“I am here for a meeting with Judy Libby.” Larissa countered.
“Regarding?” The woman asked.
“A helping position for her class,” Larissa said as she looked at the woman who was looking at her again.
“Is this a joke?” The woman asked, “Are you skipping your class right now?”
“No joke, ma’am. I was just called by Mrs. Libby a little while ago. She is expecting me.” Larissa said as she looked over the woman in the same way. “Call her and ask if you have a problem with it. My name is Dr. Larissa Walker.”
“Doctor, sure.” The woman said as she picked up the phone, “You better not be wasting my time.”
“Larissa?” A voice from the back of the office asked. It was deep, and she looked towards it. There she saw her brother, who was standing there before her in a moment. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking to talk with Miss Libby.” She said, not wanting to talk to him or anyone else. “However, there is a problem. This woman doesn’t believe I am here as a person but a student.”
“She isn’t a student.” Drew said to the woman who was on the phone, “She is a doctor and my youngest sister.”
“She is a doctor?” The woman asked.
“Yeah, she is. She got all the brains in the family.” Drew said with a laugh. “The rest of us got everything else.”
“Well, then I will write up your pass.” The woman said, and Larissa looked to her brother.
“What are you doing here?” She asked as she tried to smile.
“My stepdaughter forgot some stuff. But that is the perk of having her stepdad as the coach for the football team.” He said with pride.
“Oh,” Larissa said. “So you work here?”
“After school in the PE department.” He replied, “Why?”
“Just asking,” Larissa said with a smile as the woman handed her the pass. She glanced at her brother, who looked like he was in a good mood though he never really was. He seemed to like being there at the school. Larissa had a good idea of why. Though time had passed and the siblings were never close, he had not changed with the passing years.
“So to get to her classroom….” The woman began, but Larissa cut her off.
“Is it the same as it always was?” Larissa asked, and the woman nodded, “Then I know where it was. Her class was the only good one I can remember from the school. I could find it blindfolded.”
Larissa turned on that and walked out of the office and toward the back of the school. Though she hadn’t spent much time in the building altogether, she did remember the layout of the first floor. Being so small, she would have to fight to get to her next class, and she had mapped out the entire building and made a flow chart to see where everyone would be so she could beat them. It was the only way she could make it to her classes on time.
Larissa got to the back of the foreign language classrooms and then turned to go into the main science wing of the school. She could smell the classrooms and knew what they all were doing. She smiled to herself, and then she got to the room that had changed her life and gave it a much better and deeper meaning. It was the one place she was able to talk about what she wanted out of life and how much it meant to her. She could only smile at all the thoughts and memories that flooded her mind. She knocked and then opened the door, not knowing if the class was in session or not.
There was no one in the seats, so she sighed with relief for a moment. Then she went back to the area she knew the offices for the teachers were. Also, that was another place she had spent some time in that most students had not. She smiled as she almost rounded the corner to the hallway of offices only to almost run into one of those teachers who had helped her along. Though she had known him from her brothers having him not herself.
“Larissa?” he asked, and she smiled and nodded. “You came. Good, now Judy might not be on the warpath with the youngster.”
“That bad?” Larissa asked as she looked at the man in front of her who had always reminded her of Einstein with his hair wild. He was always the vision of a mad professor. Though he was also the one who had taken the time to explain things to her in a way she could understand and also grasp well. He had made things fun to learn about. she had loved going into his classes and just listened when she was younger.
“This one she is going slightly overboard on.” Mr. Vincent said as he smiled and place his hand on her shoulder. “Now that you’re here, she might calm down a bit.”
“I doubt that,” Larissa said as she smiled a bit and then continued down the hallway and then stopped outside the one that was open. She looked into the room and saw the small older woman and a man sitting in front of her desk as she paced back and forth in the back of her desk. Mrs. Libby looked like she was going to bite the man in front of her as she glared as well. Now looked like the time to speak, “Mrs. Libby?”
“What do you.” She started to say and then stopped as she smiled broadly, “Never mind what I was going to say. Come in. come in. This is Mr. Danner.” The older woman forced a smile toward the man and then looked back at her. Her smaller stature was always the thing that seemed off in her office. Her presence was always so big, and so were the ideas she had for the people around her. She looked at him again and then said, “You might want to remember this woman in front of you. She will do great things and make a name for herself.”
“Judy,” Larissa said and smiled. Then the man in front of her turned around and looked at her as well. Larissa couldn’t breathe. The man in front of her was the most perfect man she had ever seen.
