Chapter 6: The Clinic Two Towns Over
I didn't tell Richard I was leaving. That was the point.
That morning I got Sophie ready like always. I brushed her curls and fixed her little white bow and zipped her yellow floral dress over her cardigan. She sat on the edge of the bed while I wrapped my hands. I'd found the roll of gauze in the laundry supply drawer, the one that was supposed to hold the rubber gloves before they were moved. My hands were worse. The red had darkened overnight to a deep, angry color at the palms, and the skin on my right hand had started to blister near the base of my fingers. It hurt to close them.
"You okay, Mom?" Sophie asked. She watched my hands.
"I'm okay, honey," I said. "We're just going to be a little careful today."
In the kitchen, Richard was on his phone by the console, Vanessa's cream dress already a blur in the hallway as she passed. Neither of them looked at my hands. I kept them tucked under my tote bag.
"I'll do drop-off," I said. It was normally Vanessa who took Sophie to her preschool when Richard was home, another small rule about appearances. "Then I need to grab a few things in town."
Richard glanced up, half-listening. "Be back by ten. The Hendersons are coming to look at the east wing."
I nodded. "I will."
Sophie held my wrist instead of my hand all the way to the car, careful like I'd taught her without teaching her.
After I pulled away from the preschool, I didn't turn toward the grocery store. I turned west onto the county highway that led out past the estate gates, past the stone pillars and the long private drive, toward the two-lane road that went to Miller's Crossing. The urgent care there was two towns over, far enough that no one from the estate would see my car in the parking lot. I drove with my fingertips on the wheel because I couldn't grip it. My tote bag sat on the passenger seat with the empty bleach bottle I'd wrapped in a plastic grocery bag, and the little notecard where I'd written the name of the concentrate and the date.
The waiting room in Miller's Crossing smelled like coffee and disinfectant. The lights were bright and flat, nothing like the warm sconces in the hallway. There were three other people ahead of me, a man with a cough, a teenager with an ankle wrap. I signed in with my left hand, my writing shaky. Under reason for visit I wrote chemical burn - hands - workplace exposure.
When the nurse called me back, she was a woman about my age with short dark hair and kind eyes. She didn't flinch when I unwrapped the gauze.
"Oh honey," she said quietly. "How long ago did this happen?"
"Two days ago," I said. "It was getting worse, so I came."
She had me sit on the exam table and washed her hands. "What were you exposed to?"
I pulled the bottle from my tote. "This. It's an industrial chlorinated alkaline. I was told to use it without gloves."
Her expression tightened. She wrote something down. "Did your employer provide gloves or eye protection?"
The question was so direct I felt my throat close. I looked at the paper on the exam table, the little crinkle under my legs.
"No," I said. "They used to be in the closet. They weren't there that day."
She nodded like she'd heard that before and kept writing. "And you weren't trained on mixing it?"
I shook my head. "They said to use it straight. I did."
The doctor came in a few minutes later, an older man with glasses who introduced himself as Dr. Patel. He put on gloves and lifted my hands gently, turning them palm up under the light. He didn't ask me to be brave. He just looked.
"These are second-degree chemical burns," he said. "Both palms, with some deeper involvement on the right. The alkaline keeps burning even after you rinse if you don't neutralize it properly. You did the right thing coming in, but you should have come sooner."
He prescribed a silver sulfadiazine cream, oral antibiotics, and clean dressings. He told me not to use any household soap, not to cover them with anything tight, to keep them elevated when I could. While he talked, the nurse typed.
"This was at work?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "In the laundry room."
"I'm documenting it as workplace exposure to chlorinated alkaline cleaner without appropriate PPE," he said, not asking permission, just stating it while he wrote. "We need a record of what happened in case it gets worse or in case your employer needs to file an incident report."
I felt a small breath leave me. For two days I'd been told it was dramatic, that it was nothing, that I was overreacting. Seeing the words appear on his form — second-degree, workplace exposure, PPE not provided — made my eyes sting, but I didn't cry.
The nurse printed the visit summary and the prescription sheet and put them in a manila envelope. On the front she wrote my name and the date in marker. She handed me the envelope with both hands.
"If your employer asks, this is your copy," she said. "And if they don't file, you still have proof you sought care. Do you have someone at home who can help you with dressing changes?"
I thought of Sophie's small hands trying to be careful, and Richard's gold watch, and Vanessa's heels clicking away.
May you like
"I'll manage," I said.
I drove back with the envelope on the passenger seat, the white bandages bright against the dark interior of the car. I was fifteen minutes later than I'd said I'd be. The highway stretched empty ahead, the estate gates in the distance. I hadn't fixed anything yet. I hadn't filed anything or told anyone who could punish me for telling. But I had the paper. I had the proof that what happened to my hands wasn't drama. It was documented, dated, and signed, and it was sitting beside me all the way home.
