by Alana Terry
I think I dozed for a little bit around four. I remember waking up as a technician came in with a giant rolling machine. “Just getting some x-rays on your daughter,” he told me, and I zoned right out again after that.
Now that it’s morning, I’m not even sure I’ll book a room at the Ronald McDonald house. They’ve got a couch chair here that’s plenty big enough for me to sleep in. Sure, it’s kind of loud with monitors beeping and nurses coming in every few hours to change Natalie’s meds or check her stats, but it’s not like I’d manage any better in a room by myself.
As soon as I answer a few questions from the day-shift worker coming on duty, I go to the nursing station and request a meal card. I’m one of those veteran parents, I guess, the kind who know the ropes already. Know how to get things done. Five minutes later, I’m on my way to the hospital cafeteria. It’s like time held still between now and when Natalie was discharged from the NICU last fall. All that’s changed is the hospital decorations. There’s paper Christmas ornaments taped to the walls and a big fancy tree by the main entrance. The music’s different, too. Julie Andrews and Frank Sinatra instead of that dumb piano stuff. I’m sure I’ll be sick of this soundtrack in another day or two, but right now it’s a welcomed change from that idiotic elevator music I listened to during our first stay here.
The cafeteria’s not quite as crowded as I expected. I must have missed the big surge of night workers coming off duty and the day shift arriving in time to pick up their bagels and coffee. I grab a cinnamon roll and stand in line to get a cappuccino. If there ever was a day for caffeine, this was it.
I’m already anxious about abandoning Natalie in her room. It’s not like it was when she was in the NICU. I could leave her there for hours at a time and not worry about it. But something’s changed. She’s my daughter now. It sounds stupid, because she was my daughter even in the NICU, but it feels different since I’m the one who took care of her for the past two months.
I haven’t called Jake yet. I don’t know why I’m avoiding him. I sent him a text to let him know when we got into Seattle, but I haven’t responded to his half a dozen questions. Maybe I’m just tired. Or maybe I’m starting to pull away because I know.
Jake’s never going to leave Orchard Grove, and Natalie’s too sick to be that far away from the city. Some things just weren’t meant to be, I guess.
Once I get my caffeine for the day, I stand behind a doctor who’s paying for a fruit salad and side of cottage cheese. Maybe I’ll feel better if I start eating healthier. It might give me more energy, I don’t know. I’m focusing so hard on his cantaloupe and honeydew I don’t even notice him turn around to stare at me.
“I’m sorry, do we know each other?” he asks.
I squint my eyes. There’s something vaguely familiar. Was he one of Natalie’s specialists from the NICU, maybe?
He’s sticking out his hand. “Dr. Jamison.”
I’m sure my eyes are about to bug out of their sockets. “Wait a minute. Are you from Massachusetts?” But I see his nametag now and already know.
I’m laughing and pumping his hand like he’s just offered me a million bucks. “Eliot Jamison. It’s me. Tiffany Franklin. We went to school together, remember?”
Before I know it, he’s offering me an awkward hug and telling the cashier to put my coffee and cinnamon roll on his tab. “Tiff,” he says, and I’m glad he remembers that’s what I’ve always gone by. “I knew I recognized you. What are the chances?” He hands me my cappuccino. “I have a few minutes before I need to start making my rounds. Care to take a seat with me?”
I want to stay. Man, I want to stay. I don’t care that it’s Eliot Jamison, the kid I pestered to death because of his inhaler. It’s nice to have someone — anyone — who seems genuinely happy to see me.
“I can’t.” I hate myself as soon as I say the words. Hate the way Eliot’s eyes immediately cloud over with disappointment. “My daughter’s here in the PICU. I really have to get back.”
He’s looking at me like it literally hurts him to know I have a child that sick. For once, I don’t mind having someone feel a little sorry for me.
He sets down his fruit and pulls a business card out of his wallet. “Listen, if you ever want someone to talk to about ...”
