Page 2 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

“N ext.”

I carefully stepped up to the desk. “Hello,” I said, and the receptionist smiled in a stretched, unhappy way. She already knew why I was standing there.

“Can I have your name?”

“Emerson Mack,” I answered.

“Mack,” she repeated, and looked at her screen. “Mack. Ok, Miss Mack—” But then she stopped and grinned, a genuine expression of happiness. “Miss Mack. Like Miss Mary Mack! Oh my Lord, I’m going to be singing that all day long! Does everyone say that to you?”

“Yes. Yes, they do.”

“‘With silver buttons, buttons, buttons,’” she hummed. “My sisters and I used to do that hand clapping game all the time.”

“That’s a fun memory.” I had meant my comment sincerely, but the pain I was currently experiencing had made my tone a little sharp. She immediately frowned.

“The doctor is very busy,” she told me. “We had an orthopedic emergency.”

I understood all too well about emergencies, but seriously, I couldn’t sit in their chairs anymore. “Can you just give me an idea of how much longer it’s going to be?”

“Probably not too long,” she comforted. “Let’s be optimistic. Just have a seat.”

I’d been trying for optimism lately, but it was hard to maintain when so much of my life had gotten so difficult.

Like, I’d had trouble getting up from my seat and it was painful to walk to this desk, which was why I was at this office in the first place.

I must have looked distressed because her face got a little more sympathetic.

“Hopefully, it will be soon,” she said, but there were already so many things that I needed to feel hopeful about that I was overwhelmed by them all.

Hopefully, I’d get my life back in order so that I didn’t go bankrupt or starve.

Hopefully, I wouldn’t die alone. Hopefully, I’d be able to walk back to the overly hard chairs without falling over.

I did make my slow, limping way to the closest chair without going over sideways, and I eased myself into it.

Then I balanced the cane I now used, but only on days like this when I felt weaker and yes, in more pain.

After the accident, I’d spent so much time in medical settings, first in the hospital and then with doctor after doctor…

I hated being here. I wouldn’t have come unless I really thought I had to, unless I was pretty sure that something was wrong.

But the waiting room was full of other people with other problems, and that was bad.

Unfortunate for them, of course, but also a cruddy omen for me and how long I’d have to be stuck here.

A lot of them had already occupied these chairs when I’d arrived, and they looked plenty harassed and tired by now.

The woman next to me had been one of the crowd present when I’d come in. More like, when I’d limped in. “Is there any new information?” she asked me as I shifted, trying to get comfortable.

“No,” I sighed. “Nothing except that there was an emergency but she’s hopeful that it won’t be too long.”

The other patient looked around the room and she sighed, too. “There’s only one doctor in this practice, so we’re all here to see the same guy. I have children waiting for me and I can’t sit around forever.”

Well, here was some optimism: I had no one waiting at home for me. No one at all would be upset or worried when I showed up hours late. I did have my job but there wasn’t enough for me to do…this wasn’t optimism.

But I did try not to worry, because I was working on changing my whole outlook on life: I was supposed to focus on people, not problems, and strengthen my ties to others. I needed to develop better bonds. I needed to develop any bonds.

The woman checked her phone. “My husband has to be in the office today and my kids are with my mom,” she continued. “I feel guilty about making her do unexpected overtime.”

“How old are your children?” I asked. She told me all about them and when I requested it, she showed me pictures, too.

They were adorable, and I considered myself to be a tough judge.

I had worked in a preschool for several years as a helper and I’d done a lot of babysitting, so I’d been around a ton of children.

I explained this to the woman when I shared my opinion of their cuteness.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling, but then she rolled her eyes.

“Due to my cute kids and their skillful begging, we got a dog that they named Woofy. I blame them all for the tear in my rotator cuff. It happened when I tripped over said animal and fell in a really dumb way that also involved a doll’s high chair, an infant bathtub, and a gym bag. ”

“Sorry.”

She shrugged one shoulder, probably the uninjured one. “It’s better now, and I’m glad to be out of the sling. I’m only here because I’ve had some weird pain and I was lucky that my mom was available to watch them.”

