After (15 page)

Devon tunes her mom out. It’s always the same blah blah blah—her various sacrifices, all her best years gone, all the things she could’ve done, not that she regrets any of it, but still. Devon finishes rinsing her face, buries it in a towel to dry her skin. The old rage starts bubbling to the surface, and for a second she forgets about how awful she feels. She thinks about what she wishes she could do right now. How she would look right at her mom, right into her eyes, and say, Um, who worries about
whom
around here? Who takes care of
whom
? But absorbing the blame is so much easier. And anyway, Devon’s too wiped out to exert the kind of energy the subsequent conversation would take, so she just says, “Well, it’s not just the tuna, Mom. I mean—” She takes a deep breath and busies herself with hanging up her towel then, because she knows what she’s about to say isn’t true. Yet. It isn’t true
yet
. “I kind of started my period today, and my stomach’s a little crampy from that.”

“Oh.” Devon’s mom moves to stand beside Devon to peer in the mirror, checking out her own hair to ensure that the wiry strand sticking up isn’t actually a rogue gray but a blonde highlight. “Well, in that case you better wear a pad today, even with a tampon. That’ll kind of give the doc that subtle hint that he probably doesn’t need to be poking and prodding around down there.” She shrugs, rearranges a few strands of hair. “Saves a lot on embarrassment. For everybody.” She smiles at Devon then, pats her shoulder. “Works every time. Oh, and take some Midol. It’ll zap those cramps”—she snaps her fingers—“like
that.
”

When her mom’s gone, Devon looks back into the mirror.

Thanks, Mom
. Relief washes over her. Devon closes her eyes.

She’s never felt so free from something in her life.

Dom is quiet, just watching Devon. Pulling at her ponytail. Finally Dom clears her throat and speaks. “This was when again?”

“September,” Devon says.

Dom slides her yellow legal pad toward herself. She picks up a pen, starts writing. “So, did you go?”

“To the appointment?”

Dom looks up from her legal pad. “That’s what we’re discussing here, Devon.”

“Yeah. My mom took a quick shower and changed her clothes. And then we went.”

“And this was your regular doctor?”

Devon doesn’t say anything.

Dom taps her pen on her legal pad—
tap
,
tap
,
tap
. “Devon?”

“I don’t really have a regular doctor.” Devon shifts on her stool. “I don’t really get sick, so it’s no big deal. And with my mom’s jobs, we don’t have the greatest health care. We only go when we really have to.”

“Okay, but you went that day. So, where did you go?”

Devon shrugs. “One of those walk-in clinic places. That’s where we go when we
do
get sick or something. I went there only once before. I was twelve, I think. In sixth grade. I cut my finger. I was trying to chop up a carrot.” Devon looks down at her right index finger. She’d had a scar there for a long time; it’s faded now. In the years since, she’s jammed that finger more times than she can count, stopping goals. An ice pack and a couple of days off of soccer pretty much took care of it.

Dom returns to her legal pad, writes again. “Where was this clinic? Because I don’t remember coming across anything about it in your file. Your medical records are pretty thin.”

“Who knows? We took the bus.”

Dom looks up again, frowns. “You don’t know where you went? Come on, Devon. Don’t play dumb with me.”

Devon glares at her. “I wasn’t paying attention, okay? I wasn’t feeling very good. All I know is it was somewhere past Proctor on 26th Avenue or something. And it took, like, twenty minutes to get there.” She crosses her arms. “Happier with that answer?”

“Okay, okay,” Dom says. “Relax.”

“Well, you’re always accusing me of lying! I’m really sick of it.”

“As you may recall, you haven’t been entirely forthcoming thus far in our relationship. It’s my job to question you, draw your story out, okay?” Dom opens the DAVENPORT file. “Hold on a sec; let’s just see if I can find a record of that appointment.”

“Fine, whatever.” Devon stands, stretches her arms high over her head. She can no longer hear the music from the exercise video. She twists around, looks back at the door. Wonders where the girls are now.

Devon drops back on her stool, watches Dom as she sifts through her files. After a moment, she sighs, then folds her arms on the table and lays her head down on top of them to wait.

