“Heyyyy!” said H-, her head rotating up in order to look him in the eyes.  Slowly peering into his soul, she couldn’t stop her bottom lip from quivering.  Her face flushed red, and she loosed a single, crippling tear.  “Why did you do that?  Why did you take off my band-aid?”

“H-, come on now.  You saw that it was already starting to come off on its own.  How long had it been on for anyhow?  Two days?  You didn’t even have a bleeding oww-ee,” he said, meeting her eye-contact and rubbing her shoulder.  “Plus, I keep telling you that band-aids aren’t stickers-”

“Look!  It’s red.  Can I have a band-aid to put on it?” she asked, her tone revealing that she believed she had presented sound reasoning.

“No, H-, you cannot have a band-aid to cover the mark left by leaving the last band-aid on for too long,” he winced.  “Can we stop talking about band-aids for the rest of the night at least?  Please?” he asked, appealing to her well-developed sense of give-and-take.

“Okay.  But tomorrow morning I want another adult band-aid,” she asserted, her persistence approaching a level generally reserved for the possessed children in career-making horror classics.

“We’ll see.  For now, let’s get back to bed so we can continue reading about King Aaathuh,” he said.

****

“Daa-ddy!  Daa-ddy!” sounded his own personal alarm clock exactly twenty minutes early.

Climbing out of his bed, he opened her door and let her know that it wasn’t quite time to get up yet.

“Can I play quietly for a little bit?” she offered.

“Sure.  I just need twenty more minutes,” he said.

Only a minute passing until guilt overcame him, he reappeared in the living room, much to her surprise.

“I’m going to rest a little out here while you play,” he informed her.

“Rest a little?”

“Yeah, rest a little.  Here on the couch.  It’s not time to get up yet, but when my phone goes off, I will.  You can play though.”

“Okay.”

No sooner than he had closed his eyes, he heard her walking towards the bathroom.  Eyes still closed, he asked, “H-? Where are you going?”

The entire essence of her being still moving forward, her corporeal body came to a halt.  He opened his eyes just in time to see an empty face betray that all available energy was being redirected into deciding how best to play this one out.  No less sudden than when light vanquishes darkness, her widening eyes and resultant raised eyebrows signaled that she had made her decision.  Turning towards him, she slowly nodded her head in the vertical plane, raised her index finger, and casually informed him, “I’m just going to get one band-aid.”