The Doctor's Fake Nanny(7)

They weren't ever really around, my parents, and so they stuck me in  exactly the kind of school you're suggesting for Sophie. I hated it. I  cried every time I went but it didn't matter. They sent me and I got  punished, and no amount of pleading could get me out of it. When my dad  died I was only six, and things got worse.



My mom was so sad but she wouldn't let me be. I had to grow up, to  straighten myself out. I did it, but it was never a very pleasant  experience. My mother, she was a very harsh woman, is a very harsh  woman. I don't want that kind of environment for Sophie. Not ever."                       
       
           



       



"Of course you don't," I said quickly, eager to help him not to worry  any more than he had to for his little girl. "I'll help her, David.  She's a bright girl and I know I can teach her. And we'll have fun doing  it."



"Thank you. Really, thank you."



He stood up then, shutting his eyes and grimacing. He was pale and it  was clear that he was hurting. He looked down at me with a weak smile  and I stood, unsure of what I should do.



"Speaking of my mother, she will be here tomorrow for dinner. I was wondering if you could attend as well, to help with Sophie."



"Sure, that's not a problem. She's my little buddy."



"That's good to hear, but I feel that I should warn you. My mom is a  tough woman. She's difficult and, well, she's not the most tolerant  person. I don't know how to put that delicately."



I wasn't afraid of David's mother. I always did like a challenge.



"Oh don't you worry about me, David," I said with a mischievous grin, "I'm pretty sure I can handle her."



"I bet you can. Alright, dinner, then. Now if you don't mind, I'll be  heading off to bed. I've had a wicked headache all day and I can't seem  to shake it. Migraines. A tough thing to beat."



I nodded in sympathetic understanding and sat back down in relief. It  had been a good conversation, much better than I had expected it to be,  but it was still stressful. Talking to David Wyatt felt like navigating a  minefield. I was finally starting to feel a little bit better about  him, though, enough to wonder if maybe everything that had happened to  Nikki wasn't all his fault.



I felt that way right up until, halfway up the stairs, he pulled a  little bottle of pills out of his pocket and popped a few into his  mouth. That was what I had been looking for, right? Some kind of proof  that he was a drug addicted negligent doctor leaving dead patients in  his wake? So how come it felt so wrong to think that's what he was now?  What the hell was I going to do?





Chapter Four


David



God, these headaches were starting to get brutal. They were bad enough  that I had actually broken down and seen a doctor myself, which wasn't  something I was prone to do. I was absolutely that doctor cliché. Do as I  say and not as I do and all of that nonsense.



"It's stress, David, plain and simple. You've got to start taking care  of yourself. You've had an unbelievably trying couple of years, everyone  here knows that. You've got to start taking it a little bit easier,  okay? Speaking of which, how's your leg doing? Still in pain?"



"It's fine. It hurts occasionally but I still have the prescription you gave me."



"Need me to put in another one for you?"



"No, thanks. I've still got plenty. I try not to use them any more than absolutely necessary."



The doc gave me a suspicious look so I shoved my hand down in my pocket  and gave the bottle a little rattle. Sure, I carried them with me just  in case, but they were a last resort. I may have been a doctor but I  wasn't a fan of using medication myself.



"Alright, but take it easy, you hear me? You've got that little girl to think about now, too. Don't forget about that."



"Thanks for your time. I'll see you around."



That little girl. I had that little girl to take care of now. He was a  nice man and he meant well, but did he really think I had forgotten  about Sophie? Did he think that she had just slipped my mind the same  way one might sometimes forget to feed their cat? She was my brother's  daughter, for Christ's sake.



My brother. Just thinking about Mikey made my leg start to ache. I  winced at the pain, shaking it out and waiting for the wave to pass. It  was hard to tell if it was a legitimate pain or just a memory right now.  Sometimes it hurt when I thought about him. Then again, when I thought  about Mikey I hurt all over. Still, after almost two years.



Mikey was younger than me by a couple of years. Our relationship had  always been an interesting one. He was pretty much brilliant, and in  some ways he seemed like he was a decade older than me, maybe more.



In other ways, though, he was always a little bit of a child. He was a  dreamer, my brother. Both the youngest and the top of his class in Yale  Medical School. It was never about money for him though. He always  wanted to do something great, something worthwhile.



My brother wanted to save the world from the time he was small up until  the day he died. I almost believe he would have done it too, if things  had happened differently. Not for the first time I thought to myself  that the wrong brother had died. I was sure I wasn't the only one with  that opinion.                       
       
           



       



"Don't you want to see them, Daddy?"



Shit, I cringed just thinking about it. I could still hear Sophie from  way back when she first started talking, toddling up to Mikey and saying  something very similar to that. He had handled it so much better than  me. Infinitely better than me. I was never meant to father his daughter.  I was nowhere near as good at it as he had been.



Those two had been made for each other. Even Anna, Mikey's wife, noticed  it. Sophie had been a daddy's girl if ever there was one. From  practically the day she was born she had wanted nothing more than to be  right by his side. Hell, she looked exactly like him. I had to smile,  thinking about how goofy the two of them had been together. It was true  love, two perfectly matched quirky personalities.



It made it so much harder to take it when I heard her call me Daddy. I  knew why she did it. It was the natural thing for her to do. She was  still only four years old, still practically a baby, and I had a sinking  fear that she remembered very little of her parents. That just about  broke my heart, although it made me feel better to think that she  probably didn't remember what happened either. Jesus, I wish I didn't  remember it myself.



It was a camping trip. It was a vacation and it should have been fun.  And it was, up until the end. Mikey and I didn't get to see each other  nearly as much as I would have liked. We were just so busy all of the  time, every day. We kept telling each other that we were going to make  more time and when Anna insisted on taking Sophie on her first camping  trip Mikey asked me to come along. How do you say no to a request like  that from your kid brother? And I had barely even seen my own niece.  This would be a good start. The whole thing was almost perfect.



"Dr. Wyatt? Everything okay?"



Crap, I needed to get out of this hospital. Now that I knew that there  was pretty much nothing I could do about the headaches, because let's  face it, everyone has stress and I was pretty sure mine wasn't going  anywhere soon.



I knew the people around me meant well when they asked if I was alright,  but I was just so tired of answering that question. I felt like it was  the only question I had been answering for the past two years. I just  wanted to get home. At least things felt like they were starting to get a  little bit better on that front.



"Dr. Wyatt! David. How did everything go?"



I smiled at Kayla, happy to be asked something new. I liked the way she  asked me, too. There was something about the tone in her voice, the  expression on her face. When Kayla asked me how things went I could tell  she was genuinely interested in the answer. That was something you got  from a whole lot of people.



"It was alright. Fine, really."



"Did you learn anything useful?"



I laughed and rolled my eyes. It was always funny to me, being asked a  question like that about my experience with another doctor. Especially  when there was nothing of any use to report. This must be how other  people felt when they left my office and didn't like what they heard.  Maybe it was karma.



"Stress. Apparently it's no good."



She laughed, her striking green eyes shining with just a hint of  mischief. I watched her intently, hoping she wouldn't notice that I was  basically just staring at her. There was something about this girl.