Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect by M. J. Rose

arm.
    “What’s happened?”
    “Nothing major. I burned my arm.”
    I got up and went to her. “How?”
    “Stupid hot soup at lunch. Gretchen tripped, her soup, tomato soup, went flying. My arm was in the way.”
    “Let me see.”
    As she lifted her arm I saw splotches of blood on her white shirt.
    She saw my eyes widen. “Mom?”
    “Is this blood?”
    “Soup. I told you. Gretchen’s tomato soup. Don’t spiral over this, okay?” I ignored her exasperated tone.
    My daughter was at the age where no matter how controlled my concern was, it was still overbearing.
    I bent to inspect the bandage. “Does it hurt?”
    “Nope.”
    “No?”
    “A little when it happened. But not enough that I cried or anything. It’s just a burn.”
    “Okay.” I reached out and hugged her, carefully avoiding her arm. She let me hold her and then pulled back. I brushed her bangs off her face and let my fingers linger on her skin just a moment longer than I needed to.
    She went to the refrigerator.
    At twelve, Dulcie’s chest was still flat and her hips were still narrow, but there was a grown-up look in her eyes that hadn’t been there six months before and an impatience with me that went with it. I wasn’t sure if it was just her age or a reaction to her father and me separating or both.
    “Maybe we should go see Dr. Kulick and have him look at your arm.”
    “It’s not a big deal. I really am fine.” She opened the top of a container of blueberry yogurt. She let the fridge door slam and grabbed a spoon from the utensil drawer. “The nurse gave me a note to give to you,” she said between mouthfuls.
    She fished in her backpack and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper with a prescription stapled to it.
    I read it quickly once and then read it again more slowly. The drama school where Dulcie was spending the summer had a doctor on call. He’d come over and inspected Dulcie’s burn, said that it wasn’t serious, but had prescribed an antibiotic cream and some painkillers if Dulcie needed them.
    My daughter looked at me with her huge eyes—the samecornflower blue as my mother’s eyes—and touched my hand as if she felt just the littlest bit sorry for me.
    “Don’t worry about me,” she said, and tossed her head. Her hair, almost black like mine, was long and straight and gleamed in the overhead light.
    I watched her eat the rest of her snack, searching for clues as to how she really felt, but she didn’t seem to be in pain or crisis. Her eyes weren’t swollen, there were no tearstains on her cheeks. I took her emotional temperature whenever I came into her presence, checking my daughter for signs of distress or sadness. And I was always mildly shocked that she rarely showed any. Despite everything I must have done wrong, my daughter was a secure and mostly happy preteen. Smart, charismatic and more than pretty enough, she had a large, extended family and friends circling around her, ensuring she was traveling through childhood with relative calm.
    Dulcie plopped down beside me. “Is Gretchen a klutz or what?” She picked up Cleo’s book.
    “Don’t,” I said, taking the manuscript from her.
    “Why?”
    “It’s not mine. It belongs to a patient.”
    Dulcie nodded. One thing she understood was the sacrosanct relationship between a doctor and patient. She needed to trust something about me. Know, at least, that her mother never broke that commandment between her patients and herself. Maybe if she knew this, she would believe other things that I would not be so good at showing her.
    “Oooh. A patient,” Dulcie said sarcastically. “One of Dr. Sin’s sinners.” And then she laughed. I joined in. Even if I wanted to be angry, I couldn’t. I understood her too well. I appreciated her too much.
    My daughter was not unhappy with what I did for a living. She just wished it was more noble. “She’s a doctor,” I’dhear Dulcie tell her friends, not admitting what kind of doctor I was and what kind of help I