Chapter Three
I opened the file on the computer and quickly read it, taking mental notes about the old X-rays and the patient’s past treatment for the injury. She was my last patient before I finished reports and headed to the diner. It was Spanish Rooster Tuesday, and there was no way I was going to miss it. I was on a campaign to get it added to the Nightingale Diner's menu permanently. I just had to convince Ivy Lund that it would sell consistently if she did, which meant sending as many people as possible over there whenever it was the daily special. Now, I had someone else in my corner.
Audrey Violet.
A lovely woman who had been so welcoming since I moved to town. From what I’d come to understand, she was also the Welcome Wagon, and she’d dropped by my house to bring a housewarming basket that had included a variety of local goodies. There was homemade jam, fresh-baked bread from the Bells Pass Bakery, a potted succulent in the cutest cactus planter that now sat on my desk, and information about the businesses in Bells Pass. The day she stopped over, she’d told me she was off to pick up her husband for Taco Tuesday at the food truck. My ears perked, and my stomach rumbled when I told her I’d fallen hardfor the Spanish Rooster. Audrey informed me that half the town had, so we hatched a plan to ensure the Spanish Rooster didn’t end when the food truck did for the season.
A big part of me probably wanted to see Jaelyn, too, but I wasn’t acknowledging that part of me. It wasn’t always smart to bring those things into the light when you couldn’t have them in your life. Was Jaelyn a breath of fresh air in my all too boring life? Yes, but something told me she wasn’t looking for an ex-army doc blown apart by life. Shaking those thoughts from my mind, I pulled the curtain aside.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Warren,” I said to the family waiting inside. “Are you America?”
“AJ,” the girl answered. “Just call me AJ.”
“As you wish,” I said, bowing before I shook her hand.
A man sat in a chair next to the gurney, and I shook his hand, too, surprised by the high-tech prosthesis that wrapped around mine. “I’m Dawson.”
“Nice to meet you, Dawson. That’s some fancy hardware you’ve got going on there.”
“Courtesy of the U.S. Army,” he said, wiggling his almost nonexistent fingers. “I heard a crusty ex-army doc was in town. I expected someone much older.”
That brought a smile to my lips. “Guilty as charged, for the ex-army part, at least. After a few tours on foreign soil, I decided the civilian sector wasn’t so bad.”
AJ shifted the little boy on her lap, who was busy doing something on her phone.
I pointed at the boy. “Is this little cutie your son?” I asked, tickling his belly. He must have been about eighteen months old.
“I’m barely seventeen,” she said, glancing at me sharply. “Valor is my baby brother.”
I grimaced and shifted air through my teeth. “Sorry, it’s been a long day. I should have thought of that.”
Dawson laughed. “Don’t worry, you aren’t the first, nor will you be the last. I adopted AJ a few years ago when I married her mother, Honor. She’s not here today because she’s teaching, but I’m off for the day.”
With that, everything clicked into place. “You’re the Dawson that Audrey Violet mentioned the other day. She has nothing but good things to say about you.”
“Aunt Audrey loves him,” AJ said with a chuckle.
“Well, I am rather lovable,” he teased, taking the baby off her lap. “I suppose Dr. Warren would like to hear about your situation.”
“Yes. It says foot pain here, but that’s rather vague.”
“A couple of years ago, I injured my foot,” she said.
“What she’s not saying is, she had her foot smashed while protecting her best friend from certain death,” Dawson said, as though he needed to interpret for me.
“Dad,” AJ groaned, and I could tell she was trying not to roll her eyes. “It wasn’t smashed. It only broke the cuboid bone.”
“We’ll get back to the certain death thing, but tell me, did the break require surgery?”
“No,” AJ answered. “They said it would heal if I wore a boot, which I did.”
“It seemed fine at first,” Dawson added. “It happened in November, and by the following summer, she was able to do everything, but then—”
“Then that started to change,” AJ said. “First, it hurt to run, so I stopped. Then it hurt to walk in certain shoes, so I made sure to wear ones that supported the foot. Now, it hurts to walk in anything. I can barely get through the school day. Then, today, I was in gym class. I took a step in my gym shoes, and it was like an electrical current went through my foot. I fell and couldn’t get back up.”
“That’s a significant decline,” I agreed with a frown. “Have you been limping?”
“For quite some time,” Dawson answered. “We have an appointment with her family doctor next week because we’re sure something is wrong with it. I wasn’t surprised when Honor called me to come pick her up. Could she have sprained it?”
