Mom! Don't Pull The Curtain! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Hostetler

Mom pulls the curtain, sees everything, slaps him, then reads his badge. Her phone rings: Stanley.

The curtain ripped back along its track with a screech.

Mom stood there with her mouth open.

Dr. Hostetler was still between my knees.

His white coat hung open, his belt was undone, and his trousers were around his ankles.

He had both hands on my hips and he was still inside me.

Nobody moved.

I could hear the clock over the door.

Then Mom said, very softly, "Take your hands off my daughter."

He pulled out slowly and let the paper gown drop over my legs.

He bent for his trousers and pulled them up, buckled his belt, and straightened with his coat closed.

His face was as calm as when he'd walked in.

"Mrs. Marlin," he said. "She is an adult, and she was in no pain."

Mom hit him.

It was a flat, loud, open-handed slap, and it turned his head to the side.

He didn't touch his cheek.

"You are a doctor," she said. "My child came in here itching."

"Mom," I said.

"Be quiet, Susanna."

"Mom, I asked him."

Mom turned and stared at me.

"You asked him."

"Yes."

"You asked a man with his hands on you to do that, with me standing right here?"

"I didn't know you'd see," I said, and that was the worst thing I could have said.

Her hand shot out again, and I flinched.

She didn't hit me.

She picked something off the steel tray beside the table and held it up.

It was the cucumber.

It was long and green and slick, and every inch of it was mine now.

"Is this from my crate?" she said.

The room went silent.

"Mom."

"The second row. The long ones. I've been short all month."

Dr. Hostetler made a sound in his throat.

It could have been a cough.

Mom pointed the cucumber at him.

"You laugh and I will put this somewhere you'll feel it."

"I'm not laughing," he said.

His mouth was very straight and his eyes were on me.

I looked at the ceiling again.

Mom dropped the cucumber back on the tray and wiped her hand on her cardigan.

"Get dressed," she told me.

She yanked the curtain closed around us, and I put my jeans on with my hands shaking.

Through the gap in the fabric I could see Dr. Hostetler washing his hands at the sink.

He washed them for a long time.

When I came around the curtain, Mom was reading his name tag, bent so close her nose almost touched it.

"Justin Hostetler," she said.

"Yes."

"Hostetler."

She said it slowly, as if she had hoped for a different name.

"Yes," he said. "You're Carol. My father has shown me your photo."

"I was going to meet you properly," Mom said. "Not like this."

"Meet him?" I said. "Mom, what are you talking about?"

Mom didn't look at me.

"Stanley gave me the card," she said to him. "He keeps putting off the introduction, so I thought I'd walk in with a sick daughter and see for myself."

"You used me as an excuse?" I said.

"Don't you start. You were the one with the cucumber."

Someone knocked twice on the door.

A nurse put her head in and looked at the three of us.

"Dr. Hostetler, Ms. Hostetler says room three has been shut for twenty-two minutes. Your next patient is waiting."

"Tell her I'm finishing a chart," he said.

The nurse stared at Mom's flushed face and at my crooked sweater, then left without a word.

"Who is Ms. Hostetler?" Mom asked.

"My ex-wife," he said. "She runs the front office, and she notices everything."

Mom's purse buzzed on the counter.

She snatched it up, and the screen lit her face blue.

There was a picture of a gray-haired man in a flannel shirt, grinning, and under it the name Stanley.

A small red heart sat beside the name.

I had never seen that picture in my life.

"Who is Stanley?" I said.

Mom didn't answer.

Dr. Hostetler dried his hands on a paper towel, one finger at a time.

"That's my father," he said. "Answer it, Carol. He'll keep calling."

The phone rang and rang.

Mom held it in both hands and didn't answer.

"Mom," I said. "Who is Stanley?"

She finally looked at me, and her eyes were wet.

"Susanna," she said. "He's the man I'm going to marry."

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