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I glanced down at Calla, noting that her interest was on the phone and her nerves had calmed down considerably. “What are you watching, Calla?” I asked.
“YouTube,” she said absently, fully engrossed in some elaborate toy unboxing someone’s parents had contrived for them.
“Ah,” I smiled as I flicked my wrist and tied the Vicryl in a precise knot. “My nephews love YouTube.” I braved a look at Laurel. “Their mom, not so much.” She gave me a silent look of agreement.
I concentrated on the last few knots, but then spared Laurel another glance. “You okay, Mom? Most mamas get squeamish during this part.”
I saw her shrug in my peripheral. “I’m good. Like she said, Calla’s ‘assidert prone,’ so we’ve done this enough times that I stopped freaking out over it.”
“Poor thing,” I said honestly. A parent getting that call once was nerve-wracking, but to see your kid stitched several times? Rough.
“She’s tough,” Laurel said confidently.
I spared her an amused glance. “I meant you,” I said softly.
She blinked, staring at me again. She looked surprised that I had cared. Like it was possible not to care about her. She was vulnerability personified.
“It’s not easy to see your child hurt,” I added.
She cleared her throat and winced, swallowing thickly. I paused, letting my hands hover a safe distance away from Calla’s head. I knew that motion. I’d seen it hundreds of times in patients with sore throats.
Laurel avoided my gaze, looking down at the phone in her hand, which she held for Calla. “It did suck. If she wasn’t so resilient, it would have been harder. We used to call her ‘the tank’ when she was a baby.”
Surprised, I chuckled. “What a flattering name for a little girl.”
She gave an embarrassed laugh. “Um, yeah. I might not be the most ooey-gooey maternal force on the planet.”
I laughed outright at that. “I didn’t realize motherhood was a dessert.”
She looked up again, and this time I saw some kind of internal war being waged inside her head. Her eyes narrowed, then one eye scrunched, and she blurted out, “Well, I cannoli do so much.”
I stared, blinked once, and then snorted into my mask. “Oh, my God, that was so bad.”
“I’m so sorry,” she pinched the bridge of her nose, like she was fed up with herself. “I’m so sorry. I’m an absolute dork, but you set it up. I couldn’t ignore it.”
“I’m charging you extra for assaulting me with that.”
She groaned, laughing. “Yeah, put it on my tab.”
I blew out a breath, trying to return my thoughts back to the last stitch in Calla’s head. “I’m just warning you, my prices are outrageous.”
“Oh, I can imagine,” she said, humor still tinting her warm voice. Or, was that a raspy edge? I had to remember to ask her about it when I was finished with Calla. “I was told by several people, before we even got here, that you’re the best.”
I should probably have pretended to be surprised by that, but the truth was, there was a certain popularity that came with being the only doctor with a workout routine. I snipped the last strand of Vicryl and pressed my lips together against another smile. “Did they? And what did you think?”
“I thought that maybe you performed extra services for them or something,” she said, her tone teasing.
My eyes flew to hers. She smirked behind her mask, eyes mischievous. I take it back. She isn’t innocent at all. Damn.
“Am I done?” Calla asked, craning her neck to look up at me.
Good timing, kid. You saved me from asking your mother an incredibly unprofessional question. “Let me bandage your fancy stitches up, and you’ll be good to go,” I said.
Laurel stood away from the table, rubbing her temples and clearing her throat again. She was probably coming down with a virus. “Are you okay, over there?” I asked casually. I felt anything but casual, though. I wanted to plop her on my exam table and make sure she was alright. She struck me as the kind of person who would ignore her own health in favor of everyone else’s. And even the idea of that triggered something protective inside of me.
“Oh, yeah,” she rasped. “You know how the first two weeks of a job are. Exhausting.”
I nodded, laying an adhesive strip against Calla’s gauze bandage. “Sure, I get that. It just sounds like you’re sick.”
