Live Fast Die Hot by Jenny Mollen

hula-girl dashboard bobbleheads, and nori seaweed treats. A mix tape of nineties soft rock played nonstop as we drove for an hour to the other side of the island. Before leaving Lanai, I’d made an appointment with an urgent-care clinic in Kahului that promised to give me an MRI if my leg looked bad enough.
    When we arrived at the clinic we made Kiki come in with us and hold Sid. She rocked him back and forth as he stared at her blankly, wondering if I’d given up on solo motherhood and hired another baby nurse. My mom escorted me into an exam room, where we waited for the doctor.
    “How well do you know Kiki? Are you sure Sid is okay with her?”
    “She’s the greatest. She’s been driving me to the airport for years,” she said, as if being a great chauffeur somehow disqualified Kiki from being a kidnapper. I quieted my nerves by reminding myself that Kiki already had two kids and one on the way. She had her hands and her womb full. She knew better than I did that stealing Sid would only bring more stress.
    When a sun-damaged doctor walked in wearing a shark-tooth necklace and a gold hoop earring, universal symbols of a midlife crisis, I was dubious.
    “Are you a real doctor?” I accidentally asked out loud.
    “Ha! I think so,” he said, then looked at my mom, who seemed to be asking the same question with her eyes.
    “So where is the MRI machine?” My mom squinted down the hall like a suspicious DEA agent looking for a mountain of dope.
    “Yeah, we gotta take a look at this thing,” I said, pointing at my leg.
    “How did you injure it?” he asked, ignoring us and proceeding with his examination.
    “Running.”
    He picked up my leg in almost the same way Jason did, tipping me off that he might not be a real doctor. My mom rolled her eyes and pointed at the time on her phone. I never felt closer to my mom than when we had a third person to hate.
    “You don’t have a break,” he said, still playing with my leg.
    “I know, but it’s definitely something. I can’t stand on it. Let’s do an MRI.”
    “We actually don’t have an MRI in this facility, and to be honest, it isn’t going to show anything. Your best bet is just to go easy and let it heal itself.”
    I could already hear my mom’s
I told you so.
    “So you’re saying there’s nothing to do?” I asked, annoyed.
    “Nope. Not really. I think it’s probably just tendinitis,” he said, rushing us out, clearly eager to return to his life of surf, sun, and suing his ex-wife.
    “So what does that mean? What do I need to do?”
    “Walk on it, for starters.”
    “What?” I said, thinking I’d misheard him.
    “Yeah, staying off it is only making it worse. The best thing you can do is start applying pressure and walking.”
    I looked at my mom. She looked back at me. I felt like a kid at the school nurse’s office who just found out her temperature was just slightly below normal. What little concern my mom had faded as she walked out of the room behind me, pushing my empty wheelchair.
    As we made our way back to Lahaina, Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” blasted through Kiki’s low-fi speakers. The Moc had already moved on, buried in her phone and flashing me pictures of potential Murphy beds for her home office at each stoplight. I glanced at each picture with detached emotion, like an in-flight movie I didn’t have the strength to turn off.
    “I’ve always felt like John would be better suited to living in a man cave than sharing a room with me and Rocky,” she mused aloud.
    “Totally.” I nodded, tuning out my mom and agreeing with Cher. I was too strong to tell her I was sorry (for dragging her to Maui), too proud to tell her I was wrong (about my leg), I knew that I was blind (at least more blind than paraplegic). And I started to realize that if I could turn back time, it wouldn’t actually change a thing.

    Days later, I boarded a flight bound for Los Angeles and real life. As we took off over Honolulu, I looked down