“Do you remember when you last got your insulin?”
He shrugged noncommittally.
“A long time?”
“It’s not Mama’s fault. I just forgot.”
She heard Denise mutter with disgust behind her, “Six years old and he thinks it’s his fault.”
“Let’s double-check your levels, okay?” Ella said soothingly, careful not to let her anger against the mother sound in her voice. She patted his hand, gauging the temperature and texture of his skin.
As she administered the insulin stick, she cast a quick glance over her shoulder to the admissions desk. She recognized the thin woman with flame colored hair in a short, tight black skirt, a white, puffy jacket, her hair piled high on her head with sparkly pins. Ella knew that on closer inspection she’d find tracks on her arm.
The attending physician walked in and Ella quickly gave him the intake report. After the exam, Ella returned to Bobby’s side.
“Okay, big guy, we’re all done here,” she said, smiling into his eyes again as she affixed a bandage. “Your room is waiting for you!”
His face scrunched up with worry—unusual for him. “Will you come with me?”
Ella wondered about his fear but forced a wide smile on her face. “I’ll be up just as soon as I can.”
He smiled weakly.
“Are you hungry?”
He nodded, embarrassed to be so.
“I’ll get something yummy sent right up.” She patted his hand and he gripped hers tightly. Her heart clutched as she looked into his eyes and squeezed back.
“Ella?”
She brought her face close to his. “Yes, sweetie?”
“Don’t blame my mama. It’s my fault. I just forgot.”
She smoothed back the lock of damp hair from his forehead and swallowed back the emotion rising up her throat. She couldn’t comprehend that kind of selfless devotion. It broke her heart. There was a special place in heaven for young children who had to take care of their parents. And a special place in hell for those parents.
“I won’t blame anyone, sweetie. Especially not you. And do you know why?”
He shook his head.
“Because you’re so very good.”
His heavy lids drooped with relief and fatigue. In a rare impulsive gesture, she bent over to place a kiss on his clammy cheek. Her heart pumped with affection for the boy and she vowed then and there that she wouldn’t let him go through this again. She swore that, even if she had to adopt him herself, she’d not let this child’s life be threatened by negligence again.
As another nurse began rolling the gurney off to the pediatric ward, she felt his small hand tighten in panic on hers. “Don’t worry, you know the routine,” she told him with a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll be up to see you later. I promise.”
As she’d predicted, it had been an unusually busy night. Hours later, Ella made her way to the elevator and up to the pediatrics ward on the third floor, relieved no one stopped to ask her about the teddy bear she carried in her arms. She openly discouraged sentimental attachments between nurses and patients. Such bonds only proved difficult to handle when the patient was dismissed for home or, sadly, died. Again and again she’d seen nurses get overly attached, then crash and burn when the child didn’t make it.
As the elevator rose, she plucked at the stuffed bear’s ears and smiled, allowing herself to wonder what it would be like to care for one child instead of so many? To allow herself to love one child, without reserve. She had so much love to share.
The elevator door swooshed open to the pastel-colored walls of the pediatric ward. Ella knew this floor as well as she knew her own home; she actually spent more waking hours here.
“Hi there,” she said cheerfully to the nurse sitting at the station “Which room is Bobby D’Angelo in?”
“Room 317. But Ella, wait! You’d better not go in there right now. There’s a code.”
The words jolted Ella and she took off at a run for his room. From the hall she could hear the terse, staccato orders of the medical team. Drawing near, she saw the crash cart with the defibrillator. She stood out of the way of the team as they frantically worked over the limp child. Her gaze sought out the slim, erratic line of the heart monitor.
“Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die,” she prayed with each beat.
Time became a blur of motion and shouts. The team wasn’t giving up on this young child, calling again and again for shock. Ella clutched the stuffed teddy bear against her chest each time the child’s frail body jerked with the force of the electricity. And after each convulsive jolt, Bobby’s arm lay slack on the sheet. The skin was ghostly pale and so painfully thin she could see his blue veins travel from wrist to elbow like rivers.
Ella’s gaze fixed on his slender hands. They lay flat on the white sheets, palms up. His small fingers curled ever so slightly. Ella recalled that he’d been afraid and she wanted to reach out and hold on to his hand. To hold on to his life.
A high humming sound pierced the silence of the room. Her own hands loosened and the teddy bear fell to the floor.
That had been the last night she’d worked as a nurs`e in a hospital. The next day she’d left, turning a deaf ear to all her friends, counselors and the administration. “It’s tough, I know,” they told Ella. “You’re a veteran. You’ve been through this before. Children die. It’s part of our job.”
But that was just it. She’d been through it too many times. She’d seen one child too many die.
It didn’t help that she mentally kicked herself for falling into the trap she’d helped others avoid, but she could keep it from happening again. She vowed she would not allow another child to creep into her heart the way Bobby had. When she’d taken this position as nanny, she told herself she would be a better caretaker if she were kind and loving, yet kept personal emotions out of the equation.
