This time Poppy’s smile was real. “Okay, Princess Ninja Flower, your mission is to lie down like a burrito and stay super, super still. If you need to wiggle your toes, you can, but the rest of you has to be a statue. Do you accept this mission, Princess Ninja Flower?”
Once she was lying down, Poppy fitted the headphones over her ears and chose the song. “Tell me if it’s too loud,” she said, and Tabitha gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.
She turned to Deacon. “You can wait in the observation room, or sometimes parents like to stay right here. Up to you.”
“I’ll stay.”
“Totally fine.” She handed him a pair of protective headphones. “You just can’t cross the yellow line, and if you have any metal on you, you need to leave it out here.” She paused, then added, “That includes cell phones, smart watches, credit cards, keys, and any piercings, anywhere.”
He grinned. “Got it.”
It took a few minutes to get Tabitha strapped in with the little lavender eye mask and the weighted blanket, which helped with the fidgeting. She was always surprised by how much she loved working with kids. She’d always thought it would be draining, but something about their pragmatic energy made sense to her, like a kid would either trust you or not, and if they didn’t,they told you. Same with elderly people, typically. There was no façade. No lies. You knew where you stood.
She slid Tabitha into the machine and went to boot up the imaging software. “Ready?” she called through the intercom.
Poppy clicked through the pre-scan protocol, her fingers moving automatically. She’d done this hundreds of times, but today she felt off-axis, aware of the man standing behind the glass, the way he watched his daughter as if he could will her into being healthy with the force of his gaze.
She was halfway through the scan when she realized she’d been staring at the same set of numbers for at least a minute. The earworm of Encanto was digging into her brain, but underneath that, she kept thinking about all the things she was never going to do. She would never have a kid like Tabitha. She would never know what it was like to be on the other side of the glass, full of hope and dread for a tiny person. She would never be anyone’s mom.
Immediately, she chastised herself, this was not the time for existential crises. She had a job to do. She forced her attention back to the scan, adjusted the parameters, and made a note in the chart.
A quick glance up at the viewing window caught her totally off guard. She did a double take when she caught Deacon watching her, which was weird because typically parents just stared at the machine. His attention was not directed at her in a flirtatious or checking-her-out way. For a second, she wondered if she had something on her face, but then she realized maybe he was just trying to see if she was trustworthy, if this random hospital tech had it together enough to keep his daughter safe. He might have sensed that her mind had wandered and was telepathically instructing her to get her shit together. That made the most sense.
Tabitha’s voice came through the intercom, staticky and sweet. “I’m doing good, right?”
“You’redoing amazing, Princess Ninja Flower,” Poppy responded honestly.Me, on the other hand…
Relief swept through her as they finished the scan. Poppy rolled Tabitha out and helped her sit up. “Welcome home, Princess Ninja Flower!” she announced, and Tabitha did a happy little fist pump. “Mission accomplished.”
“Can I have a sticker?” Tabitha asked.
“Absolutely.” Poppy produced a sheet of stickers—rainbows, unicorns, narwhals—and let Tabitha choose. She picked a narwhal, peeling it off with maximum concentration.
“What do you say?” Deacon prompted.
“Thank you.”
“You earned it.” Poppy smiled, expecting them to head out of the room. They didn’t.
“I know this is strange, but we just relocated to Hope Falls from out of state, and I was wondering if you knew anyone or had any referrals for a nanny? About twenty hours a week, but that’s flexible, because my schedule is flexible. It could be a live-in position or not. I have an ADU.”
“Oh, um…” The question caught Poppy totally off guard, so her mind went blank.
“Obviously I can go through a service I just prefer to use people through personal referrals.”
That tracked since he’d asked for her through a personal referral.
“I actually worked as a nanny when I was going to school. I can ask around.”
“Thanks.” He grinned, pulled a card out of his pocket, wrote on the back, and handed it to her. “I really appreciate it.”
Poppy nodded.
“C’mon, Tabby-cat.” He put his hand on his daughter’s head and ruffled her hair. “Let’s go grab that milkshake I promised.”
Poppy said her goodbyes and watched them walk away. She stood in the doorway for a long moment, feeling the emptiness of the room press in around her. It was strange how much a child’s energy filled a space. She wished she could go back to just a few moments ago.
Time in hospitals was so different than in the real world—the clocks, the routines, the endless repetition of the same faces and sounds. Time there didn’t just pass, it oozed and crawled, backward as often as forward. She’d been working at Pine Ridge for nearly a decade, and in that time absolutely nothing had changed, except, of course, for the one thing that changed everything.
