Page 105 of Duty and Desire

He confirmed this by saying, “Most urgent cares closed, she needs to get to the emergency room.”

“No!” Carla cried, and Mo and I turned back to her. “No. It’s gonna be fine.”

“It’s probably not broken but it’s a bad sprain,” Mo told her.

“If it’s sprained, I’ll be off the stage for a week,” she returned anxiously.

At that, I crouched down to her. “Carla, you can’t dance with a sprained ankle.”

“The ice will work,” she told me. “I just need to give it more time.”

“You need to see to it and give it time to heal if it needs that so it doesn’t get worse,” I pointed out.

“It’ll be okay.”

“Just check it out.”

She shook her head with agitation. “I can’t go to the emergency room. This isn’t urgent. I’ll be waiting forever. And I have to be home to let my neighbor go. I pay through the nose for her to come over and stay late to watch the boys. She gets pissy when I’m even later.”

In a normal situation, I would offer to go relieve the sitter after my last set.

Mo would never agree to that, so I told her, “I’ll call my mom.”

Carla shook her head again. “You can’t do that, Lottie. It’s after eleven at night.”

I grinned at her. “My mom loves kids, she loves you, and she’s the kind of person who gets off on doing things for folks. And you know Tex. He’s the king of wading in when a damsel is in distress. They’ll be all over it.”

“Tex might scare my boys,” she muttered.

This was true.

“Maybe, but in the end he’ll have them eating out of his hand,” I told her the truth. “But right now, they’re asleep and you’ll be home before they wake up, so they won’t even see him.”

She looked at her ankle then at me. “I can’t be off the stage for a week, Lottie.”

I reached out and gave her wrist a squeeze. “Just go to the hospital. Find out how bad it is.” I scooted closer on my platforms and reminded her, “And you know, if you have to take a break, we’ll take care of you. You know that, babe.”

More shaking of her head. “I can’t ask the girls to help me out. You all have your own bills to pay.”

“You won’t have to, but we will, and we won’t be pissed about it. We’ll only be pissed if you don’t take care of yourself. And anyway, Smithie would rather cut off his own arm than have you and your boys in a bind. You know that too.”

She glanced up at Mo before she whispered to me, “Smithie has a lot on his mind.”

All the girls knew about my sitch. Everyone had been interviewed and they’d all been tasked to keep an eye out for a possible crackpot that tweaked them, as crackpots were wont to do.

It sucked they were in on this, and knew this was happening to me, thus they were worried about me, and it gave me more fodder for nursing the hugest grudge I’d ever held, this being against said crackpot.

Through these thoughts, I shot her another grin, and after I had them, I said, “It’s unusual for a dude, but Smithie’s a multi-tasker.”

Carla gazed down at her ankle again.

“Can I call him?” I asked. “He’ll want to take you to the hospital.”

She gave me her eyes. “He wants to be around to look out for you.”

I jerked my head to Mo. “He gave me someone who’ll look out for me. If he knows you’re hurting, he’ll want to look out foryou. And please, let me call him. If he finds out we didn’t tell himthis, he’ll be ticked,at me. And I hate it when Smithie’s ticked at me.”

This was a lie. Smithie was all bark, no bite. I didn’t tick him off on purpose, but I didn’t avoid it should such an occasion arise.