Chapter 10: The nurse

Cookie awoke, lying on a cot, in a small, yellow-painted, cinder-block room with a slender, young, pretty brunette woman, in a white nurse's uniform, smiling down at her and holding a cold compress to her forehead.

"Are you alright?" the woman asked.

The back of Cookie's head hurt, as did her shoulder and knee, but she said, "Yes," in the subdued voice of one who is disoriented.

"I'm Miss Fleming, the school nurse," the woman said. "I hear that you blacked out and they brought you here to me."

"I guess so... ," Cookie said, trying to sit up.

"No. No." Miss Fleming told her as she reached to her shoulders to steady her. "I want you to just lay back and relax for a few minutes, okay?"

"I'm alright," Cookie stated as she swung her legs around and sat fully up, holding her hand to her now dizzy, aching head.

"Hmm," Miss Fleming muttered dubiously, looking Cookie directly in her pale, blue eyes. "Then, can you tell me what day it is, sweetheart?"

"I ... um ... it's Tuesday ... I ... I think it is."

"That's right. Now let's try a little more easy question ... what's your name?"

"Cookie. Cookie Mullins."

"Cookie," Miss Fleming repeated the word. "Gosh, that's a pretty name for such a pretty girl." As she said it, she put the back of her hand to Cookie's cheek and caressed it softly.

A swirling rush of feelings overtook Cookie, as she looked up at the nurse, and tears suddenly appeared and streaked down both of her cheeks. As much as she desperately craved the kind words and the soft touch of this lovely woman, she was terror stricken by the immensity of the pent up emotions that were welling inside of her. Cookie knew that losing control and letting those emotions out would surely overwhelm and destroy her, right here where she sat.

"Please don't touch me," she loudly stated, pushing Miss Fleming's hand away from her face.

"I'm sorry, honey," Miss Fleming said. "I didn't mean to..."

"It's alright," Cookie quickly interrupted, deathly afraid that she might have hurt the woman's feelings by her reaction to the innocent gesture. "I'm just not used to anyone touching me or being kind to me, that's all. I don't know how to handle it."

"What? A pretty girl like you? Who wouldn't be kind to you?"

"Nobody," Cookie told her directly. "There isn't anyone who is nice to me ... ever."

"What are you talking about?" the nurse asked. "Hey, honey, tell me what happened to you today? Why did you pass out like that?"

Cookie suddenly realized that she had said far too much, to this nurse, already and that she shouldn't have. Her father had strictly ordered her never to speak of her private life to anyone ever. She didn't know this woman and had no idea if she could be a friend or another trap set by her father. If she got curious and tried to get involved, she could cause a lot of trouble for Cookie.

"I skipped lunch today," Cookie hurriedly told her, "and I started to feel weak in sixth hour. I shouldn't have done that. I ... I'm trying to lose weight."

"Lose weight? There's hardly that much of you as it is, sweetheart."

"Please don't call me that, Miss Fleming," Cookie pleaded to her as new tears ran down her reddened cheeks, her lower lip trembling now as she spoke, "I don't deserve that. I'm nobody's sweetheart."

"Oh, Cookie," Miss Fleming gushed in a voice brimming with concern. "What are you talking about? What has happened to you?"

"I ... I just skipped lunch is all," Cookie replied, sniffing her grief inward and girding herself as she firmly wiped her cheeks dry again. "I do that a lot."

"Don't skip your meals, honey," Miss Fleming seriously advised her, patting her knee as she spoke to her. "You need nutrition at your age."

"Yes, ma'am. I won't. I'm fine now, really. There's nothing wrong with me. Nothing at all. May I go?"

The nurse turned to a small refrigerator and pulled out a little can of orange juice which she opened, on each side, with the church key from the counter. She handed it to Cookie and said, "Here. Drink this and, when you're finished, you can go."

Cookie was glad to leave school that day. She was already running late and had to get home to clean the house and make dinner for her family.

She made beef medallions with hunter sauce, buttered redskin potatoes and Waldorf salad and got it all on the table just as her father came home.

Placing the pre-chilled salad plates before him and her brother, her father stated, "I heard you passed out at school today."

"I did," Cookie said, filling the water glass by his plate, "but I'm okay now."

"I could care less if you're okay," her father told her, placing his napkin across his lap, "just don't make a spectacle of yourself at school."

"No, sir. I won't."