"Mrs. Stebbins, things are not looking very good for you at the moment, I'm afraid to say," Principal Broderick stared at a thin file folder with displeasure from behind his pristine oak desk. Across the dark wood sat a woman with little regard for the words spewing from his mouth.
With a big, fat finger, Principal Broderick pushed a lone piece of paper across the polished wood surface, wicked anticipation marring his otherwise appealing face. Mrs. Stebbins was looking at her watch, not noticing Principal Broderick's face flush a bright red. He cleared his throat wetly, startling her from her inner thoughts and she finally looked in his direction with tired eyes.
"I really don't see what the issue is. Besides having some of the highest scores in the building-"
"Yes. We're reviewing those," he smirked unpleasantly. "We're more worried about this."
Unable to reach the paper, Principal Broderick pointed boldly at the sheet in front of her. The nine precisely printed calendar cubes were flecked with red X's, synonymous with missed days of work. At his calculation, Mrs. Stebbins had been absent one to two days a week for the last school year.
"Sir," Mrs. Stebbins conceded and bobbed her head in deference. "I can explain."
Principal Broderick's eyes glazed over with sadistic joy and Mrs. Stebbins was suddenly dreadfully fearful.
"I think it's a little too late for that, Mrs. Stebbins," he clasped his fingers together and leaned back into his red leather chair. "You'll finish out the school year, of course, and then we'll talk about a suitable severence-"
Mrs. Stebbins stood to her less than impressive five feet and glowered pure hatred at the man before her, knocking the chair to the ground in the process and successfully cutting him off. Her eyes shone and her teeth clenched, but she refused to speak rashly. Principal Broderick's smirk continued to grow and instead of screaming with all her might, Mrs. Stebbins bit down hard on her lower lip and stormed from the obnoxiously long room.
Principal Broderick's less than intelligent secretary jumped when the office door slammed open and ducked her head to discreetly watch Mrs. Stebbins march past. Tentatively, she quietly queried,
"Should I alert the substitute about your return?"
Mrs. Stebbins paused her dash across the front office, fists clenching and unclenching at her sides.
"I'm going home," she spit out as politely as possibly before dashing from the grey office.
"Until when," the secretary pulled out a thick calendar and a chewed up pen.
Mrs. Stebbins' short, blond hair whipped back as she ran through the mercifully empty hallways, flashing past crowded classrooms. She shot down the stairs, out the door and was darting through the parking lot, mind already elsewhere, before the secretary looked up to see she was gone.
--
"Who is my brave boy," Mrs. Stebbins asked as she pulled aside the drab blue curtain around her son's hospital bed. The young boy dozed peacefully, wrapped around a teddy bear twice his size. Mrs. Stebbins smiled for the first time all day and years melted from her face. That is, until the nurse coughed from the bedside chair to attract her attention.
"He's been asking for you all day, Mrs. Stebbins," the young, childless nurse pouted in a manner that sleazy patients had reinforced as appealing. "I don't see how you can leave him here like that."
The boy jerked awake, eyes wide with fear.
"Don't leave!" he gasped, eyes wildly roving the room for something to lock on.
Instead, Mrs. Stebbins wrapped him in a gentle hug, obscuring the boy's vision with a practiced hug. He squeezed her as tight as he could, which wasn't very hard at all, and whimpered, "Don't leave, mom."
The nurse, rudely taking in the tender moment, clucked her tongue and crossed her arms over her obscenely large chest.
"Where is his father, for that matter?" Mrs. Stebbins nearly hissed at the uppity nurse before she realized how silly it would look. Smiling at herself, she locked eyes and continued to grin. The nurse, quickly becoming unsettled, huffed and finally turned away from mother and son.
"You know where I'll be," she huffed, heels click clacking down the hallway before she'd even finished speaking. Mrs. Stebbins hugged her boy tightly, the better to breath in the scent of his soft, curly hair, and laid him back to bed.
"Mommy's never leaving you again," Mrs. Stebbins grimly spat out and moved to the nurse's vacated chair. Within moments, the boy was asleep and Mrs. Stebbins wasn't far behind, head resting against the plush head rest. "Mommy's new job is you, my darling, darling boy."
--
"Oh my god!"
Mrs. Stebbins jerked awake, muscles aching with cramps. The nurse stood over her, confusion and horror relaxing her face into shy beauty. She stared at Mrs. Stebbins, frozen. Looking down, still groggy, Mrs. Stebbins finally felt the weight of her small son on her lap. The boy was limp, and as she wrapped him in her thin arms, she could feel the last of his heat ebbing away.
The nurse broke down and screamed loud and long, but Mrs. Stebbins had faded out. She clutched her son's body tenderly, far away in a happy day dream. A doctor slapped the worthless nurse and shooed her from the room, but Mr. Stebbins didn't notice, or care. It wasn't until the doctor tugged her son's body that she snapped back to the world, chest suddenly crushed, lungs straining to draw in air.
"No," she whispered and clutched him tighter. "I can't leave him."
"I'm sorry, but he's gone," the Doctor moved the boy from her arms to the gurney. "It's best to throw yourself into work. Teacher, wasn't it? That's fulfilling, right?"
He waited, ready to wheel her child away and send her back to a job that didn't exist. At that exact moment, she couldn't, for the life of her, decide if she should laugh or cry.
