My Milo

Chapter 3

After eating a quick lunch, the doorbell rang. Milo opened the door for Aunt Nicole who greeted the kids. She often wore her hair up in some way, but that day it was only a simple bun. She had light reddish-brown hair, like Milo's Mom. She wore flowery clothing and carried a purse with little trinkets and charms all over it. Immediately after the door opened, as the happy aunt she is, Aunt Nicole went straight to greeting the kids.

"Good day, Abby, how goes it?" Aunt Nicole asked, bending down to pat Abby's head. She turned to Dexter and shook his hand. "And you, little munchkin?"

"Hi, Aunt Nicole." Dexter greeted back. Dexter calls her Aunt Nicole even though she's not his aunt. He sees her often enough that she may as well be his aunt, though.

"Milo's tail is broken." Abby said while pointing to Milo. Aunt Nicole looked over to Milo. Milo shrugged.

"Well then we best get going then, eh?" Aunt Nicole said calmly. Usually somebody like her would be one to freak out and start worrying for somebody in Milo's situation, but Aunt Nicole is a pretty chill person. That's not to say she has zero worry about Milo, she just reserves it for more serious situations.

A broken tail isn't a very serious thing. It would be different thing, say, if Milo broke his arm. That's a vital limb that he needs to have in order to function. But a tail? Who even needs that in the first place?  

Aunt Nicole lead the way to the car. Abby and Dexter excitedly followed closely behind her, even though there isn't much excitement over a trip to the clinic. Then again, this is Aunt Nicole we're talking about. Aunt Nicole often spoils Abby and Dexter, so maybe they knew they might get a treat.

After everyone was buckled up and ready to go, the group took off to go on an adventure. A very boring adventure, honestly. Aunt Nicole, being Aunt Nicole, of course started up a conversation in the weirdest way possible.

"So you got a girlfriend yet?" Aunt Nicole teased Milo. Milo responded with a slow ehhhh noise to insinuate that that's a weird question. And also to insinuate that he does not have a girlfriend yet. "Oh well. I'll be waiting patiently." She said in a purposefully creepy sounding tone.

"Hey, you're not one to speak." Milo joked with Aunt Nicole. "You haven't found anyone either." Knowing very well that Aunt Nicole couldn't look at him due to the eyes on the road rule, Milo made a very overly expressive look of disgust on his face. In addition to that, he crossed his arms.

"I just haven't found the right person yet." Aunt Nicole sighed, then continued. "I'm looking for a guy who likes coffee who wears glasses and is sweet and has the personality of a golden retriever maybe... Maybe he'll have freckles and dirty blonde hair." Milo was taken aback from this extremely specific description. In fact, Milo knew a guy who was exactly like that.

"You're insane." Milo said ironically. Milo decided not to mention the guy to his aunt. He thought, If they meet, they meet. If they don't, that's not my problem. Aunt Nicole laughed at being called insane. She accepts insanity as being a good thing, even though she's not insane, and it wouldn't be a good thing if she was.

The drive to the clinic consisted of a conversation hosted by Milo and Aunt Nicole that merged from topic to topic, and in the back seat of the car, pure chaos. Abby and Dexter beat each other up briefly at one point, but they got over it quickly.

Aunt Nicole parked and set Abby and Dexter free from the confinements of her car. The happiness and joy between Abby and Dexter while skipping beside Milo and Aunt Nicole was soon dropped due to the looming atmosphere of the waiting room. Held prisoners to society, the children had to stay quiet. To them, it was like torture. Where's the fun if there's no noise? Alas, the other people in the waiting room would shush them if they were to cause chaos.

Aunt Nicole and Milo went up to the front desk to tell them why Milo was having a visit to the doctor. The other patients in the clinic gave Milo weird looks for his appearance, but he was good at ignoring them. The receptionists already knew Milo and his condition, so they were used to ignoring the looks as well.

