TEN
Stepping out of his vehicle in his garage, Patrick slammed the door shut behind him and then winced at the pinch he felt in his shoulder. He used his right hand to massage his left shoulder and rolled it a few times. He didn't think the injury was anything more serious than a simple strain, but if it was still sore after a week he'd get it evaluated by an orthopedist.
Patrick was not supposed to work Saturdays at the practice again until January, but the day prior, the doctor who was schedule for October had messaged him to say that her son had needed his appendix out and could he possibly cover her appointments for those that did not wish to reschedule? Not knowing when he might face a similar parenting-related emergency, he agreed after confirming that Shelagh was available to babysit on short notice.
Of the eight appointments originally scheduled, three were canceled, so he thought the morning might be uneventful. The first two appointments had been routine, but during the third, the patient expressed feeling faint. Instead of laying down like Patrick instructed, the man had stood up…and then fainted into Patrick, who did his best to catch the older man so he did not hit his head too hard on either the exam table or the floor, but in the process had wrenched his shoulder. After the man had been sent away by ambulance, Patrick continued with the remaining appointments, which would have again been uneventful were it not for the very argumentative mother who insisted there was something terribly wrong with her son's internal organs despite the boy insisting that his stomach only hurt when he drank chocolate milk. Patrick had then tried and failed to explain the concept of lactose intolerance to the mother, who naturally assumed her son must have stomach cancer at the age of nine.
Stepping into the house, Patrick could hardly believe that it was only two-thirty p.m. He immediately decided that he could not muster the energy to cook dinner that evening, and they would be going out or ordering pizza; he'd let Timothy pick.
"Oh, hello," Shelagh greeted him cheerfully as she walked into the kitchen to throw something away in the trash can. "How was your morning?"
"Very, very long." He informed her as he scrubbed his hands over his face. "Just give me a moment and I'll get your money so you can be on your way."
She shrugged and waved her hand dismissively. "There's no need to rush."
He walked over to the kitchen sink to get himself a glass of water so he could take some Aleve for his shoulder when he heard Shelagh gasp behind him. Turning around, he saw she was looking down at her phone screen so he asked, "Is something wrong?"
"I…" She turned to him, her complexion notably paler. "A man sent me a picture of his penis."
Patrick almost laughed at how unexpected the comment was but managed to stop himself. She was clearly upset, and he did not want to invalidate her feelings; he merely assumed that the occasional unsolicited picture was part of the dating app experience for women—not that it was right, of course. It simply was a very unfortunate yet unavoidable factor of online dating.
"Is this your first dick pic?" he asked. She nodded and he held out his hand to her. "Give me your phone; I'll delete it."
She handed it over to him and he gazed down at the screen on which there was a picture of a penis resting against what appeared to be a bathroom counter just beside the sink. Looking further up in the conversation, he saw it was in response to Shelagh asking him if he'd watched any good movies lately. He tapped out a quick message then clicked on the options menu and blocked the man from being able to contact her again.
Handing her phone back he explained, "I told him to fuck off."
"Patrick!" she scolded as she grabbed for her phone once more, looking at it with concern.
"I also blocked him so he can't respond now."
She mumbled a thank you before pocketing her phone and then asking, "Why would he do that? We weren't talking about anything remotely sexual."
"Because men are disgusting," he said matter-of-factly. Then, not wanting her to wait any longer, he went into his office, grabbed seven twenty-dollar bills from the bank envelope he kept in his top drawer, and returned to the kitchen to find her leaning against the counter looking extremely upset. When he watched her brush a tear away from the corner of her eye, his heart clenched, and he reached out to place his hand on her shoulder. "Hey, don't cry; he's not worth that."
She shook her head and gave a little shrug. "I'm just frustrated. I suppose I was naïve to think this wouldn't be so difficult once I got started, but the last three times I went out with someone it was...horrendous. And now this."
"Might I suggest taking a little break? Just put the app away for a week or so until you're ready to go back to it."
She nodded and took the cash from him. "Thanks. I…maybe you're right. I'll hide my profile for a week, so I don't get any new messages. In the meantime, I'll just…go home and do my laundry," she added with a light laugh.
Following her into the foyer, he said, "I surely hope you have something a bit more fun planned for the rest of your weekend."
She shrugged as she tucked the money into her purse, which was on the floor beside her shoes. "Not really."
"Well...Tim and I have plans to carve pumpkins tomorrow if you'd like to come back over. Have you ever carved a pumpkin?"
The gloominess disappeared from her expression as she said, "Oh yes. My roommates and I have carved pumpkins together for the past three years."
