Perhaps they always were and I never noticed.
Then again, this shiny new connection with our former patient was just that—in a few weeks, none of it would be entertaining enough to carry any interest for a discussion. It’d fade into the background soon enough, lost to whatever other shiny, new thing developed and stole their interest.
I shrugged. “Fine. He agreed to going back on bed rest.”
“Oh...” She seemed confused. “That’s it?”
“What else did you think we were discussing?”
For a moment, it looked like she was about to argue, or at least say something else to move the conversation in another direction. In the end, she merely sighed and shook her head. Most likely resigning to the fact that my steel trap of a mouth wasn’t going to give her anything worthwhile no matter how hard she tried to dig it out of me.
“All right. I’m glad you two are all good.”
My stomach tightened strangely at the way she worded that. Nodding for her to follow me, we headed back down to our wing of the hospital together, a quietness settling between us.
Three and a half hours.
That was all I needed to get through now.
I could handle that.
CHAPTER 19
Terran
“Ainsley,please, work with me.”
Another loud screech pierced my eardrums, momentarily rendering me deaf.
Who knew toddlers had the lung capacity to scream at a decibel close to a rocket launching and shooting through the atmosphere?
A sharp pain shot up my arm when the heel of her little foot slammed against the bone, another following suit the second she landed the first hit. I ground my teeth together to keep from snapping at her, something that would only encourage her temper tantrum if I gave into the desire to react to it in the first place.
One of the more challenging aspects of raising a child.
Trying to wrestle a three year old into her two piece pajama set two hours after bedtime was another one and absolutely needed to be entered into some kind of Olympic sport category because… holy hell.
“No!” She wailed as I grabbed her ankle and used it to shove her foot through one leg of her pj bottoms.
The rest of her squirmed and kicked at me from where I’d laid her down on the floor when this entire mess had started over fifteen minutes ago. Her face was red and streaked with tears, pieces of her still-wet hair from her bath clung to her forehead from her thrashing around. All of it was coupled by a truly anguished expression that, under any other circumstances, would’ve tugged at my heart strings.
Tonight, though, was a different story.
Her chest expanded as she got ready to scream at me again. Giving me all of five seconds to grab her other foot and force it through the left pant leg before she actually ended up socking me in the face with whatever limb she managed to wrestle out of my grip first.
This was what I got for bending the rules and letting her stay up with me for a little longer than usual to finish her movie. At this point, this was my punishment for being a sucker and not having the backbone to put my foot down against my niece’s infamous puppy dog eyes.
Two entire hours past her bedtime and I was certainly paying for it.
She was going to be a bear in the morning for my sister.
Whoops.
“Want mama!”
“Oh my god, child,” I mumbled. “Quit it.”
Her legs flailed the second I let go. “No! Want mama!”
