by Cara McKenna
“Like nothing,” Kelly said quietly. “I know.”
“Is this how you feel, when something’s beyond your control? Like that night Don tried to kill himself?”
Kelly shook his head, looking sad. “Nah. When that happens, I don’t feel anything.”
“That sounds nice.”
“It’s not,” he said quietly. “It’s a fucking cop-out.”
We were quiet for a minute or two. I drained my bottle, and we headed back inside and down the halls to the pediatric ER’s waiting room.
A different nurse had come on duty. She looked to Kelly and me as we approached the desk.
“There’s a little boy named Jack, with a flu? Can we visit him?”
She checked something on a ledger. “Are you family?”
“I’m his aunt,” I said, then blurted, “and this is my fiancé,” grasping Kelly’s arm. If there was ever a time I could admit I wanted a sturdy male presence at my side, now was it.
“Are you both well?”
We nodded.
“He’s been moved to the ICU. You can visit, but only for a couple minutes. Follow the staff’s instructions, and don’t touch him. And please don’t panic if he doesn’t respond.”
That nearly got me bawling all over again, but Kelly put his hand on my back and gently ushered me to follow in the nurse’s wake. She passed us off to a male nurse, who had us pull paper booties over our shoes and don face masks, and scrub our hands with antibacterial soap before he let us in the unit.
The ICU was bright and stark, which might’ve upset some people, but it imbued the situation with a no-nonsense sterility I found comforting. There were scrub-clad bodies everywhere, checking this monitor and that. The nurse needn’t have told us not to touch Jack—he was lying inside a kind of toddler-sized incubator, nested in a tangle of tubes. His skin looked so red against the white pillow, and too tight, from the swelling.
“Oh my God,” I murmured through the mask, pressing my knuckles to my cheeks to keep my hands from trembling.
Kelly rubbed my back. “They know what they’re doing.”
Did they? How could he know that? I felt panic coming on, but then Jack’s blue eyes opened, and a rush of hope swept the fear aside.
I turned to the male nurse. “Where’s my sister?”
“She’s talking with Dr. Chandra,” he said, scanning Jack’s vitals.
I leaned as close as I dared. I hoped I wasn’t scaring Jack, some crying, red-faced creature half hidden by the mask. “Hi, buddy.”
He just blinked at me, looking stoned.
“Hi, Jack.” I waved, fresh tears rising. “You be strong now, sweetheart. We all love you so much.”
Kelly’s hand slid all the way down my back and enveloped my clammy fingers.
“You remember my friend Kelly, from the other week?”
“I got a blue truck, just like you,” Kelly offered.
I don’t know why, but that just wrecked me. I started crying so hard I knew no toddler could find my presence comforting, and Kelly followed my lead as I waved good-bye and headed for the door. We emerged in the hallway still holding hands. He seemed to notice right as I did, and let mine go with a final squeeze. We stripped our masks and booties.
“You okay?”
I shook my head. Like Amber, I wouldn’t be okay until I heard that little boy laugh again, and looked in those eyes and could see he was the same Jack as always, all there, all fixed.
“He looks strong to me,” Kelly said.
I nodded. If only he were as strong as the man standing before me, so big and tough and fearless, nothing could ever hurt him.
Though was I really so right, thinking Kelly couldn’t be hurt? Surely I’d hurt him myself, picking the lock on his closet door, rattling his skeletons.
He sighed, sounding a hundred years old, and leaned against the wall. He rubbed his face, and I rubbed his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“I can’t fucking stand feeling this way.”
And I realized I knew him well enough that I didn’t need clarification. I knew exactly what he meant because it was the same thing eating away at my own insides, this sickening helplessness. Having to accept that all the things you rely on to feel worthy and strong . . . none of them could do jack-shit to fix this situation. You had to just turn a child’s fate over to strangers and pray your trust wasn’t misplaced. All the time in the world to sit back and accept how useless you felt.
I stepped close and forced a bear hug on Kelly. He accepted it, stroking my back. Though I wasn’t turned-on in any way, I’d never wanted to kiss him so badly. Out of gratitude or recognition. Just to feel something good amid all this fear and uncertainty. But our time for kissing had passed, so I just held on, breathing with him for a long moment before stepping back. I checked my phone.
“It’s after two. You should go home, try to get some sleep before work.”
I saw him resist for a breath, then surrender. “You need anything?”
I shook my head. “Just the company’s been awesome. Really.”
He nodded. “Gimme a call if you hear any updates. If you want. Or if you need anything. I’m only ten minutes’ drive.”
“Thanks, Kel. I will.”
I watched until he turned a corner, then I was alone again. But I felt okay. Though his body was gone, it felt as if he’d draped me in some psychic jacket before he went, a lingering, comforting presence.
Amber returned shortly from a talk with the doctor. I stayed with her until six, when Jack’s condition got officially upgraded to stable. We cried a bunch, the whole scene feeling trippy and unreal from the lack of sleep and the overdose of emotion. I did as Amber insisted, and gave myself permission to go home and crash.
