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“Kiddo, I don’t plan on leaving this earth anytime soon. I have too much to live for. There’s a full moon soon, and your grandpa promised me we would go streaking.”
I cringed at the thought of their wrinkly bodies running and flapping all over.
She playfully smacked my arm. “That was a joke. It’s too cold. We only do that in the summer.”
“You’re killing me today.” The automatic doors opened and we walked in together.
“Just don’t kill me.” She rubbed her lips together.
A sense of foreboding struck me. Enough to make me feel ill. Was Grandpa here? Was he the sick one? Yep, that was it. He was dying, and I was about to find out. But why didn’t they call Dani and Kinsley? Maybe they were already here. Maybe they thought my mental state couldn’t take it, so they were easing me into it. Or maybe this was another intervention. What if they were all waiting at the psychologist’s office on the second floor?
While I was trying to figure out how to escape from my family, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, and I almost ran into an easel with a large sign resting on it in the lobby.
My eyes barely caught what the sign was all about before my brain registered a four-alarm fire in my head. A wave of heat accompanied by a severe case of nausea overtook me. I grabbed onto my traitorous grandma for support. “We need to leave,” I struggled to say. My mouth was drier than Death Valley in the summertime.
“Nonsense, I have an appointment with my new doctor.” She wagged her brows.
“Well great, you can see him. I’ll wait in the car.” I stared at the sign with Jonah’s photo and the words, Pine Falls Medical Center is pleased to welcome Dr. Jonah Adkinson. There he was in all his boyish-charm glory. His sandy hair had darkened and his face seemed more square, but his beautiful green eyes still sparkled, and he still carried the same aura of goodness. A goodness I could never allow myself to trust. A goodness that made him the most attractive man in any room.
“I gotta go.” I was swallowing hard over and over, trying to get some saliva back in my mouth. I turned to leave.
“No. No. No.” Grandma held me firm. For an old bird, she was strong. “How can you think to leave your sick grandma?”
“You’re sick all right,” I tried keeping my voice down so none of the other truly sick patients would hear me. My eyes bore into Grandma’s mischievous bronze eyes. “You had me worried something was really wrong with you. You let me think we were going to see Dr. Gibbons. Instead, you were playing dress up with me and deceiving me.”
She straightened up, tall and proud. “I’ve never in my life deceived you. I’ll have you know I’ve had an itchy throat that’s been keeping me up at night coughing, and you never asked which doctor I was seeing. You just assumed. And by the way, you should thank me. You’ve never looked better.”
I tried to form a rebuttal, but my head was still buzzing from the fact that Jonah was my grandma’s new doctor. What were the odds that he would become a partner at the same office my grandma had been going to for years?
“When did you find out that he was going to be the new doctor here?”
“I got a card in the mail. It was really nice. I’ll show it to you when we get home. Our Jonah has been a busy man. Did you know that he regularly donated his time to treating inner-city patients who couldn’t afford medical care?”
“No.” But it didn’t surprise me.
“He’s a real sweetheart, and he’s looking forward to seeing you. So, let’s go.”
“Wait. He knows I’m coming? How? Why? When?”
“Honey, none of that matters. What matters is that you’re here and you look gorgeous.”
“You set me up.”
“I had help.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Explain,” I growled. Grandma pressed her lips together and thought about what she should say. “I want the whole truth,” I clarified. I could tell she was thinking of a way to sugar coat it.
Grandma put her hands on her hips, defiant. “Fine. Here it is. We tried to get you on one of those shows like What Not to Wear. You know, where they come in and throw away all your clothes and give you a new wardrobe and makeover, but apparently there are worse dressers than you out there and they thought you were too naturally beautiful.”
Oh. My. Gosh. “You did what?”
She waved her hand like it was no big deal. It was a huge deal. They had applied, which meant they took pictures, maybe even videos, of me and sent them to strangers who would have humiliated me on TV. Did they all think I was this pathetic?
