I explained about the aortic dissection.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Brann,” he groaned like I was killing him.
“Listen,” I pleaded with him. “She’s eight and she’s imagining all kinds of things that happened to her mother in the last few moments of her life,” I continued with a sigh. “It’s important that she hear the truth from a doctor who can explain things thoroughly but on her level.”
“Holy crap,” he grumbled. “Ask for the moon, why don’t you?”
“Oh, come on, I have faith in you.”
“I refuse to screw up a little girl’s life by—”
“That’s the problem, Tone,” I confessed. “I’m worried if she doesn’t get answers soon that what she’s going through now is just gonna fester and eat her alive.”
He was quiet on the other end.
“Please.”
He exhaled sharply. “Of course I’m going to say yes to you, because you’ve tripped my interest with her wanting to know and me wanting to teach.”
I knew that, because I knew him. He was an amazing mentor.
“Where the hell are you, and what’s the time difference?”
“I’m in Montana, so you wanna do it now, maybe?”
He told me to grab my laptop.
Olivia decided she wanted to sit with her father and sister, and even though she wasn’t sure if she felt like staying the whole time, she was willing to see. Emery shot me a look, concerned with that, but when I grabbed hold of his bicep and squeezed, he took a breath and nodded, agreeing to let Olivia sit on his lap.
April was shaking, she was so excited. Emery seemed nervous and scared, and Olivia was uncertain as they all sat down at their kitchen table together. I pulled up Skype on my MacBook Air and called Tony. Once he answered and April saw him in his white doctor coat with a wall of x-rays behind him, appearing serious with his rimless glasses and beard and mustache, I watched her visibly relax. Her shoulders dropped, she unclenched her fists, letting her hands open as she leaned forward to better see the things behind him. And I understood. She’d thought maybe I was bullshitting her and that I was having her talk to someone other than a doctor or someone who wouldn’t take her seriously. When she saw where he was, who he was, all that changed.
“Dr. Anthony Leone, this is my friend April Dodd and her father, Emery, and her little sister, Olivia.”
“Good afternoon,” he greeted them. “April, I understand you have some questions about what happened to your mother.”
She nodded.
He then glanced at Emery. “And I understand that you’ve agreed to have me talk to your daughter, sir.”
“Yes, I have,” Emery agreed.
“Okay, then.” Tony sighed and returned his focus to April. “I have a model of a heart here if you’re okay to see that.”
“Yes, please, and thank you for talking to me,” she rushed out.
His smile was kind. “Of course. Now listen, if I go too fast or you don’t understand something or if you want me to stop because you need a moment to process the information I’m giving you… if any of that happens, you just let me know, all right?”
“Yes,” she agreed, and grabbed her father’s hand and squeezed it tight.
Emery stared at his little girl’s hand in his, and I saw his eyes fill instantly. I knew from what he’d told me that they had not had any father-daughter bonding moments in a while. This was exactly what he’d been hoping for, though probably not over something that was going to be so heartbreaking for both of them.
Walking out of the kitchen, not wanting to intrude on the family, I went to the living room and stretched out on the couch. It didn’t take long for my body to get heavy, and when I felt a hand in my hair, petting me, I made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a purr.
“That’s a good noise,” Olivia said absently. “You have pretty hair; it’s got lots of cool colors in it.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled into the pillow.
She was quiet, her fingers carding through my hair over and over.
“Were you bored?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, then yawned, wiggling around until her head was next to mine on the throw pillow. “I know Mommy is in heaven, even if April doesn’t think so.”
It was good that she believed, and why would I contradict her? I couldn’t say empirically one way or another.
“This one is gold,” she said, back to looking at my hair. I could feel the tug of her fingers. “This one is brown. This one is… red. My mommy had red hair like me.”
“Yours is auburn.”
“It’s red like yours,” she contradicted me.
I might have had some stray colors in my dirty-blond hair, but red wasn’t one of them. Thing was, though, I wasn’t about to correct her because it was endearing that she wanted there to be similarities between us. She wanted us to have things in common. “Okay.”