"Good afternoon, Miles." A receptionist greeted. Milo was recognized at any place he visited more than once. His appearance was memorable, to say the least. "You don't have a scheduled appointment today, correct?" The woman asked. Milo shook his head.

"He's here for his tail." Aunt Nicole said and glanced at Milo's tail. "It's broken... He has yet to tell me how that happened." Aunt Nicole pretended to be sad. Please, don't bring the acting into public... That's embarrassing.

Milo and Aunt Nicole got all the information stuff done, then went to sit in the waiting room. They waited there for about 20 minutes. In that 20 minutes, Abby and Dexter found themselves extremely bored. They were supposed to behave, and they did, but behaving wasn't fun. But neither them nor Milo or Aunt Nicole wanted to be the center of unnecessary attention.

"Miles Anderson?" Milo's name was called. Finally, after such suspense, Abby and Dexter could finally move and get their wiggles out. A doctor's assistant brought Milo in for his regular check-up type thing. They measured his height, weight, blood pressure, hearing, eyesight, things like that. Even though that's not what he was there for.

Finally, after waiting so long, Milo could finally get his tail looked at. The doctor took one look at it, and realized he didn't know how to treat a tail. In all the doctor's 40+ years of experience, none of his patients had tails. Still, this was his patient, and he needed to treat Milo. Otherwise his tail would heal crooked.

Simply, the doctor washed his hands, then went to consult Milo. What he was going to do to fix the tail wouldn't be very pleasant.

"Alright, Miles." The doctor said. "On the count of three, I'm going to pull your tail straight. Got it?" The doctor waited for Milo to understand. Milo is a brave person, so he wasn't worried about it. Milo nodded. "Ready? One, two, three-" The doctor quickly pulled the tail straight. It worked surprisingly well, but it left Milo in more pain than he was in when the tail was broken.

"FFfffffffffffthh..." Milo tried not to make any noise, but the pain was really bad. "Ahaha..." Milo's eyes were watering. The doctor bandaged Milo's tail up and said Milo was good to go. To make Milo feel better, the doctor gave him 2 butterscotch DumDums. Milo ended up giving the DumDums to Abby and Dexter since Milo doesn't like butterscotch.

Excited to go back home, the kids hopped back into Aunt Nicole's car. After everybody was in and buckled up, Aunt Nicole spent some time on her phone before starting the car. Milo knew exactly what she was doing because he could see her screen. She was Googling where an ice cream place was.

"Who's up for ice cream?" Aunt Nicole asked enthusiastically. Both kids cheered from the back seat. Who could turn that offer down? Ice cream for free! "What about you, Milo?" Milo was still trying to cope with the pain in his tail. The doctor gave him a painkiller, but it hadn't kicked in yet. Milo gave the thumbs up for ice cream nonetheless. "Les go."

Unlike the car drive before, Milo stayed fairly silent. Maybe he contemplated life and why he existed. Maybe he only existed for the entertainment of other people. Perhaps he was just there as a character in some author's universe. Maybe he wondered if he were the main character, and if he wasn't, who would be?

Or maybe he was just fantasizing about ice cream. Ice cream is good. Aunt Nicole found a parking spot close to the ice cream shop. Before letting the kids out of the car, she told them they could get one scoop of any ice cream. They nearly fell out of the car from being so desperate for ice cream.

Everyone got their ice cream. Milo's chocolate-caramel ice cream did distract him a little from the pain in his tail. It also helped that Aunt Nicole was teasing Abby and Dexter and Milo could watch and laugh. Then Aunt Nicole took a picture of everyone together so she wouldn't forget her little adventure with her niece and nephew and Dexter.

Afterwards, Aunt Nicole brought the kids back home and reluctantly left them. She had a busy rest of the day, so she couldn't stay even though she really wanted to. She also didn't quite feel comfortable with Milo watching the kids, even though he's 17 and can take care of the kids perfectly fine. But what can I say. Aunt Nicole is a worrier for the things that don't need to be worried over.