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"Do you surrender, Sir Wolfgang?" I asked him dramatically as I outscored him.
He clutched his little hand to his chest in a dramatic gesture and yanked his shoulder back, saying, "Never!" But as he did so, his shoulder bumped into Reagan's bag on her kitchen counter, accidentally knocking it over, causing all the contents to spill out onto the floor.
"Whoops," Wolfie said, making a face.
"It's okay, buddy. Here, let me help you," I said, squatting down to scoop up the mess and shove it back into Reagan's bag.
"Look at this stuff: lipstick, eyeliner, ketchup packets..." and then my hand scooped up a bottle of pills.
It was a little orange bottle with a prescription label on it addressed to Reagan Miles. Blame it on my doctorly curiosity, but I read the label and saw that they were prenatal vitamins. It looked like they'd been prescribed a couple weeks ago.
Wolfie looked at me curiously. "Is Aunt Rea sick?"
I shook my head. "No, that's not what this kind of medicine is for. She's fine, I'm sure."
I didn't know why I said what I said next, but I told Wolfie. "Hey, how about we don't tell her we knocked over her purse, okay?"
He nodded solemnly.
Confusion and shock washed through me. Wolfie said something else to me, but I wasn't sure what.
Reagan was taking prenatal vitamins?
I knew enough as a physician to know that there were more than just the obvious reasons to take prenatal vitamins. A lot of women took them because they helped make their hair and nails stronger, so maybe that's why Reagan was taking them.
As she emerged from the hallway, I couldn't help but notice the dark smudges beneath her eyes. She'd been tossing and turning quite a bit when she'd been with me, come to think of it. She'd also been making multiple trips to the bathroom, but I'd figured maybe she just had a small bladder.
Part of me wanted to stop everything right at that moment and grill her, but the other part of me said that no, this just couldn't be…could it?
We had a good time in the park and the museum, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't distracted. I kept watching Reagan carefully, looking for signs. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense.
The fact that she had just been picking at her food for the most part, and yet, there'd been a couple of times I called her while she was at work where she told me that she couldn't get enough of this brand of chips and apple juice of all things. I was just glad she was eating. Then, there was the fact that she'd looked a little pale lately, but she had a stressful job, and we were in a stressful situation, so I had no reason to suspect anything different.
But she had been a little quieter the last couple of weeks. Reagan was not quiet, so that should've been a clear sign to me right from the beginning. How come I'd never noticed this before now?
As we left the museum and began to head back to my place, I got super nervous but anxious to get home and get Reagan alone long enough to ask her what in the world was going on. Anxiety pooled at the bottom of my stomach as we worked our way through traffic. Nerves tightened at the base of my skull as we ascended the stairs to the second floor and made me almost feel like I was about to lose my lunch, but as we neared the door of my apartment, the nerves faded, only to be replaced with slight panic.
A small woman was standing on my doorstep, dressed in professional attire with a folder clutched to her chest. When she spotted us, she smiled warmly and asked, "Dr. Rollins?"
"Yes, that's me. May I help you?"
"I am Anita Abrams." She looked down at Wolfie pulled a card from her pocket. "Is it okay if I come in and chat with you all for a little while?" she asked pleasantly, and I looked at her card to see that she was an agent with child protective services.
I glanced at Reagan, who gave me a faint, reassuring smile, and said, "Of course, come right on in."
I was relieved that Reagan had it together, because just seeing that card made me want to run away. But this was the part of the process that had to happen. As long as this went well, we were one step closer to making sure that Wolfie stayed put.
I was relieved that the social worker hadn't announced where she'd come from in front of Wolfie. Even though the little guy was doing great in therapy, and he was opening up to me a lot more about his nightmares and his worries, I didn't want to send him into a tailspin by letting him know where this woman came from.
"Who are you?" Wolfie asked as we went inside the apartment.
"She's a potential patient, buddy," I told him, eyeing Miss Abrams meaningfully.
She smiled. "That's right. I heard such good things about your uncle, I just wanted to come see for myself," she explained.
"Oh, okay," he said unfazed and then marched to the table, none the wiser. "Aunt Rea, will you help me sort through my cards again? I got them messed up yesterday, and Uncle Adam doesn't know what order they're supposed to go in," Wolfie asked Reagan, referring to his Pokémon cards. They sat down at the kitchen table and sorted through Wolfie's cards as I steered Abrams to the couch, so that we could chat for a bit.
"Thank you for playing along about the whole patient thing," I told her. "I just worry that he's been through so much. I don't wanna freak him out."
