After Hours (InterMix)(101)
I was in my car and already a mile down the road when I realized I had no idea where the children’s hospital was, only the main one affiliated with Larkhaven. Lamenting my ancient phone, I pulled onto the shoulder and cued up a contact I’d really been hoping to not need a favor from ever again. I stared at the passing traffic, grinding my teeth and counting the rings. One. Two.
“C’mon, Kelly, answer.” Three. “Please answer.”
After the fourth tone, a cold, “Yeah.”
“Kelly. Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Can you tell me how to get to the children’s hospital in Darren? I can’t get online and—”
“What’s going on?”
Don’t, I begged myself, but the second I started speaking, the tears were stinging my eyes. “My nephew’s being taken there. They don’t know what’s wrong.”
“You know the major road that runs past my neighborhood? You take that like you’re coming to visit me, but keep going, about a mile and a half, and it’ll be on the left. You’ll see signs.”
“Thank you.”
“Was it him?” Kelly asked. Was it that piece of shit that landed the kid in the f*cking ER?
“No. Thank you, Kelly.” And I hung up. Any more talking and I’d be crying too hard to drive.
I sped, sixty-five in a forty-five the entire way, but karma was on my side. I ditched my car in the lot and jogged through the sliding doors to the reception area, shin splints screaming.
I hurried to the desk.
“Yes?” asked the bony older woman on duty.
“My sister Amber and her three-year-old—an ambulance was bringing them here.”
“Yes, the boy was checked in about ten minutes ago.”
“I need to see them.”
“This blue corridor,” she said, pointing. “Down all the way to the end, take a right, then a left after the elevators. Pediatric emergency department.”
She probably didn’t even catch my muttered thank-you; I was already halfway down the hall.
I heard Amber before I saw her. She was in the pediatric ER’s lounge, demanding information from a woman in scrubs in a high, broken voice, answered by a hushed tone and gentle hand on her arm. I skidded to a halt beside her, my sneakers squeaking on the linoleum.
“What’s happening?”
Amber squeezed her eyes shut, mouthing a soundless, “They don’t know,” and dissolving into sobs. I steered her to a chair and went back to the nurse.
“I’m her sister. What’s wrong with my nephew?”
“The doctors don’t know yet. But he’s got a very high fever, so they’re working hard to treat that, first and foremost.”
“We can’t be with him?”
The nurse shook her head, frowning apologetically. “Not until we know what’s going on.”
“I’m an LPN,” I said, desperate for any extra clues. Throw me a f*cking bone here, lady.
She lowered her voice. “Your nephew is ill-appearing.”
My blood turned to ice at the term. A child could arrive at the hospital with the nastiest flu their parent had ever seen, and still get labeled well-appearing. “What?”
“We’ve got too many staff in with your nephew to allow family at the moment. What we really need is for your sister to stay calm, and stay close. We’ll need her on hand as we work to get to the bottom of this.”
My brain knew full well this was completely reasonable, but an angry sigh shuddered from my throat. I rubbed my face, willing myself to be calm. I was the rational one. The one who kept it together. I was a f*cking nurse. Amber was a mother, but I was hers, and I had to be strong now, when she couldn’t be.
I took a seat beside her. She was doubled over, head on her knees, arms wrapped around her shins. Exactly the position she’d always adopted on the front stoop of our apartment building when she “ran away,” following a fight with our mom. Just folded herself into a wretched ball and waited for someone to take pity. One day I’d come home after school and found her just that way, with her stuffed turtle and a family-sized bag of pretzels. For nutrition, she’d explained. For when I go and live in the woods and never come home again, ever.
I rubbed her back, just as I surely had all those years ago. “He’s going to be fine,” I said, at a loss for any other words.
She sat up, face beet red. “Is that what she said?”