My eyes were so dried out from crying, my head so foggy, I didn’t feel entirely safe, driving. But the roads were deserted, no one around to get pissed if I went ten miles under the limit. I got home just after six thirty, so tired my bones ached. I left a message on Dennis’s direct line, telling him I was sorry, but there was a family emergency and I didn’t know if I’d be in for my shift, but I’d call when I knew.
Fully clothed and with my sneakers still laced, I flopped across my covers. Sleep hit me like a mallet, a dull thump full of mercy and peace.
Chapter Seventeen
I slept until noon, nearly, waking with a leaden gutful of fear as the previous night��s memories cleared away the initial confusion.
Two missed calls from Dennis sank the dread deeper. But the first was from around seven, just him telling me to play things by ear, the second left a little before ten, saying an extra tech had been called in and to not worry about work, just do what I had to do, let him know if I thought I’d be in tomorrow when I had a minute.
I spent the rest of the day at the hospital, long enough for Amber and I to complete a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, and for me to leave on various errands—to fetch drops for her tear-pickled eyes, a pillow, better sandwiches than the hospital’s café offered. A stack of glossy magazines, always her balm when she’d been stuck home with a flu herself. We weren’t allowed in the ICU for more than twenty minutes every couple hours, and it was killing her. But doctors and nurses came into the waiting room with updates now and then, Jack’s prognosis getting brighter and brighter as the day went on, unclenching my heart one puckered cell at a time.
After a yawn-filled dinner in the hospital café, Amber ordered me to go home.
“Only if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. I’m so sleepy, I barely know what I’m even saying. Jack’s stable, and you’ve got work in the morning.”
“I’ll call in, if you need me.”
“No, you go. I can handle this.”
I smiled, knowing she was right—she could handle this herself—and re
alizing it was high time we both started accepting that.
“Plus if Marco shows up . . .” She tossed up her hands and blew a raspberry. “I’ve got enough of an earful to give him, without you getting him even more wound up, just being here. No offense. Not your fault or anything. Just . . .”
“I know.” I reached across the table and took her hand. “You know you can do way, way better than him, right?”
She pursed her lips, then nodded. “Yeah, I do. Sometimes I doubt it, but after all this . . . I met your boyfriend exactly once before this, and it wasn’t such a hot time. But he still showed up last night. I know he came for you, but he came. Marco didn’t come, not for me or his son. You’ve got a good man, Erin. I wish I could say the same.”
I wished I could, too. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
She sighed. “So you keep saying. But he must be something special, to spend the night at the ER with us.”
“Yeah, I guess he is.” I knew he was.
“It’s better to not have anybody, than somebody who sucks,” Amber concluded, a fat tear slipping down her cheek. I held her hand tighter and another fell, as though I’d squeezed it out of her.
“But it’s scary having no one,” she said. “And lonely. And . . .” She laughed, looking sheepish. “And boring. But maybe I ought to get better at being bored. Before I wake up and realize I’m Mom.”
I nodded. “And you don’t have ‘no one.’ You have me and Jack.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Boring as we are.”
She laughed, and let my hand go to blow her nose. “Go home, Erin. Get some sleep. I’ll call if there’s any news.”
“Including good news.”
“Sure.”
“Especially good news,” I added, standing and organizing my purse. “No matter how trivial.”
“I promise.”
I leaned in and kissed the crown of her head. “Get some rest, yourself.”
On my way out I bought a shot of espresso in a tiny takeaway cup, just to make sure I didn’t nod off during the drive home. Coupled with my weariness, it made me feel high and weird, the streets of Darren and the fields en route to Larkhaven slipping past like painted movie backdrops.
The world looked so organic after the clinical white order of the ICU. There was disorder everywhere, in the twisted tree branches, the bits of litter on the highway shoulder, chaos rippling through the wavery V of geese passing overhead and broadcast in their arrhythmic honks. I draped an arm out my window to feel the wind on my skin.
I got home at six thirty, just in time to jog across campus and slip in before the end of the day shift, letting Dennis know I’d be in the next morning and apologizing in person for my absence. I think we talked, maybe even hugged. I was so pooped, I didn’t even register walking back to my apartment until I was flopped facedown across my covers.
I didn’t sleep, just lay there, grateful for horizontality and stillness. For a respite from being strong or alert or anything at all. I was a lump of flesh tossed across a bed and left alone, and it felt amazing.
After perhaps a half hour’s Zen, a rapping at the door killed the peace. Lifting my chin, I eyed the clock. Seven sixteen, as if I needed any more reason to suspect who it’d be. I rolled off my mattress and shuffled to the door.
Flip of the lock, tug on the handle, and there he was, that big old wall of calm, still dressed in gray.
“Hi, Kel.”
“How is he?”
I smiled. “He’s doing well. He’s going to be back to normal in a week or two, they think. The syndrome he’s got has five stages, and he was just reaching stage two. It could have been way worse.”
Kelly blew out a long breath, sagging with relief against the door frame.
“And it’s a really rare thing to happen these days. We’re lucky the doctors diagnosed him as quick as they did . . . You want a beer?”