“Lucky,” I agreed. And then she began what I liked to call an anonymous confession.

This had happened to me before, fairly often lately when I’d been in a lot of medical environments.

But I had also experienced it on playgrounds when I’d been babysitting, in ladies’ rooms, on airplanes, and in other settings with forced communalism.

Maybe it was stress that led to oversharing?

Maybe since I was unknown, it erased constraint?

Maybe the fact that I was willing to listen to them was enough to open the floodgates.

Whatever it was, I’d heard a lot from people I didn’t really know.

I’d listened to the relationship problems, family drama, and other very personal issues of strangers who probably wouldn’t have recognized me the next day.

And that was exactly what happened now with this woman in the waiting room: we engaged in a meaningful conversation between people who didn’t know each other at all, whose backgrounds were a mystery, and whose opinions mattered absolutely none.

You might have thought her confession would be about her children or maybe about her husband, but she had a different topic in mind. It was another person entirely.

“My brother brought me here and he’s supposed to pick me up,” she began. She frowned as if she wasn’t happy about this favor.

“That’s nice,” I said, since it was.

“Yeah,” she agreed, but she sounded reluctant. “I have trouble driving since it’s my right shoulder that’s injured, but I hate depending on him like this. He should be out living his own life.”

“It’s lucky to have family to help.”

She nodded half-heartedly. “I’m the oldest, so they’ve mostly relied on me. He’s in the middle of two sisters.”

I imagined that. “He must have learned a lot,” I noted.

“Pardon me?”

“He must have a way with women,” I clarified, because I’d immediately pictured her little brother.

He was just under average height had very dark hair with amber-brown eyes, white teeth, and a charming smile.

He was the kind of guy who could throw a beer across a bar and go home with the phone number of the woman whom he drenched.

He might even bring that sticky girl along with him, too.

But her eyes widened when she heard my words, and she shook her head. “Like he’s smooth? Not really. He’s not that type. In fact, he just split with his girlfriend, and she said that part of their problem was that he was clueless.”

“Hm,” I said, noncommittal. “Clueless” could have covered a lot, from unintentionally inconsiderate to purposefully cruel.

“My sister and I thought that she expected him to read her mind and she never thought that he was good enough, either. It’s for the best that they broke up,” she assured me.

“We’re all glad that it’s over. No one on our side was very fond of Mary Evelyn.

” From the expression of disgust on her face, it seemed as if she had actually hated Mary Evelyn.

“But he liked her a lot, especially at first, and it’s another setback. He’s had a hard time with adulthood.”

I nodded pleasantly, instead of asking the obvious: how had he gotten away with that attitude?

Why hadn’t he needed to grow up and take care of himself?

Maybe it was because of this woman pulling clean-up duty.

She seemed totally together, very pretty and very well-dressed.

She also had the dog and those three beautiful kids, and her husband had been in a few of her pictures, smiling and looking handsome.

Besides her shoulder injury, I wondered if anything could have been wrong in her life.

I got the answer soon enough: yes. It was her brother. He was the problem.

“He’s such a smart guy,” she declared. “Of course, he messed around some in high school and college. But who didn’t?”

“Lots of people did,” I said, and she told me that she had, too, and related a story about getting caught buying weed in her high school parking lot.

“I was terrified,” she told me. “But it worked out because I’m not a hardened criminal and he isn’t either. Sure, he used to smoke some, drink some, mess around with a few different girls.”

Exactly. That was exactly what I’d thought about him. He was a handsome charmer who hurt people, but this woman was blinded by sibling love. She wouldn’t or couldn’t understand that underneath the looks and smiles, he was probably a bad guy. It could surprise you how low people could go.

“He’s a very nice person, too,” she assured me. “It just seems like he never got kickstarted.”

“Kickstarted,” I repeated, and she shrugged the one shoulder again.

“My grandpa had a motorcycle,” she explained, and then continued to tell me about engines and batteries. What I got out of it was that you used to have to push down on a pedal to get it all going. She believed that was what her brother needed, too, a quick shove to spark his life into gear.