Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Jake looked concerned.
“You’re so uncultured,” my daughter assured me.
“I too would prefer the bandage,” Dr. Simms concurred as she wrapped his head.
“See,” I apprised Hannah.
She threw up her hands in disgust.
“Don’t take advantage of him, he’s in pain,” I scolded her. “And it’s good that it’s not broken this time. That’s very lucky. It was six months the last time. This should only be what?” I asked, turning to the doctor, who was carefully applying the bandage that went from the top of his head to under his jaw, back behind his ear, around his neck and to his chin and then back up.
“About six weeks,” she told me.
Basically, the bandage would stabilize his jaw, and the wrapping that she showed us and Hannah took video of should only allow for the smallest amount of give for him to put a straw into his mouth so he could drink his meals. Either Kola or Harper would get to wrap it for him for the next six weeks. But that’s what friends were for.
“Are they?” Kola asked later at home as he, Harper, and Sam brought in what they’d bought at the orchard.
They made so many more trips than I thought they would.
“Wow,” I said when everything was in my laundry room. You had to rinse all the pumpkins and gourds before they went out on my front and back deck, so that was why they were always unloaded there. The fact was, they had been sitting in dirt their whole lives; I always gave them a bath before they were put on display. “You did a good job,” I commended my husband, because he had. There had never been so many.
“I might’ve overestimated.”
I only nodded.
“Some are going with the boys,” he grumbled at me.
“Like that whole side of the room?” I gestured.
“What? No.”
“They have a new scale,” Kola chimed in. “You just wheel the whole wagon onto it and it weighs everything you’ve got. All one price now.”
That sounded terrifying.
“And look at all the mums.”
I was looking. There were so, so many. “Do you remember how to water them?”
“Oh no,” he said quickly. “All the flowers are for here.”
I would just need to figure out how they would all go here, was all.
“We did good, huh?”
“You did,” I assured my husband, smiling at him.
We also had an abundance of donuts and apples that I would need to distribute to friends. Hannah told Jake she would find him a beanie to cover his big bandaged head, and Kola commented that talking through clenched teeth would still make him sound like he was psychotic. Best not to try. That was what texting was for.
I got a message from him asking why we didn’t feel sorry for him, and I showed it to Hannah.
“Oh, honey, we do,” she promised, giving him one of his horse-pill ibuprofen tablets. “It’s just, you know, you’ve been breaking things since I’ve known you.”
He looked at Kola, who squinted and started counting.
“Let’s see,” my son began, “your ulna and radius in both arms, your tibia in the left leg, your fibula in your right, your clavicle, your mandible––”
“His right humerus,” Harper chimed in, stacking donuts on the table. “It was really nice of that guy to go in the back and get more donuts for us.”
“It’s because you smiled at him,” Sam explained. “He was a bit smitten with you.”
“He was?” Harper sounded surprised.
“Your right and left wrist, your left ankle,” Kola continued listing.
“He really was?” Harper asked Sam again.
Sam nodded.
“Where was I? I normally notice things.”
“Oh you do not,” Hannah told him. “You missed that guy at the Aldi flirting with you.”
“I did?”
“Technically, you broke your left ankle twice, if we count when you got stuck in that trap you made,” Kola continued.
“That thing flipped you upside down so fast,” Hannah said with a sigh. “I knew that ankle broke, the way you screamed like one of those goats.”
Jake nodded.
“And of course your nose,” Kola said, still making a list.
“You never notice men hitting on you,” I assured Harper. “I mean, that really handsome waiter at the pizza place has done everything but stand on his head.”
“What waiter?”
“The gorgeous one with the blond hair and baby-blue eyes,” Hannah told him.
“Blond?”
“Is it four times with your nose?” Kola asked himself. “Oh no, there was the time that guy pulled back to hit that other guy and got you with his elbow.”
“How do I remember that but not some hot waiter?” Harper asked my son.
“What hot waiter?” Kola questioned him.
“Some guy at the pizza place we go to.”
Kola turned to Jake. “Who?”
Jake made some hand gestures I couldn’t follow.
“That guy?” Kola said to him, making a face. “The one who’s always trying to give Harper garlic knots?”
Jake nodded.
Kola looked at Hannah. “He’s okay. I think gorgeous is putting it on a bit thick.”