To Have It All(47)
I laid a small blanket over Pim and brushed some of her baby-fine hair from her face. It had been a great day. “Goodnight, little sweetheart,” I whispered.
When Max’s cell vibrated in my pocket, I waited until after I’d closed the bedroom door to pull it out.
The name Dr. Banahan lit up on the screen.
Quickly realizing a doctor calling Max this late in the evening on a Friday was probably because it was important, I decided to take the call. Maybe Max had some medical issue I didn’t know about.
“Hello,” I answered, quietly. Waverly was in the kitchen washing dishes, and I didn’t want her to hear.
“Max,” a husky male voice said from the other end. “You finally answered.”
Scratching my head, I inhaled deeply. I didn’t like how this sounded. This is exactly how my conversation with Waverly started the day I woke up as Max, and she was definitely not a fan of Max. “Uh, yeah,” I voiced.
“Well I’ll get straight to the point, Max,” he followed. “With the way things ended at your appointment last week, I wasn’t sure if you’d be coming back or not. Will you be here tomorrow?”
Shit. What appointment? What if it was something I didn’t want to do, like a colon cleanse? The following day was a Saturday which also seemed odd. “Tomorrow is Saturday,” I pointed out. What doctor sees patients on Saturday?
“Yes. It is, Max,” he replied, sounding somewhat perturbed. “These Saturday sessions were your choice. You didn’t want to run into anyone in the waiting room.”
Really, Max? You made this doctor work on a weekend because you didn’t want to chance bumping into someone you know in the waiting room?
“What would we be doing at tomorrow’s appointment?” I inquired. I knew it would make Max sound off, but what choice did I have? It sounded like therapy, but I needed to be sure.
There was a brief silence before the doctor responded. “I’ve been concerned about you. When we last left off, you spoke about wanting to make some changes in your life. I think we should come back to that.”
What changes?
Dragging a hand down my face, I didn’t let out the groan I badly wanted to. Could Max be any more complicated? I had to go to the appointment, for many reasons. The first one being that if we took my body off life support, and somehow I remained living inside Max’s body, I needed to know everything I could about Max. Another reason would be I wanted to know about Max. I wanted to know what happened to him to make him such a selfish asshole.
“What time, doc?” I grumbled.
“Eleven, same as always,” he mumbled back.
After we hung up, I shoved the phone back in my pocket, wondering what I might discover about Max the following day. Rubbing my face, I decided not to think about it anymore that night. I was exhausted from thinking about Max; why was I Max? Would we switch back? Was I about to die? The unknown was eating me alive from the inside out. Deciding to check on Waverly, I headed toward the kitchen. She’d been in there a long time, and there weren’t that many dishes to wash. When she volunteered to do them, I told her I would, but of course she was stubborn and insisted. She didn’t want Max doing her any favors.
I’d finished the dishes, dried them, and put them away in record time. My crutches were leaning against the wall, so I did it all hobbling around on one foot. Not bad for an injured lady. I would have much rather put Pim down, but with bathing, changing, and dressing her, it would have taken me forever, and I would have needed Max’s help. Letting him do it while I took care of the dishes ensured space, and it also ensured we didn’t have to speak to each other. I was doing my best to limit our interaction, but it was difficult when we were living together for the most part.
When Helen was there, it helped. Not just because she physically helped with everything, but she was also good at playing a buffer between Max and me. Unfortunately, after she got off the phone with her son, she’d had to leave. Apparently, he’d had a bad day, and she wanted to go home and make him a special dinner.
My cell rang where it sat on the counter and even from where I stood, I could see it was Matt.
“Damn,” I muttered to myself as I hopped over to it. Picking it up, I stared at the screen, biting my lower lip as I contemplated answering it. I didn’t want to lie to him. He didn’t deserve it, but if I told him what’d happened, he’d probably try to come home early, especially if he found out Pimberly and I were living with Max. His head would probably spontaneously combust if he discovered that fun little fact. Setting the phone back on the counter, I decided to let it go to voicemail.
After I had poured myself a glass of wine, I continued cleaning the kitchen. As I wiped the counters, I found Max’s keys. They were within Pimberly’s reach, and I worried if she managed to get them in her grasp she’d either put them in her mouth or lose them. Opening the drawer closest to the kitchen entrance, looking for a place to hide them, I found a practically empty and very tidy junk drawer. And right in the center was it.
A picture.
A picture of me and Max.
Touching my neck, I fought to swallow as emotion lodged in my throat. I remembered the day the photo was taken like it was yesterday.
It was a Thursday. Max had been on edge all week waiting for a call that would tell him if he got the job he’d been pining for. He’d been tense all week. So that day I called in sick to my waitressing job and packed us a picnic. Picnics for me growing up consisted of bologna sandwiches and chips, but Max wasn’t a bologna type of guy. I spent a small fortune getting the cheese, meat, grapes, and wine I knew he liked, but the money didn’t matter. I just wanted to help him relax. That was my mission.