To My Romeo, with Love novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Registrar

They let me out on Monday morning with a bag of antibiotics and a lecture.

By ten o'clock I was back at Wornall Cancer Center, in a mask, with Fraser holding the door.

"You should be in bed," he said.

"I will be. After."

"This is a bad idea."

"It's a great idea. It's just going to be loud."

The ground-floor waiting room was full of people in recliners and wheelchairs, waiting for blood draws.

Shelby sat behind the registration desk in a lilac blazer, laughing into her phone.

She saw us and her whole face lit up.

"Laurel!" she said. "And Fraser. Hon, you look wonderful, I'm so glad you're out."

I walked up to the desk and pulled the mask down.

"Take the page down," I said.

Shelby's smile didn't shift.

"I'm sorry, which page?"

"The one with my picture on it. You took it in this room, from that chair, while I held my hat. You never asked me."

"Oh, hon." Her voice dropped and went soft. "I was so worried about you. I'm only trying to help. People want to help, they just don't know how."

"You looked up my name in the schedule," Fraser said.

His voice was perfectly level, and it frightened me a little.

"You pulled her up on a hospital computer, you took a photograph, and you posted her diagnosis for the whole neighborhood. Is that what you do with the schedule, Shelby?"

"I only saw her name!"

"You saw a bald woman with a beanie in her lap."

"Everyone can see that!"

Two chairs over, an older man in a plaid shirt looked up.

A woman with a scarf around her head put down her magazine.

Shelby noticed the audience at once.

I watched her turn toward them.

"I'm so sorry," she said, raising her voice slightly, the kind of tremble you can only get by practicing. "I'm just trying to raise money for a friend. It's all going to her. Every penny. She doesn't want help, and I understand, she's so proud, but cancer treatment is expensive, and I couldn't sit by."

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