Now, standing on the porch under a late winter sky, Ella could only wrap her arms tighter around herself and laugh at her foolishness. Did she really believe such a ridiculous vow was even possible? No matter how far away she traveled from Vermont, she couldn’t distance herself from the memories she carried with her like excess baggage in her mind. She had to gather her courage and move forward with her life. She had come to South Carolina for warmth. It was time to loosen the ice from around her heart and let the warmth in.
Across the yard, a faint light glowed from behind the heavy navy curtains on the cabin’s windows. Ella smiled, imagining Lijah lying in his warm bed covered with all those blankets, maybe smoking his pipe. She could catch the slightest scent of cherry tobacco in the night air. Lijah had told her, as many times as she would listen, how much he appreciated her fixing up the cabin and letting him “put his feet to his own fire.”
Her head was pounding from too many memories and the emotions they stirred. Often fresh air helped and she breathed in slowly, exhaling through pursed lips. She brought her hands to her head and undid the clasp that restrained her hair. Immediately, her head felt a little better, and she brought her fingers to her scalp to massage the tension away. Before long she heard a steady footfall approaching the house. Her stomach tightened and she quickly began winding her long hair into a braid.
The porch light illuminated Harris’s face as he looked up from the bottom of the steps. “Are you all done for the night?” she asked him.
“For today, anyway,” he replied, climbing the stairs with a heavy tread. “Tomorrow it starts all over again, bright and early.”
“When you’ve got sick patients, there’s always something that needs doing.”
He reached the top of the stairs and stood facing her. His face was pale with fatigue and his arms hung loose at his sides. She had to fight the urge to reach out and brush the way ward lock that fell onto his forehead.
“Sherry called,” he said. “Her mother will be in the hospital for a few more days, then moved to a rehabilitation facility. She’ll have to leave right away.”
�
�That doesn’t give you time to find a substitute.”
“No, but I don’t plan on finding one, anyway.”
“How long does Sherry expect to be gone?”
“Who knows? Her mother had a massive stroke. Everything’s up in the air right now. She’ll know more once she talks to the doctors.”
Ella sighed and leaned her back against the porch pillar. The silence dragged on between them.
“Did Marion get to bed okay?” he asked.
“Finally. She was wound up from the excitement of the holiday.” She glanced over at him. “We talked about her mother.”
His brows rose, then settled in a face rigid with expectation.
“Harris, tell me about Fannie. I’m not prying. I need to know in order to help Marion.”
“There’s nothing you need to know.”
“Why won’t you let her have a picture of her mother?”
“She does better when she doesn’t think of her.”
“But she misses her.”
“No, she misses the idea of a mother. Not her mother.”
“Are you sure?”
In the moonlight, his face appeared as smooth and inflexible as granite. “Look, Ella. You don’t know anything about this. It’s complicated.”
“Nor do I need to. All I know is that Marion needs some contact with her mother. A picture, the ability to talk about her, something.”
“I said no. It would be too painful.”
“For her or for you?”
His eyes flashed and a muscle twitched in his cheek. “This is my house,” he said in a voice grown harsh. “And Marion is my child. There’ll be no discussion of her mother.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he raised his hand in a halting gesture.
“This is one decision I expect you to abide by. Without any argument.”
She tightened her lips and jerked her head up to look at the stars, holding her tongue with great effort.
“Ella, it’s not that I don’t trust you,” he said. Then, with more feeling, “I do.”
She swung her head back to look at him. He had the uncanny ability to fluster her.
“In fact, I was thinking that earlier tonight, while I was working at the clinic. I didn’t have to worry about Marion, about her medicine, about her getting to bed all right, about the million things that run through a parent’s mind. For the first time since I can remember, I could relax and do my work, knowing that you were here.”
“That’s a great compliment and I thank you for it.” She paused and clasped her hands before her. “Seems we were both doing a lot of thinking tonight.” When he half smiled in response, she felt bold enough to continue. “Harris, I’m very fond of Marion. In fact…I’ve come to love her. But I don’t want to replace you in her life. I don’t think I could, really, at least not while she’s young. But as she gets older, there is always the danger of you becoming less important in her life. Diminished, somehow, by disappointment or perhaps just the passing of time without you in it.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, wariness creeping into his eyes.
“It’s very simple, really. You need to spend time with her.”
His face bore the look of defeat, like someone weary of this argument and powerless to change the status quo. “Ella, I don’t know what to tell you. You know how things are right now. With Sherry gone, it’ll only get worse.”
Ella pressed her hand against the harsh grain of the wood pillar. This decision had been building in her mind all evening, despite her internal arguments against it. Now, how ever, she could see her course clearly, as though she’d been fussing at a puzzle and suddenly the pattern crystallized.
