Spells & Stitches

by Barbara Bretton

  Luke slammed on the brakes and I jumped out of the Jeep. I fumbled with the straps on the car seat and finally managed to extricate a struggling, thrashing Laria.

  A hospital guard motioned for Luke to move the truck away from the ambulance loading zone.

  “Go,” he said to me. “I’ll catch up.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I’m not sure I was even close to coherent as I tried to tell the admitting nurse what was wrong, but the sight of my baby daughter convulsing in my arms spoke volumes. We were quickly whisked through the swinging doors into the heart of the ER.

  The first thing I noticed was that it was much calmer and quieter than the emergency rooms I had seen on television. The second thing I noticed was the smell. Fear? Sickness? Death? I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I wouldn’t forget it anytime soon. An elderly woman waited attention on a gurney in the corner. I tried not to look at her and wondered why nobody thought to pull a sheet over her exposed limbs. All of these things imprinted themselves on my mind in a nanosecond as nurses and interns swirled around my Laria.

  “We need you to stay outside,” a red-haired nurse said, drawing the curtain around the space. “One of the doctors will speak with you shortly.”

  I wanted to rip down that curtain, grab my baby, and transport us back to Sugar Maple where the real world couldn’t touch us, but that wasn’t an option. I stood there, breathing in the strange smells, when I heard Luke’s voice coming from the waiting room.

  I dodged an attendant wheeling a cart, then burst through the swinging doors in time to see him hand over an insurance card to the receptionist at the computer monitor.

  “They’re looking at her,” I said as he filled out some forms with a ballpoint pen. “They kicked me out.”

  I saw him print the name LARIA HOBBS MACKENZIE in block letters followed by his social security number and name.

  My stomach twisted as the real world tightened its grip on us. What would I have done without Luke? Despite my half-human heritage, it had never occurred to me that there might come a day when I needed real-world medical insurance. Or that our child might. I thanked the gods that he had provided for Laria.

  The admitting nurse got up to adjust something at the printer. Luke bent down and pulled out a familiar bag he’d kept balanced between his feet.

  “I thought you might want this.” He handed me the knitting bag I kept stashed in the Jeep.

  Knitting socks as therapy? Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. At that moment those socks-in-progress were all that stood between me and utter panic.

  Finally the paperwork was completed and we marched back into the treatment area. The cubicle where they had been working on Laria was empty and I knew a rush of fear unlike anything I had ever experienced.

  “Where’s our daughter?” Luke demanded of a male nurse passing by.

  Clearly the poor guy needed more information.

  “Laria MacKenzie,” I offered. “Infant, convulsions—?”

  He looked blank but raised his forefinger. “Gimme three,” he said, “and I’ll find out.”

  Three turned into five, which turned into twelve. Luke was ready to storm the hospital in search of our baby, when a middle-aged gray-haired woman in a lab coat approached.

  “I’m Dr. Albright,” she said, extending her right hand. “Lilith called and told me your daughter was coming in.”

  I could have cried with relief.

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Dr. Albright said, “but that’s actually good news.” She named two specific areas that had been mercifully ruled out already through the preliminary examination. She asked permission to run two more tests, neither of which would be invasive, and we agreed.

  “It will take a while,” she said with a warm smile, “so you might want to set up shop in the lounge on the second floor. Lilith said you’re a knitter so I know you’ll make use of the great light we have up there. I’ll make sure you’re kept informed.”

  And then she was gone.

  “I want to run after her,” I said as the big doors marked NO ENTRANCE swung shut behind her.

  “So do I,” Luke said.

  “Do you think the baby’s scared?”

  “She’s too young to understand what’s happening,” he said, squeezing my hand. “That’s the only good part about this whole fucking thing.”

  I bit back hot tears, but this time they weren’t for Laria. Luke had lost his first child in an auto accident. His daughter had been riding her bike at the foot of the driveway when a car sideswiped her. He had waited for good news that never came. He had heard the words no parent should ever hear. He had buried his daughter. For the first time I truly understood the depth of his loss and how strong the human spirit really was.

  “You’d better call your parents and let them know what’s happening,” I said. “I’ll call Janice.”

  “You can’t use cells inside a hospital. Go to the lounge and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Don’t be long,” I said. “Laria and I need you.”

  Even more than I had realized.

  28

  LUKE

  I heard them before I saw them. My dad’s rumbling voice, my mother’s authoritative soprano, and two other voices I didn’t expect.

  They were all over me the moment I pushed through the door into the waiting room.

  “What’s going on?” my father demanded. “Where’s Chloe? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “How is Laria?” my mother asked, struggling to maintain her professional composure. “What are the doctors telling you?”

  Meghan stood near the door looking weepy while a tall, muscular dude took it all in. If I hadn’t had more important things on my mind, I would’ve clocked him just for the hell of it.

  Did you ever take an instant dislike to someone? The kind of dislike that makes you want to wipe the smug smile off his face and knock him on his ass? That was the way this guy made me feel the second I saw him. I had to hand it to my sister: when it came to losers, the girl had radar.

  I brought everyone up to speed on Laria as we headed toward the elevator that would take us to the visitors’ lounge on the second floor.

