The Day My Family Left Me to Die novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Dr. Penfield's Office

My mother's office had not changed in ten years.

The same diplomas hung in the same black frames, and the same dead plant sat on the filing cabinet.

On the shelf behind her desk stood a photograph of the four of us on the dock at the lake, with Dad holding up a fish.

"Sit," my mother said.

She sat down across from me instead of behind the desk.

She had taken off her white coat and her eyes were red at the rims.

"I don't know your name beyond the badge," she said. "Hattie. You've worked nights here three years."

I nodded.

"You don't speak."

I touched my throat and shook my head.

"Can you write?"

I took out the pen, and she slid a prescription pad across the desk.

I wrote: YES.

She read it and nodded slowly, and her mouth tightened.

"Last night you lay in bay six across from my daughter," she said. "You stared at her all night, and I saw you do it."

I wrote: I SAW HER COME IN.

"Did she say anything to you?"

My pen stopped over the paper.

If I wrote the truth, she would have security walk me to the psych ward, and a sedative would hold me there until Monday.

I wrote: SHE ASKED FOR HER MOTHER.

My mother read it.

The sound she made was very small, and then she put her hand over her face and sat that way for a long time.

I wanted to go around the desk and lay my head on her knee.

I kept the pen still and let her cry.

"I stepped over her," she said at last, behind her hand. "I looked at a young woman bleeding and I thought, a decoy, and I stepped over her. I have taught residents for thirty years never to do that."

She wiped her face with her wrist.

"Everyone says I did what I could with what I knew. Nolan. Chad. Blythe. They say it so fast."

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