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I had to look at her to see whether she was being sarcastic, and I wasn’t sure how to respond when I saw she was being entirely serious.
“You’re crazy,” I said with a shake of my head.
“What?” my mom looked at me in surprise.
“I said you’re crazy,” I told her. “You really did just set me up with your doctor!”
“I think you two look cute together. You would make very adorable babies,” she said.
“Okay, now you are really getting too far ahead of yourself. I’m not sure I can ever go with you to another appointment, let alone be able to show up to this dinner tonight, and now you’re going to start talking about us having kids? You really have lost your mind.” I laughed.
“You have no idea. Maybe I’m having grandbaby fever. I don’t know. But, you have to promise me you’ll show up to dinner tonight. Please,” she said.
“I don’t know,” I tried, but my mother wasn’t about to let me even start to turn it down.
“You have to come! You know I did that for you! I saw the way you looked at him, and I want to see you go out with someone and be happy before I die!” she said.
“You’re not going to die,” I told her. “The doctor just told us that he’s happy with how you’re making progress, and if that keeps up, in just five years, it’s like you didn’t even have cancer to begin with.”
“But if it does come back, it can be aggressive,” she argued.
I sighed. I didn’t want to focus on that. I wanted to talk about the positive. As embarrassing as it was for her to invite her own doctor to dinner, I knew I had to show up. I didn’t doubt for one second she had done it for me, and it was the least I could do to show her I appreciated the gesture if nothing else by showing up.
After all, he was good looking, and he was a doctor. There was a good chance he would have good conversation, and I would love to have more of that in my life. I would go that night and hope to God that it wouldn’t ruin things with my mom down at the hospital.
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll be there. But you better not try to propose for me, you hear? Behave!”
“Okay, I’ll behave,” she said with an exaggerated sigh but a broad smile.
I couldn’t help but shake my head. I didn’t know how she always did it, but she did. Pulling off things like this seemed second nature to her, and I could only admire her for that. I wasn’t going to argue.
“Oh,” she said after a pause. “There’s something else you should know, Harper.”
“What?”
“I can’t cook for you, either,” my mother said with a giggle.
I sighed and shook my head, but I smiled just the same. There was a time when I would have been annoyed with such news after the way the afternoon had gone, but I refused. My mom was just trying to help, and I could put up with this.
It was a nice thing to do, even if I was confident it wouldn’t lead anywhere.
She did this out of love.
So I could put up with it.
SEVEN
Trevor
I wasbeyond nervous as I walked into the restaurant where I’d been invited to join Gwen and her daughter. I hadn’t thought I would really go through with meeting the two of them for dinner, but with the text messages I got that afternoon from Gwen, I knew she meant it when she told me she wanted to have that treat.
After all that we had been through, I wasn’t going to turn her down for something like that. After all, it wasn’t at all likely we would be seeing each other again moving forward. There would be no need to keep bringing her into the hospital.
But, this was still the first time I had ever gone to a dinner with a patient and her daughter, so I really wasn’t sure how to deal with what was going through my mind. I wasn’t sure what to expect, that was for sure, and I kept things rather casual.
At first, I thought she was inviting me to her house to make dinner.
I had accepted with that in mind, thinking that while it was strange, it was friendly anyway. But, Gwen messaged me later and let me know she wasn’t making a mess in her house, and she wanted to go to a restaurant instead. I was okay with that and agreed to anywhere she wanted to go.
