Survivor

Chapter Two

Whenever I help Mom and Dad at the clinic, Mom makes me wear pink scrubs covered in animal paw prints. She thinks it's adorable. I find it cheesy and embarrassing.

Marlene who wears the same scrubs in baby blue finds it silly too. But it's an animal clinic and well it's paw prints, what else do I have to explain?

Today I'm helping Marlene sort through the supplies. I place a pair of scissors into a jar of rubbing alcohol and then place the thermometer back into the draw. I then open a box of blue gloves and put it on the gray-pebbled counter.

I can hear Mom in the other room handling a dog that's barking loudly. She's speaking to it calmly and I can just picture her stoking its fur softly. She loves her animal patients and always has so much patience with them.

I like animals too but find it hard to always be so patient with them. Animals can't talk so it's hard to always understand what's bothering them.

Marlene curses and I look at her in surprise to see that she dropped the jar of rubbing alcohol and it shattered all over the floor. Her dark finger is bleeding.

"I'll go get the broom and mop," I tell her, rushing off. "You deal with your finger."

I hear her calling after me. "Thank you. You're a doll, love."

She's always calling everyone love. LOL.

I find the mop and broom easily since they're in the closet marked janitor supplies. There's no janitor though. Before lockdown each night the staff members take turns making sure the clinic is spick and span.

I rush back to Marlene to find that she already has her finger bandaged and started drying the floor with bounty and gingerly picking up the larger pieces of glass.

"If you move aside, I can sweep up."

She nods, stepping aside and I get to work.

While I sweep, she begins to prepare the water for the mop by adding in the cleaner.

As we're finishing up, I notice Dad walking past the opened door.

"Dad," I call after him.

"Sorry Sam, but now's not a good time. I promised Emma I'll be home to make her lunch."

He's briskly walking toward the clinic's front smoked-glass doors and I quickly follow after him.

"Emma didn't go to school today?" I was out of the house pretty early this morning.

"No, she wasn't feeling up to it."

"Oh," I say as we reach the doors.

Dad's hand is on the door handle ready to push, when the doors fly open almost crashing into him, and Mrs. Walter enters with her poodle Doris.

"Doctor Silverman." She smiles with a smear of bright red lipstick staining her mouth. "Just the man I was looking for."

"Uh." Dad looks at a lost. He was about to leave but now he has a popular client here and can't go as of yet...

"Hey, Dad." He looks my way. "You stay and I'll go home to make Emma lunch."

"You sure?" He asks, his dark green eyes searching my face.