Free When It All Falls Apart (Book One) by Lucinda Berry Page B

was involved. She completely lost it if there was even so much of a trickle.
    I jumped out of my seat and ran to scoop up Rori’s crumpled body. She pushed me away. “Get away from me, Mommy. I want Daddy.” She screamed. She wiggled and pulled away from me in my arms, frantically struggling to get out of my arms and then she screamed it again, louder this time. “Get away from me, Mommy! I want Daddy!”
    I turned to look at Robin who had automatically jumped up with me when Rori fell and was standing behind me. She was looking at me curiously with her face wrinkled up. She caught my eye and quickly changed her face to one of sympathy. “Sometimes they just want their dads,” she said, but her voice was forced and awkward.
    David came running over and Rori easily collapsed into his arms as he wrapped them around her. “It’s okay, sweetie. You’re alright,” he cooed.
    Within minutes she was smiling again and skipping off to the grill to be his helper calling after Emma to follow her. She giggled as he picked her up and threw her over his shoulders as if she weighed nothing. Robin and I took our seats again.
    Fucking brat.
    I tried not to think of her that way, but sometimes I couldn’t help it. Why did she insist on embarrassing me? Why did she always have to make me look like such an idiot? Robin had immediately started chattering away about the latest sale at the Pottery Barn as if nothing had happened, but I knew something had shifted between us that day. She had wondered the same thing I knew the nurses were asking about me now––what kind of a mother was I?
    I didn’t know. I’d asked myself the same question on more than one occasion. I didn’t understand why I seemed to be such a terrible mom because it wasn’t as if I hadn’t wanted kids. The opposite was true. I’d wanted to be a mom from as far back as I could remember, but I had never counted on having a daughter who seemed completely indifferent to me. Nothing had happened how it was supposed to happen.
    I wanted to take a long shower before heading back to the hospital. The sterility of the hospital made me feel dirty, but I knew I didn’t have time to wash it off. Rori was going to expect Puppy as soon as she was finished. I pushed my ruminations aside and focused on the task at hand.
    By the time I got back to the hospital, Rori’s preparatory surgery was complete and she was sleeping peacefully back in her hospital room. David was by her side holding her hand. I placed Puppy on her chest.
    “How’d it go?” I asked.
    “Really well, surprisingly. They numbed her up pretty good and it only lasted like five minutes. She was sleeping again by the time we got back to the room.” He handed me a cup of coffee with the familiar Starbucks logo on the side. “The nurses told me there’s a Starbucks on the 2 nd floor connecting the two sides of the hospital. I figured you’d need this.”
    I smiled. “Thanks, hon.”
    Before I had a chance to take a sip, there was a knock at our door. Everyone always knocked before coming in, but it was more of a formality than anything because they were always through the door before we had a chance to invite them in. Dr. Koven came through first followed by two men and one woman. I didn’t know what I’d expected the geneticists to look like but I hadn’t expected them to look so young. They looked like they were barely out of college. The two men looked like the kind of people who had grown up sitting in front of computers all day playing video games. The woman was small and wispy. She looked like she was jumping out of her skin even though she was standing still and her eyes darted around the room taking everything in.
    “Let me begin by introducing myself. I’m Dr. Wilcox, the head of pediatric genetics at UCLA.” He stuck out his hand to me and then David. I glanced at his badge and noticed he had an M.D. and a Ph.D. behind his name. I’d never seen so many letters behind one name.
    “You