“I’ll be fine. Thank you.” Candy dove into the driver’s seat.
She made it to the hospital in record time. Carrying June, and trailed by Joey, she went straight to the admitting desk. June was mumbling in Chinese and Joey was crying. “My daughter has a fever and a headache and she’s throwing up. One of the kids in her class has been diagnosed with meningitis.”
The nurse nodded. “Right through here. We’re going to need your permission to do some tests.”
“Anything. Whatever you need.” Candy lay June on the white papered table the nurse indicated. She looked so small and helpless. Joey wrapped his arms around her hips. Another nurse bustled in and shooed her away from the table so she could examine June. A third person came in with a sheaf of forms for her to fill out.
“Is there someone you can call?” The second nurse asked. “The child’s other parent?”
Candy stared at the women. Other parent? June didn’t have another parent. All she had was Candy and Wei who was in China. Maybe she should have let the guy from the grocery store drive her to the hospital. She found her phone and scrolled through the numbers. So many people. Clients, acquaintances, friends. Who do you call when your child is in the hospital with a life-threatening illness? Her finger paused over one number. He would come. She knew he would come.
* * * *
Tyler heard his phone ringing and couldn’t remember where he put it. He wandered through the house for three rings before he located it on the dresser in the bedroom. Why was Candy calling? Jason hadn’t done anything unauthorized had he? “Hello?”
“Tyler, June is sick.”
Her voice was all wrong. Hollow. She sounded like the night her dad hit her and he had to take her out of there. This was probably how she sounded when she called Ronnie the night Frankie hit her. “What do you mean, June is sick?”
“She—a boy in her class has meningitis. She said she had a headache, but I thought she was upset because she got in trouble at school today and then she threw up in the parking lot.” Candy sobbed.
Tension wrapped around Tyler’s vocal chords. Meningitis was bad. “Candy, where are you?”
“St Lucy’s.”
That was bad. Hospital bad. Chills ran down his arms. Christ, he hated hospitals. Tyler slid his feet into sandals as he grabbed his wallet and car keys. “Are you in the kids’ ward or emergency or what?”
“Emergency.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Is Joey with you?”
“He’s here. Wei is in China.”
Great. No nanny support. “Tell me what’s going on.” He paused at the door long enough to set the alarm and lock up then switched her to speaker on the way to the car so he could text Tessa. From the sound of Candy, she was not going to be able to fill out her own paperwork.
Candy recited a blow-by-blow of exactly what was happening in the exam room that looped back on itself. As long as she kept talking, Tyler didn’t care what she said. In the background he could hear Joey crying.
Traffic conspired against him. The fifteen minutes he’d promised stretched into twenty-five before he waded through the mob scene to the admitting desk. Half the city seemed to be in the emergency room where seven people in scrubs were trying to feel everyone’s glands and take everyone’s temperature at the same time. The guard at the door had shoved a surgical mask into his hand when he walked through the door and a kid sneezed on him. Candy wasn’t even talking to him now. A nurse seemed to be trying to make her understand that she needed to hold June while they did a spinal tap and Candy wasn’t understanding.
“My friend brought her daughter in here. Candy Perry. The girl’s name is June Perry. She’s Chinese.”
“You could hang up the phone.” The admitting nurse pointed a long red nail at the cell phone wedged against his ear.
“No, I really can’t. I’ve been talking to Candy since she called to tell me where she is and I’m sort of afraid of what will happen if I hang up.”
“Are you the child’s father?”
“The child is an orphan. Candy adopted her.”
The admitting nurse sighed. “Did you adopt her?”
“No.”
“I can’t let you back there unless you’re the child’s legal guardian or her pediatrician and I’m pretty sure you’re not her pediatrician.”
Tyler scowled at the woman. Based on what he was hearing through the phone, the conversation had started below the Mason-Dixon and was now headed farther south. The nurse might have better luck if she spoke Chinese because then Joey might understand at least. Tyler walked past the desk and pushed through the doors.
“Hey! You can’t go back there! Security!”
The whole area was a warren of over-bright little rooms, half of which were blocked by curtains down the middle. He held the phone a little away from his ear trying to pick Candy’s voice out in the hall.
A huge black guy grabbed his arm. “Buddy, you can’t be back here.”
“Listen man, my ex-girlfriend is back here with her little girl who’s really sick and she’s fallin’ apart. She called me. You know how it is.”
The guard drew a deep, authoritative breath. “Yeah, come on. She the one with the two Chinese kids?”
“Yes.”
The guard led him down another hall to yet another over-bright room. He pulled the curtain back to reveal Candy open-mouthed and baffled by what the nurse was trying to tell her, the nurse rapidly reaching the end of her tether, Joey wrapped around Candy’s hips sobbing like a baby and June laying hopefully half-asleep on a table.
Candy still had the phone pressed to her ear, but when the curtain moved, she dropped it and threw herself into his arms. “They want to put a needle in my baby’s back!”
“Tyler!” Joey switched to Tyler’s legs.
The nurse picked up the phone and rolled her eyes at the guard.
