Paula's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Paula's mother had been in the clinic for eleven days, and the town might as well have been the moon. Six miles lay between the family's rundown cottage and Cedar Clinic. Paula had no car, no money for a ride, and a father who slept off his bottles until noon. Every day she visited, her mother got a little stronger. Every day she missed, Paula felt the hope drain out of her chest. Today the cottage door was locked from the inside, her father snoring in the chair, and Paula stood on the sagging porch with no way to get across town. She tried her bike first. The back tire hung flat and split. She pushed it anyway, past chipped fences and quiet yards, until her legs shook and the sun climbed high. Two miles in, she gave up and left the bike against a post. Then she walked. She counted her steps to keep from crying. She thought about her mother's thin hands and the way she smiled even when the medicine made her sick. By the time the clinic's clean blue walls came into view, Paula's shoes had worn a blister into her heel. She limped through the door. A woman in a white coat looked up from the front desk. She had long curly hair and a stethoscope around her neck. Paula had seen her before, moving fast down the halls. "You walked here," Dollie said. It wasn't a question. She came around the desk and knelt to Paula's level. "All that way. In this heat." "I have to see my mom." Paula's voice cracked. "Nobody would bring me." Dollie studied her blistered heel, her red face, her shaking hands. Something in her expression hardened, not at Paula, but at whatever had let a girl walk six miles alone. "Come on," she said. "Your mother's awake. She's been asking for you." Paula sat by the bed for an hour. Her mother held her hand and told her the color was coming back to her cheeks. Paula believed it. She believed the miracle was close. When visiting time ended, Dollie walked Paula to the door. "How were you planning to get home?" Paula didn't answer. Dollie's mouth pressed thin. She pulled a card from her coat and wrote a number on the back. "You call me. Not your father. Me. I'll arrange your rides from now on." She pressed the card into Paula's hand and closed her fingers around it. "A child should not be walking highways to see her sick mother. That stops today." Paula rode home in the front seat of Dollie's car, the card safe in her pocket. The crossing was solved. But Dollie's questions circled in Paula's mind the whole way. Where was your father. Who packs your lunch. Who takes care of you. Paula had lied and said everything was fine. She could tell Dollie hadn't believed a word.