  I separated Meghan from the pack while we waited. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

  Probably not the most brotherly response, but I was low on patience at that point.

  “Car trouble,” she said with a shrug. “I tried calling you and got Ma instead. Great luck, huh?”

  “What kind of car trouble?”

  She shrugged. “I drive a beater, big brother. I’ve had all kinds of car trouble.”

  She said they’d spent the night at the old-school Stardust Motor Court near the county hospital.

  “I thought we were going to head up to Canada tomorrow, but he got all antsy and we set out at the crack of dawn.”

  “Crack of dawn?” My sister only saw the crack of dawn from the flip side.

  “Okay, so it was almost nine, but it felt like the crack of dawn.” They made it a few miles north of Sugar Maple when the car died and our parents swung by to rescue them and continued on to the hospital.

  “You had to bring him with you?” I muttered as the elevator light went on.

  “We couldn’t leave him on the side of the road.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.”

  “Shh,” she warned me. “Be nice.”

  I wasn’t making any promises. If the jackass got out of line, I was kicking him out. No questions asked.

  Maybe he was smarter than he looked because he nodded at me in the elevator but gave me a wide berth, which was fine by me. My sister might have a thing for bad boys, but I was a cop. I knew that bad boys usually ended up doing twenty-to-life.

  Chloe was talking to someone in a white lab coat when we entered the visitors’ lounge. She looked tightly strung, pale, and exhausted but slightly less worried than she had before.

  “So far, so good,” she said as she embraced
my parents and shot a quizzical look toward Meghan and her jackass. “They’re taking her for a CT scan now, but they don’t expect to find anything.”

  Bunny peppered her with questions that she tried hard to answer but fell short of the detail my mother was looking for. I was happy enough with the news that the seizures had stopped and there was no fever.

  “Who’s the neonatal?” my mother asked.

  “I don’t know,” Chloe said, “but a Dr. Albright is overseeing everything.”

  Bunny marched off in search of answers and Meghan took the opportunity to step forward and introduce her friend.

  “This is James,” she said. “We had car trouble. We tried calling you—”

  “Nobody’s interested,” I snapped and instantly felt like shit when Meghan blushed bright red.

  James flashed a toothpaste smile and extended his right hand in Chloe’s direction. To my surprise, Chloe nodded but didn’t take his hand. Instead she turned to my dad.

  “You look like a man in need of coffee,” she said, linking her arm through his. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get you a cup?”

  “I should be taking care of you,” my dad said.

  Chloe gave him a tired smile. “You’d be doing me a favor, Jack. Otherwise I’ll just sit here and think.”

  He nodded and lowered himself onto one of the sofas lining the wall.

  “Anybody else?” she asked, deliberately avoiding James’s eyes.

  “Tea for me, thanks,” Meghan said.

  I shot my sister a look.

  “She asked,” Meghan protested. “Chill, big brother. You’re getting a little intense.”

  “You want intense? In case you forgot, we’re waiting to find out why our eight-day-old daughter is having seizures.”

  “Luke.” Chloe placed a hand on my arm. “It’ll be a while until we hear anything more. Help me with the coffees, okay?”

  CHLOE

  “I wasn’t going to lose it,” Luke said as we walked down the hallway toward the small cafeteria.

  “I know,” I said. “I was.”

  “I saw you didn’t shake his hand.”

  “I couldn’t. I was about to turn into a flamethrower.” The tips of my fingers were uncomfortably hot and I waved them in the air to cool them down. Was it possible my magick was making a comeback so soon after Laria’s birth?

  We got on line for coffee behind a frazzled mother of three wired kids who were running laps around the room. My admiration for human mothers took another leap.

  “I thought everyone said Meghan liked pretty boys.”

  Luke shot me a look. “You don’t think he’s good-looking?”

  “Average to plain.”

  “My mother thinks he should be a male model.”

  I shrugged. “He’d have to hit the gym a whole lot harder.”

  “Are we talking about the same guy?” Luke asked. “Chiseled features, blue eyes, guns the size of howitzers?”

  I started to laugh as we placed our order. “Maybe your sister should be worried that you’re competition.”

  He turned red, which made me laugh even more. It felt good to release some of the tension that had been building inside us for hours now.

  “Not my type,” he said as we paid for the drinks. “I like tall, skinny blondes.”

  We started back to the lounge. “Nothing against Meghan, but I really wish they weren’t here.”

  “Does that mean I can kick his ass out?”

  “No,” I said. “It means I wish they weren’t here.”

  Bunny and Jack were watching the overhead television when we returned. Bunny was knitting on my sock-in-progress. Meghan was working a newspaper crossword puzzle while James leaned against the window and looked down at the parking lot. Direct sunlight wasn’t his friend. He looked older, more jaded, not somebody I’d like to get to know better. Or at all, for that matter.

  I have magick, but I’m not psychic. I can’t walk into a room and suss out the good, the bad, and the downright evil like many of my Sugar Maple friends can. But this James guy set off a gut-level reaction I couldn’t ignore. Even through the dark cloud of worry over Laria the warning bells rang loud and clear.

