Mabel shrugged. “She’ll try to cause trouble. I don’t think Lila is going to be intimidated, though.”

She wasn’t, though she was still sad about the cookies. She should have known once she blew her tight control on the amount of carbs she allowed herself that her diet would go all to hell. “You should be on the lookout for women around town calling 911 in an attempt to get you to pay attention to them.”

After all, it had worked once.

“This is going to be fun.” Noelle looked far more enthusiastic than her father.

“It could cause trouble for the clinic,” Mabel pointed out.

Lila didn’t see how. “No one’s coming in anyway. I don’t think she can make it worse. Noelle, why don’t you come back to the exam room? I want to take another look at that wound.”

Noelle nodded up at her. “Sure thing. I need to talk to you about some weird stuff with my period, too.”

Gyno. She could handle that. “All right.”

Armie shrank back. “I’ll wait out here. Lila, I need to talk to you when you’re done with Noelle. I made a trip out to visit Carrie Petrie earlier today.”

He’d gone to talk to her? He hadn’t believed her suspicions, but he’d checked into it? From the grave look on his face he was either worried he was going to piss her off by saying everything was fine or he’d found out it wasn’t. Either way, she appreciated him taking her seriously.

“Thank you.”

Noelle made her way back, Peanut following and generally proving why dogs shouldn’t be allowed in a medical setting.

“I was going to avoid you until Friday, but I thought you should get an update,” Armie admitted.

That made her grin because she could guess why. “I was probably going to cancel out of sheer cowardice, but then your real fake girlfriend showed up and pissed me off, so now there’s zero chance of me not showing up.”

Even though real-real dating Armie was probably going to make the situation with Miranda worse, she wasn’t about to back down.

And that felt good. That made her feel better than she had in a long time.

She followed his daughter, and hoped he enjoyed the view.

•   •   •

“You are a perfectly healthy young woman,” Lila said twenty minutes later.

“With the exception of the fact that I can’t move my legs?”

“Let’s just call you healthy.” She didn’t have any pressure sores or ulcers. Her weight was in a healthy range. It could be hard for wheelchair-bound patients to get enough exercise. Noelle’s injury was at L-3, low on her spine. As injuries go, it could have been much worse. And honestly it surprised her that Noelle was completely confined to that chair. “Do you have any feeling in your legs?”