I blink away tears. I swallow hard, take a deep breath, refocus on this tiny, tiny human in my arms.
“He’s perfect,” I say. Levi squeezes my shoulder. Daniel pulls a gray t-shirt over his head. Across the room, I can see Charlie smile.
“I know,” Daniel says.Chapter TwentyThaliaThe days while my mom’s in the hospital blend together. Sunday is like Monday is like Tuesday with no real differentiation between them other than the date on my phone.
I visit my mom in the hospital. After a little while, I somehow get used to the tube in her chest and then learn to ignore it. The doctors say it’ll be there for several more days, until her collapsed lung is getting enough oxygen.
Besides that, she’s loopy on pain meds for her broken arm and ribs, and every time I so much as make her smile, the nurses admonish me lest I make her laugh. She spends most of her time fading in and out of sleep, and sometimes Bastien and I take turns napping with her, in the uncomfortable arm chair next to the bed.
My father’s there, too, though he never naps next to her, but he attends to her dutifully. He charges her phone, brings her his iPad, makes sure she has good snacks and plenty of water. He brushes her hair and helps the nurses give her a sponge bath.
I know that they’re on the rocks. They have been ever since he cut Javier off and Javier disappeared, breaking my mom’s heart. But he’s still there, every day, because if there’s one thing my father understands, it’s duty.* * *I do, eventually, remember to email my professors and explain my absence, even though it’s Tuesday before I suddenly realize that it needs to be done. I beg forgiveness and offer doctors’ notes, copying and pasting the same email to all of them.
Though I hesitate over Caleb’s. I wonder if I should tell him more, expand on the fact that my mom is okay but will still be in the hospital for a little while, if I should thank him for giving me a ride all the way across the state.
Then I remember the kiss. The frantic, anxious, frayed-nerves kiss that I practically forced on him at the end of the night. The kiss that I gave him in a moment of weakness and helplessness even though I knew that I shouldn’t, because it’s not me who will get in real trouble.
If a student and a professor get caught kissing, the student probably gets a stern lecture, maybe a warning.
The professor probably gets fired.
I decide not to say anything, at least not in this email from my university address to his. It was a mistake, an accident, something that I’ve solemnly sworn up and down to myself that I won’t do again, and I’d rather just bury it.* * *My roommates, on the other hand, get blow-by-blow text updates. We have a group chat and I tell them every time that my mom seems a little extra woozy, every time there’s some decision to be made, every time a doctor has new information.
They send my mom flowers and a balloon. They send me chocolate. One night, as I’m complaining to them about how there’s no food in the house because my father is clueless and my brother is back at school and no one ever seems to think about the fact that we have to eat except me, the doorbell rings.
There’s a delivery man standing there with a pizza.
From them.
Margaret, Harper, and Victoria are my lifesaving angels, and I owe them big time.
Finally, after a week, it’s decided that I’m going back to school. My mom is still going to be in the hospital for another few days, just to monitor her, but there’s no reason for me to stick around. She’s doing well, her broken bones are beginning to mend, and the tube is finally out of her chest.
The night before I leave, I finally, finally decide it’s time to relax. I pour myself a glass of wine from a bottle in my parents’ pantry and load up a dumb movie on my laptop.
Just as I’m about to hit play, my phone rings.
It’s Harper, and I frown. She’s calling me? Harper never calls. I mean, no one ever calls, at least without texting me first and warning me, but Harper in particular never calls.
I cross my fingers before I answer.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi! Sorry for calling,” she says.
“It’s important,” Victoria says, on speakerphone.
“Did something happen?” I say, twirling my wine glass between my fingers.
“Hell yes it did,” Victoria says.
“Do you have your laptop nearby and is it on the internet?” Harper asks. “And are you at least medium-alone?”
“I’m fully alone,” I say. “Why? What’s going on?”
“Okay, okay, hold on,” Harper says. “You tell her.”