Page 39 of Clinically Delicious
Chapter Twelve
Cate
By four-thirty PM, I’d officially earned a medal for keeping a five-year-old with a broken arm alive and entertained for an entire day.
Actually, scratch that. I deserved a full military parade.
Megan had wanted to: climb the tree in the backyard... “But I can use my good arm!”, practice skateboard tricks... “Just watching, I promise!”, build a fort that required moving furniture... “I’ll supervise!”, and teach me a TikTok dance that involved way too much jumping for someone in a cast.
I said no to all of it.
Which meant I spent the last eight hours being the fun police, watching Megan’s face cycle through disappointment, acceptance, and creative problem-solving as she tried to find loopholes in my safety protocols.
The kid was relentless. I respected it. But also, my soul was tired.
“Can we make cookies?” Megan asked, appearing in the kitchen doorway with those big eyes that probably got her whatever she wanted ninety percent of the time.
“Nice try, but your dad said no baking without supervision.” I was sprawled on the couch, contemplating whether I had the energy to move ever again.
“You’re supervising.”
“I meant adult supervision. Real adult supervision. The kind that doesn’t result in emergency room visits.”
Megan giggled. “You’re an adult.”
“Debatable.”
“You’re older than me!”
“Again, debatable.” I sat up, my back cracking in three places. “How about we watch a movie instead? Something with minimal physical activity and maximum couch time?”
“We’ve watched two movies already.”
“Then we’ll watch a third. I’m thinking of something animated. With talking animals. Very low stakes.”
Megan flopped onto the couch beside me, her cast thunking against the cushion. “I’m bored.”
“I know, sweetie.”
“And hungry.”
I checked my phone. Four thirty-seven. Dr. Lyon usually got home around six, sometimes six-thirty if he had late appointments. Which meant I had roughly ninety minutes of Megan-wrangling left before I could hand her off and run next door.
Except.
Except I’d been thinking about something all day. Something that had been gnawing at me since Saturday, since the hospital, since I’d watched Dr. Lyon’s face cycle through worry and exhaustion and that bone-deep relief when the doctor said Megan would be fine.
I’d broken his kid’s arm.
Well, technically gravity and a skateboard had broken his kid’s arm, but I’d been the responsible adult. The one who was supposed to keep her safe. The one who’d encouraged the skateboarding adventure in the first place because I was tryingto be the cool nanny, the fun nanny, the nanny who said yes to things.
And now Megan had a cast that she’d be wearing for six weeks, and Dr. Lyon had medical bills and follow-up appointments and a daughter who couldn’t do half the things she loved.
Because of me.
I needed to apologize. Properly. Not with words—I’d already tried that, and it had come out as a garbled mess of “I’m so sorry” and “I’ll never let her near a skateboard again” and “Please don’t fire me.”
No, I needed to apologize with food.