“Honey, they wouldn’t want to do it if they didn’t need to.” He’d only been half paying attention to the explanation, but the nurse had repeated it so often he knew what was going on. “They’ve got to make sure it’s meningitis. The nurse is going to roll her on her side and you need to hold her still so she can get some fluid from June’s spine.” Just saying the words made his skin crawl.
“I can’t. I can’t.”
Tyler didn’t think he’d ever heard those words from her. Candy could do anything. But her eyes were wild and her hands were shaking. She looked like a cheap imitation of herself.
“You want me to do it? You take care of Joey. I’ll take care of June.”
Candy nodded. “I can’t watch.”
Tyler’s stomach twisted. Watch? There didn’t seem to be any option. “Take Joey out to the hall and we’ll let you know when it’s over.” He peeled Joey away and handed him off to Candy, who took him into the hall.
“Thank you,” the nurse groaned. “Some moms can’t handle it when their kid is really sick. I’m gonna roll her onto her side and you keep her still. You can sit on that stool.”
Tyler hooked the stool closer to the table with his foot. “Hi, mei mei. Don’t feel good, huh?”
June tried to shake her head but winced. “My neck hurts.”
“I know. The nurse is going to do something to help fix that. Okay?” He brushed her hair off her face. Then he braced himself. At least June wouldn’t be able to see the needle they were using. It looked about a foot long and as big around as a cannon.
The nurse hesitated, frowning. “Are you the child’s father?”
Tyler glanced toward the hall. Candy was out there in pieces with Joey. He was tempted to point out that June was Chinese and he was standard North American mutt, but for some reason the easy joke wouldn’t come. “It’s complicated.”
The nurse grunted. “Isn’t it always.”
* * * *
Six hours later they’d admitted June to the PICU. Brian and Suzi had taken Joey to their house. Tyler combed his fingers
through Candy’s hair. “Babe, why don’t you come eat something? There’s nothing we can do here.”
“She looks cold,” Candy murmured.
Tyler peered through the window. June was flush with fever, and according to the nurse, they’d put a cold blanket on her to keep her body temperature down. The last thing she was was cold. “There’s a whole team of people here dedicated to making sure she’s as comfortable as possible.”
“I don’t want her to be comfortable. I want her to be okay.”
A few other parents lingered in the hall outside the windows of their own sick children’s rooms murmuring to one another. Nurses buzzed around the desk behind them. Tyler wished he had a guitar so he’d have something to do with his hands. Standing here, staring through this window was maddening.
There was nothing he could do beyond what he’d already done. He’d called everyone. For the first couple of hours there had been a steady stream of people coming to find out what happened and lend support, but they’d dried up after a while. Ronnie and Ricky were on tour doing a show in Florida tonight. Tanya was in Paris, but she’d had someone from her boutique deliver some sunglasses to give the staff. Maureen had taken them home to make gift bags with certificates to Cassie’s campground, free dinner coupons at the Potterville diner, and the variety of things Candy’s clients had flooded her office with when word circulated. Hollywood didn’t send flowers. They made swag bags for the staff.
Sarina had displayed a sudden germ phobia and wouldn’t come to the hospital, but she’d been calling for hourly reports and to give her own. She seemed to be trying to do an entire year’s work in one evening. Not that Candy knew anything about it. Tyler had been fielding her calls because when she did talk to people none of what she said made sense.
They couldn’t do anything either. June was under professional care and Candy was rooted to the floor outside her room.
The little Indian doctor in charge of June turned away from the desk and walked toward them. “Ms. Perry?”
Candy blinked at her twice and then turned back to the window.
The doctor started talking as though Candy was paying attention. From what Tyler had seen, she had a lot of practice doing that. “Your daughter still has a very high fever. We are keeping her cool, but we are going to keep her in the PICU overnight for observation. These first few hours are critical. Tomorrow we will hopefully be able to move her to a regular isolation room. You should go home, get some rest and see to your other child.”
“She doesn’t have her rabbit.” Candy sniffled.
“She will sleep fine tonight without it. You need to keep up your strength and take care of your son.”
“My son?” Candy blinked at Tyler. “Where is Joey?”
“Brian and Suzi took him home.”
“Is he sick?”
Tyler glanced at the doctor who shrugged as if she totally understood Candy was on another planet. “They tested him, remember? He’s fine. He’s staying the night with Brian and Suzi.”
“Oh good. He’ll like that.” And her gaze went right back to June through the window.
“She should eat something.” The doctor bobbled her head side to side. “This will run its course in seven to ten days, but we have to watch for complications. She’s going to need all her strength.”
Tyler nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”
“If you would like, I can prescribe her a sedative to put her to sleep.”
“I’d have to get her to swallow something to get that in her.” He brushed his fingers through Candy’s hair again. “She’ll snap out of this. It’s the shock. Give her some time.”
The doctor nodded. “All right. Please let the nurses know if you need anything.”
Candy slumped against him. “I should have made sure she had all the shots they said she had.”
Too bad that didn’t win the non sequitur of the week award.