She’d come here to help Marion, but she couldn’t help Marion without helping the father. Their fates were inter twined. She’d seen that readily enough but hadn’t known quite how she could help. The last piece of the puzzle, how ever, was the part she hadn’t seen—or hadn’t wanted to see. She couldn’t help either of them without helping herself, too.
She licked her lips and pushed out the words. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
His eyes filled with question.
“I’ve been thinking about what you asked me over dinner,” she began. “To help at the clinic. I still don’t think I’ll be as much help as you seem to think I’ll be, but I’m willing to give it a try.”
His face froze for a moment while he took in her answer, then he brightened with astonishment. “Ella, that’s wonderful! Thank you. You don’t know what a relief this is.”
“I wouldn’t thank me yet.”
His smile slipped as he caught her reserved stance. He cocked his head and looked at her as though trying to figure things out. “Wait a minute. What about all that ‘animal person-people person’ stuff you talked about? You seemed so firm. What made you change your mind?”
“A person,” she replied, her lips twitching. “A little person.”
“Marion?”
“Who else?”
“What did she say to make you change your thinking?”
“Nothing.”
He seemed perplexed.
“She didn’t have to. Did you know she stood at the window, watching for your return tonight?”
His face went blank. Obviously he didn’t.
“It’s not the first time. She waits for you to come home for dinner every night. And the last thing she tells me after we read a bedtime story and I tuck her in is, Tell Daddy to come give me a kiss good-night. Every night she asks the same thing.”
“I always do.”
Ella lifted her shoulders in a light shrug.
He raised his brows with innocence. “I do,” he repeated, insistent.
“Sometimes she is awake and knows you’re there. Sometimes it’s so late she’s already asleep and she doesn’t. Like to night. Trust me, Harris. You don’t want to promise to be there, then not show.”
His face clouded and he looked off into the distance.
“I have personal reasons for changing my mind, too. Tonight, when I saw her standing at the window, I recalled how I used to do the same thing at her age. I stood for what seemed forever, wondering where my parents were, why they couldn’t be home like other kids’ parents. Wondering what was wrong with me that they could leave me behind.” She walked along the porch, absently picking up sticks and bits of debris blown in from the wind and gathering it in her hands.
“When I was a grown woman, I was able to understand why my mother chose to leave me in my aunts’ care. She wanted to work alongside my father. He was a workaholic. If she hadn’t, she never would have seen him. My father was my mother’s first priority. Not me,” she said without a hint of self-pity. “I like to think they were very much in love.
“And yet…as a child I couldn’t rationalize any of that. At Marion’s age, I felt abandoned, hurt, even angry with my mother and father. Their careers, their dedication, even their love for each other—none of that mattered. At five, all I wanted was my mother and my father back. Life is fleeting, Harris. There will always be our work and deadlines and immediate problems to solve. But Marion will only be young for a short span of time. Blink and you’ll miss it. Blink again and she’ll be gone.”
He stood motionless, his eyes haunted.
“So,” she said, rubbing her palms together. She looked up, took a deep breath and gambled. “I have a proposition for you.”
“A proposition?”
“Yes. What I have in mind is a cooperative effort. I’ll come to the clinic to relieve you, and in exchange, you’ll come to the house to take care of Marion.”
“What?”
“The work will get done, but Marion will be spending time with you.”
He shook his head. “That won’t work. We’ll still be one person short at the clinic. The work will pile up.”
“Then we’ll both have to work longer hours. I don’t mind.” Her face became resolved. “But the sacrifice won’t come from Marion. We won’t hire s
itters for her. That’s not what I came here for.”
His eyes stared blankly at the distance and she could tell that he was working this out in his mind. She figured that was only fair. She’d gone over it a million times in her own mind while waiting for him on the porch, and each time the answer came out the same.
“I don’t know if it will work,” he said slowly.
“It will.”
“But there is more work than one person can do.”
“We’ll manage.”
“How? Be realistic, Ella. Where are we going to find the time for this trade?”
“We won’t find the time, Harris. We’ll make the time.”
He pursed his lips in thought, but she saw fear in his eyes.
“What are you really worried about? Don’t you think I can handle the birds?”
“No, it’s not that at all. I’m sure you can. Frankly, it’s me I’m worried about.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not sure I can handle my daughter.”
She suddenly understood the source of his reticence and tried to think of a way to encourage him. “What about the male eagles who lose their mate while rearing their young? You told me that if someone provided enough food, he could be very resourceful and manage to raise an eaglet on his own. Remember? All you have to do is trust your instincts once again and know that you are not alone. You’re surrounded by people who will help you raise this particular little eaglet.” She wagged a finger at him. “But there is one thing you’ll have to worry about,” she added, releasing a grin. “I’ll be the one leaving you food.”
Harris lay on his bed, his fingers interlaced behind his head, and played back his conversation with Ella for the tenth time.
You’re not alone.
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