I glance at the card. Eliot Jamison, Oncology Resident. “It’s not cancer.” I want to add thank God but figure that might not be the best move. I don’t want to offend him or any of his patients, and I certainly don’t want to jinx my daughter. After all the x-rays and procedures she’s gone through these past four months, it’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t end up needing an oncologist at some point in her future. “She had a brain bleed when she was born ...” I realize I’m about to give Eliot an entire rundown of her medical history, but I don’t want to bore him to death or act like I’m out for a free consultation. “It’s a long story, and I know you’ve got to be busy.” Aren’t medical residents notoriously overworked?
He’s all smiles. I feel awful that I used to tease him so horribly. “We’re in room 205 in the PICU,” I tell him. “Stop by any time.”
Once Natalie and I get out of here, I’m going to be sick of people looking at me with so much sympathy, but right now, I want to hug Eliot for how kind his eyes are. He promises to come by and visit soon. I actually believe him, and we part ways.
I get a text from Jake as I take the elevator back up to the peds floor. How’s she doing?
I tell Jake what the night nurse told me before she clocked out, which wasn’t much, and return to my room. Natalie hasn’t woken up yet. She’s got an oxygen cannula taped to her cheeks. She looks a little ashen, but her oxygen levels are mid-nineties today. Maybe she’s already getting better.
I count down the days until Christmas, hoping to God we’re out of here by then.
CHAPTER 61
“Smelly Elly? I seriously can’t believe you forgot about that.”
I’m back at the cafeteria having lunch with Eliot, aka Dr. Jamison, the oncology resident. I decided it was time to come clean and apologize for how mean I was to him when we were kids, except he doesn’t remember half of it.
“Ok,” I laugh. “What about the time I hid your inhaler in a tampon box? You can’t have forgotten that one.”
Eliot’s smiling at me, but his eyes are soft. Maybe it’s the white coat and official nametag, but he looks like he could be ten years older than I am. “Actually, there’s a lot about those days I don’t remember.”
I bite my lip. Of course. It should be the golden rule of foster brats. Don’t bring up the past. What was I thinking?
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. When he called up to Natalie’s room to invite me to lunch, it had sounded like such a good idea. Now I’m not so sure.
“Hey, don’t apologize. If what you did to me was really that bad, there’s no way I could have forgotten it so easily, right?”
We both know this is a lie, but I pretend to agree with him.
“So, tell me about your daughter,” he says. “Her name’s Natalie, right?”
It’s ironic, really. Here I am wanting to talk about the past to forget all the pain that’s going on now, and he’s the exact opposite. Is there any safe ground between us?
I give him the sixty-second summary of Natalie’s condition. Tell him the doctors think she got a lung infection from breathing in so much of her drool.
“Poor little thing,” he says.
I still can’t believe he’s already a doctor. If I remember right, he was only three or four years older than me. Of course, he’s a genius. Probably graduated early and all that. But still, he’s already got his MD? Meanwhile, what do I have to show for myself? A sick baby, a marriage license that may or may not be valid come summer, and a trailer in the middle of nowhere that I doubt I’ll ever see again and isn’t even in my name.
I pull out my phone to show him a picture of Natalie.
“She’s a cutie,” he says as he takes my cell, and I want to kiss him for being
so kind.
“Yeah, she is,” I agree.
My phone beeps from an incoming text, and he hands it back to me. “Oh, this must be for you.”
Mom’s at the Omak hotel. Having a buddy drop me off there this afternoon.
“Everything ok?” Eliot asks.
“Yeah, it’s just ...” I find my cheeks warming up and I don’t know why. “It’s Natalie’s dad. He’s trying to find a way to get here from central Washington. Kind of crazy.”
I shouldn’t be embarrassed, but I am. Eliot Jamison, my asthmatic foster brother from a dozen lifetimes ago, now probably makes enough money in a single day to get a private flight from Orchard Grove to Seattle. Ok, so maybe not that much yet, but once he’s out of his residency he sure will. Meanwhile, my husband’s stuck four hours away because his car’s a piece of trash and won’t make it over the North Cascades without burning the engine.
There’s karma for you right there.
