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Hannah was standing at the top of the steps, crying and holding her finger. Megan was yelling at George, who was holding a stick that should’ve been in the backyard, not upstairs in the bedrooms.
“You hurt her!” Megan said.
Bridget was standing back quietly observing as her older sister continued to let George have it.
“What’s going on up there?” Cullen asked from the bottom of the stairs.
Lily had already gone up to the child and was kneeling at the little girl’s side, looking at her finger. “You’re bleeding, sweetie. What happened?”
“George took away Franklin’s fetch stick. I didn’t want him to have it because he said he’s going to take Franklin outside without a leash. But I don’t want him to because Franklin might run away.”
“George, what did you do, buddy?” Cullen asked once he was up there with them.
“He yanked the stick out of her hand,” Megan answered. “That’s how she got the splinter.”
Great. A splinter.
“You have to be careful, pal,” he said, trying his best to keep his voice as even as possible. “You’re stronger than you realize. I’m sure you didn’t mean to do it on purpose, but you hurt your sister. Can you tell her you’re sorry?”
All eyes shifted to the boy, whose face had clouded like a thunderhead. “No,” he said. “She’s dumb. She’s a dumb, crying baby.”
He turned around and walked out of the room.
Suddenly the dirty dishwater that the hospital tried to pass off as coffee sounded better to Cullen than the strong jolt of joe he usually made for himself, because there was nothing he wanted more right now than to leave all this chaos behind and go to work. Even if the hospital’s coffee was bad and that place could be a different brand of bedlam sometimes, at least it came with a chaser of quiet in the form of his closed office door. When he needed to think, all he had to do was shut the door, and unless the place was falling down, no one bothered him. Before they did, they had to go through his administrative assistant, Tracy.
“We need to get this splinter out,” Lily said. “Do you have any tweezers? We’ll probably need some hydrogen peroxide and antibiotic ointment. A bandage would help, too.”
“It’s all in the hall bath,” Cullen said. “The room where you cleaned up the blue foam yesterday.” The place that always seemed to draw the drama—whether it started or ended there.
Cullen motioned Lily and Hannah to follow him. As the three of them squeezed into the hall bathroom, the dog tried to wedge his way in, too.
Lily scooped up Hannah with one arm and petted Franklin with her free hand, keeping him at bay but allowing him to see that the girl was okay.
“Thank you,” Cullen said. Caring for children was infinitely easier with two people. He had no idea how she managed it on her own. Then again, four kids, even kids as spirited as these, must’ve seemed like a picnic compared to a classroom full. Obviously some people had the gift and others didn’t. Lily, he decided as he gathered the supplies, was the child whisperer. He was way out of his league.
He set his cell phone on the counter.
“I’m going to move this over here so it doesn’t get splashed,” Lily said, pushing it behind her with her free hand.
“Thank you. At the rate my morning’s going, I’d probably end up knocking it in the toilet.”
He and Lily exchanged smiles, and it was…nice. It made him feel as if the day wasn’t destined to be all bad.
First he had the little girl wash her hands with soap and water. Then as he prepared to swab Hannah’s finger with hydrogen peroxide, she pulled her hand away, tears brimming. “Will that hurt?”
“It shouldn’t,” Cullen said. “But I’ll bet Ms. Palmer will let you squeeze her hand just in case.”
“Her name is Lily,” Hannah said. “Yesterday, she told us that we could call her Lily.”
“Fair enough,” Cullen said. He smiled as his gaze snagged Lily’s and he wondered why it was that he’d never noticed until now how green her eyes were. And they were flecked with little veins of gold. Nice.
