“Dr. Giraffe?” I repeat.
“Yup. He said that some little girl told him he was taller than a giraffe, and now that’s what all his patients and the nurses call him.”
“Interesting. So was he really tall, then?”
“Oh yeah, he was so tall! He had to sit down on a really small stool to see me. It was kinda funny seeing him try to fit on it. It made me laugh.”
“Yeah? And what else did Dr. Giraffe do?”
“Well, he had to poke me with a needle. But it didn’t hurt ‘cause he let me use his seth-scope to listen to his heart. But then he started making all these funny noises like farts and burps, and hearing them with the thing-y made it even more funny. I didn’t even feel him poke me.”
I laugh at his pronunciation of stethoscope.
“He sounds like a good doctor. What else?”
I’m suddenly fascinated with Dr. Giraffe and want to hear more, especially since I know he is also apparently gorgeous. Even through the few words Rune has spoken about him, something calls me to want to know more about him.
“When he went to fix my cut, I told him I was afraid of needles. He told me he was afraid of spiders. While he was doing my stitches, he let me watch a video on his phone of his friend pranking him by putting a fake spider in his takeout box, and when he opened thelid, he screamed like a girl! It took him a long time to fix my cut ’cause I kept laughing so hard and moving, but he didn’t care. He kept laughing too.”
Rune begins to laugh at the memory.
“I told him that I didn’t mind spiders, but my mom hated them too. Then he asked some questions about you.”
Strangely, for the first time since Everett, my heart-wings flutter in my chest. “Oh really? And what did you tell him?”
“I told him that you have pretty hair, like a lion's mane, and that you like coffee. Oh, and that you hate waking up in the morning, and sometimes I have to go in and pull the covers off you, but then you pull me into bed with you to snuggle and tickle fight.”
I laugh now because he is right. I do that all the time. Rune is an early riser, also like his father. And I have found the best way to stay in bed as long as possible in the mornings is to have snuggle sessions and watch cartoons.
“He told me that he likes to get up early in the morning and make breakfast, which he told me is the most important meal of the day and it’s his favorite. He said that he would make me breakfast every morning and that we could have Nerf gun fights and that we could play pranks on you and that we could rock out to Nirvana and he would teach me how to throw a football and teach me the trick to get a perfect spin on it. I told him that I wanted him to be my daddy.”
Runes face drops a little. And the protective lioness rouses within me. Why would a doctor say something like that to a patient? I’m sure he was just trying to cheer him up, but he doesn’t know how much Rune already struggles with not having a dad around.
“And what did he say to that?”
“He said he would like that too. Can he be my daddy?”
I promised I wouldn’t lie to Rune about his dad. I told him that we were young when I got pregnant and his dad would have wanted him if it was a different time in our lives. It has been the most difficult part of being his mom, balancing being a dad too.
I run my fingers through his soft golden curls. “We can prank Auntie Cole, and we can definitely rock out to Nirvana. But Dr. Giraffe can't be your daddy, sweetie. I’m sorry.”
Rune’s face doesn’t change. Because deep down we both know that despite all I can do, there are many things that only a dad can.
“Oh, and he told me to give you this. Said it needs to be given to Leo.”
Man, I haven’t been called Leo in a while. It's been LJ since I left Oregon. When I changed my name legally, I chose to change my first to Leo and my last to Phoenix.
I couldn’t go by Leora anymore. That name carried so much weight. First it was the name my mother gave me, so it felt tainted, and then Everett used to call me his Leora, so every time I heard it, I wanted to die inside. And I chose Phoenix as my last name because that’s what I was hoping I would feel like. A beautiful bird risen from the ashes. I’m still working on that rising part though.
Rune pulls out an origami heart note from his pocket.
A flash of nostalgia and heartbreak flood my chest. It’s folded just how Everett used to fold his. I begin to carefully unwrap it, and my heart sinks as heaviness settles into my stomach when I see that handwriting.That chicken scratch handwriting.
All that Rune just said starts to fall into place.
Fear of spiders.
Breakfast food.
