Chapter 26

“To be continued.” Finn stood and grabbed Dolly, hoisting her up against one hip. His appointment obviously closer to arrival time than mine, it had still been a good forty minutes since we’d first sat down. Forty-five would have been better.

“Good luck,” I offered.

“You, too,” he said.

“Touch your what?” Pinky Bandage asked.

* * * *

Finn wasn’t yet back when my turn came another twenty minutes later. Apparently, there were two Dr. Hitches, a husband and wife team. Who knew? Not I, not until the nurse who came for me through a door at the other end of the waiting room explained the situation while she took my blood pressure, oxygen level, and temperature. Was orthopedics somehow romantic? Did they share wine by candlelight and coo at one another about broken femurs and carpal tunnel? Was the word bone a turn-on during foreplay?

I could see that, though not in the mature and purist anatomical sense of the word.