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He numbly stared back at her, but the deepening compassion in her eyes made him look away.
“Look, if you ever need to talk to anyone...about your wife, I’m a good listener. Sometimes people try to bury their feelings and never really deal with what they’ve gone through.”
Matt recoiled inwardly at the thought.
He’d handled Barb’s illness and death okay. He didn’t need consolation from a stranger who could never understand how devastating it had been. Not even if she was a doctor. “Just tell me about my kids.”
“Charlie told me Annie had been crying a lot, said he was worried about her.”
“Why didn’t they come to me?” He tried to suppress the edge in his voice and failed.
“Annie made him promise not to tell.”
“I’ll go talk to her, then.”
“Annie’s been...um...afraid that she might be dying, like her mother did.”
Real panic rushed through him. “Is something seriously wrong?”
Before he realized what he’d done, he was on his feet, looming over Jolie with his hands braced on the desk at either side of her. His chair crashed backward to the floor.
“Not what you’re thinking.” Jolie pressed her hands gently against his chest. “She’s been scared, true, but this isn’t about cancer.”
He righted his chair and sank into it, searching Jolie’s face for signs that she was holding something back. Softening the truth. “She’s...okay?”
“She’s been worried because she just hasn’t felt well, and she’s lost weight—six or seven pounds in the last month—without trying. For someone starting at a hundred and five, that’s a fair amount.”
She didn’t say anything to me.His usual feelings of inadequacy as a single parent didn’t come close to what he felt now, and now those feelings somehow transformed into unaccountable anger.
“Why did she come to you?”
“She didn’t. I brought it up with her after hearing about Charlie’s concerns.”
“And?”
“I hadn’t picked up on it until today, but the symptoms have been there. She’s been really thirsty when she stops by after school, and she makes a lot of trips to the restroom. When she went the second time this afternoon, I had her give me a small sample of urine.”
“You did lab work on my daughter without talking to me?”
“It wasn’t an invasive procedure—just a urine sample. I tried calling you first, but didn’t get an answer,” Jolie said stiffly. “Given her symptoms, I thought it important to try a quick screen, so I could give you more information. I certainly won’t charge you.”
Matt felt his blood run cold.Lab tests. Screens. News no one ever wants to hear.“I didn’t mean it that way. Did you find anything?”
He fixed his gaze on Jolie’s, felt every cell in his body freeze. The wall clock ticked away three, four, five seconds—each taking a lifetime to pass.
“I think she may have diabetes. Probably type 1, given the signs and symptoms I see so far. She’s young, definitely not overweight. There are significant ketones in her urine. Frankly, if she does have diabetes, she’s very lucky that we’re finding it now. I’ve seen kids who weren’t diagnosed until they were on the verge of a diabetic coma.”
Visions of every diabetic complication he’d ever heard of swamped Matt’s thoughts. Blindness. Kidney damage. Amputations. He swallowed hard.
“Look, I know this is overwhelming, but we need to diagnose this definitively. Maybe...it’s something else. But if she is diabetic and it isn’t being properly managed, she could collapse sometime when she doesn’t have medical help nearby.”
Collapse. Coma. Diabetes.The words continue to spin through his mind in dizzying progression. “What do we do? What’s next?”
“I don’t want to send her home without knowing more. I’d like to do a quick finger prick and check her blood sugar right now. It’s very easy—I’ve got a glucose meter here in the office.”
Matt rubbed a hand over his face. “Whatever she needs.”
He followed when Jolie straightened and walked down the hall to the lab, picked up a calculator-size object, then called Annie into the second exam room.