His brows rose for a moment’s deliberation. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Come on in.”
Kelly took a seat on my desk chair and I locked the door, then fetched the last two beers from my minifridge. It had grown dark, and I turned on the reading lamp before sitting cross-legged on my bed. Kelly leaned forward to accept his can and we cracked them in unison.
I fiddled with the tab, back and forth and back and forth, until it snapped off. “I want to thank you again, for hanging out. Today must have been the longest shift ever, on no sleep.”
He shrugged. “I was with Don most of the day, and he was pretty calm. Took everything I had not to nod off in the rec room during the soaps.”
“And still another shift to get through tomorrow.” I’d have thought the idea of going back to work would beat me down even more, but I was actually looking forward to it. I could use the routine, some familiarity and focus.
Funny to think the ward and its faces could be called familiar, so soon. But I wanted to see Jenny and Dennis, and the friendlier residents. See if Lee was still as clearheaded as the last time I’d spoken to him, and ask how he felt about transitioning to an outpatient program. Strangest of all, I even looked forward to seeing Lonnie.
Funny how the people who are forced on you—family, colleagues, dependents—can be forgiven their faults, in light of the commitment. The inevitability of being stuck with them. Caring was all about surrender, in the end. The opposite of control. The difference between strangling someone and embracing them.
We sipped our beers for a few minutes, then Kelly reached for my can, setting both of them on the desk, half-drunk.
“Lie down.” It wasn’t an order, not like it might’ve been one of those first nights we spent together.
I stretched out on my back and Kelly joined me, resting his hands on his stomach.
“Have we wrecked all this?” I asked the ceiling. “Whatever we had between us before?”
He replied after a long pause. “What we have between us is strong and stupid.”
I laughed, surprised by his answer, and struck by an image of a small-skulled, club-wielding ogre.
“What we got,” Kelly said, “we’re stuck with it, even if our stubborn, rational brains might decide we’re through. It’ll always be there, whether we like it or not.”
“Can I be honest?”
He kept his eyes on the ceiling. “Sure.”
“I do like it. Whatever it is. It’s just that some angry part of me doesn’t, because I feel like it’s out of my control, maybe.”
“I like when things feel out of my control.”
I blinked. “Really?”
“Sometimes, yeah. I don’t want to enflame your angry part or anything, but being in control comes easy for me. It has ever since I hit my growth spurt and lost my fear. But shit like what we got between us . . . it’s interesting. Because I can’t do anything about it. I’ve just gotta give in and let it have its way. Which is fucking refreshing, when you’re used to having to be on top of everything all the time.”
“Huh.”
We stared up at the spackle, not saying a word. Whatever force kept us wanting each other—I could feel it, as real and physical as a cat curled on the comforter between us. It was docile now, a warm and reassuring presence. But it had sharp teeth and claws. We both knew that.
I sighed. “I really am my mother’s daughter, in some ways. I like to tell myself that Amber inherited all her impulses, but it’s in me, too. And I hate it.”
He coaxed me onto my side and cradled my head. “You’re not your mom. Not any more than I’m any man who’s ever considered himself my father.”
“Sometimes I . . .”
“What?”
“She comes through. Some ugly, angry fragments of her get the better of me.”
“Those aren’t hers. Those are yours.”
“
Yeah, I guess.”
“We’ve all got ugly stuff in us. Get most anybody mad enough or drunk enough or backed into a small enough corner, and you find it. You saw mine, that night you started us talking, about what had happened to land my biological dad in the pen.”
I winced, not wanting to think about that fight.
“I’m real good at keeping my shit under control, but you hit my trigger.” He paused, lips tight like he was trying to suck a fleck of food from between his teeth. “I’m sorry about that night. About losing my rag on you.”
“It was my fault. I shouldn’t have known to begin with, unless you’d decided to tell me. Even after I snooped, I should’ve let you be the one to bring it up.”
“You knew what you knew, whether you should’ve or not. I get that that shit’s not easy to carry around. And I know . . .”
I waited almost half a minute for him to finish the thought.
“I know I don’t let people in too deeply. What you found out, that was like a crowbar. Something that stood a chance at prying me open deeper than the sex even could. It’s just that you jammed it right in there, right between my ribs and cranked it, without any warning.”
I cracked a sad smile at that. “Subtlety’s not really my strong suit.”
“And I’m not good at feeling caught off guard by things.”
“A good instinct, in our line of work.”
“But not good, if I’m trying to keep things together between me and a woman.”
All at once my heart felt thick, beating with hard, muscular thumps. “Were you thinking that way, about me? About trying to keep things together?”
“You really just thought it was about sex for me, didn’t you? Was that how it felt when we were getting into it? Just sex?”
My face burned hotter. “No. But I told myself that’s how it was supposed to be, and not to get it in my head that it might turn into something more. I didn’t think that was on the table.”
“What’d it feel like though?” His expression changed, a smirk twisting his lips, and though the word didn’t fit him, he snuggled closer. “Stroke my male ego. What stuff did you feel, that you didn’t want to?”
