Independence Day. Amy Frazier

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      Change her name? Her parents would freak. “I don’t know—”

      “You don’t know?” Her friend’s look turned harsh. “Do you want to consider your options? Like the losers’ lunch table? It’s no different in high school than it was in junior high. Maybe worse.”

      That table with the fat kids. The picked-on, misunderstood and unattractive kids. The ones who fit in with no group whatsoever except losers. In a couple schools she’d been one of them.

      She wasn’t going back to that table. Not ever. A new name and identity suddenly appealed to her.

      “Aside from picking a name, what do I have to do?”

      “Nothing yet.” Keri slipped her arm around Gabriella’s shoulders. “Just leave everything to me.”

      With her future in Keri’s hands, Gabriella’s thoughts slipped back to her parents. She wondered if her father had made it to the emergency room yet. And hoped that Baylee’s mom wasn’t on duty this afternoon.

      “WOULD MUSIC HELP?” Martha asked from the driver’s seat.

      “No.” Lying on his stomach in the back of the Weisses’ SUV, Nick spoke between clenched teeth. “Thank you.”

      This day had turned out to be—literally—one big pain in the ass.

      “We’re almost there, honey,” Chessie reassured him. “I can see the sign for the emergency room.”

      “Just drop me off.” He knew the E.R. took cases in order of severity. Dog bite would be way down the priority list. He didn’t need two women—one he was royally ticked at—hovering over him for a couple hours. “I’ll call a cab when I’m done.”

      “Nonsense,” Martha countered cheerfully. “You’ll need moral support.”

      He thought he heard a suppressed giggle.

      Shifting his weight, he groaned at the stab of pain. Cautiously, he felt his backside. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but his trousers—his new trousers—were ripped badly, and the fabric stuck to his skin with what he could only assume was dried blood. He’d have to walk into the E.R. with an immodest patch of himself hanging out.

      “Do you have anything I could tie around my waist?” he asked. “Just so I don’t give the world a free show.”

      “Hold on,” Martha replied, pulling to a stop under the hospital portico.

      The back doors to the SUV opened, and Chessie handed him the sheet she’d been wearing. He nearly threw his back out, turning to see what she had on. A tank top and a pair of jeans with the store labels still hanging off them.

      “Martha let me wear a pair she picked up at the mall,” she explained. “Wrap the sheet around you.”

      “I’m not wearing that damned sheet.” He struggled to slide backward out of the SUV. “What else do you have?”

      “This,” Martha replied briskly, tying a huge plastic Macy’s bag around his waist. Empty, it flapped behind him like half a loincloth. “Now, lean on your wife. I’m going to park the car and wait in it. I picked up plenty of new magazines today, so don’t think I’m in a rush.”

      Chessie threaded her arm under his and across his back, but he pulled away. “I don’t need help.”

      “Nick, I’m sorry. No one could’ve anticipated this.”

      As he limped ahead of her through the emergency entrance, he winced at the pain dogging his every step. Warm moisture trickling down the back of his thigh told him the wound had reopened.

      “May I help you?” the nurse behind the desk asked.

      “A dog bit me,” Nick replied. “I think I need stitches.”

      The nurse handed him a clipboard with a form attached. “Do you know if the dog had been immunized for rabies?”

      “The owner assured me it had.” Call that the only plus in this doggone day.

      “Fill out the form, and a doctor will look at you as soon as possible.” The nurse motioned to a row of chairs against the wall. “You can have a seat over there.”

      “He can’t.” Chessie pointed to his backside. “Sit, that is.”

      “Chessie,” he growled, grabbing the clipboard. He headed for the corner.

      “Mr. McCabe! What you doin’ in here?”

      Nick turned slowly to see Chris Filmore, the high school’s star running back, hobbling on crutches out of the examination area. A bright white cast covered his left leg. The sight did not bode well for the upcoming football season.

      “What happened, Chris?”

      “Broke my leg.” The kid looked sheepish. “Playing Frisbee at the beach. What are you in for?”

      “A dog bit me.”

      “Where?”

      “In the square.”

      “No, man. I mean where did he bite you?”

      How did a high-school principal refer to that particular part of the anatomy with a student?

      As Chris surveyed the plastic shopping bag draped over Nick’s backside, understanding crept into his face. “Oh, the glute.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “And here I was feelin’ embarrassed.”

      “Glad I could ease your pain,” Nick muttered and held up the clipboard to signal the end of the conversation.

      “See you in September.” Chris headed for the exit, amusement lacing his farewell.

      Chessie stood wide-eyed before Nick.

      “I suppose you find this all very funny, too,” he said.

      “I don’t see humor in someone else’s discomfort…but getting all tense isn’t going to help the situation.”

      “Thank you, Doctor.” He wedged himself in the corner of the waiting room and, standing, began to fill out the patient information sheet. It wasn’t her butt all bruised and bleeding under a red, white and blue sale bag.

      “I’m going to call the girls.” She backed away. “Can I get you a soda?”

      “No.” He kept writing. The fluorescent glare made his head hurt.

      When she left, he felt suddenly smaller that he was hanging on to his anger. He felt weary, too. Bone weary. He handed the completed form back to the desk nurse.

      An hour and forty-five minutes later, he lay facedown on an examination table as a cheerful young resident stitched up his backside. “So, Mr. McCabe,” she said, “how’d you happen to anger this particular dog?”

      “He was rescuing me,” Chessie СКАЧАТЬ