Earth Angel Read Free Page A

abdomen. “Yeow, my bladder suddenly feels like a water balloon. I’d better go to the bathroom now. See you tomorrow. Say hi
     to Tim.” Carol spun and trotted off to the staff bathroom.
    “Bye,” I called after her. But she was already gone. The three Asian men looked up at me for a moment, smiled, then returned
     to their drawing. Were they waiting for someone or did one of them want to be treated?
    I went through the door back into the medical area to ask Darlene. She was typing up an insurance form for a patient who was
     leaving. Darlene’s uniform was too tight, binding her rolls of fat into wrapped layers like a coiled firehose. She’d already
     lost twenty pounds on her diet, but she always got excited and bought clothes too small as incentive. She still had another
     twenty pounds to lose to fit into that uniform. Over at the file cabinet was Lolita, five months pregnant but skinny as a
     drinking straw everywhere but her middle, which barely bulged, as if she were a shoplifter smuggling a sweater out. She was
     nineteen and had been married two years, and I just knew she would have an uncomplicated pregnancy and easy delivery and I
     tried not to hate her for that. She had a sign on her desk that she’d made with red magic marker: N AME DU JOUR . Under that was a blue Post-it note that said
Evan
. Yesterday was a pink Post-it note that said
Sheryl
. We were expected to check in with our opinion on the possible names for her baby, the sex of which she didn’t want to know
     until after it was born. She said knowing ahead would take the fun out of being pregnant.
    “
Evan’s
good,” I said to her. “Strong, yet intelligent. A leader.”
    “You think?” she said happily. “John thinks he’ll get beat up over it, but he thinks that about every name except
Gregory
. I like
Evan
better than
Gregory. Greg. Greggy. Gre-gor-y
. Sounds scary, like those things on old buildings, those monsters—”
    “Gargoyles.”
    “Right. I hate them. And it reminds me of that music, those chants. What do I want to say?”
    “Gregorian chants.” Named after Pope Gregory, 540–604 C.E. , who was credited with creating the list of Seven Deadly Sins.
    “Those things are spooky.”
    I was wondering if she meant the sins or the gargoyles when Helen suddenly appeared at my side, startling me. Helen was the
     best physician’s assistant I’d ever seen. Very efficient, very dry sense of humor. Sometimes she affected an Irish brogue,
     even though she was two generations removed from her immigrant ancestors. “What’s that smell?” she asked.
    “Obsession,”
I said.
    “Smells like cat piss.” She hurried off, talking to me without turning around. “X rays are in on that sprain. No fractures.
     I’d send him home with a lecture about skateboarding after dark. The cold’s a cold, nothing more. Wants an excuse not to go
     to work tomorrow. Grown man looking for permission to play hooky. The woman’s your problem.” She disappeared around a corner.
    I looked through the folders, glancing at medical histories. Two of the patients had been here before. The woman seeking amphetamines
     was new. Thing was, Helen was usually right. All she needed was a few more years of schooling and she could have my job. She
     did it as well as I did already. Anyway, this wasn’t where I wanted to be. Another year here and I’d have saved up enough
     to open my pediatrics practice. By then Tim would be back working his miracles in the emergency room and we could try again
     to start our own family. We had a proper schedule now.
    The man with the cold sat on the examining table thumbing through an old
People
magazine. When I walked in he closed the magazine and slid it back into the plastic wall pocket. He was about thirty, my
     age, with curly black hair and heavy five o‘clock shadow. “Hi,” he sniffled.
    “Hello, Mr. Grieshum. Have a bad cold?”
    “No, thanks, I already have one.” He chuckled, which turned into coughing.