He slipped his hands into his pockets as he said, "Well look at that—something you've done but I haven't. Maybe you should come and show me. Er, if you want to," he added, not wanting to seem like he was trying to monopolize yet another few hours of her time that weekend when she'd already spent the better part of the day with Tim.
"You really haven't carved a pumpkin?"
"No. We've painted pumpkins, but never actually carved them."
She looked as though she was thinking for a moment then nodded. "Okay; I'll come help."
"We'll be looking forward to it. Say…after lunch tomorrow? Around one thirty?"
She shrugged and nodded. "That works; see you then, Patrick."
After she'd gone, Patrick returned to the kitchen to take his painkillers, so his shoulder didn't worsen, but thanks to Shelagh, he was already feeling much better.
"Are you happy with your pumpkins Timothy?" Shelagh asked as she finished shoving all the folded up newspaper they'd used to protect the dining table down into the trash can.
Timothy, who had been skeptical about the pumpkin carving at first, was crouching down by the table so he could look at their duo of carved pumpkins head-on, said, "Yeah. I like the one without the nose better."
"I like that one better, too," she told him.
All things considered, their pumpkin carving adventure had gone well. Worried the novice Patrick had not appropriately estimated just how messy of an experience the pumpkin carving could be, had brought a few sheets of newspaper along with her. Patrick had at least had the forethought to place each pumpkin on a cookie sheet, but as the pumpkins were quite large, the sheet was barely large enough for them to sit on and thus not sufficient to contain the mess. Patrick had frequently expressed his gratitude for her foresight which, as he put it, "saved the table from ruin."
Shelagh had to admit that while it was endearing to watch Timothy's face as the carved pumpkin was lit-up for the first time, her favorite reactions of the day were from Patrick. He could not contain his disgust at touching the goopy, slimy pumpkin innards. He groaned and gagged and complained nonstop, even after Timothy told him it wasn't all that bad. Shelagh could not help but giggle at his horrified facial expressions. Naturally, he noticed her laughing at him and called her out for it, but in a lighthearted way. Soon, he was laughing too—in between sounds of disgust, of course.
Just as she retrieved a damp sponge from the kitchen so she could wipe down any remaining sticky spots on the table, Patrick returned from washing his hands to point out, "You really don't have to help clean up."
She gave him a playful look. "I wouldn't want you to suffer through getting any more stringy pumpkin guts on your fingers."
He let out a breathy laugh. "Well, I appreciate that, but its really not necessary. I-"
Patrick's next words were drowned out by a horrendous screeching sound coming from the street. They could then hear a crash, the sound of an engine roaring, and finally a very loud thud.
"What the devil was that?" Patrick proclaimed as he walked towards the front of the house.
Returning to the kitchen sink, Shelagh rinsed out the sponge, but before she could join the investigation she heard Patrick shout, "Good God! Shelagh! Shelagh!"
Her hands still wet, Shelagh raced into the hall, where the front door was flung wide open. While Tim stood cautiously to one side, the source of Patrick's distress was obvious. A black SUV had somehow made its way up onto Patrick's front lawn and rammed into the lamppost just beside his garage. The car had spun such that it was parallel to the house and now blocking the entire view of the street as Patrick's house sat on a slight uphill.
"Oh good heavens!" she proclaimed at the sight.
Patrick, who was already cramming on his shoes, barked orders in a way she imagined he used to when an ambulance brought victims into the ER where he worked. "Tim, stay inside. Shelagh, go see if anyone was injured on the street. I'm going to check the driver."
After pulling on her shoes as quickly as she could, Shelagh hurried down the front walkway towards the driveway. Only once she was outside did she get the full perspective of how catastrophic the accident nearly was. The SUV missed hitting Patrick's house by less than five feet.
She hurried past Patrick, who was trying to pull open the driver's door, and down onto the driveway. Once she reached the middle of the blacktop she was able to see the destructive path the SUV took. She could see the deep ruts of tire tracks in two yards across the street, a felled mailbox now in the middle of the road, and—Oh.
The shock of it nearly sent her to her knees, but she somehow managed to remain standing. She even took two shaky steps closer to her destroyed vehicle, feeling as though she was in a nightmare, begging to wake up, but she could not. This horror was a reality.
Every time she babysat Timothy, she parked her car on the street in front of Patrick's house so he could easily maneuver his car in and out of the garage. On that day, her car had the misfortunate of being in the path of the rogue SUV, which had slammed into the rear end of her car, spinning it such that it was now perpendicular to the street with the ruined back end partially resting on Patrick's lawn. Though she did not know much about cars, it was incredibly obvious hers was no longer drivable and likely never would be again, given its age and the extent of the damage.
