After Hours (InterMix)(102)

“No, she didn’t, honey.” Ill-appearing, my brain echoed. Panic surged and I stuffed it down. “But I know. I know Jack and I know he’s going to be okay.”

“You didn’t feel him, Erin. He was so. Hot. I went to wake him from his nap and . . . Jesus.”

I kept rubbing her back and shoulders, doing my damnedest to act calm, when all I wanted to do was scream, scream until my lungs burst, until somebody fixed this.

“Where’s Marco?”

“I left him a message after I called the ambulance.” She checked her phone. “Nothing yet. He’s working way over past Mount Pleasant this week. He must be driving back.”

He f*cking better be, to ignore a call like that. The thought boiled my blood.

“Hang tight,” I said. “I’m going to find you a water or something.” In truth, I didn’t want her to see it when I started crying. If ever my sister needed a steadying anchor to latch onto, now was the time, and I was it.

In the ladies’ room, I gave myself two minutes to speed-cry, then pulled myself together, splashing cold water on my mottled face. I bought Amber a water and some M&M’s from the vending machines and found her just as I’d left her, in a snotty, panicked heap. A nurse or aide was trying to calm her down, but I gently asked her to leave us be until there was news.

I set the water and candy at Amber’s feet, and grabbed her a box of tissues from a coffee table. She blew her nose and gulped a couple hitching breaths before turning to me and saying, “I’m a terrible mother.”

“Oh, honey. No you’re not.” I crouched in front of her and squeezed her knees. “Kids get sick. Kids get fevers. You remember when you were like, four, and you ate a whole tub of French onion dip and had diarrhea for two days?”

She laughed weakly. “No.”

“Kids are always getting sick. And Jack’s going to get better.” Ill-appearing. “We just need to stay calm, so when the doctor has more information, we don’t miss anything, okay?”

She nodded, shoulders bucking with a few tearless sobs.

“Good girl.” I moved to the chair next to hers and let her rest her cheek on my shoulder, stroking her hair. We probably looked silly to any witnesses, two matching, baby-faced urchins, doomed to get carded until we were forty. But I felt ancient. I felt like a mom must when her child’s threatened—ten feet tall and singularly focused, a force not to f*ck with. How I felt on the ward, on a good day.

For a long time, we waited.

After a week masquerading as forty-five minutes, my patience snapped and I marched to the desk.

“Any updates on Jack?”

She shook her head with a tight smile. “We’ll tell you as soon as we know.”

Was no news good news? Had his fever come down at all? I plopped back beside Amber. “Nothing yet.”

She’d run out of tears for the time being, her irises looking violet from how red the crying had made her eyes. “I can’t stand this.”

I put my arm around her. “I know, honey.”

A funny noise cut the silence—Amber’s message alert crowing like a rooster. She fumbled in her pocket, the screen turning her pink cheeks ice blue. She frowned.

“Marco?”

Looking disturbed, she passed it to me.

that sucks. ill try 2 get over there

“I’ll try to get over there?” she asked me, blinking.

“Here.” I texted him back, judging from Amber’s expression that she was only apt to make things worse. Jack’s in the ER. Need you here. I asked the attendant for the hospital’s address and sent the message.

“There. I’m sure he’ll come as quick as he can.” I passed her the water. “Here. Drink something.”

Grudgingly, she did.

The first real update didn’t come for another hour and a half—not until after Amber had been called away three times, to speak with three different pediatric staff. She’d returned from each interview more hysterical than ever. At long last, a new nurse appeared from the hall and called, “Amber?”

She shot to her feet, me right on her heels.

Probably unsure which panicked woman was Jack’s mom, the nurse’s attention jumped between the two of us. “They’re still not sure exactly what’s wrong, but his fever’s down to one-oh-four, which is an improvement.”

Amber looked to me. “That’s good, right?”