Page 48 of The Coppersmith Farmhouse (Jamison Valley 1)
“What! He is dreaming!” My head was going to explode. “You know what? Fine. He wants a sleepover, he’ll get a sleepover. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. But, oh boy . . . he is messing with the wrong girl!”
“Sorry,” Maisy said.
“Oh, sweetie, don’t apologize. I’m not at all mad at you. But I am absolutely livid with Sheriff Cleary.”
Taking a deep breath, I fisted and un-fisted my hands a couple of times. With one final deep breath in through my nose, I said, “If you’re still okay with it, come on over at six?”
She nodded.
“Okay, perfect. If you want to come over at five-thirty, you can raid my closet for a date outfit on Saturday.”
“Sweet! I’ll be there.”
“I’m going to do a couple of laps around the parking lot to cool down before I head back to the clinic. Come find me if anything else awesome happens with Everett today, okay?”
“You got it,” she said.
I blew her a quick kiss, then headed outside, contemplating all the ways I could legally torture the Jamison County sheriff.
I managed to get my anger under control in one parking lot lap instead of two and walked back to the clinic.
It was located at the opposite side of the building from the ER. The clinic’s primary doctor, Dr. Seavers, specialized in family medicine. She held traditional business hours, Monday through Friday, and only worked outside the clinic if she was the on-call weekend doctor. Everett and Dr. Peterson rarely worked in the clinic. Instead, they were typically covering the rest of the hospital.
The nurses rotated on a weekly basis through four different hospital units and the clinic was by far my favorite. I secretly wished I could work here full-time like Dr. Seavers.
We didn’t have a lot of traffic through the clinic but it was far more active than any other rotations I’d completed. Today, I had seen a pregnant women coming in for a routine check-up, two different high schoolers getting their summer physicals for fall school sports and one toddler with a bad cold.
I was wrapping up my charting for the day, having only thirty minutes left, when an older woman walked in the door.
She was about my height and probably half my size. Her frame was skeletal and she had light brown hair with streaks of gray framing her face. Her eyes were a bright, ice blue.
I knew those eyes. I’d spent a lot of time over the last three weeks staring into eyes just like hers. They belonged to the man who was currently at the top of my shit list.
“Hi. Can I help you?” I asked.
“I was wondering if I could see Dr. Seavers today,” she said in a voice so weak I had to strain to hear it.
“Sure. She’s got some time open now. Let me get you all checked in. What’s your name?”
“Noelle Cleary.”
Yep, I was right. She was somehow related to Jess.
“Okay, Noelle. Have a seat and I’ll call you back in a minute.”
I walked back to the desk and checked her into the hospital’s system. Could she be Jess’s aunt, maybe? Certainly, she wasn’t his mother. She was far too frail to have such a big, strong son.
“Noelle? Come on back,” I called into the waiting room.
She followed me back to the exam room and climbed up on the table while I sat opposite her in a rolling black stool.
“All right, Noelle. My name’s Gigi. Can you tell me what brings you in?” I asked.
“This afternoon I went into the bathroom and I tripped and fell into the shower. I think I’ve sprained my wrist,” she said.
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry to hear that. Let’s take your blood pressure and then I’ll get Dr. Seavers to come in.”
Dr. Seavers was quick to attend to Noelle and while she finished her examination, I perused Noelle’s hospital chart.
