For the Sake of the Children. Cynthia Reese
meter reading and to listen to their chest and to note the results. But it’s five minutes here and five minutes back to class. That’s fifteen minutes. Multiply that by two times a day, and that means that each of those students is losing thirty minutes of instruction a day.”
Patrick found himself nodding and froze. Was he agreeing with her just because she was so damn pretty? He had to remember that he’d had good reasons for asking for this, reasons that didn’t disappear because some kid felt embarrassed by the attention or an attractive nurse was questioning the task. “Well, can’t you do it at recess? Or during rotation?”
“You want parents to really get riled? Take away a kid’s recess. Besides, you requested this twice a day, remember? That means morning and afternoon.”
“We have to be certain the students aren’t—”
“You mean, you have to be certain the school isn’t making them any sicker,” she snapped. “Isn’t that the bottom line? Liability?”
Patrick shifted on his feet. On the bulletin board, the middle finger on the laminated hand still stuck up in an offensive gesture. It annoyed him, so he scooped up Dana’s stapler and crossed the room to the board. He rammed the stapler harder than he should have, fixing the fingers.
As he pounded the last staple in, the door flew open, sending the Christmas wreath askew. The principal stuck his head in, gasping for breath. Harrison’s eyes were wide, his tie flying. “Ms. Wilson! Ms. Wilson, come quick!”
“What’s happened?” Dana was on her feet, pushing past Patrick.
“One of our second-graders…on the monkey bars.”
Patrick dropped the stapler and pursued the two adults down the hall, out the back doors of the school. A kid’s high-pitched screams punctuated the dreary gray morning of early December.
Dana’s long legs had overtaken Harrison’s short, stubby ones. Harrison’s potbelly slowed him down more, and now Patrick pulled up even with the struggling principal.
“What happened? Did someone fall? Do we need to call an ambulance?”
But Harrison couldn’t get the words out. He bent over, palms on his knees, and sucked wind. “She’s…on…” Unable to say more, he pointed a finger toward the monkey bars.
High up, on the top rung of the ancient metal jungle gym that Patrick remembered the PTO putting in when Lissa and Mel were in elementary school, sat the source of the screams.
Patrick drew to a standstill beside Dana at the foot of the monkey bars, joining a crowd of small-fry onlookers. The girl had one hand on a rung, and was using the other hand to shoo away the angry buzzing yellow jackets swarming around her head.
“Honey, honey!” Dana called. “Are you stung?”
“Get ’em away! Get ’em away!” the girl shrieked.
“Are you stung?” Dana asked again.
But the girl couldn’t answer. Patrick heard Dana sigh. Without warning, Dana yanked a rung and began the climb to join the girl, whose head poked through the cloud of buzzing insects.
“Okay, sweetheart, no—no, don’t swat at them. That will just make them angrier,” Dana cautioned. She took the little girl by the shoulder. “Are you stung? Let’s get you down.”
“I—I can’t.” Tears streaked down the girl’s face. “I’m scared. What if they sting me?”
“Uh, they will if we stay up here much longer. C’mon. What’s your name?”
“Jakayla.”
“Jakayla. That’s a pretty name. C’mon. I’ll bet you’ve climbed down lots of—”
The girl shook her head violently and tightened her grip on the bar. The movement kick-started the yellow jackets into even more activity.
“Okay, okay.” As she pondered the problem of how to get the girl down, Dana seemed mindless of the two yellow jackets that had landed on her scrubs.
Patrick swung up. “Jakayla?” He was now face-to-face with her. “I’ll help. Ms. Wilson and I’ve got you. You just close your eyes.”
“But then I can’t see ’em!” she protested.
That’s the point . “Trust us. We won’t let you get stung, but we do need to get you down. I’m holding you.” He wrapped his hands around the girl’s chunky waist. “Close your eyes.”
Jakayla sucked in a labored breath and squeezed shut terrified eyes. Patrick tugged, but the girl’s grip hadn’t lessened. Dana made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a smothered chuckle and began peeling the girl’s sweaty fingers, one by one, off the metal bar.
Patrick took a step down, and with one hand still on Jakayla’s waist, he used the other to steady himself. But he’d miscalculated and not looked where he’d placed his hand. The sting of a yellow jacket needled through his palm.
Dana could tell he was attempting to stifle the groan the sting evoked. “Patrick?”
He shook his head, unwilling to alarm Jakayla any more than she already was. Tears still oozed from the girl’s eyes. At least the shrieking had stopped, though.
Together, he with his sore hand and Dana with her good hands lowered the little girl to the ground. Then, Dana at once began inspecting Jakayla for stings. Finding none, she gave the girl a quick hug and turned her attention to Patrick.
“Let’s have a look at that palm.”
Now Jakayla barreled from between them to her teacher, who waited with comforting arms.
Patrick refused. “It’s okay.”
“It’s swelling. You’re not allergic, are you?”
He inspected his hand, which had indeed swollen to a princely size. “Well, this will be a pain.”
“I need to check if the stinger’s still in there.”
“Wait. Harrison?” Patrick found the principal among the crowd of onlookers. “Do you have any wasp or hornet spray? There must be a nest in one of those pipes.”
Harrison shuddered. “Oh, dear, yes, I expect that is what happened. I’ll get the janitor to spray it.”
“Got any of that foam aerosol insulation? The stuff to fill cracks?”
“I’m not sure.” Harrison seemed befuddled by the question and amazed that Patrick expected him to instantly recall what maintenance supplies the school had on hand.
“If you do, we should spray those pipes.” He gestured at the open ends. “That way, no yellow jackets or wasps can nest there.”
Patrick’s hand throbbed now. He shook it. Dana jerked her head toward the school door. “C’mon. Ice and a dose of Benadryl—how about it?”
This time he didn’t have to be asked twice. He followed her in.
“Thanks,” Dana told him.
“For what?”
“Helping. You saw how tight a grip that girl had. She wasn’t going anywhere. I would have had to hit her over the head to get her down without your help.”
“Natch. Well, except for the hand.” He stared at the puffy hand in disgust. “Why hasn’t Harrison inspected that playground equipment? We have kids with severe allergies to bee stings.”
They were back at her clinic. She pulled out the chair and pushed him lightly into it. With nimble fingers, she ran a hands-free magnifying glass over his palm and surveyed the damage. “Yep. A stinger, still in there.” One tug with some tweezers, and she was done.
She wheeled her stool around to the fridge and drew out an ice pack. “That will help the swelling. If we could have gotten