"Well," she was vaguely aware of Patrick coming up behind her as he updated her on the situation. "The driver is conscious, and I suspect very drunk because he smells—oh shit! Your car!" he proclaimed. "I, er, I'm going to call the police. Don't worry, Shelagh; we'll get it all sorted."
She was vaguely aware of him giving her shoulder a squeeze before he stepped away to make a call, but her brain barely registered it. She'd somehow gone numb in the reflection of the ruined car and, along with it, her ruined dreams of going back to school.
Now, instead of writing a check for tuition, she'd need to spend that money on a replacement car; there was no way around it. The area where they lived did not have public transportation that was practical to use. Though there was a bus stop very close by the medical center where she worked, she knew the buses did not start running until quarter to seven. Given that she sometimes needed to be at work by six-thirty, that schedule would not work for her. Even if she somehow arranged her shifts so it was manageable, she still would not be able to take public transportation to the classes she wanted to take, which were at a college nearly forty-five minutes away.
She needed a car; that was nonnegotiable. Even if she could get something very cheap, which seemed unlikely given how many news articles she'd seen about high prices for used cars, the value of the car would still be close if not equal to the amount she needed to pay for her tuition. She could always finance the car, limiting how much she had to pay up front, but she worried how that monthly payment would affect her ability to save for the next semester of classes she would need to take. She would get some money for the car from her insurance, she supposed, but she had the bare minimum policy required by law, so she doubted it would be enough to cover more than a fraction of her next car.
"Woah! Its good we didn't have the pumpkins out already!"
"Timothy! I told you to say inside!"
"But I want to see. Woah! Look at Shelagh's car! The bumper is in the street!"
"Tim!" his father scolded, but Shelagh barely registered the interaction.
Finally, when she saw Tim heading towards the street, she was shocked enough out of her trance to stop him before his curiosity inadvertently drew him towards touching some of the debris and injuring himself. "Come Tim," she said to him, gently putting her hand on his shoulder. "Let's go wait on the porch for the police to come."
"Are they going to use their lights and sirens?" he asked excitedly.
She managed a small smile at his enthusiasm. "Maybe, we'll have to see."
Ten minutes later, after the police arrived with flashing lights (but no sirens), Shelagh sent Timothy inside so she and Patrick could give witness statements. Shelagh had only spoken with law enforcement once before in her life when she was going through the process to get emancipated from her parents and become a legal adult at the age of sixteen. Though the team she worked with had been kind, it was still a very distressing event, and so speaking with the police once again brought back those difficult memories on top of the distress she already felt over losing her car. The only moment of levity came when she glanced back towards the house to make sure Timothy was still inside and caught sight of him standing right in front of the window to his father's office, his nose pressed so closely to the glass that he was surrounded by a halo of fog.
Over an hour after the accident first occurred, the drunk man driving the SUV had been taken away by ambulance as a precaution, and both damaged vehicles had been towed away. Shelagh followed Patrick inside to get her things, forgetting that she could not actually leave of her own accord until she saw the car keys dangling out of the front pocket of her purse. Her bottom lip began to tremble as the sight of them and she feared she might breakdown completely until, without saying a word, Patrick's arms come around her. She didn't hesitate to let her head fall into the crook of his neck and rest her hands against his sides.
"It's all right," his low voice soothing her as he gently rubbed her back. "I know it's upsetting, but you weren't hurt and that's the most important thing."
Shelagh's thoughts had been so consumed by the distress of needing to reschedule her extra schooling that she hadn't even considered the potential of being injured by the rogue vehicle. Had the car been on its dangerous path even just a few minutes later she likely would have been leaving the Turner residence and could have been hit in the front yard or while trying to get into her car as it spun out of control. She assumed this was why Patrick thought she was upset and, as it was an easier explanation than her midwife career desires, of which he knew nothing, she let him think it.
"Dad, are we going to have dinner now?"
"Not yet, Tim. We have to take Shelagh home since her car was towed away."
"Oh no." Shelagh said, pushing herself out of Patrick's grasp and quickly swiping beneath her eyes to remove any remnants of tears. "I don't want to disrupt your day any further; I'll just take an Uber."
"Are you sure? I don't mind."
She forced a smile. "It's fine."
As she walked back to the foyer to get her purse, Patrick followed, looking hesitant. "Please let me know if you need anything, especially with your insurance. I'll make sure to get an extra copy of the police report for you."
"Thank you, but I'll be fine," she said. Saying it out loud made the statement more believable. She would be fine—eventually. She just needed to be a little sad about her disrupted plans first.
