Free The Doctor's Little Girl by Alex Reynolds

her that she looked great and let her go to class like that, and everyone had laughed.
    Sitting on the table, Molly began to cry, partially because she was upset about what Rebecca had said and partially because she felt so stupid that she had just run out of the break room at her job to cry because someone asked her about ironing. She was sure that Dr. Harrington would laugh at her for acting this way, and maybe it would be the first step to him seeing just how pathetic she really was. She balled herself up, put her head on her knees, and sobbed as quietly as she could. No one could be stupider than her.
    Molly’s crying was interrupted by a knock on the door. She didn’t say anything, but drew her legs in closer to her chest and tightened her grip on herself, trying to disappear. She heard someone come into the room and shut the door, but didn’t budge. Then she felt a strong hand on her shoulder.
    “Hey, little girl, what’s the matter?” Andrew’s voice asked, his tone soft and gentle.
    Again, Molly didn’t say anything, she just kept crying.
    “Molly,” he said again, his voice a little firmer, “tell me what’s going on.”
    Molly shook her head. “I’m stupid,” she muttered. “I’m sorry I’m crying. I’m sorry I’m so dumb and I act like this.”
    Andrew sighed deeply. “You’re not dumb, Molly. You’re just a sensitive little girl. That’s okay. Rebecca didn’t meant to set you off. She was just trying to be nice.”
    Molly peeked out of her ball angrily. “No, she wasn’t,” she accused bitterly. “She was teasing me. She was making fun of me like everyone always has.”
    Andrew sat down next to Molly on the table and forced her onto his lap. She struggled for a moment but soon acquiesced and cuddled into him. She couldn’t stop crying.
    “Why do you think that Rebecca was making fun of you, Molly?” he asked.
    Molly didn’t think, she knew, but she didn’t want to argue with Andrew. She was surprised by his patience with her so far and didn’t want to push it.
    “She was asking me if I knew how to iron, because my clothes always look wrinkly, I guess,” she tried to explain. “People always made fun of the way I looked.”
    “What did people make fun of you for?” Dr. Harrington asked, sweetly and not accusing in the least.
    “Because I was poor and my mom is crazy, so she could never take care of me right, so I always looked like…” she hesitated with the word and then blurted out “trash.”
    It felt bitter in her mouth and made her tears renew themselves. As Andrew held her, she confided all the things that she tried never to tell anyone to him. She talked about how her father sold drugs and how he had been arrested when she was a little girl, and how his arrest had pushed her unstable mother over the edge with her emotional issues. It left her withdrawn and depressed, forcing Molly to take care of herself from an early age.
    She talked about how her classmates had mocked her and how she had never made real connections with anyone, and how desperately alone she had always felt. She told him that her mother had eventually had to be put away in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt and that she remained there, and that her father had never tried to make contact with her after getting released from prison.
    She couldn’t believe that she was telling him all this, but she especially couldn’t believe that he kept holding onto her and calmly stroking her hair as she spoke. When she finished, Andrew held her quietly for a moment. “Do you still like me?” she asked, entirely unsure of what the answer would be.
    “Of course I still like you, little girl,” he told her with a laugh. “I knew that there was something in your past that you didn’t want to talk about. It doesn’t make you any less of a person. It doesn’t make me care about you any less.”
    Molly looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Promise?” she asked.
    “I promise,” he told her.
    “And you