Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
I’d never spoken to her once, and she’d always struck me as kind of a bitch.
She was a chiropractor from what I’d learned from Keely—who had talked to her, though only in passing—and a really skilled one at that.
She had four grown kids, and a husband that was some big oil field man that was gone more than he was home.
For not having said two words to her, she had no problem coming up to the two of us in our Truth Tellers cuts with matching scowls on our face.
“I couldn’t help but hear the crying,” she said, looking pointedly at the kid in my arm that just wouldn’t stop.
I held the kid out like I’d been holding him earlier, and he instantly stopped crying.
The woman’s eyes laser focused on the kid in my arms and said, “He needs an alignment.”
“What makes you think that?”
She pointed at how I was holding him.
“That’s a traction hold you’re doing on him.” She started spouting off words and phrases that likely made a whole lot more sense to a person that was a chiropractor or a medical professional of some kind than a businessman.
“Will it make him stop crying?” Webber asked.
“It’s likely,” she answered, then explained about how, when they were born, they were squeezed through a tiny space, and sometimes their little bones got realigned in a way that wasn’t good.
She ended with, “Let me have him.”
I hesitated. “I don’t know you.”
She jerked her chin toward me and said, “Come. You can see all my accolades.”
I don’t know why, but I followed her.
Webber followed behind, still holding his sleeping baby in that weird hold.
She showed me to her home office where she had a padded table set up and so many accolades on her wall that it was damn near impossible not to see how accomplished she was.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a lot of awards.”
“I have a thirst for knowledge,” she said. “Now, if I hurt this child in any way, you can shoot me in the face with those guns you have hiding under your pants legs.”
I blinked.
“Not to mention, if you’re nice, I’ll teach you the best way to paralyze someone without killing them.”
Webber and I exchanged a look that clearly said “what the fuck?”
But I gave her the baby.
He instantly started to cry, his little face turning red as a tomato when she laid him down and straightened him out.
“He should be able to do this easily,” she explained every single step that she took. “Look here…”
She showed us and then told us everything she did, and then told us exactly what she was about to do adjustment wise.
Then she adjusted him, and the kid just…stopped.
Stopped crying so fast that my heart stopped because I thought she killed him.
Webber must’ve thought the same thing, because he took a threatening step toward her before we both realized that the kid was very much alive.
Only…not crying.
And obviously no longer in pain.
“There.” She smiled. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
That’s when my eyes caught on a particular framed document above her head.
Top pediatric chiropractor in the world.
Holy shit.
Did she just fix this kid?
“It’s possible that we’ll need to get him adjusted multiple times until his little body is back to normal, but he should be pretty good for a few days at least. If you have any other issues, or think he needs adjusted again, come knock on my door after five. Also, don’t let him scream like that anymore outside my door. It breaks my mama heart.”
She handed the child back to me, then gestured me to leave.
Webber and I left, but she stopped Webber. “You want me to do that one, too?”
“This one isn’t crying.”
“Doesn’t mean that he’s not misaligned. Everyone feels better aligned.”
Webber hesitated.
The woman swooped in, walked back to the room, and started cooing to Webber’s kid before she got him adjusted as well.
It took all of five minutes, mostly because the woman kept talking to the baby.
“Baby fever is real, even when you’re fifty,” she said. “I can’t wait for grandchildren, but my kids are all in college, and show no signs of having kids any time soon.” She walked us toward the door. “You can call me Stacy.”
Then she closed the door in our faces.
“I can’t believe that just happened.” Webber shook his head. “And she forgot to show us how to paralyze someone.”
“Next time!” Stacy called through the closed door just as she slammed the lock home. “I’m tired.”
Webber walked with me toward the open front door of my apartment, and my eyes instantly went to that white sheet again.
The white sheet was no longer moving, so I was hoping that she was asleep, and no longer crying like I suspected she was doing earlier.
I was so focused on that white sheet that when the elevator dinged, it caused me to jump.