Secret Keepers by Mindy Friddle

Author:Mindy Friddle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

The waiting room at Dr. Babbitt’s office on Monday morning was more crowded than usual. Still, Emma had long ago quit feeling put out by the overscheduled patient load. After all, she and Harold had taken Bobby to Dr. Babbitt since 1970. In all those years, the place had not changed. The green shag rug and orange molded chairs continued to clash, like ornery relatives picking the same fights. The algae-slimed fish tank burbled sadly in the corner, with its little treasure box flapping open and closed, releasing a sad burp of bubbles.

Yes, Dr. Babbitt was that rare breed of doctor who lacked ambition: expanding and updating were not to his taste. Mention the term cutting edge to Dr. Babbitt, and he’d turn the conversation to cheese graters or cutlery. For culinary art had always been Dr. Babbitt’s passion. The practice of medicine, as he once explained to Emma, was the devil’s bargain. He had to keep his considerable body and slight soul together somehow, until he managed to fund a retirement that would fulfill his passion. “The scapula for the spatula,” he would say sometimes, sighing, writing out prescriptions for Bobby, winking at Emma. “How many years to go?”

In sixteen years, the prescriptions Dr. Babbitt wrote out for Bobby had changed little. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” was a philosophy the doctor and Harold had shared and often voiced. Keeping Bobby manageable at home, as one of the pamphlets called it, was the major goal for their son, and Dr. Babbitt was more than happy to help. When it came to chemicals and medication, Dr. Babbitt was no slouch. You started heavy, tapering off as necessary.

“Bobby Hanley,” the nurse called. Bobby and Emma rose obediently as choir members. “Right this way,” the nurse, a new one, said, and bumped into the doorframe.

“Oh, it’s been a long day,” she said, rolling her eyes. It was not yet nine. They followed her down the hall. “I’m Suzelle, by the way” she said, with all the enthusiasm of a prison guard. She had a halo of platinum kinky hair, a portion of which had been caught and wrestled into a bristly puff that did not move, even when its owner did. A different nurse was a bit jarring, Emma had to admit. There were very few new things or people in Dr. Babbitt’s office. Nurse Suzelle couldn’t have known that Emma and Bobby had traversed this hallway numerous times and knew just where to go, for Dr. Babbitt practiced most of his medicine from behind a large glass-top desk in the faux-paneled room at the end of the hall. The door was ajar, and the nurse handed Dr. Babbitt a medical file. Emma and Bobby sat. Dr. Babbitt—fleshy, florid—closed the file and set it aside, as if it were a menu and his order was taken.

“Where’s Miss Gail?” Bobby asked, beating Emma to the punch.

“Nurse Gail has … retired.”

“Retired?” Emma said. Could Nurse Gail be that old? She pictured the

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