  Okay, so maybe I already knew enough about him to hate him. Cruelty had never been one of my turn-ons and there was no denying he had been incredibly cruel and thoughtless with Meghan. But there was something else at work, something I couldn’t identify but sensed just the same, and I wished he were anywhere but here with us.

  Luke sat down near Meghan and struck up a conversation. I sat on the arm of the sofa next to Bunny and Jack and tried to muster up some interest in The Price Is Right but all I could think of was Laria.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” Bunny said as she handed back the sock. “It looked lonely.”

  I managed a smile. “Toe-up or cuff-down?”

  “Cuff-down,” she said, “but I did try two on one circular once. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  I picked up where she left off, willing myself to ease into the comforting rhythm of knit three, purl one ribbing.

  Bunny patted me on the hand. “I have a good feeling about this, honey. It’s all going to work out fine.”

  To my embarrassment I totally choked up and could only nod my head in response. I was aware of James’s eyes on me, cool and calculating, and I ducked my head against what felt like an invasion of privacy.

  Maybe I should have let Luke kick his ass after all.

  Time dragged on. I knitted. Bunny bought us sandwiches around one o’clock but I couldn’t choke down a bite. Jack dozed intermittently on the plastic sofa while Luke paced a hole in the dark gray industrial carpet. Meghan must have picked up on the unfriendly vibe because she asked James to go for a walk with her so she could “get some air.”

  Bunny shook her head as soon as they left. “I don’t know why she dates men who are prettier than she is. You’d think she’d have learned by now.”

  Jack snored. Luke grunted something unpleasant. I looked at Bunny in surprise.

  “I don’t think he’s that great looking,” I said honestly, then ticked off the ways in which I found him lacking.

  “Well, look at you,” Bunny said with a laugh. “You look like a movie star yourself. Your idea of average is very different from mine.”

  “Do you like him?” I asked.

  She gave me an are you kidding type of look. “He’s arrogant, conceited, and stupid. Exactly the type my daughter is drawn to time after time.” She sighed and inspected her short, no-nonsense fingernails. “The only good thing is it won’t last.”

  “Will it last the afternoon?”

  Bunny looked at me and laughed out loud. “I knew I liked you.”

  I liked her, too. She was smart, aggressive, and definitely nosy, but she loved her family. By extension I was part of the tribe and it felt good. And to my surprise I saw a difference in Luke, too. His parents might get on his nerves, but their presence at the hospital helped make both of us feel less alone as we waited for news of Laria. Conversation ground to a halt as the hours wore on, but the feeling of being connected to each other by our love and concern for Laria was more powerful than words. I sneaked off to the empty chapel on the sixth floor and quickly blueflamed Janice to let her know what was happening.

  “If you need us, we’re there for you,” she said. “We’ll drop everything and transport over. Just say the word.”

  I tried to tell her how much I appreciated the offer, but Janice wasn’t one for big displays of sentiment. She tried to make a joke out of it, but I wouldn’t let her.

  “Knock it off,” she said with a laugh. “Next thing I know you’ll be designing a magick line for Hallmark.”

  Meghan and James popped back in around shift change at three to see if there was any news and then went off again, to the relief of everyone in the room.

  Luke and I got to see Laria once between tests and she was her sweet and hungry self. I’d expressed my milk earlier and was ready to
feed her, but the doctors were withholding nourishment until the next test was completed.

  “She looks fine,” Luke said as she grabbed hold of his pinky.

  I smiled and kissed the top of her head. “You’d never know anything happened.”

  “Sorry, folks,” Paula, one of the evening nurses on duty, said, “but Laria has things to do.”

  We lingered as long as we could, but the nurse was insistent. Reluctantly we turned to leave and found ourselves face-to-face with James Whatever His Last Name Was.

  “How long have you been standing there?” Luke demanded, not even taking a stab at being friendly. “I thought you were out walking with Meghan.”

  “We came back so I could use the john.” If the guy was the least bit uncomfortable it didn’t show. “I heard your voices on my way back.” He smiled and I liked him less than before if that was possible. “I thought maybe I’d get a look at the star of this show.”

  “No.” I didn’t mean for it to pop out quite that harshly, but my emotions were pretty ragged by then. “No visitors. It’s family only.”

  Another man might have been ticked off by my confrontational reaction, but he didn’t blink. The guy had sociopath written all over him.

  “I saw you holding her. She’s a beauty.”

  “Thanks.” I was lucky I could manage that much with Luke glowering at me. “We’d better go. They have one more test to run and we’re holding them up.”

  Luke and I started down the hall, but James stayed put.

  “Let’s go,” Luke said as the moment grew increasingly uncomfortable. “Like we said, family only.”

  I wasn’t sure if the guy was socially awkward or just plain manipulative, but I leaned toward the latter. Luke had been keeping an eye on him before this incident, but now he was watching him like a hawk.

  A middle-aged couple came in around four thirty to wait for news of their son, who had been rushed into surgery after a snowmobile accident. They huddled together in the far corner and I could hear whispered words of prayer rise and fall above the drone of local news on the television.