3“Hello.” He said as he looked at her though she was able to cover her shock at him sitting there in front of her. Though she knew she had never seen him before, he was exactly what she pictured in her head that she wanted. He reached out a hand to her and smiled. Larissa instinctively took and shook. She was glad she lived in a professional world where she had learned to do that without thoughts. She would have her mouth open and in shock if she had not been able to hide her own feelings and expressions.“Larissa Walker.” She said as she looked at the woman who was grinning.“Doctor Larissa Walker,” Judy said, correcting her.“Aren’t you a little young to be a doctor?” the man in front of her said. He looked her over and probably thought she was a newly graduated student or some
4She heard the couple fighting in the science office's hallway as she opened the door. “Jeez, Gabe, you are so overreacting. We were not doing anything. He was just helping me with moving some things around in my room.” The woman said as she raised her voice, and then Larissa heard the man she had just met speak, “Ann, come on.”“What?” the woman asked as it seemed like she was trying to think of something. Larissa had no patience for things like this or many people for that matter. She went to the classroom and looked around. It still looked pretty much the same as she went to sit down in her old seat. She was smiling again as she remembered the class and the older woman going after so many of her classmates, but she had a special place for Larissa,
The two women were left alone for a minute as the older one looked at Larissa, and she smiled again. Gabe had gone back into the hallway with the offices to get some of his things for the next class though he was going to be watching her for a moment. Judy had already told him that was what he was going o do. His classes in the room that he shared with another teacher were in the afternoon, really. “Maybe you could work with him as well,” Judy said with a sigh as she watched him go.“What is so wrong with him that you have to constantly go at him like you are?” Larissa asked.“Sometimes, you just have to know which ones need the push in the right direction.” Mrs. Libby said with a smile, “He has potential, but he has to calm down a bit to get there. That witch is going to ruin him, though.”“You aren’t planning anything else, are you?” Larissa asked, kn
She was done with the class in an hour. Though she thought it went well, she knew how to make it better. There will be a few things that she could do that would be easy to make the class more fun for the teens there that were probably not all that into the actual class but there for a requirement. Though she was now in search of the older woman to see what else needed to be done for the day, she couldn’t find her. Larissa went into the greenhouse that was in the back of the offices for the science department and saw that Mr. Vincent was in there with a class. He looked over and smiled. “It hasn’t been used that much since you left. That was really the only time I ever saw it in use.”“Maybe I will get some seeds, and we can see it again in its former glory,” Larissa said with a smile as she saw the younger students all look at her like
Larissa hated the incinerator. She had been one of the few people allowed down in the basement under the science wing. It had been specially made for the school as one of the few dump sites for the animals they used for the dissection part of some of the classes. It was the place that other schools also could use. Though this was rare that they would even start it this early in the school year.Larissa didn’t know why the older woman wanted to use it, though. She was sometimes a little off on her timing. Though she did always have a reason why. Larissa didn’t care too much in the end. Gabe walked into the room behind her after a few minutes.“I am sorry for that.” He said softly. “I have no idea why she is that way.”“Probably because you accused her of cheating earlier,” Larissa said as she turned up the gas of it to light. Then she turned it back down to get it going a
She received a phone call about six hours later from the hospital. It seemed a bad accident had happened on the highway, and the casualties were too much for the staff they had. She rolled out of bed, knowing that she had to wake up enough to drive to the hospital herself. After a quick change, she was dressed in her favorite scrubs and had a cup of coffee ready for the trip.The hospital road was completely backed up. She saw it well before she was close to the hospital and then adjusted the way she drove in. She switched directions and went in the back way that most people didn’t know about. She had to park in the last row of the staff parking. There were more cars there than she had ever seen. That was her first clue that this was not going to be good.She went in and saw the overflow from the emergency department in the lobby and on the street in the front of the building. When she got up, and she pulled her hair u
Larissa didn’t want to start her shift this way. She knew it was going to be a super long night. An hour or so later, as she had five rooms going at the same time as she was supervising the students and the other pathologist in all they were doing to do this as fast as they could to clear the hallways. She went back to the conference room and was surprised to find them still in the room with George, who was going over the release to the funeral home and everything they would need to do.She smiled as she walked in and nodded to George. Gabe walked up in the back of her, “Thank you for giving her the time.”“You all need it.” She said as she looked up at him. “Do you need me to call someone?”“No. My brothers are on their way. I called them already. They are scattered all over the
The two sat mostly in silence as they drank their coffee, and every once in a while, Larissa would glance out of the window toward the school and saw the smoke rising above the trees. She felt the plummet in her chest as she didn’t want to think about it anymore. She looked at him, who was now looking at his cell phone waiting for something to arrive, and somehow Larissa knew it would never come in.“I guess I have my answer,” Gabe said as she looked up to Larissa from staring at his screen.“With? “Larissa asked.“She is definitely cheating on me,” Gabe said. “I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. I was just the latest victim in her long line.”“Maybe something else happened. Like someone she knew was also in the accident. Maybe she has to deal with that.” Larissa countered. Thoug