“At first glance, I thought she might need surgery,” I said. “Now that I’ve had more time to assess her, there may be a chance we can rehab her without having to go that route.”
Her green eyes were watery when they lifted to mine, but even the tears couldn’t hide the fierceness in her gaze. “That’s right. I recognize you now. You’re the physical therapy doctor. Why are you down here with my daughter? She needs a real doctor.”
A real doctor? Wow.
I had about ten retorts right at the tip of my tongue, but antagonizing a young patient’s mother was just wrong. Besides, I’d have chosen the wrong profession if I took offense to everything people said when they were stressed and emotional.
Over the years, I’d learned to brush it off. Retorts always jumped to mind, but I never let them get any further than that. Well, almost never.
“I am a real doctor,” I said, my voice as measured and even as always. “I’m trained in multiple disciplines. Emergency trauma medicine and surgery being among those. Physical therapy is simply my passion.”
Annoyance flicked across her gaze. “That’s great for you, buddy, but you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here with her.”
“I fill in for the emergency department when they’re short-staffed. I’ve taken some X-rays of her arm. Would you like to see those, or would you prefer my credentials first?”
Her brows rose, but then she licked her lips and sighed. “The X-rays.”
“Great.” I gathered the ones I wanted to show her and put them up against the lightbox. “These look good, which is what led me to believe the swelling might have made her arm look worse than it is. We’ll only know for sure once she wakes up and we can determine her range of movement, but we may be able to avoid surgery.”
“Maybe?” A deep V formed between her brows when she looked at me. “Why maybe? If you’re so qualified, why can’t you read these? You also still haven’t told me what happened.”
I filled my lungs with air and counted to five. “I can read them, but they only show us so much. Adi has no fractured or broken bones, but that being said, she may still need surgery if there’s other damage on the inside that we can’t see here. There are a lot of maybes right now because we’ve only just stabilized her. We’ll learn more as we run more tests, but there was only so much we could do before you got here.”
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” she muttered. “He did this, right? It was Craig’s fault?”
“It seems so,” I said. “You’ll have to speak to your husband about what exactly happened. I can only tell you what the paramedics told us.”
She glared at me, fury raging in the depths of her eyes. “He’s not my husband. He’s my ex.”
“Sure. I didn’t know if you’d gotten the divorce yet or not.” I took the X-rays down and slid them back into the envelope, glancing at her. “He’s kind of a dick.”
“That’s why I said he’s my ex,” she replied, shaking her head before turning back to her daughter. “There’s also no kind of about it. He’s a total and complete dick who just so happens to have a small one.”
I snorted, trying to bite back my laughter. She’s a feisty one, all right.
Even though it was obvious she was having a tough time with all of this, it was also clear she was not one to be babied and coddled. She wasn’t about to faint, puke, or bawl her eyes out.
But I still felt the need to reassure her. It was so instinctual that I couldn’t help it, and besides that, no mother should have to go through something like this. Especially not when the father who caused it couldn’t give a fuck.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said quietly. “She’s going to be fine. We’re all here for you.”
“I don’t need your doctorly bedside manner,” she snapped, sending yet another glare my way. “This should never have happened. She shouldn’t have gotten hurt. What did he tell you anyway? Did he even bother telling you what happened?”
I shook my head, trying to tread carefully while being honest at the same time. “Adi appears to have fallen off the back of his motorcycle. She wasn’t wearing a helmet, but it seems like her arm took the brunt of her fall instead of her head. We’ll monitor her