Eliot and I make some small talk while we finish our lunch. I find out he went to Yale on a full scholarship for his undergrad, got accepted into some posh med school in New York City right after that, and has been doing this oncology residency for about six months now. He doesn’t mention a wife or a family, and I don’t ask. When we’re done eating, we promise to connect again soon even though I wouldn’t be surprised if I never hear from him again.
I get back on the elevator to the peds floor, and I find myself wondering if Eliot Jamison’s is the one soul in this world who’s as lonely and lost as mine.
CHAPTER 62
I call Jake after the sun sets. It’s the first time we’ve talked since Natalie and I flew into Seattle last night.
“Hey.” I hate the way my voice sounds so tired. I hate that I’m not even trying to make my husband feel like I’m happy to be on the phone with him.
“What’s going on?” His voice is funny. Like I called him right in the middle of something important. Like he wasn’t expecting to hear from me.
“I just thought I’d give you a ring.”
“Yeah? How’s it going?” He’s distracted. What could he possibly be doing? Is he playing that stupid candy game and trying to have a conversation with me at the same time?
“It’s pretty good,” I tell him. “They’ve got her oxygen levels to stay in the nineties most of the day. They’ve been giving her steroids. I think it’s helping.”
“Steroids? Isn’t that bad?”
I roll my eyes, certain he’s thinking about athletes and bodybuilders and sports scandals. “Not that kind. These are different. They put them in through the nebulizer. It’s supposed to be good for her lungs.”
“Put it in the nebu-what?” I hear dishes clatter in the background.
“What’s going on over there?” I seriously doubt that Jake is emptying the dishwasher when he’s got the trailer completely to himself. I’d be surprised if he runs a single load this whole week, especially after he’s been trained to think that his mother ...
His mother? Nobody could be that stupid. Not even my husband.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “Just dropped a plate, that’s all.” He lowers his voice. Like he’s got something to hide. Like he’s trying to keep somebody from listening in.
“Your mom’s not over there, is she?” No. I refuse to believe my husband, the man I agreed to marry, the man whose child is the most important thing in my world, could be that big of an idiot.
“What? No, she just ...”
“Jake, what happened to the serving bowl? The big white one I use for the rice?” Patricia’s voice on the other line is as obvious as that zit on Jake’s chin from his online profile pic. I could laugh if I wasn’t so disgusted.
“Listen.” He’s whispering. I can just picture him crouching low and trying to sneak down the hall so he can have a private conversation in the bedroom. “She’s really sorry about what she said. She came and apologized. She’s old-school, you know. Back when we were kids, that word meant something else ...”
“I’ve got to go.”
“Please, don’t be mad at me. If you’re not comfortable with this, I’ll ask her to leave before you get back. I just ...”
I hang up before I can hear any more of his pathetic excuses. It’s not that I’m surprised he invited Frankenmother back to the trailer. It’s not that I even blame him. You can’t expect that boy to stand up to his mom twice in the same calendar year.
I didn’t hang up on Jake because I was mad at him. I hung up because my daughter is acting weird. I’ve already pushed the alert button. Why is it taking the nurse so long to get here?
Half a minute later, she bustles through the door. “Everything ok?” It’s a stupid question. Why would I have called her if everything was ok?
“She’s doing something funny.” I’m standing over Natalie’s crib, watching her pump her legs like she’s trying to ride a bicycle and lie on her back at the same time. Her head’s moving rhythmically from one side to the other. I would have never guessed she had that much muscle strength.
The nurse is shining a flashlight into my daughter’s eyes. “She’s never done anything like this before?”
“No. I’ve never seen her move her legs at all.”
“I’m going to call the doctor in.”
“What’s going on?”
“Looks like she’s having a seizure.”
CHAPTER 63
Natalie’s got at least twenty wires taped to her little head. It’s all color-coded. Reds and greens and yellows. Like in those stupid action movies where the hero doesn’t know if he’s supposed to cut the blue wire or the red one. Except have you noticed it’s never the same color from one film to the next?