“They had to have so many shots. I didn’t want to make them suffer more needles to get blood tests for the shots they told me they had. If I had, maybe she wouldn’t be so sick. There’s got to be an immunization for this.” Candy flattened her hand on the window. “This is my fault.”
“Candy, half the kids in June’s class are sick. I think if there was an immunization they’d be fine.”
“Mark had measles.”
Measles?
“His mother didn’t get him the immunizations because she believed they caused autism so he got measles and then he got this.”
And another sharp left. “Candy, I don’t think you can blame Mark’s mother. Let’s go down to the coffee shop and get a bite to eat. June will still be here when we get back and they said you can borrow a pager so they can page you if something happens.”
“Something might happen.”
“Which is why they give you the pager.” Tyler gave her an experimental tug. She moved with him so he guided her to the nurses’ desk for a pager and then down to the coffee shop in the first floor atrium. Leaving her at a table with the pager, he went to the counter and ordered her a half-caf skinny mocha heavy on the whipped cream, a bottle of water, a roast beef sandwich, and a bowl of New England clam chowder. One of the four should entice her.
“This is my fault,” she said when he carried the tray back to the table.
“No it isn’t.” Tyler arrayed the food in front of her to see if she was still with him enough to be tempted. She didn’t even seem to notice it.
“I should have had her get another set of shots even though it meant more needles. A couple of needles then would have saved her all this.”
“You can’t know that and I don’t think the doctors would have let you anyway.” He nudged the soup closer. He’d never seen her refuse clam chowder. Of course she never let a good mountain of whipped cream pass by either and hers was melting.
“They would do what I told them to do.”
“I don’t think even you can summon that kind of power.” Tyler placed the spoon in her hand. “Eat your soup.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Yes, you are. Eat.” He took the pager out of her other hand.
“I think Mark Hamill helped me get the kids in the car.”
And another winning non sequitur for the books. “Really? Could have been. He lives around here, doesn’t he?”
“Joey asked him if he was Luke Skywalker.” Candy looked around. “Where’s Joey?”
“We sent him home with Brian and Suzi, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” She took a sip of the soup. “What are you doing here?”
“You called me.”
“But you are terrified of hospitals.”
“And you still called me.”
She nodded and took another swallow. “I should go back upstairs. June might wake up.”
Tyler grabbed her wrist. “Finish the soup first.”
“Bully.”
He turned her hand over and rubbed his thumb across her palm. “Only in your best interest. Finish the soup. We can take the coffee and sandwich to go.”
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Right.” She shoved the sandwich toward him with a ghost of a smile.
“Bully.” He unwrapped it.
“Only in your best interest.”
She ladled the rest of the soup into her mouth in silence, one eye on the pager. “Thank you for coming.”
“Not a problem.” He licked horseradish off his fingers. He still wasn’t sure why she’d called him. Why, in a blind panic, would his number be the one she picked? She didn’t seem to know either so he wasn’t going to push it. “Are you going to go home tonight? Try to get some sleep?”
“I want to be here in case she wakes up. Should I call Joey?”
“It’s nine-thirty. You’ll wake him up.”
“I miss him.” She pushed away the bowl and put her head down on her arms. “I’m a terrible mother.”
“You’re a great mother.” He put his arm across her back. “Candy, kids get sick. It’s no one’s fault. You are not responsible for everything that happens.”
“I couldn’t hold her when they did the spinal tap. You had to do it.”
Tyler winced. Holding June as she cried and pleaded with him to make them stop had not been a lifetime highlight, but he’d do it again. June had needed somebody and so had Candy. “You needed to take care of Joey. June understands. I think the only thing you really did that might damage them was give them names what had the same first letter. That’s just too cute.”
Candy made a noise that could have been a laugh or a sob. “Not funny.”
Must have been a laugh.
“I’d already decided I was going to name the baby after Joe when I found June. Lo June Ghou.”
“I guess it’s a good thing she already had a name or you’d have probably tagged her with Goldie.”
“Shut up.” She swatted him and reached for the coffee. “I’m going back upstairs.”
“She isn’t going to wake up.” Tyler put her bowl back in the tray and picked up the end of the sandwich. “The doctor has her on something to make her sleep.”
“I need to be there for her.”
Tyler followed her to the elevator. And I need to be here for you.
Chapter 10
Candy came to slowly. She was hot, but cradled tightly on a narrow bed. Or maybe a couch. She sat up and nearly fell off the edge. Tyler was asleep, holding her on an ugly gray couch. He shifted when she moved, but didn’t wake up. The last thing she remembered was standing in the hall watching June sleep through the window. Another couple curled together on the opposite couch. Leaving him sleep, she went back to June. She was asleep, too. Her face didn’t look as flushed now.
A nurse put her hand on Candy’s shoulder. “You and your husband should go home and get some real rest. Your daughter will be fine. She’s responding really well. In the morning we’ll move her to a regular room.”
“I’d rather stay.”
“Most parents do, but it really doesn’t do any good.” The nurse squeezed her shoulder. “At the very least, go back to sleep. You both look exhausted and you’re going to want to be on your toes when we move her to her room. I’ll wake you if anything changes.”
Keep Coming Back to Love Page 18