“Yes!” Dom says at last. “Got it.”

Devon peeks up at Dom; she has pulled out a page. She looks it over briefly before shoving it across the table to Devon.

It’s one of those generic sport physical forms, marked up with checks and illegible writing, and on the bottom a signature above a rubber-stamped address.

“Right there in your school records.” Dom smiles, points to the rubber-stamped address at the bottom of the form. “This is where you went, in case you’re wondering: the Urgent Care Center on North 26th Street—5702 North 26th Street, to be exact.”

Devon feels that uneasiness creeping back over her. Records exist for everything.

“So, we’ve got the clinic’s address. The doctor’s name, not that I can actually
read
his or her name on it. Doctors’ writing is the hardest to decipher for some reason—”

“
His
name,” Devon mumbles.

Dom raises her eyebrows, surprised with Devon’s contribution. “Okay.
His
name. Thank you. Now we’re getting somewhere.” Dom returns the sheet back to its place in her files. “So, ready? Tell me as many details about this appointment as you can.”

Devon sits up, rests her face in her hands, rubs at her eyes. “What do you want to know?”

“How about start at the beginning? From when you first walked into the clinic.”

Devon looks down at her wristband, pulls at it.

The waiting room is packed. Devon scans the room for an empty seat. There’s only one; it’s next to an old man with long, greasy gray hair and beard. He’s digging under his fingernails with a paper clip.

Together, Devon and her mom walk up to the reception desk.

The woman behind the desk looks up. “Name?”

Her mom pokes Devon with her elbow.

Devon clears her throat. “Devon. Devon Davenport.”

The woman consults a printed schedule. “At ten twenty?”

“Yes.”

The woman crosses something off with a pencil, then hands a clipboard with papers to Devon over the counter. A cheap black pen is attached with string to the upper right-hand corner of the clipboard. “We don’t have any information on record for you, Devon, so if you would, please fill out this new patient questionnaire—”

“But she’s not a new patient,” her mom says. “She’s been here before. She’d cut her finger and needed stitches.”

The woman smiles, forcing politeness. “She currently doesn’t exist in our database. So, to us, she’s new.” She turns back to Devon. “When you’re finished, dear, please bring this back up here to me.” Then the woman turns back to Devon’s mom. “Payment is due at the time of the appointment, ma’am. I’ll need to make a copy of your insurance card—”

“Uh—” Her mom pushes Devon toward the waiting area. “Why don’t you just go ahead and sit down and work on that? While I get this money thing figured out? ’Kay, hon?”

“Okay.” Devon doesn’t want to witness how her mom is going to dance around the payment issue anyway. She feels guilty enough as it is. She should’ve just gotten the physical at school during registration like she did last year. That was only twenty dollars. She could’ve paid for it herself out of her babysitting money.

She moves across the room to the one empty seat and sits down. Her body, every limb, feels drained, her brain foggy. The bearded man beside her has the predictable reek of cigarette smoke about him. She wraps herself tight in her sweatshirt and rests her head on her hand, the clipboard on her lap.

She skims the two pages of questions, then starts on answering them. Some of them are easy—does she smoke, drink alcohol, take recreational drugs? No, no, and no. Which medications is she taking currently? None. But the others, the ones about family health history, are not. Devon cannot answer questions about people she’s never seen, never learned anything about. Her mom is the only relative Devon’s ever known. She’s from Spokane, was a high school cheerleader once. She’d left home one night when she was sixteen because she had gotten pregnant, and she never went back. That’s all Devon knows. And her father? Devon doesn’t even know his name. The one time her mom ever discussed him in any detail was on Devon’s seventh birthday. She had said that Devon could ask one question about her father, and she’d answer it, and that would be Devon’s birthday present. Devon had asked what her daddy looked like. “You have his exact eyes,” her mom had said. “And his straight black hair. You have his face—its shape, the nose, the eyebrows. He was tall and very athletic. His hands were big. And that’s all I’m going to say.”

Devon looks up from the clipboard. Maybe her mom would know the answers to the heart problem, glaucoma, and cancer questions. But she is already occupied. She’s found a seat near the window and a man about her age. She’s smiling her big smile, moving her hands all around as she talks. Devon wouldn’t want to interrupt the Potential Boyfriend flirt act, would she?