There’s some tech in here, a cute guy in his twenties or early thirties. He’s really talkative, but not in a flirty way. More like the “I’m a dude but I’d make a great BFF and you’d never have to worry about me hitting on you” sort of way. I like him. He puts my mind at ease.
“How old’s your little sweetie?” he asks.
“Four months.” I hate saying it because she still looks like a newborn. A very out of it newborn who just spent half an hour pedaling her legs in the air like she was watching an aerobics video from the eighties.
“She’s adorable.” He’s gushing, but he’s not overdoing it. I get the feeling that he’s being sincere.
“Thanks.”
“Is she part Asian?”
“Yeah.” I answer even though I don’t want to think about Jake right now.
“I thought so. You can really see it in her eyes.”
“Uh-huh.”
He plugs some of the wires into his portable machine. “Well, I’m just about done hooking her up.”
“Then what happens?”
“We watch. The EEG’ll print out a scan of her brain waves, and that will give the neurologist an idea of what’s going on in there.”
I don’t want to deal with the same neurologist I met in the NICU, but if I don’t have any choice, I guess it’s better than nothing. We’re here to figure out what’s wrong with Natalie, right?
We don’t say much once Natalie gets hooked up. The tech makes small talk every now and then, but I’m so exhausted I end up being pretty bad at conversation. I don’t know how long the test goes because I’m back on hospital mode where my biological clock completely shuts down and I have no concept of minutes or hours. I’m surprised when he unhooks my daughter and starts peeling off the tape stuck to her scalp.
“That’s all?”
“Yup.”
I eye the chart on the screen. “What does it say?”
“I have to send it to the neurologist to look at. I’m sure he’ll be here soon to talk to you.”
Be here soon. Great. I know enough hospital-speak by now to realize the guy must have found a problem but isn’t allowed to tell me himself. I don’t know why I’m surprised. I shouldn’t have let that Grandma Lucy lady get my hopes up. She’s nothing but an old bat who doesn’t know anything
about me or my child. Was I so desperate I clung to the wild promises of a perfect stranger who doesn’t have a hint of medical training?
The tech leaves. Part of me wishes he would have stayed. I feel like an unwanted stray puppy, willing to shower all my love on the first person to show me the slightest hint of attention. I hate that I’m so pathetic right now. You know what I need? My foster mom. Sandy’s perfect in situations like this. That’s why she does so much foster care in the first place. She was made to nurture unwanted, needy creatures. Some people like that work at animal shelters. Others take in foster brats.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m special in Sandy’s mind. If I stand out more than some of the other placements she had. I was there for four whole years. That’s got to count for something. But on the other hand, she’s been doing this for decades now. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s had a couple hundred kids in and out her door. There’s no way she can remember all of them.
Man, I need to stop this line of thinking. If Sandy didn’t care about me, she wouldn’t have flown out to Seattle when Natalie was little. She came because I needed her. Why couldn’t Natalie have been born in Boston? Why did I ever leave home?
There’s a huge man blocking the entryway. “Mrs. Franklin?” he asks. I wonder if he’s the neurologist.
“Come in.”
He’s so tall, I didn’t see the petite woman standing behind him at first. Her black hair goes down past her waist, and I doubt she’s five feet tall even in those two-inch heels. She’s all smiles as she stretches her hand out to me. “Hi. I’m Riza Lopez, one of the chaplains here. This is Dr. Fletcher. Mind if we sit down?”
CHAPTER 64
I don’t want to know what a chaplain is doing in my daughter’s hospital room. Is this standard procedure? Do they just go around from room to room checking up on people? And why the bodyguard dude?
She looks nice enough. Filipina if I had to guess. Probably weighs half of what I did when I was full-term with Natalie, but her smile is genuine. It’s the doctor I don’t trust. Dr. Fletcher is six-foot-six if he’s an inch. He’s the size of a football player, and his hands are so big he could rest my baby in one palm. He’s got rich, dark skin that makes my hodgepodge complexion pale in comparison. I study the two of them. They look so mismatched, and for a second I wonder if that’s what Jake and I look like to others when they see us.