrassed.”
“Glad I could ease your pain,” Nick muttered and held up the clipboard to signal the end of the conversation.
“See you in September.” Chris headed for the exit, amusement lacing his farewell.
Chessie stood wide-eyed before Nick.
“I suppose you find this all very funny, too,” he said.
“I don’t see humor in someone else’s discomfort…but getting all tense isn’t going to help the situation.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” He wedged himself in the corner of the waiting room and, standing, began to fill out the patient information sheet. It wasn’t her butt all bruised and bleeding under a red, white and blue sale bag.
“I’m going to call the girls.” She backed away. “Can I get you a soda?”
“No.” He kept writing. The fluorescent glare made his head hurt.
When she left, he felt suddenly smaller that he was hanging on to his anger. He felt weary, too. Bone weary. He handed the completed form back to the desk nurse.
An hour and forty-five minutes later, he lay facedown on an examination table as a cheerful young resident stitched up his backside. “So, Mr. McCabe,” she said, “how’d you happen to anger this particular dog?”
“He was rescuing me,” Chessie piped up from her spot at his head. “From a very large pack.”
“Ah, a hero.”
“Just a high-school principal,” Nick replied. He’d given up rising to any bait.
“A high-school principal? How’s your work schedule for next week?”
“I can’t take it off if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No. I was just curious how many meetings you have to attend.”
“Way too many.”
“Well, you’re going to have to attend standing up. I don’t think even a hemorrhoid doughnut would give you any relief.”
Fine. He was going to have to do enough explaining as it was. He didn’t need a shiny red rubber prop to add to the merriment.
“There. Finished.” The resident backed away. “Mrs. McCabe, you’re going to have to make sure this wound is kept—”
“I can handle it.” Nick gingerly found the floor and stood.
“Not unless you have eyes in the back of your head,” the resident countered. “Besides, you have a bigger task.”
“What?”
“Thinking up a list of snappy comebacks.” The woman flashed him a bright smile. “No doubt, you’re going to be the butt of a lot of jokes this week.”
“And you wanted to inaugurate the agony.”
“My pleasure.”
He pushed aside the curtain that separated him from his fellow E.R. sufferers and moved stiffly toward the exit. His left cheek felt numb. He no longer cared that the protective Macy’s bag lay at the bottom of a hazardous waste can. He just wanted to get home. What he really wanted was a return to the day before the Fourth of July.
“Isabel said they saved us some of the dinner they picked up at Boston Market,” Chessie informed him as she followed him to the parking lot.
“I’m not hungry.”
“How long are you going to stay angry at me?”
“If you don’t mind, I don’t feel up for a long drawn-out discussion.”
“What’s really going on here, Nick?”
He stopped short of the SUV where Martha sat reading a magazine. Damn, he’d forgotten the neighbors were involved. He turned to his wife. “What’s going on here? Frankly, I don’t know. You seem to be the one with all the answers. Trouble is, I don’t understand them.”
He opened the double doors at the back of the SUV, and crawled in.
Feeling shut out, Chessie climbed in the passenger side.
“How’d it go?” Martha asked.
“He’ll live.”
“But will Eban’s dog?”
“No jokes, Martha,” Nick said from the back. He sounded like a principal presiding at a rowdy assembly. “I’ve reached my quota.”
When Martha shot Chessie a questioning look, Chessie mouthed, “Later.”
They rode home in silence. Nick didn’t forget to thank Martha, but he didn’t stick around for Chessie to follow him into the house.
“Call me if you need anything,” Martha said before backing across the street into her own driveway.
It was eight-forty and starting to get dark, but there wasn’t a light in the house. Chessie entered the kitchen to stare at a sink full of Fourth-of-July dishes and a table littered with paper plates and containers of half-consumed takeout. The girls were nowhere in sight.
She made her way upstairs. All three bedroom doors were closed. She knocked on the closest. Gabriella’s.
“Go