Disaster Status Read Online Free PDF Page B

your grandfather was ill. I’m so grateful for their skill and compassion and for the way they understood how much I needed to be there beside him. Right up until that last . . .” Her words faded off.
    Erin’s heart grabbed at the flicker of pain in her grandmother’s eyes. Renewed interest in baking and planting flower seeds hadn’t changed things; she’d been fooling herself about that. But spending time in a hospital could only make it worse.
    She squeezed her grandmother’s fingers. “I know you’re proud of me. But what I was trying to say is that I don’t think volunteering at the hospital is the best thing for you right now.” A lump rose in her throat, and she swallowed it down. “It might be too soon after Grandy.”
    Erin saw her grandmother’s lips press together and continued in a rush. “I didn’t mean you’re not strong enough. Or that they wouldn’t be lucky to have you. Of course they would. It’s only . . .”
    “You’re trying to protect me.” Her grandmother let the pronouncement hang in the air for a moment, then shook her head. “You’ve always been that way. With your sister, your cousins, your classmates, your mother . . .”
    Every time Dad let her down or disappeared. Or lied. Or cheated.
    Nana chuckled. “Do you remember the Wonder Woman costume?”
    Erin groaned. “I was six. Give me a break.”
    “Magic bracelets and the golden Lasso of Truth.” Her grandmother laughed. “I’ll never forget you standing there in those red boots with your little fist raised. Or what a dickens of a time your mother had convincing you the costume wasn’t appropriate for Sunday school.” She turned and grasped Erin’s chin gently. “You’re still a fighter, darling. For your patients, your coworkers, that new hospital fellowship. I love that in you. And I understand that this need to protect me comes straight from your heart. But . . .”
    “But what?” Erin wasn’t able to discern her grandmother’s expression in the near darkness, but there was something in her tone . . .
    “I can’t be rolled in bubble wrap. Promise me you won’t try.”
    Bleach alone wasn’t going to do it. The grout still looked gray. Erin frowned as she inspected the toothbrush she was using to scrub the shower tile. The bristles were falling out. Third toothbrush in three months. What was this, supermold? She’d never had this problem at her apartment back in the foothills. Of course, the air was drier there. But there had to be a better way to fight it.
    Erin smiled, thinking of Leigh’s miracle answer to dingy tile grout: white shoe polish. Apparently she’d shared an apartment with two other med students, and one of the women tried daubing shoe polish onto the bathroom tile grout lines in a frantic attempt to tidy before her mother’s visit. Instant fix. Erin tried not to imagine how this might extrapolate into how that doctor practiced medicine today. She worked for the CDC.
    Shoe polish wasn’t the answer. Maybe a stronger ceiling fan. And that all-natural eco-friendly cleanser she’d ordered on the Internet. She’d solve it. Like she’d solved the problem of the latest unopened letter addressed to Erin Anne Calloway. By stuffing it in the garbage can.
    She stepped out of the shower stall, tossed the balding toothbrush into the wastebasket, and sighed. It felt like she’d been whacking a punching bag all day. The pesticide scare, Sandy’s contamination, the run-in with the media, and then that irritating exchange with Scott McKenna. And there were still so many things left to deal with—Ana’s uncertain prognosis, the interagency incident review, Sandy’s recovery . . .
    Erin had almost nothing left of what should have been her day off. She still needed to finish the homework for her nurse management classes and go over a new prayer she wanted to offer at the Faith QD fellowship tomorrow morning. After which, she would start a more normal workday of kidney stones, minor