Devon completes the questionnaire the best she can. She brings it back to the woman at the reception desk.

“Thanks, dear,” the woman says to her.

“I left some things blank. I’m sorry—”

“Oh, that’s okay. You can go sit down again. We’ll call you.”

Devon slumps back down into her seat, rests her head on the wall behind her. She closes her eyes, takes slow breaths, tries to relax.

Sometime later, Devon hears her name. She sits up, looks around, momentarily confused about where she is and why. Had she been asleep? At the far end of the waiting room, a woman is standing with an open door behind her, smiling. She’s wearing a green scrub jacket with multicolored dancing dinosaurs all over it. In her hands is a manila folder. “Devon?” she says again.

Devon feels a stab of adrenaline in her gut then, because she remembers where she is. She stands—her arms shaking as she pushes off the armrests. The room has cleared out, she realizes. Only a handful of people remain now, with plenty of open seats.

“That’s me,” Devon finally manages to say. “I’m Devon.”

Her mom stands up, too, from the other side of the room. She’s holding a magazine, her index finger marking her place. The man she was talking with is gone. She bends down to pick up her purse from off the floor, arranges the strap on her shoulder.

The woman at the door nods at Devon’s mom. “You’re going to tag along, Mom? Or—” The woman looks back at Devon then, raises her eyebrows, the gesture a question.

Or.
Devon looks across the room. Her mom’s eyes are wide and bright, so hopeful. She’s twisting a strand of her long blonde hair around and around her index finger, watching Devon closely.

Does
she want her mom to come in with her? She’d hear everything that is said then, hear the doctor’s questions, hear Devon’s answers to them. Devon isn’t sure what all that will entail exactly, or even why she’s become so anxious about this appointment. But what she does know is the embarrassment she’ll feel, having her mom sitting in the room with her, seeing everything. Making her chatty remarks. But . . . that hopeful face. So pathetic.

Devon takes a deep breath, shrugs. “I guess, if you want to.”

Devon’s mom smiles at Devon, relieved. “Want to? What do you think? Of course!”

“Well then, ladies, right this way.” The woman with the manila folder turns toward the door. Devon and her mom follow her through it.

The woman has Devon stand on the scale first, takes her height and weight. She annotates the information onto a form that’s inside the manila folder. Then she has Devon sit down, takes her blood pressure and pulse and temperature. “Hmm,” she says after reading the thermometer. “A hundred point three. You’re running a low-grade fever. Feeling under the weather today?”

Devon shrugs. “I don’t know. Kind of.”

“And your blood pressure is a teensy bit high,” the woman says as she writes into the manila folder. “Just a tad.” She smiles at Devon. “Nervous?”

Devon tries to smile back. “Maybe a little.”

“So,” Devon’s mom says, “what percentile is she in?”

The woman looks up. “Excuse me?”

“Her height and weight. What percentile—”

“Mom—” Devon starts.

The woman glances between Devon and her mom.

“What?” Devon’s mom says. “It’s a good thing to know, Devon. How you compare to other girls your age and everything. What’s wrong with asking that?”

“Well . . . ” The woman flips to the back of the folder, runs her fingers along a chart. “Five feet, eight and a half inches . . . a hundred and twenty-nine pounds. . . .” She looks up at Devon’s mom. “She’s in the ninetieth of height and fortieth in weight. Tall and slender.” She smiles at Devon. “One of the lucky ones.”

“She’s already an inch taller than me,” Devon’s mom says. “Unbelievable. But the weight thing, well, I’m not saying.” She winks at the woman. “I’m not fifteen anymore, dammit.”

The woman laughs. “Weren’t those the days? When we didn’t worry about stepping on a scale.”

Devon’s mom plays with her hair again, frowns. “Yeah . . . it was . . .”

The woman leads Devon and her mom to an examination room, opens the door, pulls a fresh paper sheet across the exam table. She turns back toward the door, smiles at Devon and her mom one last time. “Have a seat. Dr. Katial will be in. It’ll be just a few minutes.” She closes the door quietly behind her.